T.D. Jakes and Cargo Cults

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

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

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

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

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

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. I just talked for about three minutes and I didn't like the way it was going, so I just hit erase.

Today in No Compromise Radio ministry, we want to make this spicy, quick, always biblical, always controversial, always in that order.

No, I think I need to change that bumper. Always biblical, always provocative. I want to provoke.

I don't want to create controversy. I want provocation. That's what I want, and I'm thankful that there are people around the world listening to No Compromise Radio.

When I get the information, the stats that they send on what countries are downloading, what countries listen, et cetera,

I'm super happy when I get the book orders and they run by my desk. These people ordered the book and we're shipping them to Ohio and Cincinnati and Tennessee and I don't know.

Wasn't there a movie star? I think it was in Gunsmoke. Wasn't there Cincinnatus? Wasn't there a guy named Cincinnatus?

All right, quite a few things sitting here on my desk. I'm just trying to clean up my No Compromise desk.

I've got all kinds of things stacked up. I still have a glorifying God book by Thomas Watson to give away, edited by Patty Hummel.

So far, nobody's taken it. It's here, it sits right here. Cargo cults.

The first thing I want to talk about today is cargo cults. I had copied this and cargo cults were of interest to me because we had

Steve Gibb on the radio and he is a missionary in Vanuatu where John Payton was.

And here's what it says about these cargo cults. I find it fascinating because it gives us insight into man and how he is a worshiper and how without Christ, you're just left on your own.

You just have to figure things out and hope you can appease the gods, hope you can appeal to the gods in a certain way.

Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II when the residents of these regions observed the

Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of material. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased.

Here's the interesting part, cargo cults. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them.

So isn't that fascinating? Here are these people, Americans or Japanese, and they put up a landing strip, they've got a bunch of airplanes and all of a sudden cargo's dropped out of the sky from a parachute.

How do we get parachutes containing cargo and food and supplies from the sky

God? Well, maybe if we make a little landing strip, maybe if we make a little airplane here and pretend like we're talking on the radio, maybe that's how we pray to God.

Isn't that fascinating what people think? Cargo cult, one was called the

John Frum cult on Vanuatu, the Tom Navy cult on Vanuatu, the Prince Philip Movement on Tanna Island in Vanuatu.

Super interesting. How about this? Believers may stage drills and marches with sticks for rifles and use military style insignia and national insignia painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, thereby treating the activities of Western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting the cargo.

So this gets to my bigger point about, since Solomon said in Ecclesiastes that God has set eternity in our hearts,

I don't think there's a God -shaped vacuum. I don't like that terminology, but eternity is set in our hearts.

And Ecclesiastes would talk about, less than everything cannot satisfy a man.

Can you imagine that? Less than everything cannot satisfy a man because unless you're satisfied by God, you can't be satisfied.

As a matter of fact, if you have little with God, you can be satisfied. And so when you look at Ecclesiastes 1 and 2 and the vanity of life,

I think ESV made a mistake when they used vanity. This is short -lived thing, it's not vain.

Actually, when Proverbs 31 talks about a wife, beauty is vain.

I don't think beauty's vain, it just doesn't last. I'm glad my wife is pretty, but it just doesn't last.

And so that's the point of Ecclesiastes, are these things, most of the time, when the word vanity is used, you should say to yourself, it doesn't last, it's temporal.

And so when it says in Ecclesiastes, towards the end, let's see right here, 24, there's nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

This also I saw was from the hand of God. For apart from him, Ecclesiastes 2 .25, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

But with him, conversely, you can have enjoyment and you can have a little and still have a lot of joy.

So here we have the island of Tana in Vanuatu worshiping certain

Americans who brought the desired cargo to their island. And then they have this cult apparatus there that they do these things.

Very, very fascinating how people will do anything to try to talk to God, but they need a mediator.

They need a man who will come and tell them who Jesus Christ is. So that's an interesting thing on the cargo cult.

And I wonder how many people think of God as the cargo cult God. We just do a few rituals and then

God drops out of the sky, something that we might want. So today on No Compromise Radio, it's clear off the desk.

One thing, I just threw those papers, actually, no kidding, I wish I could show you a picture on the ground. All right, what else do

I have here? Al Mohler, dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Lessons from Piers Morgan's interview with Joel Osteen, October 6, 2011. And here we're having

Morgan talk to Osteen about his book, Every Day's a Friday, How to Be Happier Seven Days a

Week. And Mohler is right when he calls this therapeutic prosperity theology.

Okay, well, one of the things that Mohler talks about here is how Joel didn't really want to give his real answers, how he was, in other words, reluctant to speak.

So capital punishment. You know, it's a complicated issue. Piers, I haven't thought a whole lot about it, but of course, you know,

I'm for second chances and mercy, yet the flip side is there's consequences for what we've done, and so I don't know what my total stance is.

Then get off the TV. You're a pastor. This is Seminary 101.

I'd like to figure out, now this is gonna come off as prideful, so that's not my point here, but the church that I'm privileged to pastor,

I bet you if I grabbed 50 guys and said, what's your view of capital punishment based on Scripture?

I think most of them would say, Genesis chapter nine, verse six, clearly indicates that if you take an image bearer and kill him with premeditation intention, that you should be killed.

That's the way it goes, because you're killing an image bearer. Or they might not know Romans 13, or they might know

Romans 13, but the government uses a sword not for spanking, not for chopping up your carrots, but for killing you.

That's the idea there. So I don't know what my stance is. Now, when people ask you questions as a pastor,

I think it's fair to say I don't know the answer. Brian Bartlett here at our church, nine times out of 10, he asked me a question.

I have no idea how to answer it, because the easy answer is he can get on his own, and the easy answer is

I know on my own, but the hard answer is that he asked me that he can't get on his own. I have to go study on my own so I can get back to him.

Did you figure that out? But I don't know. I don't know what my stance is.

How about you're a sissy, and you don't want to give your stance because it's going to be politically incorrect?

I think maybe that could be. I can't know for certain, but I think that's pretty much the deal.

What you need to do as a gospel minister is to say, I'm a minister of the gospel. And if you like or don't like my answers, that's pretty much irrelevant.

And if you don't like my answers, and then that means you don't like me, then that's irrelevant too.

That is Pauline. That's John the Baptist. This is not, well, I'm going to give you the answer that I think gives me the biggest platform.

This is not, well, this is poll data answering. I think I need some peach coffee.

All right, that's pretty good. I actually think that's Starbucks today though, so who knows? All right, abortion and capital punishment tie in.

Well, said Osteen, I think there could be when you say may or may not, you know, that's the troubling thing.

If we don't know for sure, and you know, what, what is this?

Oh, Morgan, he might not be the best interviewer, but he didn't like it that Osteen, according to Moeller, was fuzzy.

You need to be more definitive, Osteen. Yes, well, if I could,

I would, but I'd have to, let me study it and I'll come back with a great answer for you someday. And then

Moeller, this is classic Moeller. Not exactly a here I stand moment to say the very least.

Well, on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about Osteen on Morgan, and we had talked about this a little bit with Pastor Steve, but Steve was

Buffalo in all my time, and so now I get to just talk about this as slowly and as long as I'd like to, as long as I'd like to.

Okay, what about performing same -sex marriage? Well, you know what?

I'm going to respect the law and I'm going to respect gay people like I do now, you know. Have plenty of people that come to our church and friends,

I would call, that are gay, so I'm going to respect that. I think where it puts a difficult situation is me being a

Christian pastor, believing the scripture, you know, it would be against my faith to marry two gay people.

Well, at least he has that much sense. Later he said, no, it would be against what

I believe the scripture teaches, and so that's where I think the rub comes in with people like myself. It's not that I'm against anybody or, you know, if people want to live together, that's up to them.

But my faith, when we say marriage, I mean, I think about it, peers, and all through the Bible, there are, you know, hundreds of marriages, but none of them are shown as between, you know, the same sex.

And again, I'm not against anything, but I just believe that's what the Bible teaches. Well, good for him that he wouldn't marry two gay people.

But I'm against things that the Bible are against. That's simple. Of course, we are to be kind and nice and love other people of all stripes, and we don't want to be so self -righteous that we can't be around sinful people.

We want to be like Jesus, and He was with the tax gatherers and the sinners. That was a slam.

He eats with them. He drinks with them. He's around them. That's what Jesus regularly got slammed for.

You need to read Luke chapter 15 to talk about how we should be happy that the

Savior was around them and happy that God the Savior saves sinners from all stripes, from all different kinds of stripes.

Of course, that goes without saying. The churches always believe that. The Bible -believing church.

But the point is, of course, we're against things. I am against gay marriage because A, it's not gay, and B, it's not a marriage.

I'm against gay marriage because it denigrates Christ loving the church, the real picture of marriage.

It sort of denigrates. It's not God's best, and you can go through the Scriptures and find polygamy here and this, that, and the other and concubines and all these other issues.

But you go back to Genesis and it's very, very simple. One man, one woman, holy covenant of marriage for life, determined by God.

It's simple. You know, it's so trite. Well, I have gay friends. Well, I do.

I have friends that are practicing homosexuals. Okay, but I'm against that, but I can still be kind to them, can't

I? So this whole, you know, I'm not against anything. Well, you should be.

I'm against everything God's against, and I want to be for everything God's for. That's just the way life goes.

What about attending the same -sex marriage? Osteen said he would if the individuals were his friends.

Well, you know what I'd have to say to my friends? I love you very much, and from my perspective, this isn't going to change my relationship with you.

You may change based on what I'm going to say now, but I have

Christian principles, and I'm a Christian pastor, and this is what the Bible says about sin, and I can't celebrate sin.

See, that's the thing. This is not about tolerance, just letting things go, lie and let lie, live and let live.

The hardcore homosexual agenda doesn't want tolerance. They want celebration.

Celebrate sin, and I don't celebrate fornication. I don't celebrate adultery.

I don't celebrate pornography. I don't celebrate theft. I don't celebrate rape. I don't celebrate murder.

I don't celebrate lying. I don't celebrate hypocrisy. I don't celebrate any of those.

They are sins that can be forgiven because Christ's atonement is so great, and if Jesus didn't celebrate sin,

I'm not going to celebrate sin either. So, Moeller said, and then

I wrap it up here with this particular segment of No Compromise Radio, this is beyond mere incoherence.

It is moral and theological nonsense. More than that, it is a massive statement of ministerial malpractice.

Piers Morgan has had the sense to see that much. You cannot celebrate what you say you know to be sin.

You cannot honestly say that same -sex marriage defies the law of God and then join in the celebration of that ceremony.

And somebody might say, well, these two people live together. Now they're going to get married. Would you go celebrate that?

Well, I'm not celebrating fornication. Actually, fornication is going to end. That's a good thing to celebrate, and we can even celebrate in the common grace of God.

God has given marriage even to pagans, even to unbelievers, and that's worth celebrating, and I find it quite interesting that the first place

Jesus does his first miracle is at a wedding, and the way he does it is fascinating, too.

I wouldn't have picked that miracle, and I wouldn't have picked that place. But anyway, on No Compromise Radio, you can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

What else do I have here? Word of faith movement here. The Greek for word of faith movement, if you ever want to know the

Greek words for word of faith, it's called how to extract money from people.

That's really what it is. It's greed. I wish I knew the Greek word for that, but I was trying to be funny, and it didn't really come off so well.

Well, I'm 17 minutes into the show, and I'm not going to change it. Maybe it's blabbit grabbit. Maybe that's a special onomatopoetic

Greek word. Somebody said to me the other day, oh, it's not onomatopoetic. It's poetic or something they said, and I thought, well, send me the link, and I'll take a look at it.

So this is my Deutsch way of saying it. Prosperity theology, word of faith theology.

Friends, this isn't Christian. Of course, there are some Christians in it, but this word of faith theology is not biblical, and you need to run from it.

And these days, we have a very influential word of faith person invited to sit down with other

Christian pastors in the elephant room, and his name is T .D. Jakes. So when James McDonald invites, or maybe his son

Luke invited, I don't know who invited him, but to sit down and talk about Christian ministry with a man who needs to be evangelized, then we've got a problem.

T .D. Jakes is very influential, and he doesn't believe in the Trinity, and if you don't believe in the Trinity, you're not a

Christian. If you deny the Trinity, you're not a Christian. If you don't understand completely the Trinity, well, welcome to the world of finite sin -influenced mind when you're thinking about the incomprehensible, infinite, holy

God. But if you know the Trinity and deny it, I would affirm that how can you be a

Christian? You know what the Trinity is, and you deny it. It's not that you're a brand new Christian, and you never really thought about the

Father is not the Son, and the Son's not the Spirit, and the Spirit's not the Father, yet God is one, and the Father's God, the

Son's God, and the Spirit's God, and you can't articulate those things. I'm not saying you can't be a Christian, but when you know what the text says, and clearly the

Bible teaches that the Father's God, the Son's God, and the Spirit's God, and you deny that, and you deny three in oneness, then you're not saved.

And here's a man who denies the Trinity. He's a oneness Pentecostal, and he knows to talk about manifestations and not persons.

And then he's invited to talk about that. Now, what if James MacDonald and the rest of the men on the elephant room two discussion table say, well, you know what, we're gonna use this time to evangelize him.

Then I think they're not being honest, and they should tell T .D. Jakes, we're gonna use this time to try to evangelize you. It's six against one for evangelism.

But if it's sitting down to talk about ministry and pastoral issues, and talk about where we might disagree, then that just makes them part of the same team.

I think maybe this whole gospel coalition deal has turned out to be precarious.

Maybe we need to start putting the gospel back in the coalition. And so here you have

T .D. Jakes, we've got a problem. Jake's book,

Because You Are Anointed. Here's what he says, God imparts to a revelation of his plans for your life.

That is how the vision begins. Then in some cases, God confirms that word he spoke personally to you through a prophecy given to you by another man or woman of God.

Really? Jakes says, scripture teaches that receiving Christ as your personal savior does not necessarily make you a son of God.

But if you choose to do so, the power and right to do so is present. Just being saved does not make you a son of God.

Only those who are willing to be led by the spirit actually realize and manifest the sonship of God. Brother, you need to be loose from that kind of thinking.

Where did that come from? Who taught? You know, it's kind of interesting to see that there's no

Bible verses here because there's no Bible verses to back that up. That is horrible.

And then now we're gonna have him called a bishop? He's the bishop? Trinity Broadcasting Network has him on,

Black Entertainment Network has him on. And it's interesting that Trinity Broadcasting Network has somebody on who doesn't believe in the

Trinity. Black Entertainment Network, that's probably better because he probably is entertaining.

Ay -yi -yi. Promise Keepers having him on, that was another thing because they didn't really know what they were doing too much anyway.

But when people like Paul Morton, a New Orleans pastor, says Jake's is a black Billy Graham, I have maybe some issues with Billy Graham and his theology, but it never was

Trinitarian issues. Billy Graham knows the Trinity, taught the Trinity, believes the

Trinity, subscribes to Trinitarian thought from Nicaea. This is not a good comparison.

The Dallas Observer, besides Jake says during an interview and in his sermons, Jesus was a rich man.

He had to have been in order to have supported his disciples and their families during his ministries. What does

Jake's go on to say about his fake Jesus? The myth of the poor Jesus needs to be destroyed because it's holding people back.

Fort Worth Star Telegram says, Jake's who drives a Mercedes has moved with his wife and their five children to a luxurious seven bedroom home with a swimming pool in the

White Rock Lake area of Dallas. He said the home cost more than a million. I do think we need some

Christians who are in first class as well as coach, Jake says. Now, my problem isn't even living in a million dollar house because these days, if you lived in Manhattan or you lived in Santa Cruz or some other places, even

I have a friend who is not worth this now, but in the heyday, he lived in a million dollar house, which is like three bedroom, two bath in San Jose.

So that's not a million dollars, but it's this whole poor Jesus deal. I think he needs to reread 2

Corinthians 8 and 9. I think he needs to reread some of the issues about Jesus and the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has what?

Nowhere to lay his head. All this kind of sex talk that he has,

I don't even want to get into it. I underlined a few things here. I thought I can't even say that on the radio, tying sex to the

Lord's table. I just, it just goes beyond everything. If you're into Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland and E .W.

Kenyon and Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer and Jerry Saville and Joe Osteen and Jesse Duplantis and T .D.

Jakes and Hobart Freeman, then I think you need to study what does the Bible say?

And pretty soon you're going to be thinking to yourself, you know, when people tell me that Jesus traveled around without having to earn a living for three years and the apostles had homes and Jesus had a treasurer and Jesus would consort with the upper echelon of society, therefore

Jesus had a lot of money. Need to reread Matthew 8, verse 20.

Need to read the Jesus of the Bible, not to grab it and blab it and name it and claim it in positive confession and faith confession, life and death are in the power of the tongue, misinterpretation of Proverbs 18, 21.

And using Numbers 14, 28, as you have spoken in my ears, so will I do. This is low -hanging fruit.

Read McConnell's book that talks about this other gospel. Read Michael Horton's book,

Another Gospel from the 1990s. If horses get together, they produce what?

Horses. If dogs get together, they produce what? Dogs. If cats get together, they produce what?

Cats. So the Godhead says, let's make a man in our image and everything produces after its own kind and they produce what?

Gods. Little G gods, you're not human, only human part of you, the flesh is you're wearing.

Is that Mormonism? So in No Compromise Radio today, I try to clear off my plate, clean my plate, elbows on the table, clean your plate.

So we had the Clean Plate Club today. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com and we are glad to be on the station here.

Tell your friends about us, Facebook us. I don't know what else to tell you. You can contact us at info at nocompromise .com.

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.

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