Communion on the Moon

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

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

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

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

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

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. My name's

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Mike Abendroth, and if you're listening to me, you're either listening through Facebook, iTunes,

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TuneIn Radio, the podcasts, I guess that's iTunes.

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Mm, nocompromiseradio .com, our worldview weekend.

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Today, I'd like to do something I've never done on No Compromise Radio. I'm going to read something from snopes .com,

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S -N -O -P -E -S .com, and their subtitle on their website is

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Rumor Has It, and of course, there are all kinds of farces floating around, and you'll get these forwards, and so -and -so happened to such -and -such, or watch out for this, that, or the other, and then you realize, oops,

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I have not done my homework, and so if you go to snopes .com, they give you, it's a secular website, they can tell you if something's true or not, and for the most part,

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I trust them. As my father would say, I trust them as far as I can throw them.

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Communion, communion, C -O -M -M -O -O -N -I -O -N.

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Has communion ever been celebrated on the moon? Now, when you think about the

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Lord's Supper, and you think about communion, and what it's supposed to be for Christians, I often say to myself, these very simple things the

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Lord Jesus Christ uses so that we would remember Him. Remember the context in 1

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Corinthians chapter 11? We like to just jump to that spot in verse 23 that talks about the

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Lord's Supper. I receive from the Lord that which I also deliver to you, that the

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Lord Jesus, in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread. We go right to that passage, but we forget that the first word in 1

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Corinthians 11 .23 is for, and there's a context. The Christians at Corinth were not acting in a loving fashion.

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And they got together, the rich ones did, and they ate, and so they didn't save any for the poor people who were the blue collar workers who had to get there late.

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And Paul says, you're not eating the Lord's Supper, you're eating your own supper. And then some are hungry and some are drunk.

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And Paul says in verse 22, with an exclamation point in the, I think this is the American Standard in front of me here, hold on, just to double check.

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What, W -H -A -T, exclamation point. Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink?

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Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this?

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I will not praise you, for I receive from the Lord. And then he goes into that classic passage in the epistle of 1

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Corinthians. And so they were acting in unloving fashion. And so how does Paul correct their lack of love?

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He shows them love incarnate, and he shows them love suffering, the suffering servant, where Jesus's body and his blood were shed.

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His body was broken and his blood was shed. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

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That's the cup. And for the body, this is my body, which is for you do this in remembrance of me.

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And this is a very special thing for Christians. We have baptism that happens after salvation, and then you have communion.

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And so some people were saying, did Buzz Aldrin take communion on the moon or did he not?

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And if you go to Snopes .com, there's actually an excellent little article. And it says here, 40 years ago today, two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of the moon.

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But what happened before Buzz Aldrin, pictured in the lunar module left, and Neil Armstrong exited the lunar module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.

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I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.

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And then Buzz wrote about it in Guidepost Magazine. Now this story says that Buzz was an elder at a

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Presbyterian church in Texas. And he wanted to do something that would mark this occasion.

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It was a feat that had never been accomplished before. And so how could he celebrate?

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He got his pastor to consecrate a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine and brought them to the moon.

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And I don't know about the consecration stuff. I don't know if he's USA, PCUSA, OPC, PCA.

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I'm not sure. Let's see, did they even have PCA back in those days? PCA is coming up on its 40th year.

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And so I don't think they had PCA. Yeah, yeah, they did. This is the lunar module pilot.

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I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and whenever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

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The text says, now he then ended radio communication and there on the silent surface of the moon, 250 ,000 miles from home, he reads a verse from the gospel of John and he takes communion.

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How about that? That's pretty amazing. So what verse did he read?

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I'd ask you the question. If you were able to read some verses on the moon, I wonder which ones you would read.

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Well, there's more to the story. And so let me tell you, I just find this interesting. Later, he had this account of what happened.

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In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me.

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In the one sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.

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Then I read the scripture. I am the vine, you are the branches, whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.

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Apart from me, you can do nothing. Buzz goes on to say, I had intended to read my communion passage back to the earth, but at the last minute, they had requested that I not do this.

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NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madeline Murray O 'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion over the

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Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.

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I ate the tiny host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the sea of tranquility.

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It was interesting for me to think, the very first liquid ever poured on the moon and the very first food eaten there were the communion elements.

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And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ who made the earth and the moon and who in the immortal words of Dante is himself the love that moves the sun and other stars.

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Quite amazing. Of course, that would never happen today. Besides blacking it out, they wouldn't even be allowed to carry such cargo.

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It'd probably be too heavy. 16, 1969 rather,

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Buzz Aldrin. Buzz says in his book,

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Magnificent Desolation, 2009, landing on the moon is not quite the same thing as arriving at grandmother's for Thanksgiving.

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You don't hop out of the lunar module the moment the engine stops and yell, we're here, we're here. Getting out of the lunar module takes a lot of preparation.

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So we had built in several extra hours to our flight plan. We also figured it was wise to allow more time rather than less for our initial activities after landing just in case anything had gone wrong during the flight.

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According to our schedule, we were supposed to eat a meal, rest a while and then sleep for seven hours after arriving on the moon.

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After all, we had already worked a long full day and we wanted to be fresh for our extra vehicular activity,

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EVA. Mission Control had notified the media that they would take a break and catch their breath since there wouldn't be much happening for several hours as we rested.

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But it was hard to rest with all that adrenaline pumping through our systems. Nevertheless, in an effort to remain calm and collected,

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I decided that this would be an excellent time for a ceremony I'd planned as an expression of gratitude and hope.

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Weeks before, as the Apollo mission drew near, I had originally asked Dean Woodruff, pastor at Webster Presbyterian Church where my family and I attended services when

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I was home in Houston, to help me come up with something I could do on the moon, some appropriate symbolic act regarding the universality of seeking.

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I had thought in terms of doing something overly patriotic, but everything we came up with sounded trite and jingoistic.

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I settled on a well -known expression of spirituality, celebrating the first Christian communion on the moon, much as Christopher Columbus and other explorers had done when they first landed in their new world.

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My name's Mike Ebendroth. We're reading Buzz Aldrin's account of having communion on the moon in 1969.

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I think he also wrote a book called Return to Earth in 1973.

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He did a communion interview with life in August, 1969.

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Buzz goes on to say, I wanted to do something positive for the world, so the spiritual aspect appealed greatly to me, but NASA was still smarting from a lawsuit filed by atheist

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Madeline Murray O 'Hare. After the Apollo 8 astronauts read from the biblical account, the biblical creation account in Genesis, O 'Hare contended that this was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

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Brother. Although O 'Hare's views did not represent mainstream America at that time, you know, they rule, right?

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It's like the ninth district court in San Fran. They rule. Her lawsuit was a nuisance and a distraction that NASA preferred to live without.

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I met with Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts who ran our flight crew operations to inform him of my plans and that I intended to tell the world what

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I was doing. Deke said, no, that's not a good idea, Buzz. Go ahead and have communion, but keep your comments more general.

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I understood that Deke didn't want any more trouble. So during the first hours on the moon before the planned eating and rest periods,

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I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out the communion elements along with a three by five card on which

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I had written the words of Jesus. That's kind of interesting. You get a little personal preference kit. I am the vine, you are the branches.

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Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit and you can do nothing without me. I poured a thimble full of wine from the sealed plastic container and a small chalice and waited for the wine to settle down as it swirled in the one sixth earth gravity of the moon.

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My comments to the world were inclusive. I would like to request a few moments of silence and to invite each person listening in wherever and whomever they may be to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

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I silently read the Bible passage as I partook of the wafer and of the wine and offered a private prayer for the task at hand and the opportunity

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I had been given. Neil watched respectfully but made no comment to me at this time.

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Perhaps if I had to do it over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a

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Christian sacrament and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind, be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animist, agnostics, or atheist.

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It started off so well. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of Apollo 11's experience than by giving thanks to God.

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It was my hope that people would keep the whole event in their minds and see beyond minor details and technical achievements a deeper meaning, a challenge, and the human needed to explore whatever is above us, below us, or out there.

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Well, secret communion, but communion nonetheless. It does say in the

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Associated Press, July 20th, 1969, that communion was celebrated on the moon.

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In the 1998 HBO miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon, they did have a little dramatization of that.

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And so, if you go to Snoops or Snopes or Snipes, you can see the little handwritten card containing the

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Bible verse that Buzz recited during his lunar communion.

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It was auctioned in 2007. So, my name's

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Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. Communion on the moon. What do you think of that?

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Now, before you say to me, well, communion should be administered by elders only in a local church context,

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I just think there's something. I don't like his later comments. They seem to be influenced by the world.

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I don't really go for that. But I do like that he thought to himself, what would be the most important thing

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I could do? And then he quotes the words of Jesus. And they weren't even quoted from the

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Message Bible, after all. Well, this is Mike Ebendroth, and we're talking about communion today.

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I do find it fascinating that Jesus says, of course, you know this, but still it's fascinating to me.

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For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

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And so, while my Calvinistic friends think there's some spiritual nourishment in the cup and in the bread, and I'm more

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Zwinglian and symbolic and representative in my view, we would both agree that when you eat this, you are celebrating what the

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Lord has done and you're proclaiming something. It preaches. This is a sermon, a visual sermon, the bread and the drink.

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I remember when I was in India and I was preaching at a fairly liberal church and my friend

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Sammy was with me. And so this was an interesting church because they had heard me speak at a conference and ask if I would come and preach that morning.

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And I said, I'd be glad to, and I checked to make sure that my host leaders thought that was fine to do because I was under their authority and wanted to do what they thought was best.

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And so it was a very interesting story all around because the lady who asked me said, well,

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I'll pick you up in front of the Y, that's where I was staying in Pune, I'll pick you up in front of the

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Y at 15 minutes till 11 and then we'll have the service, we'll drive you over there and then you can preach.

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And so I said, well, is your husband gonna be coming along? And she said, no, he doesn't. He was on the board of the church, but he doesn't go to church very often.

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It's a Methodist church, by the way. And I said, well, thanks for inviting me.

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I could just take a cab there. I don't wanna step on your culture, but I just don't ride in cars and trucks and vans and those kinds of things with just ladies without my wife, without other people.

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She said, oh, I'll bring my husband then. So in fact, they came. I got to the church and the lady who was the lead elderess or elderina,

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I don't know what you call them. She knew my position on women in leadership and she was trying to,

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I think, try to get me into a little bit of a brouhaha into a fight before the service.

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And I didn't wanna do that. In my mind, this was the first service, by the way, that I ever preached without notes.

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It was Ephesians chapter two, one to 10. They'd asked me late the night before and I just basically said,

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I've got bad news, but I've got better good news, better than the bad news. And so I preached two, one to three with the bad news, dead in trespasses and sins and following the course of this world, prince of the power of the air, but God who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us.

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So anyway, by grace, you've been saved. So then she said, well, what's your views of women and all that?

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And so I said, well, how long can I preach? And she said, well, about 15, 20 minutes. And I do the same thing every time someone asks me to preach such a short message.

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I say, because I still think I'm under the authority of the people asking me, right? If they say you can't go over 32 minutes, then

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I really shouldn't, but I can ask for a little bit more time. So I said, if I keep everybody's attention, could

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I go a little longer? And so, since I'm a relativist at this particular moment, a little in my eyes, not too much longer, but if I could get to 35, that's about minimum,

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I think, for a Bible message on Sunday. And she said, sure. And then we prayed, and then

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I went out, and she said, oh, by the way, would you make sure you take off your shoes before you get behind the pulpit, because it's holy ground.

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I had a suit on. I said, sure, that'd be fine. My conscience didn't go against that at all. Just before I was introduced,

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I took off my shoes, and I walked up to the pulpit after the introduction, and they had watered all the beautiful plants there, beautiful flowers.

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I mean, poor part of town, but tons of flowers, just a gorgeous array of beauty there in the flowers, and they spilled a bunch of water, and so I got my socks on with this slushy water in the carpet.

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I'm like, oh, it's not only holy ground, it's wet holy ground, and then I preach. Well, they had asked me that first time if I wanted to help serve communion, and I usually just say, well, you know, no thanks.

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Thanks for asking, but because every church has a particular way to do it. Do you pray before the elements are distributed?

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What do you say? How do you do it? And I just passed because I don't know how they do it, and so then three to five years later,

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I went back to the same church. They had me preach again. There was a pastor this time. He said, I need help serving communion.

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Now, early on, I didn't really, I didn't wanna serve communion the first time I was there because I thought, well, most of these people are unbelievers.

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It's like going to a mainline church in America, mainline over there, and liberal, and there were some people who were saved,

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I'm sure, but many of them are not. It's a liberal denomination, and so he asked me, could

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I help serve? I just got done preaching, and he walks over. I need help serving. I can't say no.

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I mean, I really couldn't say no, so my job was to put the bread in the hands of the communicants.

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Is that what they're called? And he said, just put the bread in their hands and say, the body of Christ broken for you.

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Now, I was having all kinds of Lutheran flashbacks, Luton flashbacks, gluten -free, and so I just wanted to help.

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I figured, you know, I just got done preaching another evangelistic sermon. I'm just gonna do it.

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Well, I went around the horn. It was kind of a semi -circle, and they were all up kneeling with these benches to receive it up at the front like sacramental churches,

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Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and I went around the horn.

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They just all kept looking at me, and then they were given the wine, then dismissed. Went around the horn again, and they were just all looking at me, and like I was doing something that I shouldn't be doing or I wasn't doing something that I should be doing, and they dismissed me, and I was done.

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And it was the second one. So, the next time I went around the horn, someone else had helped now, and so I looked out of the corner of my eye as I'm saying, the body of Christ given for you or broken for you, whatever

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I was saying. It was English -speaking. Maybe that was a bad, that was a downfall, and I noticed the other server was crushing the bread into the hand, into the palm of the communicant, the recipient.

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I don't know what the Latin word is or whatever. The person receiving communion. And that's what

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I had been not doing. I hadn't been pushing it down. Broken for you. Symbolizing Jesus's body broken for you in their hand.

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And so I just started. And so when Sammy, our missionary who arranged this whole thing, he thought he better go up to take communion because he also didn't want to give offense.

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And for him it was truly communion. I said, this is Christ's body broken for you.

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And then I made sure to break it. Kept going around the horn. So see they don't teach you those things in seminary.

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My name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can always write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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You can write Steve at Tuesday Guy. And there are some rumblings that we're going to be back on VNE by the time you hear this.

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Maybe we're already back on. Can you imagine? Already back on WVNE, our flagship station.

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What does that say? It says that they're gracious. It says that they're generous. It says that they didn't kick us off and now we're back.

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And we got the same time slot too. How does that work? If you are at a church and they have communion on a regular basis, you should be very thankful for that.

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And we can remember who Jesus is. And that you can rededicate your life.

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That's a good rededication service right there. It's not coming into the front to the altar. When God remembers

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Noah, he does something about it. And he sent the wind and he blew back the waters.

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Right? The flood subsided. The sub floodited. And so too, when we remember

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Jesus, we want to do something about it. Thank you. And to be impressed with Christ's love as he sacrificed himself for us and had his body broken and his blood shed to the point of death, a vicarious, vicious death at that.

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And we know that the wages of sin is death. And without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins.

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And then Jesus died on that cross and he was raised from the dead. And so I'm glad. There might have been some liberal leanings there with Buzz, but to have communion on the moon,

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I appreciate that and makes me like Snopes better. S -N -O -P -E -S.

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So if you'd like the transcript of what I read today, it's right there online. The other thing you can do is go to noco90 .com

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to pull up our YouTubes. I don't know, 50, 55 YouTubes there on a variety of different subjects.

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Some days I want to keep going. Some days I want to quit. Some days I think I don't want my face up there.

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Other days people say they're blessed. So anyway, Mike Abendroth again. You can mail us if you ever want to mail things.

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307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston, Massachusetts 01583.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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

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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.

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

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