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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 NoCompromiseRadio .com. It is real time September, no compromise time, probably September.
Which means we're behind and we're in a bind, so we're willing to make a deal.
This is my fourth show recording today, and this is Steve's third, and so I feel like I'm warmed up a little more than he is.
It's hot in here. I'm feeling it. I mean, it feels like a sauna, as we say up here.
February 17th, Israel is still on. If you gotta die somewhere, it might as well be in the Golan Heights.
So enlist in the Israeli army and go with us to...
No, my Bible church is going as well. I think we have about 30 people or so between the two churches signed up to go, and we will go unless the government, the United States government, thinks it's unwise or unsafe, but I'm telling you, Steve, you've been there.
See a galley. You rarely see a bomb go over your head.
It's like no more than two or three a day.
I thought of some kid doing a cannonball off the diving board.
We were over there for three weeks. You know, we went to the seminary tour, and I think we only had to like duck for cover, you know, twice.
All right, Steve, since I... Janet got hit by a little shrapnel, but it was no big deal. Uh-huh, it's clean through. It's okay.
Actually, we never saw any trouble. The closest thing we got was the Israeli police, because we were there on Israeli Independence Day, which the Palestinians call the day of disaster, and so there were some kind of protests or something like that, and so the Israeli police came over, and they shoot us out of some area, but that was it.
Otherwise, we'd have never known anything was going on.
Israel has a vested interest in keeping tourists safe, don't you think? Yes, they do. So, as long as the plane lands in Tel Aviv Airport, you're gonna make it.
School children, number one, and then, you know, tourists, number two.
Isn't it interesting, you're in En Gedi or someplace where David was fleeing from Saul, and every little tour group from school, Jewish kid, Jewish school, is escorted by somebody with a gun.
Yeah, I mean, there's somebody usually in the front and in the back. I mean, they don't mess around over there, and everybody, you know, is trained and all that. I mean, it's like an armed nation, but it's not a very religious nation, I'll tell you that.
Right, I just was listening to a audio book about secret servicemen for the United States president and their families, and Steve, when they were talking about Rawhide, that is President Reagan.
Oh, I thought it was the old TV show.
Yeah, no, they give a name for the president, and then every person associated with the president, wife, kids, and all that, they all have to have the same first letter of the president's nickname. So they all had, it starts with an R.
And so there's that book, Rawhide Down, which is an excellent book. Well, Reagan, sometimes at the ranch in Santa Barbara would have a gun on his hip, and so the secret service agents are like, well, what's that for?
And he said, well, I just have to be ready in case they make it past you guys, Reagan would say. And then this book also said in his first trip to Russia, in his briefcase, he kept a gun.
President Ronald Reagan. Well, they didn't make him declare that a custom?
Nope, nothing, no scanning. The line got pretty long for TSA, so they let him go around. Oh, nice.
Uh-huh, wasn't that nice? Steve. I'm gonna fly Air Force One the next time I go to Russia.
Steve, you went to Israel, and I think you told me, this is juicy, story-like stuff on No Compromise Radio, I think another seminary went with you, and sometimes they would give some of the devotionals.
How did that all work?
Yeah, not very well. Yeah, this other seminary would remain nameless.
It's kind of in a hot part of the state, a hot state. Yeah. Yeah, and so what was different? Tell me what you thought good Bible teaching was, and what subpar Bible teaching would be, just so we can.
You know, I just remember that suddenly the whole passage of scripture that had to do with Jesus walking on the water became about. Jesus wants to have a relationship with me.
So much so he walked over toward Peter to relate to him.
I don't even remember, you know, it was like one of those messages, message, it was one of those messages that you hear where you're just like, you wanna plug your ears and just start going, and then, and then, and then, because it was so bad, and yeah, yeah, so it was, when you're supposedly preaching or teaching through a passage, and your point has nothing to do with the passage, that's bad, that's really, really bad.
You know, even if you're using, and I wouldn't recommend this, but even if you're using a passage for a launching point, and you wanna talk about something, you know, some topic, well, at least the topic should be related to your passage.
If you say that Jesus showing his deity walking across the water, putting terror into the hearts of the disciples, because they've just never seen anything like this, if you think the point of the passage is Jesus wants to have a relationship with you, then you don't understand the Bible.
We are so prone to want to try to apply the Bible that we will do it wrongly and wedge in false applications. Haddon Robinson said in an article, most of the heresies that come out of evangelical pulpits come through application, bad application.
You know, that's a good point. I like to apply that to a sermon. Steve, you grew up as a Mormon. You were trained as a Mormon. I was. You were baptized as a Mormon. I was. You were baptized in the place of many others as a Mormon.
I was. You were an elder. I was. You were, what other offices did you have?
Well, I mean, elder, priest, teacher, deacon, but I mean, those are, you know, you start as a deacon, which is funny. Deacon and then teacher and then priest and then elder.
What was the favorite one that you had? If you could pick the best one out of those four. Well, I didn't really care for being a teacher all that much.
Being a priest was kind of cool because I had a really good friend who was an elder and we did home teaching together and had a lot of fun. Home teaching is when you go and visit people in their homes.
You have a specific number of people that you contact every month. Okay.
Lauren Frank lives in Los Angeles with his wife Verlet and their young son. He wrote a little blog post called 10 Lies I Told as a Mormon Missionary. Have you read it? No, I have not. Yeah, it's interesting because he is now on the other side.
He was on the dark side, but now he's not.
He's now in the kingdom of light. He's been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.
And so I'm gonna read these to you and then you can kind of fill in the blanks and you can just pontificate, you can add lib.
Pontificate, isn't that root word pontiff? Doesn't that make me like
Yes, yeah, no, no, no. But because The pole? No, because pont is a bridge. Oh, so I'm building a bridge. A pont is like a pontificio, as in Florence. It's the bridge. Pontoon. He is, no, he's a bridge builder.
And so if he's the maximus pontifice, pontificificus, he's the maximum bridge builder. And so he's a mediator. Did you know that? Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, he is the bridge. And so, anyway, you can mad lib all you want.
We should do some Catholic mad libs, maybe. You can only fill in the blanks with Catholic statements. They go over well in Worcester, don't you think?
Super well, because we love our Catholic friends.
Number one, we're not trying to convert you. And so he, Lauren, would say, as an evangelist, I'm not trying to convert you,.
But really he was trying to convert. That's a big whopping lie. I mean, the goal of Mormon church is, I mean, like any church, they want you to believe what they believe, right? The difference in the Mormon church is they believe they're the only true church.
And they have a number of outreaches. You know, missionaries are one, but I mean, even their sports program, you're allowed to have X number of non-members on your team, you know, playing at any one time.
And, you know, they use that to kind of get the guys to come to church once in a while, hoping to convert. I did that, by the way, just on a side note.
I used to go to this Mormon gym to play some basketball.
They have great sports programs. I mean, phenomenal sports programs. So, I mean, you know, I mean, you can travel quite a bit because, I mean, we had Southern California championships, and then there are bigger championships than that.
So they have a very well-developed program.
Steve, did you say what Lauren said when asked the question, or you received the comment, we're not trying to convert you. I mean, you know, we don't wanna be converted. He said, I would respond with, we're not trying to convert you.
We're sharing the message of all faiths. Did you guys say anything like that?
Were you trained to do that? Well, I was not a missionary. My brother was, but I mean, that's just, that is an outright, that's an outright lie. Of course they are. You know, I mean, we might have downplayed it when I was a kid, you know, younger.
We might have downplayed, you know, the idea that being involved in church activities meant that we were really trying to rope you in. But of course that was the goal. You know, what's the number one thing they try to do?
We're not trying to convert you, but here's what we want you to do. Read the Book of Mormon, pray, and see if you get a burning in your bosom. We want you to listen to the story of Joseph Smith, the supposed first vision.
We want you to pray and see if the Holy Spirit would give you a burning so that you know that that's true. Steve, what if I read the Book of Mormon.
And instead of my bosom burning, what if my like, what if I got a brain freeze?
What if you got an esophagus burning, you know? Yeah, I've had those. And you had acid reflux, what would that mean?
Number two lies, as I said before, by Lauren Frank, as I told as a Mormon missionary. The Bible is insufficient. He quotes 1 Nephi 13, 28, 29, where the Bible was missing, quote, "'many plain and precious things,' end quote.
Yeah, that's a famous canard.
That they love to throw out there. Not only, you know, is it missing many plain and precious parts, like the idea, here's one, like the idea that there should be a multitude of temples. Why didn't the Jews know that?
Why didn't they just build temples all over the place? You know, today the Mormons have temples. And let me just quickly say that there's a difference between a temple and a congregational building. Congregational building is where the people meet every week.
A temple is a place where only special ceremonies go and only qualified people can get in. So, you know, once a temple is opened, you and I can't go in because we don't have a temple recommend. We can go to any congregational meeting we want, but even a lot of Mormons can't get into a temple because you have to meet certain qualifications.
Now, when they build a new one, let's say when they did a while ago in Boston, don't they leave a week or two or a month where non-temple recommends are allowed access?
Yeah, pre-dedication, but that's before all the ceremonies are going on in there. You know, the secret rituals, the baptism for the dead, the marriage ceremonies, et cetera, et cetera. None of those things are going on prior to the dedication.
But, you know, the Bible is insufficient, getting back to that. They'll also say, not only were many plain and precious parts missing, you know, so they'll say, well, we secretly in low tones in the hallways, they'll say they think that Jesus might've been married.
Since you have to be married in the temple to get to the highest level of, you know, so Jesus was probably married,.
Which means probably Jesus had kids.
Mary Magdalene, Magdala.
But they'll also say, if you confront them on a part, you know, like upon this rock, I will build my church on gates of hell, death, Hades, whatever, will not prevail against it. They will say, well, that's mistranslated.
So there are two ways that they go. Number one is it's insufficient and it's wrong.
Right, Lauren says that here, quoting from the eighth article of faith, the Bible's the word of God, as long as it's translated correctly. And he says, you know, that's kind of convenient out, but would we not, as Protestant evangelicals say, the Bible is the word of God only as understood correctly, translated correctly, to use MacArthur's quote in a different context, that what the Bible says is the Bible.
And if you get the wrong thing of what it says, it's not the Bible. In other words, the meaning of the Bible is the Bible and the wrong meaning isn't the Bible.
Right, but I mean, you know what they, they'll take it a step further though, even if you look at, cause we would say, you know what, sometimes translators don't get everything right. But if you look at the Greek and other things, you can piece it together, okay.
But the Mormons would just say, no, it's just wrong.
And we would talk about its inerrancy and infallibility in its original manuscripts.
Right, and they don't understand bibliology. They don't understand all the work that's gone into the Bible. They just say, no, it's wrong. And really has a deficient view of God, therefore. They don't believe that God is powerful enough to keep his word intact, which is
Steve, this might go to two parts. So I want to just have a little interlude here. Sola Scriptura versus Prima Scriptura. Scripture alone is sufficient. And we have everything pertaining to life and godliness.
It's all God breathed and profitable, combining 2 Peter 1 and 2 Timothy chapter 3. We say it's the Bible plus nothing else. Sola Scriptura. Now, but Prima Scriptura would be perfect for a Mormon because they see a primacy of scripture, but they have other things and other books.
But don't our Catholic friends have the same? Don't our charismatic friends have the same? The Bible's the first in a long line of visions, experiences, books, traditions, councils.
And Roman Catholics, you know, church councils, church tradition, church teaching. Magisterium. Yeah, so they have a number of other references. And the irony is, of course, that they say, oh, scripture first.
But if scripture happens to contradict something like, you know, the supremacy of Mary, then they submerge. Suddenly scripture isn't that important. And what's really important are the ex cathedra statements of a Pope or the testimony of some early church father or something, you know, or even non-scriptural books that were written by, you know, if the gospel of Thomas or whatever, you know, it's not a gospel not written by Thomas.
But if it says something nice about Mary, they love it. You know, whatever it is, anything that'll push their doctrine, they like that.
Steve, what about that apographer book, The Gospel of Barnabas Collins? Dark. It's very dark. In fact, it gives me a shadow. I used to watch Dark Shadows when I was a kid and I wanted to see some fangs.
You know, it was rare. I wanted to see the biting and all that stuff, but it was all this other hokey pokey going on. And I never got much of the action.
I mean, isn't it funny how things come around, they slap a different label on it, but what are all these vampire shows about now? They're just nothing but soap operas merged. Dark Shadows. Yeah, exactly.
So true. Soap opera, you know, vampire things.
NoCompromiseRadio .com, Mike and Steve, going over this list, 10 Lies I Told as a Mormon Missionary. Number three, you alluded to it earlier, Steve, in the intro, we're the only true Christians. It's so funny.
You know, interacting with this Catholic the other day, he was all offended that I was Pope bashing. And I'm like, I find it interesting because the Catholic Church has no problem pronouncing anathema on us, right?
But suddenly if we point out the biblical errors of the Roman Catholic Church, we're Pope bashing or Catholic bashing. And the same goes here. If we dare to point out the errors of Mormonism with regard to the Bible, then we're Mormon bashing.
But the truth is Joseph Smith's story, his story, he's 14 years old. This is the legend of Joseph Smith. 14 years old, he's confused by all this religious activity. He goes off into the woods to pray and he's praying fervently.
You know, as it were, he's not sweating drops of blood, but he's sweating. He's sweating as it were. And he's just, you know, praying with all of his heart and suddenly two personages appear, the father and the son.
And he recognizes them because they're identical twins. And I'm not making this up. You can look at any of their material. God the father has a body in this vision and he looks just like Jesus. And you see the pictures, they're identical.
And the one says, this is my beloved son, whom I am well pleased, hear him. And you know, then Jesus speaks to Joseph and Joseph says, what church should I join? This is kind of the Steve version. I'm shortening it up a little bit.
Message. Yeah. Which church should I join? And then Jesus says, none of them because their creeds are an abomination to me. Now we can Mormon bash all we want, but I say Joseph Smith started it. You know, he's the one who said every other religion is false.
We're the only true church. The church was, or the truth was gone for 1700 plus years, but God restored it through this faithful young boy.
Steve, we don't want to bash people wrongly. We want to talk about primary sources and right stuff. And so if we were to go on YouTube and type in the Mormon cartoon, is that a decent representation of Mormon backgrounds and doctrines?
I'm thinking about those two creatures and they look alike and kind of the band Mormon cartoon.
Which one? Are you talking about the Lutheran satire one? I like that one. That one's funny too. Hey Patrick.
Patrick. No, I'm talking about the Mormon cartoon that gives the background of the planets and. Oh yeah, that's horrible. Oh, it's horrible, but is it true of Mormonism? Yeah, it is true of Mormonism.
But I mean, it reminds me of like Rocket Robin Hood or something, you know.
I'm telling you, I don't know why I've got Space Ghost on my mind, but it's the same animators of Space Ghost. What was his little monkey friend?
I don't remember, it's been a few years since I watched it. Steve. You know, some things I do remember.
Space Ghost wasn't my favorite. It was more like my brother's favorite. Okay, well I think they had the same animators as Johnny Quest, so then I kind of liked it.
Okay, I like Johnny Quest.
So type in YouTube Mormon cartoon and watch. I think it's 10, 12 minutes, something like that. Number four, as we go through this list with Mike and Steve. Steve, the Mormon saved by grace alone, saved by more than our elder brother.
Oh, I mean, that is one I just hate.
I just so hate that. Calling Jesus the elder brother. Yeah, or you know, saying,.
Here's something that Christian apologists do. They refer to, you know, they almost mock Mormonism by saying that the Mormons believe in a pre-existence where Jesus and Satan were, or Lucifer were, you know, brothers, spirit brothers.
And I'm going worse than that. I was the spirit brother of Jesus. I hate that whole idea that somehow I was on an equal platform with Jesus. That is just rubbish. Jesus is the ever-existent, always God, you know, eternally powerful, a second person of the Trinity.
So to put me on any, at any moment in time and to say that I was somehow even in the same sphere of worthiness or creation or anything else as him is just rubbish because first of all, he wasn't created.
Secondly, I'm feeble and I'm pathetic, you know, and there's no comparison between me and the Lord Jesus Christ. So I hate that, let alone saying that he's the spirit brother of Lucifer. They have this whole pre-existence nonsense thing.
You know, well, I knew you before you were in your mother's womb or, you know, when you were in your mother's womb. Well, that's not the same. They are experts. Mormons are experts when you talk to them at taking a single verse and cutting it completely out of context and making it walk on all fours.
John chapter three, John answered, a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear witness, bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.
The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.
And it's interesting that he didn't say we're all in the same playing field, we're all brothers.
We'll have a little. Our elder brother is carrying the ball for us. You know, there's nothing like that. And, you know, well, I mean, I could go on and on. Jesus made us savable, you know, but it's up to us to perfect ourselves.
There's just so many errors in Mormonism, but we're getting off track here. Okay, that's all right.
Do we have time for one more? Yeah, we are, I think, on schedule, Steve, and maybe we'll do part two next time. We're the only true church. So that's number four we've seen. We're not trying to convert you.
The Bible is insufficient. We're the only true Christians. And how is this different than number three, we're the only true Christians, now we're the only true church?
Well, I mean, first of all, it implies that we're not Christians. We call ourselves Christians, but we're not. Secondly, it says that our organization is not right. We're not right, our organization is not right, but other than that, we're pretty good.
Lauren writes, shortly after renouncing Mormonism, I learned a scriptural death blow to notions of universal apostasy. Addressing Ephesians believers 30 years after the Ascension, Paul writes, unto God be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all the ages, Ephesians 3 .21.
God received glory in the Christian church from the time of Paul's writings to the present day.
And I just don't know why that's hard to understand. You know, they point again, and they have like a single verse that there must be a period of apostasy. I'm forgetting where that is, maybe in the Thessalonians or whatever.
But the point being that they wanna take that one difficult to understand passage and apply it to a specific era and say that for, again, for 1700 years, the truth was gone. Oh, they have some admiration for a Martin Luther or for a John Calvin, you know, but it's only because they were on the right path.
Mm, okay. Steve, why do you think the Mormon church has so many adherents? Why is it growing?
What's the appeal? They're losing people. I mean, there's the untold secret because as people find out, you know, now the internet is bad for a lot of reasons, but it's good for some things. People are able to research things and find out there's a lot of mythology that's just not true.
You know, for example, you know, Joseph Smith having all these wives and many of them were married to other men. You know, he got the supposed revelation after he'd already taken another wife. You know, there are all these kind of things going on and people don't know this until they can look up and see the facts for themselves.
And, you know, as a Mormon, you just kind of live in this little cocoon and you go to Mormon bookstores and it's Mormon, Mormon, Mormon, and now you can look at the truth on the internet and it's kind of scary.
Steve, I don't go much for spidey senses and gizzard stuff and liver quivers and bosom burnings, but when I walked into the Desiree Bookstore in Salt Lake City, a big one, I felt weird in the sense that there's a lot of stuff that said Jesus, but it was the wrong Jesus and all kinds of weird things that they were selling at the bookstore.
And again, I can't track it to anything else except just felt funny.
Well, there's certainly a lot of spirituality and a lot of Christian-like talk, but it's about as far from Christianity in reality as Scientology or any number of things. I mean, it's just, it's made up out of whole cloth.
And if we could put Joseph Smith on a witness stand right now and force him to tell the truth, he would admit it. Well, my name is Mike.
This is Steve here as well. Jesus is the eternal son of God, cloaked himself with humanity to live as our representative, die as our substitute, and be raised for our justification. You have to believe in that Bible, Jesus.
Preach it.
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 six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.