Jason Alligood (2022 Interview)

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.

Catching Up With Jason Alligood and the Last Seven Years

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I am very happy to have a guest today, a personal friend of mine, and I�ve been waiting to catch up with him. And so I thought, �Well, why don�t we just do this in public

You know, all this public forum, public discourse, you get an eavesdrop on two friends catching up regarding what the Lord has done in our lives and ministry. So Pastor Jason Alligood, welcome back to No Compromise Radio.

Well, thank you, brother. It�s such a joy to be here with you once again. We were just talking. It�s been like seven years, and we both kind of want that episode to go away, so we�ll start fresh here.

Jason, what has happened on No Compromise Radio? I�ve done this for 14 years, and of course, we should all expect that every one of us as Christians, we�re learning, we�re growing, we�re maturing, we�re getting more defined and precise on doctrines.

And I think Paul talks to Timothy, of course, about, �Let your progress be known to all men. So hopefully our congregation sees it. But when we play reruns on Fridays, I�m hoping the reruns aren�t too wacky in terms of my old theology.

And so, seven years ago, who knows what we were talking about. So we�ll just start fresh, like you said. Tell us a little bit about where you minister and what�s happening there at Fellowship Bible, and then we�ll get to the seminary.

Sure, absolutely, yeah. So I�m coming up on 10 years, actually, in about a month. So November 1st will be 10 years of full-time teaching pastor at Fellowship Bible Church in Peoria, Illinois. God, in His grace, brought us here, and it was a revitalization work.

And the good news is that they knew that. They weren�t under any illusion that they didn�t need to make some changes that were going to be helpful to gospel ministry for Fellowship in the area where we are.

And so they have been very, very gracious to me and my family, and God has certainly blessed our church. It�s by His sovereign grace, of course, that anything happens or changes. So I�m under no illusion that it�s because of the man, just a clay vessel.

But we have been able to see the church really more than double at this point and really, really seen a transformation, as I like to put it, from a Sunday-only church to, of course, Sundays are important, don�t hear me say that, but sort of a Sunday-only church to a church that really values discipleship and building into each other�s lives.

So, with Jesus Christ at the center, of course.

Jason, you�re getting to see that fruit, I�m sure now, of 10 years you�re there, and of course we see the Lord Jesus in the Scriptures talk about a lot of farming and growth and it�s slow and you can�t really see it that much.

It�s kind of like a child, you know, �Am I growing, Dad And there�s the growing bean. But now if you look back 10 years ago to today, you see the obvious hand of God in the growth slash maturation of your folks, don�t you?

Absolutely. And you know what�s interesting is I think the more� and you know this, brother, because you�ve been at your church for how many years now, Bill? How old was Methuselah? I�ve been here 25.

Yeah, sure. And so, you know, these seasons, they go in cycles, you know, somewhat, and so we�re really starting to see, yes, that maturation in many ways, and yet there�s new places where, if I can use this term, revitalization needs to happen that, you know, it kind of uncovers as you grow and as you seek the Lord as a church and as you�re, you know, again, preaching faithfully the gospel and, you know, certainly drawing, you know, law gospel distinctions and people are involved in each other�s lives and these kinds of things.

You begin to see where the Lord is uncovering different areas in people�s lives or in the life of the church. And so, yeah, it�s been great to see the Lord blessed in many ways, but then see the way in which He�s continuing to purify us as His bride, or at least the local representation.

Of His bride. I�ll put a link in the show notes, but if you want to access the church website and listen to Jason preach, it�s fbcpi .org, F. Frank Bacon Charlie Peoria Illinois dot org. There you go!

Hey, I just figured that out, finally. Fellowship Bible Church at Peoria, Illinois. We have it now. That�s right. Or as we say here, Peoria. Peoria. Yeah, that�s right. So, Jason, how did we meet? I think we met, did we meet at the Shepherds Conference, or was it online, was it Twitter, what?

No, it was Shepherds Conference. In fact, it was funny because I�m sure I�d been�so the last time I went to Shepherds Conference was 2015, but I had gone from about 2001 pretty consistently. I think I�d been 13 times out of those 15 years, and I just recognized your face, I�m sure, from being around Shepherds Conference, and so, you know how they have those lines up front when you�re registering, or at least they used to?

And I looked back and I saw this goofy-looking shirt, and the head on top of that shirt looked very familiar to me. And so I just walked up to you and said, �Man, you look so familiar to me. And you said, �My name�s Mike Ebendroff.

I said, �Oh, man, yeah, I think maybe at that time we were following each other on Twitter or something along those lines. And so I was able to put a face to the name to the shirt.

That is so funny. Well, people sometimes would say, you know, Forever 21, and I would think, �No, no, no, no, it�s Zara. I�m a Zara man.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was Shepherds Conference many years ago.

Oh, that�s wonderful. And, you know, with the Twitter thing, there are downsides to social media, but I�ve met a lot of very kind and warm pastors on Twitter, and so I�m thankful to the Lord for that, too.

Theological Development, Reformed Baptist Identity, and Confessional Alignment

If you had to go back 10 years ago, Jason, what would be some of the theological, I don�t know if I want to say changes, but kind of tweaking a little bit, what have you been learning over the years? What would define you now more theologically than 10 years ago, for instance?

Yeah, so I came to Fellowship Bible Church very much a sort of one of the, you know, kind of discernment guys slash progressive dispensationalist. And over time, as I was studying the scriptures and studying different theology, I began to shift, and I didn�t really have a category for some of these things until somebody challenged me to read Pascal Denalt�s book, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Subliminalism.

And as I�m reading Pascal�s book, I�m realizing, �Man, I�m a Reformed Baptist. So what I believe here about federal headship, really I can�t hold to without holding to the covenant of works. What I believe about Christ slain before the foundations of the world, I really can�t hold to that without a covenant of redemption.

You know, I kind of had heard these terms, but as I was studying scripture and theology, I was starting, I didn�t have categories for this, or at least I thought it fit neatly into the categories that I did have.

And then as I�m reading Denalt�s book, I�m like, �At the end of the day, really I�m a Reformed Baptist. And so then I started looking into the second one, Confession. You probably don�t remember this, but even some of that was conversations that you and I were having at the time, and yeah, just really starting to say, �This is where I land theologically.

And so over that course, then of course your eschatology begins to change your view of Israel, and not that we don�t love Israel, but I�m saying those views begin to change. And so I had to go to my elders and say, �Guys, you know, I�m not where I was when I came, and so we either have to do one of three things.

I need to leave and go find another charge. We need to change the Church�s statement of faith, or we need to just keep things as they are, and that feels a little bit icky, you know.

And so we worked through. By the way, just to interrupt just for a second, we�ve done 3 ,500 shows and no one has said �icky� so far, so you get the award. I, with you, Jason, reject all forms of �icky.

That�s for certain.

Well, if I win a prize, I take PayPal or a Fed Book. So anyway, so we ended up, you know, long story short, over a couple of years adopting the abstract of principles, which I�m sure you�re aware is a summary of the Second Lenten Confession, and that just seemed like, with the most integrity, what we could do as elders.

And so it allows me to be there, and it allows us to have that sort of Second Lenten Confession underpinning, and I reference it all the time in my sermons, but as elders, we�re going through Sam Rinehan�s book on covenants, Christ�s Covenant Kingdom, something along those lines.

I can�t remember the exact title. I�m sure you�re familiar with it, but so yeah, I just try to slowly, you know, encourage my elders towards that understanding.

Wonderful. I think that�s manly, too, and proper for you to say to the elders, �Look, these are the options, and you guys can decide, and I�m not going to try to, you know, change this in an inappropriate way.

And so I think that�s good for some of our listeners to hear. Tell me a little bit, Jason, about, has your preaching changed? I know you�re going through Psalm 119 now, and of course, you know, there�s nothing about the Messiah directly in there.

How do you preach a multi-series on Psalm 119 and still talk about the Lord Jesus every week? What�s your philosophy there?

Preaching Psalm 119 Through Law, Christ, and the Christian Life

Thank you, brother. I do have to say that this is the one area that I think I did pretty well on the last show, because at that time I was preaching through Judges and Ruth, and so we talked a little bit about that.

So I did at least have a Christotelic kind of hermeneutic then. So I�ve told the folks as we�ve gone through Psalm 119 that I want us to use this paradigm, as we�re thinking about Psalm 119, to the pre-converted person.

This is a law that condemns. They look in this mirror of God�s law in Psalm 119, and they think, �I could never live up to that standard. Or at least they should think that. And then I want us to think about this in the life of Christ.

How does Christ fulfill what is in Psalm 119? In the sense of the love of the law of God, the precepts of God, how does He in His incarnation and His humanity live this out and fulfill this? I like what one of my friends said the other day, and somebody else surely has said it, but when Jesus read the Psalms, in the parts where there�s righteousness, He said, �That�s me.

Right, that�s good. And then, of course, where it talks about needing to be washed or this idea of the sinfulness of mankind, that�s where Christ bears that for sinful mankind, because He Himself, of course, was sinless.

And so when you come to those passages, that�s how we need to think about that. And then I say, thirdly, the third part of this paradigm is that as believers who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ and His act of obedience in the law to these things, He now becomes our righteousness, and therefore this is a guide for us.

And we do these things out of gratitude and love for our trying God, but it�s not out of our own. We�re not seeking to earn anything. Christ has earned it for us, but we love this. We delight in this.

We know that God offers this to the believer as a way of joy, and He knows that we�ll get the most fulfillment out of this, and He�ll get the most glory out of it. And then, fourthly, the fourth part of the paradigm is that we need to see how the intra-Trinitarian theology of this works out in the life of Christ.

So, as the Father is and the Son is eternally generated from the Father and the Spirit sent by both the Father and the Son, how do we view the New Covenant in Christ as the fulfillment of Psalm 119 or any of the Old Testament, so that Christ is not only the fulfillment of these things, but it is the outworking of the Trinitarian work that He would be the one who would have sent and would do these things.

And then subsequently, He and the Father would send the Spirit into our hearts, pouring out their love into our hearts by the Spirit to enable us by Christ�s righteousness and obedience to do these things.

I love that, and I love the Lord working in your life. It seems like we�re on kind of a parallel track here in terms of kind of discernment ministry, and then moving toward Christ-exalting ministry, and law gospel, and first use of the law, third use of the law, etc.

So I knew I liked you. See, I like people who are like me.

Well, brother, you know, I�ve heard that transformation from you, from your brother. You know, it�s a joy to be, like, in that same journey, and to not diminish our brothers and sisters who, you know, believe differently than us.

But yeah, there is that joy and that communion of similarity, isn�t there?

So true. We have today on No Compromise Radio, Jason Alligood, and you can access him at fbcpi .org. Jason, I want to talk a little bit about theological education. There�s a, probably not in our circles, but in evangelicalism in general, kind of this refrain, I even heard of it yesterday, you know, kind of down with doctrine, we need more practical, we need, you know, a to-do list, and we need some of that.

Doctrine, Practical Theology, and Seminary Training

When I look at your bio, in reverse order, you just, you have your PhD from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You have a master�s degree from Calvary Theological Seminary. You�ve got a bachelor�s degree from Moody Bible Institute.

You�re adjunct at Puebla Bible Seminary and at Midwestern Bible, a Baptist Theological Seminary. Is there a seminary you haven�t been to, is what I want to know?

I�ve done the rounds, man, so the first two schools, Moody and Calvary, were both dispensational schools, and then now, you know, Midwestern being a Southern Baptist school, there�s elements of everything at Midwestern, of course.

But yeah, God�s been so gracious to let me to do that, and for my church here to go through the process of me doing a PhD, that�s a lot of sacrifice on their part, certainly financially, to help me out, and then just time, because you have to put in a lot of time.

But yeah, it�s been a joy to go through that.

How do you help your people understand that doctrine really matters, and it�s the springboard for all practical living?

Yeah, I think even our friends who are maybe in different places than we are theologically, I pray recognize this, and I think that they do, that you can�t not bring theology to the Bible. So one of my friends, a guy in our church challenged me, �Hey, you shouldn�t bring your theology to the Bible.

I said, �Brother, so do you believe the Bible is inspired in an errant, right And he goes, �Well, yeah. I said, �Aren�t you bringing your theology to the Bible You know, when you do that, and well, just that one.

Just that one. You know? �Well, yeah, but are you starting over from scratch about the Trinity? Every time you open your Bible, you don�t believe in the Trinity, and then you have to find it in there somewhere.

�Well, no, no, of course not. �Okay, brother, well, you�re bringing your theology to the Bible. And I used to say, even before my second London days, there is no such thing as a practical theology that�s not also a doctrinal, if you will, theology.

That sounds very redundant, but you can�t there is no a better way to say it is there�s no theology that�s not practical, you know? And so we live our lives theologically every day, even the unbeliever does, you know?

They have the law of God written on their heart, and they�re suppressing it in unbelief. And so, yeah, so the way I seek to impress that upon them is a few ways. One is to preach theologically, and by that I don�t mean, you know, unpacking eternal generation every Sunday, though we went through the Gospel of John, so there�s a lot of eternal generation in the Gospel of John, and simply trying to explain that.

And my wife, you know, is she�s my best, you know, fan and my best critic, which I love, and, you know, she�ll tell me, like, �Hey, you need to unpack, if you�re going to use that terminology, you need to unpack that more for the folks and I appreciate that so much.

Because the one question I ask her is, you know, �Am I clear? Was it clear today Not, �Was it good I don�t want to hear about whether it was good or bad, but was it clear, you know?

Just to interrupt you for a second, Jason, I remember R .C. Sproul would regularly say to his wife, Vesta, after he preached, something similar, asking her a question, because she was obviously a close confidant and honest and everything, but R .C. would say, �Was I kind

So I think if I take what you say, and what he says, and put that together, we might be on to a purpose-driven life book or something.

We�ll T .M. it right now, brother, on the air, and we�ll make some bucks. No, that�s so good. I don�t know if you�re familiar with a guy named Brian Croft, he�s part of a ministry called Practical Shepherding, but one of the lines in his book is, �Wives should be supportive but unimpressed with their pastor-husbands.

I like that. Sometimes Amber will say, �I�m supportive, but I�m unimpressed.

I remember talking to some young pastors, and I would ask them, �Who your favorite preacher was Because I�m eventually getting to, no one really says, �Jesus is my favorite preacher. And then we talk about how Christ preached.

But then I asked the wives, too, it was kind of a dinner, and a lot of the wives said, �My favorite preacher is my husband. And I just thought, �Boy, that�s amazing. I said, �My wife respects me, she�s glad that I preach the word, but I don�t think I�m her favorite.

I don�t ask her how I did anymore, because basically what I was saying was, �Did you like it? Am I good? Pat me on the back. And so now I don�t say anything, and six, ten times a year, she�ll say, �Honey, that was good today.

And really, in my mind, that�s like home run, bases loaded, and I don�t say a word, but I just go, �Oh, you know, praise the Lord and walk on. Sure.

Absolutely. My wife�s dad is a pastor, so her favorite preacher is her dad, so I can�t win. Well that�s perfect, though.

That�s perfect. Well, your children will grow up with you as their favorite pastor. We don�t have much time left, Jason. Tell our listeners a little bit about your Ph .D., and what you did your Ph .D. in, and have I called you �Doctor� all day, Doctor?

Dr. Jason?

You haven�t, and that�s okay. My people always said, �When you finish, do we have to call you Doctor And I said, �No, you never have to do that.

Well, I said the same thing, because I only have a D-min, and so I said, �You don�t ever have to call me Doctor. It�s not a terminal doctorate, but you do have to call me High Holy Father.

When I joked around, I said, �It�s not just Doctors, it�s the Right Reverend Doctors. Oh! That�s right. Yeah. No, but I thought my Ph .D. was on what we would call �escalated eschatology in brief, that we�re not heading back to the Garden, we�re heading towards something better in the eschaton in the end.

And I really trace that in two ways, through anthropology, through humanity, and the fact that Christ it�s a little technical, but Christ is the protological man, that if He is, before the foundations of the world, known to be the second Adam, and there�s a lot of roads you have to chase to get to this understanding, but that really, He is we�re going to be made into His image.

And so, in His perfect humanity, as we�re glorified and I haven�t even sussed out all of what this means, but 1 John 3, the beatific vision, when we see Him, we will be like Him. And then also trace that through the idea of the glorification of creation, that Adam�s mandate that God gave him was to subdue the earth, have dominion over it, to be fruitful multiply and fill the earth, and that, of course, he failed at that, but Christ accomplishes that.

And part of it, at least, is that even in today, in the already if we talk about the already, not yet that we are Christ�s instruments of mercy in that filling, because the Great Commission is to, you know, have God adopt spiritual children into His family and, in a sense, filling the earth.

But I hold to an eschatology that that doesn�t happen before Christ�s return, but that culminates at Christ�s return. So I�m not a post-millennialist.

Well, that could be a whole show, the rise and popularity of post-millennialism. I have a friend, and he talks about heaven, and he said, �If there were days in heaven, every day would be better than the last day.

And just learning about who this infinite God is, and still enjoying Him over and over and over to greater degrees as we learn more about Him. And I thought, �I�ve never thought of it that way, but that makes me long for heaven all the more.

Doesn�t it? Yeah. Amen, brother. Jason Alligood, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio today. It�s gone by fast, but I�ve got an appointment I need to keep. Make sure I keep my eyesight properly aligned.

I appreciate you and your ministry and your friendship. I like to know really smart people, so that helps too. They can access you at fbcpi .org. Thanks again, Jason. Thank you so much, Mike. Take care.

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 bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.