The Greatest Love Of All

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. Mike Abendroth here.

It's a Tuesday, that means Steve Cooley's here. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. I'd like to introduce myself to your listeners.

Yes, mas o menos. Mas o menos. Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Now, sometimes, Steve, I like to ask you about how you're doing personally.

And, you know, we have a kind of a loyal fan base, and they like to know what

Steve's doing. And so, what's the latest with you? What's the latest with me? You're up to like 19 grandkids by now.

Yeah, number 19 just came on Tuesday. And my daughters are listening, going, we weren't aware.

I know. Just five, five is good. All right, and you love being a grandpa, I know that. Yes, I do.

Best thing ever. Now, how do you grandparent compared to parent? I got to see some of your parenting in action over the years, both in Los Angeles and here.

And how would you be a grandparent in a different fashion? What have you learned, lessons learned? Well, I mean, the main thing

I try, is really what I try not to do, which is

I try not to override my kids. If they want X, Y, I don't go, yeah, yeah, but, and do my own thing with them.

So, I mean, if they tell me, I mean, it's kind of funny, right? Because I'm used to giving them orders, but when they tell me, we don't want this, or we don't want that,

I just kind of go, okay, well, we won't do that. Perfect. And I mean,

I have fun with them, but I also like to remind them of what

God says, and so we had a little discussion, my oldest granddaughter and I the other day about lying and why it's not good.

Okay, that's from Pastor Policeman Sergeant Cooley. Yeah, she got the sheriff look there the other day.

She did, do you have any kind of like kid handcuffs or anything? No, no, but I'm used to dealing with people who lie right to my face, so.

Steve, for years, I've been afraid of you in the sense that if I ever wanted to con you, I know you would see right through me, so I just gave it up.

I don't even try to do it anymore. Well, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Yeah, I know. Steve, it is dated, but it is news, and no compromise news.

It's where you come for the news 24 -7. It's old news, but it's still news. Yes, from the Dallas Morning News, quite some time ago, but from the news,

Dallas Morning News, Ernesto Hernandez, age 20, of Dallas, Texas, was fatally wounded after a fight broke out at a baptismal party.

I'm not kidding. Mr. Hernandez was with family and friends when an argument started late in the evening.

He was shot during the argument and died at a nearby hospital. So. People unclear on the concept of a baptismal party,

I guess. I guess I think we should probably warn our listeners that there are times to refrain from discussing

Paid -O versus Credo baptism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, things can get a little heated.

Man, can you believe it? Here's a celebration, and it turns into that. All right, there's some other things

I have here in the news. Thomas W. Passmore, 32. That means, that's his age.

I don't think it's his emotional IQ. What's your EIQ, Steve? No idea.

I've never had that measured. I've thought about it many times, been tempted, but. Yeah, yeah, emotional IQ. He was working on a book, working on a construction site when someone noticed a mark on his hand that looked like 666.

I guess if it was upside down, it'd be 999, and that's the number in England to call equivalent to our 911.

That's emergency. Well, you know, 999 for the Sheriff's Department meant everybody respond. You know, it's an officer needs assistance, everybody responds.

I did not know that. Yeah, so 999. 999 was a ban from England, too, with Nick Cash as a lead singer.

I did not know that. Okay, okay. Mr. Passmore then picked up his circular saw and cut off his hand.

Taken to a nearby hospital, he refused to undergo surgery, insisting he would go to hell if they reattached the hand.

Hospital officials following the judge's advice complied with the patient's wishes. Mr. Passmore, who has a history of mental illness, is now suing the hospital for 3 .35

million, saying they should have ignored his orders and forced him to have surgery from the Associated Press.

That's sad. Super sad. I have no other comment.

That's just sad. I mean, well, there is this, you know, I just, anytime anybody's trying to look for a symbol or, you know, don't buy this or don't do this because it's got this, that, or the other thing,

I'm like, come on. You know, your Toyota symbol looks like whatever or, you know, this, that.

Yeah, the insurance company, it's some kind of anarchy, Antichrist kind of symbol. Yeah, that's why

I don't have it. I have their insurance. Okay, all right, thank you. Steve, there is a little place called,

I think they're out of business now, Prenatal Education Ministries, P -E -M. What makes you say they're out of business?

In Orlando. Yeah. And it says, teach your pre -born child the

Bible and establish God's holy word in their developing spirits for life. Prenatal preschool as seen on the 700

Club. Free brochures. And do you play classical music in the background too?

So it increases their IQ and their, you know, their Bible quotient.

Now, I don't think my kids understood, but, and I don't even know if they heard, but I remember the first couple of pregnancies at least, you know, the third and fourth ones, you just kind of forget about back to life, you know, old hat stuff.

And I would say, I would kind of rub Kim's stomach when Haley and Luke were in the womb and I would sing hymns and read the

Bible and stuff like that. But maybe that was more for me than for them. And talk about the sign of Jonah. You know,

Jonah was in the belly of a fish. See, I noticed that. I noticed that. All right,

Steve, what I want to talk about today is where we're going theologically in this world. And there's an article that came out a while ago in the

Guardian. It's an English newspaper. And it's, I think, dated

October 3rd, 2014. I married myself. Yeah, I saw this and I thought,

I wonder how the invitations went out. You know, I cordially invite you to my own wedding.

Oh, cool. Who are you marrying? And then you say, you know, the parents of so -and -so and so -and -so. Well, wait a minute.

It's just my parents, you know, and... Now, Steve, when we think about this in a big picture, biblically speaking,

Christ purchases the bride, right? In eternity past, the elect is given to the son to go die for, and then in time, the

Holy Spirit will regenerate and redeem. And Christ will, through the

Spirit, transform those believers into his own image and give back the bride to the father.

And there's wonderful examples of that in scripture. In Ephesians 5, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Yes. And so don't you think the attack on marriage between a man and a woman ultimately is attack on God the creator and ordainer of the world and marriage?

Well, it absolutely is. I mean, it's against the created order, and it's also against the very picture that you were just speaking of in Ephesians 5 of Christ and the church.

But, you know, I mean, this is kind of a new twist. I mean, I certainly think that we're going to see marriage lose all of its meaning the way our society is going.

But this is just kind of so, so, I mean, it's just dumb. I married myself.

Come on. So then... Well, maybe she gets marriage benefits from the state or something like that.

Nothing would surprise me. I mean, I'm not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I will predict that we're going to see all manner of things that we would consider absolutely insane coming our way.

And they're going to be proclaimed as normal. And if you don't like that, then there's something wrong with you.

You know, like they're going to try to reduce the age for consent. And I wouldn't doubt that at some point they'll try to eliminate it all together so that we, you know, sorry,

I think pedophilia eventually will become the new homosexuality. They're going to try to normalize every kind of weird behavior.

And I'm sure the normalization of marrying animals will take place. That's right around the bend.

I'm sure it will. Well, I mean, if you can marry yourself, then why shouldn't you be able to marry your dog? If you can marry one person of the same sex, then why shouldn't you be able to marry three people of the opposite sex or six people of mixed sex or whatever, who, you know, if there's no definition of marriage, then marriage means whatever you want it to mean.

Why should it be subjective and controlled by society? Why shouldn't it be subjective and in the control of individuals?

Why shouldn't I be able to determine what my own marriage, what my own happiness means? Steve, I think you'd be living in your own private

Idaho. I absolutely would. Right alongside the B -52s, they'd be across the street from me.

Steve, marriage is sacred. It's ordained by God so much so that at a local church level, if people want to leave their spouses for an unbiblical reason, there should be the discipline of the church, the loving discipline to say, you don't realize what's happening here in this marriage and how it reflects

Christ's eternal love for the bride. What do we do in a society that everything that was good is now evil and evil good?

And so I could take 1 Corinthians 6. Don't you know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither, and instead of fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, it's now neither bullying nor intolerance nor Christian bigotry.

Those people will not inherit the kingdom of God, but such were some of you. It's all backwards.

Yeah, I mean, we have entered wonderland. You know, this is a place where everything's upside down.

Everything's, it really is crazy. It's through a looking glass. We just see things bizarrely in this culture.

Don't even presume to tell me what's right. You don't have any right to do that. Well, God does.

Well, we talked about biblical illiteracy a week ago and Christianity is a revealed religion.

God reveals himself, yes, in nature, but more specifically in scripture. And so once we go to the inside, this is what

I feel marriage should be. Well, I think subjectively marriage should be this. Once we abandon reveal religion, then the genie's out of the bottle.

Anything goes, and that's what I mean. I think we're going to see all sorts of bizarre things and, you know, you see it even now.

I mean, now, I mean, it used to be that the homosexual characters on TV were kind of the anomaly, the guy who lurked in the shadows or the guy who was the rat for the police officers or whatever, you know, but now they're the only sane ones on TV.

You know, they're the nice, normal people. It's the heterosexuals who are, you know, portrayed as being nuts and crazy and the wise fatherly kind of homosexual coming along and dispensing wisdom.

Right, and then the married couple, the heterosexual married couple, they don't really exist, and the dad's kind of, you know, he's kind of nerdy and the mom's, you know, dumpy or vice versa, you know, and it's just like, they don't understand the kids and everything's backwards.

It says in this article, finding the right person to make a commitment to can take years, but it turned out that Grace Gelder had known her perfect partner all her life.

Oh, see, Steve, you've got to learn to love yourself before you can love your neighbor because there's three great commandments.

Love the Lord, your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that means you have to love yourself before you can love your neighbor.

Three great commandments. Whitney Houston theology. It's true. The greatest love of all is learning to love yourself.

When I told my family and friends that I was planning to marry myself, my gran, who has since passed away, said, oh, you always think of something new,

Grace. Yes, I do. Yes, I'm an innovator. My parents, who are very open -minded, also took it in their stride.

They got used to my attraction to the wild and the wacky. As long as it makes you happy, Grace, then we're fine with it.

See? There it is. And can I tell you something? There's the root of the whole problem, right? My parents, who are very open -minded, in other words, they taught her that everything was right as long as she thought it was right.

And so, you know, what do you expect? Garbage in, garbage out. There's a way that seems right to a man, but it's end where it ends.

Self -marriage. Uh -huh. I know. As long as you think it's right. I mean, this is fascinating to me.

Open -mindedness. You just believe whatever you want. Remember, we used to talk about that in Bible study. You don't care what goes into your mind and what goes out of your mind.

I don't think the Jews thought open -mindedness was so good. Like a freight train, everything just kind of passes through.

But, you know, I mean, we're living in the days of the judges, right? Everyone does what's right in his own eyes.

But take it a step further. It's like nobody even thinks that they might be wrong.

Right? I'm sure that even then, I mean, people understood better the Bible in those days, and they knew they were, you know, at least somewhere in their minds, they had this concept that they were wrong.

Well, now people have just convinced themselves that wrong is right. What would the honeymoon be like?

I don't even want to go there. But I mean, it's like, you know, the honeymoon's over quickly because you realize you're a louse.

I've planned my own, you know, I'm going to take a cruise by myself and spend all my time. I mean, what kind of, basically what she's saying is she's a self -absorbed, self -obsessed loser who can't get along with anybody else.

And so the safest thing to do is to, well, yeah, I'm married. Oh, really? Who's your spouse?

Me. Right. What? Well, she said she had a strong recollection when she was 18, hearing a

Bjork song called Isabel. I think Bjork was in the Ice Cube. Wait a second. The Icebergs?

Icebergs. What was the band though? Was it the Ice Cube? Sugar Cubes. Yes, Sugar Cubes.

Sugar Cubes, yes. I like Icebergs better. And the Bjork song called Isabel was my name's

Isabel married to myself. I think I heard one Sugar Cubes record and I was like, that is like one of the worst things

I've ever heard in my life. That was enough for me. So what do you do? I stand before God and these witnesses and I covenant with myself.

To always be nice to myself, to never forsake myself and never leave me. Well, if there's gonna be a solo pact and covenant,

I prefer God's where he says he could swear by no one greater. So he swore by himself.

That's the extent of what I could go for. Maybe she made some kind of unconditional covenant where she cut a bunch of animals in half and then put herself into a deep sleep.

Yes, I think you're going somewhere. Please elaborate, elucidate. I have nothing to elaborate or elucidate.

I just think that is just bizarre. And I mean, the woman, well, she needs to be saved. Let's just put it that way.

But she has some issues. You know, I talk to my kids and I say to them.

Yeah, I do once in a while, yes. I look down upon them and lecture them, point my finger at them, yes.

Yell, you know, I'm a yeller. Are you? Yeah, old yeller. And so I talked to them and, you know, every kid is sitting there thinking, especially they're going through puberty and they're getting a little older.

How could I find somebody to love me? How'd you meet mom? You know, will anybody ever love me? And, you know,

I tell them, you know, the Lord is sovereign and we can trust in him. And I would imagine you're just gonna marry a wonderful young man to my girls and vice versa with my son.

But you know what? You don't have to worry about any of that. You don't have to go out and meet people. You don't have to really date much.

You just, I am the world. Marry yourself. Yeah, marry yourself. I remember one of my kids who will remain nameless, she said, you're never gonna let us get married.

And I said, oh, yes, I will. Can't wait, you know, and I actually did.

And so, but yeah, I wouldn't have let them marry themselves. I would have felt like a very bad dad,

I think. See, it shows Grace Gelder on a wedding day, throwing the flowers, you know, and everybody's trying to catch it.

So then these other people will be the next people to marry themselves. She said, wow, all these people have come all this way today to celebrate me marrying myself.

It was very humbling. Now, this is just like a different universe. I am exalted.

Uh -huh. Remember when I talked about, you know, that Mirror Mirror episode in Star Trek where Spock had the beard and Uhura was, you know, just, you know.

Everything was backwards. Uh -huh, that's what this is. All right, next on our news today, we have

Pope Francis. The devil works to divide Christians. This is on Breitbart.

I agree with the headline. The devil does work to divide Christians. Divisions among Christians hurt the church and they wound

Christ. Do you think he's saying anything about Protestants with those 29 ,000 different divisions? Yeah, I don't really think that's what he's talking about.

I think he's, I think he would prefer that we all come back to Mother Rome. Hmm, but you know what?

Mary would never say no to her son. Well, yeah,

I, you know what? That might be true. Certainly she would not say no to her son now, right?

But, you know, is, well, and I think the true, the opposite is really what they teach, right?

Jesus would never say no to his mother. I know, but this is, this is Mirror, Mirror Universe. This is Marrying Yourself Day.

Don't confuse me with the facts. Oh, sorry, I apologize. The Pope concluded, hopefully, let us go forward toward full unity.

History has separated us, but we are on the way to reconciliation and communism. Oh, sorry, communion.

Can I give you a clue though? History did not separate us. It wasn't history, it was something else.

It was called - The Bible. Yeah, there was that thing. Steve, you're such a stickler.

You know, I feel kind of emotionally violated when you do that, because I'm on the path.

I'm on the journey. I'm searching for self -actualization, because -

I've got my hammer and my stickle, and I'm not afraid to use them. My stickle. My stickle. Well, there's no other way to be a stickler, right?

No, I know. All right, well, let's see, what else do we have here in front of us? The Cripplegate bleep, why

Christians shouldn't cuss, October 6th, 2014. Some crazy guy named

Clint Archer. I just got news for you. Don't ever write a book with Clint Archer. If you do, only let him write a third of it.

He's quite erudite. I don't know, you know, why Christians shouldn't cuss, let no unwholesome word, you know.

What does that mean? I think that means let no unwholesome word. I mean, those things ought not to be,

I mean, here's kind of a simple thing. If you wouldn't, if the

Lord was with you, if you wouldn't say that kind of thing, then why would you want to say it? Because he is with you, right? So, I mean, if it would embarrass you to say,

I mean, here's an even simpler test. If you wouldn't want to say it in front of your grandmother, assuming your grandmother is a normal grandmother, then, you know,

I mean, if she was a motorcycle bike gang member, maybe she married herself grandma or something like that, but I guess she wouldn't be existing.

But I mean, it's so obvious. I mean, again, this, I think this goes back to an earlier show we did about biblical illiteracy.

When we talk about this, this should be self -evident, right? So, how about self -control, controlling your tongue, as James says, all these kinds of things, and yet we just don't think it's a problem.

Steve, I like Clint's reasoning, and he talks about how our words are a barometer of what's in our hearts.

And so, I mean, I could probably solve this whole problem with this cussing

Christian mentality in the emergent church. Would I cuss around Jesus if he were here?

But also, it's in my heart. I mean, for whatever reason, when I got saved 25 years ago,

I quit cussing and have rarely cussed, maybe less than five times since then. I mean, with my words, though.

But I'm sorry to say, and I'll admit it on the radio, that I don't say it with my mouth, but I say it in my mind.

And I don't like it. I get convicted. My conscience gets after me because I don't even want to say idiot or raka because of what

Jesus says in Matthew 5. Matthew 5. Yeah, I was looking at Matthew 4, but you know, about, it's not what you consume that defiles you, but what comes out of you.

It's not what goes in and what comes out. But yeah, I just, I was convicted early on, and I think really the first inkling

I had that I actually might be a Christian was when I found myself wanting to say some things, and then

I just thought, I can't say that. I can't, I can't think, and I wasn't even at a church yet.

And I just thought, this is not right for me to do, you know? Well, think about, does this edify?

Does this encourage? Does this lift up? Mark 7, what comes out of a person is what defiled him, is what defiles him.

From within, out of the heart come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. And so I just want to run from all that.

It was my past. I don't think you have to be very smart to swear. Well, exactly.

And that's one of the things, you know, being a police officer, that's one of the things I learned was it takes absolutely, let me just clue you in on this, zero intelligence to curse.

Anybody can do it. Any, you know, anybody with an IQ of, you know, 70 can form a series of cuss words.

And quite frankly, they do a lot. Steve, I wanted to go see the new

Brad Pitt movie, Fury with the tankers in World War II. And as you know, and you do too, we love

World War II and the history behind it and all the different nuances that are happening. And I just pulled up the family

Christian movie guide and it tells you, you know, brief sexual innuendo, and it'll tell you all those things.

And then it counts the swear words for you. You know, my flesh, I wish I wouldn't have looked at it because I didn't need to know that it says,

I think if memory serves me correctly, 147 times, there's the worst word that's in our culture.

Which is like, what, one a minute or something? Yeah, one a minute. So now I have to take my wife to go hear that.

Do I want to see it? The answer is yes. Should I lead my wife into go seeing that nonsense? You could just go down to Skid Row and get about the same.

And I don't understand that. I don't, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't around in World War II, but I can't believe that people talked exactly like that back then.

Even Dick Winters would say on the set in Band of Brothers, hey, we don't swear this much, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

We didn't swear that much. I believe it. All right, my name is Mike Abendroth. I'm here with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio, Tuesdayguyatnocompromiseradio .com

or mikeatnocompromiseradio .com. God bless. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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