Top Stories of 2010

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 ministry.

Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order, always Steve Cooley on Tuesdays except two weeks ago.

Yeah, that was a, it was a sad day, a day that will live in infamy. You know, I think it actually rained,

Steve. God was crying. Oh.

Anything happen to you? Did you get anything good for Christmas? Do you, did you worship any kind of pagan

Christmas tree or anything and decorate it and bow down to it and sing to it or anything, Jeremiah? We bowed down and, no, we, you know, we had a little tiny, it was actually embarrassing, a little tiny artificial tree, but that's because, you know, the good news is we had to make room for a lot of new granddaughter stuff, so that was, that was, that was a good thing.

That was the thing. I like that. Do you put the granddaughter stuff on your dogs at all, just kind of cross -dressing or anything?

No, I'm talking about like a play pen and, you know, that kind of thing. She has to have a little, and as close as the dogs ever get to it is they walk by to just kind of see if she's in there.

That's, that's it. I found it, I find it amazing that dogs know, oh, that's a fragile little child there and I have to be careful and walk gingerly.

They typically know that. How do they know that? I don't know. I don't know, but they're very, they're very good around her, so.

Today we're going to just do miscellaneous Mondays on a Tuesday. And so while some people don't, they don't like Mondays, who are you, who sang that?

Boomtown Rats. I don't like Mondays. I don't want to, yeah, some, some. Because some girl went crazy in San Diego and opened fire at a school.

I think so, and who was the lead singer of Boomtown Rats? Geldof, Bob Geldof. Yes, Bob Geldof, that's right.

The original kind of Live Aid Day or something. Freeze the World. Oh no, it's Feed the World. Freeze the World. I just got cold on the mind.

Today we're just going to do a couple different things. One thing that just popped out of my mind, now we have this pseudo relationship with.

It popped out of your mind. Yeah, it just popped right out of my mind. That's pretty scary. It was kind of like Benny Hinn. I was watching him last night on YouTube and I was showing my kids and they're like, daddy, what is that guy doing?

He had his jacket off and he was knocking people down. And then my kids said, if they did that to me,

I'd probably, I'd try to stand up and wouldn't let him knock me down. How can that be happening? I said, it's either psychosomatic or it's satanic.

One of the two or a combination of the both. Or it's criminal. I mean, that sounds like assault. Yeah, but it's assumption of the risk.

You sign a form when you go into a Benny Hinn crusade. I accept all responsibility for being hoodwinked and also hit with a coat.

And bamboozled. Yes, that's exactly right. By the way, think about it, listeners. The lottery and Benny Hinn has one thing in common and that is they both play to your greed.

And they think that, you know what, people are greedy enough they'll do about anything for money and so don't waste your money at the lottery.

You're never going to win. God doesn't want you to win. That's judgment from God if you win.

And secondly, don't do your Benny Hinn stuff because why are you going to give to get? If you're gonna give your money to local church ministry, then you do that with no strings attached.

And if God doesn't bless you on earth, then he'll bless you in heaven. I heard something recently and this man hit it right on the head.

He said, listen, the problem with money is that we view it all wrongly. It's all God's.

It's not somehow that we're giving to God so that he can give back to us. It's all

God's in the first place. We're just stewards of what he has given us. That's excellent advice. It reminds me of that man in England and he had two calves born on January 1st.

And he said, you know, Lord, I'm going to dedicate these two calves to your service. And, you know, I'm going to keep one and I'm going to give away another to the local church once they grow up and I'll feed them and raise them.

And when they're good to go, I'll keep one and give the other to the church. And a year went by and the guy said to the pastor,

I'm really sorry, pastor. I was going to give you one of the cows, but the Lord's cow died. Mine happened to stay alive.

And for so many people out there, even Christians, you know, their cow dedicated to God dies quite frequently.

Todd Friel at Wretched Radio had a great little article and I don't know if you've seen it, Steve, or not.

It's called The Potty -Driven Life. And that at least fits in with the P -D -L model.

Sure, yeah, it does. Mainstream evangelicalism, Todd said, is literally in the toilet. Family Church of Hastings, Minnesota, Christ Family Church, is now using the bathroom as a way to reach out to lost souls.

CCBChurch .com, that is not BBCChurch .org, says, our men's room, which is decorated in a race car motif, gives members a reason to invite people to church.

That is what Christ Family Church is all about, reaching those who have become disenchanted with religion, but are searching for a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Then Todd said, that's right, toilet evangelism. Yeah, I've always wanted to upgrade our bathrooms, but it's not so that more people would, you know, receive the gospel.

It's just because I thought our bathrooms need upgrade. That's all. In Southern California, I think

Pismo Beach area, somewhere around there, if you're ever out there, they have some kind of a hotel called the

Madonna Inn. Have you ever been to the Madonna Inn? No. And I think it's off the 101, and you go there and they have super ornate bathrooms.

And actually the women are allowed to go into the men's bathroom because there's all this kind of gaudy stuff that's in there.

And so they're well known. And so maybe this church has decided to do some kind of typical Madonna Inn toilet evangelism.

The local newspaper said, come for the bathroom, stay for the service. Now, come for the service and get some pie, you know, that would be bad, but come for the bathroom, stay for the service, that would not be a motto

I could be comfortable with, I don't think. Well, don't you think, Steve, at the end of the day, a lot of this purpose -driven stuff and a lot of the seeker -sensitive mantra, it's no different than a toilet -driven life?

Well, because you're using something other than the Bible to lure people in or presumably lure them in.

Although I can't imagine, honestly, you know, Madonna Inn or church or wherever. I have never thought

I'd like to go to place A because they have really nice bathrooms. I've gone to places, and when

I've said to myself, I'll go there because I think they have a bathroom. Yeah, a bathroom. When I'm traveling. Yeah, yeah.

All right, I've got this letter in the mail. And so let's just answer a couple of these on No Compromise Radio.

Ah, no, let's forget it. Let's do the top 10 stories of the year, Christianity Today. Let's do that instead, top 10.

And Steve, let's finish. We've got 20 minutes to go, 18 minutes to go. We've got 10. We need to do all 10.

All 10. So we have to make sure, let's probably start with 10, working our way up, kind of David Letterman -like.

And let's talk about these at least a little bit. Top 10 stories of the year. This is from the home office in Terre Haute.

Or it's from Christianity Today. You know what? I'll be David Letterman and you be

Larry Bud Melman. How about that? Remember Bud Melman? Yes, I do. I actually went and saw him at a comedy club in Los Angeles.

Was he funny? He was hilarious. Was he really? Because you know what, people that don't try to be funny, but are, are even more funny than if they try.

Does that make sense? Yes, it does. That's amazing. Wait a minute. That was last, last week.

Okay. Top 10 stories of the year, Christianity Today. Yeah. Okay. Ready? Number 10.

Terry Jones, who I thought used to be in Monty Python, but it says here that he's the pastor of...

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. He's the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida.

Go Gators. Sparks, he sparked worldwide condemnation when he threatened to burn a

Quran. He later promised never to burn one. That was a big story.

And actually it's affected No Compromise Radio Ministry because back in the day when we first started, and even on the website,

I guess now, there are books that we call page turners. And then there are books that we call burners.

And there are some flame, you know, surrounding the shack book, are surrounding purpose -driven life book or something like that.

Some, who's the guy who's the Anglican arch heretic Spong?

Yeah. John Shelby Spong. So we have those books, but out there we never really burned a book.

Some of our listeners actually burned books and send us pictures, but we never burned a book. So figurative book burning.

And so that is a top 10 story that affects No Compromise Radio Ministry because now we can't burn books anymore because it's quite bad theater.

Yeah, but maybe we should have been like number 11 on this list or something, you know, for even talking about burning books.

But yeah, I mean, I think basically this was a publicity stunt by a guy at a small fundamentalist kind of church.

But to me, you know, here's the thing. Muslims see the Quran as in and of itself physically, a holy thing.

The Bible is holy only in so far as the words themselves are

God breathed. It's not the pages or the book itself that somehow no damage can befall or anything.

So, you know. Good, I know some Christians, they don't like to set a book on top of their Bible just for principle's sake, not because they're some kind of, you know, spookily mystical about it, but they just think, you know what?

The Bible doesn't go under any book. In my heart and in my life and on my desk, it's at the top. Well, and you know what

I try to do? And this is just kind of something I picked up a couple of years into the Shepherd's Conference. I really try never to put my

Bible on the ground because I just always want to think about it more highly than that, not because I think

I'd be sinning in doing that, but because I want to just keep, you know, the thought that this is God's word for most of my mind.

That's good. I remember my friend Todd Swift, he's at Omaha Bible Church now as an elder, and he was reading to his daughter, his daughter was young then,

Whitney, and he was reading the Ultimate Questions book by John Blanchard, and that's a great evangelistic tract.

If you'd like to have a tract to send to people, Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard in many different languages. And there's a picture of someone stomping on the

Bible and it's under the section of sin. And so man doesn't want God to rule over him.

Unregenerate man hates God and he wants no authority. I will not have this man rule over us. And so it shows a foot on top of a

Bible. And so Todd's daughter, Whitney, saw that and you know what she did? She started singing,

Standing on the Promises. Standing on the Promises. Because who would ever stomp on a Bible? What's worse for a local church today?

Stomping on the Bible or afraid to teach it. Both have the same result. If you're a pastor and you're afraid to teach the

Bible, all of it, including Song of Solomon, Proverbs 5, Revelation chapter 20, or any other place, then you need to just let that thing go.

Like a pitcher on the mound at Fenway Park, it just needs to come over home base with clarity, fervency, and accuracy.

And some speed, too. That's right, speed demon preaching. I'm just trying to finish the analogy.

Good. I start him, you finish him. All right, let's keep going. Okay, number nine.

Christian musician Jennifer Knapp announces she is in a same -sex relationship, spotlighting questions of pastoral response to gay

Christians. Well, that is a top story and here's the top story. What would you think if I said to you, no compromise listeners, there's going to be a bunch of, there are drunken

Christians, there are fornicator Christians, adulterer Christians. How about thieving

Christians? Yeah, covetous Christians, homosexual Christians. First Corinthians chapter six is super clear.

Are we clear? We're clear crystal. It's very clear that all kinds of sin can be forgiven because Jesus Christ's death, burial, resurrection, his substitutionary atonement was fantastic, wonderful.

It accomplished what he designed to accomplish and that is save sinners, people that couldn't save themselves. But if you look at that vice list in Romans chapter one, or first Corinthians chapter six, such were some of you.

So it is improper, morally improper, theologically improper, and historically improper to say that you are an adulterating

Christian. Adulterating means ongoing. Do Christians commit adultery? Sadly, yes.

Do Christians fornicate? Sadly, yes. But if they fornicate as a regular behavior that so characterizes them, the

Bible says they're not Christians. And so you can't call yourself a gay Christian. If you call yourself a Christian who's been saved out of that lifestyle, but still struggle with desires for same -sex people, then

I get that and welcome to the world where we still are going to have to battle with our sins and welcome to heaven one day where you don't have to battle.

And so I don't know if you have any other comments, Steve, but gay Christian doesn't work for me. Yeah, I mean, the whole idea is just a contradiction.

You can't, as you said, you can't combine the two. There is, you know, I mean, sinful ongoing practice of any sin combined with Christian just doesn't cut it.

Paul says in first Corinthians six, do not be deceived. Why? Because you could be deceived. You've got a friend, you've seen them, your heart goes out to them.

You know where they struggle. They're pretty good normally. Don't be deceived. And you know, the thing about Jennifer Knapp, to each his own, of course, my wife said to me last night, you know,

I know a common theme to the music you like, Mike. I said, what's that? She said, none of the people that you like can actually sing.

I said, well, that's not the attitude anyway. I went at it. I mean, that's not my point anyway. I went attitude of the people that sing, but Jennifer Knapp wasn't even big anyway.

She's only big now because she says she's in a same -sex relationship and wants to try to, you know, promote that.

And so she's not a Christian musician. Last time I checked, Christian was a noun, not an adjective. Okay, well,

Steve's going to read the next one. While he is, I'm going to drink some of this nectar here. And this nectar is called

Diet Mountain Dew. It is a zero calorie dew. It's going to be good. Is that a promo?

Do we, is that? No, no. I wish it was. This half hour sponsored by. Okay, number eight.

Prominent, and I think we did a show on this. We don't need to spend much time on it. Prominent Old Testament scholar,

Bruce Waltke, resigns from Reformed Theological Seminary, also known as RTS, under pressure amid debate on the historicity of Adam.

This is Waltke. He says, if the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult.

Well, I have a lot of respect for certain aspects of Bruce Waltke's ministry over the years. It seems like he's been spiraling down.

Maybe it's because he's older. Maybe his mind isn't functioning like it used to be. Maybe his wife has not tried to help him.

I don't know about you, Steve, but my wife helps me by saying, don't do this. Do that instead. Be careful.

Watch out. Make sure you know. Reanalyze. Yeah, my wife's really careful about that though. She usually says something like, so how did you think today's sermon went?

Oh! So how did you think?

And then I say, well, 15 people came up to me and said that rocked my world, Pastor. If mom ain't happy.

Ain't no one happy. I'm just saying. So anyway, I don't think, I think Christianity Today has taken it a little, they've written it wrongly,

I think. The story wasn't necessarily about the historicity of Adam primarily, although when evolution comes in,

Adam goes out, and so that does happen. But when you get these guys who want the world's approval, like Tim Keller, as we had

Rick Phillips talk about that on this show and here at the church, when you're hankering for the world's approval, you'll do about anything, including give up Genesis 1, 2, and probably 3's next.

Yeah, and the age -old question is, well, if you don't believe that those are historically accurate, please tell us,

Dr. Waltke, or anyone, when does the Bible start telling the truth? If Genesis 1, 2, and 3 aren't accurate, when does it start getting accurate?

I remember Doug Phillips. My good friend, Doug Phillips. We should do a show about vision for him someday.

That'd be good. Okay. The perils of vision for him, perils and pitfalls. Exodus chapter 20,

Rick Phillips has a great verse, and I don't know if people are gonna like this. They're gonna have to start now, no longer in Genesis 3 or 4.

They're gonna have to skip ahead to Genesis chapter 21, because day language is used in Genesis, excuse me,

Exodus chapter 20. I can't find it now.

So anyway, that's all right. Six days you shall labor. No, that's not it. For in six days, verse 11, the

Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

I wonder how many days it took for God to make all that. Hmm, seems like six. So we don't want to do that.

If you are so desirous to get your unbelieving friends to like you, you cut out biblical theology.

That is not God honoring evangelism. It's just like saying, you know, if I'm cool person, they'll think

Jesus is cool. No, if you're a cool person, they'll say you're cool, and then you begin to talk to them about Jesus, and they're going to say, you know what?

I don't want this man to reign over me unless God's working in their heart, and then they'll think Jesus is the

Son of God. But didn't Jesus say, just as I love you, so the world will love you? I think that was

Jesus down in Tijuana who said that, but that wasn't Jesus who said that. When I was at Grace Church, you know, that's a lot of people name their kids

Jesus, and again, it's a free world, but I was at Grace Church, and I was a janitor, and I had to set up tables for the school, and there's a couple

Jesuses there, and then there was one, and their kid was named L -O -R -D.

How would you like to name your kid Lord? Now, if Spurgeon's wife wants to call him that, that's one thing.

If Sarah wants to call Abraham that, first Peter chapter three. That's another thing, yeah. But how would you like to name your kid

Lord? No more than I would like to name him Jehovah or Yahweh or something, you know, terrible.

There was a guy in 2006, and he went into the judge's true story, and he said, I want to change my first name to God.

The judge would not let him. This is my sermon coming up. The judge would not let him, so he said, all right,

I want to change my name. My first name is I Am. My last name is Who I Am, and the judge let him.

I Am is my first name, Who I Am. Actually, the guy committed suicide shortly after that, so he was obviously deranged.

Yeah, there's some indication of imbalance there. Subtle as a flying moth.

Okay, number seven. American evangelicals find themselves at odds with African Christians over Uganda's proposed anti -gay bill, which would punish homosexual acts with life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Well, we are not skirting the issues, but I don't know what the evangelicals,

I don't know who those evangelicals were. It is not morally wrong to punish sin.

Certainly, Mosaic Law had a lot of punishment for sexual sins, including heterosexual sins of the adultery kind, and so I don't really know that much about that one,

Steve, and since we only have five minutes left, let's just jump to the next one. Okay, number six, top story in Christianity today.

Number six, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Is that the new Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Horizon?

No, the oil spill shifts the creation care debate. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Dean Russell Moore calls it a defining moment comparable to Roe v.

Wade and oversees a Southern Baptist resolution calling for full corporate accountability.

Gotta make British Petroleum pay. Well, I don't know what Christianity did. Maybe they took this a little out of context like they did the

Bruce Waltke thing. Maybe they didn't, but I'm not really after that whole creation care thing, are you?

I say, you know, I don't wanna dump my oil out in the backyard, but. But here's what I say. Anyone that would compare that oil spill with Roe v.

Wade, considering the millions of human beings that have been put to death following Roe v.

Wade, I'm not really confident of that kind of. I think Russell Moore is such a standup guy.

Let's just say that Christianity Today took that out of context. Yeah, because it's not in quotes there. They just kind of make up their own sort of thing there.

All right, number five. Boy, we're gonna run out of time. We've got to do this. Okay, the U .S. Supreme Court rules against Hastings Law School saying the school's policy that student groups must be open to all students, even those who oppose the group's core values is a reasonable viewpoint neutral condition.

In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that gays must be allowed into Christian organizations on the campus.

Well, if you're gonna have a campus and it's going to be a Christian campus and you want to try to water down your entrance requirements and you'll let unbelievers in, then unbelievers want to congregate and have different meetings on campus, then you get what you get.

And so I'm not against people who can get together on a campus because then they're gonna take away people who want to get together on a secular campus and have

Bible studies. So to me, it works both ways. Sad for people like Messiah College, sad for Calvin College, sad for Cedarville that they don't do a good job screening people to find out to see if they're a regenerate to get into a

Christian school. I mean, so many of these are dopey. I mean, there's number four, midterm elections, have the number of pro -life

Democrats in the House of Representatives, who cares? Let's go to number two.

Thousands of global evangelical leaders. Thousands. You say in Germany, thousands. Gather in Cape Town, South Africa to discuss missions, highlight evangelicalism's global diversity.

That's something that we value here at No Compromise. I'll drink Diet Mountain due to that. Pray for religious liberty.

Actually, that is something we value. And build relationships that will likely bear unexpected fruit in the decades to come.

I didn't get an invite to that. I didn't either. I guess we're not diverse enough. Yeah, maybe, you know, since there's only 3 ,999 people at Bethlehem Bible Church, if we would've had that magic number and probably gave away one more oil change to get the people here, we might've been influential enough.

That's a slight dramatization there. We don't have 3 ,999 people.

That's how many people listen to No Compromise radio. Oh, there you go. In Sydney, Australia. But this whole, we're gonna get a bunch of people who don't agree on what the gospel is together to discuss missions, global diversity.

You know what, if I look around the world and I notice six billion people or seven billion people, however many there are there,

I'm gonna think, yeah, there's diversity here. What does that have to do with the Great Commission? You know, instead of T4G, together for the gospel, this is together for global diversity.

Awesome. I wouldn't go to that conference. Okay, last one. Okay, last one, talking about the

Haiti earthquake, raised $750 million, aid groups did, in a mere five weeks, but scandal over Baptist missionaries' efforts to move 33 children to Dominican Republican becomes a major plot line and raises questions about amateur aid.

That's the number one story that you're according to Christianity today? What do you say? Well, I say the number one story in no -compromise radio land is this, that in spite of our sinfulness, in spite of the sinners at Bethlehem Bible Church and no -compromise radio,

God still rules and reigns. And he's going to come back one day and we look back and say,

Lord, what a great year it was. Thank you for your faithfulness. Even though we're unfaithful, praise be the

Lord. 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.

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