Dan Phillips Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and our tagline really is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And what we want to do on this radio show is to promote the one who never compromised. Sadly, I'm a compromiser, and so are all the listeners.

But the Lord Jesus Christ, if you think about his life and his death, his resurrection, no compromise.

Absolutely honoring the Father. This is my beloved son in whom I'm well -pleased. And so what we do on the radio show, especially on Wednesdays, is we like to promote authors and books that would be serving as a launching pad for the gospel and Christ Jesus himself.

And so today is no different. On the phone we have Dan Phillips, and he is the author of a new book on Kriegel, The World -Tilting

Gospel. Dan, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Thank you very much, Mike.

I'm really happy to be here. Well, I'm holding this book in front of me, and Dan, I've got a bone to pick with you.

There's a man upside down, really cool green and black cover, but I think he looks kind of emergent.

He's got toms on, maybe skinny jeans. Are you backsliding at all, Dan? No, he's just the sort of guy who needs his world tilted.

Oh, that is very good. You are one sharp person. Thank you for that. He just hasn't had a chance to change his clothes yet.

Well, Dan has probably been in your homes through Team Pyro, Phil Johnson.

Dan, how much did you pay Phil Johnson to actually be in Team Pyro, on Team Pyro? I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that I bought my way onto the block.

I do remember somebody put out a funny post when Phil announced this new team blog, and he had a little bit in his poem about Phil, and he had a little bit in his poem about Frank, and then he said, and who's

Dan Phillips? And I sympathized. If Phil is the voice of reason on the blog, what are you?

Well, of course, the first thought is the voice of unreason. I don't know.

I think that we put together to a nice blend. I always look at Phil and see the voice of maturity and wisdom, and when

I'm faced with things that start my needle going up into the red zone, I ask myself, what would

Phil do? And I'm still not able to answer that as well as I would like. I just wish I could get some of his spiritual

DNA. We all bring different perspectives. Frank is extremely well, well, they're both extremely well -read, but in different areas, and I bring my me.

I know that when, this is a literally true story. When I got the letter from Phil inviting me to join the team,

I was afraid that he had got the wrong Dan. I was afraid that he was thinking of this other Dan who commented, and that it went to me by mistake, and I was afraid to answer the email because I just wanted to cherish the illusion for a little while.

Or maybe, Dan, you thought it was a letter from the other Phil Johnson regarding creationism and science and fossils.

No, I knew who he was. He has a distinctive signature. That would have been cool, too, though.

Well, before we get into the book, just hot off the press, did you know Harold Camping said The Rapture will probably finish on October 21st of this year, 2011.

He's restudied his predictions. Oh, I just saw that. Yeah, I guess he had some time to do that while he's been laid low with physical issues.

Yeah, I read that statement. It just was sad. He said that, and he's toned down about how quiet it's going to be and how gentle, and I don't know if he's already creating a way for saying when nothing happens, assuming nothing happens, that, yep, just like I predicted, except for a couple of minor adjustments here in my disquantificator.

Well, we're talking to Dan Phillips on No Compromise Radio Ministry. His new book, he's actually got two new books out, but today we're gonna talk about The World -Tilting

Gospel, subtitled Embracing a Biblical Worldview and Hanging on Tight.

Now, Dan, before we get into the book a little bit, and I want you to give us a synopsis and other things, but even hanging on tight, when

I think of the antonyms of hanging on tight, I think of lay back and let God. Is there anything to lay back and let

God that we should embrace? Or is this hang on and hang on tightly?

Talk about that for a minute. That's a really good question. I think there's two ways

I could go at that that are related to each other. One of the cases that I make at some length in the book is that even

Christians don't appreciate the degree to which we are all hardwired with a worldview that is 180 degrees out of sync with God, that we're not born neutral, we're not born seeking after God, we're not born a tabula rasa, but in fact, we hate the law of God and cannot submit ourselves to it.

In fact, we're all born with a default position that has bought the serpent's lie.

The serpent says to Eve, who has a clear directive from God, knows what she can eat and knows what she can't eat, but the serpent says, no, no, this one thing that you think you can't eat is the one thing you need, and when you get this, then you will be as God.

So she's faced with that penalizing offer to take the place of God in her own conceptual universe, and that she will decide for herself what is right and wrong, that she'll decide for herself what is valuable and not valuable.

She'll create her own grid, and when she steps onto that, and Adam, our federal head, our representative steps into that, he commits us all to that same path, and that's our default setting.

A world, you can't get away from your worldview. It's the way that you see things. It's like, I think

Calvin used the analogy of a set of spectacles. You look at everything through the spectacles.

They alter, distort, color everything that you see, and so we're all born seeing everything from a worldly perspective, from an anti -God perspective.

What conversion is is conversion is the clash of two warring worldviews and the victory of God's worldview over ours.

Now, here's where we get back directly to your question. When we have that clash, and when we're confronted with the

Lordship of Jesus Christ, when the Holy Spirit breathes life into us, gives sight to blind eyes and hearing to deaf ears, we see the beauty of Christ, we see the horrors of sin, we flee to Christ, there's a complete paradigm shift in the way we see things, and our life then becomes a necessary process of taking our passions and our preferences, our thoughts and our opinions, our convictions, taking them to the

Word of God one by one and getting judged by God's Word, assuming that we probably are wrong, and asking

God, what do you think about this, and then getting it from His Word. But too many Christians don't see what a radical change that is.

Maybe they've been Christian raised, or maybe they've heard a watered -down gospel, enough of the Lordship of Christ to bring them in the connection with Him, but they bring a lot of worldly baggage in, and they don't really realize the degree to which everything needs to come before that war, before that bar, before that judge, that criterion.

And so for one thing, they don't hold on tight because they don't think the world's that bad, they don't hold on tight because they don't realize just how much of a radical, ongoing transformation they need.

And then comes along this very spiritual -sounding line of let go and let

God, and in the book I mentioned, that's from a Charles Trumbull, and we think, oh, that sounds very spiritual because after all, who would we rather be on the throne of our hearts, like the tract says?

We want Jesus on the throne of our hearts. Every Christian should agree with that. But the way they apply that thought is, ah, so I'm gonna give my individuality over,

I'm gonna give my will over, I'm going to stop deciding, stop thinking, stop trying,

I'm just going to go passive and limp and just let Jesus live the

Christian life through me. And I have a little tussle with Andrew Murray in the book, he's a big one who advocates that sort of replacement theology of the soul, where Christ almost replaces our individuality and we just melt into the divine.

So the trouble with that is that there are a truckload of commandments and imperatives in the

New Testament and not one of them is addressed to the Holy Spirit. And they're all addressed to the regenerate believer, they're addressed to us.

God made us with an individuality and individual accountability. He means each of us to continue in Christ's word, be his disciples, be set free on an individual basis.

Now I'm not getting into the fact that there's also a corporate aspect in church worship, that is one of the commands that we encounter there, to be involved in the church, to be submissive to pastoral leadership, to be involved in the one another fellowship.

But yeah, no, the imperative is not for us to let go in our Christian life and let Jesus live the

Christian life instead of us, but for ourselves through the power and enabling of the Holy Spirit, who is a provision from God purchased for us on the cross by Jesus, by that to respond as sons to our

Father's direction. Did I get what you were asking about, Mike? Yeah, that's excellent. And you know what I love, Dan, is

I just ask you a question and off we go, and then I was kind of getting some other work done while you were preaching the gospel there.

Well, you know, I'm trying to serve. I'm just here to serve. Absolutely. Well, we're talking to Dan Phillips, the World Tilting Gospel.

This is an excellent book for you to read if you're a Christian to remind yourself of what the gospel is, who

God is, and then the response to that great gospel. It's not just for unbelievers, although this would be a great book for unbelievers so they could understand who the object of their faith should be and who they are in Adam.

Speaking of which, I'm looking outside now, Dan, and it's fall and it's New England. And for most people, when they say the fall, especially around here in Massachusetts, oh, the beautiful colors, and they're right, but somehow

I think we've forgotten about the fall of Adam. Walk us through the fall of Adam, and Adam as our federal head.

I know you will like S. Lewis Johnson, and I do as well. I was especially intrigued in your book when you called the tree a dark sacrament.

And so walk our listeners through just what Adam did and why it's important for Christians to understand the fall of Adam.

Well, thanks, I appreciate that question. Genesis I approach as best as I can as the

Lord Jesus approached it, which is as literal space -time history. But there's a false dichotomy put up by some that says that, well, we can either take it as history or we can take it as a very symbolic story.

Well, it's literal history that is a very symbolic story, because God deliberately named this first person

Adam, which simply means man. We shouldn't read backwards into that and say, oh, somebody later just applied that to him.

No, he was named man because Adam stood as our representative. He was the one whom

God gave a position as standing in the stead and standing a test for all of his progeny.

He was the first God made. He was the first God spoke to, charged. He outlined his positive commands and his negative commands.

There were a world full of possible positive commands in that God charged him with subduing the earth, but there was one restriction.

He told him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I don't, Arthur Custance tried to argue that there was something chemical about the fruit of that tree.

I just don't see that. Instead, I think it was, as you quote me, a dark sacrament in that it was the line that God drew and knowledge of good and evil, sort of a

Hebrew phrase there meaning, suggesting here that it was autonomy that was being held forth.

But if Adam had rejected that fruit and had walked in God's ways and his laws, then he could have been confirmed in holiness and he would have known good and evil from the perspective of one who had triumphed over evil, one who had affirmed good.

But instead he decided to know it in an autonomous way, to know it with himself taking

God's place. He reached out and took that. And when he took that, he represented us all.

He was like the team leader. He was representing our country. And so we say that USA won this medal or USA lost this medal.

That's a sort of a pale analogy to what was going on there. Because there was an actual connection with Adam as our representative.

And he fell, and when he fell, he brought condemnation and brokenness to all of his children, to everyone who would be naturally conceived of man and of woman.

God pronounces this curse on him. He spiritually dies. Right away you see that he's broken and dead.

His heart's still beating, his lungs are still working, but he has completely lost

God. He's lost Eve, he's lost himself. Look, he's hiding behind a bush from the

God who made the bush. What sense does that make? It tells you right away he's lost who

God is. He doesn't see God as loving and his father. He sees God as scary and he thinks maybe he can get away from him.

Maybe he can win this. Boy, who does that sound like? Who had already thought that maybe he could beat God before Adam did?

So Adam's heading in the wrong direction. All of us are born, Genesis 5 says, in Adam's image and his likeness.

So we bear that same broken, autonomous, rebellious nature. And it's more than just the fact that we've got bad habits or we've got a few bad opinions.

It's not a matter of needing to just recalculate a couple of things. Our whole premise of calculation is wrong.

And that's why so much more is needed than reforming a few habits or turning over a new leaf.

No, the whole leaf is bad. It's got to become a whole new leaf. And that's where the Lord Jesus comes in as God sets him up as the second man, the last

Adam. He comes in as a representative too. Paul mocks this all out in Romans 5, 12 and following.

In the book, I chart that out and I try to make graphic and clear the contrast that Paul is making where the one man's disobedience brings condemnation to all of his natural progeny.

But the other man, the Lord Jesus' obedience, his submission to God brings the sentence of righteousness on all those who are his supernatural progeny.

Does that get at what you're asking? Yeah, absolutely. And what I like about the book, and you just made that transition from Adam to the last

Adam, Christ Jesus, the book is broken down so our listeners can understand. Part one, who are we?

And Dan, with his typical witty style, gives a little subtitle to that section, getting at the truth of our identities.

Part two, what has God done for us? Why didn't you say, Dan, what we allowed God to do?

Rhetorical question. The eternal plan conceived, predicted, executed.

Part three, how do we get in? A tale of two towering truths. And then part four, how do we get going, preparing to launch?

And so Dan, I think with your writing style and the way you are even being interviewed, you are perfect for No Compromise.

Always biblical, always provocative. We have things in the book that push and prod, gutless gracers, crisis upgraders, muzzy mystics,

Bud Goodheart, Lodo Legup, Misty Call. What do you do?

Do you read the thesaurus at night for ideas or what's the scoop? I read great writers like Phil Johnson and stuff like that.

Oh, there you go. Well, you know, so far I like everything about you, but I'm not too keen on the whole cat deal.

You talked about sinners, produce sinners and cats. I think you're just cat crazy. I'm a cat convert, it's true.

I'm a former cat hater and you know when somebody gets converted to something, it's a hard conversion. Oh, that's right.

Now let me ask you something about the world tilting gospel. As we look at the book and you've got some sections in the back that I really like, discussion about the

Holy Spirit, and then mysticism. That's something that I continually go back to is the discussion of mysticism and you call it the quagmire of mysticism.

Tell our listeners, because they hear it from me all the time about mysticism and functional denial of sola scriptura as Phil Johnson would say, tell us what mysticism is and why we should run from it and then tell us about that new word that you coined as well that I think you can say on the radio.

Oh, we'll find out, eh? Thanks for asking and I'm really glad to hear that you're also swinging the axe against that.

The thing about mysticism is it holds out the promise of such a deeper life, such a more blessed life.

It speaks to the frustration that all Christians feel because of our failures, our screw ups, our defeats and it tells us, oh no, there's a better way.

And it holds out the thought of just letting God take us over and that appeals because we see what a mess we make of things.

We see what fools we are and we think, what better to do than let God take over? The trouble is that it's a whole mystical

Eastern worldview that is foreign to the biblical individualistic worldview. It's very different than the personal

God speaking to his personal creations, addressing us in an I -thou relationship instead of an

I instead of thou relationship. So I came from a cult, a non -Christian cult called

Science of Mind that was very much of that mindset that we were all one with God and we just needed to affirm that unity and live that unity and allow that unity and then

I become a Christian and I hear Andrew Murray sounding very much like that and other people sounding very much like that and there's that allure of the deeper life but it gets you looking away from the cross, it gets you looking away from Christ although in the name of getting you to get closer to Christ you look within yourself, you listen within yourself for voices, you feel, you're constantly checking the pulse of your own feelings and wondering if these impulses and feelings are coming from the

Spirit of God or whether they're coming from the flesh and while it promises freedom, what it really does is it produces a vapor lock because this is not the

New Testament view or picture of Christian living, a constant internal absorption rather than a constant external absorption with the person of Christ and his finished work on the cross.

It gives us the idea that we've got to actualize the cross in our lives rather than looking at it as an accomplished feat as the

New Testament does and living on the basis of its truth rather than trying to create its truth. So the word you're talking about is the word sarcacophobia which is the idea that a

Christian can become just so into this mystical trying to feel the

Holy Spirit's leadings that he's afraid of doing anything in the flesh and in its more advanced stages, a

Christian piously, super piously can even come to say

I'm not going to go to church because I think I'll go to church in the flesh. I'm not going to open and study my Bible because Bible study is really fleshly.

I'm not going to witness because I'm afraid of witnessing in the flesh. And basically what you end up doing is disobeying

God in the name of holiness. You end up disobeying God in the name of wanting to be spiritual and there's nothing spiritual about disobeying

God. That's where we came from. That's where we're being saved from and not where we're being saved to.

Dan, I think that's an excellent word but the one I was thinking about was not mystical, it was pistical. Oh yeah, okay.

All right, yeah, that's right. It's not mystical, it's pistical. It's not a matter of melting, it's a matter of believing.

Pistuo, pistious faith. Well it reminds me of one man who said the definition of mysticism is it starts with a mist and ends with a schism.

Oh there you go, yeah. I'll go for that, I'll sign down for that. Now the world's, absolutely, you can do whatever you want.

I can always edit it. I want to wedge one more thing before I just talk myself out of time. I really appreciate you mentioning all those things that are in the book.

The fact that it deals with justification, regeneration, that it deals with our sin, our distance from God, the eternal plan of salvation and even the logistics of getting going as a

Christian. Dealing with the flesh, dealing with the Holy Spirit. One of my great hopes and one thing

I'm praying to see and wanting to see is I'm hoping, of course I'm glad when all

Christians read this I've been getting just humbling feedback from individual Christians who are reading and getting help.

But I also hope that pastors get the word because I think that a lot of pastors who believe as you and I believe,

I just think if they look at this book that they might say, that's it. That's the sort of thing

I was looking for because that's the conversation I'd like to have with each and every person in my church but there just aren't hours enough in the week.

So if I can get my folks to read this and so far I've had people from eight year olds to PhDs say that they can connect with it.

If I can get my people to read this then this is gonna start us off at a different place in my discipleship.

Well we're talking to Dan Phillips on No Compromise Radio and I wanna promote his book, The World Tilting Gospel because it in fact is about the gospel of Christ Jesus.

Even when I think of the four gospels and we in modern nomenclature Dan we'll say the gospel according to the gospel of Matthew but it's really the gospel according to Matthew and so your discussion about Christ Jesus and how he saves, what his life was like culminated by the resurrection.

It's very, very important. I like it how you talk about the gospel is more than just the ticket that gets you into heaven.

I do find it interesting though, everything starts with a T. We've got T4G, TGC, TSC, the

Shepherd's Conference, TBN and now we've got TWTG and I don't know, maybe T .D. Jakes, what's going on with all this stuff?

Hmm, you think it's a sign, is that what you're saying? The artist formerly known as TWTG. Well now

I've got this other book that came out, God's Wisdom in Proverbs. There's no T's in that, what does that mean then?

Well then I'll have you on in a couple months if you send me the book for free and then I'll have you on, just kidding. Hey while I've got you on the line

Dan, I've got a minute. Give me about a 45 second take on Five Point Calvinist who are charismatics.

We've never really had that little substructure in Americana or in Evangelicalism. What's your quick take on that?

It's like saying, please explain the universe and give three examples. It's my show, you're down to 30 seconds.

Okay, all right, I welcome anybody who wants to embrace the doctrines of grace and I think a lot of these are good brothers in Christ.

I just think that their position hits at sola scriptura. I just don't think those two things go well together.

They insist that they do, but where the rubber meets the road, I'm seeing troubles. Like your blog, pithy, concise, theologically astute and witty.

We're talking to Dan Phillips. The back of the book says A Cure to Vertigo, the world tilting gospel.

It's on Kregel, I'm sure you can go to Westminster or Amazon or Christian booksellers. Give us your website for your personal blog

Dan on biblical Christianity. It's bibcurb, B -I -B -C -H -R, just the first three letters of biblicalchristianity .blogspot

.com Or you can get there through Pyromaniac site. Dan, thank you for your time, God bless you. Oh, thanks for having me

Mike, it's been a joy. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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