June Mailbag

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm actually turning up Steve Cooley's volume right now as we speak. That's so kind of you. Steve, actually, I didn't tell you this.

I thought I'd wait to tell you on the air. I was in Branson, Missouri. Mm-hmm. At The Mansion. It wasn't at the Oak Ridge Boys Theater this year. It's called The Mansion. The Mansion.

Uh-huh. Who owns that? Is that Donald Trump?

Uh, no, but I think the lineup was Winona Judd, Oak Ridge Boys. Leanne Rimes was in town, but I didn't make it. Yeah, well, um... And three people came up to me, because I had said in an earlier show, you know, whatever you do, just don't come up to me and say, where's Tuesday guy?

So three people did. I said, well, he's at home where he belongs. We only let him out once a year to California to this church that Holly attends.

See, that just goes to show, though, that they don't listen all that often. Otherwise, they'd know not to come up to you and ask where Tuesday guy is.

I told them. I have a shirt, you know. I'm trying to remember. Janine maybe sent that shirt, where's Tuesday guy? And, you know, it makes a good bike rag.

Actually, you should have it say, don't ask me where's Tuesday guy.

Yeah, don't ask. No, let's keep modifying it. Quit asking me. Now, we get emails regularly from you, the listener, for which we're happy. We're happy people listen. Happy people holding hands. Who sings that?

R .E .M. All right. Michael Stipe is about off the planet, isn't he?

Yeah, he is. I saw him do some kind of David Bowie tribute or something. Did you see that?

No, I didn't. I saw him talking about... He looked pretty out there. I thought he was talking about protecting marijuana plants with machine guns.

He? Well, I think that's, you know, R .E .M., he pretty much lost his mind.

I know. We get emails, and sometimes we answer those questions on email. So, if you want to write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Please tell me, here's one, please tell me where you find the best tracks for Halloween, if you do.

Also, would you consider a core library in your home for your children? When you have time, or I'll catch the answer on your podcast, many thanks, Virginia and Montana.

The best tracks for Halloween, usually what I do is drive around and look for the places where they give them the big candy bars, and that track is where I'll go.

Oh, that's not what you mean. I think if you... Snickers is owned by a Christian company, and if you would just take time to open up the Snickers wrapper, and on the inside, it's the Romans Road.

I just mean housing tracks, you know, to go and get the best candy. That's what I'm saying.

Those kind of tracks. See, you grew up in a poor neighborhood, I guess, for you to think that way. Very poor. I remember driving certain places and just seeing, essentially, buses coming in with kids to trick or treat.

And you know what? I don't hold that against them.

My neighborhood was so poor, we used to have to fight over clumps of ivy to see who could go in there and look for bottles. That's how poor we were. That's poor.

That's super poor. Well, I appreciate people who have the desire to give out tracks. Here's what typically happens in the Avendroth household. I never really let the kids go trick or treating that much, so we would...

I'd let the kids spy on the trick or treaters and try to scare them. That was basically the game. And we would wait till the last second and then have to go down to Christian Heresy and Gnostic Bookstore and get the kind of dopey Halloween tracks, because when the kids trick or treated, we had candy to give and we gave a track.

So we should probably write our own or something. Hmm. Speaking of which, Steve, why don't we write a biblical theology tract or something, you know? There's so many people with the Romans Road. We could do progressive revelation, historical redemption type of tract, and it could start off, you know, in the Garden, Genesis, and it ends in the Garden, you know, that thing.

And that'd probably sell a lot. People are really into biblical theology now. Yeah, it'd sell a ton. I know. They'll be flying off the shelves. So maybe the best thing for tracts is... what would you say?

She's asking, Virginia and Montana. What's the hunt for Red October? How does that guy say Montana? Remember he wanted to... Montagna. Yeah, he wanted to have a... there's a tilde over the end, I think.

Yes. Montagna. I don't really know, you know, because here's the thing, you know, Halloween, what are you aiming at? And my guess would be you're aiming at the kids. I can't really think of any... I don't know if I've ever really seen a good tract for kids.

And Steve, my answer then would be, why don't you just get a regular Bible tract that you like, for instance, the Stop tract that Grace Community Church has, and you put that in there, and then the parents are going to take a look at it anyway.

I mean, seriously, how many kids are going to look at the little Halloween tract, you know, with a ghost that turns into Jack Chick or something?

It's just not going to happen. And you know, most parents, if they're responsible at all, if they've got their kids out there, you know, doing the trick-or-treating, they're going to go through the candy, right, and take all the good stuff for themselves.

No, no, no, that's not right. But they will go through the candy, make sure it's all safe, you know, no razor blades or anything of that sort.

I mean, when I was growing up, we had the dreaded razor blade and the apple stories. And who would give apples for trick-or-treat?

Some people do. Well, you know, because there have always been people out there who thought, I don't want to give the kids that much sugar, you know, they'll turn into... What are those? Oh, I know what they're called.

Those sticks full of sugar. Pixie sticks. Oh, yeah. Yeah, people used to give those things out. My brother used to... I never really got into the pixie stick thing.

So how about the stop track, Virginia? And you could just put that there. She also asked a core library in your home for your children. And I don't really have a core library in my home for our children, but we have a common core library.

Of course. Yeah, I tell people all the time. I probably told Steve Cooley this 20 years ago or so. Why don't you have a budget, a line item budget, for your resources for your theological library at home for you and your kids and your wife?

Yeah, we had to stop that, though, because we also had to pay rent and stuff like that. And my wife's like, honey, we could either buy your theological list or we can pay the rent. I know. It was a tough call.

Now the books just come in fastly and furiously.

I mean, if they're for kids, is that what she said? Because they're a core library? No, just have them in the library at home. This is for your children. Well, you know, we started our kids on systematic theology by Grudem, and then we got them the grown up ones.

Well, and then if they imbibe and digest all the Grudem, they learn how to give fallible prophecies and you won't need any more library. Maybe. Is that OK? No, no. If you just put $100 to the side and you order, what, Steve?

You've got a concordance, right? You get a Bible dictionary, Baker's Bible dictionary. You get a manners and customs book. You get a systematic theology or one of these introductory theology books. I think I have Bite Size Theology is a nice little book.

I forgot who wrote it, maybe Christian Focus or EP or something like that. And all of a sudden, $100, you've got a set of books that the kids can go to. Yeah.

Well, and so much of that stuff now is available online too. But, you know, I don't know. It depends on what age you're talking about too with the kids. Some of those, the R .C. Sproul children books when they're really young, the story books, those are really good.

I loved reading those books to my kids. And I don't know what it is, but when you read books to children, I guess it's later in the night, it's like Daddy's falling asleep. That was 20 years ago. Now it would be awful.

Anyway, Virginia, thanks for writing. We also have one here from Mike. This is Mike from iPhone.

Oh, yeah. Look at that address too, BBC Pastor. You wrote it yourself? No, I'm kidding.

He's looking at it like, really? Well, here, Virginia is from Montana. Mike is from iPhone.

Oh. Did you notice that? Which, where is that?

I think that's the 52nd state after Puerto Rico. Okay, so it's an island. Yeah. All right. I know. Two years ago, I emailed you about church issues. The church was part of Converge. The more we researched, the worse it was.

Is that proper grammar there? Yeah, I think it is. Okay. The pastor of the church we were attending left the church and went on to a different Converge church. What would that mean? Merge? Converge? He was deconverging.

Collide? Uh-huh. After he told us they were going to leave Converge, I guess that was to be expected when we caught him in another direct lie. Praise the Lord, he opened our eyes to what was happening, led us to a great Bible church, and brought a godly pastor to that church.

So I guess he doesn't really write a question. No, he doesn't have a question. He's just thanking you. My question is, why are you at a church named Converge in the first place?

I don't know. I look at a lot of the church names these days, and I'm like, why would you pick that church?

Steve, almost the funniest thing I have seen in the last 20 years, that's, of course, an exaggeration, but they were these generators on the computer. And you could just—one was the Luther one, insult me again, and a random Luther quote would be directed toward you.

Yeah. That was really funny. But the other one was church name generators, and that was hilarious. And, you know, regularly when we drive by churches, since this is my world that I live in, in terms of theology and churches and all that, the kids would look at a church, you know, universal, unitarian, and we would talk about it.

What's that mean? It was easy for them to spot the charismatic churches too, you know, Eagle's Nest and Billowy Heights. But now people don't do that kind of thing. That's a PBS murder mystery, I think, you know, Wuthering Heights, Billowy Heights.

It's funny, Steve. Now they have to have these one word. Converge. Uh-huh. Like, you know, Madonna, Cher, Beyonce, and now it's the same thing with churches. How does that work?

I don't know, but you don't hear one named, like, basement church, you know.

I think you have to have a church name that one of the letters can be turned into an arrow. You know, like H for Hillary has got that arrow to the side. It started off with the who, with the mods and the rockers.

I don't know if you knew that. Yeah.

The original who font. Yeah, right back into the 70s, you know, late 60s, early 70s.

Would you have been a mod or a rocker? I would have been a dud. Yeah.

I didn't even like the who until I was, like, in my 20s.

Chris also from my iPhone. There's from iPhone and there's from my iPhone.

So I was glad Chris would write. Is that a different island, maybe? You know, in the chain of islands that make up the Apple.

In the Virgin Islands, there are the Virgin Islands, there are the British Virgin Islands. Yeah. It's all, yeah. He says he watches the YouTubes and he listens to the show and he wants to give us a background first.

And then the question. I know that we can't keep worshiping here. He was talking about his church. His church. But my wife is hesitant to leave as we do have many friends here. How can I lead in this area?

My wife is not being as discerning when it comes to Sarah Young, Beth Moore, and Ann Voskamp. And won't take the time to read the rebuttals. How can I get her to do this?

Can I just say this sounds like probably half of the saved men in America. This is where they are, right? They want to go to a better church. But their wives are like, you know what, honey? I have so many friends in this church and I don't see what the big deal is anyway.

And, you know, so what? What's wrong with Sarah Young, Jesus Calling or, you know, et cetera, Beth Moore. You know, so there's a little mysticism here, you know.

Well, before we answer that question and before we read a little bit more about where he's coming from, Steve, I'd like you to, with your high IQ, come up with a quick Sarah Young, Beth Moore, and Voskamp merge.

You know, what could we call it? Because they're all essentially one in the sense that Sarah, Beth, Voskamp, could we call it? Sarah Moore Camp. Sarah Moore Camp. That's perfect. So that is the new moniker here at No Compromise Radio, Sarah Moore Camp.

And they just all seem to be the same, appealing to the subjective feminine side. There's only one thing worse than ladies reading Beth Moore, Sarah Young, and Voskamp, Sarah Moore Camp. That would be men.

And there are some. Do you know that? Oh, there have to be. They've probably been told by their wives to read these books or else.

You just don't understand me because you don't read.

I said at Branson, Missouri, for the Worldview Weekend Conference, men and women should relate to the Lord in the exact same way. You think that's true, Steve? Yes. Yes. In a scriptural way, how to praise God, how to relate to Him.

Yeah, I was going to say, you kind of have to watch that because, you know, then the wives would say, see, I told you, you know, he's telling us to read Sarah Young.

Well, and then someone said to me, well, what about Song of Solomon? And I said, well, if Song of Solomon is about a man and a woman relating to each other, woman as a woman to a man and man as a man to a woman, then we've got to figure it out.

Okay. Steve, you would have liked it when I quoted James Boyce and I gave the pregnant pause. And here's how it goes. Men are better than women. Pause. At being men. Usually. Did you know today on the Drudge Report that Kris Jenner is having some second thoughts about this whole deal?

I'm shocked.

I'm shocked. I will note that, you know, if you have a subscription to Sports Illustrated, prepare to cancel it. I mean, if they're going to put—I can't even call him Kris Jenner. It's Bruce Jenner. Come on.

Bruce Jenner. Sorry. Sorry. Bruce. That's what I meant. Yeah. The guy who won the decathlon. Caitlyn is his supposed name now. But why did I say Kris Jenner? Is that a kid's name or something? Kris Jenner probably, yeah.

You know, Bruce Jenner, I mean, just imagine, you know, I've been a woman all along, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, really? Well, what about all those guys who trained for years and years and years to compete against you in the 1976 decathlon and you whipped them?

You know, what does that say to all those guys? Well, as it's been talked about in some of the conservative press online, the endgame that people don't realize will happen, the endgame that the liberals don't realize will happen when it comes to the bathroom transgendered issue, is the decimation of women's sports because the men now will take over.

You know, will a person take steroids to become number one? Yes. And a person will do other things to become number one. That is, you have a man's body and you just cut off a few things and now you can compete against women.

You don't even have to cut anything off.

You just say, I identify as, you know. Well, that's what the whole bathroom issue is, right? It doesn't matter what you are anatomically, biologically. In other words, listen to this. Science doesn't matter.

OK? Notice that. When it comes to this issue for liberals, science doesn't matter.

Well, I guess what the liberals are saying regarding that, Steve, they probably have a one-word response to science. Forget you. So this guy, Chris, from my iPhone, says he goes to a typical seeker megachurch, and he's now been thinking about the doctrines of grace and watching strange fire videos and becoming a cessationist.

He was in pre-elder training, but he had to stop that. There's a tithe challenge there. Let's talk about how not to lead a wife out of Sarah Young and out of a bad church, that is, lording over and bullying and stuff like that.

Yeah, like saying something like, that's stupid. What are you reading that for?

How about if you just wake up one Sunday and say, we're not going back to our old church today. We're going to a new church.

Fall in line. How's that for a good church? That might not be the best way either. I mean, how about this? You just all get in the car, normal time. You're off, and you just go driving by the megachurch.

And she goes, where are we going? Oh, I must have missed a turn. Well, it's Easter Sunday, and we're driving past the church, and there's the Monsters, Inc. characters. And we want to be over there with the Monsters, Inc. folks.

Well. There's actually a church in town that did that. Yeah, it's pretty. I just have a question, Steve. What does Monsters, Inc. have to do with Resurrection Sunday? Anything?

Absolutely nothing, except for there was a sequel to Monsters, Inc.

It was actually kind of a prequel. Well, you know, the good news is I already know what to do for next Resurrection Sunday, because, you know, same thing that usually happens. Maybe we have to spruce it up a little bit.

Minions. Nice.

That's my word, minions. Nice. Now, you know, all those things, I think, you know, we're obviously being facetious, but you need to have a, you know, conversation. You need to discuss this and lay out the reasons why and just kind of be patient.

And it might take a little while to get both of you on the same page, but, you know, this isn't like some kind of—. I guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't recommend kidnapping, you know, and taking your wife to a new church that way.

Well, the text in Ephesians and Colossians, as we think about how a husband should treat his wife and love and wanting what's best for her, I would imagine, Chris, that you didn't come to these convictions overnight.

And if it took you four months or six months or two years to have these ideas percolate—is that a word, percolate?

Well, yes, it is, but it has to do with coffee. I know, but that's the idea. You know, it's steeping.

Yeah, germinating. Then your wife is not going to just one day say, oh. And my guess is if she's into Sarah Mohrkamp, then she's on the immature side of her Christian walk, and there's nothing wrong with immaturity as long as you're still growing to maturity.

And you just need to be careful and teach her, and you don't have to give her, you know, position papers on Sarah Young or have her watch the NoCo videos about it. You can just—why don't you just read that together, and then you say, well, when Sarah says such and such, let's just match that up to Scripture.

Right.

And when you either can't match that up to Scripture or it directly contradicts Scripture, eventually she'll start getting it.

So, Steve, let's also talk a little bit about how do we leave a church that we realize isn't what it's supposed to be, right? We're not telling people to leave Bible-teaching churches. But if they need to leave a seeker-sensitive church for a church that proclaims Christ—Colossians 1 .28, him we proclaim—how do we leave friends?

That's got to be hard to leave friends to go to a church that teaches the Bible. It's got to be hard to leave a church that has a big singles ministry, and you're single, and you go to some Bible-teaching church, and there's two singles.

Or you leave the church that has the great kids programs with the music your kids just love. Mm-hmm.

And what happens when the kids grow up? They want the same kind of music they just love. They want the airwaves, baby. That's what they want. You know, Steve, once in a while, he's got the Eagles kind of quote and the Don Henley, Dan Vogelberg kind of stuff.

But once in a while, he brings in the Ramones, for which I'm happy. How could Dan Vogelberg be in my mind? What songs did he sing?

Longer. And, you know, another old Lang Syne.

I just remember Feathered Hair, that's all. Steve, I very much—yesterday, something happened to me, and I was in a quandary. I was in a real mental Charlie Horse position. Mm-hmm. And what happened was I was filling out the TSA pre-check, because for $85 for five years, you get pre-check 80 of the time.

Really? And I was filling it out, and it said hair color. And it said bald at the top. And, you know, not bald at the top of your head, but at the top of the list. Bald. And then it said brown, gray. So I'm like, what am I?

Just check all three of those. Yeah. And then I said—you could only check one. Then I said, why do I even care? Because it had other colors, like green, purple. Are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding. On the form, you know, the federal form, you're going to have to have your ID, your thumbprint, all this other stuff.

Purple hair. Hair color, purple. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's naturally purple. Steve—. So leaving a church. Yes. But give me some kind, nice, well-written intros. I'm thinking of the Reich and Boyce book about the doctrines of grace that aren't kind of in-your-face, Calvinistic doctrines of grace.

But they're just written well and kind of in a—they'll be like intro stuff for people. So who are we talking to? The pastors or just other people? No, just like Chris here. So he can read something and his wife might want to read it with him.

Hey, let's read Sarah Calling together so we can look at that. And then let's read this other nice book together.

Oh, another nice book together. Like something more—.

Yeah, anything that would be positive, anything that would be appropriate. I mean even Chosen by God or Holiness of God.

Yeah, I was thinking—well, I really like Chosen by God of R .C.'s books the best. Holiness has some really great stuff in it and then some stuff that I—you know, it's not as good as Chosen by God is really, really a good book.

And it kind of sets—it puts you on a whole other plane. It's not an academic book. But it's R .C. kind of in the beginning wrestling with the issue of election and other things and then coming to a right understanding of it.

And it really makes you—it makes you think and it makes you appreciate and makes you worship God, I think, appropriately as opposed to, you know, Jesus Calling where the whole idea is to have this sort of almost a pseudo romance, you know, with Jesus, which is not appropriate but somehow becomes the focal point of her so-called relationship.

Steve, I think if the couple even begins to read the Bible together and they will see a high view of God, obviously, in Scriptures, and they will see how if this is matching up with Sarah, we don't need Sarah.

If Sarah contradicts the Bible, then we don't need her. So we don't need her either way.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to see why you need her.

So we've got 30 seconds left. Can you make up another word about maybe Sarah Less Camp or something? Would that work?

No, but I was thinking we ought to have like a Sarah More Camp. We ought to have a— Trademark? Well, some kind of phrase to go with that, you know, so that we can get it on coffee mugs and T-shirts and stuff.

Well, it's probably going to be sent to us by the same people that say, Where's Tuesday Guy? as we wrap up the show how we began. Where's Sarah More Camp? Sarah More Camp. You can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com.