God Is Dead

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.

Opening Reflections on the Show, Aging, and Celebrity Christianity

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and in real time, it is October 2nd, 2020. And so, it�s gloomy out, but pretty, it�s pretty. We have some fall foliage, and the colors are changing, right?

You know what that means? The leaves are dying. Our slogan here on the radio show is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. I�m just trying to get you to think. Probably less provocative these days than in the old days, but that�s okay.

You know, we�re getting older. I�m 60 years old. Probably the 55-year-olds to the 65-year-olds listen. Maybe a few others. Don�t forget, we have a YouTube channel, No Compromise Radio, I don�t know, 150 videos there.

I�ve been getting emails from people, and they�ve been asking me if I was in the American Gospel, the second one. That�s true, and I was thankful that Brandon put me in that show. I was supposed to be in the first one, but I had radiation, was tired, and told him no.

So there was my chance to be a big star, a big-shot celebrity star in Christianity. I could have been somebody. It�s better that I�m not, and now that I�m 60, I mean, when you think about celebrity Christianity and all the stuff going on now, I don�t know if it�s true or not, but Robbie Zacharias, James MacDonald, Tulian Chevechin, who else is in the news these days?

Lots of people in the news, in evangelical news. I don�t know, there�s something else, there�s some other, oh, like down at Liberty University and all that stuff. It�s better to live in anonymity, therefore sometimes I think, why am I doing this show?

Why would I do that to myself? In the old days, if you would have asked me, well, why just start it, I probably could have said in a humble-like way, spread the gospel, but there had to be something in me that thought this could propel me into, I wouldn�t have said stardom, nor will I say it now, but into prominence maybe, evangelical prominence.

Well, 3 ,000 shows later, I�m still here in the same studio with the exact same equipment, although the headphones, the earpiece wore out and I did replace those, but I don�t think that I don�t have one, every cord�s the same, the mic stands the same, the desk is the same, the table�s the same, the chairs are the same, everything�s the same.

So I�ve got a couple extra discs for storage, that�s about it. But it�s interesting, it has introduced me to a lot of people, many of you, I talked to somebody even recently, Grant, the other day on the phone, and I rejoice in that, and I�ve gone to a lot of places and visited a lot of places because of it, and so if I can help you or spur you on or give you 24 and a half minutes of who knows what, then that�s fine.

Hymns, Psalms, and the Meaning of Victory in Jesus

Sometimes I will critique lyrics of hymns, I would never critique a lyric of a psalm. We should sing more psalms, don�t you think? Victory in Jesus, do you like that song? Victory in Jesus. Now, sometimes we like songs because they�re emotionally connected to people and places maybe that we love, experiences.

My mother loved Victory in Jesus, she�s been dead now, I don�t know, 12 years, something like that, maybe longer, 14 years. It�s amazing how you just kind of forget, well, what year did she die? So, if I�m thinking 12, it�s probably 14.

She loved Victory in Jesus, and I still remember her at Omaha Bible Church. By the way, you should check out My Brother�s Preaching, Christ-centered, omahabiblechurch .com, you can pull it up, Pat Ebendroth.

Pat and I are supposed to be leading a trip to Israel in 2021, I give it a 0 chance. I think we will wait until November 1st to say we�re not going to go, but I think we�re going to delay it for one year.

I think after the election, we�ll know more, but we have to decide with Lufthansa, the air carrier, by November 1st, and we�ll get a few people dropping out, some people don�t know, so it�s just not a good time, especially now with Israel, you can�t go farther than a kilometer away from your house, so it�s locked down tighter than I think maybe any other country.

When I travel, I�ve done it twice, I have to take a COVID test within 14, I mean, quarantine for 14 days or take a COVID test. So I had the one that went in my nose and like down to my brain, up into my brain.

That one did not feel good. And then the other one, it was a drive-up, drive-through, and it was like self-administered, so I was easy on myself. Can you imagine if you do a self-COVID test and you just have to jam it down your nose?

But my mom loved Victory in Jesus, and she was at Omaha Bible Church, and I remember her kind of toward the end of her life, chemotherapy, I don�t know if she had a wig on or not, but that�s the memory that I have, you know, she�s got a wig on or something, you know, protecting, you know, blocking her bald head, singing Victory in Jesus.

And if I think about it too long, I�m going to end up crying. But somebody just sent this letter to me with a couple different hymns, and one was the lyrics of Victory in Jesus, and I thought to myself, �Should I really like that song?

Is it just a memory You know, in the garden or something, the dew is still on the roses or whatever, you know, and it just reminds me of somebody�s funeral, not me, but maybe you. �I heard an old, old story, how a Savior came from glory.

Okay, do you like that so far? That�s pretty good, right? Nothing to complain about there. �How He gave His life on Calvary to save a wretch like me. Now, so far, after I read those two lines, maybe you don�t like the tune, but so far, I don�t know how you can�t like the song, even if you�re not emotionally attached.

�I heard about His groaning, of His precious blood�s atoning. I mean, that�s worth singing about. �Then I repented of my sins and won the victory. Okay, the response to Christ�s life, death, resurrection, is faith, right?

The fruit of faith is repentance, so I don�t care if you say you repented, we know that�s a gift, and won the victory. I probably would change that. I�d probably say something about, �Jesus won the victory and I repented of my sins, and I repented of my sins because He won the victory.

It doesn�t quite work, but that�s all right. So, that�s my first little, �Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever. Okay, true. Can you imagine? Forever. Forever saved, forever justified, forever a friend of God, forever in heaven, beholding the glory of Jesus.

�He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood. That is monergistic. That is effectual call. That is, God is the Savior. He came to seek and save those that are lost. Thumbs up. �He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him.

I mean, when you think about what�s love got to do with it, as someone once said, a great theologian, by the way, everybody�s a great theologian. It�s either great ere or great. �He loved me before I knew Him.

That�s a better way to even phrase it. �And all my love is due Him. What�s the response to the love of God in Christ Jesus saving our souls? It�s a thankful heart, a heart full of gratitude that wants to obey.

Right? Guilt, grace, gratitude. Romans slash Heidelberg Catechism. Not putting them on the same plane. But they both teach the same truths now, don�t they? �He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

Okay, I get the imagery there. I don�t really have a problem with that with lyrical license. No big deal. �I heard about His healing, of His cleansing power revealing, how He made the lame to walk again and cause the blind to see.

Then I cried, �Dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit. And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory. Well, that is helpful because it clears up, �I repented of the sins and won the victory.

So, it�s not like me winning because here it�s further explained that Jesus came and brought to me the victory. Right? So, anyway, that is here on my desk. There are other lyrics that I won�t read. Okay, should I?

�I heard about a mansion He has built for me in glory. Of course, it�s a dwelling place, right? We�re all together. It�s not like you�re down the hall. It�s really long, the shining hall or something.

�And I heard about the streets of gold beyond the crystal sea. Okay, I don�t mind that. You can call Him that if you want. I mean, this is apocalyptic language of using those things. I don�t think you�re going to see real streets of gold, but you get the idea.

�About the angels singing and the old redemption story. It�s pretty good. Because in heaven, you have the angels singing, I believe. I don�t think on earth they sing. I think they say, �In some sweet day, I�ll sing up there the song of victory.

Anyway, I think that�s pretty good. I don�t know why. I, for a long time, felt bad when I sang it. Maybe it�s just kind of a revival type of hymn. But the lyrics, I give the lyrics. Here�s the approval that No Compromise Radio gives to the lyrics so that its host, Mike Evendroth, can feel good about singing that with his mom.

Magazine Critique and Church Media Updates

We�re 10, 11 minutes in the show. If you�ve got questions, you can always write us. One of the things we�ve been doing now is we�ve been, like almost everyone else, we have, what do we have? We have live stream, and you can watch the videos.

We don�t use HD. We bought this. The cameras are like 20 years old or something. We�re trying to upgrade live streaming. We�re trying to upgrade a bunch of that other stuff. They just painted the building.

Hopefully that�s going to be more crystal clear as time goes on. Lord willing, at the end of the month, I�ll be in a little town south of Cleveland, Ohio, for a conference on sanctification, law gospel type of thing, and that�s with my friend John Tucker.

I think the church�s name is Community, maybe, Community Bible or something. If you just, I don�t even know if it�s advertised yet, Friday a couple sessions, Saturday a couple sessions, preach on Sunday, that�s the last weekend of October, and then I think that Sunday maybe is November or something.

That�s this year, 2020, so if you want to attend, that would be great. I get all kinds of things in the mail. By the way, today is just kind of like, I have to write down the name of this. I�m going to call it �Miscellaneous.

How about that? I get things as a pastor in the mail, like little magazines. This one�s Faith Life. I think Faith Life is, actually it�s just Steve McCleary here. Faith Life is, I think, the umbrella company that owns Logos Bible Software, or Bible Software owns this.

I have to use this now because Christianity Today got so bad, I don�t blame it for reflecting Christianity Today, but the editorial board and what they were writing, I never thought they wrote good articles anyway in the last 30 years, but I wanted to get the news, but I got so bothered with one of the recent editions I had to cancel, and Mr. Cooley did too.

I think Mr. Cooley�s cancellation letter was nicer than mine. Anyway, this is a Faith Life Bible Study magazine, and it�s got basically advertisements. You know the old slogan where you think, �Okay, I need to sell advertisements, so give me some news stories.

You�re not buying the newspaper for news, although you think you are. The people that publish the newspaper, they�re trying to sell ads, because that�s how they make their money. Here we have just all kinds of Bible products.

Within the first pages, NIV Study Bible, fully revised edition. I actually think if you get the 1984 NIV Study Bible, there�s some good notes in that actually. The Filament Bible Collection. It says, �Arguably a Bible innovation as significant as Gutenberg�s movable type.

You think so? Arguably, a Tyndale product. That is dopey. You�re going to say, �Well, this new software, it�s like revolutionary like Gutenberg. I mean, if you want to say the internet is revolutionary like Gutenberg, okay, well, I can see that, arguably.

Now, who are the people here that are the editors? Derek Brown, academic editor. Tom Haynes, Douglas Magnum, Mark Ward. This is for the magazine, not for the Study Bible. All right, and then it�s NAS 2020, accuracy you can trust.

What is the NAS 2020? So, we had the NAS like �78, that was in the New Testament, I think, then we had the �95, right? We took out the �thousand� and the �these. Now, we have the NAS 2020. What is the NAS 2020?

I have no idea. What else do we have? I�m just going to turn to a few of the pages here. �Prepare her, if you are a woman, sensing God�s call to ministry, we have a place for you. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and LaBelle College.

�How do you sense God�s call to the ministry Well, that�s a good question, and we don�t have time to answer that now, but it�s subjectively and subjectively. What else do we have here? Journeys of the Apostle Paul, if you�d like to go study there.

Oh, here comes the ads for Lagos for free book every month. By the way, you should do that. Free Christian e-book every month at Lagos, lagos .com forward slash get free books. Anyway, this part of my show is bombing, so I�m not going to do any more of that.

Nietzsche's 'The Madman' and the Claim That God Is Dead

If you want me to talk about a certain topic, I can. I wanted to talk about James a little bit today, but I thought, you know what, I�m not going to do that. Okay. I�m going to give you a few quotes. You tell me who I�m quoting.

This will be the �whose quotes are you quoting Who�s the quoter of these quotes that you are quoting? Can you use the root word quote three times in a sentence? I think I just did. All right. Let�s see.

Here we go. Let me just read the whole thing. I think I am. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran into the marketplace and cried incessantly, �I am looking for God.

I am looking for God. As many of those who did not believe in God were standing there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him then, said one. Does he lose his way like a child, said another, or is he hiding?

Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances. �Where is God gone he cried. �I shall tell you.

We have killed him, you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?

Withered is it moving now? Are we moving now away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling backward, sideway, forward in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing?

Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?

Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives.

Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?

There has never been a greater deed and whosoever shall be born after us for the sake of this deed shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto. Here the madmen fell silent and again regarded his listeners.

And they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground and it broke and went out. I have come too early, he said. My time has not yet come. The tremendous event is still on the way, still traveling.

It has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time. The light of the stars requires time. Deeds require time even after they are done before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the stars and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been further related that on the same day the madmen entered diverse churches and there sang a requiem, let out and quieted. He is said to have retorted each time, what are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?

Who said that? That is the parable of the madmen by Friedrich Nietzsche. You might call him Nietzsche, but Nietzsche. God is dead. That's where the quote comes from. God is dead. Now of course God isn't dead.

You could say Jesus died on the cross, that's true. But the culture that we live in pretty much is God dead in their minds, in their hearts, in their morality, right? And so while everybody wants to criticize Nietzsche, God is dead, I remember I used to wear a t-shirt that said on the front, God is dead, Nietzsche, and on the back, Nietzsche is dead, God.

I mean, here's why people want this to be true and I'm sure Nietzsche wanted it to be true. So you don't have a bunch of guilt, a bunch of sexual hang-ups, a bunch of commandments and law from a creator to hold you down.

Don't you want to live a life of freedom and joy and be healthy? You don't want to have a life that's limited and narrow by some Jewish God, now do you? If you accept the premise that God is dead, then do you have purpose in life?

Well, maybe not, but that purpose I guess could be enjoyment, hedonism, at least you don't have any standards, you don't have a moral compass that you have to keep and feel bad afterwards. I mean, some kind of purpose and faith and afterlife where there's going to be an accounting.

And then, so what do you do if you're going to knock God down, of course in your mind, then you've got to raise something up because vacuums must be filled, so what do you have in place of God? Oh, yeah, you can't have like just a regular man, but you can have maybe a Superman, an Overman, an Uberman.

There you go. You just said, I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What will you have done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves, and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beast rather than overcome man?

What is ape to man? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. A man shall be just for what? That for the Overman, a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. So, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio.

The Christian Response to Nietzsche and the Hope of Christ's Victory

What was today about? I told you it was miscellaneous. I told you that it was from victory in Jesus to a bad segment on magazines, and then now a very interesting thing, God is dead. Question mark? Well, we're thankful that Jesus died, aren't we?

We are thankful that when you see the repeating refrain of victory in Jesus, in other words, in the Acts of the Apostles, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, conquered death. So, we have that hope. If death wasn't conquered, this would be true, right?

The death of God. We would want that along with Nietzsche because it wouldn't matter, really, right? I think we're just repressive with our morality, but we know God lives. Jesus said he's coming back, and we're thankful that we have the truth of God and hope for the future.

I'm just hurting. You would have the gall to come up to me and say, I don't know if you're a Christian or not because you're not handling this trial right. But that's what we have now in evangelicalism.

It's crazy. Oh, the show's already over. My name's Mike Ebendroth.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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.