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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 Avendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name's Mike Avendroth, I'm your host today. I think I say that every single time. I'm gonna have to start off a different way.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Your host today is Mike Avendroth. Moi. I have a book in front of me, and it's called Wildlife in the Kingdom Come. Wildlife in the Kingdom Come, subtitled, An Explorer Looks at the Critters and Creatures of the Theological Kingdom.
It's an out-of-print book, published originally by Zondervan, by Ken C. Johnson and John H. Coe. And in this book, you have a lot of wildlife pictures that then in a satirical fashion would depict a theological stance.
And so, I open it up and here's page 70. It's got a picture of a moose with kind of bound feet, a little bit bound. And it says, the Arminian. And then it has the taxonomical term, if that's the right word, the Latin word, choose us and lose us.
It says, this is a clever, clever book. The Arminian, perhaps the most populous of all creatures to roam the mountain ranges of the Protestant peaks is the amiable Arminian. Unlike most of the other creatures in the theocentric woodlands, the Arminian's appearance and disposition seem shaped by an extraordinary relationship with human beings.
This may be due to his preference for gazing in the free will farmland of the Arminian. He is a man of the heart of the Arminian and of the Arminian farmlands. It is there that the Arminian struck an intimate acquaintance with the spiritual sharecroppers in the track lands of Trent.
Wow. Their fellowship remains unfallen ever since. Further defining characteristics of the Arminian are his appetite for resistible grace grass, my choice cherries, and unlimited atonement leaves. Some believe these paltry portions are largely responsible for his distaste of the more hearty doctrinal daffodils upon which the Calvinist regularly feeds.
Despite this criticism, the Arminian has flourished in the past few centuries contrary to his more staunch relative. This is particularly evident in numerous breeds such as the Wesleyan, the Methodist, the Nazarene, and especially the free-spirited Pentecostal, which is usually difficult to track.
That is classic. In general, there is a good deal of controversy whether the Arminian and his numerous breeds will persevere. Some experts contend that the Arminian's poor diet and his unhealthy reliance on the goodness of mankind will surely bring about his demise.
Still others insist that although the Arminian species is not eternally secure, he alone has migrated to the glorious state of perfection. And that's funny, it's got a footnote. It says, for a classic text on the Arminian, still in the original Latin, see Charles Finney, spelled wrongly, willy woncha, ain'tcha gonna, ain'tcha gonna, if I cocksa, woncha shova, pleading press unlimited.
So, very interesting wildlife in the kingdom, Ken Johnson and John Coe. Every once in a while on No Compromise, I might just read one of those. I don't know if you like that. I don't even know if you like the show, but I like the show and so I might as well have some fun.
Might as well laugh, just somebody was saying the other day, there you are laughing at your own jokes on No Compromise Radio. Well, since there's no one else here in the studio, I don't know who else would laugh.
I guess it could be like the Adams family, or I love Lucy and we could play a laugh track. That might be interesting. And I was talking to the No Compromise team just the other day, and we might start adding some more bells and whistles to the show.
We'll see. But remember, I have a day job and many of you are probably saying, good for you because you couldn't make it as a radio host. But this is a wonderful opportunity for us to expand the borders of Bethlehem Bible Church into the hearts and into the minds of the Fahrenheit 451 crowd.
Isn't that true? Well, today I was considering topics to talk about. I'm sorry, I have a little bit of a cold, a little bit of sniffle. So if you're listening to the first time and you think I always sound this way, that's probably not the case, but I always have the same mind.
I wasn't even gonna tape many shows this week because I haven't felt good, but we're here giving it the all American shot. In seminary, I had a professor Montoya and he would say, pastors, you don't call in sick, you crawl in sick.
And so I don't feel too bad today. I was asked a question on a radio interview the other day when someone called me to interview me, which was quite fun. And you know, the great thing about radio is you can have notes in front of you.
You can have all kinds of notes. You don't have to worry about eye contact. You don't have to worry about anything else. You can just look down at your notes and read if you wanted to. I try not to. I usually look straight ahead or I look out the window or something like that.
And I just imagine who the audience might be. So today I'd like to talk about Hinduism because someone asked me the question the other day about mysticism in the local churches, mysticism in evangelicalism.
And of course, that's one of my hot topics because it is so rampant in evangelical churches, subjective mysticism. I listened to a national preacher today on this very station. And he was talking about how God gives you peace and that is a good helper to confirm tough decisions, a peace about it.
And while you can make difficult decisions and then have a peace resting in the Lord to use peace as a driver, as a determiner, as a helper to make decisions, I think that is very, very troubling because we can't trust our hearts.
That's why we have many counselors. Peace about it, Jonah had in the belly of the boat. And so you can get agitated and you can be vexed and concerned when you go do biblical things like evangelize or go do church discipline.
And so when I was interviewed this week, I thought, you know, deep down, where does mysticism come from? Now you might say Satan or something like that, I guess you probably could. But I think our culture today is influenced by Hinduism.
That's right, I think it goes back to Hinduism. And I think many evangelicals, and I hope you're not one of them, unawaringly think Hinduistically. Unawaringly think more Eastern, not Eastern biblically, but Eastern unbiblically, and you have this subtle bent towards mysticism.
I think of Obi-Wan Kenobi, that great theologian. The force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. It is all powerful and controls everything.
We have Hinduism, and I think it has infiltrated local churches today, evangelical churches. I don't really care if it's infiltrated mainline Episcopalians, mainline Lutheran, mainline PCA, USA. They're pretty much dead anyway, as a rule.
There are exceptions and I'm glad for those. But this idea of mystical Hinduism is very rampant in our churches. The New Age philosophy is just wrapped in a Western garb in the livery of Western evangelicalism, and we don't even recognize it.
So today on No Compromise Radio, I'd like to talk about Hindu influences on American religion, American evangelicalism, American spirituality. And if you're listening in the UK or New Zealand or someplace else, it'll be the same there as well, because maybe I should say Hindu influence in the Western English-speaking culture.
I could probably call this Lion King theology. No creator, circle of life is in God's place. All is one, the stars are Simba's father. And you say, no, we don't believe any of that. We think that is Hinduism.
We think that is paganism. We don't sing my sweet Lord with George Harrison, evoking some Hindu chant. We are more sophisticated than that. We don't watch Dharma and Greg when it was on TV. Excuse me about the Hindu term Dharma for moral duty.
We don't watch Lost anymore with the Dharma initiative. Again, moral duty, Dharma. We aren't influenced by Bollywood and everything else. Well, I think this whole idea of spirituality that is mystical, that is Hinduistic, is a very tricky, clever, deceitful con propelled by Satan himself.
And I do think it's interesting, the old Puritan, John Flavel, said, by entertaining of strange persons, men sometimes entertain angels unawares, but by entertaining of strange doctrines, many have entertained devils unaware, John Flavel.
Now, the first thing we have to do is to say to ourselves as Americans, as Western English speaking people, we can be tricked. We can be deceived. We can be duped. Satan is clever. The pride of man and the sin in man, even in Christian men and women, is still very, very powerful and we have to be good discerners.
We have to be good Bereans. We have to examine things and we have to ask questions about this very issue. Otherwise, we're going to turn into mystics, Hindus. Reality is whatever you make it. Who said that?
Reality is whatever you make it. LSD guru, Timothy Leary, 1968. The influence in media is big, but now the evangelical churches, I think, have bought it hook, line, and sinker. What is truth? How do you know you can have truth?
The emergent church has bought into that to a large degree. How do you know you really have truth? President Clinton, when he spoke to Georgetown University, nobody's got the truth. You're at a university which basically believes that no one ever has the whole truth, ever.
We are incapable of ever having the entire truth. I find that quite odd, especially when I read Psalm 119. The sum of thy word is truth and every one of thy righteous ordinances is everlasting. When I was in India, I have a very interesting story.
I don't think I've told this story for quite some time. I don't think I've ever told it on No Compromise Radio. This is a very, this is insightful. This is a mystical experience, actually, for me. No, I was speaking in India with some Grace Church folks and the special speaker by video was going to be John MacArthur, and so I think it was six in the morning MacArthur time, GMT, Grace MacArthur time, and it was about six o 'clock at night, although where we were, Bombay, Pune area, it's a half hour, it's eight and a half hours ahead of Eastern, so that's 11 half hours ahead of Pacific.
So it was 6 .30 at night where we were and it was seven in the morning where John was. And so imagine this, you have the projector, then you have a screen, and then the projector puts up on the screen the image of John MacArthur, and then there's a camera facing towards the congregation, the men at this conference in Pune, a pastor's conference, and then John could see us.
So John could go to the basement studios at Master Seminary, I think it's in the basement there, and then could do this live preaching. And so I was seated on the front row and I was trying to sit in the back, but because of honor and age, age before beauty, I had to sit in the front row.
And this guy got up, come to find out later he was trying to sell Benny Hinn books in the carport, or whatever you call it. But this guy got up and it looked like he had some problems, it looked like he had some problems even trying to walk.
You would think he maybe had a stroke or maybe he was drunk, one of the two. Maybe he was drunk with the Holy Ghost. And he was walking up towards the stage. Well, maybe he had to get up to go to the bathroom, I had no idea and didn't really pay much attention.
Then he starts going up onto the stage where the screen was, the screen that had the image of John MacArthur. Well, he walked over to the screen and now everybody's kind of looking at each other and I'm not an elder at this church or anything like that, I'm just a speaker and so I didn't wanna jump up and pull some no compromise deal.
I think this is about seven years ago. And the guy walked over to the screen where John was preaching. And of course, John was preaching his typical pablum, no, I'm just kidding. He was teaching his typical, thus saith the Lord, preaching, K. Russo, he was heralding the Word of God and he was talking about gospel truth, just like John does.
And he, the man, got up and then he knocked down the screen and then began stepping on the screen. Now, the image was now on the back of, actually we were at the YMCA in Puna and it's still showing John MacArthur, but on the back wall and it doesn't show it very well because it's probably some yellow wall or something.
But still thinking that John's image was on that overhead projector screen, he starts stomping on it. And I thought, what a great picture. MacArthur teaching truth, doctrinal truth, antithetical truth, propositional truth.
There is truth, we can know the truth. We are to preach the whole truth, nothing but the truth by, you know, so help us God. And here we have a man who cannot stand that. And he gets up and he begins stomping on the truth.
Interestingly, they escorted him out and some people were trying to blame it on epilepsy and other things. If he would have knocked the screen down, maybe, but he had to go up to knock the screen down.
And then when the screen was knocked down, I don't know if epilepsy caused him to try to stomp on the place where John MacArthur's image would have been. But, you know, it was like thinking of Star Wars.
Remember when R2-D2, he had that little message for Obi-Wan when Luke was sitting there and it was Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia is, you know, help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope. It was one of those kind of moments.
That guy, he did not like absolute truth. And so that's a great little picture of the society today. That's Hinduism, there's no absolute truth. It's, you know, love the one you're with, Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1969.
And when people hear propositional truth from the Hinduistic mystical perspective, antithetical truth, right and wrong, black and white, they don't like it. It evokes responses like Voltaire's response.
Not until the last priest is hanged with the entrails of the last king will mankind finally be free. In other words, we don't want a God who rules over us. And if there is truth, absolute truth, then there is an authority that we must bow to, that we have a creator and we have a responsibility to obey and to worship and to submit to.
So you might wanna be careful when you say to yourself, oh, well, you know what, we're fine. I don't have to look at any of these issues. Satan is alive and well today. And he deceives those whose minds aren't subject to propositional truth from the word of God.
He is a great mixer. He's a great mixer of truth and error. And you can go back to Genesis, the first few chapters to read about that in the fall and how he mixes God's word with his word. Richard Baxter, the great Puritan from Kidderminster, England said, you know, I like Baxter.
Some of his soteriology was a little strange, but this part's sure good. Take heed, the devil is a greater scholar than you. Take heed, the devil is a greater scholar than you. And so Hinduism, mysticism, says it's not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
There are other truths and there are other ways to know truth, like subjective mystical experiences, truth and experience. Now, you wouldn't run into an evangelical today who would say they want to act like a Hindu.
But the reality is, if you take truth as the revealed truth of God plus something else, internal gizzard theology, you're acting like a Hindu. We have truth as an attribute of God. John 1 .14, the father is, the son rather, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.
Glory is the only begotten from the father, full of grace and what? Truth. And truth is an attribute of God and therefore God speaks truthfully. God doesn't lie. And you can look at Titus chapter one, first Samuel 15, and the glory of Israel will not lie.
And if God is truth and he speaks out truth, his word is truth. Thy commandments are truth, Psalm 119 .151. Psalm 119 .160, the sum of thy word is truth. Proverbs 30, verse five, every word of God is tested.
He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Jesus Christ, John 17 .17, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is true. So if you think you hear from the Lord in an audible way, you think God speaks to you in dreams, in bosom burnings, in other ways, I want to challenge you and ask you, are you really a Hindu?
How much influence has Hinduism, how much influence has Hinduism had in your view of God? Mysticism, which is a direct, I don't know if it's a, let me not use the word direct. It's a bedfellow of Hinduism.
I like Jeffrey Bromley's quote about mysticism. Mysticism presses the external forms of religion to attempt a direct knowledge of God. So once you say we're going to bypass our minds, bypass the scripture, and we're going to learn about God with this subjectivism, this subjectivization of the word and of experiences, you are going to go need to get that book by David Wells called No Place for Truth, No Place for Truth.
And in that book, you will see very quickly that Wells said today, and this was written back in 1993, that today you don't have people who are writing theology books or following theology books or reading theology books.
What you have instead are people having autobiographies. So he said on page 281 of this great book, No Place for Truth, without the objective existence of truth, theology becomes autobiography. And the bad news is, even today as we talk on No Compromise Radio, the bad news is if you become mystical, if you are mystical, if you are Hindu and you're thinking about truth and understanding the world and having guidance, you are going to be immature.
And I think I've done a series recently on how to stay a pygmy when it comes to spiritual truth. And I don't know if I addressed it or not, because, hey, I talk so much, I don't know what I said and to whom I said it to.
But I will say this, I'll say it again, that if you rely on subjective mystical experiences, similar to Hinduism, that you will not grow in the faith. You will not be mature, you will be immature. When you watch little babies, you watch toddlers and they're six months old and one year old and two years old, what do they do?
They crawl over, they walk over, they want to put things in their mouth. If they find a piece of dog food, down in the mouth it goes. If they have a safety pin, if you let them, they will put it in their mouth.
It's like how they have to test things and try things, is in the mouth. And you say, well, I don't have the objective word of God to guide me, then everything else just goes in your mouth. And you just try it and you want to be known for what you're for, not what you're against, et cetera.
It is the perennial question, B .B. Warfield said, whether the basis of our doctrine is to be what the Bible teaches or what men teach. And in this particular case, when it comes to mysticism, what our own hearts teach, what our own thoughts teach, where we make God in our image, because we've created God with idle factory hearts.
How many times have you heard it? Well, my God is, my God is, well, my God. If your God isn't the God of the Bible, then it's an idol. It's not a God anyway, it's probably demon energized. It's like the people that say, well, we're going to meet in Minneapolis and we're going to reimagine our Christian faith.
Now, what is that? That is Hinduism. And if you throw out biblical truth and antithetical thinking, propositional realities, then you're not going to grow. And what are you going to do? You're going to be a person who can't discern.
Bereans discerned. Thessalonians, they accepted the word as something powerful. It does its work in those who believe. Yet the Bereans were even more noble because they tested, they discerned. They, in fact, yes, judged the word.
And so you want to be a good Berean. You want to be a person underneath the word of God when he says in 1 Thessalonians 5, examine everything what? Carefully. Otherwise, you're just, this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.
No evil, no good, liberation from ethics. Who cares about sexual mores? We want to be liberated from God. And absolute truth is passe. We don't want that. We can't have a God who reign over us. So this is probably part one of, are you really a Hindu?
Are you a mystic? Get back to the word of God. Read Psalm 119 today, Psalm 119, and you'll be affirmed and confirmed that the word of God is powerful, reliable, and true. 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.