Linton Vadakedathu 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.

A Guest From Bethlehem Bible Church and His Background

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we have a guest in the studio. Now, usually when there�s a live person in the studio, it happens to be either Pastor Steve, the Tuesday guy, or the other live thing in the studio often is my dog, the NoCo mascot, Teddy.

But today we have a person who goes to Bethlehem Bible Church and is a member, faithful member, sometimes goes out and does pulpit supply. We�ll talk about that in a minute. And I�ve officiated his wedding even, Linton Vadakadathu.

Linton, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Hello. Thank you. Linton, now, that�s how I pronounce your last name. How do you pronounce your last name? Exactly the same. Vadakadathu. Now, when I officiated your wedding, how many years ago?

Five years ago? Four and a half. Okay. I had to write out phonetically, va-da-ka, because I didn�t want to mess it up in front of all your friends. I loved that ceremony with you and your wife, and I was honored to be asked.

Thank you so much for doing it. Linton, how old are you? I am 33. 33 years old. And how did you stumble upon Bethlehem Bible Church?

I went to the Master�s Seminary website and looked at all the graduates in the Massachusetts area. And there was only one church that had two people, Pastor Mike Avendroth and Pastor Steve Cooley, who were from the Master�s Seminary.

And that�s how I went to the website, emailed Pastor Steve, and started talking.

Why a Bible-Teaching Church Matters When You Move

That�s amazing. Before we got on the show, Linton, you were talking about moving. And when people move places for career or money or education, there�s a lot of reasons to move. Maybe they like warmer weather, who knows?

Tell me why it�s important, if people are going to move, to make sure you don�t commit to the move before you know. There�s a really good Bible-teaching church there.

The church is the one place where believers grow. And how do you encourage one another to love and good works if you are not in the church? And if you�re not in a Bible-believing church, where Jesus Christ is exalted and preached, how do you grow?

How do you understand what your sin is? How do you have the right view of Christ? How can you be a leader in society if you�re not in a good church? And if you�re moving for money, and you�re not looking for a good church, you will be separated from fellowship, you will probably fall into sin, and get a low view of Christ.

Linton, of course, when we kind of work out these issues in our mind, and we think, �You know what? I could make $40 ,000 more if we move to such and such a place. I mean, $40 ,000 is a lot of money.

But is there a price that we could put on,. �Well, you know what? We�ll find a good church when we get there. Let�s just take the 40. I mean, it�s valuable to have a good Bible-teaching church. Absolutely.

I mean, is it worth $50 ,000 a year? Is it worth $100 ,000 a year? I mean, we can�t put a price on it. But I am glad that you looked up the website, and you�ve been involved ever since. Tell me about your ministry now here at the church.

My ministry now primarily involves pulpit supply, where after being taught by you in the preaching discipleship class, it�s been an honor and privilege to go to different churches around New England and preach about Jesus Christ, His sovereignty, and His gospel.

Pulpit Supply, Altar Calls, and Preaching Christ

Now when you give the altar call, how do you go about that? How long does that take?

Oh, I haven�t done that. My pastor, who I will not name, will probably church discipline me.

Well, I know you have not been to that many churches, although you told me off-air probably ten or fifteen times you�ve preached at different churches, and that�s more than I ever did, even in seminary.

Have you been to a church that said, you know, why aren�t you evangelistic, or why didn�t you do an altar call, or you haven�t experienced that yet?

No, they have not said that yet. They have just thanked me for preaching and thanked me for reminding them of the sovereignty of Christ.

When you go to different churches, I�m sure you will meet a variety of different people and circumstances, and every church has its own flavor, if you will, or kind of culture. Eric Johansen told me, he�s pastoring now down at Grace Hartford, of course, he said once he did pulpit supply from Bethlehem Bible Church here, and in the middle of the service they have a sharing time for prayer request and stuff like that, and so he was asked if he would lead it.

And you know, while we might not have that here, there is prayer time, it�s a pastoral prayer after Scripture reading. But there was a lady, and she raised her hand, and she said, �Well, we�d like to pray for Jesus.

Could we please pray for him, please And I hope Eric was diplomatic, but be thankful, Linton, you haven�t had to go through that yet. I�m very thankful. Now, when you go to a church to preach for pulpit supply, and you know, we are teaching the Bible here verse by verse, and I know you do the exact same thing, what�s your strategy for picking a passage when you go to another church to preach?

It�s very simple. Every day, even at home, I�m in a passage, even if I�m not preaching. So usually, I try to do a book, and if I have been at the church already, I�ll probably start from the book I�m doing from the very beginning, from the very first verse, and I�ll go through.

If I�ve been at the church before, then I continue from where I left off the previous time I was there.

That is excellent, because you have some continuity, the church does, and then you, too, have to study all those passages, right? Because some passages, at least initially, maybe you�ll disagree with me, but initially, when I look at a particular passage, I might say to myself, you know, it doesn�t really seem that easy to preach.

The topic, of course, I know is God-ordained, but maybe there�s a different topic I�d rather preach, but then you begin to study and to dig into the passage and see how it connects to everything, and then you fall in love with the passage or get really convicted by it and think, �Oh, I�m so glad I got to preach that.

Amen. Amen. So, Linton, with a name like even Linton, is Linton, is there a particular ethnic background for Linton? No. Okay. But your last name. Yes. Tell me a little bit about India, Kuwait, etc., and the providence of God in your life to get you here.

India, Kuwait, and the Providence of God in His Life

So I was born in Kuwait, which is in the Middle East, right next to Iraq, and I�m Indian by nationality. I was born and raised in Kuwait, lived there for all my life, went for undergrad in India, because that�s where my parents wanted me to go.

What city, by the way? Chennai. Okay. And then worked in Kuwait for two years and wanted to do graduate studies in the United States.

And then you came here, were here for several years, and you married someone that is from another country. Tell me about your wife and where she�s from or her family�s from. Yes.

My wife is half German, half Lebanese. So her father is from Germany and her mother is from Lebanon, and I met her here in Massachusetts.

And it�s so fascinating to me because as we look at the world and how crazy they are for this whole idea of race and it�s white and black and all these kind of things, I tend to see things, as you know, Linton, because I know you see it the same way, we have one race and that is the human race, and people are either in Adam or they�re in Christ, and that�s how we see people.

If we do want to divide folks up, maybe we could do it this way as well, Jews and Gentiles. So I�m definitely a Gentile with my I�m half German, a quarter Swedish, a quarter Danish. And your side now, you�re even more Gentile-y than I am.

Yes. Your poor children now are Hugging. That�s probably. What�s the culture of evangelicalism in Kuwait like?

Very, very charismatic. It is led by a lot of Americans who have stayed back after the first Gulf War back in �91, and unfortunately most of the people are very charismatic. They�re into Joyce Meyer and Kenneth Copeland.

There is no gospel. There are surprisingly a lot of churches, but none of them preach Christ or the gospel. They�re very seeker-sensitive and definitely charismatic.

Reading, Writing, and Serving in New England

Linton, one of the things I like about you and this is lower on the list, I mean higher on the list is you have a passion for the Word and for the gospel and for preaching. You want to study, but I like your voice.

What�s going on with your voice? It�s just a total, like, gravelly man�s voice. How did you master that kind of dialect?

I don�t know if I did. My brother thinks I sound like a frog, but I�ve been arguing with him that I got my wife. See?

There you go. That�s exactly right. What have you been reading these days outside of Colossians, preaching through different books of the Bible?

What do you like to read? Right now I�ve been reading up on John MacArthur�s �How a Dad Should Lead. As I�m a dad of three young children, it�s an area that I could always grow in, so I�m currently reading that, and also looking at �Systematic Theology� by Wayne Grudem.

Okay.

Linton, if somebody here in New England wants a person to come and preach for them because they�re at a small church and their pastor�s out of town, or maybe they don�t have a pastor and they�re just candidating and need somebody for pulpit supply, is there a way they contact BBC, or what�s, do you know what we do here?

Yes.

They contact usually Elder Pradeep. He�s the point of contact for pretty much all of New England. And from him, one of the members of the pulpit supply team will hear about what needs to be done.

It�s been so great to watch over the last 20 years, Linton, men like you. We get the phone calls from people here in New England, and sometimes maybe on a Sunday there might be four men. That doesn�t always happen, but there might be four men from the church out preaching at different churches.

We�ve sent people to Cape Cod, even Nantucket. You have to take a ferry to get to Nantucket. Is anything good come out of Nantucket? And so, the opportunities that you men can have, I look back in my life and just, you know, it�s hard to learn how to preach unless you�re preaching, and then for you to be able to go and have the opportunity to give people not just morality, not just ethics, not just a to-do list, I�m very, very thankful for that.

Since you like to preach and like to study, have you thought about becoming a pastor or full-time ministry?

What are your thoughts? I definitely want to go to seminary and learn more. Do I want to be a pastor? That is undecided right now, but wherever I am, I want to serve to the best of my ability, and even if maybe that�s not pastor in the future.

Seminary, Pastoral Ministry, and Growing in the Bible

Linton, you know how the Lord works. Sometimes we only get to see looking back in time, but for me it was, you know what? I just want to learn the Bible. I don�t want to preach. I definitely don�t want to be a pastor.

But I was sucked into the vortex of the seminary, and now here we are. You didn�t want to be a pastor? I did not. Wow. You know what? I didn�t really have any examples growing up of what pastoral ministry was.

There were two Lutheran pastors that we had, and I mean, they would give little 10-minute messages. Maybe they were longer than that, and usually some type of, you know, be good or be thankful or something like that.

I believe that Jesus was God. I believe that He was raised from the dead. But for me, my background was you were assumed regenerate because at the waters of baptism, they believed at this Lutheran church that it was baptismal regeneration.

So they never said, �Are you born again? What about you? Are you right with God And so we just always assumed we were by default until you kind of ran, you know, away from the church or the Lord. And so that�s why I love to tell people now, �You must be born again.

Every opportunity. Was it Whitfield, who I think 2 ,000 times had in his messages, �You must be born again. And they asked him, �Why? Why do you always talk about that And he said, �Well, the answer is simple.

You must be born again. Now in the past, you've done different things here at Bethlehem Bible Church, worked in youth ministry. Give me your assessment of youth ministry across evangelicalism, maybe from India to Kuwait to here in America.

It seems to me that it's pretty watered down, and is that the right way to kind of win the youth?

There's only one way to win men, whether they're youth or old, and that is through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And at least in India and Kuwait, it was, everything was around events and pleasing the kids through activities.

And if preaching was ever done, it was just so that the parents would be off the backs of the teachers. But at Bethlehem Bible Church, we're so blessed by leadership who encourages and teaches the importance of preaching.

So here we give the Word the importance. So I can't ever remember, I mean, we had fun at Cornerstone. We still did events, and we still do. But preaching is still paramount and teaching them about life and how do you live in the real world with Christ as King.

It's interesting to me, Linton, if we decided our number one goal in youth ministry is attendance, well then there would be a way to go about getting that. Except I think, and I know you think as well, we have different goals, and those goals are based on what the text says, and they should reflect what the adult church or the main service does.

Why would we have two different goals, right? I think it was the book, The Juvenilization of American Christianity, and if you grow up in a youth group where it's just rock and roll and fun, guess what?

When you get older, you want something in a worship service that's rock and roll and fun. And what would our goals be? If our goals are not how many people attend, are keeping kids off the street, what would the youth ministry's goal be?

It would be to be models of slaves of Christ. How would what you hear in church on Sunday or in home group, how do you actually live that? When you go off to college, when you're alone, when perhaps you're not surrounded by your parents or good teachers, how do you actually put those things to practice?

And if you don't have that growing up and you are tended to, your needs are tended to, you're left alone on an island surrounded by a world that is constantly feeding you with information and constantly telling you you're better and you don't need God and you don't need a Savior and Christ was just someone who lived 2 ,000 years ago.

Linton, as you were saying that, I was thinking about Steve Lawson when he came here years ago and taught, and he was talking about the doctrines of grace in the Gospel of John. And someone came up to me and said, Pastor Mike, you know, I've just seen unconditional election in the Gospel of John, and I've never seen that in my life, and this is so wonderful.

And my flesh wanted to say, I've been teaching you that for 10 years. But I said, oh, that's wonderful. One of the things I love about youth ministry, where you have men trained by the leadership of the church, they're going to say the same things that the leaders say.

They just say it in a different way, in a different context, sitting around on couches or something, or at some event after a service project or something. So you're saying the same things that we're saying, it's just a different venue, different timing through a different person, right?

Yes, absolutely. And of course, you know, we want to have fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with fun, but there's everything wrong if it's just fun only. Yes. So Linton, as you think about India, you said Kuwait was very charismatic.

When I've been to India those three times in Mumbai and Pune, they've been very charismatic there. Even the mainstream evangelical churches have a flavor of at least a conservative, charismatic element.

Is that the same down in the south in Chennai?

Very much. And one thing you'll notice is as you walk the streets of Chennai on a Sunday, you'll be shocked at the number of people wearing white. And they're all white because they're all Pentecostal.

That's what they call there. And it's shocking. I was shocked when I first saw it. And it's a very works-based system. Very rarely is Christ preached. A lot of healings are very popular in India. Healings.

Come for a healing service. If your emotions are tied up here, come. This is a Sunday morning church service. Come for that. There are traditional Presbyterian churches, but even they don't preach Christ.

They're afraid to. If they preach Christ or they preach the text and don't put enough application, they are asked to leave. And that's happening a lot around many churches in Chennai.

Seems like that's happening a lot in America, too. You know, I'll say to people, if you have to have, you know, a fill-in-the-blank sermon outline to be engaged with the pastor, this church, Bethlehem Bible Church, probably is not the church for you.

I mean, you just think about, okay, the book of Hebrews, or you've been preaching through Colossians, or if we go to Matthew, the gospel of Jesus according to Matthew. I think there's quite a bit of drama in those books.

I think if the pastor does his work and studies, or the preacher does his work and gets up there and says, you know what, I am going to just try to really reflect this passage, both with what I say and then how I come across, right?

If it's... Well, let's just change gears. If it's a lament psalm, I think my demeanor should be one of not giddy happiness, but it's a lament psalm. But if the passage is about joy, then I think my attitude and even my voice should express joy.

So if the passage is about Jesus, I think people ought to get fired up, or maybe they should just sit down. Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you have any things about evangelicalism in America that you think, oh, I sure wish they would grow out of this, or I don't particularly like that, and I'd like to see that change.

Is there any kind of thoughts about evangelicalism?

Jesus as Friend, Lord, and King

I think one thing that stood out to me when I was in school in South Carolina is everybody likes to look at Jesus and talk about Him as a good friend. And sure, the Bible talks about this to some extent, but that's the only characteristic that Jesus Christ is spoken about or with, especially in the South.

And it's pretty much the same here when you go to different churches around here, too. Jesus is a friend. But that's not what the Scripture says. He's God. He's sovereign. He's prophet, priest, king, as you say in your book.

And evangelicalism doesn't seem to be proud of that. They're ashamed of Him as God and mighty. They just want a friend. They don't want anything else.

Lyndon, I think that's very insightful. And of course we teach that He's a brother and that He's a friend of sinners. That's obvious. But I think probably theologically what I'm seeing is the people in America want the eminence of God, that is, His closeness, His attributes of kindness and love and patience, and He's a brother.

They want that. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, except He's also transcendent. He's different. He's holy. He's majestic. He's sanctified. And we have to preach Jesus as Savior and Lord. We have to preach Him as transcendent and eminent.

We have to preach the text that's in the Bible that He's God and He's a friend, and both of those. And so I wouldn't want to go to a place that only talked about the transcendence of God and not His eminence, because even this time of year we celebrate Christmastime, and that is Emmanuel, God with us.

Anything else that you think about when it comes to evangelicalism that you wish you could help combat?

I would say kind of the role of men and women. I see an interesting—even when I—I mean, whether you go around churches or talk to other people, I see women standing up, and they like to pray more, and they like to take the lead on things a lot more.

It's a trend I've seen throughout America in evangelicalism. Men like to take the back seat. Men don't like to teach. They don't like to lead. They think it's a shame to be spiritual, when that's not what we see in the Scriptures.

Men are supposed to lead. Men are the ones who are to preach the gospel and to stand firm, and that's what we see in society. Men are taking a back seat on everything.

Well, and vacuums must be filled. Yes. Right. It's not right that they're filled by ladies when it contradicts Scripture or 1 Timothy, but vacuums will be filled. Well, Linton, we don't have much time left, but in the next few minutes, I love to hear people's testimonies, because what's similar in testimonies is the power of God and His regenerating work through the Spirit of God, and it's through the Word.

Testimony of Conversion Through the Gospel of Luke

But then there are just interesting circumstances where you think, oh, this is how God orchestrated the Word, spiritually, spiritually, supernaturally made alive in the person's life. How did God save you?

I first heard the gospel at 23 from Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.

And I did... Let me just stop you there for a second, at 23. So for 23 years, you didn't know what the gospel was?

No, even though I was attending churches. Amazing. Okay, keep going. So I heard it from them to some extent, but they pointed me to Todd Friel, who pointed me to Dr. John MacArthur. And he did a series on the gospel of Jesus, according to Luke, chapter 18, about the rich young ruler.

And there, for the first time, I heard the gospel, and I couldn't say, I couldn't... You know, you always justify yourself, because I was proud about the family I grew up in, who my grandfather was, a high priest, and all of those things.

And here, Jesus Christ, the sovereign God, is telling this rich young ruler, you must give up this money, and then come and follow me, and you'll be fine. And he's essentially telling him, you can't save yourself, I have to save you, I have to justify you.

And I remember that, I still remember that. And I'm continually growing by the grace of God, but that's the first time I heard the gospel, and by his grace, understood it. And I still remember that. Luke 18.

Well, you are in computer science, and the tech industry, and all that stuff. You're either saved or you're not. It is a binary thing. And so you were...it turned on that day by the Spirit's power. By the grace of God, yes.

That's right. Well, Linton, I am so happy that you sat down with me to let the audience know. Linton and I were just catching up on a few things here in my study, and I said, you know what, let's do a show.

And Linton said, okay. Like you know what, I don't want to say no, but here we go, radio? I was not planning to do that. And once you started talking about the sovereignty of God, I could see your left hand go to preacher mode.

So it is latent in there, it is built in, so I'm very thankful for you and your family, and your ministry, and your camaraderie here at Bethlehem Bible Church. So thanks for everything, Linton.

Thank you, Pastor Mike. 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.