Ligonier’s “The State of Theology” Discussion (Part 1)

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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

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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.

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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.

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Tuesday, just another manic Tuesday. You just said something about Bay City Rollers.

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Can you tell our listeners how the Bay City Rollers got their name? S -A -T -U... No, I can't.

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No, seriously. Bay City? Well, they're from Edinburgh, right? Aren't... Isn't that where they're from? No, no. Where are they from? They were a band.

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They were called the Rollers, and they didn't know what name to attach to that prefix, and so they spun the globe, put their finger down, and stopped at Bay City, I think,

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Michigan, and they became the Bay City Rollers. Really? I think that's the lore, the legend.

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I... You know what? I'm just not that huge of a fan. I guess I'll have to, you know, cede that to you, big

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Bay City Rollers fan. Well, I tried to see them once, and they were sold out. They did have...

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They had a unique... You know, they had their look, like the plaid overall.

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I wonder if that was, you know, with some handler, right? You get these guys, and they know how to put together the boy bands and everything else and the looks and the hair, and...

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They were, you know, pretty entertaining, kind of like the monkeys of the late 70s. I would, you know, alt -tab and switch back and forth between the

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Ramones and the Bay City Rollers. Would you? Okay. I believe. So, normally,

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I have all kinds of information in front of me, and while I do have a chart illustrative of the Book of Revelation by H .A.

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Ironside, I think you're the one at the comm today. So, what do you got? Well, I have the

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State of Theology, which is a survey that Ligonier, I think, does with Crossway every couple of years to sort of tell us where the

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Christian church is with regard to theological issues.

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You know? So, they... I don't know exactly how many people they... I mean, it's a pretty large group of people that they do, so it's pretty accurate,

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I think, you know, reflective of where the surgery is, where the church is with regard to some of these things.

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And so, let me just kind of go through some of these. So, before you do that, though, Steve, is this the theological equivalent of the

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Rasmussen Poll? Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's probably, you know, plus or minus less than Rasmussen, so...

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Okay. Just making... Well, and it's a little bit more important, but I think what it really helps us, it's not, you know, are these people right or wrong, because a lot of them are wrong, right?

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The question is... To what degree? Yeah. Well, and what does it say about what the church teaches and what it needs to teach?

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Okay. Right? So, I think it's helpful for us because as I went through this, I just thought, you know, one of the issues,

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I think, from the pulpit, I like talking about theology, I like putting my sermons, and as you hear some of these answers, you're going to go, yeah, more theological preaching would be good, right?

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And if I just can make one last comment before you get into that, Steve. We both affirm what

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Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 15, and he said, I preached to you or delivered to you as of first importance what

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I also received. Christ died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised, and he appeared to the men.

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And if you start assuming that gospel in one generation, the next loses it.

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So, we have to keep on teaching this regularly, and I think this survey will show that. Yes. So, the first one is pretty basic.

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Who is Jesus? And the question is, or the statement is this, Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not

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God. Now, obviously, that is false.

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He was a great teacher. Do they ask the people, is it true or false? Yes. All right. And it's just agree, disagree.

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Fifty -two percent agree with that statement, thirty -six percent were against it. Well, you know what

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I always found interesting, Steve, is if you say, well, you know, you're liberal, Jesus was a great teacher, he really wasn't

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God incarnate, second person of the Trinity, but he's really a great teacher. But he taught a lot of things like that very thing, like I am the

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Son of God and the Son of Man. Now, I have to be completely fair, because that was unbelievers and believers together saying that, 52 and 36, but here, listen to this.

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In the self -professing evangelicals, 30 % agreed with that, that he was a great teacher, but he was not

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God. I'm an evangelical, but I don't believe that Jesus is God. What good news might that be?

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I don't know. Is that capital E, did they say, or small e, evangelical? Yeah, well, I think they probably use a small e, yeah, they do.

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But I mean, the idea is, you know, big E. So yeah, almost a third of evangelicals agree that it was merely a great teacher.

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Okay, so what's that going to do for us, though? How's that going to help me? Well, I think it helps in this way, that every time you get to a passage, and there are innumerable passages.

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In fact, I just read one Sunday morning, Exodus 3, and when you think of Exodus 3, what's the first thing you think?

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It's probably not this, but it's true, and it's certainly inherent in this statement. Jesus Christ is

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God. It's in Exodus 3, and people go, really? Yes, read Exodus 3, because the angel of the

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Lord turns out to be God. That angel of the Lord is Jesus, and what does he say?

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I am that I am. He is God, and it's that way throughout the Bible, and you can't get out of it.

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But so, my point is, every time we have the opportunity to say, this shows that Jesus Christ is

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God, we need to say, this shows that Jesus Christ is God. Okay, I was glad for that little detour.

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I like that. I just meant, what good is it going to do if Jesus is only a teacher and not God? None.

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That's what I meant. Yeah, none. I mean, it completely empties the cross of any significance, right?

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If just a good teacher went to the cross, so what? Uh -huh. You know what, Steve? It reminds me of that old

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S. Louis Johnson story, where people would say, well, you know what? He's not really a substitute because there's a lot of icky things like wrath and assuagement of God's holy anger, and so he was just mainly an example.

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And then S. Louis always says, well, how you doing with that example? You're falling short of Christ's example of loving

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God and loving your neighbor, so now you need him as substitute if you can't perfectly follow him as example.

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Amen. Well, so they even say here, these results suggest a significant need for Christians to be taught

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Christology, the doctrine, I mean, duh, right? How often have I said from the pulpit, this is a

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Christological problem, right? If you have a marriage problem, if you have a doctrinal problem,

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I think we need to make sure we bring Jesus back into focus through plain preaching.

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Okay, now this is another good one. I mean, these are just like basics. In fact, I'm going to be doing this, I think, just to have some fun

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Friday night at the Bible study. Okay, fun Fridays. I like that. Fun Fridays. True or false, or agree or disagree,

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God chose the people he would save before he created the world. All right. Well, I would say true,

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Ephesians 1, 4, 2 Timothy 1, 9, Romans chapter 9, right?

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I mean, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, John 17. I mean, you can go, finding 26 % agree and 50 % disagree, and 24 % are too perplexed to even respond, right?

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Seriously? Is that what the 24 % is? I don't know. Well, I mean, yeah, there's 24 % missing, you know, so.

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Oh, but it didn't actually say perplexed. Well, I mean, they're just like, I don't know, can

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I get some more coffee? You know what I don't understand, Steve? Thinking Armenians have to say, well,

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God chose, they just redefined the terms, right? So I don't know why everybody couldn't just say, well, here it says

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God chose, and so he did choose. Okay. Among evangelicals, it was 38 % agree and 44 % disagree.

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So, again, you know, I disagree with that. Okay. Well, I remember the first time,

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I know I'm taking your time, but I remember the first time I met a professing Christian, and I wasn't really sure, but I saw her carrying around her

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Bible at work, right? So I go, oh, that's interesting, you know? And I think

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I was like in my cage, you know, steel cage days of Calvinism, but I was nice and I said,

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I said, well, what do you think about election? You know, the idea that God chose people before the foundation of the world for salvation?

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She goes, I don't think I agree with it. So I said, well, do you believe that Bible?

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She goes, yeah. I said, every word of it? Yeah. I said, well, election's there, let me show you. And so I showed her a couple of places, she goes,

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I still don't like it. Which is at least honest, right? I think it was Spurgeon, when he was talking about the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism.

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And I think it was about election and how people, immature people or unbelievers would not like it.

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And he said, I never expected that you would, right? And then once you finally understand and are humbled before the

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Lord and realize there's no other way for salvation, then you begin to like it. I think one of the funnier things that is said about Calvinists is you people are so arrogant, right?

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You think you have all the answers, and I'm like, actually, no. It's not arrogant to say, well,

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I believe the Bible. The truth is outside of me. I don't get to sit in judgment of the word of God.

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Steve, it's only anecdotal, but I don't hear a lot of Arminians, non -Calvinists, say things about the hidden God, Luther's term, the naked

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God, the incomprehensibility of God. I don't hear them talking that way.

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Now, maybe a lot of them do, but not in my circles. Nope. Nope. I mean, it's, well, pretty much the love of God, the love of God, the love of God, right?

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And you know what, Steve? I will confess here on International Radio, No Compromise Radio. I think for a long time, because of that overemphasis on the love of God and a misdefinition of the love of God, not talking about the sovereign love of God, for instance.

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I think I recoiled against that, and I didn't want to talk about the love of God as much as I should have talked about the love of God.

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And now I regularly discuss His love, but hopefully in the context of sovereign redeeming love.

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Amen. Okay. All right. Truly, truly. Now, this one is easy, and I think a lot of people found it easy.

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Learning about theology is for pastors and scholars only. Now, these are adult respondents, you know, so unbelievers mixed in.

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15 % agree, 75 % disagree, and I'm like, well, finally, you know, even the unbelievers get it.

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This, of course, it is kind of still stunning, because that would include a lot of unbelievers who just say, yeah, it's important for everybody to know.

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But they don't know, right? Steve, I turned on the TV the other day, and it was the same night

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I was telling you that I just turned on the TV randomly and saw an evangelical leader talking about issues.

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But I turned on Joe Osteen, and I never watch him. I haven't probably watched him for,

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I don't know, five years. You know what I'm surprised at? I was surprised at how easily he wove together a story from the

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Bible with actual Bible facts into a prosperity, name it and claim it,

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God loves you and is going to have a great plan for your life kind of thing. It was so easy for him to do.

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Actually, he taught more Bible than I thought he would, but then he denied basically what he taught by the way he applied it.

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Of course. Yeah. I mean, what would you expect? Yeah. I mean, what's interesting,

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I mean, he is a gifted communicator, right? I mean, he's skilled at it. People watch him and they like him and they can understand what he's saying.

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And I mean, in that one sense, we can certainly learn from him.

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You know what, Steve? When I watched him, I was detracted from his smile, it's the same smile, by his either

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A, makeup or B, plastic surgery. Probably plastic surgery, but yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a little hard, but again, appropriately

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I think only 10 % of evangelicals agreed with this statement that learning about theology is for pastors and scholars only.

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So that's good. I mean, it's good that generically or generally, generally speaking, that the church understands that there is a need for theological learning.

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I just don't know why they don't do it then. That would be my follow -up. Well, that's interesting, then why don't you do it?

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You know? Steve, as you were talking, it went through my mind, flashed through, the desire for experience and the desire for this experiencing

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God. Remember that book, the Blackabee book, several years ago, Experiencing God. Do you think maybe that these numbers are so high because when you talk about theology, it's not just how does

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God reveal himself, especially in scripture, about his nature and essence and workings in the world, but also how we experience that.

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So could theology be my experience of God? Yeah, well, I think what you're saying, if I could just boil it all down, is the definition of theology is so deficient, you know, even our understanding what theology is and isn't is so bad.

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I mean, if you said, it's the study of the nature of God, then people might go, who cares about that?

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Well, and even you, and to use Michael Horton's, you know, terms, you have a judicial kind of forensic courtroom talk, but people don't like that so much.

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They want to know about the therapeutic stuff. Yes, very much so. Okay. Now, on to scripture, the

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Bible. Finally, after 14 minutes of the radio show. Okay.

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This is, again, all US adult respondents, and the trend here is toward more agreement than disagreement, 41 % in 2014, and now it's 48 % agree with this statement.

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The Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths, but is not literally true.

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48 % of all Americans agree with that statement. Wow. Mithra, myths, what went through my mind were certain views of the book of Job that Russell Fuller has critiqued and others, but that was a different radio show.

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Different show. I, you know, I also don't like this whole sacred book thing, right?

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All the sacred books, I guess it's true, right? People have holy books and this is their holy book, but in terms of sacred...

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Well, I don't like it anyway. I mean, just listen, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths.

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I mean, let's just think about it. Like the flood. Well, I mean, just think about what we know about the

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Quran. The Quran is basically an illiterate retelling of a lot of Bible stories and it contains massive quantities of error.

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The book of Mormon is a completely made up book, right? So when we're talking about sacred writings, you were quite right there.

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What defines what a sacred writing is? And if we just say that everything that says that it's sacred or that somebody says is sacred is sacred, okay, well then maybe

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Oprah's book of the month club is sacred too. That's kind of sacred religious if you're up to me.

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Well, how about this, Steve? Don't you think this would help? When I look at a book, sacred could mean how people think about it and feel about it.

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But if we use some of the language in scripture, God's word and God breathed out and the spirit of God moving these authors to write exactly as he would have them in some places in the scripture of God, not even using people, but just directly speaking, that's completely different.

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Inspiration, inerrancy, and these, you know, how many books are running around claiming to be inerrant? And the answer is one.

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So let's see what the evangelicals say about that. There's charts over there and graphs and stuff.

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Do you have to be a giver to Ligonier to get access to this? No, it's free on the internet. Wow, that's helpful.

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So that's all I say about that. But you know what it highlights? That's all it said on that topic.

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But you know what that does highlight for me again? How is this practical for preachers?

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How is it practical for Christians? Even when you're interacting with other professing Christians, you know, you need to stress the deity of Christ and make sure you have agreement on that before you just presume somebody's a

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Christian. But when you're talking about scripture, every time I talk about scripture now or about the

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Bible, I want to make sure that I am talking about the Bible, not just as an authoritative book amongst a bunch of authoritative books, right?

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And giving credence to other so -called sacred writings. But those are all false writings.

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They're the false ideas put forth by Satan, 2 Corinthians 10, you know, these are demonic ideas basically designed to lead people away from the truth, right?

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So, we need to just reject and refute those ideas and give people the unadulterated

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Word of God. I like that, Steve. What if in our teaching, our counseling, our preaching, even in our evangelism, instead of saying the

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Bible says, and that's true, right? It's a self -authenticating book written by the

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Spirit, illumined by the Spirit, used by the Spirit to convict people, encourage, comfort, admonish.

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But what if we would just start saying God says? God says, yep. Right? The God who made the universe said, right?

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And when people are saying, well, I just feel that I should be able to do this or do that, and it's in direct contradiction to God's Word.

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Well, did you know that God said this? The God who created you said this. Maybe that,

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I don't know, maybe I'm stealing. No, I think that's a good one. I think that's right. Okay, so truth.

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Oh, before, I want to interrupt you, excuse me. When you were a Mormon, did you really think to yourself and subjectively feel that the

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Book of Mormon, the King James Bible, and the Doctrines and Covenants were all sacred to the same degree?

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Did you really think, you know, D &C is really, like, as close to my heart as the

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Bible? No, because I believe the LDS Statement of Faith, which said that, you know, we believe the

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Bible is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly. Okay, so that was the top book in your life.

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The Bible? No. In church life? Because it said this.

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The Statement of Faith said, we believe the Word of God is the, or the Bible is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

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And then listen, You need the church to do it. We also believe the Book of Mormon is the Word of God without qualification, right?

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Okay. No, zero. It's just, it is the Word of God. It is, and they would say, Book of Mormon is the most accurate book ever produced.

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Which edition? Right. Okay. Before we moved on, I wanted to get that out. Yeah. Okay.

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So, truth. Majority of U .S. adults assume that all truth is relative. It was 60 % in 2018 and 54 % in 2020, so within the margin of error, basically nothing really changing there.

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Relative truth? Yeah. Well, that all truth is relative, in other words, that there's no absolute truth.

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There's no objective truth. I'm sure tons of apologists have talked about this in other radio shows, and we're not really the experts on apologetics, yet people obviously believe in truth and absolute truth in almost every other industry, except, you know, in their heart of hearts.

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But when it's financial and IRS gives you statements or you find out you have cancer or whatever it is, you believe in, this is firm truth.

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But well, I don't even know if I can agree with that, and I'll tell you why. Because I've read articles about, you know, why it's okay if two plus two equals five.

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I mean, we live in a world that is really, I mean, it's always been insane, but people have really lost their minds.

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And a good part of it is because we have to fight, you know, all these social injustices.

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And if that means two plus two has to equal five, then that's fine. What does 1 Corinthians plus 2 Corinthians equal?

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That would be a lot of Corinthians. That would be, well, how many chapters, 20, let's see, there's 16 and 12, or 16 and 13.

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That's 29 chapters of you all saints are awfully messed up, repent and keep trusty.

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Okay, we have a minute and a half left. Anything else you want to ask? Petey Uh, sure. Let's do, let's do this really fast here.

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All right. The Holy Spirit gives a new birth or new life before a person has faith in Jesus Christ.

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Now, that's trickier for the average bear. Pete Yes, it is. 62 % agreed in 2016, now it's down to 57%.

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But even that, to me, seems high. You can look at statements of faith at seminaries these days and find that somehow faith is preceding regeneration.

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Yet we would know that you have to have 1 John 5, 1, you have to have regeneration first.

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And immediately, of course, people will respond with faith. Pete I mean, it shouldn't be hard, right? Jesus said, you must be born again.

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I mean, everybody knows John 3, 16. And if they know the part leading up to that with Nicodemus, they would go, oh, you must be born again.

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What does that mean? Well, you must be born again. The Holy Spirit has to do a work in you, right? Pete 1

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John 5. I tried to figure it out by memory, but I'll just read it now. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the

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Christ, pregnant pause, has been born of God. Petey That seems to indicate.

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We're up to 63 % now. You know what, Steve? We need to do a poll of No Compromise listeners and see actually how astute they are theologically.

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Pete I bet they're pretty astute. Pete Oh, off the charts. Pete Especially the people in Anchorage. Pete Yeah, that's right.

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I wonder what show is before ours in Anchorage and which the show is on after. Like Charles Stanley and Andy Stanley or something surrounded by the bookmark

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Stanleys. Charles Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth with Pastor Steve today, who is pulling lead.