Impressions Rerun

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Well, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is

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Mike Abendroth. When I get junk mail, it is really junky.

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I think probably the craziest junk mail I ever received was to Mike Haferhorf.

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So, if you would like to call me that, that would be fine. My name is

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Mike Haferhorf. I'm coming to you live from beautiful downtown Burbank.

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Actually, I had two children born in Burbank. Was it the St. Vincent's Hospital? What's it called?

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St. Joe's. Two at St. Joe's, two at St. Vincent's. Now, that's pretty interesting.

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I think Joseph was a saint, but I don't know about Vincent. Who was Vincent? I don't think we're talking about Vincent Price.

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Now, he was the saint of creature features growing up.

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What were some of the shows he was in? The Pit and the Pendulum, maybe Vincent Price was in.

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He seemed like he was the American version of Christopher Lee. Is that his name,

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Christopher Lee? All right, well, today on No Compromise Radio ministry, after I get done goofing around,

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I think I'm goofing around and laughing more and more of my humor has come out in the last year.

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I don't know why, because I'm more comfortable with myself. 51 years old. I have thought though, seriously, at 51, it's interesting.

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I don't want to come across as, nah, I couldn't care less of what people think, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

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You know, and so I don't care about people. I don't want to say that. But I do have more of a thought that, you know,

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I'm comfortable with myself. I know my sins, my weaknesses, my strengths. I know what

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God has gifted me to do. I know why I'm on this earth and what my purpose is. And it's purposely driven.

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And I just don't matter. It doesn't matter as much what people think, because I know that my job is to preach the one who never compromised

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Christ Jesus and to use any format and every format that's available to me. And so as the

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Lord has provided the radio station, I'm using that to try to teach you about the Bible. That's what

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I want to do. We have a bookstore at the church to sell books to teach you about the Bible. We preach on Sunday morning,

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Sunday night, IBS classes. By the way, if you're not at an Institute for Biblical Studies class at Bethlehem Bible Church on Thursday night, you are missing out.

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There's a ladies class now taught by Bita Farah. I think there's 55 ladies there studying how to be, what does sanctification look like in the life of a

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Christian lady? So I'm trying to teach and that's what I'm trying to do. So now I'm old enough where I want to please the

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Lord. First Corinthians chapter seven talks about pleasing your spouse. I'd like my wife to be pleased and my children.

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But beyond that, I don't do this for ratings necessarily. I think

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Arbitron ratings, by the way, sometimes people say, how many people listen to No Compromise Radio in Worcester, Springfield?

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I have no idea. And I think it's $60 ,000 to figure out how many people listen. I think that's probably three times my annual budget for No Compromise Radio, so I don't think we're gonna do that.

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So today we're doing part two on mysticism, on liver shivers, on people trying to understand and commune with God without the scriptures, from the inside out.

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And as mysticism goes up, people's confidence in the word of God goes down.

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And mysticism typically desires to hear from God or understand God, to receive truth from God through themselves.

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That is to say feelings and visions and instincts, et cetera.

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And so really, Phil Johnson's right when he says, this is a denial, a functional denial of sola scriptura.

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And I think it is an escape from reason, and I don't think you can trust yourself because of the fall. We'll talk about that a little bit today.

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And last week I was talking about contemplative prayer, just saying things over and over and over for 20 minutes like stillness, stillness, stillness, stillness, stillness, stillness, stillness.

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And from Beth Moore to Brendan Manning to Richard Foster to Dallas Willard. I almost said

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Dalit wizard. I think he used to be the weatherman for KTLA in Los Angeles.

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Oh no, that was Dallas. Somebody else. Oh, that's funny. Ay, ay, ay, ay.

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What else do we have here? Take a moment to set down this book and simply become aware of your surroundings.

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Allow your eyes to receive the light, colors, and shapes around you without seeking to do anything with what you see, says

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Mark Iaconelli. Then gently close your eyes and turn your awareness to your ears.

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Allow yourself to receive the sounds and noises around you without judgment. Who writes this?

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I mean, come on, this is some insipid romance novel gone awry in community college class, creative writing.

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Then take a moment to become aware of your body. Beginning with the top of your head, allow a gentle, is that Gentile?

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Looks like Gentile, but my eyes are bad. Allow a gentle attention to move down your body to the soles of your feet.

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Allow yourself to notice places of tension or pain without passing judgment. Can you compassionately receive your physical self?

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Spend a few moments allowing your body just as it is to breathe and rest in the presence of God.

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When you're ready, take a moment to direct your attention toward God. Quietly turn your awareness to the presence of God within all that you see, all that you hear, and all that you feel.

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Man, if I was in California, I would say that dude's off. They call my wife, my wife is a pastor's wife.

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She's a really cool lady, neat lady, godly lady. Knows the scriptures well and the

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Lord well. And she likes to surf and mountain bike and all that outdoor stuff. But when other ladies call her dude,

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I just never seem to stop smiling when she's called dude. So I'm gonna call Mark Iaconelli a dude.

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That's crazy. That is emptying yourself. That is Eastern mysticism.

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That is not Christianity. That is not following the dictates of scripture.

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Even the Lord's Prayer when Jesus taught the disciples to pray the disciples' prayer in Matthew chapter six.

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You can see the mind is used. Pray then in this way. You don't wanna pray with vain repetition like the

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Gentiles do. They expect to be heard by God, but they're not. You don't say chuck, roll down window, chuck mind out of the window.

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No, you use your mind. And you're not trying to get yourself in some yoga trance -like state and emptying yourself.

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That is not good. That is not Christian. That is not helpful. That might be contemplative prayer.

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That might be praying in the presence of God. That might be okay for Richard Foster or Beth Moore, but it's not good for you.

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So watch out. And you say, well, who are you? Beth Moore is a multimillion dollar bestseller.

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Well, that's true. But so is Sigmund Freud.

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So is Darwin. You could sell books. That's not the issue. You can be influential.

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And I don't mean she is the same spiritually as Darwin. I think Beth Moore is probably a Christian lady, but she has gotten some mysticism into her big time.

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And I'm trying to warn you from that. You know, this contemplative prayer thing is wild. Secondly, getting impressions from God are wild.

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You can't trust yourself. What does the Bible say? Do a quick study on trusting yourself.

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How about that? Do a quick study on trusting yourself, and you will quickly say, you will immediately say, you know what, the

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Bible says that's bad. So if you hear from yourself on the inside some kind of impression, then how do you know it's you or how do you know it's

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God? He who trust in his own heart is a what? Proverbs 28, 26. Here's your memory verse of the day.

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No compromise, kids. He who trust in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered.

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Don't trust yourself. You're already turned in on yourself, curved in on yourself, as Luther would say.

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Don't do that. But this all makes sense, because self is at the center of everything.

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Depravity drives people towards self, and now you're gonna learn about God from yourself? No, Christianity is a religion about external revelation outside of us, objective, propositional, antithetical, black and white truth.

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Henry Blackaby's book that took the world by storm, Experiencing God in the 80s, said

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God speaks to us by impressions. Oh, by the way, I'm just getting an impression right now.

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Oh yes, wait, wait. Yes, I'm feeling that, I'm receiving that. My antennae are working.

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Yes, I've just got an impression that what Blackaby said in his book, Experiencing God, is nonsense.

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See, now we can't even figure out who's right and who's wrong if we do this. There's nothing outside of us in the controversy to say this is right, this is wrong.

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Blackaby even claimed that if you don't feel things like this from God, that you're not really experiencing

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God. Well, I would say if you're not experiencing these things, you're not experiencing yourself. That's all that is.

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I have impressions all the time. This is Bill Gothard when you have a, quote, check in your spirit, end quote.

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God warning you directly or indirectly. Gary Friesen in his excellent book on decision -making.

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I used to say it was the best book on decision -making, but now I think Kevin DeYoung's is probably the best. Impressions are impressions,

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Friesen said on page 131. Inner impressions are not a form of revelation. So the Bible does not invest inner impressions with authority to function as indicators of divine guidance.

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Impressions are real. Believers experience them. But impressions are not authoritative.

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Amen. I think I should just probably say in contemplative prayer the word

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Friesen for 20 minutes. Friesen, Friesen, Friesen. Whitfield, the

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George Whitfield. Yes, the second great awakening George Whitfield was into subjective impressions big time.

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And sadly, he prophesied that his son would be a boy because of this impression, and his son would be a preacher.

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His son would be named John. And that little boy was born John, and he died four months later, his only child.

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And Whitfield said, I misapplied several passages of scripture. And then he later talked about that particular time in his life, a sad time.

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And he said, quote, many good souls mistook fancy for faith and imagination for revelation.

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So on today's No Compromise radio show, we're talking about ways that God doesn't speak to you.

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He doesn't speak to you when you clear your mind and contemplate a prayer. He doesn't speak to you through impressions.

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I'm not gonna talk about this a whole lot, but labyrinths are big. Labyrinths, paths that you walk through, and you walk through with an open mind and an open heart.

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The writers say, quiet, Artes says, not Ron Artes, Artes, A -R -T -R -E -S -S.

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Although probably Ron Artes has walked through some labyrinths in his life as well. Quiet your mind and become aware of your breath.

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Allow yourself to find the pace your body wants to go. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet these coming out.

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You may pass people or let others step around you. Do what feels natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like the stations of the cross or something.

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Tao Te Ching, as one man said. So today on No Compromise radio ministry, here's what

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I'm trying to say to you. If you want God to talk to you, he has definitively and finally in the scriptures given you plenty.

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And so why don't you master that? Why don't you master what God has said in the scriptures?

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And of course he doesn't say everything in the scriptures to us. That is to say, sometimes he speaks to the nation of Israel or sometimes he'll speak to Judas.

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But everything in those scriptures are for you. God's breathed word, 2

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Timothy chapter three, is an important thing for you. We believe in scripture alone as revelation.

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We don't believe in the magisterium and tradition. We believe in the Bible alone.

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And some Christians I know of would say Roman Catholics are wrong for believing in tradition and the magisterium, yet they have their own impressions.

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And so they are functionally denying sola scriptura just like a Roman Catholic would. And so I think they ought to be fair and not hypocritical.

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2 Timothy 3, 16, you know the passage, you know Timothy had been taught the word of God by his mother and his grandmother.

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And it says in chapter three, verse 16, you know the passage, all scriptures breathed out by God. ESV does a good job translating that.

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NAS doesn't, I think NIV does a good job too, the old NIV. All scriptures breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, that the man of God, the preacher may be competent, equipped for every good work.

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And so we have all scripture, not just some, not just the stuff that you highlight, not just the scripture that's inspired is profitable.

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No, but it's all profitable. It's all inspired. It's all good, teach, reproof, correct, train you in every aspect of comprehensive righteousness.

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So you don't need to look for truth on the inside. It's going to be tainted.

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It's going to be unreliable. Blackaby says,

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God, I pray that I will come to such a relationship with you that when you speak,

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I will hear you respond. He said, oh, don't let anyone intimidate you about hearing from God.

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One critical point to understanding and experiencing God is knowing clearly when God is speaking.

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If the Christian does not know when God is speaking, he is in trouble at the heart of his Christian life. Now see, that part's good, but he didn't really tell me.

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How do I tell when I'm thinking about something? I have an impression the Lord is leading me in my heart.

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How do I know that it is God himself? So here's the big problem.

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Here's the big problem on No Compromise Radio. If you abandon the sole source of God's revelation today, where we are now in this church era, as it were, 2 ,000 years after the final books of scripture written 1 ,900 years, if you say that now

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God speaks to us, you can get God to say things that contradict his word.

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That's exactly what you can do. One of the reasons why people go for the inside instead of the outside is the outside's revealed, fixed, and incontrovertible on many issues.

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No wiggle room at all. But if you say God speaks to me, hey, who am

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I to argue? Except if it contradicts God's word. First of all, God didn't speak to you.

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Second of all, he's not gonna say something that contradicts his word. So listen, listen how this is done.

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And you're going to be, I don't know if you're gonna be shocked or not, but lots of people get out of sticky wickets theologically by saying, well,

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God told me to do it. But he's not gonna tell you to do the opposite thing. I think even charismatics listening today, even mystics listening today, you have to say, don't you, that if God says something plainly, clearly, undeniably, that he's not going to whisper to you some sweet somethings about how that's not the case.

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So let me read to you something that was put on this person's website, and I'll tell you who said it afterwards just for the shock value.

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Thank you for your inquiry and my stand about my stand on women teaching men. As you may know, the ministry to which

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God has called me is geared to women. My conference and weekly Bible studies are entirely focused upon women.

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The only exception to an entirely female audience is my Sunday school class.

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Men continue to come and sit in the back. We never saw them, but did not know how to deal with them.

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Would Christ have thrown them out? I just didn't know. I handed the problem over to my pastor, and under his authority, he said to allow anyone to come who chooses.

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Translation, he's gonna not be a leader either. I've wrestled with this, and the

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Lord finally said to me, hoo, here we go. The Lord finally said to me after wrestling contemplatively,

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I tell you what, and then said her name. You worry about what

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I tell you to say, and I'll worry about who listens. Huh, that's interesting.

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Kind of an interesting vernacular that God would use. You worry about that, I'll worry about this. I think that you could on a good day say that the word worry means anxious or concerned or something like that.

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You could spin it positively, but God didn't say that. So this lady goes on to say, my ministry is to women.

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That's where my heart is. I make no bones about it, but what if men come and sit down? Do we stop and throw them out? I really don't know.

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I just place myself under the authority of my husband, my pastor, and my God, your servant, Beth Moore.

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See how easy that is? I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, First Timothy chapter two.

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Clearly, it clearly says it. Wayne Grudem says, if you can get that to say,

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I do allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, you can get the scriptures to say anything you want. He's exactly right.

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So what do you do? What do you do? I think she went on to do some

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Sunday night services at that church as well. What do you do? Well, you say, God told me it was okay.

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First of all, if your pastor tells you to disobey scripture and your husband tells you to disobey scripture, you don't disobey scripture.

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Husband says, you know what, honey, you're under my authority. It's okay to disobey. Do you still disobey? No, you don't do that at all.

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But the here, the coup de gras, the final who can argue with it, God told me, you worry about what you're going to say and I'll worry about who comes.

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By the way, let's just do a no compromise moment here. We only got a couple of minutes to go. If you're a man and you listen to women elders and women pastors and Beth Moore and women teachers like this, and you sit there and I'm not even getting into Joyce Meyer because she's a heretic.

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She's a liar. She's not even a Christian lady, but men sit there for that too. If you're a man and you sit underneath women preachers, you have to grow up.

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That's what you ought to do. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, number one. Number two, ashamed that you've led your family to such a place where their scriptures are totally disregarded, trampled upon.

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Pastoral epistles, how do you conduct yourself in the church, the pillar of the living God? How do you do that in 1

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Timothy 3? Well, there are different roles, different roles. By the way, we are all equal

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American citizens, but I don't get to fly on Air Force One. Why? Because I'm not the president.

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Someone else has that job. And dads aren't moms and moms aren't dads. And men and women,

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Galatians 3, verse 28, in Christ are equal. Obviously, Genesis 1 and 2, we are image bearers, men and women, but functionally, we are different.

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Different is good. We have different roles. And if you have the New England Patriots football team, they're not all quarterbacks and they're not all going to start, but they're all part of the team.

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And that's exactly what happens in a New Testament church. But when men, especially today in our age, will sit there and listen to women preachers and sit there, and guys today are bringing up their spouses for like the second point of the sermon.

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Years ago, when I went to Saddleback, Rick Warren got up and preached point one, sat down and did some music.

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His wife got up and preached point two. And I just thought, you know what, who does this?

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Well, when scriptures are irrelevant and the main thing is to get people to feel happy and whole, then you do whatever you want.

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You get the woman's point of view. Stephen Furtick was in New York or wherever he was at Harvest preaching, and he has his wife preach the sermon in September for him.

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I don't, who sits there and then listens? Now, if you knew me and you knew how

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I treated my wife, this is not some kind of I grab her hair and drag her around. She wouldn't put up with that for a minute.

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It would be an ungodly thing to do. But we have different roles. And so I know

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I'm going off on this, away from the topic of impressions. But if you are at a church and there is a woman elder or a woman pastor, dads,

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I'm talking to you. Husbands, I'm talking to you. Don't go back. You don't need to meet with the pastor.

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You don't need to meet with the leadership. You don't need to talk about it, meet with committees.

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You need to just leave. I think it might be nice if you send them a note and say, by the way, these are the ministries that I have that you need to have somebody fill in.

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But if you're not going to obey the simple, clear, plain, revealed scriptures, then where am

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I gonna go from there? And by the way, you watch every place that begins to have women leadership will begin to have homosexual leadership.

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It's just a matter of time. That's just one follows the other. Because at the core, at the root, isn't sexuality.

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It isn't preference. It isn't gender. It's will we stand up for the word of God or will we not?

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And we're the men these days. We're the men to stand firm, to be on the alert, to act like men.

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We're those kinds of men. Of course, let everything you do be done in love. But love says, I love God enough to obey.

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So today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about contemplative prayer, labyrinths,

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Lectio Divinia. Whenever there's something coming up new, especially mysticism,

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I just say to myself, I don't really need anything new. Tell me the old, old story. We have a book and we have a book from God written in such a way that you could study it for the rest of your life and you'll still be impressed with Jesus Christ, the great creator.

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So your homework assignment for today is read 1 Timothy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and say,

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God, help our church to do what you say. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.