Steve Kreloff Interview

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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 apostle

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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 ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, glad to be your host today. As you know, our tagline is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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I want to provoke you to think biblically about all kinds of issues. And when you think how we can know things, some people think rationally, some people think it's scientifically, others mystically.

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And for us here at the radio station and the show, it is divine revelation given to us.

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How do we know anything except that God would kindly reveal that? And what I like to do on Wednesdays is to talk to other pastors, preachers, theologians, authors, sometimes they're all of those, to hear from their perspective what

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God is doing, how faithful He is to them and their ministry. And today we have

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Pastor Steve Kreloff on the show. Pastor Steve, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Well, thank you,

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Mike. Good to be with you. Now, Steve, I think I've known about you for quite some time, especially through Phil Johnson.

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And I believe Phil Johnson says you are his favorite podcast or radio show, or he loves to listen to you the most after John MacArthur.

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How much did you pay him for him to say that? Well, that's quite a compliment. Phil and I go back many years.

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We're really best friends, though we live so far apart. I in Florida, he in California.

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But Phil and I go back to our days as students at Moody Bible Institute. And that's where we met and we became best friends.

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Not initially. I actually disliked Phil because everything

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I seemed to say, he would contradict. If I said, oh, it looks like a really nice day, he'd say, no,

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I see some clouds. The weather's not that good. Finally, it just bothered me to the point where I went to his dorm room.

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We were not roommates, so I went to his dorm room and I went to apologize and ask his forgiveness for having such a bad attitude.

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And he called me on it. He said, you didn't come here to apologize. You came here to rebuke me and tell me how bad

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I was. And I just started laughing because that's exactly what I did in my pseudo -spirituality.

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And ever since then, we became best friends. It just sort of opened us up and we became best friends and it was a very transparent moment.

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And he was absolutely right. So that's how far Phil and I go back many years, over 40 years.

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Well, Steve, when our wives and Phil and you and myself and Joe had some breakfast, not that many months ago,

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I just loved watching you and Phil and to see your friendship and your camaraderie in gospel ministry.

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And that leads me to the next question. How can, and I know the answer, but I just want you to talk about it.

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How can God so providentially bring someone like you, Jewish background, Phil, I don't know what kind of pagan background he had,

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Oklahoma State or something. Yeah, liberal Protestant from Oklahoma. Yeah, that's right.

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And then all of a sudden bind your hearts and souls together in gospel ministry.

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Just tell me about God's providence as he works out things like that for not only you, but for other people.

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Yeah, that's a great question. Phil and I are very, very different. I often tell people who know that we're such close friends that I'm not as bright as Phil Johnson.

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In fact, I don't know anybody as bright as Phil Johnson. So I don't want them to have those expectations.

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We are very, very different in personalities. And he would say the same thing.

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I think the Lord brought us really together when we both in the first few weeks at Moody did some outdoor evangelism.

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There was a group going together to share the gospel on the streets of Chicago. And it was,

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I think it was a Friday night and I just went there and signed up and Phil was there.

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And I think it was afterwards sharing when we came back and spoke about our experience on the streets of Chicago that the

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Lord really put it, I think primarily in his heart to get to know me. I don't know why, but I think

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I, perhaps he was intrigued by me, I was a little bit different than what he was used to.

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A New York Jewish guy at Moody Bible Institute who had just recently come to faith in Christ.

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I probably looked a little too much like Bob Dylan. And I think Phil was just kind of drawn to me.

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And I recognized right away what a sharp guy he was. And I think just in God's providence, opposites attract.

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We became close, close, close friends. Steve, isn't it wonderful not only where you are,

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Lakeside Community Chapel in Clearwater, Florida, but here in Massachusetts where I am, you look out of the congregation and you think, what do we have in common?

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The Bible talks about fellowship and koinonia, but really from the human perspective, there's not much in common.

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So many different backgrounds, nationalities, ages, maturation differences in terms of their

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Christian walk. And yet God has, the Father has drawn to himself through the work of the

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Son powered by the Spirit of God. And now we're all worshiping the same Lord.

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Just how great is the providential work of God? And I think that is the beauty and the grandeur of God's plan for the church.

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And on Sunday evenings at our church, I've been teaching through Ephesians. I've taught it before, but there was many years ago, but it's come afresh to me that the church is so unique in that those who were chosen in eternity past and brought into to know

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Christ have been made one as Gentiles and Jews. And I think that's Paul's major point in the first three chapters of Galatians, that as he's writing to primarily

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Gentile Christians to persuade them that you have the same status as every

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Jewish believer in Christ. You are one with them and there are no spiritual distinctions in the body of Christ and how great the

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Lord is that this would be his plan that nobody could ever figure out had he not revealed it. That right now, the people of God are believers in Christ who come from such diverse backgrounds, not only educationally, financially, but culturally and even language -wise.

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And to make them one in Christ, it's remarkable. It's interesting you bring up this question,

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Mike, or this statement because it's been on my heart how incredible the church is and that translates to the local church where you see that on a smaller scale.

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It's just remarkable. Talking to Steve Kreloff today, pastor down at Lakeside Community Chapel.

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If you'd like to listen to some of his messages, you will be very encouraged, lakesidechapel .com, and you can just go to the sermon section there.

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Steve has written several books, God's Plan for Israel, A Study of Romans 9 -11,

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Expository Preaching and Teaching, and also Pleasures of Marriage, an Exposition of the

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Song of Solomon. Steve, when I think of our charismatic friends, and we're not talking about the lunatic fringe word faith folks, but more mainstream kind of Calvinistic charismatic friends, often

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I say to myself, as we're talking about providence, maybe if they're looking for gifts or signs or prophecies, it seems to me sometimes they miss out on looking backward, looking at time from our perspective and saying, look how

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God providentially worked all these things out. Maybe some are seeking for signs and these wonders, but when

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I look back and I think of the awe moments, the God, you're so awesome and incredible.

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For me, it's not one of these experiential moments. It's seeing how God plans everything and providentially unfolds everything.

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Don't you think that's true? Yeah, and I think you see that especially in the Psalms, where the

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Psalmist encourages his heart by looking back at the faithfulness of God and how

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God delivered him from so many jams and problems he had, but that's what encourages his heart.

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It's not that he's looking for a sign, but he is counting on the fact that God who has been so faithful to him in the past will deliver him in the present and in the future.

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So yes, I think that's true as we look back at the biblical record, but also in church history at the great moments in time, especially the

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Reformation and then look back at our own lives. That's why it's a good thing to keep a journal.

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I'm not as consistent as I should be in keeping my journal, but when I have done that and I've looked back at it,

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I've gone, oh yeah, I forgot. I couldn't see how the Lord could bring me through this, but he did, and it causes my heart to be thankful and praise him.

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So yes, I fully agree with you. Steve, tell us a little bit about how God saved you.

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Here's a New York Jew. I don't know if you lived in Crown Heights or where you live. No, not Orthodox, but no.

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But how did God, as we talk about providence, providentially bring people into your life who told you the truth?

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And tell us how the Lord saved you. Yeah, well, here's my testimony in a brief form.

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I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. My parents, Jewish. My grandparents were all

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Jewish. They were all Russian Jews. And I grew up there, just a typical secular

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Jewish lifestyle. My dad came from an Orthodox background, but we didn't follow a kosher home and all those religious traditions.

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And so I grew up rather normal. And then when I was about 13 years old, three of my grandparents died within a year, excuse me, about a year of each other.

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And that really devastated me. It devastated me because number one, I didn't know what happened to them.

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I mean, even though Jewish, you think, well, you would know the Bible, but I didn't know the Bible. I was secular.

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We just had some customs, cultural customs, but I didn't know scripture. So I didn't know anything about death.

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And I was confronted with that. And secondly, I realized they're old and they died and I don't know what happened to them, but someday

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I'm gonna be dead and what's gonna happen to me. And so it sort of spun me into this, oh,

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I don't know if I would say depression, but it's certainly downcast and searching for what happens after death.

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And nobody in my family could give me any satisfying answers. I realized they all had their opinions and those opinions had no authority.

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They were just opinions and I had opinions too. So that didn't help me. And so as I got into my teen years, those nagging thoughts about death and what would happen after death never really left me.

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I threw myself into sports and school and all that. And then we moved from Brooklyn, we moved down to Miami, Florida for my mom's health primarily.

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And so it was there in Florida where after high school, I went to the

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University of South Florida. I was preparing to be a sports journalist. I loved baseball and so I thought, well,

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I think I'd like to write about baseball. So it was there that in God's plan, he sent a young man into my life, someone who lived in the same dormitory as me, not

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Jewish, a Gentile, and he was a new believer in Christ. And he just started witnessing to me.

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And I don't think he was very polished as I think back, but he was very real, very genuine, sincere.

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And I really was annoying and obnoxious to him. I just, I liked the guy, but I didn't wanna hear about Jesus.

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I didn't know anything about Jesus. I mean, I knew the name, but I didn't know anything about the person of Christ.

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When I heard the name Jesus Christ, I thought of the Roman Catholic Church. I thought of the institution of Catholicism, not the person of Christ.

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But what I decided to do is I went to a store and purchased the Bible. I'd never owned a

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Bible in my life. And I decided I would read through the New Testament and then

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I would come back to my friend and show him all the errors and problems and contradictions in the

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Bible and say, this is why I don't believe in Jesus. Well, turns out that in reading the scriptures,

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I came to faith in Christ. I think that it was probably the Gospel of Matthew because that's where I would have begun, though I didn't know it as such at the time.

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But I started reading and first I became very impressed with Jesus. He wasn't who

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I thought he would be. I guess I expected all kinds of anti -Semitic slurs and I only saw compassion and love and kindness.

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And it was probably, though I'm not positive because it was so many years ago, but it was probably through the reading of the

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Sermon on the Mount that really gripped me. So first I started being impressed with Jesus as a person.

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The more I interacted with my friend who was a Christian, the more I read the Bible, I came to realize he was more than a man to be impressed with.

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He was God and he was my Messiah. And I can't pinpoint the precise moment when

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I was saved, but there was a point where I called out to the Lord and somewhere, for his help,

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I don't think I was saved necessarily at that point, but somewhere in that timeframe, the

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Lord revealed himself to me that he had paid for my sins and that he was the only way of salvation and that I was a wicked sinner who deserved judgment.

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So that was in my freshman year at USF, University of South Florida. Shortly after that in my sophomore year, the

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Lord sent another young man, a Christian man into my life who invited me to come home to, he lived in Clearwater, actually a little suburb called

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Dunedin, and he invited me to come home with him for the weekend and go to church with him, meet his family, go to church with him.

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That church, it was Lakeside Community Chapel, a different name at that point, but the same church, the church that I now pastor.

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So it's just remarkable, the Lord's leading in my life to bring me out of my sins and whatever,

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I don't even know what religion I had, but to bring me to himself and then to bring me to this church.

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And just, I look back and I go, wow, who could have ever figured this out and planned this? Only the

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Lord. Well, praise the Lord, Steve. Tell us a little bit about your perspective when it comes to, maybe somebody has a

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Jewish friend and they're not believers and they say to themselves, well, I'd like to be able to evangelize them, but I don't understand the

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Hebrew culture. And what would you tell our listeners who have Jewish friends? What's their approach to evangelism?

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And is it different than evangelizing Jews? Tell us about that. Yeah, I think with Jewish people, certainly they need the gospel, like Gentiles, the gospel is the gospel.

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It's always the same, but there does need to be some awareness of the Jewish mindset.

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At least I'm talking from the perspective of American Jews. Understand that they're very suspicious of Gentiles.

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They would, and I'm speaking, the typical person, there's probably,

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I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but the typical Jewish, unsaved, secular -minded individual in America would look at a

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Gentile and think that all Gentiles are Christians. And they would put Gentiles together theologically all in the same camp.

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They would, this may be startling to some of your listeners, but they would look at, let's say,

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Billy Graham, Adolf Hitler, and the Pope and say, well, they're all the same. They all believe in Jesus.

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And that's just so wrong, but that's how they think. So if you're approaching a Jewish person to speak to them about the

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Lord, you need to understand that they're gonna be naturally a little suspicious and ignorant of who you are, what you stand for.

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I think the best thing to do with a Jewish person is befriend them. It's not cold turkey evangelism with Jewish people.

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You build relationships with them. Let them know that you care. And I think at some point, and by caring,

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I mean show them you care. If you go out with them, if you take them out on a meal, you pay for it.

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That means a lot to a Jewish person. If they're ill, you pray for them. You ask them about themselves.

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Ask them about Israel, the security of Israel. Ask them those things that matter, family, education, those things.

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But at some point, when you're sharing the gospel, I think it's important to bring up the Ten Commandments.

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God gave his law so that it would reveal sin. Most Jewish people don't even know the Ten Commandments, let alone think about it.

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There's usually not a consciousness of sin as much as we might think in a

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Jewish person. They need to hear about the law because the law reveals that they've broken it.

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And so from there, then you share the answer, which is the atonement in Messiah.

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But it takes a while to build a relationship with Jewish people. I know that the gospel group,

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Friends of Israel, has put out a nice little booklet about how to witness to our Jewish friends. So anyone listening wants to know more about that, they can probably contact them.

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Steve, let's talk a little bit about your book, The Pleasures of Marry, of Marriage, sorry. Yes, Marriage, not

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Marry, I don't know Marry. That's funny. I'm the one who's, you know,

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I do this for a living, this radio thing, and then here it is, The Pleasures of Marry, with Marriage, The Pleasures of Marriage, an exposition of the

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Song of Solomon. I too have written a book in the general category of sex. And so help me as, you know,

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I'm now pigeonholed as some guy that writes a book about sex. How did you work through that issue?

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Because I'm sure they did the same to you. Very carefully. It was actually my wife, a number of years ago, who said, you know, you ought to teach on the

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Song of Solomon. And I thought, are you crazy? Why would you say that? She said, well, you know, the congregation, people need to know how husbands and wives, not just sexually, should relate to each other, but how a husband should treat his wife, how they resolve conflicts.

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You really should teach about that. And so few have, from the standpoint of normal, literal language, let's say normal language.

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And so I decided it was gonna be a series here at Lakeside. I spoke on Sunday night.

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I was very careful. It really was not easy because, number one, many of the commentators don't see it the way

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I think it should be seen. As you probably know, they spiritualize it and they'll say the

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Song of Solomon is about God's love for Israel, Christ's love for the church. Those are what most of my books, my commentaries have said from reputable authors.

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So that was a challenge to find books that actually dealt with the text. And I found some of those interpretations, frankly, laughable, nonsense.

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They wouldn't do that with any other book in scripture. So then the challenge became, once I delved into it and I think

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I came to understand the story line behind the book, then the challenge became, how do you express these things in a way that is honoring to the text, but is also appropriate language?

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Because the Song of Solomon is not dirty. It may be that it deals with things in a very clear manner and doesn't always hide it behind the language of symbolism.

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But how do I explain these things so as not to be offensive and not to sound vulgar?

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And I worked very, very hard at that, very hard. I consulted a number of times with my wife, who is so good at this.

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I said, you know what? I cannot say it this way that a commentary says it.

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I'm just not gonna say that from the pulpit. She said, well, why don't you say it this way? And a number of times she just was so, so very helpful so that people got the point without me having to say it in a distasteful way.

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And I remember there was one part that was so sensitive. I said, I think my words were, Mike, what you think this means, that's what it means.

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And I just left it at that. Then what happened, I felt like the book was so, not my preaching of it, but the book was, the song was so important, so significant because of the issues it dealt with that I decided to put it in a book form.

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And that's how it came about. I published it myself. It may be on the verge now of having a publisher pick it up, but it's one of those books that I think would help so many couples.

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And yet when you self -publish, it's hard to market it. So there it is on Amazon, waiting for people to discover it.

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Well, that is great. I thank you for my copy, Steve Kreloff. We're talking to him on No Compromise Radio, pastor, teacher at Lakeside Community Chapel in Clearwater, Florida.

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Steve, we've only got a couple of minutes left. Any particular challenges there in Florida for gospel ministry?

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Lots of people, probably Southern Baptists say they're a Christian, say Jesus is Savior, but he's not their

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Lord. Is that the typical MO in Florida? Yeah, well, you know, this is sort of the

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Bible belt. There's a, I think there's a church, it seems like on every corner. We're certainly not in competition with any churches.

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We wanna just honor the Lord. My calling, my ministry is to teach verse by verse through the

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Bible and to shepherd this flock by that. I just, what's on my heart is

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I just gave a message last Sunday, every year, let me back up and say, every year, the first Sunday of the year,

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I give what I call the state of the church address. And what I do is I just share with the folks any deficiencies

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I might see in our church that need to be addressed biblically, but also I tell them about my burdens for what

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I'd like to see at Lakeside this next year. Well, last Sunday, I did something a little different. I spoke on why

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I love the local church. And I think it's because the Lord has stirred my heart through the studies in Ephesians.

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And so I just shared two points, and I was very personal with it, but two points is that the local church is the

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God -ordained place for believers to be nurtured. A lot of great para -church organizations, but they're not the local church.

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And local churches where you're shepherded and where you're loved and where pastors teach you the word and are not afraid to proclaim the whole counsel of God because they don't, it doesn't matter if they're controversial.

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I know a number of para -church organizations won't touch on certain doctrines if they feel it's controversial or specifics on, let's say, baptism and prophecy.

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So I spoke about the importance of the local church there, that they nurture you. Secondly, I said,

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I love the local church because it forces me to deal with my self -centeredness and selfishness.

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And I think that that is true of all of us, that we've all had conflicts with people in our churches.

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There are problems in churches. I, after 35 years of being a pastor,

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I know about conflicts and problems and how people are insulted and they leave churches and all that.

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And I said, the local church, God designed it so that you would deal with your selfishness and get over yourself and minister to people and love them, people who might annoy you and people who disagree with you.

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And I love the local church because it forces me to address my natural tendency to be socially aloof and just read my books and not interact with people.

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That's not what the local church does. The local church forces me to minister and love and do kind things for others.

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And so anyway, that's kind of the burden that's been on my heart. I don't know that this area is any different than a lot of other areas, except we have many, many churches and may the

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Lord bless them if they're preaching the gospel, but this is what we do. Well, I'll tell you what,

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Steve, if I lived near Clearwater, Florida, I would be a happy member at Lakeside Community Chapel to sit underneath the ministry there.

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I appreciate you. I'm glad the Lord had our paths across one another's path.

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And I hope to minister alongside of you and learn from you for many years. Thanks for being on No Compromise Radio.

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Thank you for having me, Mike. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.