Bob Bowman Interview

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.

We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. This is Mike Abendroth. I'm your host for No Compromise Radio. Welcome, today is Thursday, and Thursdays on No Compromise Radio, we like to talk about current issues in evangelicalism, what's going on in Christianity today, not necessarily the magazine.

The magazine, by the way, started off as a good magazine, and today it's probably Christianity Astray, but that will be another show for another day. Today is current issues in evangelicalism, and in the studio, I have my friend Bob Bowman, who is a missionary for New Tribes Missions.

He was the pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church for almost 10 years. He's a missionary that we support, and I said, Bob, you've got to come and talk to us about evangelism, about New Tribes Missions, and give me some good jungle stories, and don't make it boring.

This is No Compromise Radio. Welcome, Bob. Okay, thank you, Mike.

How's that for an introduction? Yeah, that's pretty good. I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say. That's why you came today, I'm sure. Yes. Okay, well, let me give you a juicy jungle story. We're going to start off with that, and then we'll backtrack a little bit.

Jungle Evangelism and the Cost of Reaching the Uki People

Okay, well, this may fit into the whole business of evangelism. There is a tribe in South America, in fact, I was out at a place called Biaraquete, which means the people. Many tribal groups, perhaps most of them, think they're the only people on earth.

And they had taught them to play volleyball. These folks had been victims of homesteading that had gone on in Bolivia from the late 60s, and they were being decimated by settlers, and New Tribes Mission found them, basically, and brought them to this single place on the Chimore River called Biaraquete.

Judy and I were out there one day, and they had taught these guys to play volleyball. So we were playing volleyball, and my friend stood next to me, and he said, you see that guy right across the net from you?

Yeah, he said, well, he knows what the deal is when they shot Steve Parker. And what that was, was this. The mission attempted to follow these folks. These are hunter-gatherers, these tribal people, which is a great deal different from people who have gardens and stay in one place, all that sort of thing.

And so they wandered about a 20 ,000 square mile area in the headwaters of the Amazon in South America, and they needed to be contacted. And so our men would follow them and contact them from time to time, several times a year, but then they would take off.

Every day, they're on the move. Every day, they're trying to find food. And so it's that kind of an existence. On this one day, after they had been brought out to Biaraquete, the place where they became stationary so that they wouldn't be killed anymore by settlers, lumbermen, gold miners, and folks like that that had come down out of the highlands from Bolivia, the tribal men came by and said to our guys, hey, let's go hunting.

And so they said, okay, we'll go hunting. And so they started out, and they were headed down the trail, and suddenly our men looked around, and just as they said to each other, where are the Ukes? An eight-foot arrow came out of the air from behind, and one of our men was shot.

He was shot through the back and out his chest with one of these arrows, and so they found out where the Ukes were. One of the others started running back to where they could get a radio, but the fog was coming in, and so they cut the shaft off of that eight-foot arrow.

So it was short in back. They turned Steve Parker over, laid him over a hole in the ground, and he laid there for 36 hours before the Bolivian army could get in to get him out with a helicopter. During that time, Steve says, I could feel the maggots in the wound eating away at the flesh around where that arrow was.

And the doctor said that was a good thing. The maggots kept that wound very clean. So that's an exciting jungle story, particularly if you're part of the crowd that is involved. And there had been one other shooting in a similar way of some others of our men, and so to reach a group of people like that is a daunting task.

I just received in my email about two weeks ago a picture of a young Uki man holding a Bible. He is the first Uki believer, and New Tribes missionaries had translated the Bible into their heart language and lived with them for 40 years and finally there is a believer.

So sometimes it takes a lifetime to see people reached, and yet we're confident that the scriptures say that in that day when we all get to heaven and we stand around the throne, we are going to worship the Lord and people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation are going to be there and the job is not over until we do all we can to make sure that that's going to happen.

Bob, that is an amazing story, and you know what I was just thinking about.

As you were telling the story? People today, seemingly evangelical people today, will say, well, people can get saved even though they don't hear about Christ specifically. Jesus actually paid for their sin even though they don't have to call on Jesus as Messiah.

Jesus saved them, but they don't really have to say Jesus is known by me. What do we say to someone like Steve who says, I'm going to pour my life out? What about someone like you who trains men and women to go overseas and into these jungles to pour out their lives up and to death?

But, oh, you don't really need to have to know about Jesus.

Salvation Only Through the Name of Christ

Well, the idea that Jesus is going to save everybody, it comes under a variety of flavors, including annihilationism and some of that sort of thing. But the idea that everybody is going to be saved comes out of our fondest dreams.

We have no confidence from the scriptures whatsoever that finally in the end, every person, including those who have shaken their fists in the face of God, are going to be saved. In fact, I think it's in Philippians, do I not read that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, both those on earth and under the earth.

That's biblical talk for hell. And that means one day people that have rejected Christ here will call Jesus Christ Lord from hell and it'll be too late for them. We have no confidence from the scriptures that people are going to be saved apart from the name of Christ.

That's correct. Romans chapter 10.

Sorry to interrupt you, Bob. That's Romans chapter 10, where people need to know about Christ and faith comes by hearing, literally, Paul says, a message about Christ. One of the reasons I love New Tribes Missions is they want to send people out, frail people, fallible people, sinful people.

It reminds me of the one-legged school teacher from Scotland, went to J. Hudson Taylor, said, I'd like to serve in China. And Taylor said, with only one leg, you think you're going to go as a missionary?

And then George Scott replied, I do not see those with two legs going. He was accepted by J. Hudson Taylor. I'll bet. I'll bet he was. So tell some of the radio audience, maybe they're curious about going into missions.

Why would New Tribes Missions be good? Could someone who is a frail, sinful Christian, who's not the next coming of John MacArthur, actually be a missionary?

Training Missionaries for Bible-Centered Cross-Cultural Ministry

Well, yes, there are about 3 ,400 New Tribes Missionaries around the world. We're working in about 20 countries and more than 200 tribes. But in order to keep teachers in the tribes, there are a whole host of things that need to be done in addition to actual teaching, actual translating, and all of that.

And so there are plenty of spaces to do that. In fact, we're living in a time when people are retiring, some of them early, and can embark on a second career. We did not go to Bolivia until I was 52 years old.

And so it's not necessarily a young person's game. What you would do if you were interested in missions, first of all, you could get on our website, www .ntm .org. And there you could see all of the possible opportunities.

But let's suppose you're maybe 19 years old, and you're thinking the Lord is moving you to missions. And I would say at 19 years old and single particularly, you would be prime time for a missionary career.

And if you came to New Tribes Mission, we would ask you, first of all, what's your Bible background? And probably at age 19, you'd say not much. And we'd say, OK, we have two Bible institutes in the United States.

Of course, there's one in England, one in Australia, one in Brazil and other places. We would say you need to have some Bible under your belt, and we would send you for two years to our Bible Institute, either at Waukesha, Wisconsin, or Jackson, Michigan.

In those Bible institutes, we teach nothing but Bible. We go completely through the Bible in two years, beginning at the Pentateuch, because if we have time, we'll talk about why that's important, because we deliver the gospel beginning in Genesis, not at John 3 .16.

And we teach a little homiletics. We teach apologetics. And then you're out in two years, and we will award you an AA degree in Biblical Studies. If you're still headed for the field, we then would send you to our School of Intercultural Studies at Camdenton, Missouri.

And there, in that third year, we would begin to talk about what it takes to plant an indigenous church among people who have no background in the scriptures whatsoever. Indeed, in many cases, their language has never been heard by anybody but them.

In the fourth year, we begin to make distinctions between who is apt linguistically, who is very apt to teach, and who also, and the folks that are very apt to do other things that will support missionaries in the field.

When we were in Bolivia, we lived 140 miles up a dirt road from the nearest city. You did not run out to Walmart when the AAA batteries went down. So in that city, there is a whole facility of a mission home.

There are pilots that fly in and out. There are buyers who buy goods to ship out to the missionaries. And those people, while they may not be teaching directly, those people have to have some skills that a lot of teachers don't have.

And there certainly is a need for them. In any case, when you're finished with four years of training at New Tribes, we award you a Bachelor of Arts degree in Intercultural Studies. Some people have asked, and so who accredits that?

And our answer to that is we do. And it's the same answer that Harvard gives. Harvard accredits Harvard. And New Tribes accredits New Tribes because our training is highly respected in the missions community.

Indeed, many other missions boards send their people through our training before they head overseas.

The Great Commission and the Need for Cross-Cultural Evangelism

Well, I'd encourage our listeners, if you're listening to No Compromise Radio right now, either through a podcast or live, go to www .ntmnewtribesmissions .org. And I was listening and watching some of the videos today.

There's a video well produced about the jungle and what New Tribes missions would do overseas, A-W-A-Y-O. I'm not a linguist, so I call it A-W-A-O. I don't know how it's pronounced, but some of those videos, Bob, are excellent, talking about men and women who love Christ and want to obey the Great Commission.

Reading the Great Commission for our listeners today in Matthew chapter 28, Jesus came up and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples, literally going.

It's got an imperative feel to it. Going therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the singular name of the plural Godhead, God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.

And thankfully, Bob, I know you'll agree. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, having Christ Jesus himself, having the Spirit of God there with us as we evangelize. And so we're talking to Bob Bowman today in the studio on No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Bob has been a faithful pastor. Bob has been a church planner. Bob is involved with New Tribes Missions now, training people. Bob, tell us the transition from going to Waukesha to Bolivia, now what you're doing in Kentucky.

Is that where you are, Kentucky?

We're in eastern Kentucky right now. We are in the business of representing the work of the mission to pastors and churches. And Bible colleges and so on. I am starting one interesting project on Thursday when we get back from New England.

I will be going to the maximum security federal penitentiary called the Big Sandy Penitentiary at Inez, Kentucky. And there we hope to see, or at least I hope to see, that we will be able to teach the gospel just in the same way that we teach tribal people who have no background in the gospel.

So you can pray about that when you think of us. It's a little edgier deal going into the penitentiary. I've already had an extensive orientation. There are things you do and things you don't do that you might not think of.

And we'll be doing that. But typically, we have meetings in churches. I recently was in the chapel service of a small Bible college up north of us there. And we're doing that kind of work. But we went to New Tribes in 1992.

It was not long after I had finished pastoring here at Bethlehem Bible Church. It was Baptist Church back then. Are you mad at me that I switched to Bethlehem Bible Church? That's all right. I recognize that everybody that believes the Bible is essentially Baptist.

Okay. When I have Michael Horton on in a couple of weeks, I'll ask him that question. Yeah, do that. I go to some of these conferences where people say, oh, no, we're not Baptist. And well, do you believe in baptism by immersion?

You believe in the absolute authority and inerrancy of the word. And so you run down a few doctrines. And they go, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I say, see, you're Baptist. There's no, you know, basically, Orthodox Christianity is Baptistic.

I'll just let it go. Hey, by the way, going into prisons, it reminded me of Wesley.

Who would ever think when you need to be trained for gospel ministry that you'd have to consider some of these etiquettes, for instance, in the prison. When I read about Wesley, they threw rocks at him.

They yelled at him. They screamed profanities at him. Did you know, Bob, drummers marched around through the audiences as he would preach so that the drummers would distract people. Ladies would climb up certain trees and expose themselves.

He would have his life threatened. How will Harris, when he preached, some people drag dead cats around so the dogs would bark and hunt? And, you know, evangelism and following the Lord, it will cost you.

It cost Peter. It cost Stephen. It cost James. It cost Christ. And I think it's a worthy cost, don't you? Well, yeah, I do.

I was kind of hoping that none of that happened up at Big Sandy Federal Penitentiary. I'm sure those folks that run the place hope not too. But it's going to be an interesting experience, and it's going to be a place where we can demonstrate that the gospel needs to be given chronologically.

Now, that's a hallmark in a new tribe's mission. About 30 or 35 years ago, a frustrated new triber who went to a tribe where they said, oh, we're already Christians. And he realized very quickly that they thought they were Christians because they didn't chew as much beetle nut anymore.

They didn't beat their wives so hard. They went to the meetings that were called and so on and so forth. And he came to the correct conclusion, these people are not saved at all. And so he became a little desperate and he said, what am I going to do?

And finally, he decided, well, he gave it a shot in Romans and maybe one of the gospels. And finally, he decided, I'm just going to start at the beginning. And so he started at Genesis 1 -1, in the beginning, God.

Who is God? What is he about? What are his characteristics? What is holiness all about? And so on. The one thing that Trevor McElwain, that new triber did that was outstanding, was he wrote it all down.

And that has become standard operating procedure in New Tribes Mission. You do not paddle the canoe up the river, jump out with your Bible and give them John 3 -16, say, say this prayer or take them over the Romans road or something like that and expect to find people really saved.

Now that what we can learn from that tribal experience is it's exactly the same way in the United States right now. We have cuter toys. We have much more technology. But when you say God in the United States these days, you better be ready to define who it is you're talking about.

Or if somebody tells you they believe in God these days, you better find out who they're talking about. I remember when 9 -11 happened, we were in Bolivia and we came home that summer after on the next summer.

And when we landed in Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, we came driving out of the city and there we found banners everywhere, God bless America. I said to my dear wife, to whom do these folks think they are appealing?

And then of course, we found out who they thought there was at the great prayer service in New York City. The leader of that prayer service was Oprah Winfrey. So when you say God in America, the chances are very good just as when you say God in a tribal setting.

That we are not talking about Jehovah of the Bible. And until we get that thing settled, there is no point in going to John 3 -16 or going to the Romans Road or talking about sinner's prayers or any of that sort of thing.

You've got to find out who God is, what he has done. We even need to talk about his anger at sin. I might talk about that a little bit Sunday,.

By the way. And then we can begin to talk about what salvation is about. Wasn't that what we see in the Scriptures, Bob? The Quran or the chronological method to me is just faithful Bible teaching. When you see Paul, for instance, talk to Jews who are steeped in the Bible, who understood the Bible, who had maybe memorized much of the Old Testament, he began appealing to them right away to believe and to repent and to acknowledge this God.

But when he met people like Gentiles, or you see Paul in Acts 17, where they do not know God, he goes back to, this is God, the creator. Before you understand God as a savior, you need to understand God as creator, judge, then savior.

That's right. This is God, he said in Acts 17.

To the people there on the area of Pegasus at Athens. He said, this is God who has need of nothing. This is God who has placed men where he will in the world. And so he was building for them a concept of just who God is.

Now in the United States, we're big on Jesus loves you. But we need to understand that Jesus loves you doesn't have much meaning until you understand that you're at war with God outside of Christ. That's right.

So the Quran, basically, the chronological method. Bob, walk us through that in just a couple of minutes. This is No Compromise Radio on WVNE 760 AM. We're not taking phone calls today, but we are talking to Bob Bowman about New Tribes Missions, about missionary work.

I'm wondering if there are people listening today who think, you know, I'm tired of the rat race of business and trying to make a buck and trying to be successful. I need to pour my life out for other people.

And I need to be like Paul, a drink offering. And I would love to obey the scriptures and go beg people on the behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. And so we're talking to Bob Bowman about the chronological method.

Give us an overview of some of the highlights that you would teach someone over an extended period of time.

I've got a couple minutes left regarding the Quran. Bob Bowman. Okay, first of all, we would begin in Genesis. As Ken Ham says, every doctrine of Christianity is probably found, at least in its outline, in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

So you begin in Genesis. You talk about who God is. You talk about the fact that he has created a visible world and an invisible world. And in that invisible world was a being who rebelled against him and who fights against him to this day.

And then he created a place for man to be created. Man, a special creation, spiritually connected to God, but finally tempted and disobeyed God, rebelled against him, sided with Satan. And every man since then has been born in the same state.

We then go through some key Old Testament events, including things like Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. We can, of course, including the flood, those kinds of things where God judges people because of their sin.

And yet at the same time, he extends his grace and he saves a remnant of people that will be saved. And we go through those key Old Testament events so that people know, first of all, that before a holy and righteous and pure God, they are sinners, not sinners like the rest of people, not just, you know, nobody's perfect, you know, but hopelessly and helplessly lost before this holy God.

And one of the videos that you could order off of our website, we find the missionary teaching. He teaches about the events at Sodom and Gomorrah. The tribal people cry out, we are just like those people.

So will you please hurry up with the stories? We're afraid that God is going to judge us before you get to the end. The missionary teaches for two months. He never mentions Jesus Christ by name during that time.

But by the time he does mention Christ, the people know that a Savior is coming and that Savior is sufficient to save them from their sin. And so the missionary in that case taught every day, five days a week, twice a week or twice a day for three months.

When he comes to the end, the entire village says, yes, Jesus is the sin bearer. He is our substitute for sin, and we need him. And they embrace him in a big way. And I might add, 26 other villages since that time.

Have done the same. Amen. Well, the time is fleeting. Bob, thank you for being here today. Bob Bowman's been in the studio talking about New Tribes missions, talking about his love for the Lord, talking about, I wonder if you would like to be a missionary, ntm .org.

Thanks, Bob, for today. Thank you, Mike. 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 bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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