Sola Scriptura

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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
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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.
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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, ministry.
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You would not believe what goes on here behind the scenes on Tuesday. We are always underneath the slogan, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.
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And when Pastor Steve is here on a Tuesday, he actually sings, maybe tap dances.
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Steve, what song were you just singing about? Some Edomite girl? Come on, let us have it.
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Well, do I have to tap dance again, too? No, no, just do us a little. All in the West Texas town of Megiddo, I fell in love with an
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Edomite girl. Peter, by the way, that's for you.
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Peter from Maynard, if you're listening, that one's for you, buddy. On Tuesdays, we try to talk about all kinds of issues, and Steve and I are thankfully and privileged to be pastors at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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By the way, we've gotten lots of visitors from No Compromise Radio who tend to go up to Bethlehem Bible Church and check us out, and they never see them again.
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Once and done. It's like the NCAA tournament, one and done. Yeah, well, I'm exaggerating, there are quite a few people who have stayed.
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For how long, well, time will tell. We really enjoyed it, Pastor. We'll be back. Remember my home
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Bible study back in Los Angeles? Almost everyone who came to the Bible study, and then at the door, when
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I said, thank you for coming, really appreciate it, and then they would say to me, see you next week. Steve, literally 99 % of the people who said that did not come back.
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Well, you know why? Many are called, but few are chosen. Well, we finished after, let's see, we're going to do two weeks per session on the tulips, but then we did the two free wills, and so that ended up being 12 weeks on the tulip, and so we finished that.
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We actually got some good email, people questioning, hey, Revelation 320, how can there not be free will?
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And so that was good, and that's why we have Josh to answer those questions. So Josh can be mean, and he can be the hatchet man while you and I just skate through.
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Isn't that fun? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so today we're going to start a series, Pastor Steve and I, we'll start a series on the five solas of the
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Reformation. Now some of you might like six solas, some of you might like seven, but we're going to look at the five solas of the
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Reformation to talk about the Bibles, why these are biblical. We don't care that the
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Reformation did them, but we think they have some biblical truth. They stem out of biblical concepts, and we want to make sure you, laypeople, our leaders, understand them.
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It's so crucial. I mean, you know, people say, are you a Calvinist? They might as well ask me if I'm a Lutheran or a
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Zwinglian or whatever that—I mean, it doesn't ultimately matter what Calvin or Luther or Zwingli said, or what the
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Roman Catholic Church says, for that matter. What matters is, what does the Bible teach?
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What does God's Word say? What does the Lord himself want us to understand about how we are to live and conduct ourselves?
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That's the issue. And I'm glad it's the issue, because if we had to rely on Pastor Steve singing, we would all be in big trouble for those
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Arbitron ratings. In Megiddo. For those of you who are listening, though, by the way, 2011,
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February 15th, we, Bethlehem Bible Church and No Compromise Radio Ministry, are sending a group of folks—not sending, but we'll all go together—to
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Israel, and when you stand there and look at the Valley of Megiddo—and I know, Steve, you have done that. When I was there in Israel, and we saw the
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F -14s or some other kind of jets flying over Megiddo— I think those were prop crop dusters.
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Prop—they were prop dusters. I need some of my props up on the pulpit dusted. That clown nose that I use on Sundays, it doesn't quite fit anymore.
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No, they were propeller -driven crop, you know. Prop crop dusters. Yeah, that. Oh, okay. As opposed to jet crop dusters.
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What we want to do is go to Israel, and then we'll have some historical background taught by the guides there locally, and then some pastors here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and my brother,
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Pat Ebenroth, will teach on -site in Israel. That will be 2011. Go to NoCompromiseRadio .com
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to register. And if you sign up today, we'll give you a free No Compromise t -shirt and a postcard.
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We actually will do that. We got the No Compromise t -shirts in. They'll be on sale, and, you know,
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I don't know what else to say. You can wear them proudly in Israel. Oh, that would be great. But just don't hold, you know, your wife's hand on the temple mount by the
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Muslims, because they'll tell you no. That happened to Kim and I. I think I was kissing her, and then they said, you know, nine -nine or whatever it is in Arabic.
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Yeah, I don't think that's Arabic for no. Low, low, low, low, low. Nine, nine. All right. The five solas of the
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Reformation, in no particular order, Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Christos, Sola Gratia, and Sola Deo—Soli Deo Gloria.
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Easy for me to say. I looked outside, and I saw the secretary walking in the rain. He's a Latino scholar. And so today we're going to look at Sola Scriptura.
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Literally it means, by Scripture alone. The Bible alone, Scripture alone.
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And this doctrine teaches that the Bible is the only infallible, inerrant, inspired authority for Christian faith.
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Everything you need to know about salvation, who God is, how to live a holy life, who man is, the right worldview, is all contained in the
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Bible and the Bible alone. I have some true or false questions, Steve, after you make a comment on Sola Scriptura.
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Well, I was actually eagerly awaiting your true and false questions, but, you know, this is where the church needs to live.
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This is where we need to camp out. This is where we need to stand, because once we depart from Scripture, we are lost, as is evident through so much evangelicalism, by the way.
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Maybe there should be a new sermon series, Lost, and we could tie it in with some kind of ABC thriller.
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And it could have all kinds of time machines, and time warps, and time raps, and...
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Steve, would you think it's fair to say that this Sola is very similar to the first letter
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T in the Doctrines of Grace in this regard? If you don't understand total depravity, it's hard to get the other ones correct.
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If you get total depravity right, most likely you'll get the rest of the TULIP correct. Similarly, if you understand
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Sola Scriptura, everything else seems to fall into place. But if you deny
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Sola Scriptura and say that somehow there are other authorities to the Bible, the Bible's equal to or under something else, then every other doctrine's messed up as well.
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So you could say that Scripture alone is a foundational doctrine. I think that's true. Okay, thank you.
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Well, that was my true or false question for you. Hey, haven't I said it before? It's my show.
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I turned the tables on you just like that. You didn't even know. Westminster Confession of Faith, which we are not elevating to Scripture, by the way.
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Oh, you just violated Sola Scriptura. But we think it's a good definition of what the Bible teaches regarding Sola Scriptura, says in Article 7, "...all
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things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.
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Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned..."
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Are you falling over? Are you sleeping? I was getting ready to nod off, yeah, it's kind of a long quote. In the some place, can you believe that?
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I invite, Steve, of my own free will, of my own good pleasure, to say, come on, why don't you be a host?
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And now if the quote's a little too long for his liking, then he starts to snooze in the radio station.
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No, we don't have a cough button, so I'm just, you know... Okay, let's see. "...and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them."
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In other words... True. It is fine to have pastors and teachers explain the
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Word. These people, like the Westminster Confession themselves, the signers, are not trying to elevate themselves above Scripture.
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We believe in Scripture alone. It's the only infallible, the only inerrant authority. But that doesn't mean you can't have people explain to you what the
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Bible tells you. Right. And I think the key, or one of the key issues here, is when someone says,
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God has said, or God told me, or God something, you know, it's going to follow that God said this or God said that.
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There needs to be a verse to back that up. You can't just make it up out of whole cloth. Steve, I think you're exactly right.
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In the day of the Reformation, in the 1500s, the Protestants were saying the
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Roman Catholics want to bring the magisterium and tradition alongside of Scripture.
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We have this tripartite kind of authority. But today, it's not necessarily the
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Roman Catholics who struggle with Sola Scriptura, but Steve, I think it's the Charismatics. Well, it's true.
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I think it's the mystics, the subjective folks that say, God told me, and frankly, let's just throw it out there, let's just lay the gauntlet down.
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God didn't tell you anything outside of His Word. I don't care if you felt a warm fuzzy in your tummy.
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I don't care if you had a burning in your bosom. I don't care if you heard thunder and somehow deciphered it as God said, sell all your money,
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I mean, sell your houses and give the money to Bethlehem Bible Church. I don't care what He said. He has spoken the
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Word. And by the way, why would He speak that to you when you don't even know what justification by faith alone is or know what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is?
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He wouldn't. He's spoken, and it's a past tense spoken. You know when I get a warm feeling in my tummy?
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It's right after I have some hot chocolate. Mmm. Well, I was thinking about the 60s song, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Love in My Tummy, and I Feel Like Loving You, but then we would go against our determined resolve today not to have pop culture in this show.
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Yeah, and you seem stuck in the 60s, you know, I mean, it's sound of silence, it's all this, you know, there's a kind of hush, it's like, wow, man, you're a little bit older than I thought.
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Well, if I would have been growing up in the 60s, if I would have been 20 in 1960,
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I probably would have been at Haight -Ashbury someplace, 66. But you digress. You know, you mentioned a couple of terms there, the church magisterium and church tradition, and maybe you want to explain those.
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I was laughing when you said, digress. I was thinking about the Tigress and the story where,
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I think it's Ringling Brothers folks were trying to get the people to get away from staring at the lions and all that, so they had a sign there, you know, one was to the
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Tigress and one was to the egress. Listen, tradition can be a good thing in life.
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There's all kinds of wonderful traditions and traditions at home and school and church, but we would never want to elevate tradition to Scripture.
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That's when it gets to be trouble. Equal to or over. There's nothing wrong with a church saying, we want to try to understand the
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Scriptures better and we bunch of bishops sit around and try to understand it. And so with the
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Catholic Church, with the tradition or the magisterium, I don't mind that they would say we like church tradition, church history, and we like the magisterium.
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It's fine by me. What's not fine is the Roman Catholic Magisterium put tradition and themselves, how convenient, alongside of Scripture, and functionally, wouldn't you say,
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Steve, many times over Scripture. Yeah, I mean, and there are several examples of this, and the ones that come to immediately to mind are concerning Mary, but, you know, they would say that Mary is kind of a mediator, that you pray to Mary, you pray to other saints, right?
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So that they will intervene with Jesus, this according to Roman Catholic teaching or Roman Catholic tradition.
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And then they would say that Jesus has no choice but to listen to his mother, and therefore, you know, your prayers are effective.
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Whereas the Bible would not say that there is more than one mediator. In fact, Paul's quite plain in 1
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Timothy chapter 2, where he says there's one mediator between God and man, or man, the man
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Christ Jesus. And what could be more plain than that? So essentially, what you're saying is, when
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Scripture and church tradition or the church teaching or magisterium seem to be in conflict, what essentially winds up winning is the church magisterium or tradition.
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They say that they're equal, but they're not. So I mean, another example is the sinlessness, like Roman Catholic teaching of the sinlessness of Mary, that she was born without sin.
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Well, that's nowhere found in Scripture. In fact, it's distorted out of Luke chapter 1, where the angel appears and says,
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Hail favored one, and they extrapolate all manner of doctrine out of that. And it's just not there.
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Well, she did need a Savior. She knew she was a sinner. And I think we'll do a whole show on Mary sometime.
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Steve, sola scriptura should be contrasted with prima scriptura, and that's what the
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Catholics would believe. They would believe that there are other guides that the Christian should follow besides Scripture.
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And so we don't say Scripture is primary, we say it is only. It is only authoritative, only sufficient, only infallible.
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There's nothing else. And so don't you think, Steve, I know you'd agree with me, if we just look at some verses that teach us about Scripture, when you have the right, elevated, proper biblical view of Scripture, why would you go anyplace else?
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So when I look at Psalm 19 and I read it, the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.
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The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
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And the list goes on and on. Then why would we put anything else up to that? Steve, you like it when
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I do this. Instead of saying the law of the Lord is perfect in Psalm 19, the traditions of the church are perfect, restoring the soul.
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Horrible. It just sounds stupid. The magisterium is sure, making wise the simple.
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I mean, it just doesn't even make any sense. You know, but it's all done with no apologies and no compromise toward our
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Roman Catholic friends. It's all done to build up a dependency upon the
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Roman Catholic Church, and instead of, in place of Scripture, and in place of faith.
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So to be blunt. Well, what we want is we want you to study the Bible for yourself. There might be some difficult doctrines, and you certainly do need teachers.
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God has given gifts to the church, that is, teachers and preachers, and some people have the gift of teaching and they can help explain things so you can understand them.
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But we want to do with Sola Scriptura what Luther wanted to do. Luther said, a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.
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Ouch. Until the pope brings his army. You know, it's funny, I'm talking too much about Catholicism, but in medieval times, the pope of the
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Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful man on earth because he had armies at his disposal.
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So not quite the same situation today. If you wouldn't—I agree, and I was just thinking about the trouble that the pope has gotten himself into now, but I think
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Tom Krause and others have done plenty of shows on that whole issue. If you don't have the Bible as your sole authority, thinking
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Sola Scriptura, then you're going to fill the vacuum with something else, just like I talked about on Sunday with another issue.
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Vacuums must be filled, and if the Scripture is not sufficient, and the only authority, the highest authority, the final authority, then you're going to be like the
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Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox—I was going to say Ether Orthodox, they kind of, you know, floating around.
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But Oriental Orthodox churches, they have sacred tradition, the Episcopacy, Magisterium, call it whatever you want, equal to the
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Scriptures, and we just think that denigrates the Scriptures. That's not how Jesus acted. And you know what's interesting is if you look at other religions, even
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Islam, Mormonism, other religions, what do they do? They give kind of lip service to the value of the
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Bible, but ultimately, Muhammad received allegedly a prophecy from an angel, which he wrote down and became the
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Qur 'an. Joseph Smith received plates from an angel, which he then translated allegedly and became the
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Book of Mormon. Why? Because the Bible was not sufficient, and so they added other holy writings to it.
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Their whole religion rises or falls with this additional Scripture.
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Well, Steve, it's kind of hard to understand Scripture, and you know, the Bible's not too clear sometimes, and there are other kind of truth systems out there that we need to have validated, and to have authentic community,
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I'm not really sure we need all these kind of sharp, rough edges. Authentic community, I love that.
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We have to be in community. Listen to what Luther said regarding that kind of angel talk that you were discussing regarding Mormonism in Galatians 1.
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Luther, the true rule is this, God's Word shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel, can do so.
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Preacher, that's Galatians 1a. So it doesn't matter if you're the pope or you're someone else, you can't say this is equal to God's Word.
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I mean, how dumb really is that? How stupid is that to say, now we are finite, we're fallen, and now we speak for God?
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No, we don't speak for God. God speaks for Himself. He does, interestingly, use for Scripture and inspiration.
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He does speak through fallen people, like His apostles and prophets. But we don't want you to somehow take the
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Word and exchange it for something else. Jeremiah 23, is not my word like fire, declares the
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Lord? How about Hebrews 4, for the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword?
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How about 1 Peter 1? You've been born again not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding
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Word of God. Study the Scriptures and you'll see how great the Word is, how sufficient it is, what kind of authority it has, that is, final authority.
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Why would you exchange that for some watered -down rice gruel? And it's so fascinating because these days the assault, even from alleged
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Christians, is really on the Bible. What do we see? We see things like, you know, whether it's the
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Dopey Code, the Da Vinci Code, you know, where they allegedly at the
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Council of Nicaea, they conspired to somehow exclude some writings of the
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Bible. How do you know you have the right books in the Bible? Just a bunch of men made that decision.
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Well, it all depends on the God you believe in. If you believe in the God of Scripture, you would know that no men could possibly kind of adulterate or change or permanently pervert
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Scripture. God is powerful enough to preserve His Word to tell us what
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He wants us to know about Him. Steve, when I read Colossians chapter 2, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
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I just think, who would want to make this exchange, this barter that says,
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I've got the best, and I'll exchange it for something not as good? I've got the Bible, and I'll exchange it for traditions?
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And Steve, don't you think this is the answer? The answer is, besides the sinful pride of man, the answer is, when you don't really like what the
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Bible says, you've got to soften it up. Yeah, because the Bible is difficult. I mean, it's so much easier to believe that you can just show up for church every week on Sunday, take a wafer, drink a little wine, and get some kind of prayer said over you when you die, and go to heaven.
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Has anybody ever said of some of these traditions in the magisterium, that's a hard saying? Maybe they have,
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I don't know, there's probably some hard sayings in there. But in general, I'm trying to say that when Jesus preached, somewhat regularly, people didn't like what
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He had to say. They would never think today that Jesus would say things like that, when back in the day they would respond with, that's a hard saying,
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Jesus. Or people would say, I don't want to follow you anymore. We're done, John 666 and John chapter 2.
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We don't want to be your disciples anymore. And so if you don't want to have the Word of God as your final authority, something else will.
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Sadly, it'll be tradition, it'll be a feeling, it'll be mysticism, or it'll be yourself.
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How would you like to have your own self? How would I like to have me as my final authority? But that's what people do.
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I mean, I remember talking to a young woman once, and it just used to be my co -worker, and listening to her describe her belief system, and I recognized part of it as being
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Mormonism, but other elements, I just had no idea where they came from. So I asked her, and she said, well, you know, parts of it are
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Judaism, parts of it are Mormonism, and I just kind of pick and choose what I think, you know, is right.
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And that is exactly the kind of mentality that has crept into so much of America. We can kind of design our own theology, which means we're really designing our own
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God. Robert Buehler, Sheilaism. Sheila just says to herself,
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I like this, I don't like that, I construct my own religion, and therefore, why call it Christianity, just call it
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Sheilaism. Christianity has always believed that this religion is a religion of the book.
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It is a religion of revealed knowledge, revealed by God, received by men, but we only understand
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God by what He has said. Well, yes, somewhat through creation, but specifically through what
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He said. And if we have to receive what He said through the Word, then why would we go do something else?
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Steve, I'll go back to those mysticism thing in the last minute of our show. People that say they hear from God are really denying
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Sola Scriptura. What do I mean by that? Well, because they're saying they're denying the sufficiency of Scripture.
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They're saying that there's a message out there that's so significant that somehow God either failed to communicate or, you know, suddenly now realizes
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He needs to communicate. And so, in essence, it supplants the
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Bible. It takes the place of it. It supersedes the Bible because God has a new message, a different message, something hip happening now.
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This is a strange, new wind, strange fire. What is that book? No, yeah, you know, it's fresh wind.
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No, it's something fresh fire. But anyway, Earth, Wind, and Fire by Symbola was really a horrible book about the church down there in Brooklyn.
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But we're digressing. We digress. You know, I think ultimately the issue, and I know you'll agree with me, is this, that the
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Bible offends us because it tells us the truth about who we are and who God is, and as sinful people, we don't like that.
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Amen. NoCompromiseRadio .com. My name is Pastor Mike. I'm here with Pastor Steve. If you have a question, write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.
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Go to the website, get some iPods plugged in, come to Israel with us, come to Bethlehem Bible Church on Sunday, 1030.
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We'd love to have you. We'll do one more show on this and talk a little bit about what happens to people in Revelation when you add to God's Word.
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You're blessed. 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 6. 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.