Our Lady of the Lake

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 in the studio, live, in person.

It's Saturday night. No, it's Steve Cooley. I'm pinching myself to see if I'm real. You know what? I know. Your legs could use a little sun,

I think. Well, yeah. They can use a lot of things. Steve and I are both sitting here with shorts on. And I don't usually see his legs like this.

And you have a Lakers shirt on, a Lakers polo. Where'd you get that? I ordered it on the internet, actually.

Okay. So, yeah, so I could rep the Lakers. Uh -huh. I like that.

Are they going to play? Is the NBA going to play this year? Yeah, that's the rumor, although it looks like the NHL will probably get into play sooner.

So what if something happened and it was like 300 to one that the New York Nets or the

Brooklyn Nets would win the championship? And all of a sudden, it's postponed so long now, the season, because of the virus, that KD and Kyrie come back and they win everything.

And you put down $1 ,000 on that 300 to one bet. I wouldn't tell anybody. You wouldn't tell anybody.

Would you tithe? I don't gamble. I mean, especially on sports things.

I think you don't follow football, proper football, soccer.

But a few years ago, a team called Leicester won the championship.

And at the beginning of the season, they were like 10 ,000 to one underdogs or some crazy number underdogs.

And as the season progresses and they start, the bookies are trying to bribe people out of their bets.

Oh, unbook it. Yeah. Well, if you do it right now, I'll give you 10 times your initial investment.

I'll give you whatever. So did they end up winning? Yeah, they won the whole thing. Really? Yeah.

I mean, it's kind of a cool story. It's kind of a Kurt Warner -esque story, because the guy who winds up being the big star of the thing a few years before was playing in pickup games and just gradually kind of worked his way up.

Just like Kurt Warner was bagging groceries and throwing the ball around Arena Football League.

Fun. Have we come to a conclusion here in New England on our quarterback?

Do we know who a quarterback is now that Tom - I think it's going to be Jason Stidham. You ask and I'm just telling you the truth.

He's maybe a second or third year guy out of Auburn. All right. And then last question, kind of a cultural update before we get into the matter at hand.

Any place you're dying to go that you can't go? Once everything's lifted and we're in phase 14, you're going to go?

Where are you going to go? I think I'm - Do you want to go out to eat or something? Yeah. I think I'm probably going to go to one of them in Chop House.

I mean, I'm really saddened because we're not going to get to go to Storyland this year, because it's kind of a big deal for us.

We, our family and our kids and our grandkids, we all go to New Hampshire and hang out in a big, big old house and go to Storyland and we're not going to do it.

So like, what's the most favorite thing for you to do at Storyland, where you get the most satisfaction, where the kids are on some kind of, what, some

Ferris wheel, Tilt -A -Whirl, some water park? You know what I enjoy the most? They have a ride.

It's like a water ride flume thing, you know, and I mean, it's not that great, but sometimes we can go on it over and over and over again.

And so, you know, the grandkids will just go with me and we'll just go and go and go and get soaked and have a good time.

So I like that. Okay. It's fun. I like that too. Steve, today

I just picked up this book, The Theological Miscellany by T .J. McTavish.

It is a little dated. T .J. McTavish. T .J. McTavish. And I don't know, it says this is free from Barnes &

Noble, but this is, let's see, 2005. So this part's a little bit dated, but I want, here's my question to start off the show.

What is it about names? Why are large churches, mega churches, the biggest churches in all of America, why do they have dumb names?

Because we're dumb. Okay. Okay. So here, World Changers College Park, Georgia at, in 2005, they had 23 ,000 people meeting there.

World Changers. World Changers would probably be seen these days as an old school name.

I think so. Right. I mean, because now it's like The Shrub or The Crib.

So, so, but, but I just think World Changers, here's the thing, like, you know, all this victorious living church stuff.

What if I'm just a regular person, kind of ordinary, normal,

I just take care of my kids and my wife and I go to work and I work at Home Depot and pay my bills and nothing flashy, evangelize when

I can, read the scriptures when I can. You'd be like the ordinary. I know.

This, this harkens back to this whole, you know, radical idea. And then Horton writes a book, you know, Ordinary, Radical Ordinary.

It is radical in the sense that, yes, you've been radically saved and that you can radically serve the Lord by doing dishes at your house as a mother.

Here's another name, The Potter's House. Oh, yeah. So, so why call yourself

The Potter's House when you don't even believe in the sovereignty of God or his triune nature?

What's he going to pot? Is this like a lot of marijuana here,

The Potter's House? That is kind of a funny, you know, nod thing because you'd think in Romans nine would be like their go -to passage, right?

I think they ripped it out of all their pew, their pew. All their, all their Bibles. Yeah. I mean, these days

I, it seems to me like sooner or later, we're going to see something called you church, right?

I think it exists probably. Does it? Yeah. You can just, Oh, you know what? How about this? Since everything's online now, we have this you church.

And so at the very beginning, you know, you have to answer like 10 questions. And so you say type of music you want, um, a 1950s rockabilly.

That's the kind of music I want. Scripture reading. Do you want the message? Uh, do you want to have a

King James or whatever you want? And who do you want to read it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's common, right?

Virtual church where you, you set the order of service. You even get self led. It's an auto liturgy.

Yeah. I do it myself. Wow. I think most people, if they could pick their liturgy, it'd be pretty simple.

I want 20 minutes of songs I like, and then I want to have a, like a 15 minute pick me up message.

Don't you think I've been rereading Christless Christianity, uh, by Michael Horton.

It's devastating. It made me think, Steve, that I should probably reread those three books by David Wells. Um, I was just looking at trilogy.

Yeah. Like I'll just say Christianity in the wasteland, you know, the third one was, I think that, yeah.

And the first couple, what were they called? Uh, God's in, in something place or something place, no place for truth.

No place for truth. Yeah. Okay. See, between the two of us, we can do this stuff. Um, but besides that, you know,

Lakewood church, I think that's because it's just in Lakewood, right? Yeah. But, but, you know, getting back to what you were talking about, how many times we, cause we listen to messages from literally all around the country.

I mean, probably more of a focus on some churches somewhere around us, but all over the place.

And how many times do you hear a sermon and Jesus is just kind of mentioned as an afterthought and the gospel maybe isn't included at all?

I know, I guess really the question that you're, you're getting us to ask is, would this sermon, would this talk, would this pep talk work at a

Ted talk and a church at the same time? Because if it would, it's not Christian. Do I need the Holy Spirit for this?

And if the Holy Spirit, if he is around, he will say, talk about Jesus. If unbelievers come and go, man, that really, that helped me, you know,

I, I, that, that'll get me through the week, at least through tomorrow. And everybody knows Monday is the worst day of the week.

I don't like Mondays. Yeah. That's a song, of course. Steve, how about people that in our circles are very focused on sequential exposition, focused on human authorial intent, and they kind of forget to sit back a little bit.

And when they're in a section of imperatives, they do a good job telling us about the imperatives, for instance, in Ephesians 4, but then they forget maybe to really stress the

Pauline stress of Ephesians 1 through 3. In other words, I say to them, do you know what?

I think I hear more about Jesus in a King James only independent fundamental altar call than I hear in your sermon.

Well, because when you come to Ephesians 4, it's predicated on everything. I mean, it starts.

Yeah, therefore. So, you know, it's all about being in Christ. It's all about the work of God that gets you to the place where you could start thinking, okay, well, since I am in Christ, how should

I think? How should I live? How should I change, right? And it's not because it's a requisite of my salvation.

It's a result of my salvation, things that I should joyfully want to do unto the

Lord. And I think what happens is they don't step back enough to see the sweep of redemption, and I think they're too afraid of maybe a

Tim Keller type of approach that always, well, in my mind, in my opinion, that he sees the sweep of redemption and focuses on that instead of the particulars of what's going on in the text.

Yeah, he's focused on the sweep of redemption so much that he sweeps away the meaning of the text. Yeah, or just, you know, ignores it, right?

So I think in his judges series, it seemed to me, this was 10 years ago, and I listened, and every sermon kind of sound the same.

I'd like to know what judges is saying, and I'd like to know how it fits in the Christian canon, right, of the

Old Testament, New Testament. Steve, here in this little book, it says the first woman bishops. Now, I don't know if it's supposed to be the first women bishops, but it says the first woman bishops, okay?

The concept of apostolic succession means that a person is a true bishop only if ordained or consecrated by another bishop whose ordination goes back through an unbroken succession of bishops to apostolic times.

While other churches and denominations have officers called bishops, only those of the historic Eastern and Western churches and the

Anglican have bishops in the apostolic succession. Using this criterion, the first woman bishop was

Barbara Clementine Harris, an African -American elected in 1989 as a suffragin assisting bishop in the

Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Suffragin city. That's good.

I mean, I reject that whole idea, of course, but... And it took to 1989 to do the pass off?

How does that work? I don't know. I, you know, the whole, the whole idea, um, as soon as I, when we were just listening to somebody saying, oh, it was a message on the phone that they produce something, whatever.

As soon as I hear a woman's voice right on the phone saying they've put their churches produce something and would we like it?

My instant response is probably not, right? Because it's not that I dislike women.

It's like, I, I dislike women in teaching roles.

So I have not read the new Amy Byrd book. Have you? No, because nobody's given it to me.

Oh yeah. I never got sent my promo copy. And I told you if you did, I'd take it. Yeah. Okay. Well, um, before any more comments about Amy Byrd, if legend is correct, however, the first female to receive

Episcopalian ordination was Brigid or St. Bride, she's called, died around 523 whom

St. Patrick converted to Christianity. She founded the first convent in Ireland at Kildara and Bishop Eibor reportedly consecrated her.

The Roman Catholic church discounts the story. What is it 50 % off or now?

I know we're late in all this, but Amy Byrd's written a new book and uh, something about re -storing biblical manhood or womanhood or rediscovering or re -recovering, re -reading, re -consecrating.

No, it's recovering from, from, and uh, some have said there should be no critique unless people read it.

It reminds me back in the old days where, uh, Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life came out.

First it was the church, then Purpose Driven Life, and then I was criticizing it and then people said, have you read it?

And I wasn't allowed to critique anything unless I had read it, I guess. And by the way, I'm not calling

Amy Byrd a heretic, but I think probably the best thing that a heretic can do is just keep writing, right?

Volume after volume after volume. I can never keep up with it. Exactly. Be like Carl, like Carl Barth. Exactly. And then somebody could say, have you read it?

Yeah. There's 400 volumes. Have you read all Barth? Are you sure he's, he's really neo -Orthodox denying the literal resurrection?

If you can't parse every word, then you have no right to stand in judgment. But what I did do, and there's something to be said for, you should give it a fair shake.

Yeah. Okay. I totally get that. Before you shake it off. That's right.

But I watched the video, the seven minute video by Crossway, and she's got a lot of questions that she asks.

And so the reason why I didn't want to write, read the book is because the way she asked the questions came across as she's trying to be a, she's deconstructing what the, in my mind, what the biblical roles are.

I think in her mind, she's deconstructing these false views of hyper -patriarchalism and the original pi per grudum manhood womanhood stuff.

And therefore I just thought this is not the way to ask these questions unless you have an agenda. I mean,

I'm not some expert in promo videos, but I've, I've done what? 4 ,500 of them, but, but you do things for a reason.

That's my point. Yeah. And you know a little something about being provocative. I do. I do.

And there's a reason for what you do, right? Because you want to poke the hornet's nest, right?

Right. And so I think that's what she did. I don't think I'll end up reading the book. I know that she's getting a lot of flack behind the scenes in her

Presbyterian circle. So most of the time problems, you know, in Baptist world, Presbyterians don't even care about.

You know why I want to read the book? Because there's just one basic question I want to know is what is the historical basis?

You know, who before her taught these things? Because the Presbyterian worldview now is always that anything new is bad.

And so, so I just want to read it and see, you know, who she's quoting as favorable to her opinions.

And along those lines, Steve, I, I watch what's going on in the Southern Baptist seminaries and convention and what they're dealing with.

And it's my opinion that they hide behind all too often. This person has signed the abstract principles 2000 and therefore they're in agreement with our statement of faith.

And so too, with Amy Byrd regularly, I hear the promotions.

She is a confessionalist and that she ascribes, subscribes to the, uh,

I want to say the 1689. I was thinking more, uh,

United Reformed Churches of America where they would say, you know, these, these, um, you know, forms of unity, three forms of unity.

But I think for OPC, it's just Westminster confession, confession, shorter, longer. But anyway,

I just hear that she, but, but, but I don't see those confessions talking about female apostles and, and asking questions like that.

I'm not saying she believes that there are those, but I just don't see, I just, I just think people hide behind that,

Hey, I'm a confessional. Well so am I. Right. Right. And, and, and un, unnumbered liberals would say that they were confessional, you know, or that they subscribe to the 1689 or that they subscribe to the

Southern Baptist message, you know. Right. I didn't, Finney, I think Finney, I think he, to get ordained,

I think he had to say that he, he signed off on the Westminster confession of faith. The one thing

I remember, well, I remember more than this from seminary, but one thing I always remember was the historical theology professor saying, liberals never built a seminary.

They stole them. And I'm like, that's absolutely true. And how do they do that?

By saying, we believe everything that the school stands for, even when they didn't, you know, I mean, the easiest one is a fuller seminary, you know.

So true. I, I'm, I'm watching the PCA, Steve, with the whole revoice issue and same sex attraction.

And can you have kind of like a gay lifestyle, even though you don't have gay sex and can you have, you know, gay intimacy, although you don't have gay sex, et cetera.

And so a lot of the revoice people are coming from St. Louis, Presbytery, and this year's main conference, the

General Assembly has been canceled. And then next year is going to be in St. Louis. So here's the trick to it all.

In the PCA to go vote in General Assembly, you can have teaching elders and ruling elders go vote.

Well, if it's down in Florida, the Florida people are going to easily drive there and then they'll have more sway.

So now they're going to have all the St. Louis people there for a lot of voting. Because the teaching elder would be somebody like us.

So we get paid to go to the Shepherds Conference, right? It's that we don't have to take the extra time off. That's just part of the package.

But for a ruling elder, let's say somebody like a Scott Brown, if he's going to go, he'd have to pay his own way.

So there are fewer ruling elders. So you've got revoice going on with PCA. You've got Southern Baptist deal going on with the letting go of the professors.

And what reason was that for? And the videos that they're putting out and social justice stuff.

It's a fascinating time to be alive. It's, we're going to see a number of denominations go through major, not evolutionary changes, but revolutionary changes.

De -evolutionary? Yeah. I mean, we're going to see, you know, people go straight liberal and we're going to see, you know,

I mean, this is going to be a real sorting out, as they say. I don't see how the PCA cannot split.

I just think over time, this issue, women's roles and leading into homosexual issues, it's going to split because you're going to be conservative and you're going to have to leave.

And there's too many of these liberal PCA folks, although they're confessional, right?

That think city, city life, art. There are some in the

Revoice camp who would say, you know, aesthetically, what makes us be great in art and theater and all these other things is our gayness.

And it's just crazy, Steve. It just can't exist. And I think lots of Southern Baptist churches are also going to. Oh yeah.

Oh, I was going to say, we're going to see that. I mean, we've thought the Southern Seminary or the Southern Baptist were going to split.

And I mean, I've been thinking that since I became a Christian, you know, because they, I mean,

I remember I had a friend who said, well, you know, we're, we're Southern Baptist. And I go, really?

And they go, yeah, the non Al Mohler wing, you know, back when that meant we're not conservatives, we're liberals.

Now, I don't know. I don't know what that means exactly, but. Well, there are people who are saying we need to figure out a conservative to nominate because Al Mohler's running and we need another one who's more conservative.

I never thought I'd hear those words ever. So it's fascinating. I'm glad we're not associated with them.

And you know, frankly, Steve, it's nice just to be up here in New England where there's nobody here, nobody around.

We're not having to be involved with all this stuff. We just watch what's going on. But you know, to me, it's basically, especially these days,

Hebrews is hard to study. The Greek is hard. Every morning

I've been reading the Greek in the book of Hebrews and I've been doing that now for several years. Just for fun the other day,

I went to First John to read in my Greek New Testament. And I'm not trying to brag like I'm some great student or anything, but I just,

I'm trying and I'm seeing root words and other things. And so I can't parse everything, but I'm trying. And I went to First John and I thought, this is so good.

It's so easy. It's a gravy train. Oh man. It's like I've been doing a college level

Spanish and now I'm in, you know, I'm teaching first graders. Uh huh. Steve, that was so wonderful.

Steve, we only got a couple of minutes left and what's your kind of like routine for your own personal

Bible study? I think a lot of people ask me that question. So what's yours? Do you have a set thing? What do you do?

Is there devotional time, study time? Are they blended? How's that all work? Devotional time, study time, they are kind of blended, especially when

I'm either preaching or getting ready to preach. You know, I want to be in the gospel of John because that's what

I'm going through. And also having a new

Bible, you know, I'm devising for myself a way to mark it up because I want to just have a very colorful

Bible by the time I'm done. So what's your new Bible? It's the Reformation Study Bible.

Good. So it's kind of a mixture. So when you're studying John 17, it can be in a devotional fashion.

Okay. These days I get up in the morning, grab my coffee, sit down. I read Hebrews 13, my section that I'm preaching in Greek, and I'll try to go through that a little bit.

Then I have my little ESV scripture journal for Hebrews right there in case I need it. I just got one of those.

I love those. Yeah. I got the New Testament. I got Psalms, the book of Psalms, and I got

Isaiah. And then I kept John at home and I brought everything else back into the office. That is excellent. I have disagreed with a lot of Crossway stuff over the years, although the book that I think is the most important book

I read in 20 years, The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, it's Crossway. Right? There are so many good things that they do.

And I said to Justin Taylor a year ago, a year and a half ago, you know, because we've had kind of our disagreements online, but I said,

I'm thankful for Crossway if it wasn't for anything else, for the propagation wing of the

Gospel Coalition. No, no. I said, I said, for the scripture journals. Well, and you know, when you first thought or you said something about it to me,

I thought, well, that's kind of, you know, cause I would always just get a yellow pad out and just start scratching notes.

And then I just thought, well, this is actually a little bit easier and probably a little bit smarter. Cause that way I just go over the same things and I can mark it up and make different notes and kind of think, okay,

I hadn't seen that. And you know, just, yeah. And Steve, for me, I have my Bible and I only would mark in it carefully.

Right. Right. I don't want to like have my pencil go over the bottom of the P, whatever that's called.

And so with this, I, I'm much more liberal in my markings, right?

So I just like, oh, circle, circle, circle. Is it non -confessional in your markings? Well, I do subscribe to the confession of the 1689, yet I'm going outside the bounds with my rediscovering, rededicating, reconsecrating

Bible markup. And mostly what we do is mark up the life, the death and the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. 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.