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Ever wonder why “conservative” charismatics won’t distance themselves from the lunatic fringe? Some things don’t need decoder rings.
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. I feel more awake than I did last show, last week. This is a serial, as you know. I�ve been told that I should just run one show after another after another, so if I do several shows on Answers You Need to Grow Your Church, whatever that book was, that if I do four shows on that, or four shows about Tulip in public schools, I should just play them one after another after another, but I have these slots of certain genre.
Anyway, it just is what it is. We�re going into the sixth year, and Mondays are sermons, Tuesdays are Tuesday, guys. I told you that when I went to Pittsburgh, that Jimmy Carraway, the pastor there, who had me speak, Dr. Berrick and I were speaking on marriage, one man, one woman, that they�re going to start a show, Pillar of Truth, podcast, daily, and Wednesdays, I think Jason�s going to be the Wednesday guy.
I was so happy because they have a lot of money, and so we�re suing them for taking the idea of the Wednesday guy, Tuesday guy. People did ask me, �Where�s Tuesday guy I know you either love him or hate him.
Last time we were starting quotes, ten quotes, ten crazy quotes from televangelists that were on Christian Post, and what I thought was so funny is that the screenshots were taken from YouTube, and they have little advertisements still on them, you know, you have to find the X and then X it out.
These are all Kia cars, Cadenzas starting at $34 ,900, it�s in front of Copeland�s face, you know. And I was using a little bit of humor. If you ever want to laugh, you can always use charismatic friends as illustrations.
I know we have some charismatics who listen. They just don�t like the shows when I�m talking about charismatics, but I think even they believe what I talk about when I say most of these things, especially with this extreme, with the fringe, with the fringe charismatic group.
I was using these ten crazy quotes from televangelists to talk a little bit about cessationism, because even to this day, two years after Strange Fire, I just can�t believe people were wigging out about it.
And when you hear, frankly, some of the crybaby responses about Strange Fire, and John did some boo-boo things, he was really bad and said he was broad brush speaking, speaking with a broad brush, painting with a broad brush.
I wanted to remind you, and here was the main point last time, that, I just dropped my phone, that Moses and Joshua, remember that was the green cluster, 65 years, Elijah and Elisha, that was the, sorry, that was the first color again, what color, blue, then we had yellow cluster, Elijah and Elisha, and then we had the purple clusters of Jesus and of the apostles, and every time you have a miracle, a sign gift, you just put a little, put a little round headed colored hen, like you would in sales.
These are my accounts, and say, hmm, in this grouping, there's about 65 years for each of those, that's where the sign gifts happened, and what else happened during that time period? Oh, revelation was being given, hmm, no wonder.
These men have been with Jesus, Acts 4 .13, uneducated, common men, Peter and John preaching, the congregation, the people were astonished who heard him, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.
These are sign gifts, and miracles belong to revelation periods, B .B., or field. Jesus did miracles for lots of reasons, but he was confirming that he was God's messenger. So that's what I was after, that was what I was trying to get to, when it was using my view for humor, and I had a quick run in here to the church today to record these shows, because today is technically Halloween, and so we are having a harvest festival at our church.
I think actually some kids might carve some pumpkins, and they might actually have some makeup on, dressed up like a little kitty, and they go through the tunnel of doom or something, you know, I don't know, I think it's, you know.
First it's 501C3, and there are some people that they just can't get over that, it's like, well, churches aren't churches if they have any 501C3B. But since it is Halloween, I have a predictor pen here, should I continue doing the 10 crazy quotes from Televangelist, and dare if you live by the pen, dare you live by the pen, confliers son avenir ont ce stylo.
It's Unclear Ask again, it doesn't give me any help whatsoever. Oh, I have a book in front of me, this is going to be a real bon ben, it's going to be a Paige Turner, somebody was giving it away for free, and I picked it up, and it's a Zondervan classic, Clarion classic to be precise.
They found the secret, edited, or written by V. Raymond Edmond, and I'm not going to read it, and this is regarding Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, John Bunyan, Ian Thomas, Samuel Logan Brengel, this guy, the author Edmond, looks like Erdman, but it's Edmond, he's Chancellor at Wheaton College years ago, and we've got other people here, Halverson, John Hyde, Trumbull, Amy Carmichael.
But the thing is, every one of these, they found the secret. Remember those old bumper stickers? I found it. There's something to be said for conversion, right? Man's response to the gospel call, the sexual call.
But I think God found us instead. Well, speaking of books, you can order Sexual Fidelity No Compromise if you go to No Compromise Radio, and there's a little link there, and you want to click on that link.
We will have an e-book out sometime, I don't know exactly when. I ordered a couple thousand of these books, and they shipped, and then we shipped them to you. Actually, it should be my daughters who were shipping the books, and the books are $11 .99, and we don't have them up on Amazon yet, so we've got to ship them from the massive headquarters of No Comedia.
I wrote the book when I was talking to my son, not exactly, but in that time frame, in that cluster, that 65-year cluster, when I was talking to him about how to think biblically about sex and what to do in light of what we've learned, that is, how to watch your eyes, where to keep your eyes, that is, what not to watch, what about the Lord and forgiveness.
I think you'll like the book. Sexual Fidelity, it will be best used, I think, if there's a men's group and you want to have a discussion, you know, guys like to get together and have coffee and talk about different topics, this would be a good one for that.
So I think every church out there should, if you order 10, matter of fact, if you email me and say, I'd like to buy more than 10, 10 or more, then maybe I'll, I don't know what I'll do, maybe you get a discount.
Ten crazy quotes. All right, here's one, this is number six. It's got a Kia picture again. Kenneth Copeland, Prosperity Gospel, by the way, if you're not healed, it must be your faith. And if you're not rich, it must be your faith.
Copeland, I'm a billionaire because the assignment that the Lord gave me, I mean, I know it's not written well, but he said, I want you to begin to confess the billion flow. Okay, it's the billion flow.
Begin to confess the billion flow. What does that mean? I just gave you kind of like an ad for the new NoCo book, selling like hotcakes. It's the billion flow. Do you realize if I sold a billion books, what that would mean?
Would I then have to buy my way onto the New York Times bestseller list? If I sold 1 billion books, I'd be happy to sell 10 ,000 books. I think between the other four books that are published, I've got another one and a half, another one and a half and a fourth written.
I haven't written for probably three years. You just get in those modes where you're in the mode of writing. These days, I'm in the mode of pastoring, being dad, husband, the stupid radio show that never ends.
Then I get these people like Fred. I love Fred. Anytime anybody says, I love him. He's a good people. There's a comma coming. There's some punctuation that's after that. Fred's always razzing me about putting new shows out.
I try. I try to put some new shows out. Once in a while, there's some reruns on Fridays. I haven't written a lot lately because I'm pretty much tired, old, no good ideas. Anyway, this is the first NoCo Media book.
We're giving that a shot because otherwise, you're controlled by whether it's day one, Harvest House, Zondervan. They've been all helpful to me. I appreciate them. I didn't clear my throat because that's not true.
I like that. I like it that there are places like that. It's nice to have your own control. I do what I want when I want. We're going to try to put out a series of NoCo books. This first one's about sex, sexual fidelity, no compromise.
Then we're going to have parenting, no compromise. I don't know, biblical masculinity, no compromise. The one that my wife wants me to write is the NoCo man. What would a no compromise man be? We'll talk about first the Lord Jesus who never compromised and then in light of who he is.
What about work? What about school? What about other areas of the NoCo man's life, finances, the NoCo man? Then on the cover, I could have, I don't know, some Marlboro man kind of look. That might be good.
NoCo man. Well, the billions, billions aren't coming in. So if we sell 10 ,000, I think the other books that I've written have sold, I don't know, maybe about 5 ,000 total. I had an idea once on the bike where some book, and I really thought, man, this is going to sell 100 ,000 copies, couldn't get it past the publisher.
I have these ideas. All right, what about getting money here and now? Oh, I do know what I want to talk about. Apostles. Now, I don't know if Copeland calls himself an apostle or not. I do know that video preacher Leroy Thompson said loudly with a starting at $24 ,900.
I drive a Sorrento. I drive a Sorrento. I had it for a week and some guy pulled out, ran a red light and smashed into me, but we're alive. God said, it is time to tell the money you don't belong to the wicked, you belong to us.
Money, come to me now. I don't know if he calls himself an apostle and even the next one, Mike Murdoch, I want you to give me a thousand dollars, donate a thousand. And that if you do, God's going to erase your credit card debt.
As you use your faith, God is going to wipe out your credit card debts. Now, I wonder if there's a special subset of faith for if somebody steals my credit card number and tries to use it. Downtown Manhattan, buying cameras, something like that.
The next one's a really sick one, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Pat Robertson, there's the Kia Forte Coupe under this little screenshot. Don't you think if you're going to do a Christian Post article, you would take the screenshots out?
Don't you think that would happen? 700 Club, there's a picture of Pat Robertson. No, he's not one of the Duck Dynasty people. This is Pat Robertson. Duck Dynasty, they're about done. We're about done with them.
Come and go. People are just glad somebody's saying they're a Christian. They're glad for that. Nah, baptismal regeneration. Okay. I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, talking about a husband who's got a wife with Alzheimer's, he should divorce her and start all over again.
Didn't he get into like a lot of hot water with that? A lot of trouble. Sunday after Jimmy Swaggart, 1991, second prostitute scandal. Here's what he said to the church. The Lord told me it's flat, none of your business.
That's according to the Associated Press. I don't know if any of those men call themselves an apostle, but now comes the no-co teaching moment. That's after some Pete's Coffee. I went to some place in downtown Boston yesterday on Milk Street, M-I-L-K.
Agdawa is what it was called, and in martini glasses. I didn't get one because they can only serve those for people who are staying in their little shop. It's a little Japanese coffee place, and they serve them in martini glasses, and you have both cold and hot coffee drinks served in one, and they layer it in such a way that you can taste a little cold and a little, and I think it's 10 bucks.
Didn't get one. But the teaching moment today is apostles. Do they exist? Because if you admit to me that apostles no longer exist, then you're on the slippery slope into the wonderful world of cessationism, into the world of the Bible's sufficient, complete authority.
Now, we looked last time that these three clumping cluster groups of time periods where there are sign gifts were around Jesus' time in the apostles, 70 years, Elijah and Elisha, 65 years, and Moses and Joshua, about 65 years.
I want to lead into my second charismatic kind of discussion, and that is apostles. 1 Corinthians 12, 28, God appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
When you look at an apostle, what does it mean to have an apostle? Do apostles still exist? And so, most people, most charismatics, the good charismatics, they would say that the apostles have ceased.
So, if there's some ceasing, cessation, there's some ceasing. So, if there's no more Bible being written, then the canon, adding to the canon has ceased cessationism. There are no more apostles, we have a stoppage, a ceasing of the apostles, a cessation of the apostles, then you're on your road.
You're on the fast road. You're on the broad road that leads to cessationism. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Why have apostles ceased? Well, because the modern-day apostles don't match up to what the biblical model was.
That's always the point. You can always say you're whatever you want to say. You drive down the street, and there's a Dunkin' Donuts, 7-Eleven, Cumberland Farm, and full apostolic church, and the pastor's name is apostle.
You in the Bible had to see Jesus, the resurrected Christ, Acts 1 .22. And I think that's probably a good thing to do today on No Compromise Radio. We want to be biblical and provocative, and so there should probably be something to do with the Bible on said show.
But you get what you pay for. Beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us, one of these men, remember they're trying to pick a new apostle, must be with us a witness to his resurrection.
And they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed, You, Lord, know the hearts of all. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his, what language, to his own place.
So you need to see the resurrected Christ. To be an apostle, generally these three criteria, see the resurrected Christ. Now, if you look at chapter 1 of Acts, verse 2, until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen, appointed by Jesus.
And even reading 1 .24 that I just did, Lord, show us which one of these two you have chosen. So you've got 1 .2 whom he had chosen, 1 .24 whom you have chosen. Jesus chooses his apostles. That seems fair unless you are so crazily against any God's sovereign hand.
I was reading the other day on some guy's website, some prophecy guy that he's got a new way of thinking about election. And you know what that way will be? It will be a man-centered way. It will be a way to bring down the supreme, sovereign supremacy of Jesus Christ and the triune God down to a manageable, edible, bite-sized portion, little 100-calorie portion.
That's maybe, that's a new little segment on No Compromise Radio, the 100-calorie God, and you can just eat it and it doesn't really matter because it's only 100 calories. I personally like Slim Bears.
They are the Slim Bars. They probably are 400 or 500 calories each. These are the thin ones and they are 100 calories. And if you are crazy that night, if you're not crazy, you have one. If you're crazy, you could have two.
If you're extremely crazy, you could put a little almond butter on there and then some salt, some rock salt. That's if you're really crazy. It's crazy. And these apostles needed to be working miracles.
If they've been appointed and they can't work miracles, Houston, we have a problem. 2 Corinthians 12, verse 12, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.
There you go. There you go. So today, do we have apostles today? Well, the sign says that we do. Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Did you witness the resurrected Jesus? Did Jesus personally choose you?
And can you work New Testament miracles? I didn't say, can you make gold fillings fall out? I didn't say, can you make people fall down and laugh? I didn't say, can you slay people in the spirit? And even when you think about these clusters, the clusters of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha, Jesus and the apostles, those 200 years in the history of the universe that had special sign gifts.
There's also a language of Ephesians chapter two, verse 20, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. Well, if you have a foundation, my question to you is 2000 years later, are we still building a foundation?
Well, the answer is no. And so we have now pastor-teachers, you can argue about is it pastors, teachers, pastor-teachers, pastor-teacher, pastor-teacher, but that's what we have now. We don't have apostles and prophets built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
Even more, that's what we like to say when we preach, what do you do when people today say they have special supernatural Holy Spirit gifts, but they're not the same as what was going on in the New Testament?
My only conclusion can be because those have ceased and now you want them, maybe in your spiritual immaturity, maybe because you have experience, solo experiencia. Is that the word? Give me another word for experience in a experiencia.
When you say to yourself, hmm, back in the Bible, tongues were languages, unlearned languages, grammar, punctuation. Now they're a bunch of repeated syllables trying to jumpstart something. When I was riding motorcycles back in the day when I was younger, and you were inclined and you wiped out or something, and you couldn't really hold your bike up and then try to kick your bike to start, you would just put it maybe in second gear or even first, and you just coast down the hill a little bit and then slowly let your clutch out, or if you want to pop the clutch going downhill, that's fine, and then the thing would start.
I don't know, some compression, I don't know all the details to all these mechanical things. How could I be concerned about mechanical things when there was basketballs to be shot, and when your dad is trying to teach you how to change the oil and you can't figure it out, and he's too drunk to be patient with you, and he says blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, and then I just go play basketball because the basketball doesn't yell like that.
See, you want to know why I have psych problems? Do you want to know why I have psych problems? Everybody's got psych problems, and we're all running from psych problems. Of course, because I'm looking for the resurrection of the body, aren't you?
Anyway, when it comes to spiritual supernatural sign gifts, here is my parting shot across the bow. Here's my parting shot. These excesses in charismatic theologies, and everyone would, I mean, Grudem would say they're excesses, Mahaney would say they're excesses, Piper would say they're excesses, Chandler would say they're excesses, Platt would say they're excesses, but they do point to the problem that the same undergirding theology that these crazy people have about sign gifts continuing, these other men have.
So, continuationists, unite. We're still friends, aren't we? Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. No Compromise Radio. You can.
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 bbchurch .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.