Street Interviews (Rerun)

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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm just sitting here laughing. Steve Cooley was actually, I wish I would have recorded it.

He was singing One Day by Mahdosh Yahu, and it kind of was clever.

I like that, Steve. Thank you very much. Sometimes the pre-show is actually better than our show. Well, sometimes.

The Need for Doctrine in Christian Life

What we're going to do today is we're going to listen to some on-the-street interviews. We have our crack team of Josh McDonald. I was gonna say Josh McDowell. That's Josh McDowell's younger son. Josh McDowell's working on his presuppositional apologetics out on the street at the Barlow Girl Conference.

And so we have Bob Andrzejczak as well, asking people questions about Christianity. Now, here's the unique thing. If you went and did some kind of jaywalking down the street, and you went to the Greendale Mall, or you went to a place that had a bunch of unbelievers, I wouldn't expect them to know about Christianity.

Would you? Why would they? I mean, I was talking to a woman last night, and she literally asked me. She said, wait a minute, are pastors allowed to get married? Yeah, so unbelievers, they don't know. This is a culture where religion and religious instruction, unless it's a Quran, is pushed to the externals, pushed to the periphery.

But for Christian places and Christian venues, Christian concerts, I would suppose that people would understand mere Christianity. You would suppose that? So Bob has been interviewing people on the streets.

And so what we're gonna do today is we're going to play some of those interviews. These were people going to the Barlow Girl Concert. The Barlow Girl Concert, we sent a people, a group of people, we sent a people.

A people not of our own. People of our own, after our own choosing. And we're gonna play these things, and then we're gonna make comments on what we have heard, because here's the premise. Christians need to learn more about the Bible and more about sound doctrine.

And we're glad you listened to No Compromise Radio Ministry, because we think we have the cream of the crop at WV &E, don't we?

Absolutely. Is this gonna be something like theological theater? Is that, you know?

Like Bad Playhouse with Dan Aykroyd? Quite bad. That was a very bad answer. For those of you that don't understand it, I guess you could YouTube. Was it, what was it, Bad Playhouse? That was extremely bad.

Extremely bad. So let's just see. Oh, that's Greg Beal first. That's not working. That was actually Greg Beal, teaching at the Master's Seminary, Master's College Chapel, what we reverie resemble. I think that was a sign from God.

It's what we call around here an outtake.

All right, so now we're gonna give this another try and see what happens. Our engineer is so fired. Doctrine to be important. Doctrina es muy importante.

Well, yeah, I'm guessing, because it should be something, I mean, we should follow, I mean, based on, you know, the word of God. All right, so what do you, what kind of doctrines do you think are essential to the Christian faith?

Doctrine? Whatever's in the scripture. Yeah, whatever's in the scripture, really. Whatever's in the scripture. Okay, good. Okay, well, perseverance.

So just persevere as a Christian to be light in this world. Well, that was pretty good. At least she got one at the very end.

Yeah, perseverance is a good doctrine. I like that doctrine.

I do too. If someone came up to you and asked you the question, what is doctrine and is it important? I wonder what you would say.

Maybe something like, is the doctor in? Is that what you're asking me?

When I say the word doctrine, what do you think? I think of a,.

Okay, it's about like, what part of Christianity you're in, like if you're a Baptist or Pentecostal or whatever.

But clearly doctrine is more a denominational thing. Yeah. Denominational thing, yeah? Yeah. Okay, so when Timothy, for instance, Peter writes, or Paul writes to Timothy, rather, he tells him to teach sound doctrine, that sort of thing.

What denomination was Timothy? Wasn't he originally Roman? The final question, you said you're a Christian. Yeah. Would you consider yourself a born again Christian?

Now, before she even answers that question, Steve, I'm sitting here laughing my head off, but I probably should just be sad, shouldn't I?

Well, it just goes to show what's going on in the church today. You know, how the very idea of doctrine has been ignored to the extent where people are perplexed by the word, rather than being exhorted in sound doctrine, or even as Paul wrote to Timothy, as Paul wrote to Timothy when he left him behind, when he went to Macedonia and left him behind, Timothy behind in Ephesus, he wanted him to instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines.

Well, if you don't know what sound doctrine is, how are you going to teach them not to teach strange doctrines, wrong doctrines, erroneous doctrines? You have to understand what good, solid, biblical teaching is in order to understand what the flip side is.

You have to.

Sound Doctrine, Church Leadership, and the Problem of Shallow Christianity

Well, Steve, I think the average lay person is certainly accountable for what he or she does or does not know about the Bible. But I think this goes back to what elders and pastors are doing. If pastors and elders aren't teaching sound doctrine, I think of Titus chapter one, where elders, church leaders, pastors are to hold fast the faithful word so that he will be able both to exhort in sound denomination, sound doctrine, and to refute those who contradict sound doctrine.

And so if the pastors aren't teaching it because they want to do some felt-needs deal, some kind of seeker-sensitive, some kind of God-will-take-care-of-your-loneliness-and-make-yourself-fulfilled, no wonder the people in the pew don't even know what the word doctrine is.

Maybe they should just start chanting, scratch our ears, scratch our ears. I mean, is that what church is down to these days? Just, you know, like I've said before, the church that doesn't want to waste your time, maybe that's a good name for a church, the church that won't waste your time.

Reminds me of the drive-up, drive-through funeral parlor. You just drive up, you punch in your number, it's a special code number for family. No one could just pull up. But you know the special code number, and then you type in the code number and then the curtains open up, you get to see the deceased through some ceramically, not ceramically, what do you call that when you have something wrapped?

Permetically. Permetically sealed, yes, so there's no contaminants involved. And then you say your rosary and your Our Fathers and drive off.

Now my question is, if they're cremated, do they send them in one of those pneumatic tubes right to the front of your car?

I think that might cause a problem. So we're gonna go to the next one. This is Barlow Girl, I mean this has nothing to do with the Barlow Girl, I wish they wouldn't promote Joyce Meyer, but these are people going to Barlow Girl, people from our own church went to Barlow Girl, so I'm certainly.

It's Barlow Girls or Girl? I think it's Barlow Girl. Oh really? Yeah, yeah. There's just one of them even though there are. There are three girls, but I think it's called Barlow Girl. It's kind of like Stanford, the Stanford Cardinal.

All right, here we go.

How are you? What's your name? I'm Chris. Hi Chris. So do you think doctrine is important? Yeah. So when I say doctrine, what do you think about? What does it mean? Stall. Well, doctrine would be a teaching from the Bible.

It's a true teaching about God. Allegedly. Do you think that's important for confronting error, for example? Well, it depends on what teaching and how you approach it. And what you mean by the teaching and how you approach it.

Surf's up, dude. What do you think when I say justification by faith? Is that important? Yeah. What does that mean to you? Well, it means, I don't know. It's interpretation.

It's vital. Okay. It's the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls. What do you think of the substitutionary tone of Christ? Or what do you think of when I say that?

I don't know. So those are big words. And doctrine doesn't always have to be big words. Doctrine could be, Bible says God is love, right? And so that's a teaching about God, it's an attribute of God, correct?

Yeah. All right, so now everything's gonna be complicated. Substitutionary tone would be Christ died in the place of sinners. He was a substitute for sinners, all right? And so that's what he did when he saved people at the cross, was he took the punishment of God and never have, correct?

Yeah, so far, Steve,.

And these have just been random, I've just randomly clicked these things, including the Greg Beal quote, but I just click them and they just don't know. I would say that overall, these are younger people, that's true.

But what happened to the days of Jonathan Edwards here in New England, where at 14 years old, he would know Greek, Hebrew, Latin, probably, I think he did his dissertation in Latin, he did a speech at Yale, I believe, in Latin.

What's going on with our children today?

Well, they're not being educated. I mean, it's as simple as that. And we're not being, we're not stretching them in any kind of way. I think even of the education that I got when I was in school, and I think the kids now, it's just so much more, I guess, flexible.

Things are dumbed down. I mean, I remember not too long ago, looking at some kind of test that was written a hundred years ago, and it was called an entrance examination. And I looked at it and I'm going, boy, I could only probably get about half those questions right.

It was a high school examination, a high school entrance examination. And I'm like, man, how the standards have fallen.

Remember that book, Steve, by Ramsbottom, which is called Bible Doctrine Simply Explained. And it's got providence of God, sovereignty, substitutionary atonement. And then it's got a little asterisk in the very back of the book.

And it says, this book was originally published under Bible Truth Simply Explained for Children.

Yeah, yeah, but our level of education, our level of understanding has so fallen that now it's, I mean, I'm amazed at what has happened to people just as a result of MTV, TV in general, but especially MTV.

We have so many people right now in this country, young people, who are absolutely clueless as to what's going on in the country or in the world or anything else. And so they're clueless.

About the Bible, absolutely. Yes, Bible truth. I think of society, especially evangelicals in society, that is to say even leaders in society, they only will preach at secret sensitive churches applicational messages.

Do this, don't do that. It's the gospel of moralism, the gospel of do good. For those of you that are in the know, they give all the imperatives, but no indicatives. That is to say, people are not told who they are in Christ, so therefore, they can live out who they are.

In other words, Ephesians 1, 2, and 3, here's doctrine, 4, 5, and 6, here's practice. So creed comes before conduct. Doctrine comes before duty. But you go to most churches today, the average layperson says, just tell me what to do so I can get through another week.

Yeah, I mean, and for all the good it does about changing hearts. I mean, really, what does that say? It says we're more concerned with how we look, how we behave, how we approach other people than we are with our own standing before God and our own thinking about Him.

What happened to the sermon that tells you, I don't want you to do anything. I want you to remember who Jesus is. That's all I'm after. I'm after your attitudes. I'm not after anything else but the way you think.

Last time I checked, that's code for, here comes a satire. I love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Well, when crisis, when tragedy strikes in your life, 17 ways to be a better librarian, whatever the sermon title is for this week, is not going to help you. What's going to help you is something like seven truths about God, six reasons why you can depend on God in the worst of circumstances, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

When you walk through scripture, when you see how faithful God is, those are the kind of things that just remind you again and again that you can get through anything. All right, I like that.

Good job. Let's hear somebody else. What do you think doctrine is important? What's doctrine? Doctrines are teachings about God, teachings from the Bible, what the Bible says about God, man. That's annoying.

What do you think about when I say doctrine? Do you guys think doctrine is important? For my job it is.

What do you do? I want to be a music therapist, and so to get a doctorate, I kind of need to. It's a doctorate. It's a doctorate, so you want to get.

A PhD of some sort, right? I'm talking about doctrine, doctrine, like biblical teachings. Is that important? What do you guys?

Wait, wait, wait. Did she say she wants to be a music therapist?

Is that what? Music therapist, and that's why her doctorate is very important. Oh, man.

A PhD. So she's going to make people feel better through music?

Well, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearance in his kingdom. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season.

Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and a doctorate. I mean, we want you to study doctrines. The best thing you could do is grab yourself a good, easy-to-read systematic theology. How about picking up Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology book?

How about 100 Essential Truths of the Christian Faith by R .C. Sproul? Something like that to learn doctrine, and if you haven't learned it so far, you might be surprised to know that you probably know more than what you think in terms of bodily resurrection.

That's doctrine. Deity of Christ, that's doctrine. But today's a good day to start learning more about doctrine. Well, today's always a good day.

To start learning more about God, and when we say doctrine, we're talking about teaching about God and God's teaching about man, so doctrine is good. Think of it as like vitamins. Do you think that doctrine is important?

Doctrine? Yes. What doctrine would you think is essential to Christianity?

I don't really quite know that much. I just can't quite tell right now. Stage fright.

What do you mean when I say doctrine? Doctrine? Oh, it's something used to make a habit or ritual something, or maybe if you do following the wrong thing, you would do, you'd try to teach a certain thing and use it as a doctrine, just a certain teaching style.

Some people do, maybe that could be a doctrine, I don't know. Certain teachings, he's getting closer.

The right one in the word of God. What's an essential doctrine to Christianity? What would you say is essential to Christianity? Essential. Do you think doctrine's important? You know, maybe Bob should have used, you're getting warmer.

Maybe that would have helped. You're getting warmer. Colder. Let's be honest with our listeners. Certainly there's an amount of stage fright when somebody thrusts the microphone in your face. By the way, Bob did say to all these folks, we're with the radio station.

We would like to ask you some questions. Do you mind if we tape you? So they had a few moments notice, at least. Well, and he didn't ask them,.

Who's the Speaker of the House? Who gets to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate? He didn't ask really difficult questions. What is doctrine? All right, how about this one then? Let's see, let's change directions.

Well, we'll ask your name. First name. I'm Bethany.

Okay, we have Bethany. Where are you from, Bethany? I'm from Massachusetts. All right, and in town, you wanna give a shout-out to anyone? This is radio. Can I give a shout-out to my friends in New Hampshire?

All right. They can't hear it, but, yeah, they can't hear it, but hi, anyway. When I say the word doctrine.

Let's stop there. You know, when it's a shout-out, let's communicate, let's Twitter, let's react, let's do all that stuff, man. They're ready to go. But if you say, where's doctrine? What's that?

Is that in New Hampshire someplace? Well, it's like, it's like, I didn't know they were from the valley. You know, San Fernando Valley. Oh, this could be bad here. I feel something bad coming on.

Quite bad. What did you think when one of the brothers there, she said that we could be the next Mother Teresas and Joan of Arcs in our world?

I think she meant that we need to make a change, because usually Christians just sit around and judge people who aren't Christians, but we should actually go change.

All right, do you believe Mother Teresa, a Catholic, did she preach a saving gospel? Yes. All right. Did she preach salvation by grace alone through faith alone, or would she have preached something along the lines of salvation by faith, comes from faith and works, like the Catholic Church?

See, now, once we start peeling those onion layers back a little bit, first of all, they don't know doctrine. Then if you don't know doctrine, how do you know who's a professing Christian and who isn't?

So ecumenism just breeds incessantly.

Yeah, Joan of Arc. I mean, yeah, I want to be a delusional, you know, I mean, how about, what's the guy's name, you know, who tilted at windmills? I mean, you know, I want to, oh, Don Quixote. I want to be Don Quixote.

I want to be, you know, Joan of Arc. I mean, foolishness.

No wonder we have this ecumenical craze out there, because if there's no doctrine to divide over, of course doctrine divides. It divides truth from error, and it divides what we're supposed to think about God and what we're not supposed to think about God, and so once you water it down and say, I don't even know what doctrine is, I don't know what transubstantiation is, I don't know what Latria versus Dulia is.

Is that Dulia or Dulia?

Dulia, a song by the Beatles. So yeah, Latria and, it is Dulia. I think it is. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, with different kinds of worship, people say they don't worship.

Oh, what was that? That's lined up right there. We heard a statement tonight. You guys can be the next Mother Teresa's or Joan of Arc's in your world. What did you think when you heard that? I thought it was unique.

Do you believe Mother Teresa preached a saving gospel, a gospel that can save? Sure. Do you think doctrine's important? What's doctrine?

How are you? Doctrine would be teachings. I mean, seriously, for most people, those would be fighting words. When you begin to say something about Mother Teresa, I'm glad she served all kinds of poor people in India, but when you read her quotes, I hope she didn't die believing what she said she believed because she was so far away from grace alone.

It wasn't even funny. And it's sad to me because the first lady we played, just a couple of ladies ago, oh, if there's an important woman around, we just want to be like her. Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa.

They just have to be a woman,.

And we'll look up to this woman. Great women of faith. Bad girls of the Bible.

It's all that stuff. So what we want to do here at No Compromise Radio is this. We don't want to compromise, and the only way you can stand up for truth and stand up against error is to know doctrines that are found in the Bible.

Doctrines, Ologies, and the Need for Biblical Literacy

Steve, tell some of the folks out there listening at No Compromise Radio today, what are some of the doctrines, some of the ologies that they could study that would really prove quite practical at the end if they learned the doctrine to start?

Well, certainly harmartology. You want to know about sin. That's what it is. And we can talk about anthropology, the study of man. We can talk about theology, theology proper, study of God, Christology, study of Christ, pneumatology, study of the Holy Spirit, et cetera.

There is so much to learn. And when you ask people, what is doctrine, and they just say either, I don't know, or can I get back to you, dude, or whatever, what they're really showing is a shallowness of faith.

Now, could they all be Christians? Absolutely, that's not the issue. The issue is how do you intend to navigate through this world that's filled, by the way, with false teachers and false teaching if you don't know what the truth is?

If you can't say, you know, with, is it Calvin, you know, that justification by faith is the article upon which the church stands or falls. Yeah, if you don't know, it doesn't matter who said it, I mean, if you don't know that to be true, if you don't know the foundational truths of the faith, then you're going to be swept away with every wind of doctrine.

That's right, so what we want to do is we want to encourage you to study your Bible. Steve, I've got a new title for today's show, Abridged Christianity, small C. We, in our society, like things fast, easy, uncomplicated, are ready to swoop down and pick up at a moment's notice, and so instead of reading the whole Bible, let's just do the Bible in a minute kind of thing.

Remember that book that was out?

Sure, and you know, just to take off of what C .S. Lewis once said, you know, I think he had a book called Simple Christianity. Well, now I'd say it's probably more like Simple-Minded Christianity.

That's right, so this is kind of an abridged faith which will not help you when you're having the full edition trial. Come to your life.

Yeah, I mean, the more depth you have in your relationship with Christ, the more comfort he is to you in the difficult times, you know, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, how can you say, you know, that you trust that shepherd when you don't even know him, when you don't even know what he said, when you don't value the things of Scripture, which are doctrine.

Maybe our listener, Steve, could start out with even the doctrine of end times. That sometimes even motivates those Christians who are weak and struggling, maybe new Christians, and they want to study end times theology.

I'm fine with that. If you're just an, you know, eschatology maniac and that's all you study, I have a problem with that, but much of the Scripture would be end times thinking. If Jesus is coming back soon, how then shall we live?

And so, why don't they start with some good eschatology books, maybe like Darby and the Left Behind series, right? Survey said.

Yeah. No, that wouldn't be the place you'd want to start. But, you know, what you want to be careful of, and it certainly is true, that what we believe about Christ returning should impact our lives now, but what you don't want to do is be a person who can only identify the books of Daniel and Revelation in the Bible.

That's right. I would say get the MacArthur book on Revelation. It's a commentary, a study book for even laypeople, and it's called Because the Time is Near, would be a great way to look at eschatology, and you would learn not just end times theology, but you'd learn the book of Revelation, too, from a good pre-meal perspective.

It puts things together so well.

Who, Phil Johnson? Well, I mean, we were there for a number of John MacArthur sermons in the Revelation series, and it was just, it was awesome. Just great stuff.

Well, today is Tuesday, and we've been talking about doctrine, abridged or unabridged. My name is Mike Abendroth, and this is Steve Cooley. Hi. Hi, and we're at info at nocompromisedradio .com, or you can get our podcast as well.

Mike and Steve from Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. 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 bbcchurch .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.