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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 coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church. 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.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church. A close look on the ground. So I think the groundhog went back inside. I�d like to talk about charismatic, Calvinistic pastors.
Does a pastor have to be, A, charismatic to be effective in gospel ministry? Now Piper, John Piper, has over the years, in my opinion, sadly invited lots of people to the Desiring God conferences, of which there have been many great speakers.
Sinclair Ferguson, Alistair Begg, John MacArthur. And he likes to bring people in to, I think, probably stir the pot a little bit. I don�t know his exact motives, but he brings in Rick Warren. I think that had to be by video because of death in the family or something like that.
He brings in Mark Driscoll. He brings in Francis Chan. I understand that one maybe a little bit more than the others. He brings in Doug Phillips. Well, that would have been weird too. Doug Wilson. I was thinking about Vision Forum, Doug Phillips.
That would have been just as weird or bad. And then he�s brought in to his latest Desiring God pastors conference at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota, a man who is trying to say we should all be charismatics.
Why faithful pastors must be charismatic and not cessationist, really according to Eric Davis at the Cripplegate. That should have been the title, but the title really was Sovereign Grace, Spiritual Gifts, and the Pastor.
Okay, that�s a nice title. How Should a Reformed Pastor be Charismatic? And the preacher, he�s the pastor of Jubilee Church in London. You can go to the website there and you�ll get lots of information if you�d like to know more about him that will reveal his true beliefs.
The preacher was Topelioso, T-O-P-E-K-O-L-E-O-S-O. And so, if I�m mispronouncing his name, I�m sorry. I�m not trying to do an ad hominem attack regarding this, but I am going to do an attack because when I watched that video, first of all, Piper asked him to speak on the topic.
But when I watched that video, I didn�t say to myself, �Oh, I could have done a better job. Why doesn�t Piper ask me �This guy doesn�t agree with everything I say, so therefore he�s bad. I don�t want to do that.
I don�t want to be that kind of person. I want to learn from my Presbyterian friends, from my Charismatic friends, from my Baptistic friends. I want to be a learner. I�d like to listen to messages about God�s Word and Christ Jesus from Arminians, from Calvinists.
I can learn from a lot of people. You might not think that�s true. But in fact, that�s true. And so I don�t just say, �Well, I hope they�re bad. I hope everything�s bad there but that had to be as I watched the video, maybe one of the worst videos I�ve ever seen.
And I did say, �I could have done a better job. That is just a horrible message for lots of reasons. And so he is trying to tell us how you can be Reformed and Charismatic, but not just how it happens.
I mean, if he said, �Piper�s Reformed and Charismatic, C .J. Mahaney�s Reformed and Charismatic, Wayne Grudem�s Reformed and Charismatic, Gordon Fee isn�t Reformed, but he�s Charismatic. I mean, okay, Sovereign Grace Churches, I understand it.
I get it. But it didn�t turn out that way. It turned out that he said he basically, not it can be done, but it should be. It should be done. And this is what Tope said, �In fact, it must be done. If we�re going to talk about the gospel in its full-orbed beauty and power, then these gifts, the supernatural sign gifts, are not optional.
They are necessary and vital. So for necessary and vital gospel ministry, you have to have all the gifts, including tongues, interpretation of tongues, discerning of spirits, prophecy, and the list goes on.
Healing. This is vital and necessary. So, in other words, if you are a pastor and you don�t believe the sign gifts are for today, then you are handicapped in your gospel ministry. There�s a problem. You are not adequate and you are not sufficient.
There�s something lacking. And see, right from the get-go, the cessationist may have problems, but the problem for the Always, it turns into, after we�ve discussed the theology of it and the Bible of it, it turns into there are haves and have-nots.
That�s just the way it goes. Haves and have-nots. And I�ve come from the charismatic background, so I don�t speak as one who doesn�t have a leg to stand on. Now, at Cripplegate, Eric Davis did a two-part message on this, �Why Reformed Pastors Need Not Be Charismatic to counter Tope�s message.
I thought the message was so bad. If I would have been John Piper, I would have just taken it down, because while he got some audience participation and some affirmation by the audience, it was just horrible.
If I were ever asked to speak at the Shepherds Conference, at Ligonier, at Desiring God, at Philadelphia Reformed Conference of Theology, any of those places, first of all, I�m not going to get the invite.
My fee�s too large. What are people thinking putting fees on their ministry for? That�s another show. I�m not going to get asked, although I would love to get asked. But I would spend so much time on that message.
It would be tight. It would be well-rehearsed. I hate to use that word, you know, like it�s a stage or a show, but I would practice it because I would want to do the right thing. I understand the gravity of it all, and to get up and to just have a bunch of nonsense come out of your mouth that isn�t exegetically based, full of ad hominems itself, I think it should be taken down.
You know, good leaders, when they make a bad decision, invite this guy. Another bad decision, have him talk about this. Another bad decision, put it up on the video and it�s still on the website. I think the best thing to do is just to take it down.
That would be a good decision after that. If you are a cessationist, you don�t have sufficient ministry. Your view of the Spirit of God is deficient, he says, and it�s not going to be good. So I like what Eric Davis said.
He said the first misconception is cessationists fear the work of the Holy Spirit. That�s basically the vibe you get, both Phileans-oriented and by Tope�s words. He said, Koleoso said, �Why would anyone who is a Bible-believing, Christ-centered, theology-loving, be cautious and hesitant about the Holy Spirit?
It comes down to a number of things, but it�s basically fear. So you�re afraid. If you�re a cessationist, you�re afraid of the Holy Spirit. You�re afraid of the ramifications of the Holy Spirit. First of all, if the Holy Spirit wants to do something, he can do anything he pleases as often as he pleases, whenever he pleases, as thoroughly as he pleases.
I can�t stop anything. I cannot stop the Spirit of God. I�m not afraid of, well, what if I become a charismatic? I�m not afraid of that. I have to go back to the Bible. What does the Bible teach? Furthermore, you mean to tell me that all the cessationists in church history�I mean, for certain things, I�ll grant that, but you mean to tell me that all the cessationists in church history, they had the wrong view of the Holy Spirit, and they�re basically in fear?
They were fearing? I don�t buy it. I don�t buy Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, Charles Spurgeon. They feared the Holy Spirit. That is a wrong argument. Misconception number two, Davis said, inherent to cessationism is a deficient gospel.
That�s what Tope is trying to say. Here�s what Tope said, �If we don�t pursue the things of the Spirit in the way that they, the early church, did, there are consequences. Now, see, we don�t even understand�I shouldn�t say we.
He doesn�t even understand description, prescription, things that are normative, things that aren�t, transitional books like the Book of Acts. He thinks everything that happens then should happen now, including Azotah�s being, you know, a few miles over to Azotah�s in Acts chapter 8.
That still happens today? Why do you need cars if there�s consequences if you don�t do that? We will end up preaching an anemic gospel, having a diluted gospel, having a deficient gospel, even a destructive gospel.
That�s an outright lie. That is an outright lie. Exegetically it�s a lie, logically it�s a lie, theologically it�s a lie, and pragmatically that�s a lie. It�s a lie. If you�re not full gospel, that is to say you don�t have all the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural sign gifts that were given in the New Testament era, then you have an anemic gospel.
Don�t you ever fall for that, No Compromise listeners. Don�t get bullied by the fear factor and by, �Well, it�s anemic, it doesn�t work. Go back and see the damage that Wimber did with his power evangelism.
Watch how that worked. Just go to Mark chapter 1, and here is a bunch of people who are wanting the full-orbed gospel that Jesus offers with healings and miracles and casting out demons, and he gets up early and goes and prays and then leaves, and he leaves a bunch of other sick people probably gathered by the door by now, and Peter has to go out to hunt for Jesus, and Jesus said, �I came to preach.
That�s what I came to do. And so this argument that Tope uses is absolutely ridiculous. Tope goes on to say, �Diluted because it is so easy to take everything of the Spirit and make it thinned out. Too diluted, many churches in the West, it has become so diluted that almost anyone could do that stuff and lead that thing because it�s just pragmatic all the way around into the ground.
We have become just so natural thinking. Then we have theological constructions that make cessationism okay. It�s not okay. Well, I�m fine to be listening to someone who can make a rational argument, but this, I�m not intimidated by Tope�s fear factor, and I�m not seeing any verses.
Let�s go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14, let�s go to Ephesians 4, let�s go to 1 Peter 4, let�s go to Romans 12. Just deal with the text, �Oh, you�re afraid. See now, if I did that to my charismatic friends, they wouldn�t buy it either.
They wouldn�t buy that kind of argument, and this is at a �Desiring God� conference for pastors, �Deficient Gospel. Boy, it�s getting me riled up. Misconception 3, we�re talking about John Piper�s bad decision of why Reformed pastors have to be charismatic basically while he asked for and then okayed Tope Colisio, pastor of Jubilee Church in London, to speak at the pastor�s conference in Minnesota.
Misconception 3, Eric Davis, �Cessationism is pragmatic by default. Now that�s what Tope just alluded to, this thing doesn�t work, like working is the issue. No, our job is to be faithful, isn�t it?
1 Corinthians chapter 4, �Stewards are to be found faithful. And if something doesn�t work, it doesn�t matter, we�re to be faithful. When I talk to parents, �Spanking doesn�t work. Well, they�re not spanking the right way.
I can tell you that. They�re spanking, they�re out of anger or they�re not thinking through the issues and they say it doesn�t work. But even if you spank well and it doesn�t work, you�re still commanded by God to do it.
It doesn�t work? What does that mean? It doesn�t work. I�m supposed to be faithful. Colisio went on to say, �If you don�t learn to do ministry by the Spirit, you�ll end up by doing ministry by pragmatics, it�s a natural default.
So that means if you don�t do sign gifts, you aren�t using the Spirit of God, sorry, you�re not doing ministry according to the Spirit of God. So what would happen if the Spirit of God left a cessationist church?
Nothing. I think that�s quite the wrong-headed view. The Spirit of God assists the proclamation of the Word. The Word is illumined by the person, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. He the Holy Spirit focuses the attention on Christ Jesus, so the attention of Christ Jesus as central in the church would be taken away.
Conviction, gone. I mean, there are so many things, fruitfulness, the gift of teaching, gone. Seal of the Spirit of God for salvation, security and assurance, gone. I did a series not that long ago, a couple years ago, �What if the Holy Spirit left Bethlehem Bible Church
My default isn�t to pragmatism. Are there cessationists who are pragmatic at the core and they don�t need the Holy Spirit at all because the thing runs on its own, saddled back in other places? Well, of course, but this is a lame argument.
It is a lie to say if you don�t do ministry by the Spirit, you�ll end up doing ministry by pragmatics. It�s a lie if you mean do ministry in the full-orbed, sign-gift gospel for today. If you do your ministry according to the flesh and not the Spirit, generally and overall, I would agree with it, but that�s not the context of his message.
Here is what Colioso said. �People responded to the gospel. He�s describing what�s going on in the church service. �One of the chief ways that people respond, people crying. Really? That�s the fruit of the Spirit, I guess.
He goes on to say, �To pastors at a Desiring God conference, bring the congregation to the presence of God. Let them see you in the front row with your hands up in the air intoxicated and hungry for God.
That is more than your jolly sermon that you�re going to preach. Oh, okay. Should I want to be a charismatic ever? It won�t be because of that. This is the wrong way to argue with a cessationist. Do we need the Holy Spirit?
Must we have the Holy Spirit? Should we rely on the Holy Spirit? Colioso said, �The Spirit of God, the Spirit came upon Jesus, and this triggered the beginning of his ministry. I want to submit to you that if he needed the Holy Spirit, it�s nothing short of arrogance for us to think, �We�ll just go, we�ll be fine.
The plan is not just for you to go. The plan is for you to go and be fruitful. So, if we�re talking about the need of the Holy Spirit in the local church for gospel-oriented fruit, I think the answer is yes.
But to be a charismatic to have that happen, that�s what he�s trying to say. Scott Thomas, Eric Davis Wright�s former president of Acts 29, talked about cessationism and he said, �Acts 29 believes it�s not God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible.
And we don�t believe it is God, formerly known as God the Holy Spirit. May he rest in peace. You watch what�s going to happen in evangelicalism. Some of these men who have stuck to the Word pretty much as charismatics, you watch their stepchildren.
You watch their children in the faith as they fall away and spiral out in the next few generations and the followers go farther than the leaders did and the teachers did. Am I glad doctrines of grace are being taught at many charismatic churches?
Absolutely. But I�m not glad when people make such arguments and they�re at the �Desiring God� pastors conference. It just boggles my mind. Okay, what else? By the way, the Spirit of God works through the Word.
It�s not an either-or. He works through the Word. And if your pastor is preaching the Word, you can be guaranteed this fact that the Spirit of God is freely working through that man and in the congregation through the Word.
You see how the Spirit convicts and how the Word convicts. You see how the Spirit, how He exhorts, you see how the Word exhorts. The Word of God is the instrument that the Spirit of God uses regularly.
All right, what else does he say here? Oh, I like what Eric Davis said, �Cessationists believe in the Holy Spirit. Keep in mind that one of the greatest works ever completed on the Holy Spirit is a 900-plus page tome by John Owen, a cessationist.
Owen�s colossal work on the Spirit will not likely be matched in exegetical and biblical competence any time soon. And it is a work which ought to make contemporary evangelicalism blush at our pneumatological shallowness.
As Sinclair Ferguson said of this book, he realized of Owen that central to the Reformation�s rediscovery of the gospel had been the place, person, and power of the Holy Spirit. He saw, as Warfield later did, that Calvin was the theologian of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, but Calvin�s gospel was anemic and not sufficient and weak and pragmatic because he didn�t believe the spiritual gifts of healing and tongues, discerning the Spirit, and other signed gifts were for today.
Tope said, Tope Collioso, �What do you do when there�s a demonic situation in the camp? You can�t theologize Satan away, you can�t lecture him away, you need the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a supernatural calling.
So, Pastor, you need this. To that I don�t disagree, but that�s not what he�s trying to say. It�s not at face value. It�s in the context of this, you�ve got to be charismatic, you�ve got to believe in the signed gifts for today because how can you do spiritual warfare without these signed gifts?
My question to Tope is this, where in Ephesians 6 does it say anything about supernatural signed gifts in dealing with demonically possessed people? Why is it gone? If we have the Word and we have the Spirit, cessationists can�t do spiritual warfare?
Maybe he thinks cessationists don�t see Satan under every post-nasal drip, melancholy mental illness. Maybe that�s it. You cannot theologize Satan away? What cessationist is trying to actually do that?
Nobody�s trying to do that. By the way, why doesn�t Paul in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, or Titus, say something to the fact, here�s how you deal with demon-possessed people? Because the way you deal with demon-possessed people is not to think, this is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, where you talk to demons and you think you�re an apostle, but it�s to preach the gospel because when the Spirit of God, when He goes in a person, the demon and or demons goes out.
It�s simple. How do I deal with demonic situation in the church? Well, I think I�ve been equipped, fully equipped, fully adequate to do the work of God. That�s what 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is about. When we learn from Paul writing to Timothy that the Word of God is God-breathed, right?
All Scripture is God-breathed. And we learn about how it reproves and rebukes and it exhorts people in 2 Timothy 4. We realize this is for the man of God, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
The language there is if you�re going to go take a boat ride from here to Cuba, you make sure you have enough citrus and enough water and enough oars and enough flare guns, I was going to say stun guns, and other things to make sure that you have every contingency covered.
That�s what God has done with the sufficiency of Scripture. We go back again to, is the Scripture sufficient? Are the Scriptures sufficient? Are they not? Do we believe in Sola Scriptura? At the end of the day, it doesn�t seem like this man does.
Now does it? Colio so, Jesus went around all Galilee preaching, teaching, healing, delivering. He went around teaching, preaching, healing and delivering. The church in the West basically only wants to do two things, preach and teach.
It doesn�t want to do healing and delivering because when you stand and teach, if you�re articulate, if you have a suave way about you, you can pull this thing off and people won�t even realize there�s no Holy Spirit in it because it�s just so smooth.
Somebody will you call him out on this? That is so, I have no other words, that is so lame. It�s the lame argument. It�s not true, it�s not biblical and it�s a lie. If you have enough smooth, suave, bolo kind of talk, you don�t need the Holy Spirit.
Well, what might be true in some of the evangelical churches at Young Juniors or somebody like that? Well, that may actually be true. You don�t need the Spirit of God to pull that off, but the context here, he�s trying to get people who are cessationists to switch, he�s not doing a very good job because he doesn�t even know hermeneutics and if he does, it hasn�t shown here.
It hasn�t manifested itself in his message at Desiring God Pastors Conference. My call is for John Piper to just take that message down. I�d rather see Piper do it, I at least respect Piper for doing it, ten reasons why Reformed Pastors should be charismatic.
Piper�s going to go to the text, I�ll give him that. I don�t trust him with his speakers, but after all, it�s his conference and he can do whatever he wants. But I do trust that when he gets up, he at least opens the Bible.
As much as I maybe don�t like his guess, he will open the Bible and when he opens it up, he understands hermeneutics, unlike this particular man. And if this man does it, then why doesn�t he show it? When you say the church in the West wants to preach and teach only and without all the demonic stuff and healing and delivering, you�ve got insufficient gospel, then we part ways.
And I say Eric Davis did a great job on Cripplegate trying to expose this guy. And if you are not a charismatic, you are not missing anything except shenanigans and a hootenanny going on, trying to make the flesh into Satan and trying to say, �Well, the gospel needs to be full-orbed or it�s not the gospel at all.
I don�t see that in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4. You can read it over and over and over and over. We have a message, and that message cannot go forth without the work of the Holy Spirit. He is needed in gospel-centered ministry.
But his supernatural sign gifts obviously aren�t needed because for 1 ,800 years they weren�t in existence. That should be one more reason why you should be a cessationist.
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.