You Might Be a Dispensationalist
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Pastor Mike discusses an article called You Might be a Dispensationalist if by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr. He also talks about Hal Lindsey, the Personal Promises Bible, and a Noah's Ark Replica Zoo.
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- Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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- 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
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- 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.'"
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- In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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- 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
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- King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth.
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- I have not been in the studio lately. I was in California for not just a
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- Shepherd's Conference, but the Shepherd's Conference. And so it was good to listen to some of the men there,
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- Lawson and MacArthur. I think I might have liked Moeller's message the best.
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- So you can go to the Shepherd's Conference. I think it's shepherdsconference .org. Pull up Al Moeller's message and see if you liked it as much as I did.
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- He was talking about Hebrews chapter 12 and the difference between Sinai and who
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- Christ is in the new covenant. And he said, when people ask him, you know, how was church today?
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- He said the response should be in light of Hebrews 12. We heard from the word of God and we weren't killed.
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- We didn't die. The pastor didn't die. We didn't die. We heard from God and we lived.
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- Well, you can always write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com. Get quite a few emails. Not too many hard questions these days, more personal questions.
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- But if you get hard questions, we're gonna send them right over to Ray. He can answer them for you. Our Tuesday guy,
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- Tuesday guy's on a three -month sabbatical. And so I don't know if he wants to record shows or not, but if he doesn't,
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- I'm just gonna have to pull up some old reruns on Tuesdays or I will have to throw my voice.
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- When I was in Los Angeles, there were a couple of people at Shepherds Conference who wanted to know where Tuesday guy was.
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- Are you Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio? Yes, where's Tuesday guy? So I thought they were gonna say something like, are you
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- Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio? Could I have your autograph or something? But not one person asked for my autograph.
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- Not even one. No, not one. But they did say, where's Tuesday guy?
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- So there you have it. Let's see. Oh, No Compromise 90 is our
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- YouTube channel. Just uploaded another one. It's usually every Wednesday unless I'm out of town. We'll try to upload a
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- No Compromise video. You might be a dispensationalist if, and I like these kind of things here on No Compromise Radio.
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- This is August 23rd, 2012, written by Kenneth Gentry. So those of you who know who
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- Kenneth Gentry is, you know he's not really too enamored with dispensationalists.
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- He wrote an earlier blog post witnessing to dispensationalists. Oh, that's so funny.
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- All right, let's see. I haven't even, I don't remember what he wrote. So we're just gonna give this a shot.
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- I can always record over it. You might be a dispensationalist if, you like to chew gum constantly so that your ears won't pop in case of the rapture.
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- Kenneth Gentry. I believe Gentry's Post Mill from the Department of Full Disclosure at No Compromise Radio.
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- You might be a dispensationalist if you subscribe to the newspaper simply to keep up with biblical prophecy.
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- See, there you go. I guess you could listen to, it's not DeHaan. Who's the guy that's always on?
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- Jimmy DeYoung. DeHaan DeYoung. Deaven Drawley. You might be a dispensationalist if you always leave the top down on your convertible just in case.
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- I have to admit, Gentry's pretty funny. Gentry's pretty funny. You might be a dispensationalist if, barcode scanners make you nervous.
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- Now see, these days I like barcode scanners because I have my little MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone.
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- And then I can scan my 130 calorie fruit nut fiber one protein bar
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- Snickers faux thing, and it scans right in there. So it works out perfect.
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- Lost 20 pounds in five weeks with MyFitnessPal. Starving, you might be dispensationalist if you starve yourself.
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- You might be dispensationalist, Gentry said. Excuse me. If you have been a
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- Christian for less than one year and you have already studied through the book of Revelation 12 times. Now, of course we want to study the book of Revelation, but isn't that true?
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- There's a lot of truth to just when people first get saved, they love to study cults and they love to study the book of Revelation.
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- And in all fairness, the Bible says in Revelation one, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
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- God gave him to show to his servants, the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant,
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- John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
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- Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.
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- I don't know when the show's going to air, but I'm going to be in Patmos soon. So that's going to be exciting to be on Patmos and read through the book of Revelation.
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- Gentry, you might be a dispensationalist if you attend a church that sings a
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- Christian hymn, sings as a Christian hymn, the 1960s pop song,
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- Up, Up and Away. Hey. Now the bad news about laughing here,
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- I'm by myself in this room, there's no one in here, but you all hear me laugh. Up, Up and Away, my beautiful balloon.
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- Remember that? You might be a dispensationalist if you think General Revelation is the commander in chief of the armies of Armageddon.
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- Now that is super clever. That is very clever. General Revelation, some kind of movie,
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- Bruce Willis movie or something. What was Reformation 21 doing, reviewing the
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- Bruce Willis movie on there? I like Ref 21, but I just thought that was kind of odd.
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- That was almost a gentry moment, dispensationalism if. Dispensationalist if.
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- You can name more dispensations than commandments. Wow. See, typical dispensationalist, old school at least, seven dispensations.
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- And then most today, probably want to have fewer than that. Okay, you might be a dispensationalist if gentry said you forget your wife's birthday, but you know the latest predicted date for the rapture.
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- Might be dispensationalist if you have already forgotten the last date predicted for the rapture, but you are excited about the most recent prediction, confident that this is it.
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- See, that wasn't as funny because the dispensationalists that I know don't predict the rapture.
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- If you are a book collector and you long to locate a copy of the late great planet Earth in the original
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- Greek, see, there you go. If you believe that the term early church fathers, you might be a dispensationalist if.
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- If you think this early church fathers refers to J .N. Darby, C .I. Schofield, and Lewis Perry Chaffer, the early church fathers.
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- And lastly, you might be a dispensationalist if you would like a copy of Hal Lindsay's personal study
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- Bible with penciled in corrections. Wow. I remember when I first got saved, and of course
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- I was into prophecy like a lot of Christians, and of course the Bible's into prophecy and the ethical implications of said prophecy, but I was really trying to figure out the future, and for me it was exciting because to think that Jesus would return in the future, to think that all these wrongs in the world would be made right, to think that Jesus would come and he would execute justice on the unjust, and that I was no longer an enemy of God going to receive his justice, but I had received his mercy and grace through the eternal son.
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- I was happy and I was glad to know that I wasn't going to get it in the end, to think about guillotines and to think about nooses and gas, killing people in a variety of different ways that we have today, and to think that however
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- I was gonna get executed by Jesus, the execution I deserve fell on Christ, on my behalf.
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- So I love to study prophecy, not just the book of Revelation, but 2 Peter 3 and the
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- Olivet Discourse, and so I like doing that, but at the beginning of my Christian walk, I didn't know better, and so I zoomed right in on Hal Lindsey, and we always wanted to drive down to the
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- South Bay where he had his, I don't know what church number that was or what wife number that was, but anyway,
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- I'm glad I'm not caught up with Hal Lindsey's eschatology because he's far removed from a typical maybe
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- Dallas Seminary, Master's Seminary point of view. So today on No Compromise Radio, dispensationalism.
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- I will say that soon we'll do a show, What Do We Believe? regarding end times here at No Compromise Radio, and I don't really have a camp because I'm straddling too many horses and too many dividing walls, so I don't really have a name.
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- I don't like to be called dispensationalist for lots of reasons. One is I'm vain. That's one of the reasons because dispensationalism carries so much baggage that I don't really want the baggage attached because I have some sophisticated sensibilities about me, don't
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- I? So I don't really like the name dispensational because I don't believe in the seven dispensations.
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- I think Darby and Schofield have a lot wrong in their eschatology, and so I'll have to do a whole show on that.
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- Regarding covenant theology, there are some things about covenant theology that I'm not too keen on either, although I love federal headship.
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- I love the two Adams in Romans 5. I don't really love the first Adam, although you know what
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- I mean. I believe that God looks at the world covenantally, and I believe in the covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace.
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- So you don't want to call them a covenant. Pick a different name. That would be fine by me, the eternal counsel of God, the
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- Father, the Son, and the Spirit to go rescue the elect. So anyway, what do we believe here at No Compromise Radio?
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- I think that's going to have to be a whole show. In the meantime, you need to go to S. Lewis Johnson Institute, SLJ Institute, our believer's chapel, and pull up The Divine Purpose.
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- So you need to listen to S, for Samuel, Lewis, L -E -W -I -S, Johnson, known as Lewis to his friends.
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- And then listen to The Divine Purpose, and it covers what is a covenant theologian, what is a dispensationalist, why do each one have certain things that are very good, and then are there things to critique in both?
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- And so I pretty much subscribe to S. Lewis Johnson's eschatology, which puts me in the middle of everything, a man without a home.
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- I do see a future for Israel. I have a hard time getting around, getting my mind around the recapitulation theories of Revelation.
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- And so I'm pre -millennial, but see the world covenantally. So see,
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- I'm stuck. I'm not a progressive dispensationalist. So what do we do? What do we do?
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- Well, don't buy any Hal Lindsey stuff, and don't read the newspaper, as I think
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- S. Lewis called it, don't be a future snooper. How does this fit in? I mean, we will see how things fit in as we look back in time, but now looking ahead of time, it doesn't really seem like that's a good thing to do.
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- Secondly, here on No Compromise Radio today, there is something that Erin over at Do Not Be Surprised sent me, and I appreciate her website so much, because she can do all the work for me, and then
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- I have info for doing the show every day. Personal Promise Bible.
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- Personal Promise Bible, subtitle here on the blog site, the website, A Bible As Unique As You Are.
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- Ooh, see? Get to know me. So here's what you do. You enter your name, and then it takes 7 ,000 different words out of the
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- Bible and puts your name in the Bible, so it's a personal promise Bible. And this is, of course, horrific, and this is sad, this is vain, this is where's
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- Waldo, this is American, this is Western, this is selfishness, this is sinful because we're now thinking so many places where the
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- Bible's not speaking to us directly as the church, that this is for us. And so the particular one that they give you here is 2
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- Peter 1 .4, and so you just type in your name, and the set example here is Joe.
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- So I'm just gonna go ahead and read this. It's not Joe Mama, but it just says Joe. By which he has granted to Joe his precious and exceedingly great promises that through these,
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- Joe may become a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust, 2
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- Peter 1 .4. Now, certainly when Paul, some of the other general epistles, when these men are writing things to the local church in a very direct way, we know that these promises are for us.
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- They are personal. They are precious. Trying to think of other words with P.
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- To just take your name, Mike, and insert it, it says here, 7724, because it's cool to have numbers, right?
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- Noco 90, you gotta have a cool number. E1, R1, each one, reach one. You know, it's gotta be cool. That's, oh,
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- I'll tell that story in a second. The personal promise Bible inserts your name in more than 7 ,000 key scriptures throughout the
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- Bible. Read more, experience a breakthrough as you take reading your
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- Bible to another level, to another horrible level, to a horrible level.
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- Imagine connecting with God in a whole new way. You've never seen the
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- Bible expressed so personally, so powerfully.
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- And then it has people on the back that say it's good. And of course, it should not surprise anyone that Brian Houston, senior pastor of Hillsong Church, Sydney, Australia, said,
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- I love the Bible and was quoting excerpts from it in church. It's a great idea. Pastor Wanda, she likes it.
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- Oh, let's see. I think that's it. Well, I think you should run from the personal promise
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- Bible. There's a way to read the Bible correctly, and there's a way to read the Bible incorrectly.
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- And we would like authorial intent. When the Bible teaches something, let's say it's a promise to Israel, the nation of Israel, there are certain principles that we can derive from that.
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- There are certain applications that could stem from that. But to just go ahead and throw your name in there.
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- See, I don't trust these people enough to have them understand that if he's writing the church at Ephesus in the book called of Ephesians, that it's written in a circular letter fashion.
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- And so it is true. These promises are true to people in the church, but I don't trust them to do it, especially with some of these people that they have in the back, a personal promise
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- Bible. God wrote the Bible the way he wanted it read. And it has words like you.
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- And it doesn't have the word Mike in it. I don't think Mike's in there anyway, except Michael, the archangel.
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- So what was I just gonna say? Oh, I know what I was gonna say. The meaning of the
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- Bible, to quote my old pastor, is the Bible. If you have the wrong meaning of the
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- Bible, it's no longer the Bible. It's a false meaning. There's one meaning.
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- Now there can be a variety of applications, a census -plenty -er aspect of application, but there is one meaning, and it's the meaning that God wanted the human author as he moved that man by the
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- Spirit of God to speak, to write. Whether that was through an amanuensis or through his own pen, that's exactly what
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- God wanted to have recorded. And so when we have personal promise Bibles, there's a way to teach people when it applies to people personally.
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- And there's a way to teach that this is written to someone else. And so whether that's 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14, or other verses, we have to make sure we understand this correctly.
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- So this has to go to Cooke's and Barney's Award given today to the makers of the personal promise
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- Bible. I don't know if they did it for money, but there's a lot of money to be made in Bibles.
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- And certainly people have to make money to live and to work and all that stuff, but I think you should run from that.
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- What else is here on No Compromise Radio today? A 500 -foot Noah's Ark being built in Hialeah.
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- Hialeah, H -I -A -L -E -A -H. The Hidden Ark Group, I guess it's not so hidden anymore, is it?
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- Began building a 500 -foot wooden Noah's Ark on the outskirts of Hialeah that will be both a zoo.
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- Ooh, you can't make this up. Will be both a zoo and a way to raise awareness about the current environmental changes, et cetera.
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- A variable fuselage. Fuselage, I know,
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- I know. Well, Carolina Peralta, who is part of the group
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- Hidden Ark, who's no longer hidden, it's a religious thing because it's
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- Noah. God teaches us to protect animals. Now, think about this for a second.
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- I've always wondered why parents, for instance, unbelieving parents especially, would go to the baby section of the store.
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- What are some of the names of the baby stores anymore? Bed, Bath, Babies and Beyond or something like that? And they would go to the store and they'd get mobiles.
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- I remember buying mobiles for our children and they said if there's these certain black and white ones with spinning circles on the inside that you could hypnotize and mesmerize and all that stuff for your kids so they'd fall asleep.
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- No, the ones we got where they're supposed to help your kid's brain power. And so we would put the mobile above the crib and the kid gets bigger.
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- You have to move the mobile because they can stand up and yank the thing down. But people like to get Noah's Ark cribs. And I think actually we had
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- Noah's Arks animals and stuff and two by two, two little fluffy things. And so I'm all for that.
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- But when you think about the reason why there was a flood, it's pretty amazing. It is earned wrath by the people who snubbed their noses at God.
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- God was so patient and long -suffering. And Noah was as bad as everyone else. But he found grace in the eyes of the
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- Lord. God graced Noah and Noah responded with a righteous life, a blameless life, and a just life.
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- And he obeyed God in light of the grace of God. And then he built the Ark. But friends, every single animal outside the
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- Ark perished. If you had some animal on the, you know, every dog, every cat, every whatever, all dead except those on the
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- Ark. And so if you want to try to take the personal promise Bible and then you take this and you combine them in some weird way, the
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- Ark shows that God really cares about animals, teaches us to protect animals.
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- Then God wiped all the other animals out. What does that side of the story teach us?
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- Noah's Ark was, it was apocalyptic. There was an awesome rainbow in Los Angeles as we were about ready to fly out of LA for the
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- Shepherds Conference. And, you know, it's a rainbow, like a bow and arrow, except it's not pointed towards the earth.
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- The bow isn't because it's set up and God has promised not to flood the earth again. And so I asked the person what the rainbow means at the
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- LAX Airport Enterprise rental car. And I said, well, what does that mean? Isn't there some meaning to the rainbow?
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- And then I pointed to this beautiful rainbow. She said, pot of gold at the end, it's a pot of gold.
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- I said, is that the ancient meaning of the rainbow? Yeah, I think there's a couple of pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, that's the story, sticking with it.
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- So then I said, can you imagine when God flooded the earth? He promised that he would never flood the earth again and put a rainbow up there as his promise, his oath that he would never do it.
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- See how the bow's not aiming towards us? If you see a bow and arrow, think Hunger Games or something, bows, arrows, it's not pointing towards us.
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- It's put away, it's set up. When you wanna store a bow, that's the way you store it. It's arched like that. She said, well, it still floods in the earth.
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- I said, well, that's true, but God promised not to flood the entire earth again. So here we have the 500 foot
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- Noah's Ark being built. It's a secret group of people, but now they're telling us. And then it's good for awareness and it's a good place to have a zoo.
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- I think that's kind of nice. This lady goes on to say animals from the street, animals that are hurt, animals that no one can take care of.
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- We will take them in. We are not predicting the end of the world. No big floods.
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- So there you have that on No Compromise Radio. See, aren't we just on the cutting edge here? We are on the cutting edge.
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- Let's see, what else do I have here? Some church folks ask, what would Jesus brew?
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- Wall Street Journal, March 8th, 2013. Subtitled, Others Abstain from Tasting Trend.
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- A Swaddling Ale Falls Flat. A whole article here about beer groups at churches.
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- There's one here at Christ Church in Massachusetts. So maybe we'll talk about this more later. But I didn't know that time has gone so fast.
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- When you laugh at your own jokes, time goes by fast. But I wasn't laughing at my own jokes today. I was laughing at Gentry and I was laughing at the 500 -foot
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- Noah's Ark Zoo Vet Club. So maybe we can have a vet. I like vets.
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- We don't have any vets at the church here. We need a chiropractor at this church. So even though I don't like to beg for money at No Compromise Radio, I would beg that if you're a chiropractor that you need to come to Bethlehem Bible Church so before the service
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- I can get kind of an adjustment in between services or something and get my neck cracked and preach.
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- Info at nocompromiseradio .com. You can go to No Compromise 90 YouTube site to pull up some of the videos.
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- Our NoCo ever. Episode two is up and stay tuned for some books coming your way that probably aren't gonna be out for a year but that's all right.
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- Mike Abendroth, nocompromiseradio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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- The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.