James White And Odd Flames

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, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and before we introduce our guest today, I'd like to remind folks that Israel 2015 with Omaha Bible Church, Pat Abendroth and No Compromise Radio, Bethlehem Bible Church, or you can sign up, you can go to our website, and we're going to be going to Israel in 2015.

And I wish our guest was going with us, James White. Why don't you go to Israel with us?

I haven't been given an invitation, so I will expect that very quickly. Can I put it on the calendar right now?

Well, you have to raise your own funds, that's the problem.

Oh, man, I'll sing.

See, if I invite you, then Pat and I won't be able to teach at any of the sites, because they'll all want to listen to you.

Well, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. They all know you two pretty well, and I would just like to sit back and watch that, because the interaction of two completely weird people would be really, really fascinating.

I think you called us nefarious brothers one time on your blog. I think that might work. Yeah, I think so. So, James, AOMin .org, Alpha and Omega Ministries, a debater, I love his books, and I wanted to have him on again.

No Compromise Radio, you're not a stranger to the ministry. Do you ever listen to No Compromise Radio at one-and-a-half speed while you're on your bicycle?

Depends on the subject, but normally everything's at one-and-a-half speed, so I can get through all of it. I'm actually falling behind right now, because I haven't been on the bike as much over the past about week as I had been for the past two months, so I'm already falling behind in my studying.

James, I live here in New England, and it's been difficult with 20 below wind chills to get on the carbon fiber.

I'm sorry. Am I supposed to feel badly about this? I have to get up at 2 o 'clock in the morning to ride in August here, okay? So I'm sorry that the 20 below wind chill thing just is not really pulling the sympathy on me right now.

Strange Fire, Cessationism, and the Temperature of the Debate

Let's talk about a few things that come to mind in current events and evangelicalism. Let's back up a hair. How about the kerfuffle that happened in light of Strange Fire? What are some of your thoughts on that, and how can our listeners navigate between these two camps, the cessationists and the continuationists?

Well, the thing that's bothered me the most, to be honest with you, is the two camps have seemingly completely drawn up the drawbridges and have the fire ready to drop on anybody who wanders close enough to say, hey, could we talk about this?

I'm going to be debating, actually, Michael Brown on the subject of healing, which obviously is going to touch on continuationist, cessationist stuff, in just a few weeks on Revelation TV over in Europe, and this is not my area.

I'm not going to claim to be an expert in these areas. I'm just an elder in a Reformed Baptist church when it comes to this stuff. But we're also going to be debating, doing a separate debate on the extent of the atonement, so that helps me as far as being a little bit more in the area that I'm used to dealing with.

But it just strikes me that, at the time, and I saw it coming, I didn't have much time to prepare for it. I was in South Africa doing a bunch of debates with Muslims down there, and so I get back and it happens like the very next week, and so this whole thing hits, and it just seems to me that on both sides there is not a whole lot of willingness to say, well, that's a good point, but it just seems to be completely black and white to certain people on both sides.

I'm not saying that the truth is in the middle. I am a cessationist, I do believe that the miraculous sign gifts have ceased, but I argue for that from Scripture, I argue that from the purposes, I argue for that from the sovereignty of God, and I recognize that there, you know, I'm not quite ready to throw John Piper under the bus or something like that, even though I'll be perfectly honest with you, Piper's never been my go-to guy on any areas like that, but I'm not going to burn a Grudem Systematic Theology or something like that.

I listen to these guys and I want to be able to interact with them, I'm not going to compromise, they know where I'm coming from, but at the same time, I'm just concerned about the knee-jerk reaction that I'm seeing from the other side.

I mean, I've seen some horrible stuff that has been put out in response to the Strange Fire conference, and it seems like some people didn't listen to what was said at Strange Fire, and there were a couple, please hear me clearly on this, there were a couple of times, how many people spoke at Strange Fire, I mean, how many sessions were there, how many hours of discussion was there, I don't even know, but I have said there were a couple of places where I was concerned that the necessary qualifications were not stated clearly and that as a result, the main message would get muffled because people would focus upon that, and I think I've been proven right, because that's exactly what people have focused upon.

And I'm very, very, very sensitive to that because of my work with Muslims, because unfortunately what I'm seeing a lot amongst evangelicals is, well, there aren't any moderate Muslims out there, or they'd be out doing this, that, and the other thing, they're all jihadists, all the rest of the stuff, and I shake my head and go, no, they're not, if every Muslim in the world was a jihadist, there would be peace absolutely nowhere, they make up one point however many billion people on the planet, and if they all wanted to kill you, there would be what you see in localized areas all over the world, and that's not the way it is, so please, let's not lose our minds here, let's listen to what the other side has said, let's allow them to define things, and so on and so forth, but that's unfortunately amongst many evangelicals, there's no willingness to do that, and I'm starting to see the same attitude, in fact, just before we started talking, I had someone who listens to my program regularly, just, you know, ripping and shredding on that kind of stuff in regards to Michael Brown and this whole area, so I'm concerned that right now the temperature is so stinking high that there's a whole lot of heat being generated, but not a whole lot of light, that's my concern right now.

Why Charismatic Leaders Hesitate to Condemn False Teachers

James, as I think through this, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems to me that some of our charismatic friends, real brothers in Christ, and you'd name the Grudems, or maybe the Sam Storms, or Michael Browns, why are they so reticent?

What's the reluctance for them to say, Mike Bickle teaches this, it's wrong, Benny Hinn is even more extreme, this is flagrant, this is completely in the false teacher category, speaking with Ben, why the reticence, why the reluctance, do you think?

Very, very good question, and it's interesting, I was just paralleling it to what happens with Islam, I think that part of it is the same thing you get when you talk to someone who is a Muslim, whose theology does not allow them to believe in the acts of jihad that are taking place, and yet they are very reticent to condemn a fellow Muslim without looking like they're actually supporting imperialist America, or something like that.

It almost seems like the sides have been drawn up so tightly that you circle the wagons, so that the guy on the other side of the circle may be shooting in a different direction, but at least he's shooting at the same enemies, and so we're now friends, even though we're really far apart, and the lack of discernment in those areas I think is partly due to that, but then I think there is simply an element within the charismatic movement that precludes a discernment, and that is the subjective element to it.

If I'm saying that I have this subjective experience, and that subjective experience is the foundation of my being able to say, well, the Lord said this to me, or the Lord said that to me, then how can I look at somebody else who likewise says, the Lord has said this, and apply an objective standard to them when I'm promoting a subjective standard with myself, and so I have often said that one of the key issues here is Sola Scriptura, and is the sufficiency of scripture.

That's interesting, Michael, I guess I haven't gotten to it yet, it's on my list, hopefully I'll get to it on about a 75-mile ride this weekend, but in authentic fire, his response to the Strange Fire Conference, there's a chapter on Sola Scriptura made me charismatic, and so the idea is, well, it's just a plain reading of the text, but the issue isn't here a hermeneutical one, it is a categorical one, that is, what is the final and sufficient source of authority?

And I just don't know how anybody who allows for the idea that the Spirit is speaking in the first person, in a revelatory fashion, can long and meaningfully defend the idea that the canon is closed, and that scripture is, in and of itself, sufficient.

You can say, oh, you know, when Mrs. Butler says, the Lord said to me in our services, that's not the same level of scripture. You can say that, but try to flesh that out, try to demonstrate what that means.

Does that mean it's not coming from the Spirit of God? Does that mean it's not the words of the Spirit of God? How do you have a thus sayeth the Lord that has one meaning in scripture, and then another meaning in our worship service?

I just don't think that works. And so the result of that is, there just isn't that strong commitment to the objective standard that allows for someone to look at something and go, yeah, wow, that's just completely wrong.

Benny Hinn, Healing Claims, and the Problem of Discernment

So I, for example, a couple days ago, ran across a clip of Benny Hinn, and he was in Kyiv, Ukraine. That's where I got the connection. I'm going to be in Kyiv in just a couple weeks, teaching church history.

And so he was in Kyiv, Ukraine, a couple years ago, and it was all about how he, you know, the anointing fell, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And it was absolutely beyond the bounds. I mean, I'm sorry, anybody who claims to, in essence, be throwing the Spirit around, using his coat to knock people in the front row over, and in the meantime, showing he was in a really foul mood, he's yelling at people, he is in absolute despotic control of everything, so much so he's telling the musicians what key to put in, he sees some security guys and says, he's out of here, out of here, and never comes back.

I mean, he's just in a really foul mood, and yet, in the midst of all that, is allegedly throwing the Holy Spirit around and anointing people. There's nothing about repentance, it's just totally separate from my religious faith, okay, which is Christianity.

I see nothing that's even close to what the Holy Spirit of God would do in this situation. I look at that, and I just go, how can anybody be aware of this, and not recognize its unbiblical nature? Now, of course, at the same time, you and I both traveled abroad, I never thought I'd be doing much of that, but I want to be a lot like you, and so I'm trying to do that now.

My bookings, by the way, are down since you've been going to Germany in my stead.

Well, you blame me for that, okay, alright, it's good to know when to expect the knife in the back, but anyway, I was just down in South Africa, and the church down there is absolutely crippled by this kind of wildly unbiblical teaching.

Most of the people there that call themselves Christians are not even functionally Trinitarian, they're barely monotheistic. Their knowledge of the Gospel and the Bible is next to nothing. There are a couple, obviously, good churches down there, the one that I spoke at associated with Master's Seminary and stuff, but they are in the small minority, and they have to spend so much time doing what I would call theological triage.

They've got people coming in, they're actually sheep of Christ, but they have been absolutely fleeced, and their heads have been filled with all sorts of silliness. It was a real honor to be at the church down there, and to see all these young people, and they didn't want it to end.

They were just so thirsty, so hungry to hear consistent Biblical teaching, because the word-faith movement has just crippled the Christian witness and ministry in that nation. So unfortunately, they're not alone there.

That's very common overseas.

Michael Brown, Benny Hinn, and Public Accountability

We're talking to James White today on No Compromise Radio. You can go access his site, aomin .org. I just was watching The Dividing Line this morning, so I encourage our listeners to do that very thing.

James, it seems to me that the cessationists, they will police movements within their realm, for instance, King James. Only people are cessationists, and we will take them to task for their errant views.

But then I say to myself, how can Michael Brown—I didn't really know Michael Brown before this whole brouhaha—but how can I respect Michael Brown when his tweet page says author of 22 books, Ph .D., and then he goes on Benny Hinn, and there's five shows.

Is there any circumstance under which you would go on Benny Hinn, and what would happen in the first ten minutes if you did?

Well, you know exactly why I'd go on Benny Hinn, and that would be to rebuke the man and to call him to repentance for the blasphemy of pretending the Holy Spirit is something you can throw at people.

But that's not what was going on with Michael, and what bothered, what concerned me far more honestly than Michael's going on Benny Hinn, which I consider to be a massive lapse of discernment, and a basically, okay, strange fire, you were right, completely all the way down the line, no discernment amongst charismatics.

But what's been worse has been the explanation that he's offered, and that basically saying, I don't know anything about Benny Hinn, if these things are true, wouldn't it be wonderful if I now have an opportunity to talk to Benny Hinn?

He's been doing this stuff for 30 years. Thirty years. You could sit down in front of your computer right now and start watching Benny Hinn stuff on the computer that's widely available to anybody, and you could watch nonstop, just long enough to sleep and maybe shower, hopefully, for the next week and not repeat anything.

But boy, you sure would repeat heresy after heresy and error after error. And what really concerns me is then Michael plays Benny Hinn saying good things, as if that means, well, here you go. He calls people to repentance and belief in Christ, there's no other way of salvation but in Christ, and there's no other name given among men by which you must be saved.

So he's preaching the gospel, and as long as you preach the gospel, you've got to be a Christian, everything's good. The problem there is, obviously, is that I could pull the same stuff from the Mormon prophet, I could pull that from your local Jehovah's Witness, I could pull that from all sorts of sources.

There is just a fundamental lack of discernment in saying, well, he says good things, and I've got a former student who works for Benny Hinn who says he's a wonderful guy, and therefore we don't have to worry about him tossing the Holy Spirit around, and we don't have to worry about his private plane and his $10 million home and all the rest of that kind of stuff, and we don't have to worry about all the people sitting in the back of his Crusades with the truly crippled people who never get close to the stage, while people up front are getting their short right legs healed.

I just went to my chiropractor an hour and a half ago, and I got healed, too. My right leg was shorter than my left leg out there. They're even now, hallelujah, but I didn't have to spend, I didn't have to sow seed into Benny Hinn's ministry, I didn't need to go to the right chiropractor, and it helps when you're a cyclist, as you know, to have your legs about the same length.

So that's what really bothered me, was, and when I get a chance to sit down with Michael, the one first thing I'm going to say is, Michael, don't tell me you don't know about Benny Hinn. The teenagers and the old ladies at my church know about Benny Hinn, and they're not sitting around watching TBN, either.

It's just, he's been on ABC. He's been the subject of exposés and everything. You'd have to be living in a closet not to have encountered a great deal of information about Benny Hinn. And so that really is what has made me go, no, come on, that's just not a possible defense.

You know, you had to have known what kind of fallout there would be from going on there. And even if you say, well, look, I went on there to discuss issues that are important to me, I was allowed to speak the truth, I was able to address the hyper-grace controversy and homosexuality and stuff like that, okay, I hear you.

But if you're going to go on Benny Hinn and talk about homosexuality, you've got to address what Benny Hinn did back in the 1990s, where he prophesied that by such and such a date, the entire homosexual community would be wiped away by fire.

How can you avoid that? It would be like going to Westboro Baptist and never mentioning all of the nastiness that they have promulgated in the name of Christ. You could preach in the pulpit about what's important to you, but given where you are, how can you avoid that?

I don't understand. James, I know you're... At the same time, let me make one quick addition to that. At the same time, there's been a lot of people saying, well, you should be doing this, this, this right now.

I haven't even had a chance to sit down and actually talk with them. So we are in a day where social media has put everything on such a fast track that I think that's actually closing down some avenues of communication.

So the point is, when I sit down, Michael, over dinner in a couple weeks, I am going to be very straightforward in what I say. But I think that we don't have to be so fast that I have to act long before that.

Charismatic Calvinism, Church History, and the Future of the Movement

James, going to Kiev and teaching church history, help our listeners understand, in light of church history, do we ever have a Charismatic Calvinist movement? Was there ever such a thing? Question one.

And then question number two, what do you think will happen with the stepchildren or the next generation of Charismatic Calvinists?

Oh, goodness. Well, you have to be very, very careful. Sometimes people are surprised when they find out what someone's view of spiritual gifts are, because it doesn't necessarily come out of what they're saying.

And so whenever anybody says, well, this is completely new, this is never been seen before, it's real easy to find an exception someplace. It's real possible to find, well, you know, here's a spirit over here, and he was open to this, or la, la, la, la.

The issue, really, I think there is not so much talking about Calvinists as it is talking about what constitutes the Charismatic movement, or a particular view of the role of the supernatural, the supremacy of scripture, the concept of speaking in tongues, how are they all related.

I think that's one of the problems is that, you know, you don't have a lot of precise dealing with that. And that's one of the problems, I think, that Strange Fire had to address, is that in talking about the Charismatic movement, it's just as wide, well, I'm not going to say it's just as wide, but it's such a wide variety of people come from such a wide variety of backgrounds that you're automatically going to be running into problems of accusations of broadbrushing and things like that, because of the large number of people.

And the same thing with the Reform movement. I mean, how do you define that? There are Reform churches, they were the people in it, wouldn't believe almost anything that John Calvin believed. So, historically, the key issue to me is Reform people have emphasized the sufficiency of scripture as the sole and foul rule of faith in the Church.

And hence, any kind of revelation or anything like that beyond that has always been rejected or not in the sense of being Reformed means the Holy Spirit's no longer active, the Holy Spirit is no longer able to enlighten men's minds or things like that, but the idea of seeking that kind of thing.

That's one of the major differences, I would say, between the Charismatic mindset and the Reform mindset, is the Reform person says, if God wishes to move in such a way that He acts outside the normal bounds that He has given to us, He is free to do that, and we are in no way, shape, or form putting any limitations on what God can do.

But that's not what the Charismatic movement says. How many times you just happen to hit the wrong button and end up on TBN, and almost the very first words out of the TV set are almost, always, expect your miracle today.

Well, if something can be expected, it ain't a miracle. That's just by the way the definition. And so, when you put all that together, you see why, looking at Church history and looking at the varieties of people that have been called either Reformed or Charismatic, it's very difficult to draw extremely strong lines without inviting somebody to say, Ah, what you forgot about this, or Ah, what about that?

But it's a little bit easier to talk about the second part of the question, and that is, I do know people today who are trying to hold the two together, and very often, maybe this is your experience, they say that they're doing so because they have been mistreated, or feel that they've been mistreated within the quote-unquote Reform movement, or they were looking for something more, the worship wasn't enough for them, etc., etc., etc., so it's been some type of subjective experience that is there, that they're looking for something to fill that void.

And when you look into the future of where they're going to be, I don't see a Charismatic Reformed movement being able to hold itself together, because there's an internal dissonance in regards to the key issue of the sufficiency of Scripture, and how Scripture functions, and the whole concept of Revelation, as well as the sovereignty of God.

One of my main arguments in Spain in my debate with Michael Brown is going to be, look, sickness and disease is all under the sovereignty of God, and if there is a divine decree and God has a purpose in these things, that has to be taken into consideration, and the entire Charismatic understanding of healing always being in the will of God, it's purchased in the Atonement, X, Y, and Z.

Got about 30 seconds, James. This doesn't allow for that kind of a perspective. So, I don't see a real big future coming from that group, because I just don't think it can hold itself together.

James White on No Compromise Radio today. You know what I thought, James? I just sat here listening to you. I thought I was listening to the dividing line, then I forgot I had to ask you questions. I just talk a lot.

Thank you so much for your ministry, voice crying out in the wilderness, proverbially. We appreciate you and what you've done for the Kingdom. God bless you. Thank you, sir. Great to be on with you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.