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Andy Stanley and Patriarchy
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and wow, Steve, it must be summer because you have shorts on and so do I, but you�ve got those funky kind of foot things. What are those?
These are the same sandals that the disciples wore. They look like it. They actually smell like it. Well, you know, I picked them up while I was in Jerusalem.
Now, what happens in the Mormon Church, do they do foot washing there? No. No foot washing. Well, it�s a description there in John 13, eh?
I know, but we never did it, eh?
How about, what would they teach, would they do what we do, that it�s just a description, not a prescription?
It has been so long since I�ve been there, but I would just say� It�s a long trek to Utah. Your feet must be dirty. You know, most of the meetings and the talks and whatnot were really not about Scripture.
They don�t exposit Scripture, and you would never have, like, the same person teaching week after week after week. It�s different people getting up and, you know, just usually talking about experiences, what happened on their mission trip to, you know, Guatemala or, you know, whatever.
Very rarely were, was there anything where you could write down notes and trace them back to some Bible verse or Book of Mormon verse or Doctrine and Covenants verse or something like that. They just don�t do that.
Hmm. Well, today I received in the mail Patty, our secretary, is gone, so I walked out and got the mail, and somebody sent me a book, and it was from Methuen Mass. Oh, nice. And I thought, �Well, this is either going to be really good or really bad.
And so I opened it carefully in case any anthrax might come out.
Always a threat here at Bethlehem Bible Church.
That's a Greek word, by the way anthraxus, �red-hot coals. Yeah. And I opened it up, and it was an L. N. G. White book. I knew something was wrong when I saw the person�s name is on the return envelope or address there, and it said John 8, 32, and I thought, �I think the truth will set you free.
They�re trying to send me some Catholic book or Seventh-day Adventist book or JW book or something like that. And it was, and it was as predicted. So did they convert you? Well, I rode my bicycle past the Seventh-day Adventist church a couple Saturdays ago, and there's a guy who's got a huge sign, I don't know, five-foot by five-foot, big picketing sign, and he stands on public property on the sidewalk, and it says, you know, �L. N. G. White was a kook.
That's �cook. It actually says �cook. She didn't cook much.
I don't know what she did. But anyway, I thought, you know, what do I do? So sometimes I ride past, and I'll say, �The investigative judgment was a lie because that's a certain doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist.
But he doesn't like put his fist up to go, �Yes. He doesn't affirm me in any way, shape, or form. I rode past the other day, and I said, �I'm going to go home and have a rare steak in L. N. G. White's honor.
And he just looked at me. So I thought we were teammates, but I guess not. Probably not. Yeah. Would you ever picket a place? Probably not. Yeah, with like signs and stuff.
That just doesn't sound like me, so I'd have to say no.
I just got a flashback to R .C. Sproul sitting by an abortion clinic at a Planned Parenthood building on the sidewalk, and he had his oxygen there, but he wasn't picketing. I mean, he was there to try to say to ladies on the way in.
Just talking to people. Anything you're reading that's good or fun or anything like that?
Good or fun, not really. I mean, I've been reading through multiple commentaries on the 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith. If that's fun, then yeah. Yeah, sometimes that is fun. Well, I mean, especially, I do enjoy, because one of the things I like about R .C. Sproul's commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith is he just throws anecdotes right in the personal anecdotes, right in the middle of this thing, and you just go, I don't see that in the confession, but okay, you know?
Well, I guess fun. And the confessions are related to how much you subscribe to them.
Ooh, shots fired.
Steve, I don't know if you realize this, here, I've got the CBD catalog in front of me, and of course, Andy Stanley's been in the news. You can get a three-pack for $5 .49 of Andy's book. I didn't know he even had this book, but this is, I'm not kidding, this is the book title.
Okay. Since nobody's perfect, dot, dot, dot, how good is good enough? Now before I read you the little subtitle here at CBD, I mean, Church history is replete with people trying to answer that question, and you know, it could be Roman Catholicism, and you know, condign merit, congruent merit, and I'll try really hard, and even though it's sinful and not quite good enough, God sees that sincerity and counts it as really good, you know, this is crazy.
Well, I think I can explain this. I think you could. It's the old evangelism explosion, you know, discipleship evangelism thing. You know, if you were to appear before God tonight and he were to say, why should I let you into my heaven?
Here's the answer. Because I met the Andy Stanley standard.
Whoa, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Who determines what that standard is if it's not Scripture? Andy. Whoever the leader is, right? Whoever the popular teacher is. Now let's see what the...
I really thought, you know, it was going to be Andy Stanley's commentary on the Old Testament. Mosaic republic. He's like, you could sell a book, you know, for $19 .95, and the title of the book would be Who Cares, you know?
Who cares about the Old Testament? Who cares? My church is almost bigger than Osteen's. I think that's the goal, by the way. To get the biggest church? I think so. I'm not sure. Well, that is a goal. It's a goal, right?
Here's what it says on the CBD catalog, good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. That's in quotation marks. Okay, so far, I mean, do I need to keep reading? Is this like the...
Yeah, because there has to be a bailout quote here, right? I mean, I'm sure that Andy is going to be rock solid. Should I be calling him Dr. Stanley or something?
Well, it's... Lord Stanley? I pity the poor fool who thinks, you know, now that Andy Stanley's a better theologian than his dad. I mean, I've got all kinds of quibbles with his father, more than quibbles, but at least he's orthodox most of the time.
If the two of them were in a competition, would the winner get the Stanley Cup?
I had to ask. I always remember in seminary looking at the eternal security book by Charles Stanley, and I could be wrong, but I want to say page 164 talked about weeping and gnashing of teeth. That was a certain spot in heaven because he was so anti-lordship.
How do you get people in heaven that have done certain things? And I always thought that was a little...
Was that towards the top of page 164? I don't know.
But I had memorized it for many years. Maybe it's 146. 641. Because I know... Well, no, he doesn't write books that long. Although I did see the new Liz George Harvest House Women's Bible Study. I mean, a women's Bible.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. She's got like a... She's like a study Bible. Wow. Liz George Study Bible, in essence.
Probably be most popular among men, would be my guess.
Well, it depends if their wives have told them to read it. Oh, honey, you'll really like this. And I like Liz and Jim, so I would never say, you know, where's Liz's husband? I might say that about Beth, but I wouldn't say that about Liz.
Beth George. Beth George. Who is the guy that teaches you don't have to ask for forgiveness? Was that Wally George?
You just... Wally George, that old crank in the Orange County TV.
He used to be on Channel 56 or something in Southern California, and then his daughter was an actress. She was blonde. I did not know that. Yeah, she was in Ferris Bueller's Day Off or something like that.
Oh, well, yeah. That's almost like that.
Who could forget her dramatic scene?
A surprising number of modern day skeptics and Christians believe this, that good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. It sounds like a cake song, by the way. But is it actually biblical? Stanley says no, asserting that God's Word tells us nobody is good enough for heaven.
He explains how Jesus's grace can save sinners when good deeds can't. 96 pages, each three soft covers from Multnomah.
Wait, 96 pages? Uh-huh. Well, and I've seen, you know, how they typeset things these days. So 96 pages is like 48 real pages.
Well, I think it says here, you know, I'm surprised that CBD is actually listing margin widths now, but it says four and a half inches margin.
This is, I mean, that's a good sized newspaper article. And how much is it?
Well, they were retail, $14 .97, but now CBD gives you three for $5 .49.
That $14 .97, not only should he have to autograph it, he should personally deliver it to your house.
And I wonder, here would be my question, has he changed his view? Mm. Uh-huh. Nobody's good enough. That's what he says. Well, if we'd like some biblical input, Romans 2 .13, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
It is an impossibility, of course, because of Adam's fall for anybody now to live, but the principle is still true, right? The principle is still true that if you were to keep the law, if Adam would have kept the law, then God would have said, here's your reward.
But of course, he didn't do it.
Somebody else came along. What does that mean, though, that we have to be doers of the law to be justified?
Well, if you can't do the law to be justified, then you're going to have to trust in one in chapter three who has done the law, and he will be your stead, your surety, your anchor, your representative.
But isn't the law in the Old Testament, therefore, according to Andy... Oh, now I see where you're going.
I'm slow on the uptake. Yeah, I mean, come on, that whole Old Testament deal. We need to unhitch. I actually, this happened to me, Steve, therefore it must be true. That's how I'm... Andy started all his, you know, bonker stuff, and I thought, well, this just makes me want to read the Old Testament all the more, and I just was reading in Chronicles.
And the queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon, and Solomon had asked not for riches or anything else a long life. He asked for wisdom, and God was pleased and gave him wisdom like no one had received it before, and then he gave him everything else, too.
And the queen of Sheba said, the half has not been told. That's where we get that slogan. The half. Uh-huh. And so I think, you know what, the half has not been told about the spiral down into unorthodoxy and to Andy Stanley.
Sometimes because I watched a video of him the other day, and it's almost like, I feel like he's like testing me. You know, I'm going to say something, and then he's like looking, I mean, obviously he's not looking for a response, but it's as if he expects to be pelted or, you know, pelted with tomatoes or something.
It's like, can you believe I'm saying this?
As Dave Letterman used to say, they've, something really, pelted me with rocks and garbage. That was the slogan by Letterman. Pelted. Well, you know, the thing is, Steve, both of us, and on the radio, and of course when we're preaching, we use kind of inflammatory language or provocative language to get people to think.
You know, both of us have said, are you saved by works? You know, the answer is yes. Not your works, but Christ's works. You know, kind of an R .C. Sproul-ism. Or Sunday I said, you know, all religions lead to God.
They lead to His judgment. Right. And so those kind of things, I don't mind, but then you better make sure you give the correct answer afterwards. And Andy, I think, just says, well, what does the culture want?
And I'll just give the culture what they want.
Give the people what they want.
Steve, I was reading Hebrews chapter 5 as I'm studying this week about this section where the writer says, essentially, you don't want all this Melchizedek high priest talk. You need to grow up. You know, I know you want to talk about how good the children's programs are, but, you know, stop sucking your thumb and having milk only.
You need to grow up. And he says it in chapter 5, verse 11, about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.
You need milk, not solid food. Here's a fascinating thing. Pastor to this, in this book, the writer, the author, whoever this is, from Paul to, I think somebody once said Mary might have written it. Do you think that was a Catholic that said that?
Probably. I'm going to vote against Mary. Okay.
Here, this inspired writer is saying, okay, the problem isn't the word. The problem isn't the sermon. The problem isn't doctrine and Christianity. And now let's bring it in to Annie Stanley. The problem isn't the Old Testament.
The problem is these people wouldn't hear it. I mean, they audibly could hear it, but they weren't responding, digesting, understanding, teaching others. They weren't accepting the truth. What the writer did not do is, well, you know what, they won't accept it, so I'll try a different way.
We'll just get rid of that. That to me is the crux of modern, pragmatic Christianity and evangelicalism. We have a message. The culture's dumber, the culture doesn't read, the culture is post-Christian, pre-Christian, persecuting Christian.
They don't want anything to do with antithetical thought and exclusivity of Jesus. So what do we do? We'll try something else. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, no, no, the problem isn't the word. The problem's you.
So now what do I do? Do I change because you're the problem, and then I give you, the baby, what you want?
Well, I think a lot of that is reflected in the sort of march to liberalism and political correctness, because this woman I read in this Christianity Today article, she says in an interview, she says, we're going to lose people to non-gospel belief if we don't absorb what the world says about the patriarchy, what the world says about violence against women, what the world says.
Now, we've talked about this. We believe that there should be consequences for violence against anybody, right, and all these kind of things, but we don't have to take on the terminology and the thinking of the world in order to reach people with the gospel.
We don't have to rage against the patriarchy in order for people to get saved. That's not a gospel principle.
It is true whether you've experienced it or not, but Steve, especially with your line of work before you were a pastor, I'm sure most of these people who are raging against the machine of patriarchy and women and protect them and everything else, and of course we have wives and children and daughters who need to be protected, but I wonder how much they've protected them.
You, I'm sure, have gone into people's homes for domestic abuse and have arrested the perpetrator whose inflicted damage on his children are on his wife, haven't you? Yes. I mean, how many people who run their mouths about all this have ever walked into, I mean, and domestic violence, I don't have to tell you, that's a good way for the policeman to get hurt.
Yeah.
You're risking your own life. Yeah, those are the most dangerous calls that there are, because the woman who has just been beaten up, when you turn and go to arrest her husband, a lot of times the woman jumps on your back.
Yeah, she doesn't want her husband. No, she doesn't want him going to jail. You know, it's like, hey, everything was fine until you went and took him to jail. It was, what? Look at you. You know, you don't...
The thinking that says, well, you believe what the Bible teaches about complementarianism, about male headship in the home, in the church, makes you somehow condone violence or aggression. You're complicit in it.
I just think these people, I think they know better, but they're hoping their audience doesn't think at all.
Yeah, I mean, the truth is, I get, I mean, it's like a surge of adrenaline when I think of, you know, a husband beating his wife, when I think about him, you know, abusing his wife or abusing his kids or whatever.
I mean, I physically have to, like, restrain myself and just remind myself, you know, what I need to do as opposed to what I want to do, because I, you know, I don't respond well to that. I don't like it.
Well, what happened, Steve, and I know you will, you know, you'll agree with me. Okay, complementarianism. It's had its run, and then now there's some bad people who have done some bad things in light of that.
Therefore, it must be wrong. Now let's go to egalitarianism, and then when egalitarianism has its day and there are bad people at the top there, then we won't go back because that's not how the liberal society works.
We'll have to put women in charge. Well, then what if bad women are in charge and there are bad things that happen?
Well, that's okay because they're women. Yeah, I know, I know. That's exactly how it works.
When you look at the Bible, the Bible teaches loving discipline, and pretty much no one can deny, okay, does the Bible teach you should spank your children or use a correction like that besides verbal correction?
And the answer is Solomon teaches that. Well, what do people say? I've tried it, it doesn't work. Well, that could mean all kinds of things. That could mean you're not doing it properly, you're not doing it lovingly, you're not doing it, you're mad when you do it, because something doesn't work.
That's not the test of truth. Well, complementarianism doesn't work.
That was never my question. Does it work? The question is, what does the Bible teach, right? Well, here, you know, I've tried being nice to my wife. I've tried talking nicely to her. I've tried taking her out and wooing her and being romantic toward her.
It doesn't work.
Yeah, so then just stop. Okay, let's keep going. I've tried to evangelize my neighbor. I've tried to evangelize my kids. And you know, I've actually done that for 15 years. I think it doesn't work. It doesn't work?
I need to try something else? Well, what? The problem is not with the message. We've become dull of hearing so often at the risk of alienating people. I haven't become dull of hearing. I struggle with that, but I haven't become dull.
I know what the Bible says. It's this kind of lifeway, metropolis, megalopolis. What's that new shark movie, Mega? Doesn't that look dull? Oh, yeah, it does.
Mega. Yeah, straight to video. So, here's the question. You know, if people say, well, biblical methods don't work, well, okay, well, let's use worldly methods because obviously the wisdom of the world is much greater than the wisdom of God.
Isn't that right?
Mm-hmm. Steve, I'm feeling you. I'm thinking that's working. I think that's one of the new love languages. It's the language of the world. We can incorporate that into the new expanded five love languages book, since that's kind of in front of me here.
Expanded. Expanded and revised. There's all these numbers. I guess numbers sell. Five love languages, seven men, seven women, the Eric Metaxas books, 40 days of purpose. I think numbers sell. Numbers always sell.
If you want numbers, you've got to give numbers. Seven year tribulation. Is that a book? It could be. It would sell. Let's write it. Uh-huh. Here, it doesn't even have to be a book. You have 2018 class of.
Numbers everywhere. So, I don't understand why then a Jesus calling book for graduates would sell. It doesn't have a number.
Well, it's on caller ID though. You know, Jesus, how do you know he's calling? Because I can look at my phone and I see.
There was an apartment complex down the street from our house when I was 12 years old. And it was called the August Moon. And I didn't really know many people that lived in apartment complexes until I went to school.
And then some families did, right? They couldn't afford a house or divorces or whatever. And they always had a commercial to try to get people to come to the apartment complex. That's not really a good place you want to be.
You know, you want to be in a place like Santa Monica Rent Control. No one gets in. They don't have to advertise. They de-advertise. And they always put their ads to this tune. The August Moon is calling you.
I just thought, I don't want to go there. It's bad.
It's worse than like a dorm room. Sounds like lounge music or something.
Uh-huh. Well, we've got more to talk about when it comes to Beth Moore and everything else. But I guess she's not the new president of the SBC. Would you have left the SBC if Beth was the president? I would have if I was in it.
Well, I think she's got time for maybe J .D. Greer to nominate her next time. Well, that'd be swell. Uh-huh. And I'm sure the Washington Post would give their... Unqualified endorsement.
Uh-huh. I mean, again, when the church or when church leaders say things like, well, this doesn't work or this doesn't apply to us anymore, what we need are new methods, new thinking, new... New measures.
Finney, and let's just import the world's vocabulary, the world's philosophies. Well, you no longer have a church. Well, it's a good tax write-off, though. Well, sure. Yeah, it's a nice shelter for the money, but it's not much of a shelter for God's children.
I know. Well, Pastor Steve and I are here. NoCompromiseRadio .com if you want to pull up other shows. If you want to do us the biggest favor you can, tell other people about the show.
Tell every man, woman, and child. Man, woman, and child. He's gone. Touchdown.
Lyle Bremse. The Huskers. You can write us info at NoCompromiseRadio .com, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com, or the Tuesday guy. Tuesday guy. Or whatever.
You're at SomeCompromiseRadio .com. Okay. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.