SBC 2022 and the YRR

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

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

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

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

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

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

And at last, finally, talves, we have Steve Cooley back in the studio. Steve, welcome.

That's shocking. I mean, it was nice of you to fly me in and everything, so I appreciate it. Where have you been? We put you up only at the

Motel 6, normally the guests at No Compromise Radio receive Hampton Inn. Yeah.

But I got the downgrade. It's the downgrade controversy right here on No Compromise Radio. I need to reread the downgrade controversy history.

That would be good for us. Okay. It's been a while since I mean, there are a lot of books.

I'm just like, yeah, I haven't read that for a while. I mean, like liberalism and Christianity, you know, I haven't.

Yeah, tell the studio audience that doesn't exist, but tell our audience about your class on Saturdays and can they access them?

We have a live studio audience. We have in the past. Well, you know, the

Saturday classes, I think we, I don't know if we've recorded them all, but we haven't put them up and, you know,

I think this fall we probably should just because, you know, just a really timeless topic in terms of Machen and Christianity and liberalism.

And we'll be going through that book and the men coming on Saturday morning at 730, you know, just for donuts and conversation.

We've had a really good time. We have a lot of fun. So Steve, I know your format because we have talked about it over the years and done that format for 20, 30 some years.

Tell Sunday school teachers, Bible study leaders, home group leaders, teachers outside of Sunday morning sermons.

Why is a Q and A format good? I don't mean the teacher asking questions. That's good.

But a written kind of true false quiz. Why is that good? I really do love it.

I mean, I said, you know, in the beginning I just thought, okay, I don't really understand this. But the more I work on doing quizzes and handing them out to the class, they just engage.

They almost, now I'm not going to be careful, I'm just going to say it forces the class to engage with the topic.

They have no choice. They're compelled. Why? Why do I say that? Because they look at the questions and even if they don't like the questions,

I'll have people raise their hand and object to the way I wrote the question. And I'll joke about firing my secretary, who's me, you know, but it's good because people read the question, they think about it, and trick questions are good.

Everything that you could do, but the other reason it's good, not only does it force them to engage, but it forces the teacher, and I think this is the key, it forces the teacher to read the material or to think through the material that they're teaching and to think, how can

I put this in a way that the class is going to get it? Because it's easy to just blow through a topic and to lecture and to, you know, and to convince yourself that you've presented things well.

That was my sermon on Sunday night. But the way that you know that you're presenting the material well is when it's received and you hear that in the class.

They receive it and they respond back. They can mimic it back. Yes, or, you know, ask intelligent questions about, you know, and this, it often doesn't happen in a lecture because people might be engaged for a while, but eventually they're, you know, they have a tendency to check out, especially if you just think,

I'm just going to give them a sermon. Well, it might be a great sermon and it might not be, right?

But this Sunday School, the whole quiz format is just, it's fantastic, in my opinion.

I think when I was teaching Fundamentals of the Faith class years ago, 30 some odd years ago,

I was trying to figure out a way to keep the class engaged and then show progress, right?

We've got two done. We've got eight to go, right, etc. And so I started doing these true -false things for Fundamentals of Faith.

Then I thought, this is so good. Then you start mandating it and say, Steve, I want you to teach this class for me, but you have to do it true or false, right?

And then you've evolved it since then. Probably we should just tell all new Sunday School teachers, just do true and false.

Do some quiz for the Sunday School lesson. And sometimes I'll throw in, you know, if I'm really feeling confident, you know,

I'll throw in a why or, you know, a what question, but mostly true -false or multiple choice or something, you know, and, you know, obviously with multiple choice answers, you can have a lot of fun.

You know, just throw in a weird one. I think it's built in the system, is it not, Steve? We're so inquisitive and curious.

If there's a true -false question, we're trying to exact whatever false statement is in there, right?

Yes. Jesus, Creator, and the first created thing, right? And you're like, okay, I see that.

Yeah. Speaking of what... Go ahead. Well, and, you know, so people will read super carefully.

And again, all these things, what do they do? They force the class to pay attention.

You know, it's almost like they learn, they're compelled to learn. And I'm like, is that bad? And I think the answer is no.

Hence the term Sunday school. I have a letter here on the desk, and it's got a nice Venetian look here,

Venice, Italy. And you can see with a little abstract type of painting in the

French era. And I open it up and here's what it says, Steve. I won't let you see it. I'm going to read it. You're scum.

Close. In nice cursive writing, just some information as to why

I don't believe that God, the Almighty, and Jesus are the same person or deity.

And I thought to myself, well, they obviously don't believe that Jesus is the eternal

God, but I don't believe that the Father and the Son are the same person either, that Jesus are the same,

Father and Jesus are the same person or deity. So talk about true -false. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so I read your statement, and if any part of it is false, then the whole thing is false. So thank you for that.

Steve, did you know we are on two radio stations in this country? We are on KAGV 1110

AM in Alaska and KFGR in Wyoming. How about that? I have a new motto for us.

We want the airwaves. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Steve, next topic, you have watched at a distance, so have

I, the Southern Baptist Convention, their gathering in 2022, and Votie was voted down to be,

I don't know what it was, some pastor thing, and then Askell was voted down. What's your general take? Then we'll talk about some specifics in Southern Baptist world.

Well, I actually posted about this on Facebook last night, and I said, you know,

Southern Baptist Convention, Tom Askell, no thank you. Votie Bauckham, nah, hard pass.

And I go, we, you know, basically SBC to the world, we're unsinkable. And I posted a

GIF, and it's this, or JIF, and it's the captain of the Titanic kind of doing a little dance on the deck, and it shows the

Titanic like trying to skip over the iceberg, and instead it explodes.

And I'm like, that's pretty much, that's the SBC. It has hit the iceberg and denies that it has hit the iceberg.

Speaking of social media, I put on Twitter a picture of Rick Warren, who was on the floor saying some things.

He didn't have a thing around his neck, a lanyard saying that he was a representative or whatever their nomenclature is.

He wasn't allowed to speak, but of course he's Rick Warren, and he is the Southern Baptist of all Southern Baptists in my mind.

And I put a picture of that up, and I said, Southern Baptist Convention, behold your king. Oh, man.

And, you know, I did not know he's baptized, you know, how many hundreds of thousands, 73 ,000 people, and man, he's got a good track record there of his pragmatism.

Oh, yeah. I've got to drag up a picture here. Well, you're dragging it up.

I guess here's the real question. For years and years and years, solid, conservative, good people in terms of good theology and wanting to live up to their theology, they, okay, let me just finish this sentence and then you read it.

They wanted to stay in the Southern Baptist Convention. They've seen its liberalism, the drifting toward it.

They've seen what's going on with critical race theory and other issues and social justice stuff at Southeastern, at Southern, at Southwestern.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. They've watched it, but they keep staying. They keep staying, hoping, right?

They love, they want to invest, and not everything about it's wrong. And I think today would be the day that if you're a

Southern Baptist church, you file whatever separation papers. It wasn't like Askel barely lost.

No. And, you know, to me, it's just, it's shocking that people stay in, right?

I mean, it, and I understand it. I mean, there's a history, there's the missionary work, there's, you know, there's just,

I mean, if you just think about all the property and everything else, I mean, there's a lot that would kind of make you think, oh,

I don't know if we want to leave or not. But now it's just gotten, it's gotten to the point where you just, you just wonder how much longer can people stay.

So here's the meme. I didn't even post this one because it's just so bad.

Rick Warren. Now this is, it's a parody, ladies and gentlemen of the listening audience. Rick Warren, I'm not here to defend myself, but I helped build

Noah's Ark, then build a bigger Ark and was spared from the flood. I also trained Samuel, Elijah, and Daniel.

I led 11 billion people to faith in Jesus and I planted every church in the

New Testament. Joe Biden? Did he say that? No.

But, but I mean, Rick Warren's statement was, you know, I'm not here to defend myself and I'm not here to brag.

And then he just started bragging, you know, about all the, he's trained more pastors than the entire, than all the seminaries combined.

I'm like, hmm, does that include the ladies? Years ago, I picked up John MacArthur from the airport and he was going to preach here at the church.

And I was talking about Rick Warren, highballs, you know, these big shots.

And MacArthur basically said, whatever they do, whether it would be ministry or business, they would be, from a human perspective, successful.

Because they're, they're entrepreneurs, they understand leadership, they've got it all down. And to me, when

I listened to that quote from Warren on the floor, I just thought, that's a businessman.

What's a businessman do? To try to garner votes and to try to get support. I've built this and I've built that,

I've done this, right? That's what happened. And you know, to make it Southern Baptist, you have to preface it with, now

I'm not here to brag, but let me just tell you. Attendance, buildings, and cash.

That's right up my alley. I mean, I just humbly stand before the people and, you know, billions of people come every week.

And, you know. Well, the other thing that we have to address too is, you know, Tom Buck says something about someone and now they go after him and they go after him.

And I watched the whole, whatever it was called, the Skype between the

Bucks, Danny Akin and Karen Swallow Pryor. And I just thought, this is ridiculous.

Can you imagine the stress of all that? Yeah. It's, you know, and then to not, they're not going to let the

Bucks defend themselves, you know, at the SBC. But they'll give Rick Warren, who I don't even think is,

I don't even know if Saddleback is technically in the SBC, but he had no warrant for speaking and they just, you know, yield him the floor.

But somebody who's been a massive part of the SBC and Tom Buck, and they're not going to let him talk.

When I saw Moeller on the floor, it's interesting to see him on the floor versus up on the stage platform.

It seemed like he, has he had a stroke or something? He was having a hard time talking. Of course, he might've had

COVID or a cold or who knows what. Well, after reviewing his medical records, I, you know, I don't know.

I really don't. I mean, he, you know, he's been ill for a long time. So, and I mean, just,

I think by his own testimony, what does he sleep like three hours a night or something? That cannot be good.

No, that cannot be good. Any other thoughts on the Southern Baptist Convention? If we were SBC Church, what would be our next step?

We'd be talking to the other elders about how do we, how do we leave? You know, how do we explain this to the congregation?

And you know, when they need a study group to figure out what a pastor is, you know, whether women can be pastors or not.

But it doesn't surprise me. I mean, it was probably 20 years ago. I have a friend who we share a mutual hobby lives down South and his wife was a youth minister in the

SBC. And he, and he said, you know, we're of the non -almolar wing, you know, and that was, that was 20 years ago.

So it, it doesn't really surprise me. This has been like a slow motion train wreck for decades.

It's just been, you know, when would it get to the point where really nobody can defend it anymore?

So, you know, the only question is, you know, what emerges out of this? I mean, I would think, you know, does

G3 become a denomination? Does Tom Askell start a denomination? You know, what, what happens?

And the answer is, I don't know. Steve, I think that's good insight. And for me,

I liken it to, oh, we, we, we had John Paul the second as a Pope for so long that we just accepted it.

Right. When do you get a new Pope? Well, well, maybe you did, but I, we just as, as the world recognizes the leader and then all of a sudden he dies.

And then there's another one and there's another one and you see that happening before your very eyes. I mean, white smoke and everything else with denominations is the same thing.

I mean, our whole lives, pretty much the big denominations have remained the same. There hasn't been a start of a denomination and Magen didn't start up the

OPC in our lifetime, et cetera. Now we could be watching with G3 and other things. I mean, they've got a publishing wing.

I'm sure if you ask Josh Weiss, do you want to be a denomination? He wouldn't say it, but I think they have the network, right?

That you have to be a part of. Oh, they definitely do. Yeah. And I think you pay to be part of the church network and you get benefits to be in that network.

Isn't that what Baptist denominations do? They have events that, I mean, are so well run, you'd think they were, you know,

SBC. I mean, just super slick. Right. Well, that's fascinating as things grow and then you have a big platform and then you have people on the platform that maybe have differences with you theologically and how big must those differences get before you cut those people off?

Eternal functional subordination. Yeah, it's a, yeah, that's an interesting dilemma, right?

What do we agree on and where do we draw the lines? But, you know, for the SBC, getting back to that,

I think, you know, it's interesting to watch even unbelievers comment on my Facebook wall.

You know, they're like, the world's falling apart and, you know, the SBC is going to divide over this. And I'm like, yeah, the

SBC should divide over this. If you can't, if you can't read the scripture when

Paul says, I will not have a woman, you know, exercise authority over a man.

If you can read that and say, well, what does it really mean? Or and I'll give credit to him because I think he said it first,

Wayne Grudem, of course, we disagree with his theology on certain areas. But he said, if you can take 1

Timothy 2, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man and turn it into.

I do permit. I do. Or she must. I'll add that. She must teach and exercise authority. Then you can use the

Bible to say anything. Remember Gordon Fee, he's written some good things, but his Ephesians, excuse me, his 1

Timothy commentary, he's saying, well, you know what, Ephesus, because Paul's writing to Timothy at Ephesus, at Ephesus, they needed to have men only.

But you know what, for us now, you see the trajectory. It's the same thing. Once you do this with the women in ministry, the same hermeneutic yields homosexuals in ministry.

And try to contextualize it, you know, to that one church so that it doesn't mean, you know, and the problem again is, and everybody listening should know this, if you just go to the context,

Paul ties it to Eve being deceived first. So it kind of negates this whole concept of, gee,

Corinth had special problems, and this only applies to Corinth, and you know, it was just a few women who were saying things that they ought not to at the church, no, no, no, you're making that up, move along.

And then they'll say, Steve, well, you know what, this is a fall issue, and so we're trying to go back before the fall, and before the fall, this would be legit to have women teachers, et cetera, if that were possible.

And then in 1 Timothy 2, not only do we have Eve falls first, deceived,

Adam wasn't deceived, he was the federal head that was a complete sinful idiot, he should have killed Satan right away, the serpent, but it goes to the created order, right?

God created man first. So even before fall, there are issues between men and women's roles, and you look at Janet, and I look at Kim, and we look at Galatians 3 .28,

we're equal in Christ, and our spouses are more godly than we are, what does that, but that doesn't have anything to do with the text.

Right. Crazy. Can you imagine seeing a young man in your church, or these days, now women, and you think, you know what, they need higher education, they need pastoral ministry training, they need to go somewhere they can learn exegesis, theology, historical theology, biblical theology, hermeneutics, and let's send them to study under Karen Swallow Pryor.

I'll take a pass. Yeah, but they get half price if they're Southern Baptists. Sweet. I mean, it would be great to have her for a professor and then, you know, write papers for her that just completely question her legitimacy.

Let's see how those grades go. Well, I was listening to Victor Davis Hanson the other day, and he was talking about higher academic life and work, and in the old days, he said, and for him as well, even today, you assign something as a professor, the students to write on it, and if they take a different view, it's okay.

They just have to substantiate their view and do the research on their view and come up with the right way to phrase it, and then the professor doesn't say, well,

I differ, therefore you get knocked. No, no, you did a great job. I do differ, but I'm gonna grade you on that, but that's not what people these days do.

No, because you must conform. You will conform. Maybe we could start calling Tuesday shows the

Borg shows, right? You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Steve, I found an old New Calvinist Young Restless Reform Movement printout.

I don't even know who this is by. Oh, it said, posted with permission by Nick Weissel.

Maybe that's him. Oh, good old Nick. Yeah, yeah. Do you know Ellie Weissel? I have not read that book,

The Night or Night, for a long, long time, but it's so graphic and gruesome. I don't mean sexually, but it's like, ouch,

I don't think I can read it again. Concentration camps. Yeah, well, all that stuff just, it just, it turns my stomach and makes me weep.

I mean, that's. This is a little section in No Compromise Radio where we have four minutes and we have a bunch of little statements and I'm gonna do, you don't have to say just one word,

Steve. You can give me like a little phrase, but I'm gonna say something from the New Calvinist movement, YRR, and you just quickly make a response.

All right, ready? Go. It's not rooted in the historic Reformed tradition. That's a shame.

Okay, good. This is, I like this. It eschews scholasticism entirely. That's also a shame.

Myopic focus on five points of Calvinism to the detriment of covenant theology, which undergirds the entirety of the canons of Dort.

Hmm. Well. In other words, hey, as long as you're a five -point Calvinist, that's all we care about.

It doesn't matter. And I'm like, can you be a five -point Calvinist without any concept of covenant theology?

I think the answer is no, so. Okay, good. Church growth prioritized over church health.

Always a problem. I mean, if you have a healthy church, the

Lord will add to it. And if you have a huge church and it's not healthy, who really cares?

Good. Church celebrity culture, right? Driscoll and all that. It's a pandemic, right?

And the amazing thing is the church doesn't learn. We have one problem after another, after another, after another, and then the next generation of celebrity arises.

Multi -site and church campuses. Not churches. How's that for a six -ing?

Evangelical book industrial complex. Same authors, same publishers, same things over and over and over.

Yeah, somebody should give a speech warning about that a la Eisenhower and the military industrial complex.

Turning everything into something to be gospel -centered. I mean, you can make cookies in a gospel -centered fashion.

I think I'd like some gospel -centered cookies. They don't have any good brown sugar.

It's all stevia, I think. Mmm, good, yummy stevia.

Really awful forms of Trinitarianism. Endemic. I mean, those are everywhere and they need to be rooted out.

Setting up young and restless men in places of authority before they've matured. Hey, it's growing so fast, we've got to have leaders here.

Also a problem. And we see it even now, you know, with people who are not ready for leadership, being put on platforms and really then being forced to defend their positions that they cannot defend.

I think of Driscoll and some of these other folks, Matt Chandler, they're so young. Well, then it makes sense that they would put young people then in leadership positions because they were put in leadership positions when they were young.

I agree. Lastly, lack of conversation with classical Christian theism in favor of individual ingenuity of particular theologians.

In other words, forget classical theism. That's Aquinas stuff. Yeah, I'm happy that all of this is making a comeback, classical theism and whatnot.

You know, men like Barrett and others kind of shining a light on the way the church used to believe and saying, why have we strayed from that?

How do we get back to it? I think these are proper things to think about. Steve, don't you think that during the

Reformation time, the Reformers said, you know what? What's right and what's wrong? Well, let's not attack the things that are right that the church has taught and the

Trinity they got right and the deity of Christ and the virgin birth, but they've got soteriology wrong or they've got sola scriptura wrong.

So let's attack that. Right. They didn't have to attack classical theism because it was right. Exactly.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's always a matter of priority. People are, even on other issues like eschatology, well, what did the

Reformers believe? You know, what do they believe about this or the other thing? Well, they were fighting the big wars.

They were fighting for scripture. They were fighting for the gospel. They were fighting for justification, you know, and these kinds of things and not so much on the other issues.

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

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

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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