Not Wright

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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
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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."
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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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
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.
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Live today in the studio, not only Mike Abendroth, but Steve Cooley, who's live text -blogging the whole show.
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It's true. I've been flown in especially for this occasion. I'll be live -blogging the show, adding my comments.
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You can see them all at my own website, TuesdayGuide .com. Somebody wrote in and said, why don't you live text -blog, and we said, put your money where your mouth is.
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And so after the $2 ,000 gift to the Donate button on No Compromise Radio's front page, we have to eat our words.
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And so we'll be live -blogging constantly. What is live -blogging? I have no idea, but I'm going to try to do it anyway.
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Steve, there is an evangelical love for N .T.
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Wright. It's cool to like N .T. Wright. Lots of people want to bring him into mainstream evangelicalism, and pretty much
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I think they're crazy. Of course, has that man said some things that are true, maybe bodily resurrection or something?
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But I wouldn't bring in N .T. Wright into NoCo land to influence them, our
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Bethlehem Bible Church premises, for no amount of donating. Well, I think his parents had some really good insight, though.
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That's why they named him Not Trustworthy. That's what the N .T. stands for. Well, pretty much.
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I don't trust him, and we're going today on No Compromise Radio to read quotes from N .T.
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Wright's own books compiled by Rachel Miller. I thought she did a good job compiling these things.
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And then Steve and I will talk about this a little bit with one purpose in mind. If you would like to understand the
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New Testament concepts of Jesus, sin, substitution, heaven, and atonement, don't read
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N .T. Wright. What? Well, I'm going to have to get rid of three -quarters of my library then.
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Well, when I read Surprised by Hope, and I heard from so many people this is the new mere
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Christianity by C .S. Lewis, I just thought, this was a bad book.
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It was... Burnable? It was burnable. I think I tried to sell it, but then
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I didn't want anybody else, some other poor chap to get it. Poor chap. That poor chap, that poor lad.
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And you know, I mean, when you have a really bad book, you want to give it away or sell it or something like that, and then you just realize, hey, why don't
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I just take some poison and give that to somebody, too? Well, Steve, when you make up just to break up, what are you going to do about it?
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It's all we do. All right, here we go. Every quote from one of N .T.
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Wright's books, The Meaning of Jesus, page 154. Because if he didn't say it, we couldn't do this. I do not think
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Jesus knew he was God in the same sense that one knows one is tired or happy, male or female.
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He did not sit back and say to himself, well, I never. I'm the second person of the
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Trinity. Okay, that is straight up stupid. I'm sorry.
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He's a super smart guy, but that is just as dumb as you can get. That's I'm going to be nice and say that's satanic.
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Page one, page 25, Meaning of Jesus. I have found from time to time that the Jesus I knew by faith seemed less and less like the
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Jesus I was discovering by history. You know, it's so remarkable because here's the thing,
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N .T. Wright apparently has insight that the original audience didn't have. You know, if you look at John 8, 58,
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Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was, I am, listen to what the original hearers of that said.
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So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus went out and hid himself or went out of the temple and healed himself.
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Later on, they say, you know, he says, well, why are you going to stone me? And they say, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be
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God. And he didn't say, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. Prove it. Prove it. You know, that's in John 10.
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Some of the listeners, though, Steve, are saying to themselves, I don't even know who N .T. Wright is. And what's our response to that?
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Good. Just keep not knowing because he is really a bit of a rock star, especially among the kind of, what would you call them, the erudite, you know, evangelicals.
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Absolutely emergent. He's known for his association with the New Perspective on Paul, and he was the former bishop of Durham.
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He says in his book, Meaning of Jesus, page 144, when people ask, was
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Jesus God? They usually think that they know what the word God means and are asking whether we can fit
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Jesus into that. I regard this as deeply misleading. Again— You know what this is?
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I think it's arrogant pride of that man. Well, and I'm just like, okay, read John 1, you know, and you would not say such a thing if you believe
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John 1. I mean, that's just dumb. Steve, the old way of reading things, the conservative way of reading things, the well -worn paths of reading things, they're all wrong.
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This is a new generation. We have to read things through these mental Middle Eastern eyes of 2 ,000 years ago and see you just don't get it.
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You're stuck in the Reformation, pal. Well, all I can say is if you want to start a cult, a good way to start it is to say, you know what?
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The old ways don't work. Let me tell you the new ways. I've got some fresh insights that no one's ever had before because God withheld them until this day.
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Until me. Yeah, that just sounds like— Until me, myself, and I came along. That's Ellen G. White. That's Joseph Smith.
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That's every cult figure. That's Muhammad. That's every—oh, did I just say that? It's every cult figure in history.
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Simply Jesus, page 172. This way of looking at the climax of Jesus' story is not, to be sure, the standard, traditional, orthodox, conservative reading, though it highlights from a new angle the traditional dogmas of incarnation and atonement.
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My convention—contention, rather—is that it enables us to understand the original historical reality for which those dogmas are later often dehistoricized abstract summaries.
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In with the new, out with the bad. Yeah. So to summarize, you know, this is kind of like he's going to out -Bultman
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Bultman. This is like, I'm going to demythologize
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Bultman, you know, who demythologized the Bible. And you know, again, this is just experiential nonsense.
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I mean, this is just rubbish. Page 30 of Simply Jesus. And I am being nice to him.
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Here we find the classic Western Christian myth about Jesus, which is still believed by millions around the world.
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In this myth, a supernatural being called God has a supernatural son who he sends virgin -born into our world, despite the fact that it's not his natural habitat, so that he can rescue people out of this world by dying in their place.
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As a sign of his otherwise secret divine identity, this son does all kinds of extraordinary and otherwise impossible miracles, crowning them by rising from the dead and returning to heaven, where he welcomes his followers after their deaths.
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In the Protestant version, Jesus commissions his followers to write the New Testament, which reveals the truth about Jesus and, once more, how to get to heaven.
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Okay. That's a classic Western myth about Jesus. So this was written by a Christian scholar, not an atheist.
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I mean, this sounds like it's worthy of one of the virulent atheists. Steve, what we should have done, now that I'm thinking about it, but we don't have time to redo it, we should have just had a bunch of quotes, talked about it, and then say, guess who
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I am? Yeah, tell me if I'm the atheist or the Anglican. That's right. Atheist Anglicans.
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All right, this one's going to get Steve's goat. Steve loves dogs. I love my goat, too.
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But the goat that gets Steve is when you mess around with John's gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ according to the
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Apostle John. Simply Jesus, page 149. More important, we must avoid jumping to the conclusion that Jesus was doing things that proved
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His divinity, or that the main point He was trying to get across was that He was the
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Son of God in the sense of the second person of the Trinity. Oh. Now, don't read
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John and assume these I -M's and these signs are trying to show that He's God in the flesh.
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And so why— Avoid jumping to that conclusion. Yeah, why did He do the signs then, you know? This is just—this is—this is unbelief masquerading as Christian scholarship.
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That's what this is. It will not do to suppose that Jesus came to teach people how to get to heaven in Simply Jesus 146.
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That view has been immensely popular in Western Christianity— I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.
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For many generations. But it simply won't do. The whole point of Jesus' public career was not to tell people that God was in heaven and that at death they could leave earth behind and go to be with Him there.
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It was to tell them that God was now taking charge right here on earth, that they should pray for this to happen, that they should recognize in His own work the signs that it was indeed happening, and that when
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He completed His work it would become a reality. Simply Jesus 146. This—well, I'll just tell you what that is.
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That is a picture -perfect description of modern, liberal
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Christianity. In other words, meaning there's no spiritual significance to all this.
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It's all about what we do in the here and now, and that God is most pleased with us when we are most pleased with ourselves.
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And it's all about recreating the world in this mythical kind of—well, what would
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Jesus do? Well, He'd give, and we'd pay more taxes, and we'd— Steve, I would love to have
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J. Gresham Machen alive during the time when N .T. Wright is writing his stuff. The only thing better would be to have
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B .B. Warfield after N .T. Wright, and he would not do what so many modern people do.
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Pastors today, I'm telling you, evangelical pastors, quote N .T. Wright and read him.
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And I would love to have B .B. Warfield totally go after these kind of issues and quotes.
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Let me give you another one. All right. Steve's writing me a special note, so okay, there you go.
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Well, that's got to be the book title, right? Not right. Not right. Perfectly. W -R -I -G -H -T.
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If—excuse me—for most people, the phrase, Son of God, carries with it all the connotations of that first myth in which the supernatural being swoops down to reveal secret truth, do extraordinary miracles to prove his divinity, die a redemptive death, and get back to heaven at once, enabling others to get there, too.
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Notice how he puts those little barbs in there to get back to heaven at once. This is heretical teaching. This is bad for you.
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You ought not to read this, and somebody needs to tell people, and I'm glad this lady put this coalition together.
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What is that guy's name, the atheist guy who runs around and wants to debate all the time?
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What is his name? I can't even think of his name. But this is—he would write this kind of stuff, so you're exactly right.
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I mean— Christopher Hitchens? Yes. If I told you—well, that's not who I was thinking, but he's one of them. But if I told you this was an atheist who was writing this, and we never mentioned
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Wright's name, you would believe it. And you know, now to think that this guy is having an impact on mainstream evangelical thought, it's shocking.
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This really is—it's that he is the new Bultman, only people aren't even as smart as they were when
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Bultman was around. At least Bultman sounded ponderous and, you know, impressive.
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This is just nonsense. Steve, J. Gresham Machen wrote a book on the virgin birth of Christ.
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I wonder what he would think of the meaning of Jesus, page 158. Those who have emphasized Jesus' divinity have sometimes made the virginal conception central.
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The birth narratives have no impact on my reconstruction of Jesus' public agendas and his mindset as he went to the cross.
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Of course they have no impact on— This is snooty Englishman saying, looking down his nose, as he takes his glasses off and drinks some scotch.
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I mean, of course, I don't know if he does any of that, but as if I saw that on TV. And to say, my reconstruction of Jesus' public ministry.
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I could care less what his public reconstruction was or his reconstruction of public ministry It makes no difference, because I think this guy needs to be born again.
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I would have to agree with that. He needs to repent. He knows better. See, that's the thing. It's one thing if there's somebody, they're a brand new
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Christian, well, what does the virgin birth really matter? How does it such a big deal? I don't really understand.
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It's not really in 1 Corinthians 15, 3, and 4. Help me understand why this is so central.
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And you know, you can only—this is just further evidence of what Jesus said in John 3, that you must be born again.
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There's something that has to be done to you. It's not a matter of intellectual knowledge or just intellectual heft.
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I mean, I think Etta Lineman, this is the same kind of thing here. That's somebody you wouldn't know, but she was a student of these—
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I know her. Right. Well, yeah. Oh, you're talking to the listeners. Of course. Of course, you would. Now, don't put me on the level of the listeners,
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Steve. But she was a student of Bultmann and these other mythologizers, and she wrote books and she did all these kind of things, and then she gets saved and has to, you know, recant everything that she's ever written, you know, up to that point.
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And he—right? If he got saved, he would have to do the same thing. He'd say, hey, listen, if you've got my books at home, burn them.
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If you've got any of the articles I wrote, burn them. I wish he'd recant from simply Jesus, page 150. Jesus' powerful acts of healing, then, together with the other extraordinary things the
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Gospels credit him with, are not done in order to prove his divinity. Credit him with.
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Credit—I mean, like, they made stuff up, this, you know— Yeah, it's Q, Mark and stuff.
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See, that is super bad. All right. Transfiguration, Steve. We know of the account in Mark chapter—is it 9?
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8? 9. Let's say 9. I think it's 9. But anyway. What's the transfiguration do?
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Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's in simply Jesus, page 146, N .T. Wright. The transfiguration of Jesus is not, as it stands, a proof of his divinity.
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Nope. Moses and Elijah were transfigured too. Really? Yeah. Well, no—
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They showed up at the transfiguration. That's a bald -faced lie. Yeah. The text doesn't say that. Yeah, they were there.
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But does it say that, you know, their flesh was peeled back and their glory was made manifest? No, it doesn't say that.
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You know, does it say—does Peter talk about the glory of Moses?
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No, he doesn't. Wright said, So in this nineteenth -century story, where the Russian mystic and his disciple, what the story of Jesus on the mountain demonstrates for those with eyes to see, our ears to hear, is that just as Jesus seems to be the place where God's world and ours meet, where God's time and ours meet, so he is also the place where, so to speak,
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God's matter, God's new creation intersects with ours, where God and people meet, the
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Mount of Transfiguration. Well, again, this is this kind of—he's neo -neo -Orthodox, you know?
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I mean, this is kind of Barth meets Bultmann, and, you know, they both get mugged in an alley, and this is what you wind up with,
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N .T. Wright. Steve, it's very misleading to use Messiah, our Christ, as shorthand for the divine name of being, or being of Jesus.
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Very misleading. I mean, hey, it's just the Holy Spirit working through these men that uses that, so it's very misleading.
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Steve, let's go from bad to worse. N .T. Wright quotes Jesus' self -understanding.
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My case has been, and remains, that Jesus believed himself called to do and be things which, in the traditions to which he fell heir, only
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Israel's God Yahweh was to do and be. Here we go, Steve. I think he held this belief both with passion and firm conviction, and with the knowledge that he could be making a terrible, lunatic mistake.
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Now, who quotes N .T. Wright positively from the pulpit? I certainly don't, and I wouldn't.
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I think it's a terrible, lunatic mistake to promote N .T. Wright. Well, and I mean, I would agree, and I mean, just think about it.
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I mean, I know I've read evangelicals who say positive things about him and about his books, positive reviews on Amazon .com,
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and you just go, why? Because it's cool to do it. Why? What possible reason is there? Jesus, in the victory of God, page 652 -3, as part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented an action he believed he had to do and be for Israel and the world.
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Prayer and doubt, see? He is playing fast and loose with all this.
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All right, let's see. What else can he deny? How about substitutionary atonement? No, he can't deny that, can he?
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Simply Jesus, page 181. It's easy to belittle Jesus' death theologically.
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Notoriously, it can be done by imagining a straightforward transaction in which a God who wanted to punish people was content to punish the innocent
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Jesus instead. This always, of course, leaves unanswered the question of how such a punishment could itself be just, let alone loving.
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Because he's both the just and the justifier.
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He is the judge and the justifier. This is God we're talking about, and it's his plan, and for him to take it apart.
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I mean, if I went to anti -rights church, I would bring an ample supply of tomatoes.
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I mean, this is unbiblical, unchristian. Okay, Steve, Jesus is writing
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Jesus' self -understanding. Get ready. Here comes the big tomato from Pastor Steve. "'Despite a long tradition,
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I do not regard the resurrection as instantly proving Jesus' deity.'" Because Romans wouldn't say anything like that, would it?
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Romans 1 .4, forget it. I guess dead people can make themselves alive.
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No wonder he's not a Calvinist, because he doesn't understand this and he doesn't understand that. Well, you know, you talked about people having ears to hear and whatever, you know, eyes to see, and I think it's more like, you know, when
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Jesus talked about his sheep know his voice, well, I think there's a reason that anti -right is mocking all this.
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It's because he's not one of the sheep. He's El Goto. Totally. Simply, Jesus 1 .97,
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thinking of the second coming of Jesus returning often raises the same kind of problems that we saw with the ascension.
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People who still think that heaven is a long way away, up in the sky, and that that's where Jesus has gone, imagine that the second coming will be an event somewhere like the return of a space shuttle from its far -off orbit.
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Not so. Yeah, I think it's going to be more like a gigantic asteroid, and I think it's going to wherever anti -right is.
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If he comes soon, it's going to land right on anti -right. Steve, he says in his writing,
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Jesus and the Identity of God, after 15 years of serious historical Jesus study,
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I still say the creed ex animo, but I now mean something very different by it.
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Isn't that how you get your hamburger? Ex animo? They used to do that until there were some people who heard a jack -in -the -box.
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Not least by the word God itself. Steve, we want to make a little plea to the
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No Compromise radio listeners. Would you just please, if you hear your pastor with affirmation, quote anti -right, be kind about it.
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Wait till Tuesday. Wait till Tuesday, guy tells you it's okay. And then would you talk to him and say,
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Pastor, should I be reading anti -right? I noticed you quoted him from the pulpit. Is he good to read? And if he says yes, then you need to pull up this compilation of quotes by Rachel Miller.
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Is anti -right wrong about Jesus? And the answer is, yes, he is if he believes what he says.
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Hey, Pastor, you quoted anti -right affirmatively. I wonder if you would quote these people affirmatively.
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And then I just start questioning, you know, about Muhammad and Ellen G. White and Joseph Smith and the
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Watchtower and whoever else, you know. He is as much a Christian as any of those people, as, you know,
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Buddha. Okay, let's just—you want heretics and aberrations? You want to have stuff—
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I'll take heretics and aberrations for $2 ,000. And you want stuff in your mind to make you think improper, blasphemous, non -worshipful, non -honoring, non -glorifying thoughts of Jesus?
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Then you read anti -right, Jesus and the identity of God. Instead, I suggest that we historically think about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the temple and dying on a
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Roman cross, and that we somehow allow our meaning for the word God to be re -centered around that point.
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What would be that point? Well, he doesn't believe in substitutionary atonement. Well, I mean, but in that little paragraph there, so then our
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God would be some crazy person who was just out of control and went in and gave up his life to desecrate the temple.
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In this sort of Christianity, simply Jesus 149 to 150, God is in heaven and sends his divine second self, his
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Son, to demonstrate his divinity so that people would worship him, be saved by his cross, and return with him to heaven.
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So he's anti -Trinitarian. Yeah, I mean, he is belittling everything about the
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Bible, about Christianity. Again, I just say, what is the difference between anti -right and an atheist?
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And probably the difference is that anti -right, listen to this, anti -right makes his money teaching the
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Bible. That's the difference between anti -right and an atheist. She's like Rick Warren. See, Rick Warren would be given a pass if he was some guy who didn't understand the ramifications of what he's saying.
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But he does understand because he is educated, because he is smart. And so here we have the strict nine of a non -biblical
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Jesus jammed into the Church through eloquence, through position, through writing skills, and through satanic means, as far as I'm concerned.
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I couldn't agree more. Well, Steve, today on No Compromise Radio, we've tried to just lay it on the line.
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Doctrine does matter. I thought we were giving a hug to anti -right, kind of a long -distance hug. Well, I think for some certain amount of money on the donate button, we could probably send bears, you know,
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Care Bears, Vermont Bears to people. A box of chocolates. We are dead set against people who try to bring into the
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Church doctrines that defame Jesus. We want people to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love the
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Bible, to be sure that it is the Bible, not have some so -called scholar come in and destroy it all.
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I think the works of anti -right will be steadied for decades, probably by atheists and those who want to undermine the
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Christian faith. That's about the only value to them. Well, our positive note, read J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, and you won't fall prey to anti -right.
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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.