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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 Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Today's Tuesday. Steve, good to have you here. Good to be here. Happy birthday. Well, thank you very much. I had a double espresso in light of my birthday.

The Problem with Christian Advertising and Compromise

My wife made me this morning, and so I'm fired up. Woo! I just was telling Steve, just before we started the show today, that my last show that I taped was about vows and how marriage vows, written by yourself, are not, they're symmetrical.

They're too romantic. They're too, I love you and you love me, and then Steve said, I love you, you love me. Where was Steve? Actually, it was yesterday when I taped the show. He drove up in his truck, came into the church, was here for 30 seconds,.

And then drove off again in a huff. Yeah. Not exactly, well, I was in a Microsoft rage yesterday. Yeah, that's exactly right, and you should have been. Yeah, I had several, I think four conversations with Microsoft yesterday after a couple of uninstalls and reinstalls.

Was it in, were you speaking to them in English?

In two of the conversations. I can't seem to find the Finder tab.

Oh, that would be Mac. Yeah. No, two of the conversations were in highly inflected English. Oh, okay, that's nice. Yes, thank you. I thought you could speak in tongues, though.

Not, never on Wednesday. Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we do something that is, hopefully, provocative to you, but easy for us.

That's the way we like it. Always provocative and always easy, and not always in that order.

When we get the new Christianity today, there's all kinds of things to talk about, and we dabbled into this a couple times ago with the NIV. Steve, do you, is that your Bible of choice? Do you preach from the NIV?

The nearly inspired version. Oh, touche. Was that the 1978, 1984, 2002, 2005, or 2011 version?

I find them to be less and less inspiring as time goes on.

Well, today, let's talk a little bit about Christianity today, and we don't know what we're going to talk about today, actually. This is the 2011 version of Christianity today, and sometimes,.

Not to be confused with the 1977, 78, 79.

Well, back then, they actually had theological articles. Oh, back in the day, yeah. Yes, they did. I'm sure they did. I thought it was interesting, some of the ads that Christianity today takes, and so, Steve, I think that's topic number one.

Proclaiming the Gospel, Not “Sharing”

Topic number one is, Real Enjoy, Enjoy Real Success Without Losing Your True Self is a book now that you can buy, advertised in Christianity Today by Devon Franklin, produced by Faith, Enjoy Real Success Without Losing Your True Self.

Now, that sounds pretty Christian to me, doesn't it? Not exactly. I think he was in the shark tank the other day,.

Pitching his wares. I mean, when Jesus said, you know, you need to deny yourself, I think that's exactly what he had in mind. You need to lose yourself. Yourself is the problem. Well, your unsaved self is the issue.

Steve, T .D. Jakes recommends it. T .D. Jakes said, a must read for anyone seeking to strike that quintessential balance between faith and function.

You know, I have one word that comes to mind, kindling. Yeah.

Well, here's one of my issues. If you are a ministry, then you have to, oddly enough, Steve, minister. Minister, yeah. That's right. And if you minister the gospel. Part of the word, I think. I think if I ever had a magazine, and that magazine was a Christian magazine, I would probably not take ads for products that weren't uniquely Christian.

I think it would be called, first of all, The Hafenhorf Chronicle. Yeah, that's right. I say that because people have a hard time. They look at Mike's name, his last name, and they cannot say it.

I don't care how many times they've heard it. I don't know how difficult it is. If you'd like to call me Abendroth, that's fine, but we prefer Abendroth. Yet, here again in Christianity today, it's anything for the money.

Steve, I have to tell you this, and I said this to my No Compromise listeners. There is an owner of Parables Bookstores, and she refused to carry the updated NIV for principle's sake. Good for her. Don't you wish our local Christian stores around here would stand up for principles, too?

I do, and that would be a great principle to stand up for. I mean, that thing isn't even fit for kindling. You'd probably have to douse it with something,.

And it won't even start on fire. So, note to self, if you're a Christian organization, then you'd like to do things Christianly. Steve's still looking around for that. I can't even find that page. That was at the very beginning, so that was my first foray into it.

It must be well-hidden. Steve, what's the second foray into Christianity today for our topic, topic du jour? Oh, you want me to do that? Yeah, yeah, you can pick one, though.

Yeah, on the very back cover. And it says, who's next? People you should know. And it talks about a man named Paul Louis Metzger. And I guess he goes to some, oh yeah, here we go.

Did he write me and you and a dog named Boo? Is that the guy? No. Okay.

That's for Pete Maynard. Okay. He is the Professor of Theology and Culture, which is interesting, Professor of Theology and Culture at MoMA Biblical Seminary. Seminary. And especially, he's also founder of the Seminary's Institute for Theology of Culture, New Wine, New Wine Skins.

New Wine, okay, I'm listening while Steve's coughing. I'll hit the cough button for Steve. Yeah, we need to get one of those. Anyway, so. Send your money to No Compromise Radio, earmark it, cough button.

He's written some books. He's written some books and other things like that. And I thought it was interesting, this last part, because, well, let me just kind of briefly go through this. He says, you know, they host conferences.

They bring in various sides of the issues. Topics have included culture wars, same-sex marriage, racism, and HIV AIDS. And here's what they try to do. They try to increase the communication between disparate groups.

So for example, he says, we've brought Unitarian Universalists, Buddhists, and gays onto our campus to share our respective views. I think that's nice.

Well, if you know a friend and you're sitting down having a nice Pete's Coffee someplace, aspartame free, and they would like to share with you certain views that they have about their morality, or lack thereof, and their worldview, don't you think that'd be a good setting?

Sure. But I don't think I'm going to open up the church building nor the seminary building to come and say, let's share. Last time I checked, we have good news that we should be telling other people, proclaiming to other people.

And so, Steve, for me, I don't even really like to share. I don't like to use the word share. I think proclaim, or preach, or herald, or exhort. I think those are better terms for me.

You know what I said the other night in an IBS class, you know, I was talking about, because foolishly, I hadn't gone through the notes recently, and it did say, you know, if you want to share your faith kind of thing.

And I said, can I just correct that? Because you cannot share your faith. You know, share is not some kind of, like, a box of Kleenexes where you can just hand them out or something like that. We have to, at a bare minimum, tell people the truth, but proclaim, or preach, or herald, those are the correct biblical terms, not sharing.

Sharing. I think, you know, John the Baptist in the wilderness, he was really good at sharing.

Sharing. Thank you for sharing that today, Pastor. Oh, here's the thing.

I think, Steve, that people underestimate the power of the gospel and the power of the word and the power of indwelling sin in an unbeliever. And so sharing is somehow going to solve the problem of indwelling sin and people being dead in their sins.

We have good news, and I think we ought to proclaim that good news. And the good news of Christianity is not, you know, this is your view and this is my view. We have the right view, and I'm sorry that it sounds like we have a monopoly on the truth, but it's not our truth.

We have received this gift. We have received this stewardship, and it is our responsibility to proclaim that. And I think in a way similar to John the Baptist. Now, you might not be exactly John the Baptist-like, but you should proclaim like John the Baptist does.

We have truth because we have it from God, and you need to listen to this truth and then bow and respond in light of that truth.

But wait, he asks a perfectly fine question. If we are going to break through divisions, and that's really the key, break through divisions, bring everybody together, we need to listen to people on the other side first.

Why should they listen to us if we don't listen to them?

Well, let's go back to John the Baptist for a second, Steve. John the Baptist, we think of him as some fiery, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, brood of vipers. But I'm looking here in Mark chapter one.

He preaches Christ. He's the one who's talking about Jesus. And so, if you'd like to come to our seminary, to our church building, and we'll sit, and you'll listen to me talk about Jesus, I think that's better.

After me, John the Baptist said, Baptist John,.

Big bad John, big bad Baptist John.

After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Call me old-fashioned, but I think Jesus is pleased when people tell other people about him.

That's right, and I mean, the whole idea that we need to listen to people and their warped understanding of the world, their warped understanding of themselves, and their warped understanding of the Bible before we can tell them the truth, that's a little bit warped.

Steve, that warped thinking finds its way into the church where people say, we don't want to have one guy get up and preach from one book. We need to share, if monologues are out, dialogues are in, let's do the Doug Padgett, everybody kind of talks, everybody's valuable, their input's valuable, and so now it's in the churches too where the old days of John Knox standing in the pulpit thundering the word to marry Queen of Scots or anybody else who will listen, that's passe, that doesn't work.

See where the world is today? The whole world's not Christian, so that must not work.

Who died and put you in charge, though? Why do we have to have one guy up front? A dialogue, so an unbeliever's opinion, even in a church setting, is just as valuable as the man who studied a message all week and gets up to proclaim it, not on the basis of his own authority, but on the very authority of Christ himself.

I think I'm gonna start calling that gizzard. Gizzard theology. Gizzard theology, you just have something in your gizzard, you feel it in your bosom, and you have to let it out, and so here, Steve, when we were younger, we were poor, and so my mother'd have to get the hearts and the liver and some other

The gizzard. The gizzards, yeah. The gizzard's kind of chewy, though. Okay, so it's now my turn now. We're listening to ourselves talk here in the studio today on No Compromise Radio, Mike and Steve.

Maybe we should bring some people in to share. Do you know what I thought of that?

You know who I'm gonna bring in to share? Yeah. She doesn't know it yet, but I'm gonna bring my wife in. Oh, great. She's gonna be the first female guest on this show.

Will you have to leave the room, though, because then she'll be exercising authority over you? No, I'll be asking her questions,.

And unlike the NIV-updated 2011, not the 78, 84, to 02, or 05, it's not like she'll assume authority in 1 Timothy chapter two. I'm looking at this page, Steve, and you don't even need to find this page.

The NASB, New American Standard Bible page, it says literal, timeless, true, readable, trusted, embraced, and then it says lower prices. I just have to say, Steve, that probably in my heart of hearts, I still like the NAS better than the ESV, and we preach from the ESV here at the church.

We were paid off to do that. Yeah, there goes our discount right there.

But I still like the NAS better for lots of reasons, and maybe because I studied it for so long, or maybe because it seems like it's more literal, for instance, in 1 Corinthians chapter six, there's two words for homosexuals, and it just combines the two, that is the ESV.

But here's my sad statement for the day. For me, Steve, to watch the NAS and its publishing arm just destroy the translation, foundation publications, I'm just sad because this thing is going to be a dinosaur in no time.

Yeah, it's very sad, and one of the reasons we went to the ESV is just because that is a company, I mean, the ESV is a good translation, even though they so have inverted 2 Corinthians 5 .21, I mean, the word order, so I'm like, I have to re-memorize that thing all over again, but the meaning's still there.

But they market it so much better. They're so much smarter and so much more able and willing to work with churches that it's just like night and day. I mean, the NAS has locked up 1 of the market share,.

And that's where they've been sitting for Maybe that's the Lockman Foundation. You want to put a lock on 1%, how would they do in the shark tank?

Not very well, I mean, they've been sitting there for almost 35 years at this meager 1%, and you're not going anywhere except for to the dustbin of history if you don't learn how to market, even if you've got the best, if you have the best mousetrap in the world and you don't know how to market it,.

You're not going anywhere. I have an ESV app on my phone, on my iPad, all these things. How much did that cost you?

It cost me zero. Yeah, see, the NAS would never do that. I mean, I wouldn't say never, but I shouldn't say never, but it's just not their first thought is to give things away.

Hell, the Gospel, and the Need to Read the Bible

Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we're just doing a potpourri of all kinds of, you know what we'll call this today, Steve? Stream of consciousnesses. Put our consciousnesses together. How many SS's can we put on that?

I'm going to trump you right now and steal this from you. Here's a quotation in Christianity Today from Eugene Peterson. He did the message. He did a lot of, he writes a lot of books for.

He went to that conference in Colorado, didn't he? Oh, no, I think, no. No, it wasn't. Yeah, that was the other guy. That was the other bad guy.

Sorry, I get my bad guys. That was the other liberal. Okay. That was Yancey. Oh, yeah, Yancey. Somebody did write us and said, you know, you misspoke for Yancey speaking at the gay Christian conference, and I don't like what you said, and I wrote them back, and I said, but if you just exchanged the word adultering, fornicating, or drunkard Christian conference, I think there'd be a problem.

We think all sin is forgivable, and we think we should love people who are ensnared in sin, but the way you love them is tell them there's the righteous one who died for unrighteous ones like you who are living in a state of unrighteousness called homosexuality, and in light of that, you should repent and forsake your sins and believe in the God-man.

But anyway, Eugene Peterson said this. There's very little Christ, very little Jesus in these people who are fighting Rob Bell in regard to his new book, Love Wins. Very little Christ, very little Jesus in these people who are fighting Rob Bell.

How about that from Eugene Peterson?

I mean, my mom used to have this thing where she would say, consider the source, you know, a source code, and I'm just like, you know, very little Christ. Well, if Christ spoke about hell more than he did about heaven, and Rob Bell says there isn't a hell, I think there's more Christ in the people who are going after Rob Bell than maybe there is in Rob Bell.

Absolutely. I don't think you can get saved through the proclamation that there's hell and that there's nothing else. There's no mention of the God-man. There's no mention of sins being forgiven because Jesus was a sin-bearer, the just dying for the unjust that he might bring us to God.

I know you have to preach about Christ, but is it fair, Steve, to frighten people with hell so they turn to the God of heaven?

Well, I think it absolutely is. I mean, if you just think of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. I mean, did he say, listen, I just want you to feel good about yourself. I want you to know that you're going to heaven and God loves you so much, he just can't stand it.

That is not I think Steve had the espresso today.

That is not the kind of preaching that convicts people of sin and that drives them to the cross.

Steve, if it would have been written in Helvetica font for the environment using less ink, I might have believed it. On recycled paper. Here's what we want to do. We want to encourage you to read your Bibles.

If you simply read your Bibles on a regular basis, you will notice what the Bible teachers, what the Bible authors, what Jesus himself down to the loving Apostle John talk about, and they talk about lots of things, including the doctrine of hell.

And so I guess, let me just rephrase it this way. There's very little Christ in Christ, very little Jesus in Jesus, since he's fighting people like Rob Bell. There's not much Jesus in Jesus, I guess. Is there?

I'm not even going to answer that one. I mean, that's, yeah. That whole idea is absurd and that's spoken by a true liberal defending another liberal. Well, speaking of liberals,.

The Spirit, the Word, and Charismatic Theology

Steve, what do you have up for us next? He started looking down at the magazine and then he looked at me with his ears perked up thinking, what is going on? I think I know where you're going.

I saw you had a Do you know where you're going to? I saw you had a seminary ad and so I've got my own little seminary ad. I really like this. Okay. If you like it, I probably do. The King's University and of course they have a seminary too.

This is Jack Hayford, the founder and president of it. And I just found this fascinating because notice the emphasis on scripture here. The King's College or the King's Seminary is preparing spirit-filled, spirit-formed, spirit-empowered servant leaders.

Wow, did you know all the king's horses.

And all the king's men? Couldn't put charismatic theology back together again? Well, yeah.

I mean, there is no emphasis here on the Bible. Spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit. The Holy Spirit is third person of the Trinity. Awesome. You know, but he works through a revealed word.

That's exactly right. And the Holy Spirit points to Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit, he himself could receive worship, could receive adulation, could receive all kinds of things, but he has chosen to point to Christ Jesus.

I can't even think of a time, Steve, in the New Testament, maybe there's one or two, but I can't think of them right now where the spirit receives praise or that we're supposed to praise the spirit. So even, you know, praise God from whom all blessings flow, et cetera.

Sometimes we sing about spirit, we love you, we worship and adore you, glorify your name in all the earth. I think it is the spirit, it's glorify Christ's name. So show me, here's my point, show me a spirit-driven church, a spirit-filled church.

You'll show me a church that preaches the word, which then will obviously reveal Christ Jesus.

And what Jack Hayford is getting at is, you know, when he says spirit-filled, spirit-formed, spirit-empowered servant leaders, you know, the emphasis, it's just out of balance. The Holy Spirit is emphasized to the exclusion of just about everything else.

And whatever you do is anointed and spirit-filled,.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. See, what our listeners don't know is that I actually like Jack Hayford as a person. When I was first being introduced into Christianity as an adult, I had my Lutheran background, but then I was going through difficult times.

My father was dying and my wife, before she was my wife, my to-be wife, invited me to go to church. And I went for two reasons. One, I wanted to be around this girl that I thought was pretty and nice.

And the second reason was, is because I needed some answers. And so guess what church we would go to on a weekly basis? Church off the way? Church on the way. Okay. And you know, on the Sunday morning, Steve, there wasn't a lot of speaking in tongues and there wasn't a lot of this kind of kooky stuff.

On the other nights, it was a little bit different. But I, and I remember running into Jack Hayford at the Burbank Airport of all places. Yeah, I had a bad back. I had a big suitcase. Did it heal it? I got it healed.

Yeah, right on. I should have had him fix the bad wheel on my suitcase, but I forgot. I'm so happy. No, seriously, I went to like Jack Hayford. The problem is when you do this spirit thing all the time, you forget to study the word because essentially the word becomes irrelevant because why do you need the word when God speaks to you?

Then once the word becomes irrelevant, then anything goes because you're not controlled by the contours of the word of God.

Yeah, I just, I, you know what I would, whenever I would hear Jack on the radio and he would always say, you know, turn to your neighbor and say anathema or what, you know. Oh no, don't tell me that.

Turn to your neighbor and say blasphema, oh.

I mean, it was always that turn to your neighbor and I go, what is he talking to a bunch of, you know, first graders or something?

Turn to your neighbor and say. Well, you better say turn to the person on your left. Then nobody's going to pay attention to you. Turn to your neighbor. What if the people turn the wrong way? All right, well, we don't have much time left.

Max Lucado, Big Questions, and the Centrality of the Gospel

I do want to get into this other topic next time, but how about Max Lucado Takes Big Questions of Life. Max Lucado Takes on Big Questions of Life. And it is a new book published by Thomas Nelson. And so here's my question.

The book's called Max on Life. Do angels really walk among us? How should I discipline my kids? Can you help me with my marriage? Why do I worry so much? What really is God's will? Steve, I particularly have a problem with, if you don't know the gospel, then how do you know the implications morally of the gospel?

And the answer is you can't. And, you know, I'm just reading this ad and this is just an amazing thought to me. Because there's a lot of, for your average advertisement, there's a lot of text here. And you know what word is strangely missing from this whole ad here?

Jesus, gospel. Bible. He's going to answer all these questions, but it doesn't ever say that he uses the Bible or the scripture or the word or anything else. It just talks, in Max on Life, today's most trusted pastor and author takes on life's most important questions.

Well, what does Max have to say about this and that? Ultimately, I have to say, with all due respect, I don't care.

I want to know what God says. Well, and probably, Steve, in the book, there'll be some quotes and he'll use that. But my problem is he's most trusted. Yeah, that's an indictment, probably more on Thomas Nelson than anyone else.

But if he's going to be the most trusted pastor, I hope he's going to teach the right way to go to heaven. And as a baptismal regenerationist, we've got big problems. So remember, Christianity is, this is the gospel.

And then in light of that, live out your faith. Conduct befitting an officer. So how do you know what the conduct is.

If you're not an officer? And you know, I have to ask, is this really one of the big questions in life? Do angels really walk among us? I mean, is that something? How many nights did you lay awake just going, I wonder if there are angels walking around?

Well, if it was more than one, I'd be surprised.

Yeah, questions about sex, finances, forgiveness, et cetera. We want you to read your Bibles. And so make it your point this week to get your Bible, open it up and read it, and you will be blown away by the person and work of Christ.

And it is the gospel that we should be focused on, that Christ would die for sinners, that he would take our guilt, that we would get his righteousness, and that God would raise him on the third day and that by faith alone in him, we can have eternal life.

That's what we need to focus on.

Info at 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.