Baptizers Unite

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 ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and to quote Michael Stipe, it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. Today in real time, it's Snowmageddon.

Recording my second show now today on Friday, the night before the world ended in New England. Snowmageddon, blizzard, blizzard-a-ma-ghetto. Anyway, my name's Mike Abendroth. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

We try to talk to you about biblical issues. We try to put the focus on Jesus Christ, the one who never compromised, and that is our show, No Compromise. What are we doing here today? Well, that's a good question.

Radical Christianity Looks Ordinary

I do want to draw your attention to a website that you need to go to regularly. It's called The Aquila Report. The Aquila, T-H-E-A-Q-U-I-L, like NyQuil, A-R-E-P-O-R-T .com. The Aquila Report.

And it's got a lot of articles there linked. It's a compendium. It is a veritable goldmine of what's happening now in Christianity today. I like to look at The Aquila Report. I like to go to my friend Aaron's DoNotBeSurprised .com, and they both do similar things.

And one, I think The Aquila Report is Presbyterian PCA-based, I think. I think the leaders are doing that. Here's an article. Jesus doesn't want your risk, he wants your life. Stephen Altrogge, I don't know if that's how you pronounce his name, Altrog, A-L-T-R-O-G-G-E.

And boy, his article, perfect for modern evangelical in regards to what's happening now, and to the church of what's happening now. I've been thinking a lot about risk lately. In my little circle of Reformed theology, taking risks for God is currently cool.

It's in, it's radical, it's crazy, crazy love. It's what all the cool kids are doing. Piper and Platt and Chan are writing about crazy, don't waste your life, radical love. And I am really grateful for these guys, okay?

I'm really grateful that they are encouraging my generation to go hard after God. I'm grateful for the Harris Brothers challenging young men and women to do hard things for God. If any of you guys happen to stumble onto this, please feel my gratefulness.

But I'm starting to think that we might be getting the principle right, but getting the application wrong. Here's what I mean. When I read the books on being risky and radical and crazy, I come away feeling like I need to do something really, really big for God.

I need to take a risk by uprooting my family and being a missionary to India. I need to be crazy for Jesus by adopting four Vietnamese orphans. I need to be radical for Jesus by starting an inner city ministry to the homeless.

If I'm not doing something big for God, I'm wasting my life. If I'm not going big for God, I might as well be, might as well be sitting in front of a slot machine in Vegas, slowly throwing my life away.

Now let's just stop right there. I think Steve has really exposed something that's in Christianity. Now, nine times out of 10, I don't think we're gonna do things that are so radical. Now, where is the steady, faithful, behind the scenes, living a quiet life, working with your hands, devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ?

Isn't that admirable? Of course, there are people in churches today who should want to give their lives away for mission fields and ministry. I think there should be calls for that. But what about the majority of the people who sit here at Bethlehem Bible Church or any other church who need to be good dentists, good mothers, good students, and they faithfully live out by the Spirit's indwelling work of grace in their life, and they live out the Christian life, focusing on Christ Jesus in the day-to-day, in the toil, in the sweat, in the another day, it's another day, and so what if we have all this kind of crazy love, then what happens?

I think we begin to think to ourselves, they're the uber-Christians that are radical, crazy, and everything else, and we are just the ones staying at home. Now, Steve says, don't get me wrong, all those things I mentioned above are good.

If God calls you to do those things, then do them with all your might. Am I being crazy radical enough? I don't think so. Am I not being, rather? I don't think so. Here's why, being a Christian is fundamentally, easy for me to say, man, radical, risky, and crazy.

Mark 8 .35, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake in the gospel will save it. Well, what does this look like practically, Steve says? What does it look like to be radical for Jesus every single day?

And here's what I like about this article. Well, it looks pretty ordinary, at least in the world's eyes. Being radical for Jesus means fighting against our sin aggressively, and being willing to do whatever it takes to cut sin out of our lives, Matthew 5.

It means blessing those who hate you, giving your possessions to your enemies, Matthew 5. It means being poor in spirit, meek and hungry, and thirsting after righteousness. I wish he would've described the giving your possessions to your enemies part, but that's okay.

It's just a blog. It's just a radio show. It's just snowmageddon. The Bible's description for the radical Christian life is not particularly sexy or glamorous. Being radical for Jesus means being, now this is really excellent, subject to authorities, Romans 13.

It means being patient in tribulation, constant in prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, and showing hospitality, Romans chapter 12. These aren't particularly exciting things, but I think we need to realize that these are radical.

The world does not operate this way. Those who don't know God curse in the midst of tribulation, never pray, indulge in their sins, curse their enemies, and despise righteousness. If we would seek to follow Jesus, that will inevitably lead to crazy love.

I wish I would've thought of this. I'm not opposed to doing big things for God. We need more people in the missions field, et cetera. If God calls you, fine, go hard, et cetera. Good job, Steven Al-Trogge, Al-Trogge.

He wants your life. All right, what's next? Here we have something next. It's called from the Christian Post, Catholic-Protestant churches sign historic baptism agreement. Now, some days I say to myself, I'm running out of topics for No Compromise Radio.

We're into our, let's see, 3 1⁄2 years, 300 shows per year. Hey, did we already miss our 1 ,000? Somebody figure that out, would you? How many shows have we done? We need to know. How many no-co shows are there?

Probably 1 ,000. Kind of get, you run out of things to say after a while. That's why we only have a 24-minute show. If it was a 60-minute show, then my hobby is gonna take over my life. Leaders, this is by Michael Grabowski, Christian Post reporter, January 30th.

Baptism, Church Unity, and the Problem of Regeneration

Leaders representing the Roman Catholic Church and some American Protestant denominations have signed an agreement in Texas to recognize each other's baptisms. Now, I have to say, I think if you go to an infant baptizing church and you ask the person, have you been baptized as a baby?

And they say, yes, I have. I've been baptized by a Roman Catholic priest when I was younger. I believe they accept that. Now, that's a whole show in and of itself. I don't know why they do, but they do.

About six years of dialogue. Now, I have a lot of words that I don't like. Now, remember, this is just a show. We're just, this is just, you know, I'm just kind of, you know, sharing from my heart. I don't like the word journey, authentic, community.

And here's another one, dialogue. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Reformed Church in America, Presbyterian Church, USA, the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the United Church of Christ signed a document recognizing each other's liturgical rights of baptism.

Common agreement on mutual recognition of baptism, affirming baptism at St. Mary's Cathedral in Austin. Together, this is what it says. Ready? By the way, I've got my holy water right here from the Holy Land, holy water from the Jordan River.

I'm not kidding, in a box. Wait, I'm gonna get some of this out. Now, let's just do this right now. It says here, certification of authenticity. We hereby certify the authenticity of the products in this package.

The holy water is from the Jordan River. It looks too clean for that. The virgin olive oil was made from the olives of old Galilee olive trees. The holy soil is from Jerusalem City. We illegally got this out.

All right, I've never taken this out before, honestly. And now I have the holy water from Jordan. I'm gonna open this up. This is the first time, I'm not kidding. I'm opening this holy water up right now.

Oh, it's gonna be hard to put back on. And I just, I'm putting some on the microphone. I'm not kidding. This is holy water from Jordan River and it's all in the microphone. Woo, now that means I'm not gonna have any more mistakes because we are set.

Together, we affirm. Now, see, if I was Todd Freel, I'd be on TV and you could see it. We affirm together that by the sacrament of baptism, a person is truly incorporated into the body of Christ. First Corinthians 12, Ephesians chapter one.

The church, oh, it says into the body of Christ, comma, the church. Baptism establishes the bond of unity existing among all who are part of Christ's body and is therefore the sacramental basis for our efforts to move toward visible unity.

It said towards, but it should be toward, visible unity. We rejoice at the common faith we share and affirm in this document. We understand that the journey toward, see there, I got toward right there.

Full visible unity depends on openness to the grace of God and humility before the initiatives of God's spirit among us. Sister Mary, I wanna say Elephant, Ann Walsh, Director of Media Relations for USCCB told the Christian Post about the lengthy background that the baptism agreement was part of.

Okay, well, what does that tell you? Well, it tells you a lot. It tells you pretty much everything you need to know. It does say here that the clergy involved in the agreement ceremony held in Austin told local media about their feelings regarding the baptism recognition.

It's a historic moment. We're very much in concert with it. An associate presbyter of the PCUSA told the Austin Statesman American. The ecumenical effort, this mutual recognition of destruction, oh, excuse me, of baptism, is part of our response to Jesus' prayer that we may all be one.

So there you have it. You have all kinds of people who don't know anything about the Bible getting together because it's good to be good and it's nice to be nice, and it's nice to be unified because then as you all go tragically headlong, pell-mell into perdition, you can go together because Satan loves a crowd because it makes people feel better.

Friends, there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, to do something, to have somebody do it for you. I remember I was in Missouri one time, Brandon, on a gambling trip, just kidding, but I was there and I went to a church service and it was weird because they were teaching through the James chapter one, verse by verse, but he believed, and as I read some of the stuff and talked to him afterwards, in baptismal regeneration, that you get into the church and you become saved through baptism.

And I said, yeah, but you do that. It's something that's done. And he said, no, it's done to you. You don't dunk yourself. You are dunked, or in this particular case, you don't sprinkle yourself. You're sprinkled by someone else.

We have no righteousness. We do unrighteous things because we're unrighteous. We sin because of the fall. And so our hearts are tainted by sin. Our minds are tainted by sin. Our will, tainted by sin. And we've got a major problem.

What we offer to God isn't perfection. And since God is so perfect, He desires, He demands perfection. His name is at stake. His glory is at stake. And so anything we offer to God that isn't a perfect aroma regarding sacrifice, you know, we're in trouble.

That's why someone, and that someone's name was Jesus Christ, came to do what we couldn't do because He has a good heart. He is perfect. And all His righteousness and His goodness stem from His holy nature.

And so we have the work of another to save us. You're not saved by anything you do. When you go to a funeral and the guy brings out the little censer for some smoke and mirrors and says, because of this guy's baptism, we know he's in heaven, that guy's a liar.

Now, he might not think he's lying because he's so inbred with all this and so indoctrinated. And that's the water he breathes and he swims in and the air he breathes. I don't care if you're Protestant or you're Catholic.

I don't care if you're Methodist or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic. You have to be saved by the work of another alone. That's why it's by grace alone and through faith alone. And not any of these things like baptism.

And so for apostate liberal Protestants and for Roman Catholics to get together to talk about baptism, I'm sure it pleases the Catholics to no end because they're not changing their doctrine for any Protestants that are too ignorant of church history to understand these things.

It's also made it to the National Catholic Register. Catholics reformed Christian groups, acknowledge baptisms. Adelaide Darling posted 2513. And so what does Father John Crossin say? He says, there has already been a strong response from Christian churches together.

Members who have said this represents healing. This represents healing. I pretty much have no words. Now, listen, am I kind in person to Roman Catholics and to Methodist and to PCA USA folks? Well, of course I am.

But I'm not around them right now. This is called No Compromise Radio and you can't compromise. It's kind of like, all right, works righteousness via the sacrament of baptism. And what kind of, how does this obligate God?

I'm against anything that makes the death of Christ minimized. That's what I'm against. Anything that comes against Christ's perfect, perfect, a perfection. See, what I'm doing is I'm looking up a Bible verse now and then I'm not thinking about what I'm supposed to do.

You're supposed to have all these Bible verses listed out for the show ahead of time. But then if you don't know what you're gonna say before the show, you don't know. It says in Galatians chapter two, yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. That's right. Goes on to say in chapter two, verse 21 of Galatians, I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Just last night, I was talking to my daughter, Gracie, who's almost 12. And actually we were going to go see the Celtics-Lakers game. So that was good, but that was Snowmageddon if you were a Lakers fan.

And I said, well, Gracie, if you can do anything to get to heaven by being good, what does that tell you about what Jesus did on the cross? And she said, well, if you can get to heaven by being good, then why did Jesus die on the cross?

We can't get to heaven by being good, so he had to die. And so in her mind, still dealing with these abstract concepts of justification and substitution, just how masochistic God would be if Jesus had to die on the cross when we could contribute something, our everything, our a little thing, except the thing is we contribute nothing, no thing we contribute except our sin.

And so I stand up for the glory of God at the cross because attack that and you attack everything. This isn't, you know, let's be mean to people. Let's just tell people the truth. I think that baptismal regeneration is a lie because of Galatians chapter two, yes, and many other things.

It was fascinating yesterday when we were driving to Alewife station, which is the T station, the Metro station, to take us into Boston to the North station. We drove past the Mormon temple and I said, I want you to see the Mormon temple right off the two highway freeway there.

And I want you to see the top and it was the gold plated angel Moroni with a trumpet trumpeting the bad news that you can get to heaven by being good. That's the herald. That's not good news because I'm not very good.

I'm pretty bad. You know, when people come to your house and then in your front door and they knock and they're JWs or they're Mormons or anybody else, ask them, what's your good news? Do you have any good news to tell me these days?

And if they say, well, yes, you can get to heaven. How do I get to heaven? Their answer is basically going to be works righteousness. Be good, do this, do that, do the other. And then you tell them that's not good news at all.

That's not good news because you know what? What I do for God and unto God, I do with a corrupt heart. I need help. I need a savior. I need a deliverer. And so this is, you know, not good news that you're bringing me.

And then you say, by the way, let me tell you some good news. And then you tell them the good news that saves. All right, well, what about this? Maybe you're probably not going to like this here, but I'm going to read it anyway.

Trent, no, I don't think I want to do that. Do it another time. Okay, Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio, info at nocompromiseradio .com. We're going to have to talk about this lady, I think, later in Jesus culture.

What's going on at Bethel Redding and Kim Walker Smith. I think she's going to be interesting to talk about. Passion 268 generation. But you know what? I don't think I have the time today. I ain't got the time, brother.

The Free Will of God and the Limits of Human Will

All right, I'm running out of things to say. This is crashing and burning. True or false? True or false? Does anyone have free will? True or false? Does anyone have free will? Of course. Most people are going to say, yes, everybody has free will.

We ain't no robots. Lost in space, a robot. God is totally free. He's the most free, only free person. Right? Let's not call him a person because God in three persons, blessed Trinity. His will, free.

He does what he wants, always as he wants, as often as he wants, because he wants to. That's it. Psalm 135, I know that the Lord is great and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all depths.

Job 23, he is unique and who can turn him and what his soul desires, that is his will. He does. Ephesians 1, who works all things after the counsel of his own will. Daniel 4, he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

Isaiah 46, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Psalm 115, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. I think I grew up learning it as he does whatsoever he pleases.

Why does God do what he does? Because it pleases him. Is there any reason outside of him that he does any thing? No, no. Matthew 11, it was well pleasing in thy sight. So that is why we believe in the free will of God.

I think the next time someone talks to you about free will, you know, you can talk about the will follows the nature and if the nature is bound, the will is free to choose according to the bound nature and, you know, the free will is the mind choosing and you can do a variety of these different things.

But I think we should go immediately to, let's talk about God's will first. Why do we always talk about man's will? Why is there this big conversation always going on, perennial conversation? What about man's will?

Is it bound to internal sin? Is it bound to the world system? Is it bound to Satan? Is it bound to, you know, just how free is it? But let's start with God from now on. That's a new no-co deal. Somebody asks you about free will, you say, well, let's talk about God's free will first because once we establish that, then man's will has to be subordinate to God's will, doesn't it?

Creature-creator bifurcation? I think it does. So from now on, when anybody asks you about free will, say, okay, let's talk about man's free will, but first let's talk about God's free will and what does that mean in Psalm 115 and Psalm 135 and in Ephesians chapter one and Daniel chapter four and Isaiah chapter 46.

What do those things mean first? Well, my name is Mike Abendroth, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can also look at NoCo90 at YouTube channel. God bless you.