Current Evangelical Events

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. Today is Tuesday, and Steve Cooley is here. What do you think about how you're doing? I'm doing great. Loving all the snow.

I'm looking outside. We don't know when this show's going to be aired to his radio show. Hopefully not in July. But it is so snow-packed here. It's a snow-valanche. It's snow-bomination.

I'm not even going there. I've seen all the ridiculous phrases they're using on the weather things.

It's crazy. I know. We want to invite you to our conference series this year, 2011, and we try to have two speakers, internationally known speakers, men who are faithful to preach the word of God expositionally, Christ-centered.

Bethlehem Bible Church Conference Series. If you're close to central Massachusetts or you have a car, we want to invite you. It's called, well, it's not called. It's called a conference series, but we have a little subtitle there by Jonathan Edwards, a quote from him, give me New England lest I die.

And so we're trying to promote gospel exposition, biblical fidelity, godliness here in New England. And so Danny Akin is going to be our speaker this year, March 18th to the 20th, here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

You can register online, bbchurch .org, and he's going to talk about, any guesses? Probably not about Danny Akin. Probably not. Marriage and family. So Friday night, 7 to 9 .30, Saturday, 7 .45 to 12 .30 in the afternoon, and then Sunday for Sunday school.

Who is Danny Akin? Who is Danny Akin? I don't know, but I figured that we got somebody that started with the last name A, and then B, and then C, and then we were up to the Ds. Nice. So Danny Akin is the president of Southeastern Theological Seminary, and Danny Akin used to be the right-hand man for Al Mohler at Southern, and I had Danny Akin as a professor for my doctorate program in Louisville, and he is a, you know what I like about Danny Akin?

He is going to teach marriage and family, but you watch him teach it expositionally. He'll go to Ephesians 5 and work through the text and then give some helpful hints of 1 Peter 3. I really hope he majors on 1 Peter 3, 1 to 7, the whole wife thing.

That'd be good. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he won't, but some of the things he said the last time he was here stuck with my wife to this day. That's true.

I think he'll say a lot of the same things because I'm asking him to speak on the same topic, but we have a lot of new people, new listeners, people here in Worcester that would be encouraged by this and convicted, and so.

Danny Akin, Bethlehem Bible Church Conference Series, 2011, March 18th to 20th. Register online at bbchurch .org. Well, Steve, what's up for today?

What's up, what's up? What's up, Holmes? We are going to the encyclopedia of current modern evangelicalism.

It is fun to talk about what's happening in evangelicalism today, and the easiest way to do that so we don't have to collate everything ourselves is to just go to Christianity Today.

And it's also a pretty sad way to look at Christianity Today.

That's true, although some of the stuff is interesting. This is the February 2011 edition. First of all, Steve, before we start, I'm going to have a new feature here sometimes on Tuesdays. I have a pocketbook of quotations, and I'm just going to open up randomly and see what happens.

Walt Whitman, I celebrate myself and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Walt Whitman.

Wow. The great theologian Walt Whitman.

Didn't Tracy Chapman sing a song like that? Oh, so anyway, that didn't seem to work out. Maybe we'll have to try something else.

Maybe some Christian quotes, or what about quotations from the Bible? That'd be kind of crazy. Yeah, you know what? Always biblical. You know what? Here's what I say. Start your next sermon with that quote from Walt Whitman and then make that work.

Let's do the whole show. I just opened up to another one. Galette Burgess, I never saw a purple cow. I never hoped to see one, but I can tell you anyhow, I'd rather see than be one. Somebody told me the other day that when we're doing our kind of comedy and humor on Tuesdays, that we actually think we're funnier than we are.

I think that's probably a true assessment.

Somebody said that? Somebody said that, yeah. That cuts, except for, you know, it was me. Shh, don't tell anybody. All right, Christianity Today.

Here on No Compromise Radio, we like to talk about biblical subjects in a provocative way, and we want you, here's our kind of sub-theme, even though we joke around a lot, we want you to look at culture, look at the world, look at everything around you through the gaze of the Bible.

In other words, as Abraham Kuyper said, when you look at something in the world, you think of Jesus possessing that. Jesus, across the whole world, he says, mine. So when it comes to politics, mine. Countries, mine.

Culture, mine. Our churches, mine. And so we want to look at the world through the lens of the lordship of Christ.

It'd be kind of like Psalm 24. The earth is the Lord's and the Lord contains. I like it.

So let's go to page eight, and page eight, Steve, has all kinds of news. And so this actually is pretty good for Christianity Today because they can't slant it in any liberal way or non-supernatural way or anything like that.

I will say this. Number five, scandal at Christian TV network. Now, to me, the scandal is that people think it's actually going to be a scandal. Scandal at TV networks that are Christian, that just, isn't that par for the course?

Yeah, because I mean, why would you, as a Christian, why would you own your own TV network? It's usually not, I mean, watch Christian TV. No, don't watch it. But I mean, is it to promote Jesus Christ or is it to promote their own self-interest?

And I think over and over again, you know, it becomes clear whether you're ordering this month's special trinket or, you know, miracle healing oil or whatever they're selling. It becomes pretty clear that the focus is not on the Bible.

Or on the God of the Bible. I've been so sick the last three months, Steve, as you know. I could probably use some trinket oil right now. Most of the time, when you think of Christian ministries, you have to say to yourself, how frugal are they with God's money?

And that's why radio is such a good avenue because it's inexpensive. Only lately, with the advent of Channel 9002 for cable access, can there be cheap, inexpensive Christianity on TV. I remember back 30 years ago, Steve, or 20 years ago, MacArthur always said he'd never be on TV because he could be on 500 radio stations for every TV show that was on.

And so now it's different because it's just cheaper. But when you've got your own TV network, there's problems. There's no elder board above you, et cetera. And so what's happening at Daystar?

Well, according to Christianity Today here, they have this little note, Marcus and Joni Lamb, the founders of Daystar, the world's second largest Christian television network. Yeah, Christian. Admitted in November that Marcus had an adulterous relationship several years ago.

The Lamb said they went public to head off a blackmail effort by a former employee who sued and all this other stuff. But they wanted to kind of preempt that blackmail by releasing the information that he'd been unfaithful to Joni all those years ago.

Well, certainly we're not laughing at adultery or anything like that. Here's what we want to say. When you get fed your regular diet of Christianity via TBN, via Daystar, you are going to have a super large stomach and your ribs showing spiritually.

That is to say, it's like a child in Africa that's starving. Their stomachs are distended and engorged, but they're starving. And so these places have a lot of people, they have a lot of money, but they don't give the pure milk of the word.

And so we want to encourage you, if you want to watch TV, I think you could probably watch Christian TV Today. Maybe there are certain podcasts that have videos and you watch Grace Church on TV if you've got to watch things.

But we want to warn you that nine times out of 10, what you hear on TBN, I guess there are some exceptions.

Can you think of anybody who's on who's On TBN that I can think, well, I saw, what's his name, Ray Comfort, I think was going to be on with Kirk Cameron or something. Yeah, not too long ago. But I mean, it's really the exception rather than the rule.

It's a pretty, mark it with an asterisk when they have somebody good on.

So we want to encourage you, if you want to watch TV, watch something good, you know, like 24 or something.

That's no longer on, but nice slide.

Phoenix Hospital loses Catholic status. Now, one of the things I used to love about Catholic churches is that they would not perform abortions at the Catholic hospital. And so while I vehemently disagree with Rome's position on the Bible, Christ's work, faith, justification, you know, minor issues.

And even the sacraments. And sacraments. I am glad that Catholic hospitals don't kill babies in what should be the safest place in the world, that is the womb. But why, what's going on here? Because I think that's an interesting topic.

It says that they've revoked the name Catholic from St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in December after facing off with the hospital officials over an abortion that the hospital authorized in 2009 to save the life of a mother.

The archbishop considered the procedure a violation of the ethical and religious directives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Catholic Health Association disagreed, publicly backing the hospital.

The hospital, however, will retain St. Joseph's in its name.

So the question is, is it ever right to kill a baby? Some would say, oh, because of rape. And we would say at No Compromise Radio with the Bible giving full support, just because there's been one sin or crime, you don't do another one.

It's not the baby's fault. So rape and incest, those are usually brought up, Steve, don't you think they're brought up to just kind of elicit this emotional thing where somebody's been raped and so how can you make them have the baby?

The percentages of children born to rape and incest are small. Very, very small, yes. But for our position, thou shall not kill, thou shall not murder. You don't kill a baby because somebody's been raped.

Prosecute the rapist, but you're gonna have the baby. That's sovereign God opening the womb. And we would not want to kill a baby because it's a baby.

I mean, in the political world, you're super strict. If you'll just restrict abortion to rape, incest, and the health of the mother, whatever health of the mother means.

Isn't it interesting in Exodus where God gives Moses the law and if you hurt a woman, you're fighting and you hurt a woman, and the baby is killed inside the womb. It's serious business. Yeah, absolutely.

What about this though, Steve? Ectopic pregnancies. There's the baby in, I believe, the fallopian tube and you have to stop that or the mother will die. I think that that's a baby and so I wonder if this is for ectopic pregnancy.

I doubt it. I think it was probably something else. Right. I remember who was the Christian, C. Edward Coop. He wrote a book and he said in all his years of medical practice, he had never seen a case where you had to kill the baby to save the mother.

No, and I mean, if you've been watching the news at all here lately, that clinic in Philadelphia, all that's been going on there where this so-called doctor would actually show up after a baby was born and then kill it.

And it's just horrifying. I mean, when this sort of thing, when abortion becomes just kind of accepted practice, it inevitably leads to horrible results such as what's going on in Philadelphia, but I digress.

I would agree with the Roman Catholic Church in stripping that. I mean, obviously that hospital has nothing to do with Christianity in any way, shape, or form.

All right, I'm gonna give you a quote, radio listeners, and Steve, I think he knows, but he's gonna feign like he doesn't know. I'm gonna give you a quote and then you tell me who said it. I haven't got a clue.

I'm not exactly for the use of drugs. Don't get me wrong. Oh, you know, I read this. But I just believe that criminalizing marijuana is costing us a fortune. And then here's the interesting part, Steve.

Yeah.

And it's ruining young people. Yeah, it was Paul McCartney. No, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no,.

I do know who it was. Oh, blah-dee, oh, blah-dah, life goes on, brah.

It was actually, it was another Beatle, Pat Robertson.

He was actually the sixth Beatle. There was a fifth Beatle for a while. Pat Robertson is known as the sixth Beatle. And if you give him $2 million, he'd get a bowl cut. Yeah, and sing Let It Be. So the criminalization, the criminalization of marijuana is ruining young people.

Pat, how could that be?

I don't know. People say that marijuana should be legalized. And if you've ever, obviously I've dealt with people who have smoked inordinate amounts of marijuana at various times. I've seen them trying to drive or do whatever.

And it is not a harmless drug. Let me just assure you of that. And it can have even lifelong effects if it is used chronically. And so the idea of decriminalizing it, what's he saying? As a pastor, I don't know how you do that.

Go ahead and just make it legal for people to kill brain cells and make themselves dopey.

Isn't it interesting, Steve, that you become so famous, and I don't think he desired to become famous, but everything he says is recorded. Aren't you glad everything that we say isn't recorded and printed?

It's not. I mean, we're not, wait a minute. Is this thing not on? Are we not famous? Well, yeah, in our own minds. All right, one last little news item here. Gay coach loses job. Lisa Howe, the women's soccer coach at Belmont University in Nashville, resigned in order to avoid being fired after she told her team that she was in a lesbian relationship and that her partner was expecting a child.

You know, the main thing I know about Belmont is it's some kind of musical college. And Vince Gill supported them when they made the NCAA tournament, he was there. Okay. You know, that's my big connection to, which isn't really any kind of connection at all.

But it's interesting. Yeah. The incident raised questions about don't ask, don't tell, like policies at Christian universities. Days after Howe's resignation, Belmont President Bob Fischer insisted that the school is welcoming to gays and lesbians.

Terrific. Yeah, here's a funny thing. Why would a Christian college have a don't ask, don't tell? If you are, policy, if you're practicing homosexual and you want to go to a Christian college, the Christian college should have one word for you.

No, or repent, or believe, or, but not, oh, sure, we take everybody here. We don't really care.

I think the problem comes from, you've got parents who are Christian and then they force their kids who aren't Christians to go to a so-called Christian college. And they're, you know, committing fornication, heterosexual sin or homosexual sin.

And then you've got this horrible atmosphere. I just don't understand it, Steve.

I'm kind of at a loss today. I don't either. Well, I mean, if you're at a Christian college, one would expect that a prerequisite for going to a Christian college would be that you have a Christian testimony.

You know, they should say, tell us about how you came to Christ. And on that basis, including, and with your grades and your test scores, we'll let you into the college. But short of that, you shouldn't get in.

Well, you can't go to some college and then say, well, you know, my dorm RA is living with some girl, or my dorm RA is a lesbian practicing, because that just undermines everything. And so it's a free country, like I always say, but you should just take the word Christian off your college and then...

Yeah, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. You know, how about, we're a formerly Christian college, you know, something like that.

The college formerly known as Christian. All right, here's the big one for today. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Mike Cooley and Steve Avendroth here, and we are together, the team, on Tuesday's Page 12 Christianity Today, the discerning seller.

This one bugs me. Lifeway is going to drop warning labels on bad books and just sell them anyway. It wasn't too long ago, I did a show on Christian bookstores, so-called Christian. And I basically said, if you want to sell trash and heresy, Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn, if you want to sell other religions like Roman Catholicism, you can do it, but you're not a ministry.

So you just call yourself a for-profit. And that raised the ire of some people here at the local bookstore. And that's just the way life goes. Stop selling the stuff. And then I'll do a whole show on how Morningstar is, you know, holding the line and selling evangelical products with good hygiene.

You know, what do we do if Target starts selling mouthwash with arsenic in it, strychnine? We just keep buying it. Oh, you know, but you can make a lot of money off of that. And so here, Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention's arm for distributing books and bookstores, Lifeway, they used to put little labels on books, on authors that were bad for their people.

Rob Bell is mentioned, Donald Miller, Brian McLaren, William Young. What they said, people who have espoused thoughts, ideas, or concepts that could be considered inconsistent with historical evangelical theology, like the shack or something.

They put a little sticker on there.

Well, off go the stickers. Awesome. I love here what this one person wrote here. And I think he was one of the books that they were, oh, it's a blog post by a Christian musician and speaker named Sean Groves.

And he says this, he says, everything I write might be wrong. Exercise discernment. How about that in the, you know, right on the cover of the book. Everything I write might be wrong. Exercise discernment.

But instead, you know, if you, I guess what they're trying to say, what Lifeway's trying to say is, don't trust anything on our shelves. It could be good, might not be, you know, just because we sell it doesn't mean anything.

I think if Johnny Lydon in Public Image Limited, he had a lyric said, I might be wrong, I might be right. So we could just do that. Here's what the article says. The labels became more trouble than they were worth.

Hey, here's another idea. When you walk in the store, they go,.

Here's your truth coin. And you go, truth coin? Yeah. And you just flip it up, you know, if it heads, it's a good book, tails, it's a bad book. I mean, you can't really tell unless you read, right? So this is just a really bad, a bad way to go.

I mean, our objective, we do have a, I wouldn't really call it a bookstore. We call it a book table. We'd like to have a bookstore someday. But, you know, the objective should be to sell only good books, those that are, promote good doctrine.

I mean, it's straight out of Titus 1 -9. Why would you want to give doctrine out to Christians that maybe isn't good?

Don't we want to sell the best? If you're a local church, you want to have the bookstore mirror the pulpit ministry and Sunday school ministry and behind the scenes ministry. Once in a while, we get kind of a bad book in or one we say, like that Platt book we read and we pulled it, we were selling it and we pulled it.

And so, you know, everybody makes a mistake. But when they say, when Lifeway says, we've dealt with all kinds of churches and everyone has got an opinion. How about this? That's a weasel word.

Instead of calling it a book ministry, maybe we should call it a, you know, we're just trying to keep you on your toes ministry. You never know what you're going to get.

You know, it's like a box of chocolates. You know? So we want you to read good books. Let's do a show on good books sometime, Steve. This is so controversial. You know, every time you turn around,.

You're slamming something. Did you do something on that? You know, did you talk about burning books?

You know, I used to until some maniac down South was going to kind of burn something else.

And then I never could do it. Yeah, he was actually going to burn the Quran, but we won't talk about that.

Because we don't want to get in trouble. We are No Compromise Radio Ministry and we're going to talk to you right now about what Christianity Today thinks are the best books for 2010. The best books. The best book.

I don't think MacArthur's Slave is going to be at the top. You don't? No.

Well, did it get released in 2011 though?

Well, that's exactly the reason why. I'm just trying to keep you on your toes.

Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you got that. Keep you on your toes ministry. I like it.

Yeah, I've got the, I need some more caffeine or something. Steve, did you know in the last week, I've been to the chiropractor three times. I've been to the acupuncturist once and I've had two deep tissue massages.

Wow, I'm really behind. And I still have a headache. And Thursday I go to the osteopath. So. Well, I have a prescription for you. Shovel some snow. I did that yesterday, but. It didn't help? It didn't help at all.

I'm going to jump in the Mediterranean Sea with a No Compromise tour to Israel. That probably won't help either. I think this is going to be. What about the healing waters of the Jordan? No, I actually, I'm supposed to teach the pool of Bethesda in John five.

And so maybe I'll be the one who quick jumps into the water first when it's rumbling and God can sovereignly heal me. Nice. Now that's an interesting passage. I think I need to teach that in No Compromise.

All right, so here's what we're going to do. We are going to have a cliffhanger because we don't have time to get into book awards and music awards because time is gone. Doesn't 24 minutes seem to fly by on WVNE 760?

And we don't even have the old Jack Bauer, you know, Tintin.

Tintin, Tintin. I know. And you know, you can watch an hour show in 42 minutes. That's pretty good. Yeah, cut out all the commercials. That's the way I like to watch them. So what we want to do here is to remind you, Danny Akin, if you are married or have children, we would love to see you here at the conference at Bethlehem Bible Church.

And he's going to be very frank, very open, very convicting.

I was convicted last time. Yes, and very no-compromise.

Oh, you know what? I've interviewed him before, but not for the radio show. I should probably interview him for no-compromise radio ministry. That'd be great. So that is coming up March 18th, 19th, and 20th.

Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. Steve, we've got about a minute left. Any parting shots, any shots across the bow? Any kind of, you know?

Yeah, I mean, here's what I would say about Christian television. I would love to turn on Christian television, have them teach us the Bible, have us listen to them expound the scripture, talking about our sinfulness, God's holiness, the fact that Christ came to redeem sinners, that he took on a second nature, that he lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, rose on the third day, and that all who believe in that, in his work, might go to heaven, as opposed to he came that we might have a better life now.

Our being lifely bookstores now. There you go. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Abendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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