Lighthouse Ministry International

Shepherds Conference, Friends, and the Start of the Show

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.

My name is Mike Abendroth. I'm glad to be here today at the helm in the Starship Enterprise. I was at the Shepherds Conference in Los Angeles, and it was great to see some of my friends and comrades, old professors.

I remember seeing Dr. Zemeck there. He was probably my favorite professor at Master's Seminary, George Zemeck. And I asked him about the heart and the mind differences, and he talked about how Mary pondered things in her heart.

I asked him about the Gabor man, the mighty man, and he immediately quoted Jeremiah 17, 5. We talked about false totality transfers, and it was great to see Dr. Zemeck. MacArthur was seemingly 20 years younger in his delivery and enthusiasm when he talked about the Holy Spirit and how charismatics have hijacked the Holy Spirit.

Sounds like the new book on the Holy Spirit by MacArthur is going to be excellent. I saw men like, let's see, Russell Honig, who is in New Zealand, and I went to school with Russell, crazy New Zealander.

It was just great to be at Grace Church. For a long time, the people here in New England thought I was trying to make Bethlehem Bible Church Grace Church of the East, and I was castigated for that, not condemned for that, but criticized for that.

Now when I bring people, I think we brought about 12 or 13 men from the church to the Shepherds Conference, and they see how the Lord has blessed Grace Community Church. If we could have some of that maturity and excellence of worship, excellence in preaching, ministry service, then I don't think that would be a bad thing to have Grace Church of the East here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Oh, I saw Jesse Galindo. Jesse Galindo was a man that I taught Fundamentals of the Faith to in 1993 or 94, and now he was taking off some days, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, to serve the 3 ,300 men who came for the Shepherds Conference.

Pretty impressive. So Jesse, I'm glad you heard the Word of God and you heeded it. So today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, we're just talking about a variety of things. I haven't been back here in the studio for quite some time.

Books, Bloggers, and Self-Promotion at the Conference

Let's see. What else do I have? Oh, an interesting story. Don Kistler, who used to be the president of Soledad Gloria Books, now he has Northampton Books, all kinds of Puritan writings and things like that.

I went up to Don Kistler in the bookstore and saw him there, and he was buying some books. And when you buy books, you get $50 worth of free merchandise slash books at the Shepherds Conference. And so if you don't spend all $50, then you lose it.

So you have these two little coupons, $25 each. And so he had $41 worth, and I had just talked to Don about the guy who, in New England, at Don's first pastorate, didn't like his preaching and didn't like how long he preached.

And he met Don at the door and said, I don't like your preaching. You preach too long for me. Don said, how long? It's too long for who? And he said, well, for me, of course. And he said, well, that's the problem, my friend.

I don't know if his name was Jim or something. I don't preach for you. I preach for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm sure he is not bored after hearing his word preach for 45 minutes. So I told Don that I remember that story, and we talked a little bit, and he gave me his business card and said, hey, I'd like to come up to New England sometime and preach.

And he thrust his business card into my hand, Northampton Press. So I was about ready to walk out of the bookshack at Grace Church at the Shepherd's Conference where they sell the books. And they said, oh, it's, you know, $41 or whatever, Mr. Kistler, and you could get one more book for that or you're going to lose it.

And I just walked by a display, and lo and behold, they had the sovereignty and supremacy of King Jesus bowing to the gracious despot. By a crazy man named Mike Ebendroth. And they had those books, and they weren't even turned sideways.

You could see the cover there. And so I thought, since Don said you should come, you know, I should go to the church and preach, I thought, well, then I'm going to do some self-promo as well. So I just turned on my heel and picked up the book and put it on Don's stack and said, here's a book that I wrote that I think you should probably read.

He said, oh, okay. So then the price rang up, and he owed like an additional $7, additional $5, and he had to put it on his credit card. So I thought that was pretty funny that Don Kistler, I forced him to get one of my books.

I'm probably going against my own grain here. There was a blogger that's always promoting his own books and his own stuff and tweeting about his own stuff all the time. I understand that you get excited about a book, and I say on the radio show, here's my book if you want to order it, because I think it promotes the gospel of Christ Jesus and his word.

Sometimes enough is enough. And so I wrote that particular blogger my comments, and we disagreed, but he was nice about it. All right, what else do we have here on tap for today? Okay, someone gave me something called Lighthouse Ministry International, and what do I think about Lighthouse Ministry International?

And so I just printed out the sheet here. It's like a booklet that you go through in case you've got some problems. Just looking at it, I don't think I think too much of it. But before we do that, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We've got our email up and running. You can go to our website and get Facebook shows, our iTunes, and oh, I guess I will say this. This is probably at the risk of self-promotion too. I went in one of the other places at the Shepherd's Conference where they were selling some jackets, and I said something to the lady who worked behind the counter, and it was cold that day, and I made some comment to her, and we were talking, and the person next to me said, that's No Compromise Radio.

They recognize my voice. So what do you know? That is pretty amazing. They recognize the voice of No Compromise Radio Ministry, and the first thing they said after that was, where's Steve? Don't forget, No Compromise Radio Ministry is going to be having a video production that you should probably be able to see around June.

I'm going to be interviewing Phil Johnson, Carl Truman, and James White, asking them questions about elephant room, celebrity Christianity, substitutionary atonement, etc., and that's going to be coming up soon.

I'll tape that in April, and we'll videotape that in April here in Boston, and then we will play it. Probably it'll be two shows on the internet that we'll play, $49 .95. Actually the first one's going to be free, and the second one, I think I might just have a little donate thing in there if somebody would like to donate it, because it is quite expensive.

If you knew how expensive Phil Johnson was, you would wonder. Just kidding. Okay, Lighthouse Ministry International. I'd like to remember who gave this to me. I don't really remember. However, it says on the front procedures manual how to set the captive free.

Deliverance Procedures and the Problem of Self-Help Spirituality

Step-by-step procedure to minister deliverance. So if you have the demon of minister, you might need deliverance. All kinds of deliverance ministries out there. I've done no homework, I just sat down and thought I'd just start running my mouth on this show on No Compromise Radio.

This is not going to be some critique that is well planned out or well thought out. I'm just going to start reading this, and one of the reasons why I don't have to plan this out very much, it's going to be patently obvious how bad this is.

I would say 95 out of 100 deliverance ministries are bad because they're putting the focus on the wrong foci. Step-by-step procedure to minister deliverance. I still think that's funny. It's like step-by-step procedure to pastor deliverance, to reverend deliverance.

You want to be delivered from your reverend or your pastor. I guess you're supposed to minister deliverance, setting the captives free. On the front we have a table of contents, statement of faith. Overall, the statement of faith seems good.

No problem there. I haven't read it perfectly. But here's where we start to get into trouble, is on page five, lighthouse ministry, pre-ministry preparation, confirming your appointment, read the scriptures that are written below, and then write down areas you are losing ground in your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Where you're losing ground. Well, I would not deny that there are places in our life as a Christian where we struggle and our sanctification wanes. I would not deny that there are imperatives in the scriptures.

But the first thing that I would do on this sheet is I would put all the glorious indicatives, as J. Gresham Mason called them, the triumphant indicatives. What Christ has done and the greatness of Christ Jesus.

Because I'm going to fail. I'm going to be the chief of sinners. I'm not going to walk in a manner worthy. I know I'm supposed to. I know the Spirit of God many times energizes me to do those things. And when I do them, then praise the Lord.

When I don't do them, I am to blame. But there's a bunch of stuff on here where you don't measure up. And so that's where I'm going to have the immediate problem. But you're supposed to bring this form in when you come in for ministry.

So I need to be delivered. There's some deliverance needed in my life. I've got something, some demon, some oppression, some possession, some transgression. I have some kind of issues. Give me an issue and I'll give you a tissue.

And so traumatic experience. Have you ever been abused sexually, physically, emotionally, spiritually? Have you ever experienced severe rejection? Have you ever been party to an abortion? What's the name of your father?

This is the section under lineage. Has any family member living or dead been involved in witchcraft or occult activities? I could probably check yes when my mom and I played Ouija board to see if I would win the Monroe Junior High swim team event.

That was weird. Suicide, mental illness, secret society like Freemasonry. Have you ever been involved in witchcraft, Satanism? Have you ever cursed God? Have you ever renounced your salvation? Are you addicted to nicotine, food, sex, alcohol, drugs?

Do you habitually lie, swear, criticize others, steal, abuse yourself, abuse others? Do you have severe anxiety, severe mood strings, mood strings? Do you wear a mood ring? Do you have anger, rage, nightmares, blasphemous thoughts, fantasy thoughts?

Do you struggle with lust, pornography, adultery, homosexuality? Do you have an extremely low self-image? Do you feel unworthy, inadequate? Are you unable to forgive someone? Do you have strong fears?

Do you suffer from a prolonged ailment? Do you have migraines, nervousness, insomnia? Do you experience difficulty reading the Bible, praying, attending a worship service? Do you have spiritual confusion?

That could be a show. That's a whole show. Apathy, unbelief, strong doubts. Thank you so much for completing this form. Please remember to bring it with you in bold letters. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

Now I'm not laughing that people have problems. I'm not laughing that people have issues. I'm not laughing that people are seeking to get help. I'm not even laughing at the people's motives at Lighthouse Ministry, because most likely the motives are good.

They want to help people. But here we have all these issues. Tell me all your issues, because we've got to do some talk therapy. We need to sit and talk. This isn't like this is a person who's going to go to their pastor, their shepherd, who would know them.

So this is the kind of get to know me. And we need to figure out if there's any external forces. And some, I guess, internal sin. There's some verses here regarding that. I will tell you that there are verses at the top.

Galatians 5, Colossians 2, Mark 7, Colossians 3, Ephesians 6, Ephesians 2, 1 Peter 2, etc. Self-image, Satan. Can't you see where all this is going to go? That you do what you do because somebody is making you do it.

Somebody is propelling you to do it. It's not necessarily that you have propensities and sin and the sin nature and Father Adam. It's something else. And then we can deliver that someone else or that demon or that demon of addiction or demon of pornography from you.

But the problem that they're not going to be able to do, and I don't even have to turn to the next page, although I'm going to, is we cannot deliver people from themselves. That's not something I can do.

I cannot minister a deliverance ministry because I can't get them out of themselves. Now certainly the Spirit of God can make people born again. He can cause them to be regenerated. Now that is true, but our problem is us.

I met the enemy and I am the enemy. My primary enemy is not Satan, although he is an enemy. I think probably he's more involved maybe with church leadership issues, but Mormonism and some of those bigger issues.

I don't think I'm to resist Satan, I know that, but I think my own sin gets me in more trouble than Satan does. Now there's an invisible war that's going on that I don't know anything about except that it goes on and I can't be worried about it because I know I have the Spirit of God.

And if Christ is for me, who can be against me? If God has justified me, then who can condemn me? And so I don't run around trying to say, well, I've got a problem, therefore it's really Satan. It says here, Ministry Acknowledgement, I have come of my own free will and may leave the session at any time.

Translation, A, we're Arminian, and B, this is going to get bad. I'm probably going to get emails on this too. I got a blistering email a couple of weeks ago about something that I said about mental illness and that I should stick to the Bible and not to science, and that's another topic.

Armor of God, Spiritual Warfare, and the Limits of Deliverance

Okay, open with prayer, put on the armor of God, claim the power of the blood, invite the Holy Spirit to direct the ministry time, claim the victory in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, doesn't that strike you, kind of the name it and claim it, and here's what we're going to do.

Move into the pre-deliverance information session. Be sure to include the explanation of door openers. See page 17. Okay, just for fun, let's see a no-compromise radio. What is a door opener? I'm looking at door openers, page 17.

Oh, so you're going to try to get some kind of inside scoop from them so you can talk about it, and door openers were some of the things we talked about before. Pain, fears, abuse, channeling, clairvoyance, blood packs, blood packs, did they have one of those on Rambo, charms, amulets, drugs, pride, gossip, you know what this reminds me of, these door openers?

If you have a horoscope that's generic enough, it'll cover everybody, and then people can specifically apply the generalities to their own life and think that somehow there's something to it. I mean, what isn't on this page?

Apparitions, gluttony, envy, swearing, coveting, street drugs, nicotine, TV addiction, NCIS addiction, uh-oh, uh-oh, I'm in bondage here, sin bondage, addiction to any substance, alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sweets.

Now, there are some sweets here in the church, and you can go over to the secretary's desk and get some of those sweets. I usually get the ones that are kind of Splenda. I gave up aspartame 13 months ago, but I haven't given up Splenda.

I try to use Stevia when I can. Actually when I flew Virgin the other day, they said, would you like a sweetener? I said, yes, please, and they gave me a Stevia, as we say here in New England, a Stevia.

So, deliverance stuff. When you understand Romans chapter 8, I don't think you need to go through a deliverance ministry. I think you can certainly remember who you are in Christ and focus on the indicatives.

There are things that you can tell people to think and things to do, but when I look at the scripture, what should we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It's hard to read the SVFD, read NAS for 20 years. Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who is raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword, as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Know in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

See that's what I need. I need to have my eyes focused to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now it does say here in Lighthouse Procedures Manual, page 8, pre-deliverance information session. The word deliverance frightens many people, like the host of No Compromise Radio Ministry.

And yet it was one of the counsels of our Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know what our counsels is. Isaiah 6, 2 -1 -6, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted.

He has set me up to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to the prisoners. Number two, our Lord Jesus Christ has given us his authority and tells us to go and do the same.

In Luke 10, 18 -19, I was watching Satan fall like heaven, like lightning, but your light has given you authority. Bold. See, there we go. What the apostles have and what those that Jesus gave the power to, we have that same power.

Bad hermeneutics. We want you to know that Satan is a toothless, defeated lion who roars a lot. I don't really know in 1 Peter 5, I believe verse 8, then how is he devouring people, seeking someone to devour?

He's trying to devour, but he has no teeth? I don't think that's right. What else do we have here? Much of the defeat we experience is because of bad choices. I believe that. That's good. Temptation is not sin, but yielding is.

We use the term demonized, oppressed. These are new words on No Compromise Radio. I've never heard of these before. Invaded, intruded upon, offended. So, if you have some lineage bondage or habitual sin or unconfessed sin or directly have given place to Satan, well, what would that matter?

He doesn't have any teeth. Through occult activities, spiritual warfare, what are the mountains in your life? Then they give a bunch of verses about spiritual gifts that are signed gifts that are no longer today.

We bind the strong man. How do we do that? A. We ask the Lord to show us how to minister in all authority as Lord Jesus did. B. By binding Satan first, manifestations of evil spirits have virtually stopped or at least have begun to be greatly reduced.

Friends, you don't need this. You don't need to write some agreement prayer. You don't have these issues. This is not spiritual warfare. You need to read Ephesians 6 and see what does Ephesians 6 say.

Don't you think Paul would have told Timothy or Titus in the pastoral epistles what to do when it comes to all this demon stuff and all this deliverance ministry and these things like incantations and occult activity?

Yeah, these Wiccan, witchcraft, rebellion cult things need to be repented of certainly and you need to run to Christ Jesus. And if there's sin in your life, sensuality, and what they have here called a lesbian spirit, then you need to repent.

But we can look to what Christ Jesus did for us when we can't do it. This whole thing about self-mutilation and cutters and self-abuse. People walk into my study all the time with all kinds of problems and I don't know specifically how to deal with the problems in terms of how do I stop that?

What remedy do I give? What does science say about anorexia and bulimia and cutting and all that? Here's what I can do. I can tell them that they can find rest for their souls in Christ Jesus. And I talk about Christ's life and how we can have his life imputed to our account and have our sins imputed to his account.

I talk about his victory over sin and death and Satan. I just talk to them about Christ. This kind of stuff focuses too much on what we were, our shame and all how to discern God told me kind of deal.

They might not even like that. But bind Satan? Ask the believer's permission to bind Satan? No. How about I'm going to tell the person who's in for a counseling session and discipleship that I'm going to tell them exactly about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not in the name of Jesus binding Satan, but talking to them about the name of Jesus. All his attributes from his wrath to his mercy and how they can have rest for their souls. Friends, No Compromise Radio Ministry, if you're in some deliverance ministry, I think you ought to be delivered from the ministry of deliverance.

NoCompromiseRadio .com.

NoCompromiseRadio .com.