BYOG: Bring Your Own God

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.

A Listener Letter About Salvation Without Works

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Pastor Mike Abendroth here, and Pastor Steve Cooley, the Tuesday guy. That was just a shock. I just touched this and it shocked, it made a noise. You deserved it.

It was a little message. Oh, subliminal message of subjectivity. Maybe it was a thousand gifts. I think it was a message from the Lord. Maybe something having to do with Lent, the Lenten season.

One of my favorite times of the year because every year I make the same pledge, I give up Lent for Lent. It makes it easy. I like to give up Lent as well, but it doesn�t seem to be working.

I don�t know if I�ve read this letter online before or on the show, rather.

Is it a nice letter or a bad letter? I�ve read enough bad letters. This is from a listener. Okay. Well, like I said, is it a nice letter or?

Pastor Mike, I�ve been a listener of No Compromise Radio since you went on the air on WVNE. Okay. Your show has helped me grow in my, has helped me in my growth as a Christian. Wait, did Kim send this in?

No, no. I try to listen every day unless I have to work late. I mean, some people�s excuse me. Well, that�s nice. I want to thank you for spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to the greater Worcester area and for your focus to lost Catholics.

Well, that�s great. Until a believer in the Lord Jesus cared enough and witnessed the good news of salvation without works to me, I was lost in my sins. It is hard for me to witness to my Catholic family members and friends who simply do not want to know the truth and think that I have been led astray.

I can only pray for their salvation. Please accept the enclosed donation for continuing your radio ministry. That�s awesome.

You know, I say all the time because, you know, we live in a Roman Catholic area. And, you know, one of the saddest things to me is the false assurance that they have. Contra, by the way, the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, which says you cannot know and you�re damned if you pretend to know.

Mortal sin of presumption. But you know, if you talk to the average Roman Catholic, they�re fine. And then you go to a Catholic funeral and I�m going to publicly ask forgiveness for everybody who has a Catholic family member and asked me to go to the funeral because I really struggle with that.

I really do. But I went to one and when we heard the priest say that this person was in heaven because of their infant baptism and some of the good things, the nice things that they�d done in their life, which were really pretty minimal, may I say, I just can�t stand it.

I mean, it�s like, I have to be held down because it�s so wrong. It�s so, and you�re proclaiming that, the priest is proclaiming that to all these people looking for answers. And he�s saying, you know what, here�s all you have to do to go to heaven.

Just be baptized, do a few nice things, and God will just welcome you. That is not the gospel.

My friend calls that the religion of the bear. And the bear, you know, if you have a real bear chasing you and your friend, just run faster than your friend and you�re okay. And so just find someone who you�re better than in your eyes, religiously, spiritually, and you�re going to get into heaven.

So it�s kind of like heaven is N plus one. Whatever the other person is, is N, you do one more good deed.

Well, how about, I could call this the religion of, well, at least I�m not Charles Manson. I mean, really? That's the standard. You know, that's just, when Jesus talked in Matthew 538, or 548, and said basically, you have to be perfect to get into heaven, and we could go on and on and on, you know, about refusing to know yourself, Luke 23, or 923, and etc., etc., etc., all the, basically the requirements for holiness and righteousness that Jesus set.

And then a man can tell you that you�re good to go by just being baptized and doing a couple good things. That�s, who are you going to believe, Jesus or your priest?

Well, Romans 2 .13, the doers of the law will be justified. And so just keep all the law, you certainly will be justified, except maybe just one sin and you can't. Maybe Adam's imputed sin, you can't.

Maybe your sin nature, you can't. Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and nobody can keep the law. There's only one law keeper, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in Him, His perfect life, His death, His resurrection, and you will be saved.

But you will also be transformed. You will not live a desultory, kind of mediocre life. You will be changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Steve, I will change his first name because I don't have his permission to read this, although I probably, you know, to identify him. It's okay. I give you permission. Okay. Well, I'm going to change his first name anyway.

And here's how he's going to sign this letter. �Sincerely, Jim, the bad Catholic Wow. Isn't it interesting? So I thought we were hateful. Bad Catholic. I thought, you know, people have to plug their ears when they listen to the show.

And then now we have, thanks for your ministry. So that's kind of nice.

We do get some of these things, you know, from Texas or, you know, different places, but it's nice to get a, you know, homegrown. Local one. Yeah. Local yokel. You ever listened to Dwight Yoakam? All the time.

One of my favorites. You asked me. I knew that. All right. So in the news is the LGBTQRSTUVW. And PCUSA, some time ago, middle of March, said that they will marry people. I think it's 14F is their denominational common book of prayers, subtext number, whatever it's called.

Two people, you know, two human beings. They don't have to be of different sex. And at the same time, Steve, I found an article by a man and it's entitled this, I'm a Presbyterian minister who doesn't believe in God.

And I believe he's a PCUSA pastor, John Shuck is his name. And he says he doesn't believe in God. And the article, I think it's brilliant for its honesty, but it is condemning for the same reason. It's just shocking to have somebody actually put this in print.

It's kind of amazing, right? This is behind the curtain, the machinations of what's going on behind the mechanics of the PCUSA denomination. I think it's very core.

Well, I'm going to give a little something away here because I read part of this article and I just thought I could take from my liberal atheist friends, just about everything that this guy says, because he sounds just like them.

And I'm like, why don't you go get a job, pal, because you're just, you're wasting people's money.

Steve, while I, of course, don't know his motives or anything like that, reading this article, and he has a smile on his, you know, the picture of him as showing him smile. His selfie. Yeah, his selfie.

And he's got some, you know, kind of like light moments of levity and stuff in this. But I think it strikes me as, in my opinion, completely farcical in the sense that you say God all the time, but you don't even believe in him.

And so you're hypocritical and a liar to start, and I haven't even read anything yet from it.

But other than that, he's a perfectly nice guy. Yeah, he's good people. Yeah. My dad used to say. Okay.

My dad used to say that too. I know, they're good people. Yeah. And they would use wrong grammar too. They'd say, you know, he's good people. They're good people. Both. Both just seem to work. Everybody's good people.

Uh huh. And then you say, but, and then you can kind of slander him after that. As long as you say that at the front, he's really good people, but. So here's what he says. Religion is a human construct.

The symbols of faith are products of human cultural evolution. Now let's get to the third one, Steve. Comment after I read it. Jesus may have been a historical figure, but most of what we know about him is in the form of legend.

Myths and legends takes me back to my REM days. Hmm. Yeah, I, well, you know, we've been talking about scripture, about its inerrancy, about its reliability, and this just strikes at the heart of it. I mean, this guy should never even open up the Bible.

Um, well, why? He'd do just as well to get up there and, you know, read, uh, Greek mythology when he gets up in the pulpit, because it's just to him, it's just as reliable.

Steve, let's just change, since we have the ability here in the No Compromise Radio Studios to do about anything. Let's change the title of his article. I'm a Unitarian Universalist who doesn't believe in God.

I believe that. Okay, that's better, isn't it? Yeah. Don't you think that's more, more, um, it's more demonstrative of who he really is? Yes. Okay. Next one. God is a symbol of myth-making and not credible as a supernatural being or force.

Not credible. Okay, now this is PCUSA.

Well, I mean, you know, he's, he, he's saying he doesn't believe, so obviously he doesn't think it's credible, but I'm just like, what do you, what do you do? How do you minister to people when you just say, well, you know what, that's okay, I don't really believe in God, and this is all just random chance, and I mean, he must be a real, you know, source of encouragement.

I think his favorite book is probably Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen, 1923, probably.

Or Atlas Shrugged, one or the other.

So you know, Machen nailed it, and he said there's two religions. The religion of the Bible, which God is supernatural, he does things over and above nature, and he is a divine being, eternal, triune, sent his son to cloak himself with human flesh to live as a representative, die as a substitute, as raised from the dead.

Or you believe in liberalism, and everything is non-supernatural. He admits it. So I give him credit for partial honesty, but then he's, he's saying God, but he doesn't mean God, he means something else.

But you know what, I bet if we met this guy, we'd just think, he's such a nice guy. You know, because you'd have to be, right? I mean, how can you encourage people, I mean, sometimes we encourage people with our niceness, but usually, usually it's with the Word of God, right?

Or words that are kind of buttressed by the Word of God. So if you don't have that, if you have no hope of heaven, if you have no hope of a sovereign God who's in control of all things, how do you, how do you, quote, unquote, serve as a Presbyterian minister?

You must be a really super nice guy. Pete. Yeah, you'd have to be, right, kind, smooth. He also says the Bible is a human product as opposed to special revelation from a divine being.

So why stay Presbyterian? Because you get a good check? Pete. Yeah, I mean, again, he could just take any book into the, if he even gets up into the pulpit, why not just show, you know, forget all the sermon illustrations as movie clips, why not just show a movie on Sunday morning?

I mean, let's just, if it doesn't really matter anyway, why not just some kind of, you know, old Disney movie on Sunday morning?

Pete. Well, too bad. He doesn't have a Bible verse after that, because he would torque it into this. All scripture is not breathed out by God, and is not profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God might not be competent, and he will be ill-equipped for no good work.

Pete. Because God's not really credible anyway, that would be his message, right?

Pete. Yes, because when we think of the scripture, why do we know the scriptures are infallible and inerrant? Well, it eventually brings you back to the character and nature and essence of God. God is faithful, therefore what he produces, right, through scripture, what he says is true and faithful.

Pete. Well, and I recently got into a discussion with some of my relatives, and they said, you know, well, your starting point is, you know, an inerrant Bible. And I said, no, that's really not my starting point.

It's the end point. The starting point is the nature of God. And if you believe in a sovereign God, who's in control of all things, who created everything by the word of his power, if you believe in that God, then it's not hard to believe that he has preserved, that he first caused it to be written, his word, and then he has preserved it in an inerrant form so that we can have it today.

Well, why does it strike people so strangely that we as Christians, what's the root word of Christians? We, we have, yeah, yeah, right, in excess, why do we have any shame for saying Jesus walks into the temple, and the scrolls are unrolled, and they are opened up to Isaiah chapter 61.

And Jesus says, I'm the Messiah, these words that speak of the Messiah, I am he. And you roll that thing back up. And can you imagine the commotion that goes on in that synagogue? And so I said temple, but I meant synagogue.

And so we have the same view. We say this almost every show, we have the same view of scriptures that Jesus does. That's why we call ourselves Christians, because we follow Christ.

Yeah, I, and we'll get to this, this guy calls himself a Christian, but I'd say he's basically the anti-Christian, right? Against everything Jesus is for. So, but what do you expect when you start with the, basically the idea that Jesus, well, he might have been a, he might have been a historical figure, but if he was, you know, if he was certainly, it's the legend, I mean, I suppose he probably, I guess he could get up in the pulpit and read from Q, maybe that would be acceptable.

How about this? By this, you know, the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that you heard was coming and now is in the world already from our beloved apostle John, 1 John 4, 2 and 3.

And so this man has the spirit of the antichrist because he does not believe the eternal son of God has cloaked himself with humanity. He denies supernaturalism. And what's the next point? He denies afterlife.

I deny there is an afterlife. Well, and you know, if you want to, if you want a picture of the antichrist, you know, we always want to put, we, meaning evangelicals, want to put, you know, kind of horns and a tail on him and make him really obvious and he's a horrible person, all that.

Well, the truth is, the spirit of antichrist presents itself as being rational, reasonable, nice, inviting, and really just wants to make this life nice, comfortable, inviting, and, you know, the perfect entryway to hell.

Steve, if Satan masquerades as an angel of light, I'm sure his followers and his emissaries and his pawns, they have learned from Satan's tactics. And so if you come up to people and say, I have the spirit of the antichrist, you're going to go to hell when you die.

Let me tell you about life and death now. So they, instead of cloaking themselves with light, they just use smiles and nice words and they use God, but they evacuate the meaning of God.

I mean, his business card can say, you know, Minister PC USA, but what it ought to say is Minister of the Lord Satan. That's what it ought to say, you know, and I don't suppose that would probably score many points with folks.

I think this will probably be one of our highest rated shows ever. So we're reading today on No Compromise Radio from an article that was on patheos .com. It's on Hemant Mehta's normal posting, but this is a guest post by John Shuck, a Presbyterian minister.

I'm a Presbyterian minister who doesn't believe in God. And so he goes on to talk about his strategy and his view. Personally, he said, even though I don't believe in God as a supernatural agent or force, many say I do because I utilize, now I'm contracting some words, I utilize the symbol God in worship.

This may be viewed as cheating and myth-making, he says, but I find God for me is short for all things for which I long beauty, truth, healing, and justice. That is a quote.

Well, I think there are a lot of people who would call themselves Christians whose God is social justice, whose, you know, whose God is kind of utopia, whose God is heaven on earth. But that's not reality.

Scripture never points us to that, never says that we're going to achieve the perfect, because why? Because everybody's a sinner.

Steve, I don't know with your Mormon background if you ever went to some parties that I would go to and it would be, oh, there's going to be a big party. One kegger, two kegger, and then we go to other parties.

For the record, no. Okay. And there'd be other parties you'd have to bring your own beer. And so they'd send out a little blurb. You remember the acronym for bring your own beer?

Um, let me think. Yes, I do know that, BYOB.

So here's what this shuck says. So classic quote, someone quipped that my congregation is BYOG, bring your own God. I use that and people to bring their own God or none at all. While the symbol God is part of our cultural tradition, you can take it or leave it or redefine it to your liking.

That pessimistic B, that says person mystic, permissible, oh, oh, it's because it's a, it's a, there's a problem here with the printout. Do it yourselfers is the heart of beliefless Christianity. Okay.

So now we have BYOG and beliefless Christianity. Beliefless Christianity. I don't know whether to cry or laugh.

You know, is Christ our anchor or not? Well, apparently not. You know, they are anchorless Christianity. We're just adrift.

Okay. So faith is the instrument through which the benefits of Christ's life and death are given. It's the non-meritorious instrument, faith, right? Faith without works is dead and the just shall live by faith.

But we have a beliefless, faithless Christianity. I guess Habakkuk and I guess James, the just shall live by beliefless Christianity. I mean, it is just so ridiculous. It's idiotic. It's asinine.

Pete. It's absurd. I mean, it is, you know, I guess you could look at it this way. This is kind of like the Alice in Wonderland version of Christianity, right? Everything that should be up is down and down is up.

And you know, it's looking through the world at, well, it's all nonsensical.

Pete Did, was it Lewis Carroll? Did he write the book? Pete. And it was Humpty Dumpty, right? These words mean whatever I say they mean or something close to that. I forgot the exact quote, but it's close.

Pete. And it's just absolutely insane. He imports whatever he wants, you know, and allows other people, they can put whatever they want into this symbol we call God. It's all the same anyway. And this is, it's so unbiblical, you know, to even call yourself a Presbyterian.

What does Presbyterian mean? You know, this whole idea that you're run by elders and everything. Well, elders are called according to what? I mean, you just drive back to, this is all, they might as well just call it a church of atheists.

Why PCUSA Pastors Should Leave a Denomination That Denies God

Okay, Steve, let's talk about that PCUSA denomination for a minute, a few minutes. I would say kudos to those churches, whether they kept the building or they lost the building to the denomination, that they would leave.

I mean, I applaud them, sincerely applaud them. But what do we say to the PCUSA pastors who call themselves conservatives and to quote R. Scott Clark, what are they trying to conserve while they're there?

They're not helping. You have to excommunicate blasphemers like this.

Yeah, there's no, there's nothing left of the PCUSA. I mean, it is, you know, they are, they're deserts. I mean, this is complete, there is no hope. There is no truth. There is nothing left to defend in the PCUSA.

If you're a believer in a PCUSA church, you need to get out.

Steve, when you said deserts, I was thinking of 2 Peter and chapter 2 talks about their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. He goes on to say, they are blots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast on you, hearts trained in greed, forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. That's exactly. How would you like to have those things written about you? That's scary. It'd be horrifying.

And it's exactly what they are. I mean, just again, just imagine, you know, you have someone who's dying in your family and you go to this guy and you say, I need comfort, I need hope, I need help. And what can you say?

Well, I'll go talk to this guy, but you know, just get used to the idea that he's about to go into, well, he should say the lake of fire, but he'd say, you know, into non-existence, but that's false.

What kind of hope does that offer?

That's very insightful, Steve. The Christian pastor, the Christian lay person, man or woman has good news for people who are in the ICU or who are on, you know, morphine, dying, right? What's the good news?

This guy has no good news, except here's a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem or two. Yeah, let me read this to you while you're dying.

Let me hold your hand as you go to hell. May the Lord forbid us from ever doing anything like that. We want to, you know, as long as there's life, there's hope. That's what I tell people, you know, when they have unbelieving family members who are on the verge of death, I say, go and preach the gospel.

Even if they're unconscious, we don't know what the Lord can do. We don't know the limits of the mind. We don't know. We hear, we read stories all the time of people who are, you know, apparently beyond hope who come back and then say, you know, I heard every word you said while I was in that coma or whatever.

So who can say? You know, typically, I don't think people who disagree with us are our enemies, but false teachers are our enemies. And of course, false teachers can be granted repentance. And this man, I would hope God would grant him repentance, but he is a false teacher.

And second Peter says of men like this, they promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. And so you ought to run when people begin to talk like this and act like this. If you're in the PCUSA, we don't tell people to leave churches very often, but you want to leave that church.

And if you're a leader there, have your whole church leave. If you don't get the building, you don't get the building.

Well, and you know, we sometimes get accused of being judgmental, et cetera, et cetera. But here in this case, scripture would leave us no choice. But we do want, we do care about this man's soul. We care about the souls of those that he quote unquote ministers to.

Repent on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.