Political Musings

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

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

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.

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

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 king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth. Take two.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Bueno. We just were three minutes in, and I thought, ah, you know what? This sounds bad.

True confessions from No Compromise Radio. Absolutely. We're gonna talk a little bit today about Franklin Graham and Rick Santorum and President Obama.

But before we do - And Mitt Romney. Mitt, too? Yeah, he's in there, too. Okay, all right. See, but I first wanted to give you the story about Jonathan Edwards, the

North Hamptonian congregationalist Calvinist preacher, famous for Sinners in the

Hands of an Angry God, Freedom of the Will, religious affections, and other things. Edwards gets kicked out of his church in North Hampton.

He goes down to Stockbridge, and he preaches to the Indians. And so sometimes he would preach the same sermon to the

Indians and then other white congregations in the area that he would do pulpit supply for. And he preached to the

Indians a very kind sermon, generous sermon, a pastorally, you know, my beloved kind of sermon.

You say my beloved, too, once in a while, don't you? Yes, I do, yeah. But one month earlier, he preached a sermon that he preached nicely to the

Indians because they were responding to the word. But he preached to some white people who weren't responding to the word of God, and he laid it out.

He lambasted them for their lack of response to preaching of the gospel.

So it's not that you don't respond to the pastor, we're nobodies, but you don't respond to the Lord, you are gonna get the proverbial spanking from Edwards.

And so Edwards said to this white congregation, he would, quote, "'Rather go into Sodom and preach to the men of Sodom than preach to you and should have a great deal more hopes of success,' end quote.

Woo, woo, yeah. And you know, sometimes, do you ever feel like saying that, you know, when everybody's like falling asleep?

I mean, it's 10, you know, 45 in the morning, they had all Saturday night to sleep, they're tanked up on coffee, and, you know, can't keep their eyelids open.

These days, I mean, what are the excuses for sleeping on Sunday and not paying attention, especially in light of the availability of caffeine?

I have absolutely no idea, other than, you know, the bad habit of maybe watching

Saturday Night Live and playing Xbox till four in the morning. I don't know. Hey, it's my day off. I have liberty.

Woo -hoo. So if you ever hear a pastor say, I just as soon preach this sermon to the inhabitants of Sodom, expecting a better response from them than you, you know you're in big trouble.

Yeah, I've yet to include that line in one of my messages. Although, you know, who knows, maybe in April.

Maybe that's the kind of sermon you ought to preach if you have an external source of income. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

If you're looking for that backup plan, you know. That's right. As Lewis said, somebody wrote into him that, you know, you can preach that God wants you to smile, sermon's all you want, and the congregation will pay you, but once you start meddling and getting into their business, sin, and you're a sinner and rebuking and reproving, you better have a source of outside income.

Ha ha ha ha. So Steve, I will readily confess that I don't know much about politics.

I generally know from some websites and occasionally I'll look at a few times a week real clear politics.

We are not trying to endorse everybody's foray into politics and is that good or is it right and how to vote?

But here's what we do want to analyze. Would this be a good time for me to announce my candidacy for presidency of the

United States? I don't know, but I hear some other sounds. Because if this is the appropriate time,

I am ready to launch. I'm going to announce the formation of campaign. No, you know, we're talking about politics and the candidates for president and there's been a little hubbub.

I don't know if you saw this. I mean, I was listening to it on the radio this morning. But on MSNBC, they were like grilling

Franklin Graham to find out whether he thought President Obama was a Christian or not because of some things that Rick Santorum said.

And so Franklin Graham said, you know, basically gave the gospel. In fact, here he says, asked about whether Obama had accepted

Jesus Christ. Graham said, I don't know. You have to ask him. I cannot answer that question for anybody.

And isn't that right? Isn't faith an individual response? Aren't we required to repent on our own?

Nobody else can. And you can't assure me of my salvation any more than I can assure you of your salvation, right?

That was a pretty good answer by Franklin. What does he go on to say? All I know is I'm a sinner and God has forgiven me of my sins.

Right. You know what Franklin Graham could say? Well, I go to such and such a church. Therefore, I'm a Christian or I am.

I mean, out of all people in the world these days, I'm Billy Graham's son. Yeah, that's that's why I'm a Christian. That's all you need to know.

Just look at my pedigree. Look at my resume. You know, I'm I'm going to heaven. I'm the son of Billy Graham.

He said, you have to ask every person. He has said he's a Christian. So I just have to assume that he is.

And you know what? Because it cuts off there. But what I listened to it with the host actually went on to say was, so why won't you take his word for it?

He says he's a Christian. Why won't you take it? I mean, they were like grilling him to just say that President Obama is a

Christian. And, you know, here's the here's the crux of it. Graham said on another occasion that he had asked

President Obama while he was still a senator, asked him if he had trusted Christ personally as a savior.

And President Obama, then Senator Obama, went on to say that he had become a

Christian in the early days when he was a community organizer, when he went to work in Chicago and the people among whom he was working asked him, well, where do you go to church?

And he said, well, I don't have a church. And they said, well, you can't work here if you don't go to church.

And that's when he started going to Jeremiah Wright's church. But that was the sum of his testimony.

There was no sin, no repentance, no I believe that God raised him up.

None of those things, no resurrection, no holiness, no nothing about anything.

It was just that's when I started going to church. Well, I would want the best for our president. But I would imagine if you ask him the diagnostic question in evangelicalism, or if he was trying to become a member of Bethlehem Bible Church.

By the way, wouldn't that be interesting? Going through a church membership, and he sits through the four classes to understand more about the church and what she believes.

And then we ask all potential members lots of questions, but one is this.

And so we ask this question of you, No Compromise listeners. Could you please tell us what the gospel is in 60 seconds or less?

And I wonder what President Obama would say. My guess is that he wouldn't know the right facts.

And so if you don't know the facts, Christianity is more than facts.

But it's based on facts because it's based on a historical event. And so if you don't know anything about history, then there's no theological principles stemming from the history.

Therefore, you can't be a Christian without knowing certain facts. Facts alone don't save, but they are part of the historical ramifications and realizations of biblical truth.

Well, I mean, can you be a Christian and not know, for example, that God raised Jesus from the dead?

No, you can't be a Christian unless you know that intellectually. And believe it in your heart.

And I do believe that. And then with volitional trust, grab hold of that by faith.

I mean, can you be a Christian and not believe or not be aware of the fact that Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully

God? You can't be a Christian unless you believe that. So, I mean, these are issues that are central to the faith.

And for somebody not to be able to articulate those, that's problematic.

So, I mean, I think it's interesting that Franklin Graham's on this. I wonder if they were doing the same thing, you know, with Hillary Clinton and trying to figure out if she was a

Christian or not. I seriously doubt that. But he goes on. They go on in this interview to ask

Graham about Rick Santorum, whether he's a Christian or not. And Graham says,

I think so. His values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it. I think he's a man of faith.

Well, Rick Santorum is, as we all know, a Roman Catholic and one who believes in a lot of things, including the contraception itself is sin.

That's the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on that. So, saying that he's a moral man, does that necessarily mean,

Pastor Mike, that he is a Christian? Well, don't we, in one sense, wish that that was the truth?

Because if it was relative moralism that could get people to heaven, then there'd be a lot more people going.

The problem is there's no one good, not even one. No one's righteous, and everybody does wrong things.

And how horrible it would be if people could get to heaven by being good. How horrible it would be if God then killed his own son at Calvary.

That would be a crime. It wouldn't be the best act of love ever exemplified. If people can get to heaven on their own goodness, on their own merits, or some kind of scale where their good outweighs the bad, then the worst thing

God could have possibly done was to put his son through what his son went through. There's no reason for it.

And when I look at the climate of politics now, Steve, I don't say to myself, I have to have an evangelical president.

No one else can govern. You can look back in history and see men who weren't born again, and women who weren't born again, who can govern well because of the common grace of God, because of their image -bearing nature, because of the prayers of the saints for righteous leadership.

There's lots of different ways to go about it. I think people like it that Winston Churchill was the prime minister during chaos in the world.

And we would all say, you know, we're thankful for that. So when I look at the Obama who is not even a

Christian unless he's trying to get votes and says he is, but he doesn't understand it, then you've got Romney who is a self -professed

Mormon, and I take him at his word. You've got Santorum, a self -professed Catholic. I take him at his word. And then

Newt, I don't think Newt said anything except Franklin says Newt says he is, so I think he is. Well, Newt's thing is, you know, he became a

Roman Catholic a few years ago, and basically that was in light of his personal difficulties.

You know, he found God and confessed his sins, and now everybody needs to just accept the fact that he's a Christian and he's right with God.

That's kind of Newt's moral stand. I think if I ask this question, would you rather have some man of faith lead the country versus a man with no faith?

I'd rather have a man of faith where there's some kind of background, some kind of mooring of right and wrong.

This is good. This is righteous. This is unrighteous than having an atheist. Because, Steve, just a short time ago,

I met with a young man, and he said the day I learned in high school that evolution was the truth, at least what

I thought was true, was the day I realized I didn't have to answer to a creator and I could go send my brains out.

And that is the number one issue with people who fall in love with evolution is,

I don't want to stand before a holy God and have to explain anything. So if there is no holy God, you know, if the universe just miraculously—pardon the use of that word because it wouldn't be a miracle— but if it just spontaneously came to being on its own and, you know, matter arranged itself, and the

Earth just so happens to have a gravitational pull that maintains life in an orbit that, you know, is beneficial to human life and everything else, and then out of nothing, life sprang, well, that's pretty cool.

Because now I don't owe God anything. And now I don't have to have a bad conscience when

I'm sleeping with my girlfriend, the person would say. Or, you know, even worse, if I'm stealing from my employer or, you know, whatever kind of things

I'm doing, I don't need to worry about it. I mean, what people don't understand when they have that mindset is, why is it that we all know we all have a conscience?

Why is it that we all know that some things are wrong? How is it that there is order in the universe?

Well, those things didn't happen by accident. And, you know, to think that everything is an accident is just—it's

A, stupid, but B, it's wishful thinking. Steve, don't you think that President Bush's declarations of evangelical faith, that is,

I worship Jesus, I have a personal relationship with Jesus, whether he's born again or not,

I don't know, but at least he said things that would make me think he's born again more than other people, maybe some of his policies.

You know, deny that. But people are so anti -Bush that they realize we better not talk that way, so we just better talk in generalities, that we're men of faith and church is good,

America still goes to church, so we go to services. Yeah, and I think, you know, Bush's—well, his own personal life didn't always match up with what we would want.

I mean, there was swearing that was caught on tape and stuff like that. But I mean—and he would go to his wife's liberal

Methodist church in Texas, you know, and then you look at his kids who kind of—they're an interesting group.

But in any case, it seemed like he might be a believer, and we want to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not here to dog anybody, but the question is, if somebody's life doesn't match what their profession is, you know, and clearly not so, in other words, it's pretty hard for somebody to say,

I'm a Christian, and then to say it's a woman's right to abort her baby, to kill her baby.

Those two things are pretty tough to reconcile. I mean, we can argue about taxes and this and that and the other thing, and those are all just matter of opinion.

But it's not a matter of opinion whether abortion is murder. Steve, when someone says,

I'm generally a Christian because I'm moral or I have faith or I go to church or I've been baptized, a lot of the things that show me that they've got a false faith, a spurious faith,

I just use the philosophy that comes from James 5. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

And if James, the preacher, we think James was actually a sermon, it's certainly a sermonic form,

James preached to a congregation and then said, you know, there's a place that there are a lot of unbelievers and it happens to be this very church room, building, barn, house, anyone among you, then when people talk in a way that's not distinctively

Christian, I don't say in my mind they're not saved. But it seems like they're not saved and so I better make sure

I give them the gospel again. That's how I go about it. Well, you know what? Let me ask you this. If I give you the gospel right now, if I say, you know what?

My God is holy and you're a sinner and Jesus Christ came to earth as both

God and man, fully God, fully man, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death in the place of sinners, was raised on the third day and you need to believe in that, all of that in order to be saved.

Are you going to be insulted even though you're saved already? I mean, have you ever been insulted when somebody preached the gospel to you?

No, I think the only, and I know exactly where you're coming from. I like hearing the gospel and I read about the gospel all the time.

I was reading a book last night about the gospel. So we as Christians love the gospel. I think the only, in all honesty, if you preached it to me and I was thinking, you know what?

I'm kind of caught in sin and I've been doing some things I ought not to be doing and Steve is wondering if I'm really a

Christian or not, so he's re -preaching the gospel to me. I might be offended. Steve, what's your point?

But in other words, this message is of first importance and Paul knew that. So just think about all the messages in the

Bible, and there are a lot. Out of everything, what is at the top, the apex of our faith has to do with our

Savior and his substitutionary death and resurrection for sins. And so sins against our

Holy Father, as you said earlier, not the Holy Father, but our Holy Father. So when

I hear these politicians, I just say to myself, Christianity, even if we get a

Christian president, that's not going to solve the world problems. In my mind, Steve, of course,

I want moral government. It's better than licentious. I want government, not anarchy.

I don't want Sharia law, blah, blah, blah. But I say to myself, this world is so messed up.

Only Jesus is going to be able to fix it. Well, and here's the—and that's exactly right, but there is something about someone who acknowledges that there is something greater than themselves, you know, a creator, a superior being, because if you deny that and you become the president and you have all the authority that you have, then your tendency is to do things that, you know, basically would almost indicate that you're sort of a dictator and that you're not accountable to anybody, that you're above the law, and certainly there's no

God to whom you're answerable to, and you just kind of go your merry way. And so I think it's good to have someone that has an idea that I have to submit to someone, even if I can't see that someone.

I think that's helpful. And I would totally agree with those sentiments. I would rather live next door to a

Mormon than I would someone who's part of Anton LaVey's satanic society reading the satanic

Bible. Now, neither of those are going to be salvific. Moralism doesn't save.

Certainly, Anton LaVey doesn't save. And maybe the

LaVey followers would realize their unrighteousness sooner than the Mormons would, but that's a different conversation.

So the same goes true with government. I would rather have moral government, those who recognize there is somebody over us, than people who are just secular, secular governments like we have now for the most part at the highest federal level, create what we're in at this very moment.

Well, moral morass, I mean, just a place where almost anything goes and everything is acceptable and any kind of comments to the contrary are really seen as derogatory and insulting and closed minded.

And, you know, I mean, even as I listened to the debate has gotten rather silly about Santorum in the last few days, about the whole contraception issues and other things he said, you know, he said that I think it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that he said that mainline

Protestant denominations are non -Christian. And I'm going, well, you know what? There's some truth to that, right?

I mean, you go to PCUSA or, you know, a lot of the

Lutheran strains or the Episcopal Church, and they've just completely lost their way.

You wouldn't hear the gospel if you were there for 20, 30 years in those churches. Well, it is fascinating,

Steve, to watch all this. And, of course, this is being taped in the middle, late February and probably won't be played until March.

Any guesses if you had to guess who's going to be the Republican nomination nominee?

The guy I said from the beginning, Mitt Romney. Will there be some kind of nuclear issue at the convention?

No, I don't think so. I don't think that that, you know, people are going to try to derail that or whatever.

But I think what's going to happen is over time, just the kind of the money advantages, the structural advantages he has will just sort of weigh on the other candidates.

And, you know, plus it's kind of interesting. Ron Paul, we haven't even talked about him, but Ron Paul has been running anti -Santorum ads.

And, you know, it's almost like Ron Paul, because a lot of people don't know this. Ron Paul and his wife are friends with Mitt Romney and his wife.

And so it's like Ron Paul will not attack Mitt Romney. And I think that's going to help Romney, too.

So it's President Obama versus Governor Romney. And then who's going to win? I don't know.

But I think, you know, I think in part it's going to depend on who Romney picks to be his VP nominee.

I mean, I hope it's somebody with just a little bit more style, a little more picante, as you like to say.

Or in India, they have special spicy things on some of their potato chips. And I think it's called jakta.

Yeah. So you'd like a little jakta for your vice presidential. But I think

Romney has a pretty good chance, especially, I mean, as we're talking, you know, the average for gasoline is over $3 .50

a gallon. And some people are talking about $5 by this summer, $5 a gallon gasoline. It's pretty hard for the president to be very popular during those kind of times.

But it could be really close, especially if, you know, either

Santorum or Newt Gingrich. Frankly, I don't think Newt Gingrich can get elected. Steve, when

I look at the landscape of the world and having a new president and everything else,

I think it's easy to become worried. What's going to happen? What if President Obama gets reelected?

And then what happens with the judicial court nominations? Supreme Court, rather. What's our solution?

How should a Christian think about these things? Because Fox, the local radio stations, I think a lot of fear is being sold.

And people, when you watch it, you get frightened. So, therefore, I don't usually watch much of this. Weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

That's all we can do. Oh, wait. That's not right. Sounds like Nero. Yeah. I mean, when we look to the scriptures, we see that, you know, especially if we think about 1

Peter and Nero, as you're just talking about, you know, 1 Peter written to early

Christians in anticipating of suffering and persecution. And what does he do? He says, hey, in light of what

God has laid up for you, in light of the surpassing, the treasures that God awaits for you that can't be touched by anything here on Earth, you just need to be focused on him.

Just thank God that you're born again. He never says anything negative about the government.

In fact, he says to submit to the government. Well, I love at the end of 1 Peter, you reminded me, in Chapter 5, it says to these suffering people who suffered much more than we will ever suffer.

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you forever.

To him be the dominion forever and ever. There is someone who is the real king, the real despot, who is ruling everything, and we need to look past our human leaders and see

Christ Jesus as on the throne. Yeah, Christians need not panic. I mean, when we think about, again, the times of Peter when

Nero was ruling things and using Christians as human torches, and we think, oh, we've got it bad right now.

No, we don't. We absolutely don't. And, you know, whether President Obama is reelected or not, God is still on the throne.

Well, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Mike and Steve here today. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

You can also send us your political views if you'd like, and Steve will be happy to answer those. Feel free, and I will pass them on to someone else.

www .nocompromiseradio .com No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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