Seminary or Cemetary

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to Wretched Radio, my name's Steve Cooley. Wait a second,

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I'm totally discombobulated. I'm totally discombobulated now because I don't know where I am.

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Mr. Tuesday Guy, help me, what's happening? Well, it's not unusual that you don't know where you are. Let me help you out.

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Unusual to be loved by anyone. All right, Tom Jones, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

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All right, well, today on No Compromise Radio, we have just potpourri for 500. Okay, you know, they don't do 500 anymore.

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Ipecac? It's either 1 ,000 or 2 ,000. Syrup of. Syrup of. What is something that will really make you sick?

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That's exactly right. So today on No Compromise Radio, let's just, Steve, let the spirit lead us.

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Let's just go with the flow. Let's, let's potty.

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Let's party. All right, first thing on the soup du jour today is

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Dallas Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary. Good history, good heritage? Great, great heritage, great history, yeah.

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Probably one of my all -time favorite Bible teachers of this modern era, S. Lewis Johnson, educated there,

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I think he taught there 30 years. Wow. S. Lewis Johnson. Steve Lawson go there? Steve Lawson got his deem in there, that's correct.

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Probably Dr. Thomas went there. Yeah, Dr. Thomas definitely went there. Lots of guys there, Dr. Pentecost, I appreciate a lot of his ministry.

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Yep. But anyway, Dallas Seminary used to have a little symbol to show their school.

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What would you call a symbol like that? Logo? Icon, yeah, logo, yeah. Yeah, icon. And so it was a fire.

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I don't think they're charismatic, but it was a little fire. I think it was the Holy Spirit, yeah. And underneath it, it said three words.

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Any guesses on what the words were? I think you know. Abrahamic Covenant rules. Abrahamic Covenant.

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Now, now, that was funny. I think we could be on national radio with quirky comments like that.

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Yeah, sure, for the six people who understand, you know. Absolutely. This is, instead of K -love, what could we call it?

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K -jive or something. And it used to say, preach the word underneath it.

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Preach the word. And I thought that was fairly apropos, because there still are many Dallas Seminary students who preach the word.

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Is that politically correct? It also seems apropos, since it's 2 Timothy 4 .2, preach the word. Absolutely.

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Well, they've changed their logo's slogan. I think the logo still looks the same, but the slogan's different.

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And so, if you go to, that would be different if you were actually speaking English. Different if you were from Nebraska.

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Hey, it was great to be back in Indianapolis, listening to people. I heard a lot of heck of a's.

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I heard a lot of, they had to get some pop. You got some Diet Pop in that fridge. Seriously? Yeah. Nobody talks like that.

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Kirby Myers does. Does he really? I guess it's a whole Midwest. Hi, Kirby. I think so.

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And so, now the new slogan is teach truth, which is fine and dandy.

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We don't want to teach error. And love well. Teach truth, love well. And so, that just really bugs me.

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When you walk onto the campus of Dallas Seminary and you see this big preach the word deal, it bugs me now that it's teach truth, live well.

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And it wouldn't be so bad, Steve, if they didn't have women chapel speakers preaching to men. Yeah, that seems to be a little bit of a biblical problem,

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I would say. Now, they're trying to get around it because it's just a chapel message. It's not

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Sunday. But to have a woman stand up and open the Bible, they tell us it's not preaching.

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And after listening to Linda Martin give her talk on Does the

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Lamb Know It's Shepherd and the sermon entitled Cat Theology, Sandra Glan, adjunct professor of pastoral ministries and Christian education, after listening to those two talks, messages, for sure that's not preaching.

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It'd be one thing, Steve, if they were good messages, taught well, exegetically correct, expositionally preached, and something like Elizabeth Elliot.

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I could actually appreciate Elizabeth Elliot's preaching, probably, because it would be solid. But here -

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Like Oprah Winfrey, weren't they? Cat theology, I'm telling you, it was just,

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I said to myself when I watched those two, you can go to DTS .edu and go to, I think, Resources, DTS Chapel, and then once a quarter, they'll have some woman up there.

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And then the men just sit on the stage. And there are certain men that you know, Steve, that I love still at Dallas Seminary, but I just don't get it.

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What is going on? And show me a seminary that says, well, let's just let some women first let the,

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I think it started, Steve, when you have women sitting in on the classes with their husbands, but then they needed kind of a seminary wives class, which those first two are fine, don't you think?

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Yeah, yeah, but you know, you're just stuck in a rut, you're old fashioned. Is that a

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U2 song? No, that was stuck in the moment. Oh, that's right, that's right.

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So it's just sad, and I wish Dallas Seminary and the leadership from the president on down would just take a stand, draw a line in the sand, and go for it and say, we are not going to have women exercise authority or teach or share or anything else.

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And so then my question is, if it's a chapel and these ladies are not really preaching, then don't call it a chapel.

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Call it, I don't know, an elective, something else. Don't we preach at chapels? That's no different than Gordon College here in Massachusetts.

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Having rabbis and priests come to the chapel because isn't chapel by definition worship?

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Well, it should be, one would think. You know, why else are you having your students go into a chapel?

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But you know, 11 years ago, my wife and I went to Israel and some of the DTS students, they were on different buses.

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And so occasionally, I mean, we were all allegedly on the same tour, but we didn't really get together that often. And when we did,

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I just was kind of amazed because there were female students and male students, but just kind of how little theology they, you know,

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I would just talk to them, not trying to be argumentative, but just try to engage them on some of the issues, you know, find out where they were on lordship.

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They didn't even know what I was talking about. And I just wanted to grab them and go, are you really in seminary?

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You know, and so it just seemed to me, like even at that time, like they'd kind of lowered the academic bar so that they could broaden their student base, you know, get more students in by making easier degrees.

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I think they had, you know, degrees in missionary work or something like that, you know, just different things that you could major in instead of just, you know, basically preparing for full -time ministry.

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Well, Master's Seminary basically prepares men for missionary work and Bible teaching, preaching.

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And I think it's fine. Like Southern Seminary, you can expand that. You can expand your borders and boundaries according to 1

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Chronicles 4 with Jabez. I just want more land. What's Gary Gilley's book saying?

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I just want more land. All I wanted was more land. Yeah. So I don't mind that you prepare people for other

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Christian endeavors, but then to have the ladies in the homiletics class and then ladies having the chapel message and getting up, that message by Linda Martin about does a lamb know its shepherd?

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You know what I thought I was watching, Steve? I thought I was watching Bad Playhouse with Dan Aykroyd back in Saturday Night Live.

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It was just horrendous. I thought it was Sherry Lewis and Lamb Chop. I didn't know.

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Where's my laugh button or cough button? Lamb Chop. Well, for the younger people out there, the wretched listeners, you need to figure out how to use your

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Google to look up the Lamb Chop. Is that Sherry Lewis's sister? I don't think so, no.

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She was a ventriloquist who used to do a little kids thing with a lamb who was more like a sock puppet than anything else.

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It was sideways mouth. Yeah. The Lamb Chop made pretty funny faces,

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I have to say. So here's what we'd like you to do if you have any questions about ladies in ministry, that is preaching and teaching.

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Just reread the pastoral epistles. It's very simple. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, and see to whom does

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Paul address these letters, Timothy and Titus, both elders, and how to run the local church.

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We're not saying Margaret Thatcher was a bad prime minister. Are we? No, I think she was the

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Iron Lady, come on. But when he's talking about the qualifications for elders, isn't it a generic, it's not a man, it's a generic person.

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Could be anyone with those qualifications, right? Well, according to the contemporary English version, where the son of man is translated the human one, probably you're right.

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Just stand up and, you know, if there's no compromise, we even have to call out our friends at Dallas Seminary who end up compromising.

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That's exactly what it is. And when I talk to Mark Bailey privately and publicly and in a group setting, he seems to have good reasons for it in his mind, but at the end of the day, it's just all wiggle stuff.

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And so we just want, I don't want Dallas Seminary to be basically what it's turned out to be behind the scenes.

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It's a laughing stock of evangelicalism because of psychology and this watered down stuff.

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Who wants to go to Dallas unless maybe you get a free ride? You know, it really needs to be cleaned up. They need somebody, a sheriff to come into town and just kind of straighten things out.

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Well, what would happen if they decided to get rid of this women's issue? It would blow the seminary up, maybe in half, and everybody would freak out short term.

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But then we would have another man like an Al Mohler who did the exact same thing.

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Of course, Southern was worse than Dallas is now, but both going the same direction. And Al Mohler, used by the

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Lord to clean up Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and now we just sit back and say what wonderful things the

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Lord has done through an institution, through a man at an institution. Amen. Yeah, I mean, he's a hero, you know, in that sense.

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Speaking of heroes, did you used to like Princeton Seminary, Steve?

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I loved it. B .B. Warfield. Yeah, before I was born. Archibald Alexander, A .A.

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Hodge, Charles Hodge, Samuel Miller, I think, was there. The Princeton theologians of old, the great titans of the faith.

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If you like Scottish theology, I think sometimes you could actually have scotophilia. What would it be,

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Princetonianphilia? What would that be? I don't even want to guess. Putting the word love like Philadelphia with Princeton.

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Yeah, that'd be good. What's their colors? They're orange, right? They're the orange cats? Yeah, orange and black, yeah.

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What's their team named? Tigers. Tigers, yeah. Tigers, the Tigers. So here in Christianity today, we have

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Princeton Theological Seminary celebrating two centuries of service. And it's nice that they do have a

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Bible verse there. The seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain. That's nice that they have Matthew 13. But then,

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Steve, this is what it says for an advertisement. If you want this kind of school, then you should go there.

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So let's just come up. I'm gonna flip it. I'm flipping it over. If you could see us on Wretched or TV, you would notice that we aren't looking at it.

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If we wanted to advertise a seminary, let's just talk about that. How do we advertise a seminary? If we're gonna start a

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Bedlam seminary. Well, I think we would want to first say that we're going to have men learn to teach the word as if lives depend on it.

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That's very good. You were leading up to something. I was wondering which direction that was going. Yes, something like that, where learn how to preach the word, preach the word, have convictions, boldly uphold the word of truth, passing it to the next generation.

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You could do all kinds of stuff like that. You could do original languages, things like that. You'll be more fully equipped in theology.

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And I mean, we're gonna give you the nuts and bolts that you need for a theological education so that you can preach the word week in and week out.

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Something maybe like rightly dividing the word. We're gonna teach you how to do that. We're gonna teach you how not to be ashamed of the gospel.

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We're going to disciple you with other men who've been through the ringer. Through the rigors of the ministry.

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Absolutely. So here's what it says. If you are seeking, and then it should have a colon there, but whatever, vocational discernment.

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Oh, like I wanna know what I'm gonna do? I wanna know what church I could go take that's all unbelieving, but I can get paid since I only have to work on Sundays.

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Nice. By the way, Steve, wouldn't it be great if we were just liberal pastors? And to me, that's a cake job from one prayer breakfast to the next and luncheon and social and all the liberal gospel stuff.

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That is a cake job and get paid and be in a parsonage too. Yeah. The only problem is when you die, you go to hell, but.

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Oh, sorry. That would be a problem. But of course there are a few pastors out there in liberal denominations who are actually evangelicals.

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See, I have to give these disclaimers. Why is that? Yeah, thanks for that caveat. Yeah, okay. If you're seeking to a study in a diverse, multicultural faith community.

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Yeah, there's nothing more important. There's nothing more important than being diverse and multicultural. I mean, look, we have one culture and that's the

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Bible culture. Steve, what if you lived in Iceland, Greenland, and everybody was the same color?

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Would you care about multi -ethnic diversity? Yeah, we'd have to apply or we'd have to bring in applicants from all over the world.

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But we couldn't really start our school until we had - Well, back in my day, growing up in the 60s and 70s in the

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Midwest, we'd have to bus them in. Yeah. Right? Sure. You have to just, it's school choice and you can just, that is wholeness.

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That is a healthiness. When there's red and yellow, black and white, all precious in his sight. Steve, I've got a problem.

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Here's my problem. You know I have lots of problems, but this is a little side note. Here's what

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I call it. Are we going into analysis now? This is my pastoral pontification. Okay.

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If I were going to write an article on a blog, I would write this. Monochrome people and celebrity pastors.

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All right, here's where I'm going with this. If you do preach the gospel, the real gospel, and preach the gospel of Christ Jesus and him crucified, the gospel where we have the mediator, not the

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Jew Christ Jesus, but the man Christ Jesus in 1 Timothy 2, then you have an amalgamation of people whose only common bond is the gospel.

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You look around the church we're at, Steve Bethlenbible Church, there are a lot of people I wouldn't normally pick as friends or family members or to do things with, but we're all united with the gospel.

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We have all kinds of different colored people here, different backgrounds, different languages that they would speak, certainly different culinary tastes.

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Absolutely. But what binds us together? We're bound together by the gospel, and so that's what

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I'm after. Now, if you have a big celebrity, what binds you together? I think what binds you together is that celebrity, everybody ends up being the exact same.

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So you think, well, what does Mars Hill look like with Driscoll? Oh, they all kind of look like Driscoll, or they want to be like Driscoll.

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I'd like to know, do we have churches out there for nerds and kind of dorky people and just geeks?

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Where do they go to church? Does he wear those kind of low -riding pants, the kind of cool unisex sort of pants?

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Does he wear those? Do you know what? I try not to look at the site, because if I go to pastormark .tv or whatever it is, it's just his face everywhere.

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It's all about sex. It's all about his face. So I just don't want to be bothered.

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Okay. Okay. So monochrome churches, I don't think there's any problem with it if you are in Greenland, and here you say, we want diverse multicultural faith communities.

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I just don't get that. Well, I do in this sense. If you are coming from a pagan perspective, what's the most important thing?

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That you have a diversity of opinion, a diversity of look, that everybody is allowed to be different and be themselves.

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The problem is, that is exactly a pagan perspective. The biblical perspective is,

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I don't care what you look like. I don't care what you sound like. What I care about is what you believe, and that should be the heart of any kind of seminary.

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This gets to teaching style here on No Compromise Radio Ministry. When you're looking for a seminary, I wouldn't pick a seminary if you're a young man today by saying, well, they're going to give me the four views, and then

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I get to pick which view I'd like, kind of like the NIV application study Bible. Right, yeah. NIV study

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Bible. What I'd like is, I'd like to have some men of God who I can trust, tested, tried, faithful, pastoral, epistles kind of men, and then they can teach me what the true truth is, to use

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Francis Schaeffer's words. Of course, these are the three options, but this is why we believe this one, and we'll focus on this true option, because this is not dealer's choice.

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This is, in other words, Steve, why would we have a seminary that does the opposite of what we get from the pulpit?

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I want pulpits full of bold men who have studied, shown themselves approved, and then they tell us this is the truth.

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But when we go to seminary, could you please give me the four views? I like this seminary, because I get to decide what

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I believe for myself. Well, can you imagine sermons like that? Here's today's sermon. It's kind of a multiple choice thing, and whatever answer you want, that's okay, because God wants a diverse community.

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As N .T. Wright said. I mean, what does that even mean? Is God, I was talking with a

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Jewish man here lately, and he said he was gonna reread the Old Testament, which I encouraged him to do, but he said, except for maybe

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Leviticus. And he said, that's really tough. And I go, well, the great thing about Leviticus is

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God is very particular about how he's going to be worshiped. And we kind of set that aside these days.

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And that's where we get things like this Princeton ad where it says, diversity, diversity is key.

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Diversity, diversity, diversity. Does God have one particular way in which he wants to be worshiped, or is he really looking for diverse worship?

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Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the

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Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came down from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the

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Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord has said. Among those who are near me,

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I will be sanctified. And before all the people, I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

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It was kind of like God was saying this diversity thing, I don't really dig it. When people say, well, I don't know about Leviticus.

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I always think of chapter 10 as exciting. And then of course, chapter 16 and 17, but you're right.

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God wants particular, peculiar, God revealed worship.

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He doesn't just say, figure it out and go with your gizzard, go with that burning in your bosom, worship me whatever you'd like.

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Dealer's choice. Go with your gizzard. The gizzard goer. I mean, they went with their gizzard and he consumed them.

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Skipping down a couple on Princeton Theological Seminary, celebrating two services of two centuries of backsliding since B .B.

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Warfield, and Machen left, and then John Murray soon followed.

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A Christian community of faithful worship and fellowship. I don't think that's so bad. World -class faculty.

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The support of fellow students who become lifelong friends. Well, yeah, that's, well, I mean, that's true, right?

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You go to school, you're in the trenches with these guys. Of course, there it's these gals and people who are undetermined as to their orientation.

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Yeah. Well, the thing is though, but that's, for me, Steve, you and I were lifelong friends. It's, well,

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I guess it's pre -seminary, but there are guys that I'm friends with there at the seminary, but I didn't go for that reason. If you go to seminary to get friends, you got a problem.

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Your problem isn't skinny jeans and, you know, and iPad 2 malfunctions. You've got a bigger problem.

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I have no friends. I think I'll go to seminary. Well, maybe that's why they let women in to seminaries is because when guys don't have any wives and they need them, and so then they, you know, you find a mate, it's, but what if you marry a woman and she becomes a senior pastor and you're like the youth guy?

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Problems. I see problems. As the husband. Conferences and programs for church leaders, they have those there, and ongoing resources for ministry in the church and world.

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Then Princeton Seminary may be a community for you. Now here's the wildest part,

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Steve. Founded in 1812 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Princeton Theological Seminary is the largest

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Presbyterian seminary in the nation. Grounded in the Reformed tradition, theological tradition, and committed to ecumenical and multicultural expressions of the faith.

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That's a contradiction. Steve. That's a total contradiction. That is so lowbrow to me.

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Just admit it, that you'll train people, gay people for the ministry, et cetera, et cetera.

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Don't say founded and grounded in the Reformed theological tradition and then say something about your trajectory, which is exactly opposite.

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If they were gonna be honest, they'd say founded in the Reformed tradition, which we then ousted. Abandoned.

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Yeah. And it says here, student body of 600, faculty of 44 scholars, and a network of more than 11 ,000 alumni, alumnae, it says that actually, serving

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Jesus Christ in every state in many countries around the world. Well, if you believe the

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Bible's true, if you believe in substitutionary atonement, if you believe in the deity of Christ and the literal resurrection,

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I think you better pick a different school. Yeah, of which you, I mean, you could hardly do worse.

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Maybe Harvard and Princeton. Harvard would probably be worse, maybe. I don't, you know,

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I mean, they're both bad. Well, I believe in entropy and I believe in the laws of thermodynamics because you, spiritually even speaking, because Princeton, well, let's get them in order.

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Harvard, then Yale, then Princeton. Start off as seminaries to train men only for gospel ministry.

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Yeah, and then the decline. I mean, I had a professor in seminary who used to say that liberals never built a seminary, they just took them over.

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And that's pretty much true. I mean, even seminaries, you know, like Fuller, founded by fundamentalists, and then, you know, just goes off a cliff.

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Is Fuller a seminary? I thought it was a psychology school. Fuller Theological and Psychological Training Unit.

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I don't know what it's called. Well, today on No Compromise Radio, you've just been sitting in the living room with Pastor Mike and Pastor Steve.

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One of us has a very comfortable chair, the other one, less comfortable. I just got this new cool chair and Steve's jealous.

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He wasn't too sure when the box came. I'm not really jealous. I just said that, you know, I wish we were on TV so that people could go, well,

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I see who the big shot is, you know. The big dog. Info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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I think you should write Steve Cooley some really hard theological questions and you can just send them at info.

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Or address them to Ray at nocompromiseradio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.