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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.
No Compromise Radio ministry. This is a yawn-free zone, Steve. No yawning. Uh-huh. A few weeks ago, I came in on a Saturday night, I hadn�t done a lot of shows, and I needed to do a few, and I think I yawned six times in one show, so where�s our yawn button?
What?
Uh-huh. Boy, those must be scintillating. I�m going to have to look those bad boys up.
Well, I was hoping people would really feel sorry for us and send us a lot of Pete�s coffee or something.
I�m just like, what is the title of the show, Yawn-Fest, you know, or Sci-Fest?
Steve, last time, we were talking about a survey that you have. You want to kind of just give us an overview of what we talked about last time as we pick up this scintillating screed of a show? It is pretty good.
Lifeway Research and Ligonier Ministries combined forces like, you know, Wonder Twins Activate. They put their power rings together and, you know, they formed some kind of a giant elephant thing. ISIS.
Whatever it was. Anyway, they got a list here. This is in Christianity Today of our favorite heresies, and I kid you not, that is the title of this.
Does CT even know what a heresy is?
Well, no, they don�t. I was going to say they know it if they see it, but no, they don�t because, you know, if they actually knew it, then 80 percent of what they publish wouldn�t get published and they�d pretty much go out of business because they�d have to stop taking advertisements too, as we say in the United Kingdom.
That is very that�s full of controversy, Steve. Yeah, I can�t even say that one.
It always makes me laugh. Okay, so we had the first several, you know, 82 percent said people have the ability to turn to God on their own initiative. 74 percent said individuals must contribute to their own salvation, not to their own church, but to their own salvation.
71 percent said Jesus is the greatest, first and greatest being created by God. 65 percent said God knows all that happens but doesn�t determine all that happens. 57 percent agreed with this statement, �My local church has the authority to withhold communion and excommunicate me.
And here we go, new material, 56 percent agreed with this, �The Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. They didn�t take my Fundamentals of the Faith class.
Why do these kind of special what do they call this again, survey? Yeah. Why does it make me want to say sits and leaping or something like that?
Context in life. This is very, I mean, maybe these evangelicals, self-described evangelicals, were all like fans of Benny Hinn and they just, you know, see. Okay, nice.
We�ll get to that in a second. Steve, maybe it�s just the German that wants to come out of me because a lot of German theologians are so Bad. Oh, yeah. So it�s kind of like a feshtriff. Steve, it was probably 25 years ago.
Maybe we were sitting around at the Bible study at my house. Good morning, Holy Spirit came out. I think the same time Robert Williams, Robin Williams was famous for saying, �Good morning, Vietnam. Good morning, Holy Spirit.
Uh-huh. And he, I believe in his first edition, it was since revised, believed that in a trichotomous way that each the Father, the Son, and the Spirit had a body, soul, and spirit. Had a trichotomy.
Right. And so there were nine, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. Nine SIs, Essenes of the Trinity. Number nine? Number nine? No, that�s good. So let�s get back to this Holy Spirit one.
What was that all about? The Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. Is a force, yes. Yeah. Is a force, not a personal being.
Sometimes I�ll hear people talk and we are so used to, especially in English, and I guess the same would be in Greek, too. We�re so used to thinking that the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being.
Of the wind as an it, that sometimes when people say the Holy Spirit or the Spirit is an it or something, that I hear people talking about it and force and stuff like that. But set the record straight, the Holy Spirit, he has personality, he has emotions.
He has will. Will.
Don�t grieve the Holy Spirit. Right. Right. Yep. You can�t. Yep. And he also distributes the gifts as he desires. Verse 15 is 12. So, I mean, let�s see, what else can we say about the Holy Spirit? I mean, he has multiple attributes of personality, things that a person does, right?
So� Tell me what it says again on the list here. What�s the survey? That it is a force?
Right. 56 said he is a force, not a personal being.
What do you think? And this is going to sound like it�s a joke, but it�s really a serious question. What effect, a negative effect, do you think Star Wars has had on evangelicals� view of the Holy Spirit?
In other words, there�s so much of this force stuff. Be with you, and then.
I can almost imagine, you know, if you�re trying to, because we see this a lot, people trying to Christianize movies, you know, or Christianize the movie experience. So they go, you know what, the force is just a, that�s just a, like a stand-in for the Holy Spirit.
You know, the Holy Spirit is everywhere around us. He moves in us and, you know, and all these kind of things. And so I could see where maybe people, if they go to one of these churches where they try to exegete movies, you know, and movie clips, I�ve seen some of those.
They�re bad.
As bad as this next show is, probably pastors who say they�re evangelicals but bring in secular movies into the pulpit is even worse. How about the shack now? It�s going to come along. Okay, it came and went as a book.
Lots of people believing it. And then now we�re going to have the movie and, you know, the Holy Spirit.
Pete I have to admit, though, I am looking forward to the sequel, The Kobe.
You know, that�s going to be pretty good. Paul I was looking forward to The Kobayashi Maru.
Pete. Yeah, the unwinnable scenario. I just don�t know how anybody could know anything about the Bible. Oh, sorry. Anything about the Bible, especially the New Testament, and, you know, but even in the Old Testament, if you really study the Old Testament and believe that the Holy Spirit is a force.
Paul. What happens in evangelicalism is I think they just have such a skewed view of the Trinity, and they don�t really think Trinitarianly. And then they, you know, if you had to tell someone, ask someone, describe the Trinity and try to have some proof text.
I don�t really think, Steve, they would say to themselves, okay, there�s one God. He subsists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And the Father, Son, and the Spirit aren�t each other.
And then you go to the passages where the Father is God. That�s pretty easy. The Son is God. That�s easy. And then you have to find passages that show the Holy Spirit. He�s God. And probably the easiest is in the early chapters of Acts when you don�t just lie against the Holy Spirit, but you lie against God.
Pete. Right.
And that�s what causes Ananias and Sapphira to breathe their last, as it were, yeah. In a dramatic display of the niceness of the New Testament Trinity.
Paul. Can you imagine, Steve, back in seminary days, I don�t know if we had the exact same professors, but I had a professor that said, these small, very few, rather, punctuations of the holiness of God, sprinkled into the New Testament, just to kind of remind us again, even though God is gracious and loving and compassionate.
And when you look at Jesus� incarnation, you should be thinking all those things. But it is a serious thing. It is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of living God.
Steve. Well, I mean, even his Jesus interactions with the Pharisees over and over again in the Gospel of John and the other Gospels, he�s not some kind of like, you know, come on, let�s just have a group hug.
Let�s hug this thing out. I mean, he blasts them. You know, I mean, what is it, Matthew 23, you know, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you. And I�m like, anybody who listens to Jesus talk to these men, interact with them over and over and over again on the Temple Mount, anywhere, and think, oh, Jesus is just love and that�s all he is.
And, you know, no, he cares about doctrine. He cares about truth. And, you know, he lays it down. I mean, he�s dealing with them.
Mark Even when Jesus talks to Peter, and Peter was wanting Jesus to bypass the cross to just get straight to the crown, and Jesus, I don�t think his demeanor mentally came across like he was wearing capris and toms.
I think it was pretty direct, pretty forceful. Don�t you think it was something like this?
Hey, get behind me, Satan.
Mark Now, I like tom shoes, but if people wear, men wear capris and toms together, got a serious problemo with that. Pete I don�t even know what tom shoes are. Mark Serious problemo.
Pete Yeah, because I don�t wear cool stuff, man. I wear nice, you know.
Mark. Was the difference between nice and cool?
Pete. The difference is I�m not cool. That�s, you know, I�m just not, not at all. I�m not even remotely cool. Okay, so let�s see. Oh, yeah, here we go. Fifty-four percent agree with this. Fifty-four.
Pete. Fifty-four percent. So, yeah, we�re still over half. Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.
Mark. Everyone sins a little.
Well, we just have a couple little boo-boos and a little mistake-o�s.
Pete That Supertramp song, sin a little bit. Sin a little bit.
Oh, you know what? Sometimes you listen to songs for a long time, and you don�t really know what they�re saying. Mark. A lot of people think it�s give a little bit. Pete. Yeah, and then you look at lyrics .com, and you think, that�s what they meant.
I was reading some Clash lyrics the other day, and I thought, oh, that�s what they meant.
Mark Oh, I guess I could never listen to that song again. Pete Sin a little bit.
Well, I think in evangelicalism, we have so lost the holiness of God as a concept and as an idea and as a deterrent to sin and something that�s so great, because how could we be in fellowship with a holy God only through our Lord�s work?
But God�s not as holy as He says He is in Scripture, and that�s what people think. And we�re not really as bad as the next guy, and so the gap to be between man and God is,.
Who needs a mediator? Lower God a lot, raise men as much as you can raise them. And now, I can, maybe I can�t get there on my own, but I can see heaven.
Mark Steve, the Tower of Babel builders, you know, it just is, hey, at least you�re not making people build it with bricks, no straw.
Pete Now, that�d be a good sermon, the modern-day Tower of Babel, because I�d say the modern-day Tower of Babel is most of our evangelical churches, as evidenced here. You know, we�re kind of raising ourselves up to God.
Mark. Okay, so we could probably get no-co on people. Arminianism, colon, modern Tower of Babel, question mark. Pete. Shots fired. Mark. Shots fired. Pete. But sin a little bit. Okay, Steve, you�ve heard me say this for 25 years, so it�s going to be no surprise to you.
Think about how many times we don�t sin. That would be a better way to go about it, because if the standard response to God, both as my Creator and Redeemer, is to love Him just with all my faculties, whatever, you know, I have thought, you know, in my mind, soul, strength, you know, spirit, heart.
You can just add all these different words from different places in Scripture. I was just supposed to love Him full bore, full throttle, and love neighbors full throttle too. I mean, how many times am I not sinning?
That�s the question versus, you know, well, I just sin a little bit. Only a few times today I wasn�t loving God with everything. It�s just, come on. Okay, liar.
Teresa. Well, and the other thing, most people are good by nature. Listen, even our own government, you know, the system of it with the checks and balances, everything else is predicated upon this fact.
Man is inherently evil. You know, the Bible says there�s no one good. I mean, you know, all sin falls short of the glory of God. And it�s not just little sins, we sin in a variety of ways, and I just can�t even, you know, it�s, again, I think it says a lot about our churches when people who presumably go to these evangelical churches, because that�s what it says here, don�t understand the depravity of man.
And they just think, hey, we�re pretty good. We�re not so bad.
Paul. And Steve, when it comes to depravity, let�s just take a look at the Bible through some different lenses. We could, of course, pick out the Judases and the Jezebels and her husband Nabal, the fool, and we could pick out people like Sisera, and we could pick out people like Goliath.
But let�s just look at some of the saints to see the depth of sin in saints. How about Abraham when he said, oh, this is my sister, twice? How about David? Do you know what? I, for the sake of this particular girl, he could have sex anytime he wanted with his wives, and for that particular girl, I�m going to kill with premeditation her husband, who had honor, and put the nation at risk and everything else.
I mean, so it�s Samson, right? Samson, he�s in the Hall of Faith. We�ve got Jephthah making these kind of idiotic, asinine vows. These are the good people, right? Quote-unquote. These are the good guys.
These are the ones that God would call saints and set apart. And if the depth of sin is found in them, well, that�s, as they say, a horse of a different color.
Well, you know, you could follow all the ups and downs of Peter, but I mean, even when he�s, after the resurrection and everything, when Paul goes and confronts him on adding the law to Christianity, basically, you just go, sin is never-ending, and people are not good, and they always default back to their own understanding of things like Peter did there.
And you just go, who would ever think that we�re mostly good, or we�re basically good? And it�s this folly.
In Adam�s fall, we sinned all, and it wholly, totally affected all our capacities, and that�s why we need a Savior. We have to keep moving. All right, we can always turn it into three shows.
All right, but listen, this one, you�re going to like this one a lot. 48 of evangelicals, almost half, agree with this statement. God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Hmm. Well, see, He accepts the monotheistic religions and their worship, and He accepts them as blasphemous, is how He accepts them, because without the mediator, He doesn�t accept anything. Okay, think about worship and approaching God.
It doesn�t take very long for us, if we just open up our Old Testament and figure out, Old Testament, to figure out that access to God was prescribed by Him and Him alone. Let�s pick out Nadab and Abihu, who thought, you know, we can just get through the strange fire on our own.
The way to God, or let�s just, you know, let�s just pick up the ark in our own way. I mean, our hands, they�re not really that dirty, but the ground�s got a lot of dirt on it, manure. There�s a prescription on how to approach God, and you just don�t saunter in, and even the high priest had certain prescriptions on that particular day to pass through the holy place into the holy of holies, or else he�s dead, right?
There�s all the sacrifices and all the bulls and oxen and all these things, but modern evangelical says, nah, none of that stuff carries over. This is the New Testament, and Jesus is basically a way to God, not the way.
And, you know, 1 .6 billion Muslims, I mean, come on, they acknowledge Jesus. They call Him a prophet. I mean, certainly God wouldn�t turn away their worship.
Let�s talk about that for a second, Steve. What do we do with people who, they give Jesus this kind of like, you know, pat on the head by saying He�s a good teacher? You know, He just was an excellent teacher, because even if you�re not a believer and you read Jesus�s words, let�s say you read one parable in Matthew 20, and different guys pay, and, you know, they�re going to get paid different times of the day, and these workers that are hired a different hour, and you read that and you go, even as an unbeliever, you would read it and go, now that is a killer parable.
Steve. There�s a lot of insight there, you know? Sermon on the Mount, right? Matt. Yeah, Sermon on the Mount. But what do we do with people only saying He�s a good teacher?
Steve. Well, if He�s a good teacher, you also have to look at all the places where He specifically claimed to be deity, you know, and so then you have to ask yourself, well, was He a good teacher there?
Because if He was saying, you know, I am the way, no one gets to the Father except by me, what did He mean by that? What about when He said, I and the Father are one, claiming the power of deity in Himself, you know, and the Jews who were listening took up stones to stone Him?
Well, why was that? It wasn�t because they were thinking, oh, this is a profound point that He�s making. It�s because they understood the claim He was making, and He wasn�t a good teacher. He was, in fact, the God-man, God in the flesh, preaching the truth, and they didn�t like the truth.
Matt. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, and no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with Him. Well, what did Nicodemus not say?
We know you�re from Satan. We know you�ve got Beelzebub as a brother. We know you�re Lucifer�s counterpart, you know, and comrade in crime. He even saw the signs, the previous sign in John 2, as you know, as you�re teaching through it, is changing the water into wine.
And Jesus basically says to him, listen, you need to see me as something more than a teacher. You need to see me as your Savior. That�s one of the places I would take the people. Jesus teaches that He�s God, and that you�re going to blow hell wide open unless you get down on your face and worship this particular God, Jesus.
And here Jesus is like, you�ve got to see me as a Savior. This whole teacher bit, I think, is disingenuous.
Mark Well, it�s very disingenuous. Matt What do we do with Jesus?
Ah, you�re a good teacher. Well, no, if you�re only a good teacher, man, you�re a teacher on like bad acid in 1969 at Altamont Speedway, because who runs around says you�re God in the flesh? Mark Amen.
Well, in Judaism, you know, I mean, the fact that they deny He�s the Messiah and then God�s going to hear His prayer. I�m like, what kind of sense does that make that the Father would then, you know, allow people who denied His Son into heaven or hear their prayers or anything else?
So does God hear their prayers? Well, of course, because God knows everything. But in terms of here as a father to a son or a father to a daughter to want to help and come alongside, there�s no prayer kind of, you know, it does no good for an unbeliever to pray.
Mark. Or accept the worship, you know, is what the original question is. But that idea is folly. If you�re not worshiping the God of the Bible as He presents Himself, then you�re not worshiping Him at all.
So if you�re not worshiping Father, Son, and Spirit, you�re not worshiping the God of the Bible.
Steve, it�s so crazy because, okay, God, the Creator says, you have access to me only through Jesus. And now evangelicals, quote unquote evangelicals, are surveyed. Well, what about people that want to spit in God�s face and not do that?
What if they want to approach God? Can they approach God that way, a different way now? Oh, absolutely. I can hear S. Lewis Johnson on my shoulder saying, all this is because we don�t read our Bibles.
If we would just read our Bibles, we would realize that we don�t need to read Berkhoff�s Systematic Theology, even though it�s here, it�s in front of me, it�s wonderful. If you just read your Bibles, you would see the exclusivity of Christ Jesus.
Well, and this just goes back to the whole idea that we don�t need to know the Bible. We don�t need to know about God. We just need to know God, have a relationship with Him. Well, having a relationship, you can�t have a relationship with anybody that you don�t actually understand who they are.
If I asked you about your wife, if I asked you about Kim and I said, well, what does she like to eat? And you said, I have no idea. After all these years, you have no idea what she wants to eat? No, never asked her, never watched it, never really thought about it.
Actually, what does she like to do? I have no clue. Where does she like to go? I don�t know.
I thought you said you loved her. Steve, but all this is, this problem is compounded. It�s multiplied by the fact that we are listening to the Jesus callings and the Ann Vos camps and the Beth Moores of the world that push God speaking to us in our inner spirit outside of the Bible, apart from the Bible.
We�re basically functional Roman Catholics.
All this subjectivity, all this feel-good nonsense and no objectivity. What is the objective ground of truth for Christians? Where can we know the truth is? And the truth isn�t in our feelings. It�s not in emanations.
It�s not in a little voice in our head. By the way, if you have voices in your head, you should write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com. Truth is only in scripture. That�s the only place we can get it.
Thy word is truth. That�s it. I was thinking about that David Byrne, Brian Eno album and on one of the tracks, I hear voices. I hear voices.
Some kind of poltergeist thing. That�s pretty scary. Yeah. I never subjected my conscience. You never saw poltergeist? Well, I did do that.
I was a kid. I think I was four. I know everybody saw it. They�re here. Wasn�t there some kind of curse about poltergeist allegedly and all the people that many of the people associated with the show were dying off like X-Files stuff?
I don�t know, but it sounds like a good reason to stop a pipeline. But I digress. Steve, do we have enough for the next show?
Yes, we do. Okay. So this is Mike Cavendraw, Steve Cooley, No Compromised Radio. We�d be happy if you told your friends about the show. Don�t ask for money unless you�re a millionaire. So if you�re a millionaire, go to the website.
Yeah, sure. Cut us a check.
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