Pat Abendroth Interview (Part 2)

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.

Evangelicalism Needs More Christ, Not More Branding

This is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. Hey, that sounds like me. Pat Abendroth is stealing my identity. WVNE, don't I have a contract? This is Mike Abendroth. Will the real Mike Abendroth please stand up?

Pat and Mike, back in the studio again for another edition of No Compromise Radio, always provocative, always biblical, never in that order. And so what are we gonna do today? We're gonna continue the theme, look at evangelicalism, but not necessarily preaching today, although we might talk about that a little bit.

Pat has a good knack for looking at the culture, culture of the church, culture of mainstream church, mainline, evangelical, fundamentalist. Has a good knack for looking at that and then making a critique, both negatively and then positively.

So I think we'll do that today. But a couple of things just first, Pat. We got a bunch of ESV Bibles in the mail. We're switching to the English standard version. And on the top of the box, on every one of the boxes we receive with ESV Bibles, 800 and some pounds, was a little something written.

And here was our little friend's written statement. KJV only. And I just showed Uncle Pat that. I just showed Pat that. Pat, what do you think of that? That's the wildest. Do you think Justin Taylor at Crossway Books wrote that on there?

I should take a picture of that and send it to Justin saying, look at what's happening. I saw it with my own eyes. It was pretty funny, but it must've been Jojo the Box Boy or the Shipper Guy, huh? Or Jill Jill the Shipper Girl.

ESV Bible, it's heretical, it's New Age, it's against the word of God. By the way, when I meet kind of raging KJV fundamentalists, the Rucker type, the Pensacola Christian type, are the, what's the lady's name?

The Econ, the Econ. Oh yeah, New Age Bible translations. Yeah, yeah. James White talks about her all the time and she wanted to debate him. I just think they don't understand and they're trying to stand up for this issue that is, it's not, it's inconsequential.

Of course the Bible is consequential, but in terms of Westcott and Horton, all these issues, I'm firmly convinced that when I stand up and preach from the ESV, I'm preaching from the word of God. Absolutely.

Very interesting what happens. I've met him, you've met him. Just, it's the same one the Apostle Paul used, so it's good enough for me. You know, let me put my head in the sand. Don't confuse me with the facts.

I know what I believe. It's no wonder that Christians appear to be idiots because we are, too many times, sad. Absolutely. Well, if you are a King James-only person, I'm glad you're listening to the show.

You are dead wrong, you are ultimately wrong. You have a cause that should not be your cause. Your cause should not be King James-only-ism, but at least you're listening to the show today and I hope you send all your hate mail to omahabiblechurch .org.

I don't think so. In fact, the other thing I have before we talk about the church in my hot little hand here is this newspaper. You probably, like me, have folks in the church, they cut out little things and hand them to you.

This was given to me a couple days ago. I think it's from the USA Today. Brilliant journalists there. At this last supper, they had a lot on their plates. Later paintings of the last supper show an increase in food.

No, no, what is that about? And there's a picture from Duccio, 1308, and there's a sparsely set dinner table with Jesus and the apostles. And then there's Lucas Cranach in 1565. They have a lot of food on their plate there.

And this is relevant how? All right, here's the segue. Here's the lead in on No Compromise Radio. Spartan Lord's Supper plates and now Spartan Christianity. Ah, now I see the connection. Connecting the dots on my end of the microphone.

The Problem of a Christless Evangelicalism

If you had to analyze evangelicalism today, we know preaching's the big issue, but short of preaching, what are some other problems with evangelicalism? And then let's talk about some of the good things that are happening in evangelicalism.

The biggest problem of all in evangelicalism, without a doubt, and I know you'll agree, is in evangelicalism, there is not enough emphasis on the evangel himself, who is the good one of the good news message.

It's Christ. So it seems so odd that we even say evangelicalism, but we don't talk much about the evangel. It is absolutely mind-boggling. Raving, starking, bonkers, as J .I. Packer would talk about when people disagree with the lordship of Christ.

How can we as Christians, for instance, have publishers that 80 of their books that they publish aren't even about Jesus? How does that work? It doesn't even make any sense whatsoever. We just come back to men will be lovers of self.

In the last days, you're exactly right, Pat. Difficult, stretched, compressed, troubling times will come and people will be lovers of self, right at the top of the list. In churches today, if you walked into a regular church, you just picked up such and such Baptist church on the Yellow Pages, from the Yellow Pages, and went into a church service, how would you just describe a service?

This is Church Anywhere USA, and walk me through a typical service. What would be good about it and what would be bad? What's gonna be good about it from at least a human perspective, I guess, is somebody's gonna read the Bible.

That's probably gonna be the highlight. Scripture reading, that's right. But you know what, a lot of times they don't do that anymore. I've even heard it said, at least in a dead liberal church, and they're still stuck in some kind of old tradition, it might be better than the current evangelical church because at least they're going to do scripture reading.

Pat, that's so true. Let's stop here just for a minute. As much as I slam Roman Catholic theology, and rightfully so for two reasons. One, there's a lot of people into it, and two, we're in New England, so what are you gonna do?

At least they have scripture readings. So many evangelical churches today, who wants a pastoral prayer? Who wants the scripture reading? Stand up and read from the Bible. We're gonna have spiritual dance.

We're gonna have the drama team. We're gonna have some videos of some Braveheart deal or something. There's no scripture reading. I think people should stand up and read a good chapter. This is no legalistic, you have to do this or else, but a good chapter, a hefty dose of scripture reading should be in every church, and the liberals and the Catholics are doing a better job in that than the evangelicals.

Yeah, it's just, it can't be more ironic and crazy than that, but you're exactly right, Mike. I think of J .C. Ryle, the great Anglican bishop of the 1800s. He was converted when he went to a church and they had a scripture reading for the day.

Please open your Bibles or whatever they said back in those days to Ephesians 2. I'll be reading verses one to 10. Converted through the reading of the scripture, Ephesians 2, one to 10. That's where the power is, so it's a good thing, good thing for us to even learn.

How about other things that'll happen in the church? Why, Pat, and I'm getting to the whole regulative principle, Lutheran principles, do we do things because we're told to do them, or if we're not told to do them, it's okay to do.

What do churches typically do? What's their liturgy in a regular church today that calls himself evangelical? Liturgy is Starbucks in the foyer. We won't call it that. That's, you know, the sacrament of whatever.

It's the sacrament of Starbucks. Vinty Starbucks. So you've got Topio Espresso Campana sacrament. Make everyone feel comfortable and everything is, you know, light and fluffy and the music is gonna be like you heard on the music station coming in, and everything is so relevant and we're gonna make the Bible relevant, and here's how the Bible applies to your life and parenting and diaper changing and whatever it might be, when in fact it's all craziness because Christ is relevant.

He's always relevant. What's relevant is the fact that you are a sinner and that Christ is righteous, and you need his righteousness. That couldn't be more relevant than that. And even when we see the problem, and so the pastor says, I know sexual immorality is a problem, so I'm gonna give you eight easy steps for overcoming sexual temptation from the life of Jesus.

It's all upside down and backward. Fact of the matter is what Christ did in overcoming temptation ultimately is he was doing a work for us so that we might trust in his perfect righteousness and on and on we go.

Boy, you sound like Sinclair Ferguson. You know, he said we are so upside down when it comes to the ministry of the word and the focus in local evangelical churches. We go to the temptation account of Jesus who, impaled by the spirit of God, goes out in Matthew 4, Mark 1, and Luke 4.

He goes out into the wilderness purposely for temptation for us to show. I mean, maybe you say he's the second Adam overcoming this temptation, and he is our captain and the author of our salvation, and he is doing everything perfectly and righteously.

And then we turn that into what Sinclair Ferguson said, a sermon on how we overcome temptation. It's absolutely crazy, and you won't do it. And if you did do it, then why in the world did you need atonement from Christ?

Why did you need him to do all that? God could have just told you what to do. And it would be fair if you said, by principle, here's the primary focus of the passage, but by principle, this text here, it would be good for you to think about the word of God and to use the word of God when it comes to temptation.

For sure, yes. But let's bury that way down deep after we're impressed with Christ and his perfection and his righteousness and him earning salvation for us, really. So here we are. It's pretty easy to see the wrong things and the right things are Christ, Christ, and more Christ.

That's right. Well, don't you think this is spiraled in on itself like some kind of black hole caving in on itself with WWJD leading the way? What would Jesus do? Yeah, it's the absolute, complete, and total wrong question.

Occasionally, you'll see, here's our example, Christ Jesus, and this is what he's done. But we like those little things that we have around our wrist here at the church. They're not really big sellers and they kind of make your wrist green.

But what would Jesus tell his apostolic messengers to say about Jesus? And then later, after you've pondered that for 5 ,000 days, to have you respond to such a thing. But I don't know the acronym for that.

Wissy wig? All right, so tell me about drama while we're thinking about that because we're only halfway into NoCompromiseRadio .com. I have Pat Ebendroth in the studio today. He is my brother in Christ and literal brother as well.

Same mother, same father. And what is going on in evangelicalism is the topic for today, church services. Let's talk about drama now. And why do you In New England, don't you say drama? We do. Drama mean, law and order.

It's a very interesting thing. Pat, the first time I was in New England and someone was reading from Revelation at a church service, I am the Alpha and Omega, nobody laughed. And I just thought it was the most hilarious thing I had ever heard in my life.

And nobody laughed. He's the Omega man. So Drama is what we were gonna talk about. Back to drama. Why do people do drama in local churches today? And what does it really tell us about their view of scripture?

They do drama in church today, maybe because it's what they think people want or it's gonna somehow connect to people or something like that. But what's interesting is the Bible doesn't give that as an imperative.

No pastoral epistle emphasizes that. It's preach the word, the word that exalts Christ and gives people hope and transforms people's lives. And we say, ah, I have a better idea and I'm gonna connect with people in a more relevant way or something like that.

We've gotta act as if the Bible says drama the word. Well, yes, but I'm a visual learner and studies have shown me and shown everyone else that some people don't learn when they hear things. Some people learn when they see things.

Oh, nice. Well, we have a drama for you later at the end of the service. It's called the Lord's Supper. That's exactly right. And here are the elements and you can see them and they symbolize great, great redemptive truth.

That is so true. If you think that you have to drama the word, you've got a low view of the word and its power. And it's just like in Matthew chapter 22, you don't really understand God's word or its power.

And so you don't need to do drama. I'm not saying that on a Friday night, if some kids at the youth group wanna put on some skit, they're not allowed to do it. We're not talking about that. We're talking about Sunday morning worship when God calls the saints to worship, you won't see any kind of drama that is performed by people.

You will see the drama of redemption, unfolding drama revealed in God's word. And so that's what you're going to see. I could not in any good sense of the word, sit in a church that did drama once a month on Sunday morning, once a year or once a week.

When I see churches that do drama on Sunday morning, you know what I think of? Weak leaders, weak pastors, weak view of scripture, weak elders, and weak elderettes. I just think, you know what? These people are ashamed of the Bible.

And if you're a church out there listening today, and you are a member, and you go to a church that has drama, kindly, rationally, thoughtfully, why don't you go to your pastor and say, I think I'd like more preaching pastor and less leotards.

I think that'd be a good thing to ask. But somebody's going to say, Mike, well, the Bible doesn't forbid it. And there's nothing in the New Testament that says we shouldn't do it. But my question is, what's going to go?

If you're going to make room for it, which is a question in and of itself, but if drama is going to come, then what's going to go? We know the answer. Especially if you have a 55 minutes to have your service done, because you've got nursery workers, and if people are going to leave, and reminds me of the guy who says, you know, at 55 minutes, I'm standing up and walking out, pastor, so make sure you're done by then.

I think those kind of people need to repent or get out even sooner than 55 minutes. Why don't you just leave after you've had your bad coffee in the morning? Something's got to give, and so our philosophy, Pat's philosophy, my philosophy, I think it should be your philosophy as well, when the Bible commands us to do something for worship, that's what we do, and we won't add anything else.

The Bible should not have to say, don't drama the word, don't have 15-year-old girls with tight dresses and streamers dance the word, don't have some kind of Jimbo the gorilla stomp his feet two times when you ask him how many testaments are in the Bible, the word.

We don't need any of that. Shenanigans. Shenanigans, that's exactly right. The Bible doesn't need to say that. The Bible needs to say things like, when the saints get together for corporate worship, here's how I am pleased.

We want you to have the Lord's Supper, which points to Christ and his atoning work. We want you to preach the word, which speaks of Christ Jesus, both Old and New Testament, reveal Jesus my son in whom I'm well pleased.

We want you to have scripture reading, which is focused on the word. We want you to sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs that all talk about redemption, sin and redemption and the drama of God. We'd like you to have baptisms that picture before your very eyes, death, burial, and resurrection of people and of Christ.

We'd like to have you give money to support the work of this Christ-centered ministry. We'd like you to pray and ask God to bless. And then if we get all that right, then maybe I'd have time for something else.

But we're still working on doing that with excellence. Absolutely. And Mike, one thing that I think is important to bring up and discuss a little bit would be the fact that there were dramatic arts being practiced and very popular when the Bible was being written.

And so God certainly could have said, it's not as if this just came along later. And now that we know this effective means of communication, we're gonna introduce it, God should have thought of it. It was popular, it was going on all over the place, but God chose not to use those means.

He chose to use the means of his word proclaimed, right? You're exactly right. When we have now churches in the area, evangelical churches, I don't know, but Catholic churches, it's in the news, New York Times, I believe, they're gonna start doing some 3D things to get youth back in the church.

You know, Avatar was big, Shrek 3D is big, Alice in Wonderland 3D is big. So now let's do Roman Catholic stuff big. Let's have 3D kind of movies and videos and all that kind of stuff. If the word isn't enough, I mean, we learned this from MacArthur early on.

If the word isn't enough and Christ isn't enough, it's never gonna be enough. Kim and I say that all the time privately and to people who can stomach it. If you love Jesus Christ and his word, this church will be enough for you.

But if you're here for friendship, if you're here for camaraderie, if you're here because you like double backbeats and in the music and you like, you know, windmill guitars and all that kind of stuff or whatever you like, whether we have that or not, here's what we do have.

Christ Jesus has revealed his mind and his work to us through his word. And we will proclaim that, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, forgiveness of sins, free grace, I have loved you freely. And if that's not enough, you're looking to be the pastor's friend, maybe we will be friends, but if you're not gonna minister, we probably never will.

So if you like Jesus and his word, you'll love this church. And God gives you a desire if you are born again for his word, you will have a longing for it. So maybe if you don't have a longing for it and you just want your ears tickled, maybe there's not been a heart change on the inside.

Reminds me of Vance Havener, he did the whole thing about the gospel horse and this was a generation ago. And for the big tent revivals, they'd bring in this horse and they'd say to the horse, how many testaments are there?

And he'd stomp his feet two times. How many commandments? And he'd stomp his feet literally 10 times. How many apostles? 12 times. And then somebody got, he caught onto the thing and he got up and shouted at Vance Havener, said, how many hypocrites are in this church?

And then the horse started dancing on all fours and did a huge deal. Clown ministries, I met somebody a while ago, we really like our church and I especially like that guy who comes and does some kind of magic and does some kind of juggling with the clown thing.

We like those kinds of sermons. Oh, the one that says God is stupid and didn't know enough to put this kind of stuff in the Bible. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. The good news is what you probably don't see, listeners to No Compromise Radio Ministry, there are hundreds, yay thousands, of faithful men all across the world.

I've seen with my own eyes, Pat, and so have you. People who week in and week out, 30 people at the church, 50 people at the church, a hundred people at the church, faithfully preaching Christ. And we won't ever know about them, but the eternal ages will know about them because I think the Lord Jesus himself will reward them with a wonderful reward that will show us all what's really important.

And I've met some of those people. I think about the man at our church, Dan Rathbun, his father, Bob, is preaching, he's blind, he's in Lowell, and I don't think anybody knows about Bob Rathbun, but the Lord knows about him.

35 years of faithful preaching, 40 years of faithful preaching. There are people who say, we'll sing about Jesus, we'll give unto Jesus, we'll pray to the Father through Jesus we'll preach Jesus, and then we'll come back on Sunday night and do the whole thing over again.

There are a lot of churches out there. You just have to look. And when it comes to unbelievers, the called will respond. And it's not a matter of we have to somehow juice it up, spice it up, make sure things are exploding and it's technologically cutting edge.

You know, you and I both, Mike, grew up video game after video game after video game, TV, TV, TV, all this stuff but neither one of us were converted because somehow people used some fancy technological means or instruments so that we would somehow find the gospel relevant.

Well, we could call for that study that actually exists. It's called the Bible Study and it uses the Andy Griffith Show to teach moralistic lessons about the Bible. We could use that maybe. Maybe the Partridge Family Study Bible.

That would be good. The Osman Study Bible or something like that, Donny Osman. We're talking on No Compromise Radio about this and about all kinds of other things. Tell me, Pat, if this is something you'd agree with.

You look at a church and see what they do and you can tell all about their belief system. I think that's absolutely true. You can know very, very quickly because it shows whether or not they really believe the Bible.

As we said before, we know 2 Timothy 3 .16 and 17 if they really believe it based upon what they do with the book. Yeah, because if you say you believe something and you don't do it, you really don't believe it.

I remember a man at Master's Seminar, he used to be a professor there, Pat, and I said to him, do you believe that women should, according to 1 Corinthians 11, have their head covered? And he said, yes, I do.

And then I just nicely said, does your wife wear one? The answer's no, and I thought to myself, he doesn't believe it. Well, maybe he does and she doesn't. That's exactly right, which would then undermine the whole point of the passage anyway, I think, in terms of submitting.

Now, we're not here to talk about head coverings today, although that might be spicy enough, but if you believe something, you'll act on it. And when you fall short, of course, we are sinful, you'll be sorry for that and you'll ask for forgiveness for that.

And that all goes to the territory. Pat Abendroth can be heard, he's got a radio show as well, I think it's his sermons played in Omaha, Nebraska, but if you want to listen to some preaching to see if Pat practices what he's just preached here, omahabiblechurch .org, omahabiblechurch .org, and pull up some of the sermons.

Pat, you're preaching through? Romans right now, Romans chapter 11. And he had about 19 ,000 people at the church and then he preached through Romans 9 and now he's got 38 ,000 people at the church. Very, very funny.

I actually think we've not gone backward after Romans 9, I was pretty thankful for that and God draws people, it's great. Pat, I think if people can sit for months through Romans 1 to 8 and then they see the connection in chapter 9 early on, what Paul's trying to say, it just flows.

Makes all the sense in the world. Absolutely. Well, today, if you'd like to ask us a question, it's info at nocompromiseradio .com. We've been talking about the state of the church. I think we should say this at the last minute.

Jesus Christ, according to his own word in Matthew chapter 16, is building his church. And I'm so glad, and I know Pat is as well, we are big fat sinners and if it was up to us, the church would cave in.

But Christ, through fallible preachers, frail preachers, sinful preachers, of course called by God and equipped, according to 1 Timothy chapter 3, he builds his church and he has his word do its work.

And so I'm encouraged by the state of the church because I know every elect person that the father gave to the son to go redeem at Calvary, he's going to make it. Absolutely. She's going to make it because Jesus made it.

Jesus paid it all. And our response to Jesus is we'll obey your word in local church and at home. Amen. 10 seconds, anything you want to say? Great to know, trusting in him. So we want to be used by him to build his church and that's why we want to proclaim his word.

Absolutely, God bless 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.

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