2021 Summer of Interviews: E. Burns Interview (Part 1) (2018)

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.

Meeting Evan Burns and His Ministry in Asia

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. I usually don�t record shows on Friday nights. It�s kind of spooky around here, maybe that�s one of the reasons here. But I have made an exception tonight because I have a friend in town, and we have just gone on a field trip, kind of a missionary field trip, to see some old missionary haunts, and we thought we�d come back and record a show and talk about it.

Evan Burns is in the studio here. He�s in the house. Welcome back to No Compromise Radio. It�s great to be here, Mike. Thank you. Evan, when�s the last time you were here in the studio? I think it was 2014.

Wow. Okay. And tell our listeners, for those, you know, some are fair-weathered friends and fans, and they don�t listen to every single show, and maybe there�s some newbies. So tell the folks who have not heard of you for the past interviews, what is your ministry, and yeah, what�s the Lord given you for ministry?

Historically, my wife and I have lived and served in Asia, and most recently we have been in Thailand, and we moved to Thailand in 2013, and I work with a seminary there training Southeast Asian pastors.

And my ministry has been twofold. It has been primarily as an apologist contending for the gospel and what I would call Bible centrality, and then also just lifestyle evangelism, not having a single program, but going to the market, sharing the gospel, and just broadly disseminating the gospel wherever I go.

A Strange Evangelistic Encounter in China

Tell our listeners, in light of that, before we talk about your book and what we did today, what was�give me a weird evangelistic encounter that you had that you thought was going to be regular and maybe random, but it was just odd.

Yeah. So when we lived in China, I was sitting down with a Chinese friend. His name was Bob. That�s not his Chinese name, but that�s his English name. What was his real name? First name. Fei is his first name, and Xiang is his last name, surname.

But Bob has this big toothless grin, and he was hung up on evolution, because in China, it�s a communist country. They believe that they are the most evolved race, and they believe that there is no court higher than the Chinese government, and so they are adamantly atheist.

But Bob was wanting to know�this was the interesting question is, �Have you ever seen the movie Titanic I had to admit I�d seen part of it, so I don�t admit that very openly, but now that it�s on the radio, I suppose it�s public news.

He said, �Do you know at the end of the Titanic what the people were doing I couldn�t remember. I said, �No. Just remind me. He said, �The ship was going down, and there was a priest reading something.

It must have been like what I think was the Lord�s Prayer. He said, �And everybody was at peace as they were going into the ocean as this priest was reading something, the Bible. And he said, �I want to know what those people knew.

I said, �Really? I�ve never heard the Titanic launch somebody into a question about the gospel before.

And weren�t they singing a song or something, you know, �Eternal Father Strong to Save� or something like that?

Well, I haven�t watched it in a few days, so I mean, I don�t know.

Well, you know, you�ve been out here for I picked you up at the airport yesterday, and you�ve done nothing but say, �What�s on Netflix and Hulu I�ve been very surprised, but I guess your wife doesn�t know.

Yeah. It reminds me of a guy I know in ministry, and his wife started to do the health food kick and everything else, and he and I went down to the Santa Cruz boardwalk, and she was down the boardwalk with my wife, and he was sneaking hot dogs.

And, you know, he was probably 40 years old, a grown man. So Evan, you went to school where?

I did my PhD at Southern Seminary.

Is that like a Baptist seminary?

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. That�s right.

The Ohio State Baptist Seminary. And I know you did your dissertation, and then it turned into a book. I love the book. Tell our listeners a little bit about the book and how they could order it.

The book is published through Pickwick, and its title is A Supreme Desire to Please Him, The Spirituality of Adoniram Judson. And when I was this was 2003. I was spending time with the Lord, and I was going through the biography of Adoniram Judson, the first missionary from America sent out to Burma.

And I was compelled by the man�s endurance and his perseverance in suffering, and after being at Southern for a while, I was talking to my supervisor, Michael Haken, and my other good friend in the program with me, and they both encouraged me to look into Judson and to unpack his letters, his journals, to find out the reason for his famous endurance.

Epilepsy, Brain Surgery, and Trusting God in Romans

Now, as I look at you, I see some scars on your head, on your cranial area. What happened there?

Yeah. So, I grew up with epilepsy, and ever since I was born, but they didn�t know what it was until I was in grade school because of neuroscience at the time was still developing, and they didn�t have categories for the types of seizures I used to have.

I could have up to seven seizures a day and was not supposed to live past high school with how severe the seizures were, and I was on multiple medications. At one point, I counted 21 pills a day, and those were brain meds, and a lot of the medications were still experimental at the time and led the doctors to believe that the only way forward for me was to take the risk of brain surgery.

So, in high school, they suggested removing most of my right temporal lobe, which is where the scar tissue was, and the chances of me coming through the surgery well and able to finish high school and going into college were not high, and the chances of the surgery having negative effects and me being what you might call a vegetable was fairly high, and so it was a do-or-die type of a surgery.

When you were contemplating all those things, I�m sure with your parents� advice, were you a Christian at the time? I was. Okay. And so they�re going to, you know, if you�ve made the decision, we�re going to go forward with it, and it�s the night before the surgery, and you were thinking what?

Yeah, I still remember, actually.

We were in our hotel in Seattle, and my mom and dad were�my stepdad were there, and they were just wanting to console me, ask me if I wanted to talk about it. I said, �You know what? I would really just like to read my Bible for a while and I was

Kept reading Romans 1 through Romans 8 over and over again, and during my growing up years, it was the book of Proverbs and the book of Romans that God instructed me in the most, and I felt the most comfort in Romans 8.

Amazing, and now we still feel great comfort and experience great comfort in Romans 8. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus at the front part, and then, of course, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

A lot of things could separate me from God when it comes to my love, but not from God�s love to me. Absolutely. Tell me, when you woke up out of surgery, and you know, you probably were grogging and everything else, was there a point when you thought, �I can think

Well, the first thought I had was, I�m alive, because I wasn�t�when I was going into the surgery as they were putting the mask on me to sedate me, I was actually singing it as well with my soul, because I wasn�t sure if I was going to wake up in the Lord�s presence or back on the hospital bed, but I was in so much pain.

I had blood in my eyes. I was in enormous pain. It was a 14-hour surgery. I was only supposed to be under for 10 hours, and they said that chances of me being cognitive and aware of anything after 10 hours was not great.

But I remember thinking, �I�m alive, and God must have a plan still.

And that was 20 years ago, approximately, right? Yeah, �96. And you have your Ph .D. and married.

How long have you been married? We�ve been married 12 years, and I married a great woman of God who, when I proposed to her, she said, �I�ll only marry you if you take me to the Muslim country. And I said, �Amen, you�re the one.

So we went to Turkey for our honeymoon, and then we moved back.

Living as Expendable Servants for the Honor of God

Well, that�s amazing, and I don�t mean to be flippant about this at all, and we�re friends enough I can ask you, and I think it�s interesting. I think your response will be interesting, although I don�t know what you�ll say.

Is there something in you that thinks now in a very, not tangible, but a very real way, �Listen, I should be dead anyway, and they never expected me to live through this brain surgery, and I am even more conscious of the fact that I am expendable until God takes me home, and so why not go to a Muslim country

Is that the way you think, or no?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my formative years from the age 5 to 15, let�s just say in round numbers, lived my dad would say, �You need to live every day as if it�s your last. And that wasn�t just a pithy Christianese sort of clich�.

I mean, we both knew that the epilepsy could claim me at any time swimming, crossing the road, riding my bike, etc. And I lived wanting to share the gospel with friends and people because I felt like eternity was on the line every day.

And then even after the surgery, I believe that, well, every day is not our own. It�s on loan to us. Our lives are not our own. We are owned by God. We don�t give God permission for anything. He has absolute control and rights over us, and why would I not want to live for the honor and the glory of that good God who has caused us to persevere by faith?

And so, yeah, going to a Muslim country, going to a Buddhist country, why not? Why not? Because we have a great resurrection to look forward to, and whatever is lost in this life is gained in the next, and so it�s a good life.

Was it Cary?

It wasn�t Judson. It was Cary, what they were criticizing him, that he was going to be eaten by cannibals. That was John Patton. Oh, yeah, John. That�s right. And he knew he was going to get a resurrected body anyway, right?

Yeah, that�s a great quote. The old elder in his church said, �You�re going to be eaten by cannibals. They�re going to eat you. And he said, �Sir, your body is soon to be laid in the grave and soon to be eaten by worms, but my body may be eaten by cannibals, but together our bodies will rise in the resurrection and will fare the same.

What a great quote. We�re talking to Dr. Evan Burns today on No Compromise Radio. We support him as a missionary here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and if you would like to know more about supporting someone who would actually preach the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the representative and substitute risen Savior, and you want to support people like that, you can always email us info at nocompromiseradio .com, or your sending agency is.

If you go to lastfrontierglobal .org, you can find out about the ministry that we do. My name is not explicitly on that ministry, but you can support us through that ministry, lastfrontierglobal .org.

Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness as Comfort in Suffering

Thank you. Evan, when we think about ministry and missionaries and calling and where do we go, we�re motivated by people in the past. Our ultimate motivation comes from, if we went to Heidelberg Catechism, guilt, grace, and gratitude.

Our guilt is so great, and God�s grace, especially in the personal work of Christ Jesus, is so great. How could we not respond to ministry out of gratitude? We have the ability now because of the Spirit of God.

Not everybody has to go in the mission field or anything else, but we get motivated by that. We also get motivated by people who weren�t perfect but served the Lord and the Carys and the John Pattons and those folks, but particularly with Judson.

Was it your suffering and epilepsy and the brain surgeries and all these things that gave you a special kinship with Judson because he did have to suffer so much?

Yeah, I think that the drama of the Judson story just captured my attention because I saw a man who knew what it was like to suffer. Now, things I�ve been through and my wife have been through don�t compare to what he�s been through, but still I saw somebody who persevered by faith, not wanting to add on to his salvation, but wanting to simply please Jesus.

One of his premier biographers said his theme was pleasing Jesus, and from the very beginning of his life to the very end of his life, he would write on pieces of paper, �Is this pleasing to Christ And wanting to please Christ was his main venture, his main resolve.

And it wasn�t as if he could improve upon God�s pleasure in his life, but out of love, out of gratitude, out of worship for what Christ has done. And the way my life and my story intersected with Judson�s was learning from a man who knew how to endure well by faith, faith alone in endurance, looking to Christ, the reward of his faith.

Before we talk more about Judson, we go through these trials in life, and God has these variegated various trials as James 1 describes them, and he uniquely has those prepared for us and uses them as discipline and pruning and helps us to have resolute faith and persevere.

Lots of reasons, including 2 Corinthians 1, �Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

And I asked you if you had a random missionary encounter that was interesting, and that certainly was. How about opportunities in your life now where you've been able to use, not in a pragmatic way, but you've been able to comfort others in a very difficult trial in a way that maybe you would not have been able to do if you wouldn't have had those scars on your head.

Can you think of opportunities in your life that you've had?

I can think of one opportunity, and it's not solely me, but it's my wife and I together. When we were in Turkey, my wife was struggling with discouragement, and she wouldn't mind me saying even depression, and it was a very difficult, dark season for a variety of reasons.

It wasn't a singular reason only, but I will happily say that the one thing that got her through it and got her out of it was the doctrine of imputation of Christ's righteousness. She wants to write a book someday that says, I believe the title was, How Imputation Saved a Missionary, and that's what got her through it.

I found a book in my library on imputation of Christ's righteousness, and I said, �Hey, let's go through this. One of those providential moments. We sat down and we read through it over about a month and a half, and she went through her own personal transformation revival just in the text of Scripture of imputation.

And then fast forward as we moved to China years later, there was a Chinese house church pastor that I was mentoring. He was helping me with Chinese. I was helping him just with theology and ministry stuff, and his wife struggled with immense depression and mood swings and other things that she was at times borderline suicidal.

We had to literally talk her off the ledge a few times. Once or twice she was banging on our door in our apartment, just needing counsel right away, and she knew she could talk to my wife, Christy. Christy used that doctrine of imputation of righteousness and justification by faith alone and Christ alone as the tool for reassuring, comforting, counseling this poor, doubting, hurting Chinese wife.

And it was amazing. I mean, years later, looking back on their marriage, their marriage was saved. The woman is thriving in her relationship, and imputation is not something you just need to know as you get saved, but it's the oxygen you breathe.

It's the gospel.

What an encouragement. Many times, and our listeners probably go through this as well, we need to be encouraged by the Lord and often via people through His church. And all of a sudden you think, okay, how could I encourage someone?

Well, maybe I could say, you know what, I'm praying for you, or you do a good job serving these other people even though you're hurting. I guess there's a variety of ways you could do it. But how about, you know what, let's study the doctrine of imputation.

And to me, that is so helpful. Doctrinal issues are important. I mean, all of Scripture talks about doctrine and who God is, and you have your wife who's encouraged by Christ's perfect law-keeping, credited to her account.

I mean, we often focus on our sins credited, our imputed, our reckoned to Christ account, but we sometimes forget the other. And for the wild Darbyites and other people who deny active obedience or this imputation, we're robbing them of something wonderful.

Machen is in North Dakota dying, and he sends a telegram, and he's talking about the active obedience of Christ, no hope without it. And it will help you on your deathbed, and it'll help you when you're down.

How does it exactly help, though? Maybe our listeners are wanting to piece this together. Okay, Jesus' perfect life, and I've got discouragement and depression.

What's the connection? So, here's the illustration I use at times. If somebody comes to you, and they're struggling with, let's just say depression or some sort of discouragement, and you find out that, hey, maybe it's sin-related, it's related to some sort of pet sin, some habitual sin in their life.

And first, they're looking for forgiveness, and the gospel offers free forgiveness. That's only half the good news, and the illustration I use is that you're in negative debt, all you can give to God is debt, there's nothing you can give to Him.

He takes it away, He levels you at zero, that's forgiveness. But then imputation is not only taking away your debt and leveling your account at zero, but it's adding to your account all that Christ has done, so that not only are you forgiven, but you are counted as righteous, so when you are forgiven, you're innocent, but when you're righteous, credited, imputed with righteousness, that's alien, not your own, but Christ's, you have not only been innocent, but you're counted as having done everything right.

Now, can you imagine what that would do to a counseling, discipleship, personal growth situation where doubt is in the room, and you can not just dispel the doubt with declaration of forgiveness, but declaration of righteousness?

And it's amazing as you think about that doctrine and just ponder it, it makes you think about Jesus, right? It makes you think about the triune God. One of the things we often do, and sadly I do it as well, we just think about ourselves, and then we become kind of this black hole vortex and feeding on ourselves, and if I am the object of my thinking too often, of course, that will lead to even more discouragement and more depression since I'm so sinful and so finite.

But thinking about Jesus and who He is and what He's done, and then thinking, wait a second, there's a lot of things happening to Jesus, including Calvary and the wrath of God poured out for those three hours, but Jesus never doubted.

He never had sinful doubt. He never had sinful depression. He never had anything else. And when God sees me, He doesn't see me as, oh yeah, that's that person I saved 10 years ago, and they still can't get over their discouragement.

Well, okay, practically that's what we do, and He might even discipline us, but in Christ He sees us as the one who, like His Son, has always trusted and always worshiped. That's a good word.

Yeah, we are beloved sons.

Amen. Well, I want to talk to you more about Judson and our little field trip today. We're going to do that next show. Everybody is going to pretty much want to be me today, because I take the world-renowned Judson scholar up to Judson's haunts today, and then I got the behind-the-scenes, here's what Judson was doing, and here's where he left, and he did this, that, or the other.

But you can live through my vicarious experiences next show, but not this show. And we had a lot of fun today just trying to encourage one another in ministry. You do some teaching at a seminary. What are you doing there when it comes to theological education here in the States?

Training Missionary Theologians at Western Seminary

Yeah, so the seminary in the States that I work at is called Western Seminary. It's in Portland, Oregon, and I direct the MA in global leadership there. And what's unique about that program, which I didn't single-handedly design, but I had a significant influence in its design, is that it trains missionary theologians, is what I call them.

I don't care so much about missionary anthropologists or demographers or sociologists. I care about theologians, men and women who know how to handle the text and then handle the culture, not the culture first and then the text.

I want people who can write a missionary support prayer letter, like the Book of Romans, something sent to the people that encourages them in the faith and then makes an argument for missions, something that's not just humanitarian in orientation, but something that is doxological and theological in orientation.

Evan and I were talking today in the car, maybe it was last night. You have this city that is definitely sin city. I mean, if you think Vegas is sin city, how about Rome, 50, 60, 70 AD, at least before the fire, of course, and you think about the pedophilia and the prostitution and the slavery and the greed and the corruption and the gambling and the gladiators.

I mean, the list could go on and on and on. And Paul writes them a letter and he says, now, I'd like you to do some reconciliation between genders, and education is important for even blue-collar people or even slaves.

What does he do? He says, this is the gospel. This is real liberation when you stand before God as son based on the work of another.

That's what it was all about. Paul's not in it for the transformation of the city. Paul's in it for the declaration of the King whose city is coming at the end of the age, and Paul is there for the salvation of souls that they might put their faith in that Christ.

Evan, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio today. We're going to be back next time with part two, Adoniram Judson, Salem, Massachusetts, and other things. We'll see you next time.

Thanks. 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 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.