Life Behind Bars (Part 2)

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.

My name is Steve Cooley. Mike Abendroth is still on vacation. There are rumors that he will be coming back someday, although many of you have voiced a lot of support for, you know, frankly, deposing him.

But I digress. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. Again, we have Matthew Feldmuth, my good friend, and he was really waxing eloquent about Romans 10 .9

and what it means to be saved last week when we had to abruptly end our session.

So, you know, we don't have a script here. We're just kind of winging it. And I want people to understand, you know, you talked about if there's, if the

Holy Spirit hasn't changed you or if your faith hasn't changed you, then, you know, it's not saving faith. And I wonder if you would just kind of describe the difference you mentioned last week about how hopeless you were, about how you wanted to even die at one point, maybe more than one point.

Why don't you just tell us how you look at life now, and then we'll kind of go back to where we were. How do you view life right now?

I view life like this. Prior to coming to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, okay,

I was looking for a high. And the high that I was looking for prior to drugs was adrenaline with my dirt bike in the desert, surfing, water skiing, things like that, really high rates of speed, crazy stuff, adrenaline rush.

Then it was drugs. And then after coming to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, it was reaching out and helping other people.

And that to me is so fulfilling and rewarding. And, okay, it's not just, it's reaching out, not just evangelizing somebody, but reaching out to the homeless person and giving them a sandwich or something like that, doing something for them, okay?

And then when they're saying, hey, that was really nice of you, and they thank you, then it opens the door for me to give my testimony, which

I am quick to tell them, well, the only reason I'm doing this is because Jesus saved me.

And prior to me giving you this little bit of money here, instead, I would have taken it from you, okay?

And now I'm giving it to you because Jesus touched my heart and it opens the door to tell them that I was once a drug addict and a dope fiend, and now

I'm not that way anymore. And it makes me feel so good. It's so rewarding, but it's more than that.

It's fully evangelizing. Now I have these little tracts that I passed out when I was in prison, and I'd walk around the yard and I'd tell people that I used to have three life sentences.

We didn't get into that last week, but at one point they did take me back on an appeal and the judge did remove the three life sentences from me.

And today that judge is my friend. And 38 years on the bench, he never wrote a letter for anybody.

And he wrote a letter for me because he saw the change in me. I've witnessed to him personally many times through the mail, on the phone.

And when I do that, it makes me feel so good because I know I'm in God's will.

And Steve, not everybody that we witnessed to is gonna come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

Well, maybe not then, maybe you planted some seeds, maybe not, but even when I'm rejected and I don't deal with rejection real well,

I know in my heart that I'm doing what God wants me to do. And it's hard because I'm competitive.

And when I reach out to somebody and evangelize them, I want them to fall down right there and do the sinner's prayer, even though I'm not a big fan of the sinner's prayer and baptize them an hour later.

And it's not gonna happen like that, you know? But I know that I am in God's will and that's what

God wants me to do. And so, that's - You mentioned how much you like Ephesians 4 .30

last week. And as you were talking, I was just thinking about Ephesians 4 .28, which says, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

And I'm like, there you go. You're the very embodiment of Ephesians 4 .28, right?

No longer stealing, but instead giving to people who have a need. So, when you evangelize somebody, and I'm kind of giving you the hard way to go right now.

When you evangelize somebody, when you're preaching Christ to them, what do you tell them?

What do you say to somebody in hopes that they will believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved? This is the crux of my message.

It's a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Let me say that one more time.

A personal relationship with Jesus Christ, okay? And here's the thing.

I don't believe in religion. I think that that's a horrible thing when somebody says to me,

Matthew, you're quite a religious person, okay? And when they say that to me, that just means that you're a habitual at whatever it is, you know?

I was a religious heroin addict, you know, if you want to put it that way. And so, it's not about religion.

And a lot of the people that I'm witnessing to, okay, have a religion, whether it was a

Catholic background or whatever, and it was their parents' religion, and they were forced to go to church or whatever, and they think that they know that, and it's a bunch of rules and regulations.

And it's not. It's a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Okay, now, let me cut you off there, and then

I'll let you continue in a second. Isn't it true that everybody has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

See, I thought I'm going to stump him. Just between me and the radio audience right now, Matthew's like, what is he driving at right now?

Where's he going with this, okay? And I can't speak for everybody, because I don't.

Well, but think about this. Everybody does have a relationship with Jesus Christ because he's either going to be their savior or their judge, right?

And if you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, whether you know it or not, then you've rejected him.

That's it. Okay, but it's Matthew's job, if I come in contact with you, to make sure that you know who

Jesus Christ is. So who is he? Jesus Christ is my savior. Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins.

Jesus Christ delivered me from heroin. Jesus Christ took the judge's heart and changed it to take those three life sentences off of me.

But you know what? 2 ,000 years ago before that, Jesus Christ took the life sentence off of me.

And I was heading to hell, and there was just no two ways about it. And not just was

I going to spend eternity in hell, which I can't even fathom, but I was living hell on earth.

I was living in hell, you know? Even when I was married, and I had my son, and I was sleeping in my bed, and I had my house, and my vehicles were paid for, and I was a union journeyman, and I had everything that you could possibly want,

I was not happy. I was looking for happiness in a needle in a spoon, and it just wasn't there.

And it just was getting worse and worse and worse. And I was even trying to find happiness in my wife.

I was trying to find happiness in my son, and I couldn't. And it wasn't until I came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's not going forward on an altar call and repeating some prayer that somebody else says for you, and you repeat that, and then you go back to your regular lifestyle, and you think that you took out fire insurance policy, and you now are a

Christian because you said the sinner's prayer. Like I said earlier in the program, if your faith hasn't changed you, your faith hasn't saved you.

Well, I want to take a break from the theological questions for a minute and go back to, excuse me, the prison.

Because you leave jail, you leave the county jail system, and you go to state prison.

Why don't you, for the radio audience, why don't you just tell them what the difference is between county jail and state prison?

Just a short summary. Well, okay, county jail is going back and forth to court, and it's less freedom, believe it or not.

It's actually a harder time in the county jail. And the deputies there are young deputies, and they're basically doing their apprenticeship.

And so they have to be macho and tough and disrespect you and show off in front of the other deputies and that type of thing, and they treat you pretty bad in there.

And then when you get to prison, it's actually a better environment. Depending on your custody level, mine was maximum because I had the three life sentences.

That means I was in a two -man cell, which is nice because instead of being in a dorm with 100 people, you're in a cell with one other guy.

And people talk about when they go to prison, hearing that door shut and how horrifying that is and bone chilling and all of that.

Well, it was just the opposite for me because when that door shuts in your cell, okay, yeah, you're locked in that cell, but you just locked 9 ,000,

I mean, 998 people out, okay? And you're just in there with one other guy.

There's usually 1 ,000 people on a yard, and you don't have to see the violence and all of that as long as you got a good cellmate and everything.

And in prison, you're allowed to go to church, you're allowed to walk on the yard. But on the yards

I was on, it was extremely violent because everybody pretty much had a life sentence.

I was, including me, for the first few years, lots of gangs. I was terrified for the first couple of years, and I knew

I was gonna be terrified, and that's why when I was in county jail, I just wanted to die. You don't just go to prison and do your own thing and mind your own business.

Depending on what race you are, immediately the shot caller of the gang gets at you.

They wanna see your paperwork. They wanna make sure you're not a sex offender. And if you are, then they're gonna tell somebody else to stab you.

And then if you're not, then since you're the new guy on the yard, then you're gonna have to stab the first sex offender that shows up on the yard.

Okay, and then now I did wanna talk about race relations a little bit. How would you, would you describe race relations in the prison?

Would you say that everybody treats everybody equally and they all get along in racial harmony?

Is it kind of like heaven on earth sort of thing? No, it's miserable.

Not even. Even inside their own races, there's bickering and politics and people striving to get to the top and doing backstabbing things constantly.

They don't even go to their own rules. The people that enforce the rules don't even abide by their own rules.

And you can't eat. I can't sit and play chess with a black man.

I can't eat after a black man. I can't sit in the day room with a black man. There's the showers are segregated.

There's a white shower, the Hispanic shower, the black shower, and that's not by the police. The inmates do that and the police just go along with the inmates' program.

See, and I tell people things like that and they're like, really, why would it be like that? And I'm like.

Because that's how they keep, the cops actually like it like that because they keep, they pretty much patrol their own.

The cops, most of those cops have kids and they think about what it would be like if somebody did something to one of their kids, okay?

So if an inmate doesn't know about somebody that's in that prison, the cops let it be known and they wanna see it taken care of.

You mean like a child molester? Yes, definitely. And rape, any rape is the same, even if it's a, and they're treated worse than an ex -cop rather than a judge or anything.

The bottom of the barrel is a child molester. Right above it is somebody that rapes a woman.

So, this is kind of an odd question, but it just struck me and I just thought I'd ask anyway. Did you ever meet anybody while you were, another inmate while you were in jail or prison where you just thought, you know, this guy's really innocent?

Yes. Really? Would you say that was common or? No, maybe two times.

And one of them is right now, he's on the Innocence Project and then the other one, he got turned down by the

Innocence Project. And both of them are Christian and I believe both of them, but that's two people out of, oh, come, maybe 10 ,000, 15 ,000 inmates.

Yeah. Yeah, I say it's not really all that likely. So, tell the audience, what is it like to be a

Christian in prison? What separates you from everybody else? What makes it different? Okay, well, for me,

I had joy and peace. And this is, remember,

I had three life sentences. So, somebody might say, yeah, he had joy and peace after he knew he was getting out, you know, but I had joy and peace before I got the life sentences off of me.

And not every day is joy and peaceful, but, you know, when I came to a saving faith, it was about reading the

Bible, studying the Bible, not just being somebody that had head knowledge, but applying it to my life.

It was being kind to the child molester that was a Christian and being nice to him and rejecting peer pressure and helping that man and befriending him.

That was the hardest thing for me, the hardest thing in prison. That was harder than saying no to drugs or any of that or getting caught up in anything.

That was the hardest thing was to befriend a child molester. And what do other inmates think about that when they know that you have?

They hate that. They hate you. You're just as bad as they are. And if they see you on the yard with one, whether he goes to church or not, they hate that.

And it took years for people to give me respect because of that.

But when they finally would talk to me, this is what I would say to them. I would say, you guys always judge the

Christians. Like he's hiding behind that Bible. He goes over to the chapel and he hides. And they're just weak, the

Christians. And they use that as a crutch to avoid the gangs and all of the politics.

And I tell you that it's just the opposite because a real Christian doesn't judge what another man's here for.

He helps him no matter what his need is. He helps him. He reaches out to him.

He helps him. When he needs someone to talk to, he talks to him and he doesn't care who's watching and everything.

And he's there for him. And a real Christian reaches out to the guys on the yard that nobody likes, the guys that are handicapped, that are meek, the ones that are scared, the ones that have mental illnesses.

Well, and here's the truth, right? If being a child molester will send you to hell, so will telling a lie or committing adultery, right?

And so, as a Christian, you're sitting there and you're going, okay, well, yeah, I get it.

This guy's a sinner, but then again, so am I. And before God, a holy

God, I'm as, apart from the grace of God and apart from the work of Christ, I'm as guilty,

I'm as deserving of the punishment of God as this child molester is. That's right.

And if you were to talk to the people that I broke into their houses and stole their jewelry, they would tell you

I'm just as bad as that child molester. You know? And their eyes, I am, because I stole from them.

And you know what? Sin is sin. And, but let's look at the other side of it. When you're like I am and you've been delivered, when

I got saved, I was delivered from my addictions. I went to 12 -step programs all of my, you know, using years on and off in rehabs, in hospitals, big bucks, insurance from my union and everything, trying to get sober and stay sober.

And even when I would blow out the candles on a cake for a year of sobriety, I still wanted to reward myself with drugs and alcohol.

And when I came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, I was delivered from that. I was completely, all of the temptation was just completely taken away from me.

I don't identify myself as Matthew, an alcoholic and an addict. Okay, when

Jesus delivers you from something, he delivers you from that. And so for me to be delivered from all of that and to have peace and joy in a dark environment like prison, you know,

I want other people to experience that. I want other people to have what was so freely given to me.

And I know the things that I did and I was forgiven from. And so why can't they be forgiven?

And in the Bible, it says that Jesus forgets our sins as far as the east is from the west.

And also I think in the Old Testament, Isaiah, where he casts them into the ocean and Corrie Ten Boom once said, and there's a no fishing sign there.

Yeah, you know, I love the, it's actually Psalm 103, which is amazing to me that it appears in Psalm 103 where it says he removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.

And, you know, one picture, because I preached this here not too long ago, but one of the pictures is when

God, of course we have to view this in terms of an anthropomorphism, meaning these are terms that we can understand.

They don't really apply to God per se. But when God looks to the east and he sees us, that our sin is behind him, it's to the west, and he can't view our sin and us at the same time.

And, you know, that's how far removed they are. And that's exactly right. That's the work that Jesus Christ did.

I don't know if I told you, but one of the early steps in my coming to faith was actually in a 12 -step group.

Have I ever told you that? No. Well, I wouldn't have told you that because there were a lot of things I didn't tell inmates.

But when I was, I was struggling.

I was still out on patrol and I was struggling. You know, I wasn't happy with life. And I was seeing the department shrink and he told me that, you know,

I was codependent. And I had absolutely no idea what that meant. And he gave me a book to read and told me to go to 12 -step meetings.

And so I remember sitting in a group one night and listening to them describe their higher power.

And boy, oh boy, you know, I mean, because you know this, because you sat in these meetings and you're not supposed to laugh or pass judgment or, you know,

I have a hard time like not expressing, making a facial expression when

I'm listening to something totally ridiculous. So here's the group. One person says, my higher power is

God. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm going, okay, that's okay. My higher power is Jesus. And I'm like, okay, that's okay.

My higher power is this group. And I thought, have you looked around the room?

This is probably not a good higher power, you know, with all due respect. And then somebody said something and I had this thing where I would bite my cheek so I wouldn't laugh.

And I've never, I think I bled a bit, you know, the inside of my mouth so hard.

She said, my higher power is part of my brain that I've designated to be my higher power.

And I just thought, okay, now to me as an unbeliever, right, which I was, and I just thought that is the most absurd thing

I've ever heard. You know, that part of your brain is part of you. It has no power, you know?

So I left the meeting that night and I was just thinking, okay, I know there's a God, but I was out of Mormonism by then.

But all I could think was there had to be a God to punish really, really bad people. You know, the child molesters, the people who, you know, did bad things to other people.

I wouldn't have held burglars in the same, you know, class, by the way. But I was just convinced there had to be a

God to punish really bad people. So I went to a friend who was a police officer and I said, you know, do you guys still have that 12, the

Bible study for cops? And he said, sure. But he started looking at me all suspicious because I'd always made fun of him.

And I said, well, you know, do you still have any?

He goes, well, yeah, but you know, what's the punchline? And I said, well, no punchline.

You know, I just know that there's a God. And I told him about the 12 -step meeting and I said, I know there's a God, but I don't know who he is.

And I thought, you know, you seem to know who he is. So maybe I'd go and go to your Bible study. He turned like white as a sheet.

He was so, you know, like, he was embarrassed by the way he'd been talking.

And so he was like, sure, you know, you can come. And he, you know, and that was like one of many little things along the way where I finally, you know, came to faith.

And I mean, it was a really bad Bible study, but that's the here and there. But it was a lot better than that 12 -step group.

I'll tell you that right now. So that you're,

I forget where we were, but let's go back to the prison. And just, we're talking about what it's like to be in the prison and to be a

Christian in the prison and some of the relationships and things that happen there. Let me ask you this.

What were like, what kind of folks would typically come in and minister to the inmates in a prison?

What kind of people would come in that I would minister to? No, that they would, you know, like the volunteer chaplains and stuff like that.

I mean, do they have that in the state? Yeah, they have volunteer chaplains that come in there. And one was the chaplain from LA County Jail, Bobby Mercado Ministries.

And he came in there and he was an ex -convict himself and his testimony widely known.

And he would come in and bring ex -bikers and ex -gang members and people like that to come in and minister to us once in a while.

The chapel, I was on the same yard for 13 years and it was the same sermon every

Sunday with an altar call. And - I'm gonna need to cut you off again.

I'm sorry for that. No Compromise Radio. And we will have our third installment next week.

And I'm really enjoying my time with Matthew. 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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