Razing Hell

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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.
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My name is Mike Abendroth, I'm your host. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.
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You can listen to us either live here at 330 on 760
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AM, or you can go to iTunes and type in No Compromise Radio. You could type in Bethlehem Bible Church if you want to hear the
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Sunday morning sermons. You can also go to nocompromiseradio .com,
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and they've got all the podcasts there, and you can get all the information you want.
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So that is how you get ahold of us. We're glad to be on the radio. We're coming up on,
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I think, show 300 pretty soon. 300 shows. I don't know where time has gone.
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I didn't know whether to re -up for another year or not. It takes a lot of time to look through things that I've already preached and then sit down here and preach them.
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For those of you that are wondering, maybe no one's wondering, do I come up with a new show? I just have to start from scratch.
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I don't have time for any of that, so I just try to find something. That I've already taught, or said, or done, or felt, or emoted, and then sit down and off we go.
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And only 24 minutes? I should be able to talk about anything for 24 minutes.
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That's not very hard, is it? Just wind us up and let us go. I usually tape the shows ahead of time, and I'm about, oh,
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I like to be about 20 shows taped and in the can, ready to go. So they're up and going, and if I can go out of town or whatever
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I like to do, I can then do it. Today, just a kind of a funny start,
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I have a book that's out of print, Wildlife in the Kingdom Come by Johnson and Co.
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And basically you have a cartoon on the right -hand side of every layout, and then you've got a theological description of that.
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So there's all kinds of theological words, and then he, in a comedic way, describes that particular theological person.
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It could be the Texas Receptus, it could be Westcott and Hort, and in this particular case
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I have the Arminian. And the Arminian, and it has the taxonomical term underneath it in Latin, choose us and lose us.
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And if you know much about church history, you'll find this very funny. Perhaps the most populous of all creatures to roam the mountain ranges of the
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Protestant peaks is the amiable Arminian. Unlike most of the other creatures in the theocentric woodlands, the
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Arminian's appearance and disposition seem shaped by an extraordinary relationship with human beings.
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This may be due to his preference for grazing in the free will farmlands.
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It is there that the Arminian struck an intimate acquaintance with the spiritual sharecroppers in the track lands of Trent.
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Interestingly, so basically what this person is trying to say is, in a funny way, the Arminians have some spillover from the
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Roman Catholic view of free will. Further defining characteristics of the
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Arminian are his appetite. So basically you've got a cartoon of an animal, then you've got description of that animal.
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So this animal happens to be the Arminian. Resistible grace grass he eats, my choice cherries and unlimited atonement leaves.
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Pretty funny, huh? Despite this criticism, the Arminian has flourished in the past years.
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Contrary to his more staunch relative footnote, C. Clark P.
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Knox, there's a wilderness that won't hurt me. And as Lewis Johnson's critical response, there's a gap in his thinking.
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Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. In the general sense, there's a good deal of controversy whether the
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Arminian and his numerous breeds will persevere. Some experts contend that the Arminian's poor diet and his unhealthy reliance on the goodness of mankind will surely bring about his demise.
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Still others insist that although the Arminian species is not eternally secure, he alone has migrated to the glorious state of perfection.
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For a classic text on the Arminian, see Charles Finney's. It's just a play on Charles Finney.
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Willy wantcha, ain'tcha gonna. If I coax ya, won'tcha wanna.
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On Pleading Press Unlimited. I thought that was hilarious. And you say that was so funny,
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I forgot to laugh. Well, they've got the Calvinist here. He's kind of a moose with five points on his antlers.
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I thought that was funny. For further reading on the Calvinist Pinnock Debate, see Clark P.
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Knox. The Calvinist. You're so vain you probably think this song is about you. An enthusiastic defense of the
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Calvinist is found in the best -selling Getting the Points of Cross, edited by J .I.
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Sacher and R .R .C. Sproul. And then the other one that I have, I could go on and on, but I don't think it's so funny anymore.
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Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio. They've got a picture of a kangaroo jumping up and down for joy.
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Extremely happy, tongue out, smiling. And this is called the charismatic. In Latin, the hibi shibi fizzawazza.
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The footnote for that fizzawazza, it says no interpretation was available at the time of publication.
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See, because it's an unknown tongue. This one is absolutely hilarious.
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Of particular interest is the charismatic's ferocious appetite for wonders and signs, sprigs, worship, wisteria, and experiential eucalyptus leaves.
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These delicacies grow in abundance in the various vineyards, get it?
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In which the charismatic frequently forages. Supporters of this jolly jumper insist that she is a delightful addition to the land often filled with stuffed shirts.
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Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yet numerous experts of the Outback remain miffed and mystified at the rapid growth of the charismatic population and are uncertain whether this is ultimately good for the theological ecosystem.
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They believe that the charismatic's ecstatic bouncing is trampling all over boundaries established by the word of God rangers who patrol and attempt to maintain order in the theological kingdom.
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Footnote, a critical view of this creature can be found in John McCarthy's Leapin' Loonies on the Loose, the ungrounded charismatic.
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So, for those of you that think we here, No Compromise Radio, are just stuffed shirt
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Calvinists and can have no fun, there you go. Go get the book. Christianity Today, vainly naming the name.
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Cussing isn't our only problem, though that's bad enough. Molly Hemingway wrote a little article on Christianity Today, July 2010, vainly naming the name.
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Cussing isn't our only problem. If you haven't noticed, there is an increase in the discussion of swearing okay for the
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Christian is cussing good from the pulpit. Now, the bad news is
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I've had so many bad words go into my mind and I've had so many bad words come out of my mouth when
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I was an unbeliever. I got saved when I was 29 years old and sometimes I actually think of those words.
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By the grace of God, I don't say them anymore. I'm glad, but it doesn't mean I never would or never will.
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I hope I won't. I hope the track record of the last 20 years is going to be true in the future.
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But sometimes I think of those words. Sometimes I think of those words when I ought not to think of those words.
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Sometimes when I'm preaching, one of those words might come to my mind. The question is, should we cuss?
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And is this a good way to relate to some of the younger generation, some of the emergent crowd?
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What do we need to do? And I thought it was interesting in this article. She said, the third commandment doesn't just mean we should avoid cursing or swearing in God's name.
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It's possible to violate it even if we never utter a curse word. Martin Luther said that the greatest abuse of this command occurs when, quote, false preachers rise up and offer their lying vanities as God's word, end quote on Luther.
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That is a fascinating thought. What is worse? Somebody getting up there and saying one of the seven words
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George Carlin said we couldn't mention on the air, according to the FCC, some kind of four -letter word.
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Is that worse? Or is it worse to speak things about God that aren't true, rise up and offer their lying vanities?
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How about God is just a God of love? How about there's no hell? How about God's not sovereign?
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There's a lot of things you could say that I think are worse than actually saying a curse word.
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Mollie goes on to say, in other words, false doctrine taught by those who claim to speak for God is worse than the crudest and most profane comedy special ever to air.
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When pastors go beyond Scripture to promote the gospel of prosperity or to tell parishioners not to worry about sexual immorality, they are not just wrong, they've also blasphemed
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God's holy name. Mollie, good job. Christianity Today, good job.
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Most of the time I don't say things like that because many times
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Christianity Today completely bombs it. But here they did a great job in talking about how we should speak well of God.
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So I don't know about you, but I don't want my pastors to swear. The men that I look up to who preach the word faithfully in season, out of season, over decades,
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I've never heard them swear at all. I've never heard John MacArthur swear. I've never heard Sinclair Ferguson swear.
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You can listen to S. Lewis Johnson preach and preach and preach and preach. He's with the Lord now, but all those messages on the
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Believer's Foundation, Believer's Chapel, and you will not hear him swear. By the way, why bend down to the culture and say, well, the culture today so that we can prove our authenticity, so we can prove how we can relate to the younger crowd, let's swear a little bit and kind of shock them and then tell them that we're one of them.
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This is no different than in the old days when people say, well, our pastor's committed adultery, but we should restore him anyway because, you know, he's one of us.
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I like it that people like J. Vernon McGee, for instance, Sinclair, excuse me,
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S. Lewis Johnson, when they preach, it's timeless. Why? Because they're not buying into whatever the fads are.
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There may be an occasional reference to current events, but it's just in passing, and they're back to the text.
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If your pastor preaches a sermon, you should be able to listen to that sermon in 30 years, and it should still be just as relevant.
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And if he is preaching the Word, it will be relevant. You should be able to take your pastor's sermon and then go play those sermons in Sri Lanka, and they should be just as relevant to the
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Sri Lankan group because the Word of God is transcultural. It's transchronological because it's written by the infinite
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God who knows all things, and it performs its work in those who believe, doesn't it? So we don't need to stoop down to any kind of, well,
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I've got to relate in such a way that this is going to denigrate the message and the messenger.
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Certainly, when I go speak to high school students, I'm going to say to myself, now this is going to be delivered differently than if I were speaking at the rest home, if I were speaking at the
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Moose Lodge, or if I'm speaking somewhere else, different than the pulpit on Sunday morning.
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Sunday morning, I'll say, all right, I know what the people have been taught because I've taught them. I know what they're ready for. I know they know.
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I know what they know, and I've been involved in their lives for 13 and a half years, and so this is how
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I'll preach. So for high school students, for college students, it's going to be a little bit different approach, but it will be the transchronological
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Word. I might approach things differently, but I won't preach the Word differently.
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It will still come from the text. So I just want to commend
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Christianity Today for doing a good job in that particular article.
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I was very, very happy to find that out. Well, what else do we have here? Going on to the next thing, this is kind of just a potpourri for 500,
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Huffington Post. I don't know if you ever read the Huffington Post online. I like to read some of the religious things there because it tells me what people are thinking in the mainstream of American culture.
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August 31st, 2010, Sharon L. Baker, PhD, author of Raising Hell, R -A -Z -I -N -G, you know, knocking it down,
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Associate Professor of Theology and Religion, of all places, Messiah College.
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I remember I first moved to New England and heard all the people talk about how great Messiah College was.
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I will talk to you about what Sharon Baker says, and if she's the Associate Professor of Theology and Religion at Messiah College, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would never send my children, or those here at the church, at least not with my permission, they can do whatever they want.
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I don't control their lives, but not with my blessing, rather, to that particular school. And they call themselves a
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Christian school? How about all the people who died and left endowments thinking, you know, this is a Christian school? I say every endowment needs to be looked at again, and if the school has changed its policy on a particular topic, you know, a minor topic like hell, then they shouldn't accept those monies anymore.
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How could they in good conscience? I think Walt Kaiser's right. Let's look at the Statement of Faith, match it up to what the people who were giving money to that thought they were going to teach, and if you've changed, then stop receiving the money.
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She wrote this article called The Problem with Hell, and listen to the sacrilegious nature of this.
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When I was 26, I found out I was going to hell, young, impressionable, see, young, impressionable, and without a strong faith.
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I listened intently as the pastor of a church I was visiting described in graphic detail the torturous, unquenchable flames that would burn human bodies forever and ever.
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Boy, that's a pastor who was faithful. He spoke of worms eating away at decaying flesh, total darkness without the presence of God, and worst of all, no release from those horrors for all eternity.
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Sounds like that's Jesus's message on hell, doesn't it to you? I certainly didn't want to be one of those unfortunate many to feel the flames licking at my feet soon after leaving life in this world.
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Good! Repent from your sins, run from hell, and run to Jesus. So I took out the proper fire insurance and asked
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Jesus to save me from my sins and therefore from eternal torment in hell. She says that was 25 years ago and hell is still a hot topic.
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I am so very concerned about remaining faithful to the Christian scriptures. What do you think the next word is?
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I really want to be faithful to the scriptures. What do you think the next word is? When somebody's going to dog this kind of topic and they're going to say, you know, we just, we're beyond this.
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If you kind of extrapolate from the New Testament times, we're way beyond some kind of fire, brimstone,
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God of wrath, God of justice, a God of war. How about that God the warrior theme?
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She probably wouldn't like that either. So I'm very concerned about remaining faithful to the
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Christian scriptures. Next word. I'm even more concerned about remaining faithful to the
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God of love who loves the worst of the worst, the world's enemies, including even the Hitlers, the
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Idi Amin's, and the Osama Bin Laden's of the world. So how do you know who this
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God of love is without the scriptures? You don't. And there's no such thing as the God of love at the expense of the
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God of wrath. It's made up in your own mind. It's an image. It's a figment of your own imagination. Listen, you can't say
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I want to remain true to the scriptures, but I've got to interpret the scriptures in light of a
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God of love. No, the scriptures reveal that God is a God of justice, of faithfulness, of all kinds of perfections, including love and wrath.
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And when you are a professor at Messiah College and you have a PhD and you don't understand there's a difference between the love of God for his creation and the love of God for his bride, his wife, and his children, you don't understand the difference.
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His elect ones, well, you're going to find a trajectory for your hermeneutics and it's going to end you up in places like this, and then you're going to be teaching other people about how sophisticated people don't believe in hell.
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She says, our traditional views of hell as a place of eternal punishment where unbelievers dwell in undying flames contradict the image of God as merciful, forgiving, and compassionate.
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No, it doesn't contradict it at all. Jesus is the lion, he's also the lamb.
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Do those things contradict? No, because we believe both of them. We believe both of those.
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And so when Scripture teaches that God in the Old Testament is a God of grace and justice, and the
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New Testament teaches that God is a God of grace and justice, we believe that. This whole Old Testament God of wrath,
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New Testament God of love. How about Jesus? New Testament teaches more about hell than all the Old Testament combined.
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And how about the Old Testament where God is slow to anger, gracious, compassionate, and he forgives sins?
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What about that? Back to the article, Sharon Baker, PhD, talking about her book
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Raising Hell. Would it be okay to burn this book on No Compromise Radio? I can't talk about book burning anymore because it's so much in the news, but I mean metaphorically.
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When I say burn a book, that just means this is not worth your reading and too bad it's out influencing other people.
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I am also very disturbed by the behavior of those who claim kinship with God through Jesus, who for centuries have instigated and participated in horrendous violence in the name of God.
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What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with anything? All kinds of people have done violent things in the name of God.
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That means nothing. It's a non sequitur. But now it comes out we will continue to solve the problem of violence violently, including our buying into the violence of hell.
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So see, Christians, they are violent. There's all kinds of bad things done in the name of Jesus, including thinking about the violence of hell.
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Well, my friend, and I don't know if she would want to count me as a friend, but as a fellow human being,
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I would remind you that when we buy into this peace at all costs, we forget that peace with God was made through war and death of Jesus Christ.
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So she says this. I've written a book that rethinks the issue surrounding traditional notions of hell as a place of eternal punishment in favor of a view more consistent with that of a loving
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God. What follows are my reasons for wanting to R -A -Z -E hell. Well, you can do that.
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It's a free country. Just don't call yourself a Christian. Call yourself a God is lovest or something like that, because this is what we have.
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Jesus could have said, you know, by the way, that verse in Daniel 12 to the talk about eternal destruction, that really wasn't real.
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And when you hear John the Baptist talking about brood of vipers, and when you hear in the centuries to come, not just Paul and Peter, but the church fathers talk about hell as a real place, just forget all that.
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She said, hell doesn't avenge evil or reveals God power. It does the opposite. I totally disagree.
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It exacts justice and it does it in such a way where people will stand there and go, wow,
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God is powerful. She says, hell heralds eternal hopelessness.
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Suffering in hell for all eternity means that souls burning there forever will exist without any hope of redemption. Yes, that's exactly true.
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So repent now. That's the message. I think it's Dante, abandon hope all ye who enter here.
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That is the despair and that is the end result and the fruit of sin. Hell keeps evil in eternal existence.
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What does that mean? Hell keeps evil in eternal existence? No, we'll see.
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When we get to the new heavens and the new earth, there's not going to be any effect or any ramifications of evil at all.
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There will be a separate place where God keeps that and the saints in heaven, if they know about it, they won't care.
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And if they don't know about it, they won't care either. I disagree on point three as well. Number four, hell creates a clash between justice and love.
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No, we just have to believe both of those. They both are true. We unintentionally conjure up a cruel father who demands that unrepentant sinners spend eternity in flames, finding endless torture and agreeable way to achieve justice.
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Well, Jesus was tortured for three hours and longer, some by God, some by man, on Calvary, and there will be the eternal torture of unbelievers who spit on, denigrate, and do not bow to Jesus Christ, the only
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King of kings. God is more than a God of love. Hell assigns eternal violence to God.
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Well, it doesn't take very long to read the Old Testament to realize that God is a God of violence because the wages of sin is death.
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And it's just the grace and mercy of God. He doesn't slay everybody like he slew Achan and Ananias and Sapphira and Uzzah and many other people.
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Hell executes eternal punishment for temporal sin. Does sin committed during one short temporary lifespan deserve an eternity of punishment?
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Even in our society, we strive to make the punishment fit the crime. Well, the punishment does fit the crime because the sin is a sin against an infinite holy
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God, which requires an infinite payment because of the one you sin against.
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So when I read things like this, the problem with hell, it's the problem with sinful people who will not submit to the
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Word of God, and we hire them to teach our kids in college. Hell might not be vogue.
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Hell might not be cool. Hell might not be in. Brian McLaren might not believe it. But you just look through the ages and find out who taught about hell, and I think
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I'll stick with them over some Messiah College faculty member. I'll stick with Daniel, John the
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Baptist, Jesus, Paul, Peter, the writer of Hebrews, the loving apostle
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John, and every other great saint who lived like Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, Howard, excuse me,
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Hudson Taylor. I'll just stick with them. How about that? And so when you abandon the
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Word of God, you abandon everything. My name is Mike Apendroth. This is No Compromise Radio.
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If you are not a Christian, if you are not born again, and you die in your sin, you are going straight to an eternal hell.
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Hell is real. It may be unpopular, but it is true. And you can believe what universal
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Unitarians believe, or the Love Family, or Eckencar, or Christian Science, or Edgar Cayce, or Sun Yung Moon, or Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses, but Jesus is the one who you ought to believe, who you must believe, and there is going to be hell for you unless you repent and believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ, and trust that he would be a sin -bearer for you, dying for your sins, giving you his complete righteousness, so God will look at you and say,
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Welcome, because you have had your sins forgiven, and you've had Christ's righteousness imputed to your account.