Race And Evangelicalism

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Michael Abendroth here, glad to be your host. I don�t know, how long have we been doing this? Four years? Five years? Sit down, put the headphones on. I have one on-off switch that pretty much controls the rest of the panel.

The mixer and the recorder and the, I don�t know, I don�t need this machine over here, whatever this black thing is. BrickLinks, B-R-I-C-L-I-N-K, unless I was going to be on Wretched Radio. So, I�m thankful for the wretched contact.

What else? This other box over here, I need that for, I don�t know what I need that one for. That would never, we never use that. It�s actually a caller button and it says call. I push a button and I hit drop.

So if a caller calls in and I want to accept it, I can, and then I can drop the caller in the middle of everything. Underneath the drop button in this panel, this JK Audio in-keeper, digital hybrid, it says ducking.

So there�s a auto-answer, presence, AGC, receive minus 20, minus 9, minus 3, and then something underneath the drop that says ducking. So that�s maybe when someone calls, they have a theological question or a snarky comment and you don�t want to deal with it, so you hit the ducking.

Actually, we started off the show and we did it live at the studio at WV &E. What street is that on? James Street, maybe, used to be on, still is on. Then I started doing this show live here from the studio, the church, my office, the study.

And then I�d have folks coming by who are church members and they just wanted to come kind of watch. So I felt almost like, as they were looking through the windows, this is how it must feel in New York City for some NBC show.

You see the people outside, but nobody from our church had signs. So in the middle of evangelicalism, because of some of the issues we�ve had, racial issues in Ferguson and those kinds of things, things happened in Florida and other places, I find it fascinating to watch what�s going on with social media, the Lawrettes of the world, the, what�s Lawrette�s first name, Mr. Brian Crawford Lawrettes, the Tabetiana Whaley�s of the world, the Bodhi Bokoms of the world.

It�s interesting for me to listen to these men and see what they�re saying. And I�ve said before that I�m not pro-Bodhi�s family stuff, family integrated church stuff. He certainly preaches the real gospel and is faithful in that regard and certainly many other regards.

I don�t mean to dismiss that. But I was so glad Bodhi said what he did when pressed for a response. So amen, kudos. But now looking back, I�m reading James White�s 12, when was this, January 28, 2012.

And it�s of middle-aged white guys and repentance. And so he talks about a blog article written by Brian Crawford Lawrettes. And here�s what Lawrettes says, and I think looking back in time, this is interesting.

It doesn�t have anything to do with Ferguson per se. Here�s what Lawrettes says, �I�m actually� and this is on White�s blog, �I�m actually quite angry as I write these words. My anger is at those who have attacked Bishop Jakes, that is T .D. Jakes, that is the modalist, that is God, the Father, Son, and the Spirit as manifestations, torquing 1 Timothy chapter 3 out of context instead of God subsisting in three persons as Scripture would teach, manifesting.

And Jakes is, he�s not a foolish man in the sense that he�s not, he�s smart and so he knows how to try to get around his Pentecostal modalism, or modalism in general. And so here Lawrettes is angry at the people who have attacked Bishop Jakes and James McDonald.

Now this show is being recorded right around the middle of December, and James McDonald has just endorsed TBN, he�s on the TBN site for the Chicago studios and parading around. You know, it�s one thing to have a half-hour show that TBN decides to run.

I don�t know, if they said no-compromise TV show, I don�t know if you know this, but we have a no-compromise TV show, you can access it at Worldview Weekend. If they said you can, we�ll play that on TBN.

Now if it is unfettered access, if it is access where I can say whatever I want to say as often as I want to say it, that�s one thing, and that�s still, you know, debatable. Some would say yes, play it, some would say no, it�s 2 Corinthians 6 issue and guilt by association, association by guilt, and that�s one thing, that�s a category.

That�s different than this category with James McDonald, and he is pushing it, and you have just watched the once-credible ministry of walk in the Word, I think that�s what it�s called. Now it seems like, in my opinion, it�s like walk in the world and walk with the TBNs of the world, and so this guy, Lawrence was mad that people attacked T .D. Jakes and James McDonald, without even coming to the event, are considering giving Bishop a fair hearing.

Some of these gospel-centered people strike me as extremely arrogant, and while they preach a good gospel, they, in this incident, don�t seem to be living the gospel. Well, you know what kind of bells and whistles that lights off in no-compromise land, because it�s an impossibility to live out the gospel.

I don�t know, do you mime that, do you mime the cross and the crucifixion? And even there, how do you live the gospel? Think about Jesus dying on the cross 2 ,000 years ago, and the gospels telling us of what had happened on the crucifixion.

But the majority of the theological importance of that crucifixion was given to us by special revelation by later apostles. Now, of course, there was some inkling of the theological events with the darkness in Matthew 27, and the tombs being opened, and the darkness, did I just say darkness already?

The darkness, yes, and the time of the crucifixion coinciding with the Passover lambs being slain. You know, there�s a lot of that stuff, so I�m not saying there�s zero, but we need an interpretation, a divine interpretation of what was happening there at Golgotha.

And of course, we receive that, and you can look at Romans or Galatians or lots of other books that tell us about that very thing, but you can�t live out the gospel. And so, what do you mean live out the gospel?

Do you mean be nice and just assume these things? And we�re hearkening back to the elephant room too, and of course, I wanted to do something positive in the middle of my critique of that, and so I brought in James White, I brought in Phil Johnson and Carl Truman, and you can access those things at No Compromise Ever on Vimeo, and listen to see what we had to say about it.

Here, Lourdes goes on to say, �They appear to have elevated love over doctrine, over love for people, and because of this I say to them what Paul said to another man, Peter, who avoided people, �Your conduct is out of step with the gospel.

Galatians 2. �The greatest, or biggest, excuse me, pushback Lourdes says, �came from the reformed crowd. Now please hear me, I�m reformed with an intentionally lowercase r, but to be honest with you right now, I�m really embarrassed to be.

The loudest voices in the conservative evangelical world are middle-aged white reformed guys. And then later he says, �But this same reformed crowd who is pushing back refuses to come to an event or to have honest dialogue.

This reeks of theological bigotry. You need to repent. At issue is exactly that your love for issues has trumped your love for people. In you, if you have attacked Bishop Jakes or James McDonald over bishops perceived modalism, and after hearing what he has to say and how he is a modalist, then you need to repent and it needs to be public as the attacks that you have made.

Anything less than this is unbiblical. I�m anxious to see how truly gospel-centered you are. Wow. Wow, that�s amazing. That is truly amazing, and I wonder if in retrospect Lourdes says that he now should make as public what he has made public in response, to his own response, middle-aged reformed white guys.

Now, let�s think about this issue first from the racial perspective. What do you mean middle-aged white guys? What does that have to do with anything? The church is to be governed by, shepherded by, ruled by, if you want to use some scriptural language in 1 Timothy, if that�s too harsh for you, led by white men?

Of course not. But older men. That�s true. But what�s the white part have to do with anything? So if we criticize a man who is a modalist, Pentecostal, word-of-faith, errorist, teaching heretical things, and he wants us to listen to what he wants to say first, now remember Elephant Room was not, and Elephant Room 2 was not, you know, we have different perspectives in the world.

Let�s talk. It was these are evangelical differences we have between us, now let�s talk. And was it not Mark Driscoll who wanted T .D. Jakes to be there as well because no other church was as large as Jakes, and we need to hear from other people and other tribes because they�ve got these large churches?

Memory serves me. But this has nothing to do with white and black. This has something to do with truth and error. If we want to go back to modalism and Aryan heresy and Athanasius, are we talking about white people?

So you know what, these are white people, it�s a white error. I think if you do your research, I don�t think you�re going to be finding too many white people with the ones I just named. Now everyone struggles with sin.

Some people probably have never struggled with any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or racism. Maybe they grew up in a family where that was just not an issue. And other people grew up in families that had racist issues and that just exacerbated their own sin.

And maybe there are Christians now that struggle with racism. But the men that I know who critique this, I don�t think one of them is racist. How do you figure out if you�re a racist or not? It�s interesting, second chapter of James, it says, �My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.

In other words, when you think about Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, you think about the fire in the middle of the bush in Exodus chapter 3. You think about the pillar of fire leading Israel by night in the wilderness.

You think about the Shekinah glory. You think about Jesus with eyes like flame of fire three times in the book of Revelation. When you think about this Jesus, the Lord of glory, and then you say, �You know, I probably shouldn�t compare myself to other people.

I should compare myself to the Lord of glory. And then everyone else fades. They are irrelevant in the sense that how could I judge myself against them and think I�m better somehow, based on skin color, intellect, education, anything else.

I am having, you know, to do, I am before the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, that is how James chapter 2 starts off, and then he talks about somebody comes in, they�ve got gold rings and fine clothing, sit here in a good place.

It says in chapter 2 verse 8, �If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You are doing well. Okay, he�s just a neighbor, not a white neighbor, black neighbor, Samaritan neighbor.

But if you show partiality, you�re judging someone�s inside based on their outside look, then you�re convicted by the law as transgressors and committing sin. And this is a big deal. So what do we do with racism in general?

How is a Christian to think through it? Now, I don�t know from the pulpit, I don�t do this very often, but I guess on the radio show on No Compromise Radio, I could. I think I grew up, I didn�t really care white or black or anything in between.

I didn�t really think in those categories. Maybe it was because of sports. I had up on my wall a Bart Starr poster, he�s white, a Ray Nitschke poster, he�s white, and a John Brockington poster, he�s black.

And so I�d think of the Lakers, and I liked Jerry West, he was white, I liked Gale Goodrich, he was white, I liked Wilt Chamberlain, he was black, I liked, who was that other guy, Jamal Wilkes, he was black.

And so I never really thought in those categories. I played basketball and football in junior high and, well, mainly just in high school. We had white people, black people, I think the basketball team I played on, we only had a handful of white guys.

But it�s fascinating to me. Again, it�s my own sinful heart, so I don�t want to blame my grandparents too much. But in Omaha, while my grandparents did not like being persecuted because of their German heritage and when they came over from Germany during the war, or thereafter, they were persecuted because they were German, and of course, we have Nazis and things like that.

They weren�t. But they were persecuted. Grandma would tell me about how she would bring her lunch to school and then the kids would steal her lunch and throw it down the outhouse hole. So they didn�t like that.

But they didn�t like black people. They didn�t like other ethnic people. And so I remember hearing some of the words out of their mouths. And, you know, these are grandparents. They love their grandkids.

They, you know, bake cookies. They don�t speed. This is a grandpa who we walked out of a restaurant once and he just forgot to pay and went back in to make sure to pay because it was right. But they were racist.

And when we were 13 years old, when I was 13 years old, our next-door neighbors moved out and an Air Force family moved in, except they didn�t happen to be white. And you would have thought that the neighborhood was going crazy.

It did go crazy. This is going to lower the value of our homes. And now we have all these low-class people moving in. I think he was an officer in the Air Force. I mean, just think how insane this is, how sinful this thinking is, how awful this thinking is.

You just compare yourself to Jesus, the Lord of Glory, and who would ever think that way? But, of course, I thought that way. I don�t want to blame anybody else, but it�s exacerbated by my family and father to some degree, not mother.

And so you just begin to think kind of these kind of thoughts. And so I probably held on to some of those thoughts for a long time. And then I got saved. And so, oh, one other quick story. The neighbors, their last name were the Floyds, and we had kind of a big ditch in front of our house.

It was landscaped. Basically, it was an overflow water thing. It didn�t look like a ditch per se. I mean, it was, I guess it was a ditch, but it was paved at the bottom, and then it had grass. And since they�ve covered it and made it kind of like into a park thing.

But anyway, that was like this drainage thing. And the thing is, it went down into this large area, and it was like a small tube and into this big reservoir thing. And some kid fell in the ditch in front of our house.

And we�re talking about a fast current just sweeping you away. Now we�ve got 20 foot of water, 20 foot deep. And it�s just taking this kid, and our next door neighbor, the black Air Force man, rescued the kid the last second before he got sucked under for a sure death into that long, narrow tube.

He wouldn�t have been able to breathe. And people still had problems. I�m just telling you, racism, discrimination, it�s an awful sin. It�s a wicked sin. And it is something that can be forgiven, of course.

And it is something to be fought against, of course. And when you come to think of Jesus, the Lord of Glory, everything just gets taken care of. Now, maybe I have a problem with some of the race talk these days, because I basically live in my own skin.

And the Lord has just taken that away. When I got saved, I didn�t swear anymore, at least out loud. Once in a while, I think I swear a word even now, sadly. And he took away the racism. There are other things that weren�t taken away.

And so maybe other people struggle in other areas, but I�ve never struggled with it. And so the way I always think about it is, I�m glad Jesus died on the cross for Jews and Gentiles. And since I�m a Gentile, why would I be bugged at another Gentile, a black man, an olive-skinned woman?

Why would I care? What do I care? And so I�m thankful that the Lord has rescued me. And now I just think, okay, fine. I don�t like it when people are saying you have to have a church with proper racial mixes and percentages.

I mean, what if you live in Norway? What if you live in Kenya? I think the way it should go is, if you preach the gospel and you preach the scriptures faithfully week in, week out, your church will reflect the community.

If the community is all white, it will reflect all white people. If it�s all Indian, it will reflect all Indian people. And I�m thankful here at Bethlehem Bible Church, the town we live in is a town of about 6 ,000 people, and most people are white.

I see some black people once in a while, some Puerto Ricans once in a while, some Indians once in a while, but oh, it�s only once in a while. But our church, we have all kinds of different people here.

Why? Well, because the gospel, �Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is a sin bearer for all kinds of people. And when you go to the book of Revelation, you see some of those kinds of people that are there.

And so for me, when I think of these things, I think about my past, and now I think, �Hey, how do I work through this? I have a son and I have three daughters. And I�ve told the listening audience for a long time, �Here�s how you should think about it.

For my daughters, a guy wants to come and win over my daughter through me. He has to be a man. He�s always had to be a man. He has to be born again. That is, he has to be a Christian. He has to believe in the sovereignty of God, right?

And that�s it, right? I want somebody who�s committed to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, who thinks they can serve the Lord Jesus Christ better with my daughter than they could on their own and she with him.

And that�s where it ends. I don�t care. I honestly don�t care. I don�t care. If my daughter said, �Well, you know what, I�m going to marry a black guy. I might say, �Well, you know what, honey? You totally have my blessing.

And I might say, �Well, you know, sadly there are going to be people that are going to not like that, but we�re going to just honor the Lord. Or maybe I wouldn�t say it. I don�t know, but it makes no difference to me.

Zero. Nada. God has set me free from that. And that�s why I�m so nonplussed about this whole, you know, everybody, all these evangelicals. Well, we haven�t done enough in churches, you know, and we�ve got to talk about racial reconciliation and race is a gospel issue.

Something just strikes me as odd, and it rings hollow when I hear this kind of language. If there is a racist in the church, if there�s someone who is prejudiced, if they think they�re somehow better than someone else, compare yourself to the Lord of glory, repent of your sin, and quit it.

Love other people. And I�ll tell you, this is not true because I�ve experienced it. It�s true because of the Bible. And I have experienced it, just as a side note. It is freeing. It is wonderful. There�s one race, it�s the human race, and we�re all from Adam.

Or we�re from Noah and his three children. Not or, and. And so, our federal head, Adam, and now our federal head, Jesus. And so, when you look at Revelation, it is great language so you can see just the kinds of people that Jesus dies for.

And after this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, �We�re better than you.

Of course not. Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. Amen. Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be to our God forever and ever.

Amen. So, once this critique, �Hey, you middle-age Reformed white guys, you�ve got problems with Jakes because he�s black. That is a canard. That is false. That isn�t true. I hope in the last couple of years, Lord has said, �You know what?

I shouldn�t have been angry. I shouldn�t have said, �You guys need to repent I was wrong. Hey, we�re all wrong on certain things. This controversy, it cannot be won by just going, �Well, you know what, bunch of racists.

I don�t know one Christian leader that has any other kind of sentiment than what I�ve tried to express today, that when you compare yourself to the Lord of glory, you realize how sinful you are, how insignificant you are, what a sinner you are, and you don�t compare yourself to someone else.

Not at all. Aren�t you glad there�s forgiveness for all kinds of sins because of what Jesus did? Even discrimination. Even racism.

Even bigotry. I�m very glad. Praise the Lord. 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 6. 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.