Pat Pactum Abendroth Interview (Part 2)

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, a ministry. Michael Lee Abendroth here at the helm with the person to my right in the place of honor.

I'm Michael Lee Abendroth. Uh -huh. You're Pat, my younger brother. Patrick James Abendroth. Which one is it?

Whose voice is whose? Are you the third? Patrick James Abendroth the third? I don't think so. Are we

Irish? Mike and Pat? I think our voices are similar, our mannerisms are similar, but you can tell the difference between who's who.

Can you? I think so. Okay. Who's speaking now? Well, when I was in Omaha, and Molly and I would go out to dinner,

I'd sometimes say to Jonathan, you know what? Be nice to your younger brother, Owen. Tell us about your kids.

I do think it's funny when people say, who's older? I'm like, come on. Give me some of that. Yeah, but they did that 10 years ago, and I probably looked younger then.

But now, no way. I saw pictures of us when we were in New York at Providence Baptist Church for the

Nonconformist Conference, and I saw us from behind, and I've got the big, huge, yarmulke bald spot.

It's like my bald spot's like a kipper. So do you bicket? I mean, do you do the total shave ever with foam and everything or not?

When I did that once, it just bled all over, and so I didn't appreciate that. So I just, usually on Saturday nights,

I just go down to, I think it's like a one setting or something, and just do that on sideburns in the back.

That's what I do. What do you do? On the Flavor Saver. Do you bicket? My head? Yeah, ever? No. You used to have short hair like me.

I did. Molly said, I want you to grow your hair out, so I did it. Okay, nice. I'll die on certain hills, but hey, you know.

We've kind of had the same facial hair over the years, haven't we? I just get lazy and don't do facial hair, and let it grow.

I'm so blind now, Pat, that I shave, and then I look at myself in the magnifying mirror,

I'm like, I didn't even shave practically. I mean, I missed that spot and the creases and everything else. I'm like, oh, brother.

Pat and I regularly talk about what old men talk about, our health issues and stuff, and I just say to Pat, oh,

I just had this happen to me, I had to go to this doctor, that doctor. That's what I said. I am you in nine years. Ouch.

So, Pat is the pastor of the Omaha Bible Church. The Omaha Bible Church. The Omaha Bible Church, and the host of the

Pactum, and Pat and I will be taking a group to Israel February 23rd through March 1st,

I believe, next year of 2023. And by the time you hear this, it's almost time for you to register via Bethlehem Bible Church No Compromise Radio, because otherwise,

I've got a few slots to give to Pat. Absolutely. We have so many people that want to go. It's gonna be a great trip.

I think we had to get a bigger bus. I didn't even know they had bigger buses, but Israel's fun together. Well, you know what?

I thought maybe what we could do is some of the people that signed up late, we could just call it the Mars Hill bus and just throw them under the bus.

Ooh. I don't know. Lots of people won't even know what that means. I know. So people can listen to the

Pactum. I love listening to the Pactum, because it's Pat Ebendroth and his friend who's,

I think, on staff as well at Elmo Bible Church, Mike Grimes. And unlike No Compromise Radio, where we just, you know, it's just whatever comes out of my mouth,

Pat studies, researches, picks a topic like theonomy, and then they work through it, and it's at a lay level, but pastors could learn, too.

Pastors could learn how to talk to their lay people, and how did the theonomy one go over?

I think that's one of the most downloaded episodes. So I've had to block some theonomists, because, man, theonomists like to fight.

Well, you add a bunch of law and it makes you crabby. If I ever become a theonomist,

I'm going to be a nice one. Oh, I would go. I did the same thing when I thought, all right, I want to be, in person, the nicest

Calvinist anybody has ever met. A kind Calvinist, like Jerry Bridges. Right. Totally. And so if I was a theonomist, and I was training other theonomists, we're going to kill them with kindness.

I think it's baked in the cake, though, for whatever reason. Kind of crabby. So I appreciate the free press that they gave me on Twitter, just sharing the episode with other people.

Oh, this is a pretty bad episode. This is poorly done. Yeah. As of, tell me why. Oh, a while ago,

I was on a show, and they asked me about newthetic counseling, and I had no notes.

Newthetic. I had no notes. I didn't do any research. I didn't look up, you know, when Jay Adams wrote his first book in 1973,

I mean, whatever. I just was trying to help. And of course, I'm not for psychology, number one, and I want to make sure that when

I think of people, that I realize the fall happened, right, so I don't think people are innately good or inherently good.

And you know, to try to help and to use the Bible as a sufficient source, there are some good things, but there are some things that I don't particularly like, and so I just said off the top of my head, this is what

I wish they'd do instead, and then somebody did a whole podcast refuting me. Because I didn't do something right.

It gave you free press. Somebody said, are you going to listen to it? And I go, no. Why would I listen? I mean,

I can learn. I mean, that's all I do all day if I'm on the bike or working out at the gym listening to podcasts.

I want to learn. I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I don't need to listen to a critique of myself.

My own conscience does that. It's true. It's true. So give me your philosophy of preaching.

I think for years I should have done what you have done, and that is, yes,

I'm going through books verse by verse, but you're preaching larger sections, and I went too slow and added in too much systematic theology.

I go faster now. I should have done that a long time ago. What made you kind of switch from micro -atomistic word study, 17 times use of the

Septuagint, add in a bunch of anthropology here, and then next verse we'll do the same thing, and it's 9 ,000 sermons through Matthew.

What made you change? I think most smart things I've done in life, I've just followed your example. So you probably did it first, and I followed your example.

But I think, I actually think maybe there was, I don't, yeah. Maybe somebody could do a whole podcast refuting about what

I'm about to say. So think about some historical changes that happened.

You've got theological liberalism, you know, early 1900s, and the Bible isn't true. The Bible is not

God's word, but it contains God's word, and so we're going to say no. As Christians, every jot and tittle, every word is inspired.

It's all God -breathed, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, and now we're going to over pendulum swing, and since every word is

God's word, now we're just going to do one word at a time and really dig ourselves in.

And so I think maybe that was a bad overreaction sometimes, because if I'm going to study one word, which

I've done before, therefore, you know, whole sermon on therefore. Or justification, right? How important is that word?

Absolutely. But when now all of a sudden we hunker down and we're going to do one word, it's easy to lose sight of the forest because you're staring at the branch, not just the tree.

And before you know it, you are in, you know, Ephesians for 52 weeks, and you are in chapter four, five, and six.

It's kind of the practical side, the response side of things, and you lose sight of the fact that it was a letter meant to be read in one sitting.

And if you do it that way, you're going to remember Christ, you're going to remember all of the indicatives, and you're not going to make it all about law, so to speak.

So I think that's a big reason why. So primarily that's it, plus talking about what the original intent was, it's a letter.

So if I'm going to go 52 weeks, somehow I've got to have it in my mind, it's a letter, don't forget about chapter one, two, and three.

And what I try to do myself, and then teach any student that I might have for preaching, if you are going to do 50 sermons in Hebrews, fine,

I get it, it's legit, but don't recap the first five chapters when you're in chapter six, don't recap them the same way every single sermon.

Be creative and take some time, I don't mean be creative with the text, but be creative with your summary of what's going on, so people don't just check out, oh, this is the five minute recap,

I get this every week, Ephesians 1 to 3, it's in him, in him, in him, praise of his glory, praise of his glory, praise of his glory, now we get to chapter four, walk in a manner worthy, it's like a weight, a balance, fulcrum, it's just like the same thing every time,

I try not to do that. Agreed, yeah. We've heard those kind of sermons before. The first 15 minutes of the hour sermon is just review, so you can just check your mail or something.

Seriously, I know. Yeah, so we don't wanna do that. I also think, this is secondary, but people are more and more biblically illiterate, so I think

I want to have people see more stuff, I want them to see the big picture and to see more of the

Bible, so it's not like they're catechized from birth upward and they know the

Bible and they know the connections themselves, they don't, so I've got to help them see big picture because they don't know it.

I like that. You have a great bookstore, by the way, at Omaha Bible Church, what's your philosophy of having this,

I mean, there's so many books, I mean, staffed, it's a room, why is that important?

It's one of my favorite ministries, I always wanna go in there, I'm in there every Sunday because you can talk to people about theology and they're looking for things that they're interested in, so I love being in there,

I love putting sound doctrine in people's hands and helping them, we, I think, lose a thousand dollars every year, we don't make money.

That's not bad, though, a thousand. It's not too bad. That's put under continuing education, line item. Good, trying not to make money,

I think we've had a couple people over the years be offended that were, you know, they want to turn the tables over because, you know, we're...

We're selling the goods on the Lord's Day. Exactly. I remember going to an Al Martin Reformed Baptist Conference and remember

Trinity Bookstore was big in the day, getting good and inexpensive books, and I went there and Steve and I, it was a

Sunday and I wanted to buy some books before we drove home. No mosque. No mosque. Closed. I thought, how about if I don't use cash?

I could just use my credit card, then it's not a work, like in Israel. That would be good. Go on Shabbat elevator.

It stops on every floor. So, books are great, bookstores are great,

I just think there's so many bad books, why not shepherd people with some good books? Who runs it now, Greg? Greg Gensler does.

Okay, I like Greg. Volunteers. And the man who did before, he's went on to glory, what was his name?

Emmett Champion, loved to be there, and that's right.

Good, good. Good memory. Talking to Pat Avendroth today on No Compromise Radio. We know that the

Lord builds the church and he has people leave as well, and it's no fun when people leave the church.

I would imagine, Pat, as you talk about the Lord Jesus regularly and often, now even in the book of Acts, that some people love it, they learn, they grow, that's the tenor of the church where they're excited and we're just going to be fed again this

Sunday from the pulpit. But some, in our circles, they want a list of things to do, they want practical things, they want moral things, that sermon's not really practical, and then they leave the church.

At least that's true here sometimes. Does that happen where you are? It does. And it's sad.

It's sad when people want less of Christ -centered stuff and they want more life coach stuff.

But a lot of people, I think a lot, how about this, a lot of people need a life coach in the 21st century. They didn't have a dad, they didn't have a stable family life.

I think people, I'm all for it. But that's not my job, it's not your job. And so read some books on practical things, natural law is important, but it's not primarily what we're called to do and proclaim.

So it's a heartbreaker, but there's a dispensational church down the street that'll give you character studies in the life of David.

So they can go ahead and do that instead of seeing Christ as the ultimate David, because it's very appealing.

You have to do something with the Old Testament if it's not redemptive historical, anticipating Christ with types and shadows.

And so what do you do? You turn the Bible into timeless truths for living, and guess who we sound like?

Theological liberals. Liberals. That's exactly what they did in Machen's day. We just were back in New York City together, and Fosdick and others.

Talk a little bit about his strategy, okay? Since the Bible, or maybe talk not about a strategy, but his philosophy.

The Bible is not really true, but we don't want to abandon it. We don't want to talk about wrath, propitiation, substitution, sin.

We need to use it. We call ourselves a church. So what should we do anyway? Yeah. Is it Harry Emerson Fosdick or Henry?

I get them confused. Harry. I think it's Harry. Yes. Yeah. So he was known as the practical application preacher.

So think about that, if you would, dear no -co -listeners. So if you think about that, if you have to do something with the

Bible, the pastors still want to have their retirement. They still want to get paid, and people want to have community. So you still have a church, and you can't just throw the

Bible out, because that might run people off. So you still use the Bible, use it every week, and it's timeless truths for living and things like that.

And when we say things like that today, we don't realize we sound like people who don't believe in substitutionary atonement.

We just sound like theological liberals. The Bible used to be viewed by believers, and should be today, as a book about God and a book about Christ and redemption.

And so when it's all this, oh, you know, it's the guidebook for life, a lot of people think that, oh,

Fosdick, you sound like a liberal. B -I -B -L -E, basic instructions before leaving earth.

Okay, yeah. And obviously the Bible gives us a lot of guidance, and it does tell us God's will, and it tells us some super important things.

We're not saying that it doesn't, but there's a whole lot of things. Even in terms of, we say, the sufficiency of Scripture, well, sufficient for what?

Not sufficient for how to get a man on the moon. Not sufficient for, you know, how to rebuild an engine or a transmission, how to do math.

Fix a bike chain. Who wrote that helpful article on the insufficiency of Scripture? T. David Gordon.

And he took a lot of heat for that. If you can find that article, The Insufficiency of Scripture, I think it was in a

Whitehorse Inn magazine, Law and Reformation. It was kind of good marketing, right? You're gonna get people's attention.

They're gonna go, what do you mean by that, right? It's absolutely insufficient for so many things that we do.

How to play basketball, all those things that are not bad things. Well, talk about the life coaching again,

Pat, and the mentoring. I too notice that, you know, it's a fallen world, and some dads don't train their sons to do work or know how to go on a job interview or whatever, but I think most congregants think that the pastor is the reservoir of knowledge and application and problem solving for every single area.

Communication, marriage, finances, work, health,

I mean, so many things, and I think I'm not adequate for that. I can help you have a Christ -centered worldview of that problem, but half the time,

I don't know. So you're in the habit of saying more and more of what you just said. I'm not an expert on that.

I don't know. I don't know, which is really good for us to say, I think. Right. But here's what I do know.

I do know that even though you have a desire for practical application and a few take -home tips and a few non -negotiable things that you have to do, just like I did in New York City, I go to the sermon in the

New Testament, really the only sermon, maybe James was a sermon, to an established church and a group of Christians, and they're on the run.

They're getting persecuted. They probably need some tips on how to order some vacuum -packed food and stuff, so they just add water.

It's a revival. Here's where you get a life straw. That's right. And bring a flint and a knife.

And a tactical shovel. Right. This is all you need. And instead of that, it is 12 chapters of Jesus.

Book of Hebrews, yeah. That, to me - Great point. That's a great point. I'm glad you made that. Yeah. At the conference.

So what's going on here in No Compromise world? We have Pat Abendroth here because he was at New York and preached there, and then we drove up and Pat preached here this last

Sunday, 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the whole chapter, matter of fact. I tried to go fast. I like that.

Tell our listeners how you started the sermon, though. I started the sermon by saying, I have some criticisms of your pastor.

Yeah. Well, don't they all? People knew right away they were already laughing, and I thought, you might not want to laugh quite yet.

So I had five criticisms of your pastor, and by implication of you as the congregation, and it was a good setup.

I wasn't quite sure if it was going to work or not, but it worked. All right. How about this one? We have been taught by people,

Raul Reis, right? Calvary Chapel. The juice. He would talk about the juice. Well, he'd talk about the 10 leopards that got healed, and only one came back to say thank you.

I thought it was like Dr. Doolittle or something, the talking leopard. And Raul Reis, we grew up Lutheran, and then we started listening to Raul Reis, Calvary Chapels, and then it was

John MacArthur, and then it was whomever, S.

Lewis Johnson, or who we're reading now. How do you look back in the past and think, okay,

I disagree with some of our pastors and teachers and mentors, but I'm thankful for such and such.

How do you view your past in a sense? I need to climb over there on the no -compromise couch for this little counseling session.

The sofa, as we say. It's a sofa. Okay. In Massachusetts, it's a sofa, so yeah.

I think I'm thankful for Calvary Chapel, and you're the one that pointed me in that direction, in the sense that I don't know if they do it anymore, the

Calvary Chapel in my town doesn't, but old school Calvary Chapel, it's started in Genesis and preached through every book of the

Bible, through the book of Revelation, then start over. Good things happen when that happens.

You believe the Bible's true, and you just go for it, and you might teach you can lose your salvation because you're not thinking clearly, or you're an

Arminian by bent like they were back in the day, but good things happen, so I'm grateful for that, and so many people get converted in Calvary Chapels.

We would see them back when we were at Grace Community Church, because then they figure out that predestination and election, election's unconditional, and so then they mature, and they migrate out.

Oh, Mike, do you remember the day we went to Archives Bookstore, and it was loaded with good

Reformed books? You remember that? And it was from the Calvary Chapel College that kicked out

Calvinism and all the library books that talked about it. So many people were becoming Calvinists that Chuck Smith, I'm told, said, get rid of the

Lorraine Bettners, get rid of the John Owens. I have John Owen, Death of Death, and it's stamped

Calvary Chapel Bible Library or whatever, and then it's stamped over that,

Withdraw, Withdraw. It's a prized possession. I wonder if they got rid of Spurgeon, because even

Arminians love Spurgeon. It's true. So thankful for those guys, thankful for John MacArthur, and taking the

Bible seriously, and expository preaching, and those things. So I'm grateful that people...

I think sometimes, Pat, about me, and I mean, I always think about me, but me in this regard, that what did

I teach in the past, right? I've been here 25 years, you've been at OBC for 24 years, and think about the things that we've taught wrongly.

Not that Jesus isn't God, or there's not a real resurrection, but some of the finer points, and maybe some even the bigger points, and yet God has still blessed the ministry, right?

Good things have happened because we've decided to go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, lectio continuum, we just try to teach the

Bible, and even if we say something dumb, the Spirit of God can override and change the people. Indeed, super grateful for that.

Happens probably right now. I know. I have a little thing in front of me, and it will lead us into a story, but sometimes,

Pat, when you're down, and you're tired, and you need a James Taylor song or something, you need daily affirmations.

Okay, Mike's holding this little cube, I'm waiting for it. I declare that you choose faith over fear.

You will meditate on what is positive and what is good about your situation.

You will not use your energy to worry, but to believe. Fear has no part in your life.

You will not dwell on the negative, discouraging thoughts. I declare your mind is set on what

God says about you. His plans for you are for success, for victory, and for abundance.

That's good, that's great. Why in the world did I just renew my life insurance? That was such a waste of $700.

Man, I just tell my wife to listen to the Joel cube. Somebody said it to me, it gives us a little fun every once while, a no -co when my

ADD mind can't think of the next thing to say, but I bring it up because... Right now, that was affirmation 26.

Right now, it's paused though, Mike. It's paused because I've got a whole sermon I could listen to over there. You've paused our affirmation.

I pause in you. Coffee breaks in German are like coffee pausen, right?

You pause for coffee. It's not ausfart. You see the signs in the airport and you're like, that just makes me laugh when

I see that. No, I wish I had an editor for this show.

I wish I had a producer. It's exit, right?

It is. I'm not even going there, but that's what happens. If you need to get off the Autobahn, that's what you do.

Ausfart. Look for that. My kids, when we were there, they laughed at that and they laughed.

I think light is H -E -L -L in German. And so they were allowed to say hell in a non -biblical context and stuff like that.

Yeah. Tell me just with a little bit, like three minute version, two minute version,

Pat, I pulled up Osteen. You did meet him, right? We've talked about that before, but it's always fun. Yeah, I think it's on my

Twitter feed. So there I am talking to Joel and he had bodyguards all around him and we knew that he'd been confronted by different people.

So we just want to ask him questions. I think I asked him how he got so good at getting people to do what he wanted them to do.

In other words, manipulate. And so, right. And he thought about it.

He wasn't quite sure. And eventually it was Billy Graham was his answer. Now, did you have to tell the bodyguards and the handlers the question beforehand?

No, no. We had to give them our phones. If we wanted pictures, then they would take the picture. And so the funny thing was

Ken Ramey, a friend of ours, a pastor. Is he still our friend? Ken is a sweet guy.

I love Ken. He's in Texas. But Ken took me because I was speaking there and Ken didn't want to meet

Joel. I mean, he was afraid the rapture was going to happen when he was shaking Joel's hand and he was going to be left behind or something.

He'd get like the un -anointing or something. But Joel had enough common sense, kind of like when somebody would visit

Bethlehem Bible Church and maybe they're not wanting to talk to you and they're trying to sneak out of line afterward.

Those are the people you want to meet. Hey, what brings you here today? Glad you're here. Joel wouldn't let him take the chicken exit in line.

It was like super extra friendly. Joel knew how to get things done.

He could see that Ken was bashful. Totally. It was fun. A lot of good, a lot of good fun.

All right. Well, I think people can pull our discussion of that on YouTube. Right, Ed? I think here at the church years ago, we looked younger.

And I had glasses on the kind of something, bifocals or something, when they sat down low, some kind of weird readers.

You said, just get real glasses, Pat. I mean, Mike, you're going to look better. So I did. I took your advice. Pat Abendroth, the

Pactim Omaha Bible Church, Mike Abendroth, Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio. 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.