Mormons and Burning Bosoms

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.

Giving, Stewardship, and Whether Churches Should Track Donations

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. We have Pastor Steve here again. Steve Cooley is the Associate Pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church, and he is an ex-sheriff and an ex-Mormon. Are those equivalent statements?

Are those sympathetic statements?

I don't know, but I also used to be the night guy to 7-Eleven. Does that count for anything? You did. What'd you do to pass the time? Get robbed.

Did you actually get robbed? Yeah, it kept me busy. Tell us about that. We'd like to learn a little bit more of Steve's side. He doesn't really talk about his personal life too much. So, Steve, tell us about getting robbed.

Well, it's kind of dull, you know.

I was actually relieving a man named Muhammad. It was shift change, and Muhammad was in the back stocking things, and it wasn't quite my shift yet, so I was playing a little pinball. A couple guys walked in, and I thought, well, I wonder if Muhammad will get those guys.

He did, so I just kept playing pinball. And all of a sudden, the guy says, no, just the green. Put it all in the bag. And I look up, and there's the gun, and I'm just like, gulp. So, you know, that was pretty much, that was the moment where I just thought, I think I need to join the Army.

I'm a little bit done with this whole thing.

And the rest, as they say, is? History. Today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, we are going to be led by the Spirit in what we do. I hope so. Here's a Fox News update. An alert? Is this a Fox News alert?

Fox News alert, foxnews .com. What's the market doing today? Oh, not that kind of alert. Okay, sorry. Title, March 17th, 2011, pastor accused of denying communion to churchgoers who didn't give tax refunds.

Oh, you mean they were supposed to give their tax refunds to the church?

Members of a small Baptist congregation. It had to be Baptist. Wouldn't it have been nicer if it would have been a bunch of United Methodists?

Well, thankfully, we're known as Bethlehem Bible Church, so we can kind of duck under that one, even though we're, you know, Southern Baptists. In Texas,.

They say their pastor denied them communion after they refused to give them their tax refunds. Parishioners at the Houston Unity Baptist Church, and that's with a P, by the way, not Baptist.

I wonder how much unity they had after that, by the way. The pastor, John Goodman,.

Asked members of his congregation to hand over their tax refunds to the church. Quote, he said, for all those who are getting a tax refund, how many of you are going to give it to the church? One person who was a member of the church spoke in anonymity.

You know what, I think he was preaching from, you know, the Ananias and Sapphira thing, you know, and so they held something back. Totally.

I wish it would have at least been that. Goodman has admitted to denying his congregation communion, but said he did so because church members overall have failed to support the church financially, like giving money towards its new parking lot.

He said only four or five members of the church actually donate, and he called the rest of his congregation devils. I ask if there were any other members, which I know it is, I know, I'm just reading this, this is just how it's written.

That's a sick, yeah. That got income tax money. I ask if they would like to contribute it over here to the new parking lot.

Yeah, we're going to put that where it belongs.

Should pastors know what the people in their church give? That's a tough one.

I mean, we don't know. I'm pretty, you know, I'm pretty happy with that. We had a discussion the other day about this, and I don't really know what the answer to that is. I mean, it would be, I don't know, that's a tough one.

I mean, it could be unsettling, but on the other hand, it could really reveal what people are thinking and doing.

Well, we're not going to try to make any policy change for no-compromise radio givers or anything like that.

Our Bethlehem Bible Church. Yeah, if you're listening, we want to know what you give.

Like we say around here, we have a policy, we don't ask for money, and we don't get any. That's our policy. Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary, was here at the church, and you ought to go online at www .bbchurch .org and download those messages on family, child raising, women's roles, men's roles, sex, kids, all kinds of things.

And it's free. And it's free. And Akin said that there is a guy he knows of at a very large church who purposely checks the giving on a regular basis. Not because the church needs the money, because they don't.

Not because he wants to try to hold Thor's hammer over them.

Or people's feet to the fire, another picture. That's right.

But rather, Akin said this about the pastor. And Akin wasn't necessarily saying we should do this, but he just was explaining this man's position. That when you stop giving, it is a heart issue. Because where your heart is, your wallet will be, and vice versa.

And you can tell a lot about a person based on their giving and their spiritual condition. So for instance, Steve, I'd always heard it said that you do keep a spiritual diary, and that's called your checkbook.

And so I thought it was very interesting, and I know Steve did too, that if pastors would look, and all of a sudden somebody's giving, let's just pick a number, $1 ,000 a month, and all of a sudden it's down to nothing.

Then the pastor calls and says, we know there's something going on in your life. I'm not here for money, but he said this pastor had found out people who were involved in gambling, all kinds of issues.

And so it's always a spiritual issue. I'm not talking about no compromise radio right now. I want to make that explicit. What I'm saying is you need to give your money to Jesus Christ through your local church.

And if you don't give money to Jesus Christ through your local church, then you've got a serious problem. I don't want your money. You send it to your local church. You give freely there. But if you don't give money to the Lord's ministry in your local church, that's problematic, and that shows that you are trying to love something more than God.

Yeah, because you don't understand that what you have is a stewardship. I think the tendency is to put the church in the afterthought category, or maybe even if the pastor preaches about giving, then they're really short of money.

Well, to quote the great theologian Bono, the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister. The problem isn't the church coffers. The problem is what are your priorities? What's in your heart? And why aren't you excited to see what the Lord will do through your giving?

Absolutely.

Does this ring a bell? Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And so here at No Compromise Radio, we are not asking for money. We don't ever wanna ask for money. We want you to give liberally, generously, through your local church.

When I first got saved, Steve, I didn't know what to do with money. I just knew that all the money that I had hogged and hoarded and kept for myself and my own pleasures, I knew God gave me all that money and I wanted to be a good steward.

So I started sending it in to radio ministries.

Do we have to talk about what we did when we first got saved? Because I did some pretty stupid things.

I sent money to Bob Larson's quote unquote ministry. Where is Bob Larson these days?

We need to do a show on Bob Larson. I gave money to Dwight Thompson who I think is out on the road now with Dwight Yoakam. The Dwight brothers. I'd rather see Dwight Yoakam. I'd pay to see Dwight Yoakam probably.

I totally would. Especially in Bakersfield or something. Wouldn't that be good? I, you know, my wife will, you know, roll her eyes, but I just love him, so.

Something about Cadillacs, pink or something?

Yeah, pink Cadillacs, yeah, long white Cadillac.

That's right, and so I sent money to him. I sent money to Billy Graham. I sent money to Chuck Swindoll, Insight for Living. And I just tried to pick people that I appreciated their ministry on the radio I knew I had to give.

And so I don't think the Lord is going to somehow, you know, chasten me for that because it really was with a motive that I received, I think, from the Bible. I thought, you know what? Here's what the Bible says.

I wanna have a motive of obedience, send it in. But then it took me a while to realize that the money that I send in should be mainly to the local church. So if you give, it should be to the local church.

And if you'd like to give above an extra amount to Chuck Swindoll's ministry, that's fine. But you need to give to your local church. So this is not a special call to send a no-compromise radio ministry.

We don't wanna do that. If we lose a radio station, what is it? It's a Macedonian call. God told me. How about this, Steve? 1 -800-Macedonia. How about this, Steve? I don't know if you were at the Bible study at the time as we were in California together, but I don't know if it was pre-Bible study for you or post-Bible study.

And there's a lady who was in Hollywood. She got saved, but she wanted to do everything kind of dramatically, like actors would, like actresses would. You can call women actors, actually. Yeah, you can.

I don't, but you can. That's right. I don't, the royal I. And so she said, I wanna be baptized at a black church in downtown LA. Were you there? No. And so it was all, you know, we've gotta just, whatever we think of baptism, we think of Baptist.

She thought of black Baptist. And I said, you know, I'll just go with you with the Bible study group. And we'll go down there because we wanted to be excited for her. And she was attending the Bible study.

And said he knew the words. We went down there. And Steve, it was a triple dunker, by the way. Really? Father, son. It's my privilege and pleasure to baptize you in the name of the Father. Under she went, pulled her back up.

In the name of the Son, under she went, pulled her back up. In the name of the Spirit, under she went.

Well, I've never seen the triple dunker.

Yeah, well, you know what? That's actually the Trinitarian dunk. So here's the good part, Steve. Then there's an offering and plates are passed. And when I go to a church, I never give to that church that I visit because lots of times I don't know enough about the church to give.

And so usually as a visitor, we don't give because I've got to kind of scope that out. And I want to follow New Testament giving patterns. And that is planned. And that means the church of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem Bible Church receives the money that I give.

And so sermon happens. The sermon was typical, you know, fluff that you hear in most churches across America. And then, Steve, it was the pastor's special offering. The pastor stood up, said he had a need, and he had a need of a new car.

I kid you not. How could I make this up? I need a new car. And so he stood there with kind of an orange, it looked like a Halloween bucket that you go trick-or-treating with. And he stood at the very front and each row was required to get up, walk down the aisle, go up, and in his presence, put money into the bucket.

Well, I think that's biblical. Yeah. I didn't know that look on your face, what that meant. And I just thought, how crazy is that? That is just intimidation. If you want to, if your pastor needs a car and doesn't have a car, and he's been a good steward of his money, well, I think you should probably give enough money to get that pastor a car, especially if you've got about six of them.

Why don't you give the pastor a car? I get all that, but I don't get this. You know what? I need money and you're going to give.

I can almost hear it. You know, do you expect the man of God to drive what that will buy?

You know? When I first came out here, I was driving some, I don't know what it was, Steve, but it seemed like it was a 1973 Pinto. Come on. You know, I remember that car. It was a Pacer. It's called the Humble Mobile.

Rob Bell, Love Wins, and the Denial of Hell

Well, this is Mike Ebendroth with Steve Cooley on Tuesday here at No Compromise Radio. I believe it's March sometime, and we are looking forward to summer, and we are looking forward to summer when Phil Johnson is coming to Bethlehem Bible Church to preach in May.

How about that, Steve? Yeah, that actually will still be spring. You know what? It still will be. Well. Every once in a while, I get to, you know, poll rank on them. Yeah, that's true. What else do we want to talk about today?

I think I'd like to talk about Rob. Taco Bell. Taco Bell? No, but Taco John's back in Nebraska used to add in some Alpo to the burger, and then they would cut down on the meat costs because they were really putting in dog food.

How about that? Steve is actually sick, and with our studio equipment, we don't have a cough button. We'd like to make a plea. If you'd like to send us a sender. 1 -800-Macedonia. With a cough key on there, that'd be good.

Cough key. That's Kafka. Oh, yeah, okay. Small difference. Let's talk a little bit in the time we have left about another issue that's in the news, and that is Rob Bell and his new book called Love Wins.

Steve, give me just kind of an overview of the controversy and a couple of salient details.

Well, I think this actually has to do with a basketball player named Love, Kevin Love, with the, oh, that's the wrong book. The Minnesota Timberwolves, those two words would never go together. Yeah, basically what Rob is saying in his book is that God loves us so much that in the end, everybody gets to heaven.

Kind of love wins. God is a God of love, and pretty much love only, so that in the end, the only thing that will ever keep you out of heaven is your own stubborn willfulness, and eventually, though, God will wear you down.

It's interesting talking to Danny Akin behind the scenes. He said, because they are so radical, they meaning Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Tony Jones, Doug Padgett, et al, because they are so radical in their libertarian free will-ism that they have to say that some could go to hell.

Love will win, and most will not go. The majority won't go to hell. Almost all will go to heaven, but there may be a few select people that God will allow to go to hell because of their radical beliefs in the free will of man, and so you can't send somebody to heaven against their own free will now, can you?

No, you can't.

No, they have to be willing to go to heaven.

What we want to do is when a controversy like this comes down the pipe? Pike? Pike? Down the highway? Mass Pike? Yeah, Mass Pike. You say to yourself And you have to pay the toll. Got to pay the piper.

Moeller was right. We've read this book before, and what Satan does is he says, well, you know, it used to be Arianism in the third century, in the fourth century, but Arians aren't too popular now, are they?

So let's just recalibrate and redisguise Arianism, the denial that Jesus Christ is the eternal son. Let's just have them show up as 1888 Jehovah's Witnesses, and so everything is old, but it's packaged in a new way, and so is this a new thing?

Fosdick, repackaged? Yeah, it's just old-fashioned liberalism, but instead of calling it liberalism, you know, you just make it seem like love, love, love, love. God is, I mean, this sounds like the kind of thing that I would expect to see when I drive by the Unitarian Church, or Unitarian Universalist, or whatever they are.

Remember, the more you use the name of a church, the bigger trouble it is.

Yeah, unless you're in Uteville. So Uteville Bible Church. Ralph E. Powell, it must always be remembered that the Bible is our rule of faith for the doctrine of hell. However difficult the doctrine may seem, for natural reason or for human sentiment, Scripture leaves no doubt about the terrible nature and the eternal duration of hell.

Rejection or neglect of this doctrine will have dire effects upon the true health and mission of the church, end quote in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible. Steve, if you don't really believe in hell, what does that do to missions in your own neighborhood and foreign missions as well?

Well, I have absolutely no idea why you would ever support them, why you would ever be involved with them. I mean, what are you doing? You're wasting your time. If there's no hell, what do we need to worry about it?

You know, I mean, either you believe or you don't, and it all comes out in the wash.

Who cares? If you really believe that there's a hell, I believe your thankfulness will go up if you have been rescued from such an eternal fate, and I believe your desire internally will increase to evangelize other people and tell them the good news.

Listen to what J .C. Ryle said. There is no mercy in keeping back from men the subject of hell. Fearful and tremendous as it is, it ought to be pressed on all as one of the great truths of Christianity.

Our loving Savior speaks frequently of it. The apostle John in the book of Revelation often describes it. The servants of God in these days must not be ashamed of confessing their belief in it.

Well, just think about this. If there is no hell, to extrapolate just a little bit, then what we're really saying is that there's no punishment for sin and that ultimately God does not really care about sin.

What does that say about God? That God isn't really holy. I mean, you just have to negate whole sections of the Bible. You might as well just take, you know, not Thomas Jefferson's scissors. You might as well just take the shredder to the Bible because you're not going to have much left.

Absolutely, and this is why we want you to just be regular readers of the Bible. S. Louis Johnson was right. Most Christian problems can be solved if they, the Christians, would just simply read their Bibles through one or two times a year.

And Steve, I go back to Genesis chapter three, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. Did you know the first problem in all of the Bible, the first lie, the first issue of doctrine that was satanically ignored or denied, it's the doctrine of eternal judgment.

Genesis chapter three, verse four. There's no eternal judgment. There's no eternal ramifications. There's no spiritual death. That's the first lie in the Bible. So friends, read your Bible and then you're going to easily sniff out the likes of Rob Bell.

You're not going to have to be some Basset hound to do it. You can just be anyone and you'll say, that's a no brainer from Genesis to Revelation. The doctrine is clearly taught repugnant, although it may be, it's supposed to be repugnant because sin is repugnant and a just holy God has to punish that sin.

Well, we don't like to think about hell.

You know, I think I recently got myself into trouble at a funeral because I would not affirm, this is all I did. I didn't say where I thought the person went who died. I just spoke of the people there and their need to repent because we're all sinners.

We're all bound for hell, left to our own devices. And that really upset some people. There was even one person I think who left because I would not say that this person who died and gave absolutely no evidence of salvation, that I wouldn't say that they were in heaven.

Well, that's a tough one when you do a funeral like that. And usually we let the people connect the dots. We just preach the truth.

And by the way, just for the record, I didn't say where she was. I didn't address that issue at all.

There's a new book that's out by a guy in Nebraska. And you know, in these books about heaven and hell, and I went there and I went there. Oh, so now somehow we're supposed to believe that there really is a heaven because some guy said he died and went to heaven.

Therefore, we believe it's true. Or some guy dies and says he went to hell and then he comes back and therefore we're supposed to believe it's true. I go back to Powell's statement. The Bible is our rule of faith for the doctrine of hell, nothing else.

Nobody's ever gone to hell and come back to talk about it. Nobody's ever been to heaven and come back to talk about it because when Paul went to heaven, he came back and was told not to talk about it.

Well, and you know, the problem is we've trivialized hell in our culture. You know, people say that they're going through hell. We hear this all the time. Patton's hell on wheels. Yeah, I mean, if we understood, you know, the absolute punishment of an all-powerful God against sin for all times, we would not, like I said, trivialize it by saying that when we're going through a rough patch in life, we wouldn't call it hell on earth because there's no such thing as the oppressive, almighty wrath of God poured out on you constantly, full force forever.

That's when people say, oh, I've got a cross to bear.

It's my nagging wife. Well, I don't think they quite understand the torture that Christ went through, the naked torture on the cross, not necessarily physical torture, although that was true and sad, but the torture, the wrath of God, as it were, no, the torture, as it were, the wrath of God poured out on the son as he stood in our place and accepted the punishment that we were supposed to get, and then we just say, oh, I've got a cross to bear.

It's my bad knee.

Well, and you know, again, when people talk about hell, how do you get out? How do you escape hell on earth? Well, a lot of times, it's as easy as changing what you're thinking about. You know, if your circumstances have brought you to a place where you really feel like you're suffering, well, you know what?

If you stop what you're thinking about and think about something else, then hell goes away, and the reality of hell is it never goes away. You know, every single day is just like the day before. There's no sleep.

There's no rest. There's no relief. It's just oppressive, ongoing torment forever, and if that sounds depressing, it is, and that's why we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I think this is a little overkill, but for the sense of the show today, Louis de Molin, M-O-U-L-I-N, was a professor at Oxford, and he wrote a little treatise in 1680, and here was his point that he was trying to prove in 1680, that only one person in every 100 ,000 is actually born again going to heaven.

Now, let's just say he's wrong. We do know that many are called and few are chosen. We do know that the gate is narrow, and only few go through that narrow pressurized gate, and the road is broad, and many go through that broad gate, and I'm just wondering, Steve, there probably are many people out there today who like Edwards would describe them as trying to flatter themselves that they aren't going to hell.

That's right. I mean, people blithely, they are convinced that they're a good person, that they're going to heaven. They're on that broad way. They're heading through the broad gate with everybody else.

They look around and they go, you know what, I'm not as bad as that guy or this guy. The problem is that's not the standard. God demands perfection, and perfection is only available one way, and that's through the Son, Jesus Christ, his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his resurrection on the third day, and it's only by belief in that and a changed life.

Christ doesn't leave you the same. If he has saved you, he changes you. That's how you get to heaven, and not on the basis of your own merit or supposed merit.

Can you imagine living your life thinking that you're good enough to get to heaven? And most people do. I'm good enough to go to heaven. What does that say? What is your life saying now if that's your belief?

I'm good enough to go to heaven. What does that say about the child abuser, God the Father, who would torture his son for those three hours on Calvary with his wrath poured out on the son? For what reason?

The son didn't deserve it, so who did? Your goodness deserved it?

If you didn't need salvation, the Father certainly had no need to punish his son for sin, his son who never sinned. So you have to wrestle with that question. Why did Jesus have to die? He died for sinners like you.

Do you want to know the love of God? You look to the cross. Do you want to know the holiness of God?

You look to the cross. You want to know the justice of God? You look to the cross. You want to know the long-suffering of God? You look to the cross. And so that's our only hope. We look to the cross and we say, God, I take your word for it that if I look to Jesus Christ and believe in him with my heart, soul, mind, and strength, that you will save me from my sins.

And I want people saved from their sins.

To believe in risen Savior. I want every single person to believe that. That's what we want.

NoCompromiseRadio .com. God bless 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 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.

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