Luke Abendroth 2025 Update

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, Michael Lee Abendroth, in the studio today with Luke Michael Abendroth, and just moments ago we were holding

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Eliezer Knox Luke Abendroth. What in the world is going on,

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Luke? How are you? Good. I carried on the family tradition. I passed down my first name as his middle name, as one of his middle names.

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Yeah, but I'm offended that it's not Eliezer Luke Knox Abendroth.

00:41

What's going on with that? I wanted it to sound like it was my name at the end. You got to turn the dubstep off, man.

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His background. That's how they do this in radio. Oh, no. We are not in Carlsbad, California. This is uptown

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Worcester, downtown Burbank. Yeah. It's like a nightclub or Hillsong.

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Hillsong. Well, I went to a Hillsong in Los Angeles, and it was like they had dubstep.

01:06

Really? Yeah. They had the big, you know, the beat, and it has the big drop and stuff, so. Hmm. Yeah.

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I needed some kind of Euro red sunglasses on. I have all kinds of presets like this.

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See? It's just like house music. I don't even remember what I was saying. Oh, something about Eliezer.

01:26

Yeah. So I wanted his last name to have, I wanted the last part of his name to be my name.

01:34

So if it was Eliezer, Luke, Knox, Abendroth, then it's all broken up. I want it to be Eliezer, Knox, Luke, Abendroth.

01:42

Oh, so there's a pause in there. Yeah. It's almost like a space. Yeah. In Hebrew, what's a little,

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I don't know, it's not saying a lot, but huh? Otnok. Is that it? I don't know.

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The halfway marker of the verse. Oh, I didn't know that. I don't think I've ever heard that before. So how can

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I be better at Greek than Hebrew and you're better at Hebrew than Greek? How's that work out? I don't know.

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Maybe because I've done more Hebrew. So the Israel stuff helped. That's true. Now, last time we talked,

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I don't know if it was official that you're preaching every week. And I don't know your title,

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I guess, a pastor or something at Redemption Church, North County. Tell me a little bit about the church. Yeah.

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So we are a new church as of six months ago. I am a pastoral candidate there.

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So we have a little bit of a time of, I guess, testing or something for the congregation to get to know myself and the other guy,

02:40

Andrew. But I am preaching pretty regularly. So that's been great. I just finished preaching through Ruth.

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But the church is, yeah, it's new. We are, we're in Carlsbad, California, which is like North County, San Diego.

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And yeah, small, but it's been, it's been fun. Really, really great. Great people.

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And I saw the website and I thought it was excellent. And it talked about being confessional and I don't know,

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Christ -centered and other things, but I don't know what you said on there, but I really liked it. Well, how did you know

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I wrote it? It's chat GPT. I said, I said, write a church doctrinal statement based on Mike Abendroth and No Compromise Radio.

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And that's what I came up with. It's better than I seen Creed. It's the Mycene Creed, the

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Mycene. Okay. You're a student at West Cal, a

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Westminster Seminary, Escondido. What's the difference between Escondido Westminster and Philadelphia Westminster?

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Well, they're both sort of sister schools. Westminster Philly was started by Machen and I know

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Westminster Escondido at least is sort of carrying that on, on the, on the West Coast.

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So there's some different small theological things and stuff like that. But traditionally they've been somewhat sister schools, both serving the confessional reform traditions, you know,

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OPC, PCA, and then out in the West Coast, especially the URCNA, the

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United Performed Churches of North America. So yeah, there's differences, different, different professors, so different flavors.

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And you're being pretty nice to Westminster Philly. Good for you. You know, you know how to do things.

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I know how to do things. He taught me. Well, I'm glad you're at Westminster Escondido.

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I prefer that Westminster to the other Westminster. How about that? Sounds good. Sounds good. Okay. Although, who, let's see, years ago, they had

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Westminster Escondido, had Fesco, Godfrey, maybe Ball was still there,

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Dennis Johnson. Dennis Johnson. Who are some of your professors now? My professors now, this last semester,

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I have Dr. Bittner, Dr. Brad Bittner for Greek. He's a, he's a great professor.

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I have Dr. Vannie teaching Hebrew and Pentateuch, he's a Hebrew, Hebrew guy, and he's, he's a great professor as well.

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And then I also have, I've had Dr. Estelle, Dr. Troxell, who wrote that With All Your Heart book, a popular little book on the heart.

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And then who else? Dr. Clark was, was a big influence in me going to that seminary,

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Dr. R. Scott Clark, and then Michael Horton teaches a few classes too. Does anything good come out of Nebraska, just like a hayseedville?

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I think it's you, Pat, Dr. R. Scott Clark, Dr. Troxell.

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There we go. A bunch of people, Nebraska. Something went through my mind and I didn't say it.

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You'll be very happy. I'm finally learning. What's something about Runzas? Oh yeah, there's, that's true. We go to the

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Pactum Conference, probably within no time, you'll take my place speaking at the Pactum Conference. So there'll still be two

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Abendroths preaching, but it'll just be Luke and Pat.

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That's how we'll know that nepotism has won the day. All right.

06:03

Today on No Compromise Radio, we are free flowing, Mike and Luke just sitting down talking.

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It's like you're just listening in on a father -son conversation. Luke, you got in last night at what, 5 a .m.

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or something like that? Yeah, our flight got delayed. So I think it was five. I think I got home at 5 a .m.

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and I had a coffee on the way home and I drove for your daughter, my sister, Maddie, and I was wide awake.

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So I was trying to fall asleep and then I had my little Kindle out, just trying to read or something to fall asleep. Speaking of reading, tell our listeners a little bit of what you've had to read, like in the last month as you got ready for finals.

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Well, all of the semester reading. Right. So you did all this semester reading in the last two weeks.

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And what was that reading? Who'd you have to read? Who did I have to read? Well, I had a lot of reading for the

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Church in the Modern Age class, which is sort of the final church history class that you're required at Westminster.

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So it covers from the French Reformation up until the present day. So I had to read a lot of Beza, Turretin, and then a wide range,

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Schleiermacher, all kinds of things. If somebody in the listening audience hears the word

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Schleiermacher, what would you say? Let's say they're a lay person. They don't know anything about him.

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What do they need to watch out for? Everything. Yeah.

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As we say around here. On the circus spot. Whoa. Right next to the dog -faced boy.

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See, that's where Schleiermacher belongs. Yeah, right next to the dog -faced boy. It's true.

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But seriously, what was his big push? What was he known for? Well, hopefully my professor doesn't listen to this, but I think if I had to summarize,

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I didn't really. I thought he was known for being on drugs reading his article that I had to read. It was so trippy.

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Was it Fear and Loathing you had to read? I don't remember the name of it. But just basically that religion, we need to stop thinking about particular religions and consider religion singular and that all religions are getting after this one feeling of absolute dependence and we really need to recognize the universe outside of us and basically pantheism.

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He tries to, in a liberal way, take Jesus and the Atonement and change the meaning and make it into some kind of progressive scheme for a new age of humanity.

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All right. And you have been reading, who else, Bloom? Oh, well, that's just for fun.

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I had to read a bunch of stuff for the final about evangelicalism and how it's related to the

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Reformed tradition. So Dr. Horton's recent works like Shaman and Sage and little small booklet called

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What is Secularization. But he's referenced Harold Bloom, who mom actually likes

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Harold Bloom because he compiles poetry, English poetry. He's a, he's a literature critic and a literary critic.

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And there's, I got home and there was a Harold Bloom book sitting in the room on the counter. But yeah, he wrote a book called

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The American Religion. So I was just interested in the class. I was reading out. I was stuck on the plane in Chicago for two hours on the tarmac.

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So I was reading out on my Kindle. What you said earlier to me today, Luke, I thought was insightful.

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Tell our listeners a little bit about Bloom is against Christianity and he was hoping for something to happen in Christianity and it is happening and he was against something else.

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What were you describing? Yeah, basically this book, The American Religion, this, this literary critic,

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Harold Bloom, he highlights the American nature of, of the

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American Christ. He calls, he calls the Christ of, of evangelicalism and he talks about how there is an

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American religion, even though we don't have a state religion, the American religion is all about the inward turn.

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And he highlights how that is actually opposed to historic and what he uses often is historic creedal

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Christianity, that there's this creedal orthodoxy, whether it's in Roman Catholicism or in the reformed tradition or, or just in, in the story of the church and that the

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American version of Christianity is totally opposed to that, even if they, they don't admit that.

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And so he highlights the similarities between what, what he says is the, the Southern Baptists, the

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Mormons, and, and then he talks about Adventism and basically his argument is they are all just repackaging ancient

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Gnosticism, which is one of the, which is the original heresy of the Christian church that matter is bad, it's evil, there's a

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God within us and we need to unite to some kind of eternal world soul.

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And so he basically just traces this, this search for the, for the inner man that's really divine and this kind of pantheistic impulse in a lot of versions of Christianity.

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And it's really interesting because he highlights, he said, you know, he reads so much about religion and religious criticism and he highlights one person that he said stands out as an example of this kind of ancient backwards historic

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Christianity. And he says, this guy, he doesn't like him, even though he knows he's intelligent. He says, it's, it's

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Jay Gresham Machen. Nice. So he basically just compares the religion of Machen to, and the historic

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Christian church to what we see in the churches today and, and the, the impulse, and he does a lot with Mormonism as kind of the, the chair example of, of this

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American religion. So it's probably redundant to ask, but just to clarify or maybe rephrase with a question, why do you think we've gone so far as an

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American church, so far from creeds and confessions and external and objective to the subjective?

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Is there a reason for that? What's kind of driving all that besides Satan? Well, I think a lot of this is explained.

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I think, I mean, I'll just, I don't have an original thought about this, but I think it's probably following Dr. Horton is a lot of this finds its roots in,

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I mean, you could go all the way back to the fifth century and Orphic spirituality, but especially in the

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Christian tradition in medieval mystics, like Joachim of Fiore and, and men like Meister Eckhart and the men who,

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Steve Meister, I knew that I should watch out for that guy. Yeah. So, and Towler who wrote

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Theologica Germanica, but basically all these medieval mystics who were, they definitely had this pantheistic idea that everything is divine and you need to turn inward.

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You need to, to look inside of yourself for a true religion.

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This was kind of picked up by, this is a long answer to your question. This is kind of picked up by, by the Anabaptists.

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So the radical reformation who they're actually one of the first groups to have a scholar who compiled the first collection of so -called contradictions in the scriptures.

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So that's what, that's what the Anabaptists did because, and they were able to look at the scriptures from their inner light within themselves that they had from these medieval mystics and they could determine this dead written word, what was really important in it.

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So they set themselves up over and against the scriptures and, and that's really mediated to German pietism by Burma.

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And then in German pietism, you get this, this within the Lutheran church and within other reformed and confessional churches, you get this opposition to what's seen as this dead orthodoxy, this confessionalism that there's this living, there's this living religion of the inner man that transcends all denominational and confessional boundaries.

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It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you have this experience and, and you know, that's what, what influenced

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Wesley. Wesley was, was, was, was a witness to some of those German pietists. And then, you know, Wesley passes this down to, to Whitfield and Edwards in the second great awakening, you have

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Charles Finney. So I think a lot of it is just that, that theological heritage, this intellectual history of this is the, the inward turn.

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This has always been a tradition that's lurking under the, the crust of Christendom, maybe on the fringes, but there's always been the, this creedal

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Christianity that looks to the, the ancient creeds and looks to the scriptures outside of us as an authority.

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And even the spirits work in us, the spirit is not us. He's outside of us, even if he's working inside of us and looking out for truth.

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And there's always been this other, other tradition. And so I think that's part of it. I mean, I think another part of it is probably what united Americans, what united all

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Americans to come to America. Well, even if it's not a dispensational millennialism, there is a type of millennialism that they are, that they're advocating that if we get there, if we, if we get away from these constraints of European society, there's going to be a new age, that there's going to be a city on a hill.

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It's not the church, but the Puritans, even some of the Puritans and pilgrims, we're going to be a city on a hill as a nation now.

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And so there's, there's this uniting together of people like that, or these pilgrims who still have this orthodoxy, but they're looking for a greater age.

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And then you also have the Quakers, you have William Penn, Pennsylvania, you have these men who they are, they are the, the, they are continuing this tradition of, of, of the

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Anabaptists and this radical anti, this quote unquote dead orthodoxy movement.

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So who, what unites those people? It's this desire for a millennial kingdom, even if it's not supernatural.

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And they, they all agree that we need to get away and we need to get to this new age. So I think that we've just continued that on and that new age is realized by turning inward, turning to the self and look inside of you and you'll figure it all out.

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So I don't know, that's all very confusingly said, and I'm just repeating what

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Horton teaches in his classes. So, but that's, that's a little bit of, of how he probably would answer it.

16:53

That's excellent, Luke. I was just listening to you and learning today. We're talking to Luke Abendroth.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. You can write us, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

17:05

Luke and I were here at the church building for something else. And I said, Hey, come on in. Let's do a show. What are we going to talk about?

17:12

I have no idea. And that's just how we roll. So good job, not knowing the questions, but coming up with good answers.

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As you were talking earlier about the drift toward the inward man,

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I was thinking about Quakers because we are close to Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, New Bedford, New Bedford, and the whole whaling thing.

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And I don't know if you know this, Luke, but the whalers, you know, they were all Quakers down there at Nantucket. And so the women ran the show because the guys were out on the ships.

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And now you've got this kind of a little feminism, ladies, you know, inner light.

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You know, I don't know where George Fox was, but he's probably somewhere in the middle of all this stuff. But I think the fall affected our inner light.

18:05

Right. Well, and that's the thing is, at the end of the day, what that doesn't explain is, what about the spirit and the flesh?

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No matter how sanctified you are, when you're 98 years old and you've been a missionary for 50 years, the flesh is still there and the flesh is still not necessarily your body, but your sinful flesh is still hanging on.

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There's a continual war of the spirit against the flesh. And unfortunately, this leads to this kind of like, well, if it's spiritual, it's good.

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And which is not biblical at all. What do you think the reason is? I don't know if we have one, but the

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Lord could have immediately glorified us upon salvation by either taking us to heaven or glorifying us on earth.

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Why do you think we're, I almost said relegated, but that would be, I don't want to defame the

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Lord's name. Why do we have to struggle like that? What's the reason why

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God thought in his perfect plan, this is the way his sanctification should go in terms of our response to killing sin and living for righteousness.

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And it was, it's very difficult. Well, I don't know if I want to answer the question, which is why in God's perfect plan, usually that's the same thing.

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It's the desire to peek in to the mysteries. Is Luke correcting me on my show? No, I'm just kidding.

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But I think probably Romans 7 carries the answer with it of what does Paul say?

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Why does he say with such passion, thanks be to God who gives, who brings the victory through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Why does he say that? Well, it's because right before, immediately prior, he says, who wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death without that black velvet background.

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You don't see the diamond of the gift of Christ's righteousness and his obedience in our place and this salvation totally outside of us.

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It's external that Christ has accomplished. So I don't know that that's probably what I would know.

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I think that's good. I read someplace that that body of death that Paul was wanting to be delivered from,

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Paul had that idea because sometimes if you would get caught for murder, first degree murder, they would take the dead body of the person, of the one that you murdered and like strap it to you.

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Right. Do you think that's legit? I don't know. I should be asking you if that's legit. I've heard that before from you.

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It sure preaches. Yeah, it's great. Uh -huh. All right. Luke, a few more questions as we wrap up the show here pretty soon.

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What's been kind of like the biggest aha moment at Westminster Seminary?

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It's not like you were atheological when you went there. It's not like you weren't exposed to Reformation, creeds, confessions,

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I know you didn't really know much about the denominations, OPC, PCA, URCNA, that kind of stuff.

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But what's been kind of your biggest takeaway after now, what, a year and a half, two years at Westminster?

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That's a good question. That's what you say when you don't know the answer. I think for me, the biggest takeaway from Westminster, well, it's hard to boil it down to one, but -

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Give me five. I don't care. Well, I think one of the biggest takeaways is just the importance of tradition.

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I think when I really came to know the Lord, I was really excited about reading the

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Bible, which was a good thing. But I think I really did think, well, okay, what is the

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Trinity? Okay, let me make sure that that's right. I'm going to go get my ESV out, and I'm going to look through it with the help of Google and make sure that 2 ,000 years of Christianity is actually correct.

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I think that was something that even for myself, that's sort of the impulse is, I can figure this out.

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I know. I don't really need the church. And I just, I think even, although I think

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Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, the body with many members is probably, in context, it really is talking about a local assembly of believers.

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I think that's still true for all believers, that we should have a posture of respect and honor towards our brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before, and especially things that they died for and that were most important to them, we ought to prize highly.

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And that doesn't mean that we accept some kind of Roman Catholic notion of tradition, that tradition is over scripture.

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We still have to say that scripture is our only authority, sans scriptura.

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But at the same time, these ancient landmarks, as maybe the author of Proverbs would say, they're not moved, they shouldn't be moved flippantly, that we should at the very least be aware of the

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Christian tradition. And when we are outside of its bounds, we should pause and reflect and consider.

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And sometimes that leads to men like Martin Luther, pausing, reflecting, considering, looking even at some of the earlier church fathers and then rejecting, rejecting a tradition that many people held.

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And that's fine. But I think just the posture, I think I've learned, I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

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I don't want to, I want to, I want to pass down. I want to guard the deposit. I want to continue to pass to the next generation what's already been handed down to us.

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And just, I think, I think the Lord has humbled me maybe from the arrogance of thinking I can figure everything out with my, with my, my

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Bible gateway app, you know, and in the ESV out. I think

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I've tried to explain this to folks that are just coming into studying creeds and confessions and, you know, there's a response by them.

24:07

Well, you know, they're not above the Bible and all that. And of course, that's true. Final authority scripture.

24:13

I'm not arguing against that. But I would say things like this. Tell me what you think, Luke. You've got in the 1500s, you've got people in certain languages, let's just say in England, coming up with certain doctrines, 1500s in Germany, the same doctrine, 1500s

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Geneva, same doctrine, 1600s Netherlands, different languages that they speak, same doctrines, 1700s other places in Europe.

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Fast forward a little bit to the 1800s in America with Princeton. And essentially on the effectual call,

24:54

Trinity, deity of Christ, salvation, you just go right on down the list that it's almost exactly the same, different continents, different languages, different centuries.

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And we have this Catholicity small C where you think, you know what, this is, uh, I can't say that every one of these people is wrong.

25:14

And I'm the one who's right. When I come to this text. Right, right. Yeah. And I think even

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I always just think about the, what's called by theologians, the perspicuity of scripture is scripture perspicuous.

25:27

That is, is scripture clear? Can scripture be interpreted? Can it be understood? Now, Peter says there's things that are hard to understand, especially in Paul's writings, which

25:37

I agree with. But that doesn't mean that the, the core of scripture, that what we have in the word of God is insufficient for life and godliness.

25:47

And because the scriptures are clear, we can interpret them. And we can even have room for a small, a authoritative interpretation that if something explains scripture clearly, then it is authoritative, not in and of itself, but it is authoritative as long as it accurately explains scripture.

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You know, the, in the old Testament, Ezra gives the sense of the scriptures, just like a sermon. We would say, if you explain a scripture clearly and accurately by the help of the spirit, that is authoritative because it comes from the scriptures.

26:24

And it's the same with these, with these documents. But we would rather go to our favorite pastor or favorite podcaster or Christian writer and read their book than read documents that have stood the test of time for 2 ,000 years of those to whom the

26:41

Holy Spirit is promised that he will guide them into all truth. So good, Luke. I've often said to people here, even at the church, when they were kind of introduced to the idea of the

26:53

Holy Spirit's work over the centuries. And I would say to them, wait a second, you just only, only read the

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Bible, right? And that's what you're trying to tell me. And no confessions, no creeds, no this, no that. So it's the

27:04

Bible only. That's all you're going to read. They'd say yes. And I'd say, but don't you hear me preach?

27:10

You're listening to me preach. So now you have somebody else who's telling you, would you rather have in my study that we're in right now, would you rather have me have no books, just the

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Bible or a lot of books from a lot of authors that pretty much all say the same thing?

27:28

Would you rather have influencing me because I'm going to teach your children? And so then they kind of finally get it.

27:35

Right. All right. Well, Luke, today, it's been good to have you in the studio. I think during Christmas time, since you're around for a while, we'll have you in here again.

27:44

I think you're headed to Providence Reformed Baptist Church to preach in New York City on December 29th.

27:50

So that should be fun. What's the website at Redemption Church, North County, if they need to get to that?

27:57

I think it's redemptionchurchnc .com. All right. I think you just type in Luke Avendroth, Redemption Church, Carlsbad.