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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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Steve, we can tell as many jokes today as we want since we're not paying for airtime.

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Sweet. Well, you know, now that the shackles are off, let's just, I heard a really good one.

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Okay, just kidding. Did you hear about the priest, the rabbi, and the Pope? No. Steve, I was sent by Ryan, Ryan S.

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He sends me all kinds of things. I think he sends them to me and then Todd Friel too. No, well, that's not, isn't that, that's no good.

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How about loyalty, you know? Yeah, next thing you know, he'll be sending them to Brandon House or something. House.

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Something from the Sacred Sandwich. Tell the listeners, the Sacred Sandwich, do you ever read it?

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Is it blasphemy? Is it go against your Twitter feed or anything? It's almost as entertaining as the church curmudgeon.

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Oh yes, he's actually pretty witty, isn't he? Yes, he's quite witty. There's a satirical cartoon.

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They have drawings, pictures, funny captions in the Sacred Sandwich. Not too much sacred stuff there.

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Although once in a while, I'll see a few sacred things. And there's not too much sandwich either. Why don't they call it that?

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I have no idea. You know, it's just kind of an alliteration, I think. And it says here, back to Egypt.

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It's got a picture of a pyramid and a palm tree and sun and a camel and a couple of kids with balloons. And of course,

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VBS advertisements. I think people can make a lot of money on VBS. And it says, adventures in spiritual compromise.

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Sweet, back to Egypt. Let's go back to Egypt. The camel says this, hey kids,

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I'm carnal the camel. And this summer you can learn about God's truth, Egyptian style.

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What now insert is that Bangles walk like an Egyptian? Live like an Egyptian. Yes. Live like an

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Egyptian. You start your journey as an Israelite in the wilderness only to find a new freedom in Jesus Christ that lets you make a faith

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U -turn. Maybe that's like Rick Warren calling repentance a do -over. When you golf.

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It's a second chance. It's a Mulligan. That's right. Enjoy your best life now with stops at Party Pyramid, Toyland Oasis, Pharaoh's Job Corps, and more.

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Jam to cool Bible songs and pig out on tasty Nile treats as you discover an amazing faith friendship with the world.

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Nice. So while we're talking about it, I said to myself, Steve, when

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I read this, oh, that's cute. It's a nice little parody. But I would say 90 % of the

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VBSs that are out there, Vacation Bible Schools, I say 90 % of the curriculum is exactly this under the guise of a few

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Bible verses and morality lessons. Sure, because if you're living a moral life, then

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God is pleased with you. It doesn't matter what your heart is. He's more concerned with the external obedience.

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Yeah, so let's teach the kids lesson one, day one. Honor your parents.

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I'd go for that. Be truthful. No, no, let's make it alliterative. Honor your parents.

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Honesty is the best policy. Home is where the heart is. And hone your morality.

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And avoid anything but G -rated movies. Kim, my wife's brother,

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Steve, he's a believer. He lives in California. And he always tells me the story when he was a kid, when

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Jesus commanded the Sea of Galilee to be still. The account in Mark, I believe,

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Mark 4 says, even the wind and the seas obey him. He didn't even know what he was...

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So when you're looking for a VBS curriculum, which they'll be starting to send those things out soon, spring is soon, right around the corner, what should they look for?

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What should you look for in a VBS? Well, you might wanna start with the Bible and then the gospel, just basics.

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What do kids need to hear? Pretty much the gospel over and over and over again until the day,

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Lord willing, that they believe. My favorite thing is, Steve, when I see the adverts sent to the church building and I get the mail sometimes and look through it and they're advertising their

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VBS and this is a new curriculum, hit it out of the park, you know, Yankees strike out again or something.

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I don't know, whatever it is, they have different versions and you could check the version you want. So it's the mainline

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Protestant version, although they just say Protestant, and then they have the Roman Catholic one as well. Nice.

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And so you can just take these things and teach the kids good manners. At least the kids are out of the house for a few hours per day in the summer.

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That's always a good thing. And we're theologically flexible. You know, hey, and just think about it this way, you could use the mainline

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Protestant one one year and then the Roman Catholic one the next year. And ask the kids if there's a difference.

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And probably there's not going to be very much of a difference. Maybe Bible translation difference, but pretty much these

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VBSs these years, it's all morality. You could actually use the Quran, couldn't you?

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Or the Book of Mormon to come up with some principles for life, right? Because God's given us conscience.

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He's given us revelation in nature and people know, don't murder, tell the truth.

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That's how you have a good society. Don't steal. Yeah, don't steal. So anyway, when it comes to VBS, what we've been doing at Bethlehem Bible Church, sometimes we have to write our own, although that's quite the project.

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Yes, it is. And the other times we've been using OPC VBSs. See all these letters we have to use,

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OPC VBS? And Orthodox Presbyterian Church puts out a really good

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VBS curriculum. And every day, it's five days, it's Jesus is maybe the way.

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Jesus is God. Jesus is risen from the dead, or whatever those are, five things about Jesus.

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Last time I checked, vacation Bible school, John chapter five, Luke 24, even the

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Old Testament speaks of Jesus. So I think that's a good VBS. So a lot of churches are just having vacation school then.

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That's right. What's different about this year, Pastor? We took the Bible out. So that's right.

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Taking the B out of the VBS. Yeah, right, okay, good. Speaking of letters, so you didn't know,

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Steve, this was going to be the letter day. You thought it was going to be common myths part. So it's probably a red letter day. It's probably a red letter day.

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I actually like red letter Bibles, not because I say to myself, hmm, this must be more inspired since it's red

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India ink or something. But I just like it because for the most part, I trust the translators and say, oh yeah, these are the words that Jesus is saying.

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And I'm not just speaking as I'm looking at a dialogue between the rich young ruler or something. Yeah, it's kind of a shortcut. So yeah,

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I like that too. Yeah, okay. I do. We can't trust them all the time though, can we? No. And I think about out of the millions of Bibles I own, there's probably only one or two that are red letter, so.

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Why choose the PC USA? The PC USA is - Because it's American.

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That's right. Presbyterian Church USA. Now, just to give you listeners kind of an overview, while we aren't

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Presbyterians, we know a few Presbyterians, don't we? We do. We even like a couple of them.

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On the spectrum of Presbyterianism, you have liberals and you have conservatives.

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On the liberal side, you would have the PC USA. That's what we're gonna talk about today. But there are some good

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Presbyterians, OPC that we just referenced earlier, the Only Perfect Church, wait a second, the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church, did I just say that? Little shout out to the OPC. And PCA, Presbyterian Church of America, Ligon Duncan's PCA, Carl Truman would be an

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OPC. So there's a couple of guys I respect. I wonder what they talk about when they get together. Carl's always busting on the associate pastors at PCA churches wearing their khaki shirts and khaki pants and polo shirts.

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My guess is it's like the two Baptists who met on the Golden Gate Bridge, right? And they're arguing about the different confessions of faith, something like that.

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Well, the third paragraph of Westminster says, what I'm gonna do is

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I'm gonna read this from the actual Presbyterian Mission Agency.

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This is a document from the PC USA. It's the liberal denomination.

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It's the one that asked the questions about what about same -sex marriage? It's okay to ordain homosexual marriage.

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It has a variety of things like that. It's off the deep end. Well, and the amazing thing is it wasn't always, but okay.

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Yes, so it says here, some congregations are wrestling with whether or not to maintain their connection to the

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Presbyterian Church USA. By the way, Steve, lots of those churches have some conservative folks in them and they're leaving.

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And so now the PCA USA is freaking out. What happens when a congregation leaves with the building?

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Can they take it? And so it's a problem. This little piece of paper, the document, is trying to belay the floodgates.

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Yes, it says here. Kind of calm things down. The following are just a few of the many reasons for them to choose to remain with the denomination.

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So let's just say it's Bethlehem Bible Church and we're in the denomination of Bible churches. And it wouldn't be independent, fundamental

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Bible churches. Sure, yeah. But it'd be, what's IFCA again? Independent fundamentalist. I fight Christians anywhere.

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Yeah, I fight Christians anywhere. So these are reasons why you should stay in a denomination.

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And so without reading this, Steve, with all seriousness, what would be some reasons to stay in the denomination for a real

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Bible church? You want to stay in a denomination because, why? Because the statement of faith is Christ -centered.

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I mean, let's talk about what goes on. Sure, yeah, that would be a reason. And I mean, you know, if perhaps, you know, like some denominations have a theory that you can have a greater impact in terms of missions and things of that nature.

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Okay, cooperative, getting together. Maybe it's kind of like a chain of Ace Hardware stores.

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You're independent, but you all put together your name as Ace and now you have a buying conglomeration.

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Yeah. Similar attitude. It would make it easier for people who, in your denomination, who go on vacation to find a local church to visit while they're gone, right?

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Because they would kind of brand identification. They'd go, oh, well, there's another Bible church.

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I can go to that one. It teaches the same thing as my Bible church does, right? See, I like that.

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There are reasons to stay in a denomination. This is how many baptisms there have been this year and the

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Lottie Moon Fund and, you know, who knows? There's reasons. But this is trying to keep

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Presbyterian churches from fleeing to go to more conservative Presbyterian denominations like the

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PCA. My guess is PCUSA folks wouldn't go to the OPC. They'd probably go to the

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PCA first. Right, where - They like khaki, I guess. Yeah, I think some of those folks, you know, eventually they might be some leaven, but we'll see.

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In no particular order, it says here the scriptural emphasis on unity.

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While unity does not require all Christians to be one in denomination, it is important for us to consider what

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Jesus' prayer for unity among his followers means for us today, John 17. So we've got unity over what?

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Truth. Yeah. That's a tough one. Well, you know what?

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You might disagree with us on small issues like how do you get to heaven? What's God's -

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Deity of Christ. Small things like that. But, you know, what about unity? Come on.

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What constitutes a marriage? Human sexuality, preference, gender ID. Infinitesimal compared to unity.

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See, doesn't it go back, Steve, ultimately, and I just hear the MacArthur interviews with Larry King reverberate through my mind.

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My son's been watching some of those on YouTube and he says, John does the same thing every single time. Whatever question they ask him, whatever

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Larry Queen, Dairy Queen. Freudian slip. I was, I meant to say Larry King and I thought of Dairy Queen and I said

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Larry Queen, but it was all unintentional. You're thinking about lunch. Yeah, at least we don't have to pay for this particular show.

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Yeah, thank you. Shout out to our sponsor. WV who? Anyway, John always goes back to the gospel or he goes back to the

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Bible says. And so once a denomination says to itself and to its adherents, its members, its churches, the

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Bible's not the ultimate authority. Science is, reason, tradition, the wind of the world's agenda.

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It's over, Steve. It's absolutely over within a generation. Well, you know, when you mentioned reason,

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I just think about fairness, equity, justice, all these kinds of things that people wrongly mix in and it ultimately is reason, but they mix in together with their religion, with their church.

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And so you wind up with churches like this, mainline Protestant churches usually that are more concerned with social justice than they are with what the

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Bible says. Steve, and it all relates together because why choose PCUSA according to the

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Presbyterian Church USA, I got it from their website. It says the PCUSA in its many expressions is engaged in work across the full range of the gospel's concerns.

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So these are the gospel's concerns. Okay, now I did not read any of this. So go ahead. Preaching and worship.

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Oh, that's good. Evangelism, education, care for the poor, work for the wellbeing of the environment and more.

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The PCUSA is committed to the great ends of the church, capital G, capital E, a commitment to the whole gospel for all people.

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Is the environment, I don't do that. I mean, when I preach the gospel or when I evangelize somebody,

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I'm not usually, and by the way, are you taking care of the environment? Do you recycle?

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When a denomination doesn't know what the gospel is, we've got a serious problem and I think

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I would want to flee. If I'm in the PCUSA church and I'm a leader, I got to get out of there, take the church with me.

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And if I'm a member, I've got to get out of there too. They don't even know what the gospel is. Can you imagine a sermon like on planning your trips carefully so that you don't waste any extra gasoline?

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Steve. Are you minimizing your carbon footprint? The gospel is talking about the good news of Christ's life, death, atonement, resurrection.

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It's the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

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What does this have to do with feeding the poor? Of course, people who have been saved will respond by being kind to poor people, but that's not the gospel.

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When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. Did you hear about the pastor? I just read this that he,

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I don't know if it's true or not, but supposedly he's the new pastor hired. It's his first Sunday.

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They're going to welcome him. And he had dressed up like a homeless person. Suppose a 10 ,000 person church dressed up like a homeless person who was wandering around before the services and asking for money and all this.

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And everybody was ostracizing him. And then he walks up there as the new pastor. I saw a picture of him and you know what?

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I think he was going for the apostle Paul look. I mean, he was kind of looking -

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Doesn't the Bible say something about we're not supposed to have any images? No graven images.

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Well, it also says we're supposed to care for the poor. It is funny, you just think about James and what he says about kind of playing favorites and the rich guy shows up and you want to sit him right up in the front of the thing.

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And really it is something that people do wrestle with. But yeah, I don't know if that's the way

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I would want to introduce myself to a new church. That's just me though, because - I just think to myself, what do I do the next week?

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Yeah, that's a tough one. That's an object lesson that they probably won't soon forget. And that'll be the object lesson they use to throw him out.

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Uh -huh, that's exactly right. Hey, thanks a lot for that object lesson, you're fired. Mike Abenroth, Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio.

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You can go to noco90 .com to pull up some videos. By the way, I'm still trying to get Steve Cooley to do a

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NoCo 90. I think you would get more looks and views and hits than Friel's, Todd Friel's.

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I'm seriously dubious of that. Next to where's Beth Moore's husband, Friel's got the most.

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So it's not even his show, his idea, his concept, and he gets more hits than any other episode

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I've done. Really? Yeah, one of my favorite concepts, I don't know if the show's any good, the 90 -second deal of you got credit for Adam's sin.

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It's got like 1 20th of the Beth Moore deal. Well, you know, who's more popular,

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Beth Moore or Adam? You know, I mean, that's - I mean, how many books has

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Adam written lately? I mean, come on. As long as Beth Moore's, you know,

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I was gonna say her sin, I think it is a sin for her to teach men, but as long as her sin's not credited in my account,

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I'm okay. There are four great imputations in the Bible. Beth Moore's not one of them.

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Why choose the PC USA? Here's what it says. God's spirit continues to work in congregations throughout his denomination.

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This denomination, even as we decline in membership numbers, there's new life springing up all over, often in surprising places.

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I thought they were gonna say, even as we decline in biblical fidelity, there's new life springing up in. It talks about there's new life springing up in a surprising place like downtown churches that address sex trafficking on their corners and in many other shapes and forms.

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See that - Rhombuses and trapezoids. No, is that something, you know, that I, it's an evil, right?

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I mean, the question is, is that the primary role of the church to run around and try to stop sex trafficking?

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What do we wanna do? You know, can we stop something like that? Do we wanna change laws or do we wanna, you know, preach the good news and allow the

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Holy Spirit to change hearts? What I would suggest a PC USA person to do is to read

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Romans and ask yourself the question, what's missing from this great book of Romans?

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It's all about righteousness. We have none. God richly supplies his son's righteousness to all those who would believe and that it affects your life.

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And there were problems of sex trafficking in Rome at the time. There were slavery issues.

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There were poor issues. There were homeless issues. There were people treating women poorly, right?

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It was a very sexist, male -dominated, women are chattel kind of thing.

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And what did Paul do? Paul didn't write about that at all. He avoided it because the gospel was of first importance.

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Did you know in Rome, you could not even, if you were a woman, you could not even get a driver's license. Well, what about that VBS camel?

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Could you ride the VBS camel around? You know, sure. Back to Egypt. Back to Egypt. That kind of thing.

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And so the other thing I'd have you do is read one of my top five favorite books of all time outside the

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Bible. And that would be Christianity and Liberalism by a

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Presbyterian of all people. Orthodox Presbyterian, OPC. He would be

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OPC guy today. Didn't even start the OPC denomination. I think I'd have to ask

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D .G. Hart, but Carl Truman would know the answer to. Well, you know, I have the answer actually in the other room because I have a class syllabus on every single denominational split in the 20th century.

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Okay. Yeah. And so I think he - In fact, I think Carl McIntyre was involved in forming the

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OPC. Okay. So it's a great book written in 1929, as my guess,

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Eerdmans, and it talks about this very issue, liberalism. And so once the gospel is abandoned, you're gonna go do something else.

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And so here we have the social gospel, the liberal gospel. I'm not surprised that once you abandon inerrancy, infallibility, sufficiency of the scripture, you then start doing other things like sex trafficking issues.

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I don't like sex trafficking, but that's not the church's primary focus because we have a redemptive focus.

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And it's so easy to get caught up. I mean, that is a good thing, right? But it's easy to get just sort of detoured into all these different good things.

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And all of a sudden you find yourself spending zero time on the gospel. Steve, since we're not paying for this particular show.

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At all. At all. Not even a cent. What blame do you put at the feet of the

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Tim Kellers of the world who emphasize the social aspect of the gospels outworking?

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Well, they make it cool, right? I mean, Tim Keller makes it evangelical and cool at the same time to be concerned about these things.

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He's sort of, it's subtle because you can listen to a lot of what he says and just go, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

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But it's that little, you know, it is really like the leaven that spoils the whole lump because it's just a little bit.

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And what happens is some people, it's not Tim Keller necessarily that I would be concerned about if I were looking at the big picture,

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I would say, well, what comes after Tim Keller? Or what do the disciples of Tim Keller teach?

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Because the further you get away from Tim Keller, the more you're going to find that his teachings take people off into uncharted waters.

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So if it would be Machen's warrior stepchildren, we could have Keller's social foster children.

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Yeah, they're going to be more errant than he is. And, you know, they're going to get further and further away from the truth until it's going to be unrecognizable.

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I mean, that's much like what's going to happen when Rick Warren finally leaves the scene, whenever that is. The people who follow him will be absolute liberals.

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You won't be able to tell that there was any Christianity ever there. Why choose the

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PCUSA? The PCUSA is the heir of a great confessional tradition found in the book of Confessions.

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Was that error as in E -R -R -O -R? No, because we have a great traditional confession.

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Which we abandoned. Stemming back to Westminster Confession of Faith, which we totally don't go for today. Yeah, that's really great.

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We love the Westminster Confession of Faith. We keep it in the office under lock and key. We break it out, you know.

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My last bit of advice for those of you in the PCUSA, and you're really born again, you're real

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Christians, and you have a heart of love. I want to help tonight my denomination. If I can stay,

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I can influence them. I understand those feelings, but pull up on the internet, Robert Godfrey, a

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Presbyterian, the myth of influence, and read that, and then with a tear in your eye, you're going to have to leave your denomination.

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I mean, that would be like a drop in the bucket compared to this, but I've heard Roman Catholics, I'm going to stay in and change it from the inside.

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No, you're really not. You're one of 1 .2 billion people, and you're Joe Nobody at the end of the pew.

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And even Pope Francis is not going to change the Council of Trent, in my opinion. No, he's not, although he's really, he's working at it.

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He's really working at it. So, nocompromiseradio .com. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com,

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and you can write Steve at - Hey, this is a free show today.

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Absolutely free, get what you pay for. 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.