2024 Summer of Interviews: Todd Friel and Wretched Radio Interview (2024)

Opening Banter and Introductions

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Glad you're tuning in today. You can always email me mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Don't forget the new book, Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd, is out now on Amazon, a 31-day guide to suffering.

I'd also put out a book, Sexual Purity, a 31-day guide to purity. And once in a while, I've made the mistake and called that a 31-day guide to suffering as well. But that's a different story. Today, I am thrilled to have one of my good friends on the radio.

Todd Friel of Wretched Radio is on the air. Todd, welcome back to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Hello, Mike. Can you hear me? I know you're having another year on the calendar. Can you hear me? So what Todd and I know you don't know, dear listeners, is we were trying to get this all figured out.

And I don't know who has a lower IQ. You know, sometimes they have an emotional IQ. I wasn't disclosing that. I was.

Mocking you for your age. Would you please receive the insult as it was intended? Okay, mea culpa.

I take that. By the way, Todd, I'm doing Duolingo Latin. So as we say here in New England, Latin.

So do you have Duolingo on your phone? You're speaking in tongues right now. What are you.

Talking about? Todd, thanks for being on the show today. What is this Latin business? What are you talking about? So there's an app on the iPhone called Duolingo. And you can learn other languages Duolingo.

And I'm now doing Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Spanish. Wow. Yeah, because I'm old, and I need to make sure the brain keeps on going. Wow. All right. Okay, here's a quiz. How much of this.

Stuff do you know? The Greek and the Hebrew and the German? No, you're doing Spanish and Latin.

All right, decline. Puella for me. Puer. Don't make me cough. Where's my call button? So you haven't been at it for very long, have you? Correct. I'm trying to learn Latin because I'd like to read John Owen better.

Because they say that John Owen, he writes his English like he's.

Writing Latin. Did you know that? It's a simple sentence structure. And it's actually easier to learn the Greek and Hebrew for sure. It was always considered in classical education to be the foundational language because the structure of it was far more consistent.

And it was sort of like a foreign language primer. Then you would take Greek, then you would take Hebrew. So you've done.

It all backwards, but that's fine. That's nothing new for you. My son is at seminary, and he said he's doing great in Hebrew. Greek is harder. So he's one of those odd people that like Hebrew better than Greek.

That is odd. I know, I know. It's just another Ebendroth for you. Todd, I wanted to tell our listeners how we met. And it was through a man named Ray Johnson. And Ray loved Wretched Radio. I think he started paying for no compromise radio ads to be placed on Wretched Radio.

Then I filled in for you several times. I just wanted you to know, maybe I've told you this off air. When I officiated Ray's funeral two years ago, it was closer to Boston, and Ray had this steel company that he owned.

And Todd, I was so thankful for the turnout, so many unbelievers, lawyers, people in the industry, construction, and everything else. And I thought, there are more people showing up for Ray Johnson's funeral than there will be for mine.

And it's through the testimony of a Christian man doing business as a Christian. And you would have been really, really pleased by that. We're thankful to have known Ray. Yeah, that's a fact. Amen. So let's get off the funeral stuff.

And by the way, I usually say to people, as Laverne and Shirley is to Happy Days, no compromise radio is to Wretched Radio. So which way? Hold on. I don't know that.

You're going to explain this because I don't know if I like being either Laverne or Shirley.

Which one do you like? Don't make me do the smoker's cough. These aerosol steroids are going to not kick in for a while. Todd is found at Wretched Radio or Wretched .org, excuse me. Todd, I was looking at the shows and listened to one yesterday, Polycule or Sex Cult.

Can you tell me what in the world has happened to Wretched Radio over the years?

Calling Sin by Its Name

Yeah, you know, we have to talk about things that in polite society, and certainly at a church, you just wouldn't discuss. Now there's a push for normalization of, well, I'm sorry, perversion, which I think is the program that you're referring to.

And my encouragement, we need to be using actual language. We need to stop with the modern speak, the therapeutic language that we love to employ to make abortion sound like women's reproductive health care.

And we need to start responding, I think, to these conversations when the New York Times Magazine prints an article on polycules, an essay on 20 people. Even the Mormons would see that. Oh, hey, that's a little too many wives.

You got 20 people in a polycule. So this is everybody with anybody. Well, I think it was at the Daily Signal, the fellow who wrote an article covering the New York Times Magazine piece said it's a sex cult.

That's what it is. It's a sex cult. And so we need to abandon and jettison polycule. It's polyamory of molecule. Is it to make it sound scientific? It's sin. It's a sex cult. And I think one of the little things that we can do, Mike, which actually might make a big difference.

When we talk about these subjects, as much as you can workplace without getting fired out in public, rather than bringing our voices down, or when somebody talks about some of these sinful subjects, we actually describe them biblically.

Stop accepting the language, because I think that they're pulling a semantical shell game on us to try to normalize perversion.

Todd, I think you're exactly right, and it doesn't take a church historian very long to go back and find out this was happening. Instead of calling sin, sin, what, a generation ago we called it a disease or a syndrome or an illness or something like that.

Mike, we just, you know, aren't we just broken and wounded?

Broken and wounded. And then I think, you know, you're robbing yourself of any kind of hope, because the Lord is so merciful. I think of Proverbs chapter 28, verse 13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

And we want our folks to have mercy. We want mercy from the Lord as well, so.

Let's call sin a sin. You know, it's funny. I had an experience the other day. I was in a deli, and I met a very lovely Jewish couple, older, and they were Reformed Jewish people, but they were starting to lean politically more to the right.

But when it came to social issues, still very progressive. In other words, they were pro-abortion, et cetera. And they were talking about how they practiced their faith and what have you. But they said, but here's what we'll never do.

We'll never try to impose our beliefs or to change anybody's lifestyle. And for some reason, Mike, it hit me when I heard them say that, I thought to myself, well, that's not nice. If you know somebody is either lost, confused, they have a potential mental illness, to not tell the truth isn't kind at all.

Now they would tell you, no, we're being very kind because we don't want to make anybody feel bad by suggesting that they might be wrong. And I thought this really is a demonstration of speaking truth in love.

You need to be loving people by telling them the truth and using language that, oh, there was another word that was used, assist. They're just creating these terms all the time. And I think that we need to stop them and lovingly say, I'm sorry, what you're describing, the Bible says is sinful.

I think that's just something that we can do as Christians.

It's so inconsistent in the unbelieving world where there'll be objective truth at the cancer hospital, you have cancer. And of course we don't want to hear that, but this is the, these are the remedies, or if you're in the financial advisor's office, you are bankrupt.

But when it comes to polite society, like you said, people don't want to mention those terms so starkly and so bluntly. And it's a shame. Todd, I wanted to ask you a question regarding wretched radio.

No compromise over the years. I think I've been on every day for 15, 16 years, and you've been on longer than that. I changed from kind of like a polemic discernment ministry, discernment to here's who Jesus is, Christ for pardon, Christ for power.

It's turned to a Christ-centered focus. I'm sure there's been a maturation in you as a Christian. I've seen it. What about the radio show? What was it before? Is it the same now?

What are different emphases, et cetera? Let me put it this way, Mike. If I had to go back and listen to Todd, especially at the beginning, I don't think I'd like that guy. Look, I was saved when I first started doing Christian radio.

I know that I was born again, but you're right. Certification is a lifelong process. And this is something that I think a lot of us who are Biblicists, that are conservative, don't like to say, even about ourselves, that I'm a different man today than I was 25 years ago.

I'm more mature because there's an implication that you weren't very mature back then. And the reality is I wasn't. And I know that now. And here's what I know then too, Mike. If I've matured over 25 years, that means I'm not done.

And I got more maturing to do. So it's this never-ending process. And we should all be willing to say, you know what? The Lord has changed me. And that means even confessing I could be a pretty obnoxious jerk.

And the Lord has been gracious and patient. And I think, Mike, one of the things that has, if you will, changed me is just knowing more and more Christians, more dear saints, and understanding their faith.

They are believers, but their lives, so many people, they're on a perpetual struggle bus. And this life filled with sin is hard. And who am I to come along like some pontificating podcaster jerk and tell everybody how to live their Christian life and to tell, worse yet, and to tell pastors how to run their churches?

So have I changed over the years? Yeah, I have. Do we still do polemics? Yes, but we now have rules. Back then, I was a gunslinger. Thankfully, over the years, I've learned that there are actually rules to discernment.

There are rules to polemics. You don't get to shoot and then aim. You need to work through a process which takes some patience, which means you might lose some YouTube views because you're breaking news and on the cutting edge of the latest dump that Art Driscoll did.

But we practice discernment wisely. So have I changed over the years? Praise God, He's changed.

Me. Amen. Todd, I'd like to have you talk a little bit about the new ministry that you're starting, slash started, Gospel Partners Media. If people go to wretched .org, they can see some of that. Help Us Build a Christian National Lampoon.

Why would you pick those words? It wasn't National Lampoon. I'm just kidding. Help Us Build a Christian Daily Wire. Tell us.

What's going on with the new ministry. Well, it's the ministry. This may or may not be of interest to you, but perhaps you've noticed the same thing over the years, that there have been national ministries and they typically tend to revolve around somebody who's a strong voice, a strong preacher, and then they die and the ministry kind of dies with it.

I thought years ago, if the Lord blesses this ministry with anything, to be mindful of perpetuating it so that when I die or just the Lord takes me out, that there's still a ministry here. Combine that with, and I truly don't listen to much talk anymore, like the Fox News and what, I just can't do it.

But anytime I listen to somebody conservative, whether they're Christian or secular, they'll share the latest rant. Okay, look at the, here the guy's getting sued again, the cake baker in Colorado. And you know, just enough of this.

We can't be silent anymore. We got to do something and we'll be back after a break. And they get you whipped into a complete frenzy. You're completely agitated. Your blood pressure is off the charts. They tell you to do something and you go, yeah, yeah.

And then there's nothing we can seem to do. Well, we decided to do something in response to our brave new world. Combining that with my desire to have a broader, deeper, stronger ministry, we're actually adding eight voices.

So that means there's going to be eight individuals joining us who will be doing things from podcasts, writing books, doing resources, Sunday school resources, webinars. And we're not going to be the daily wire in that.

We're on the latest dumb thing that Joe Biden said, but instead it's going to be about, these are the issues of urgency today. And we want to walk alongside and undergird you and provide resources, not to tell you what to do, but to provide everything that you might need to live a godly life in Christ Jesus.

So starting this fall, there's going to be a lot more people talking out of this ministry.

Petey All right. Well, people can go to wretched .org and get a little taste of that. And we've got folks from Tim Challies to a couple of my friends, Kratz and Petey I know John! Petey Yeah, I went to school with John.

I also went to school with Francis Chen.

Petey Wow, I've got to wipe that out.

Petey And Adam Tyson. I know we've spoken together down in New Zealand. And so good for you.

Here's what's agitating about John Kratz. He's such a gentleman. He's such a shepherd at heart. Every time I'm around him, I'm like, oh, I'm just not nice. He is such a nice man. He's a kindly man. And he's whip smart.

Petey Amen. And he's a good writer as well.

Petey Yeah. Yeah. So we're working on a podcast for him. The goal of it is, this is going to resonate with you, Mike, the goal is to teach theology, but not simply to teach theology, to show how it actually applies to day to day, how it can come out of your pores, as opposed to just being stuck in your head.

So he's going to be one of the people that helps us to actually apply theology to our lives. Because, all right, you didn't, but that's what I call it a concern. Observations these days. We have seen all of the silly preaching, starting with Robert Shuler and the seeker sensitive preaching and all the shenanigans and pastors who enter churches on zip lines.

And we've responded well with expository preaching. But I have noticed that expository preaching turned more into almost seminary instruction teaching, as opposed to preaching. We're ringing the text for everything that we think is in it, even though it's inexhaustible.

And we're teaching a lot of facts and that's good and that's needed. But if it doesn't play from head to heart, I don't think that's preaching that is reaching its full potential. So that's one of my desires.

And that's one of the elements that we focus is to make sure that we're not just teaching for the sake of teaching, but so that it actually affects people's will, their emotion, their affections, their submission, their desire for holiness.

In other words, we want Christianity to be an active.

Faith. Amen. Well, I was reading Philippians. I have been reading Philippians this week because I'm going to preach from it this Sunday. Okay, you're more sanctified than we are. No, no. Bible reading name dropper.

No, no. What I was going to say is I met Paul on the Damascus Road. Oh, okay. No, I was going to say Paul's love for the people at Philippi and his desire to see them learn and grow. And of course, there are abstract things about the Trinity and other issues, but he really wanted them to advance the gospel and walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.

And I just see his heart for that. And so I think that's what a pastor needs, not just, well, I'm going to try to educate the congregation with 14 uses of this word and it's used elsewhere and such and such.

I mean, when I look out of the congregation, Todd, I see children and adults as well. And sometimes I'll say, children, what about such and such? I mean, think about Ephesians. It's been written so people would read it out loud and children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

I just want preaching. I don't want a seminary exegetical lecture, but I probably did that for 20 years, Todd, the wrong way. And it's a lot easier to do it the wrong way than trying to shape and to craft with.

Science and art a message. It is easy to do that. And here would be an example. We all love Ephesians chapter two, that when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive in Christ. Okay.

We'll have a tendency to focus on we're dead in our trespasses and sins. Dead men don't make themselves alive. I've said it. I'll still say it happily, but I'm not sure that's the thrust of the verse.

The thrust of the verse is God's great love making us alive because we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And I'll regularly hear some exegesis on being spiritually dead, total depravity, all well and good, but hello, where's the love of God?

And I think that we've kind of stayed away from talking about the love of God because I think that our radar is so high these days. When some Protestant movements, all they talk about is love and it's not a biblical love.

It's a squeaky gooey. God is just digging you and you're so amazing. Lovey dovey language that we go, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't want that. And I think that we've perhaps gone into the opposite ditch where we're terrified to talk about the love of God.

And that's the very thing that God wants us to experience in him. I don't see an emphasis on being saved and justified. I see Romans five, one and two, where we're produced through justification for what reason?

To be in a peaceful, loving relationship with God so that we can know the love of God, the height, the depth, the breadth, the width of the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. He died and justified so that we can enjoy him forevermore.

And that should start now. Pete Todd, sounds like to me, you should probably.

Teach a preaching class because our young men need to know about that. I'm reminded of Sinclair Ferguson, Todus Christus, the Latin for whole Christ back in the Reformation time. And what Owen and now Sinclair Ferguson wants to happen and I want to have happen is I don't want to separate Christ and his benefits, his person from his work.

And of course, we love justification and forgiveness and sanctification and future glorification, but who's the one giving us those things? The father sending the son out of love and then the son out of love dying, the spirit, et cetera.

And I think we're afraid of Joe Osteen. He smiles and talks about God's love. So, we swing the other way to our detriment. God is a father. And if you're a Christian, you can't send your way out. I mean, I've been accused over the years of being an antinomian when one single sermon, if they'd listened to, I mean, this Sunday, walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.

But I refuse to put people back underneath some law that they have to keep in order to stay saved. No, you're a Christian. And if you disobey, the father will discipline you, but you have a love of the father.

And the love of the father is eternal and immutable. Do you know who else is making a point of that a lot lately? I'm going to let you guess. What nationally known preacher has also said things, I'll paraphrase, and then you tell me if you can figure out who it is.

If I could implant on you one idea, it would be that you never stop looking at experience and growing in your love for the Lord and knowing how much you are loved by him. Guess what national.

Preacher has said. That's a pretty good paraphrase. I don't know, but I'm going to say Chuck Swindoll.

You know, that would be, you know, I think that'd probably be a pretty good guess.

That was Paul Washer. Oh, interesting. Well, I would rejoice in that because most of the sermons I've heard of Paul were pretty heavy on the law.

You know, they are, but those are the ones, you know, they just have smoke coming out of the YouTube machine when you watch a Paul Washer sermon. I don't know about you, Mike, but watching Paul Washer, I've actually been saved 17 times.

Those are the ones that gained that. That's not the total ministry, and if you go watch, they're not hard to find. He's passionate about talking about the love of God.

Podcasts, Counseling, and Biblical Application

Well, in that, I definitely rejoice. That's good news. A couple more things, Todd, because we've got to wrap up the show here. You mentioned podcasts earlier. What's on your podcast? What podcast do you listen to, secular, sacred?

What does Todd Freelisten to?

I'm actually listening to the podcast we're producing here. Have you listened to Greg Gifford's Transform podcast? I have. I think he does. Counseling.

Stuff out of Masters University, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right. He's going to be one of the guys joining us. Well, he also hosted our Transform TV series. He did three seasons. It was actual biblical counseling. This is Greg Gifford. It was in our TV studio, counseling an actual Christian.

I'm telling you, Mike, it is so powerful to watch the Bible being applied to somebody's life. Okay, season one, Robin comes to us because she was getting the kids on the bus in the suburbs, and then she'd go in the house and light up a bong and start her day, getting high, and then she'd drink in the evening.

That was Robin. She came in because she knew she had a problem. She heard Isaiah and God's plea, stop drinking dirty water. Don't stop drinking cistern water. Come to the living spring, the cool, the fresh.

In that moment, she said, I don't want dirty water anymore. I want more of Jesus. If you could see her today, she hasn't had a drink. Their family's doing devotion. She's plugged into her church. It is like, wow.

So, that's Greg Gifford, and he's doing also the Transform podcast. I think he just finished up the series on being unequally yoked. It's outstanding. And as long as I'm talking about biblical counselors, you know Lou Priolo.

I think he just died, didn't he? He did. He actually did the fourth season of Transformed with couples. A couple came in. Check this out, Mike. They had not touched each other in five years. And they sat down, and after about 45 minutes with Lou, and he had them repent to one another and ask for forgiveness and grant forgiveness to the other, they got out of their chairs and embraced fully his husband and wife.

Wow. That's Lou Priolo, and he was going to be doing a podcast with us too, and we lost him, and it still bums me out to this day.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear about that. Todd, last question. I appreciate your desire for proclaiming Christ to the lost and evangelism, and you talk about that a lot. How would you encourage our listeners today to evangelize more, to speak well of the Lord Jesus to unbelievers?

You know, what's the first thing that comes to your mind that you would tell people?

Mindful Evangelism and Opening Conversations

This is going to sound like mindfulness, but be mindful. Just be thinking about it. Instead of having a conversation, and it kind of goes here, it goes there, and you talk about the natural subjects like, you know, politics, and then you talk about politics, and then you talk about the election, and then you talk about what the Democrats are doing.

Just be thinking, okay, wait a second. How can I turn this from, if you will, a secular conversation into something that is much more Christian? And all you need to do is be mindful. Listen for it, and you can ask these questions, and even if you can't find an off-ramp to get onto a conversation about Jesus, depending on which part of the country you're in, here in the South, I can walk up to a complete stranger.

How are you doing? Really good. Okay, it'll take them about 15 minutes to say that they're really good because, well, that's kind of the Southern way. Then my next question can be, where do you go to church?

I kid you not, and that is totally acceptable here. We just need to summon up the courage. We just need to be thinking about it, and we have a tendency, and I think we get this from Paul in Colossians, you know, that there would be an open door of ministry.

I believe that's Colossians 2, maybe 3, that there would be an open door of ministry. Well, he wasn't talking about, like, somebody might walk in front of him, or he bumps into them, and he gets to talk to them about Jesus.

He was talking about, like, an open door, like, the passport gets approved so that he can go into a different continent. Then, in the next chapter, he tells us to make the most of every opportunity. We don't really need to act out to set the opportunities.

We just need to leave our homes, find a sinner, and start the conversation, and if it scares you to death to do that, then go to a university campus, because I am telling you, and I say this with a great deal of conviction, these young people, they want to talk.

They are more open. They know something is broken on the planet. Everything is, they, even the Gen Zs feel it, and because they haven't had many people take interest in them or pour into their lives, you saddle up next to a university student and just say, hey, can I just talk to you about your soul, and I'm telling you, Mike, you know, we do Witness Wednesday, and I'll approach a kid, hey, can we talk to you on the radio?

I've only got, like, five minutes, and 45 minutes later, when I wrap it up, they're like, oh, are we done? They just want somebody to care, so don't go into it like you are a knight in shining armor, and you're going into, go talk to somebody because you love them.

You love the Lord, and you have got a treasure. You are, you are a poor person, and the Lord opened up a treasure chest of blessings to you, not the least of which would be justification, forgiveness of sins, adoption into God's family, and you just have to tell somebody about the treasure you found.

You go with that attitude, and I'm telling you, nine times out of a hundred, it will go well.

Amen. Todd, Kim and I, my wife and I went up to Vermont to see the eclipse. We went up to go skiing, but we found out there was an eclipse, and so we saw both, or did both, and I needed some air in the tire, and I pulled over to a gas station, filling up the air in the car tire, and two ladies about 30 years old came over and said, your license plate says Massachusetts.

We need a ride to Massachusetts. I said, I kind of looked to see if they might have any bombs or guns or something like that. I'm with my wife, and I said, well, I can take you to Burlington, Vermont.

You can get a bus there. I'm not going to Massachusetts today, and I said, you'll be safe with us. I'm a pastor. This is a pastor's wife. The only requirement of me giving you a ride someplace is I'm going to ask you questions about the Bible, and they said, oh, sure.

That's fine. They were Harvard medical students, and we talked about the Bible and evolution and all that, and so just, you know, just like you said before, just be willing, be mindful, look around, and I think I'm going to start a new podcast called Hitchhiker Evangelism.

It has its risks. It does. Todd, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate you, and even behind the scenes, after I got the second round of cancer, you texted me and said, can I come up, serve you, preach, my own dime, whatever I can do to help.

I appreciate that from you, and just wanted to say that publicly that I appreciate your friendship and your desire to serve. Well, thanks a lot, Mike. There goes that crown. No, I said it, not you. I said it.

That's out of thank you. People can go to wretched .org to learn more about the new project and listen to Todd's shows, and let's see. Is there anything else? Oh, last question.

Writing, Manhood, and Christ in All of Life

Are you writing another book, and if so, what? I actually just finished two. I keep calling it the porn book, but that kind of doesn't seem to be a good title. It's called Play the Man. It is a book on the expulsive power of new affections, kind of a Chalmers term, that it's not enough to just hate your sin.

You got to love something more, so it's a book to help all the men who are indeed in bondage and slip this in, to pull them out. And then the second book, which I am hopeful that is going to be published by a publishing company soon, the title is up for grabs, but it's a desire to show how every single thing in our lives is about one thing, everything.

The chair that you're sitting in, mowing your lawn today, geopolitics, the weather, marriage, intimacy, napping, how everything is connected to one thing, and that is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ and his redemptive work to show that we are in God's ecosystem.

You can't escape it. This is 24 -7 about the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a Christian, we have a tendency to forget that, and we could be Christian dualists who go to church, we read our Bibles, but then when we're done, we go deal with life.

Well, that's not the way God sees it. All of life is about Jesus Christ. So this book endeavors to help all of us be, well, sorry again, mindful that we are about something bigger than ourselves. We are actually about the Lord's business.

And even when you do his business poorly, you are still glorifying him because nobody can escape this. We are here to glorify God. You can do it well, you can do it poorly, but you're going to do it. You can do it by getting saved and bringing great glory to a son.

You don't get saved. It's not as big a glory, but you will glorify God when he casts you into the lake of fire because he's just. He prefers, however, to save. That is his preference. He desires to save.

He doesn't want to go to war with so paltry a foe. And so we are about the business of glorifying God. And the Christian would realize every aspect of life is about that. It just colors everything. It gives me purpose.

I've got a mundane job. It doesn't matter. I'm glorifying God. My marriage is in a shambles. You know what? You're going to glorify God in your marriage. And it brings about a joy and a lightness that we are about somebody.

Far more important than our own. Amen. Good words from Todd Friel. Todd, thanks again for being on the radio show. I leave you with the Psalm 1 message version. How well God must like you. You don't hang out at Sin Saloon.

You don't slink along Dead End Road. And you don't go to Smart Mouth College. What? That's the message version on No Compromise Radio. Todd, thanks a lot for being on. God bless you. Love you. Love you, Mike.