Tomek Krazek Interview (Part 2)

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

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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."

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My name is Mike Abendroth and we have a little slogan around here, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

I love the Word of God and I love to have people think about it and to meditate and to mull and to chew on and to just consider the things of God.

I'm quite convinced that people read the Bible too fast and so just to sit and to read the

Word of God, it's life -changing. And so, a couple of announcements before we get into the show today. Don't forget

Israel. I think we have through October is the deadline to get your registration fees in and then we're going to head off to Israel, Lord willing,

February 17th, next year, 2015. Get fed online. Also teaching

Christology, if you want to go to that website, helping my friends there teach about the person and the work of Christ, eight one -hour lessons, two hours per night every

Tuesday. So, today, back in the studio, good to have you again this week. It just seems like we were here just a few minutes ago,

Tomek. Yeah. The weeks go by fast, don't they? Unbelievable. That's right. Tomek, tell us who you are, where do you live, what you do, and what your goals are in life.

Well, my name is Tomasz Krążek and I live in Poland. See, I had him say that. I live in Poland at this moment in the northern western part of Poland in a small town of Bornysulinowo and this is where we planted a church and I've been a pastor there.

And we are looking, as we look to the future, we want to move to a bigger city with some opportunities, with bigger opportunities, because we'd like to develop a training center and plant another church.

Tomek, you have been a pastor now for 12 years, is it? 10 years. 10 years.

Okay, so how do you start off as a pastor 22 years old, because you're 32 now. How was that? I think of Paul writing to Timothy, don't let anyone look down on your youth.

Tell us an interesting story about, you know, you're young, there must be 60 -year -old businessmen in your church, and how did that all work?

Yeah, I can probably better tell you how not to start. So yeah, when we got married and soon

I started planting a church in this town, Bornysulinowo, where there was no gospel ministry before.

Never? Never. There had never been an evangelical church? Never. Okay. Never. So yeah, first couple years, ministry pretty much focused on evangelism, trying to meet people in town and trying to build relationships with people, because in Poland it takes a long time to build trust, because no one will want to listen to you, no one will want to hear what you have to say, no one will come to any meetings, no one will accept your invitation unless you actually build some trust.

Let me interrupt you for a second, Tomek. The Catholic Church has such a stronghold in Poland, so if you have a small

Bible Baptist kind of church, they're going to think of it as a cult or a sect.

Is that right? Yeah, that's right. That's what they would think, especially in smaller towns.

Big cities, it's changing a little bit, but yeah, in small towns, that's what they would think, and they would actually try to create some kind of opposition, and we've experienced that over the years of our ministry.

They would, for example, try to discourage people from reading our

Bible. Oh, interesting. Yes, they would tell people that it's the Baptist Bible, it's the wrong

Bible. So actually, at one time, they were taking the Bibles away from children who were given

Bibles from Gideons in front of the school, so they would discourage from that.

They would also slander us if we did some day camps, trying to work with people or teach people English or do

VBS with kids. They would try to slander us. They would try to tell the community that we are not safe to hang out with, that we will eventually brainwash the kids or will actually even try to pass drugs to children through the snacks that we prepare and things like this and crazy stuff.

Tomek, when you think of gospel resistance and the enemy and truth and the battle for the mind, spiritual warfare, this invisible warfare that we know exists but can't see, we know it's true because the

Scripture teaches it. Tell us the story that you told our church about, in light of the persecution,

God providentially and marvelously exposing people to the gospel. Yeah, He does.

He does. You know, no matter how strong the power of the Catholic Church would seem to be or the local government, it's not going to stand in God's way to build

His church. If He wants to build His church, He will. Christ said, I'll build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

So we've seen that. I mean, I remember this one time as we rented a place for our church gatherings, there was a man who lived above who didn't like us and he would try to sometimes stand in the window, wait as we go to church and throw rocks at us and potatoes sometimes.

Were they new potatoes? New? Yeah. They were not cooked. Oh, okay. So they were harder.

They were harder. And he would also play music. He would turn down the speakers to the floor and he would play music during our services.

And you said that was disco music, bad disco music? It was bad disco music. Was it bad American disco music or bad

Polish disco music? It was bad Polish disco music. We call it disco polo. And so then he made some accusations, but in light of that, something happened.

Yeah, he made some accusations. First he tried writing to different newspapers, then to police.

Eventually he wrote a letter to the government, Polish government, Department of Protecting Children Rights in Warsaw.

So the department had to, of course, react. So they contacted the local government of our town and the mayor sent his kind of a vice mayor, the second most important person in town to investigate on us, to come meet with us and interview us.

So she came and she asked questions and we tried to answer as best as we could.

Did she come to your house or what? She came, we met at her church actually. And eventually she came to one of our camps, so she was exposed to the gospel and eventually she became a believer.

And then her son became a believer and then her husband became a believer. So that's exactly what

God is into. You know, I think of how God is so sovereign and many times, probably in Poland as well, in America, we think he's sovereign over everything, but evil somehow is, he's not, and you know, there must be free will.

That's how we explain evil and everything. But I just go back to Acts chapter two and Acts chapter four, and to think that God was sovereign over the worst sin ever committed.

That is the crucifixion, the murder of Jesus Christ, and he can take sin and then make it glorify him.

And so he can take the sin of this man and turn it into the glorification and the exaltation of his son.

That's amazing sovereignty. Yes, it is. I don't want to worship a God who's less sovereign than he is.

No, no, no. Speaking of which, I think of Poland. How is the evangelical church in Poland when it comes to the sovereignty of God?

I guess we could say Arminian, semi -Pelagian, Augustinian, Calvinistically. There's a resurgence in America through the ministries, for instance, of James Boyce and R .C.

Sproul, John MacArthur, many people who are teaching the Bible. And so we have

Reformed faith, soteriology, five souls of the Reformation, Tulip, however we want to describe it.

Is there the same kind of thing going on in Poland, an undercurrent of the sovereignty of God?

Or it's pretty much just the Arminian, you know, they're telling the truth about Jesus, of course, and his death and his resurrection.

People are getting saved, but it's more of a man -centered view. Well, I'm afraid the majority is

Arminian. There is a lot of man -centered views in the church, but definitely

I can also say there is a resurgence of the Calvinistic, Augustinian movement in Poland, going back to the

Word of God and studying the Word of God and preaching the Word of God and the five souls of Reformation.

There is a resurgence and I see more and more churches like that.

And in my region, and I am fortunate because in my region, most churches are

Calvinistic. Tomek, it's amazing. When I was there for the, what's the conference name?

Faithful to the Word? Yes. You put together a Faithful to the Word conference, and I don't know how many folks came.

I mean, it doesn't matter to me the numbers, that's not really the issue. But in such a country like Poland, where there are hardly any evangelicals, let alone how many

Reformed faith evangelicals would be there, to have a conference in the middle of essentially nowhere, to have all those folks come out, a hundred and some people showed up and them, the ones, especially in English, who could tell me, most of them spoke

English. They've got the Lagos Bible application. They're reading

R .C. Sproul. They have a John MacArthur study Bible. They're reading John Murray.

And I just was very encouraged to think that God is building His church in Poland. Now, we need more training.

We need more men, but the ones that came to the conference, they seemed to have really solid theology, asked the right questions.

And I just felt a brotherly love and camaraderie in the gospel in Poland.

And that's what we see happening with this new generation that God is raising. That's why we want to come and try to meet this need of this hunger for the

Word of God and provide good resources for people where they can be trained and good training program so that they can be trained to expose the

Bible. So Tomek, you talked at Sunday school when you were here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and I think it's probably online, the

Sunday school hour, about how few churches there are in Poland, 0 .1

% or less evangelicals, and how out of all the municipalities and towns and cities in Poland, there are hardly any evangelical churches.

And so your strategy is, I think the right one, let's train up men to do expository preaching and then send them to those cities.

So you're going to go to probably a larger city, start a training center. What's your philosophy with this gospel training other men to take over the country?

Yeah, our church is not the only one, and it's not unique, but there are very few churches.

If you look at towns like ours, smaller towns, as the map that I showed on Sunday, you can see that there are no churches in most smaller towns of Poland.

And so, yeah, I think that we need to first influence the bigger cities.

We have to influence the Ephesus of Poland, the Athens of Poland, and Corinth of Poland, cities with resources, cities with people.

We need to influence those cities so that then from those cities, there will be men trained to go into the smaller cities of Poland and influence those cities with the gospel.

Why is it so important to teach these men expository preaching? Well, it is important because as we look at the history of God's work in this world,

I mean, you look back at Nehemiah and you see that the spiritual reformation came through the word of God, and you look at Haggai and people stopped rebuilding the temple because of various reasons.

They started taking care of their homes. And then you read in chapter one of Haggai, at the end of chapter one, that then the

Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and the remnant of the people, and they came and worked on the house of the

Lord of hosts. But when you move a little bit earlier, you see that it came as a result of teaching the word of God.

It was Haggai as the messenger of God who came and spoke the word of the Lord. And as a consequence, their hearts were stirred up.

So this is what God does. Then you look at second Timothy and you see the prediction of the difficult times that will come, times of people will be lovers of themselves.

And they will try to gather teachers who will teach what tickles their ears and all of that.

And you see that Paul gives one remedy. He says, preach the word of God, stick to the word of God and preach the word of God, because it is the word of God that is breathed out by God.

It comes from God and is profitable. And so that's why we believe it's important because it is the word of God that makes, uh, uh, makes a genuine transformation.

Tomek, I'm looking at Deuteronomy chapter one, verse five, beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law.

And it's one of the first occasions I think of expository preaching, exposing people to the meaning of the text.

This is what God said. This is what he means by what he says. And we get up and we don't invent the message.

We just explain what he has said. And then it changes people. It changes the way they think, then what they do, how they think about God themselves, others.

And so really as a country goes, uh, you can figure out where preaching is because preaching is what changes the lives of people as Christ is proclaimed.

Tomek, tell us a little bit about your sending agency. If somebody wanted to support you or know more about you, your

Polish website's going to be difficult for our English listeners. Yes. But what about the website for your sending agency?

Well, the website is, uh, imusa .org or internationalmessengers .org.

It will take you to the same website. And I think there's a link for a bio sketches of various missionaries.

So you can find, you can find the link that will link you to us. And there will be a description of our ministry and, uh, there will be a phone number.

You can feel free to call the agency and they will tell you more about our ministry.

Uh, you can also send checks, uh, to the address that is given on the website. You just put in a memo that it is for, uh,

Tomek and Ivanka Krasik ministry. And that that's, that's the way money will eventually get transferred to us.

Yeah. It's interesting because, uh, there are philosophies for missionaries, uh, in United States churches.

And so how do you pick a missionary? That's always a good question. And they never taught me that in seminary.

I I've been to several seminaries and taught at seminaries and, and maybe they teach that now or some other seminaries, but didn't really know what to do.

And so over the years through trial and through error, we at Bethlehem Bible Church say this, basically, we want to support other people who do what we're doing here.

So it's like an extension of what we would do. So we want to talk about Christ -centered expository preaching.

We want to talk about second Timothy chapter two, training up other men for gospel ministry.

And so while I like, um, you know, clean water and how to make a well, or I like, you know, doctors kind of ministry or carpenters ministry, building buildings, those things are all fine.

And I don't want to say that they're irrelevant. But since we're about expository preaching and training men, we want to support other people who do the very same thing.

So when I saw Tomek and went there to Poland, I thought, this is the kind of man we need to support for gospel ministry, because we really are doing ministry together with the same philosophy.

Do you think that's the right, if your church grows to be so large that you send out missionaries or want to support missionaries, is that what you would do?

And that's what we would do. I believe so. And, um, yeah, I think, I think the, um, the most important mission of the church is, is, is preaching the word of God and planting other churches.

I think that's, that's the plan of God for this world at this age. Tomek, how about this?

Charismatic mysticism, subjectivism comes along with a lot of Bible teaching.

Is there a relationship between expository preaching, if it's, if it's emphasized and then taking care of subjective mysticism, replacing it?

In other words, you've got preaching, you've got subjective mysticism, charismatic, I was led,

I was told I, you know, God told me, how can both be there? How can both be true? Does one take care of the other?

If you emphasize one, does it eclipse the other? I know there's a charismatic influence in Poland.

What's your strategy? What are your thoughts in general? Well, there's a strong charismatic movement in Poland.

Probably it's the strongest movement now among not only evangelicals, but even Catholics. So it is an extremely strong movement.

And, um, yeah, there is a, there is also a strong movement of not the extreme charismatic things, but there's also this neo -Calvinist movement, um, in Poland, uh, growing.

Well, uh, what's our strategy? Well, I don't know what our strategy exactly is.

It's, uh, we just want to focus on preaching the word of God and stay faithful and expose the word of God as it is, and, and present the word of God as, as what it is.

And, and just trust that people eventually will understand that if you want to hear the words of God, you just, you just study the

Bible and not rely on the subjective, uh, senses and feelings you have, because that just creates all kinds of problems.

Now, when I was asked the question, when I was doing a conference for you, I was very glad to go, by the way, you were all very gracious and generous and opened your homes to me.

And it was a question answer time and you were my translator. And I was asked about God talking outside of scripture, still small voices.

Um, what, why I was asked the question, why is this popular that people want to hear from God outside the word?

Now I gave an answer and probably caused some trouble. So now I'm going to ask you the question and then you can cause me trouble.

Why do you think it is so appealing to people who are really saved? They're born again.

They want to hear from God outside the word. Why is that so appealing? Why do people long for that and yearn for that?

Well, I think there are a few reasons. Uh, one of them is people probably are lazy. No, but seriously, there are people who are just lazy.

They, they don't want to open their Bibles. They don't want to study. They don't want to put the hard work into reading the word of God and understanding the word of God is, is just easier to say, well,

God told me this. God told me that. And I'm interrupting just for a second. We know from second

Timothy chapter two, verse 15, study to show yourselves approved. Oh, workman, it does take hard work, different languages.

It takes toil. And so we're laughing because I gave the answer in Poland, uh, that, you know,

I think people are lazy. That was one of the reasons. And so that's, that's the inside joke. So keep going. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah.

So that is one of the reasons, but not everyone is, is lazy. I think there's another reason. I think there is this temptation.

It's, it comes as part of our human sinful nature where, where we just,

I think it's part of trying to be self -centered, man -centered where I think it makes you feel better when you build this, this, you present this picture of you as a person that God actually speaks to.

And, and it kind of creates this, this authority and the eyes of others, because God told you something and it makes you feel better that actually

God speaks to you. And so I think that's another reason why it's so tempting for people to go that way.

People say, well, it's a relationship with God. And so I talked to him and he talks to me.

I think that's another reason. Don't you? Yeah, that definitely is. But can you really, at the end of the day, believe in the sufficiency of scripture, sola scriptura, the scriptures are not deficient.

Can you, Tomek, believe in sufficiency of scripture and affirm that God is speaking today to us?

In the end, I don't believe so. It's, it's, it's contradicts itself.

I often, as I talk with some, some guys, some men that are my friends and who have those tendencies and I'll ask them a question, for example, so what do you do if as elders, you meet together and you all differ in your opinions and, and all of you say, this is what

God told me this morning as you prayed about it. What do you do? They say, well, we'll look at the word of God.

We'll look at what Bible says. Then my question is why, why don't you do it before? You know, why don't you, why don't you start with the

Bible? Bible is sufficient. Right. So if you say, God told me something, how do I know if it's true or not?

Because we believe in, in errant prophecies, prophecies are inerrant. We'll have to check the Bible to see if it would match up.

Then why don't you just go directly to the Bible? Exactly. So if you are listening overseas, we do have listeners in Europe.

You want to be trained for gospel ministry, you can go to EBTC and type that in European Bible training center in Berlin and get trained there.

And one day, Lord willing, we could either have an extension of, or something similar to a training center in Poland for Polish pastors to preach the word, right?

Yeah. Praying for that. And hopefully that will happen. Good. Tomek, you're going to be heading down to Capitol Hill Baptist church for the nine marks weekender.

What's a, what's a weekend or what are you going to learn there? A weekender is an event that focuses on the topic of church theme of church.

So it will touch on all kinds of issues of the church, like church discipline, service organization, just anything that's related to the church.

That's, that's what the event is about. As I understand it, I went to several years ago, Mark Devers, the pastor there, and just a great opportunity to see things behind the scenes.

The shepherd's conference in Los Angeles, you get a lot of world -class Bible teaching, and there are so many men, they can't you behind the scenes, but at Capitol Hills, they've golfered the, the, the nine marks weekend or where you can sit in an elders meeting.

I got to go to Mark Devers house to have lunch with him. How nice was that? You get to do that because you're a senior pastor.

And so the senior pastors go with him. The associate pastors go with the associate. Tomek, thank you so much for being on No Compromise Radio, coming here to preach the word.

Often I think to myself, the world is going to, you know, purgatory and to hell in a hand basket, what's going to happen.

And then I see a new generation of preachers raised by the Lord to proclaim the truth. And I think you're one of them.

And so thank you for your ministry. Well, thank you very much. 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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