The Eternal Son and JWs At Your Door

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.

Radio Show Banter, Website Updates, and Upcoming Israel Trip

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I think we're gonna like the show today. Sometimes I show up to the studio just to see what I'm going to say. That's kind of fun. That's a good reason to do a radio show, isn't it?

You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. You can go to our website, nocompromiseradio .com. There are links there to the Twitter feed, links to the videos, over 100 videos, if you want to pull up.

We've tried to put some short videos out just to teach the truth. I don't know if I'm just sucked into the vortex of social media, and then my face is put in all these videos, and it's, you know, me, me, myself, and I.

Or it's, well, let's figure out how to infiltrate people's minds with truth as they're in a YouTube era. So YouTube isn't bad in and of itself. It's a neutral entity, but there can be bad things around YouTubes.

And of course, you know, I don't like some of the links that I see to the right and have to change the screen size and blah, blah, blah, but we're trying to use it. And so we're thankful for some of the responses.

And anyway, that's the story. That is the story. We've almost finished five years recording shows for No Compromise Radio. I figure what we do with the next year is we just play reruns all the time. And you say to me, Mike, that's what you did this summer.

That's pretty much what I did this summer. So anyway, more reruns than ever. And if you don't get it right the first time, I'm just going to keep playing it until you figure it out. I saw one person posted something that said, if we want to have a laugh, we listen to Mike Avendron.

So I guess I'll get you with the humor and then on the side, teach you some biblical truth. How's that? Don't forget Israel trip, February 17th. I need you to send in your deposit before October. I don't like to talk about money issues on No Compromise Radio, as you know, but this is something different because it's a tangible product.

And it is a trip to Israel with Pat, my brother and myself, Omaha Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio Ministry. All right, what do we have here? J .C. Ryle. Now, if you don't read J .C. Ryle, you want to.

When I first read J .C. Ryle, I would say to myself, this sounds exactly like John MacArthur. But of course, J .C. Ryle was writing in the late 1800s. MacArthur's writing in the current era. What's BCE?

Before the common era, after common era, it's ACE now? What do they call it? What are the archeologists saying? I don't know, AD I call it. But Ryle, warnings to the churches, practical theology, thoughts for young men.

A lot of these books you can get free online, but you ought to read J .C. Ryle. He has pertinent truth. And what I like about men like Ryle is that they're going to be biblical, and therefore they are going to be transchronological.

So I hope that when people listen to No Compromise Radio in 50 years, that's a pipe dream. But if they were to listen, there are some current things that pop up here or there, and that's fine because it's a daily radio show.

But I hope if they listen to the sermons that were preached in the pulpit here, I hope they would say, well, that's super relevant. He made a comment about the president being President Obama. But other than that, it's chalk with truth, and it's just as important now as it was then because he's dealing with eternal transchronological truths.

I love to say transchronological, by the way. So anyway, you want your pastor to be teaching in such a way where someone from Lebanon could come in, or India, or from United Arab Emirates, whatever it's called.

I met somebody from there a while ago. And to say, oh, okay, I get that, I understand that. As long as they can understand English or they have a translator, yes, those are eternal truths. So J .C. Ryle says, I must deprecate, and I do it in love, the use of uncouth and newfangled terms and phrases in teaching sanctification.

And so I bring this up because there's a lot of debate on sanctification. Kind of the free grace movement, cross-centered, gospel-centered sanctification, monergistic sanctification, synergistic, deliberate deal with Tulian.

You've got Westminster, Escondido, Westminster, Philadelphia. We've got Rick Phillips. You know, you've got R. Scott Clark. Just all kinds of issues that are brewing, and we're trying to figure out how to, you know, work out our salvation with fear and tremble.

And what do we do with this sanctification? Justification, sanctification, conflated. The list goes on. I plead that a moment, Ryle said, in favor of holiness cannot be advanced by new coined phraseology or by disproportioned and one-sided statements or by overstraining and isolating particular text.

This is so right on. This is apropos for today. Or by exalting one truth at the expense of another and squeezing out of them meanings which the Holy Ghost never put in them. The cause of true sanctification is not helped, but hindered by such weapons as these.

A movement in aid of holiness, which produces strife and dispute among God's children is somewhat suspicious. Wow. That's all I have to say. Wow. If you teach the Bible verse by verse, I think that will assist you.

You listen to the Bible taught verse by verse, you will be assisted. What do I have here in front of me? There is a new Stonewall Jackson book coming out. And I ordered it. I think it's called Rebel Yell.

It won't be out on Amazon, through Amazon till I think September, October of 2014. For those are listening 50 years from now. You can tell me if it's stood the test of time. But I like Stonewall Jackson.

I think I'm more of a Yankee at heart, being born in Nebraska. You know, that's so far west at the time of the Civil War, but still north of Missouri. And so I've always thought of myself as a Yankee, not a Yankee fan, but a Yankee.

But I say to myself, then I moved to California and just the crazy people moved to California. The ones who wanted to be free, let's take a chance and let's cross the M-I-S-S-I-S-S, cross the Missouri River and let's get out there to California.

Then I moved, so let's see, 22 years in Omaha slash Lincoln, 17 in, no, no, 15 in Los Angeles. And then now 17, 18 here, whatever that is. It has to equal 54, I know that. I was helping my daughter last night with eighth grade math.

I said, honey, I can figure out these two. If you minus a minus, it turns into a plus. If you want to multiply, divide fractions, you have to flip the numerator and denominator around and change the division sign to a multiplication sign.

I got that part down. But this other kind of thing that you're asking about, we've got to get online and figure it out. I can't quite get it. So anyway, back to Stonewall Jackson. I have a lot of respect for some of the men in the South and there are so much written about the Christianity of soldiers, probably more in the South than the North.

Of course, now I live in New England and so you have to be a Yankee. You can sing, especially if it's a bad church, you can sing. What was I going to say? Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by Unitarian.

But I don't think if you're down in Birmingham, Alabama, I don't think if you're down in Texas, they don't think they sing that too much. And of course I listen to S. Lewis Johnson all the time and he's got that Southern accent, spending all the time in South Carolina and Alabama.

But anyway, Robert L. Dabney was the chaplain for Stonewall Jackson. And I like reading Dabney. Every man has his faults, I know. But he doesn't have that many in terms of theological faults and his systematic theology, maybe my all-time favorite systematic theology.

I love Robert Raymond's systematic theology. I love Burkoff's systematic theology, although maybe a little dated. Some of the cross-references don't seem to pan out. Just for sitting down to read, Raymond is better.

I then, well, I mean, I could have, you know, I could tell you the ones that I've read in terms of Millard Erickson and those folks and Grudem and these guys. But I started to read, and Voices, Voices is a good one.

Three volumes combined into one. I started to read systematic theology by Dabney because Phil Johnson loves Dabney. And I think it was Phil who helped me early on by saying, go to Dabney if you want an excellent written explanation of how we can offer the gospel freely to everyone, and yet Jesus has only died for the elect.

Is it a genuine offer? And so Dabney was the one he referred me to. And so I've appreciated Dabney from afar. And then I read it and I just thought, this is the best. This is the best. This is devotional.

Of course, I love Calvin's Institutes because you think of Calvin. Wrongly as dry and not devotional. It's very devotional. I need to reread that again sometime soon. But anyway, I'm reading Bovink now, the four volume Reformed Dogmatics.

Excellent. Makes me almost want to have it surpass Dabney. But all these systematic theology discussions also want me to get into S. Lewis Johnson's computer because I heard there's a systematic theology in there.

And so, see, there you go. Dabney said of Stonewall Jackson. Oh, you know what? Let's see. These notes were taken down by Stonewall Jackson as he listened to Robert L. Dabney preach on occasion regarding the death of an individual.

So how about that? How about this is Dabney's preaching and Stonewall Jackson is taking notes. This is even better. This is no compromise radio at its very, very best. Dabney. But in the hour of death, especially, a Christian needs a savior who is no less than God.

An angel could not sympathize with our trial for they cannot feel the pangs of desolation. A human friend cannot travel with us the path through the dark valley for the creature who yields to the stroke of death is overwhelmed and returns no more to guide his fellow.

The God-man alone can't sustain us. He has felt the mortal blow for he is man and he has survived it and returns triumphing to Sikoros or to Succoros for he is God. Unless the divine guide be with us, we must fight the battle with the last enemy alone and unaided.

Just when the struggle becomes most fearful to the soul, the veil of approaching dissolution, descending between it and all the world shuts it off in the outer darkness. And then in vast solitary night must the king of terrors be met with no human arm to Succor or to Succor and no ear to hear the cry of despair that is lost in the infinite silence.

So must you die, my friend and I. Words by Robert L. Dabney, taken by Stonewall Jackson. I'm going to Jackson. Fascinating. You've got to have a redeemer who's God hyphen man. Along with Lewis Johnson, I don't even like to say God and man.

100 God and 100 man. I just like to call him the God-man. Make sure you put God before man. He is the God-man and forever will be, right? You'll see five man-made things in heaven and you'll see the piercings on Christ's arms, wrists, hands, wrists, his feet and his side.

And he is forever having a body, Christ, the second person of the Trinity. And that's why when I was in California this summer, someone knocked on our door. We have a little mobile home and they knocked on our door and I saw there were two of them.

I knew, I knew they were here to tell me that Jesus isn't the eternal God because both the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses would say the same thing. So you pretty much know when they're going to knock on your door, if you say to yourself, I don't know, are they Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses?

Where's the King of the Cults book by Walter Martin? I've got to figure this out. What should I say? Is there a different approach? My approach to both is the same because they're both going to deny that Jesus is the eternal son.

And so they don't believe in the God-man. Now with the definitions of the Bible. And so I need a man who's more than a man. I need a God who's also a man to be my representative, to be my substitute.

And so how can God identify with us if he doesn't have the same nature that we do and that he's not man? And so how can God, just a man, die on behalf of sinners and have enough righteousness to bestow on all those who would believe?

You need the God-man. And of course we see the God-man in the pages of scripture. And so when I have people knocking the door, I don't need to know if they dress alike. I don't need to know if they're 19 years old and they have the title elder.

I don't need to know if there's a couple of bicycles around the corner. I don't need to know how many more people are in the car. I just know when they come to the door, they're going to say shameful things about Jesus, if they're Jehovah's Witness or if they're a Mormon.

And so my strategy is always the same. And maybe you and No Compromise Radio Land would use the same strategy. First of all, don't do what you might have an instinct to do and that is to just shut the door.

If you're a new Christian and you don't think you can withstand the pressure because these people are so trained in how to pretzelize the theology of immature and or new believers, I guess that would be fine.

Flee, false teachers. I wouldn't say you were, you know, shameful, but eventually when you grow into an understanding of scriptures, I think you need to open that door. And so I have my heart usually start to beat because I know it's going to be a clash.

This is not going to be a warm, fuzzy time together as we share our hearts knit in Christian love. I know I'm going to be wounded, broken. I know there's going to be a fight, a theological fight. So I probably was meaner back in the old days in terms of my physical disposition and facial expressions and posture.

I try to be nicer now in terms of the way I stand and smile and kind of just talk like this. Like I'm, I don't know, having a neighborhood. And you call me Mr. Mr. Abendroth's neighborhood. So they, when they first arrived at our little place in Santa Cruz, our trailer, trailer park.

Hey man, I live in a trailer. All kinds of trailer trash songs that people send me. Nothing wrong with that. They said, well, you know, we're here to talk about current events and spiritual things and blah, blah, blah.

And our neighbors were concerned. I just thought, you know what? That is so untrue. That's a lie. I said, let me guess, you're Jehovah's witnesses. They said, yes. And then I do what I'm trying to encourage you to do.

Find the one that looks like the trainee. Okay, it's usually the one who's not talking. It's usually the one who is just, you know, standing there watching and observing. In this particular case, it was very easy because there's a grandma and there was a daughter, a granddaughter.

Matter of fact, I asked and they were related. And so I just immediately asked the little girl. She was 13. I have a 13 year old daughter. I have a 15 year old daughter. I have a 21, 21 year old daughter.

And I don't talk to them, no compromise style. I'm not bashing and blasting and blood vessels bursting out of my forehead. I may have a lot of faults, but I know how to talk to a 13 year old girl. And so I said, do you have your Bible?

She said, yes. I said, could you look up Titus 2 .13 for me? She didn't know where it was. Her grandma had to read it. Could you, and I know they have a Bible, a New World Translation. So I'm not gonna ask them John 1 .1 because they're gonna put the indefinite article A in there without understanding any kind of rules in John 1 .1 with grammatical rules.

And then I said, do you have Romans 9 .5? Could you look that up? And I looked at the little girl again and the grandma had to read it. And I told them why it is so important to believe in the eternal son of God.

And that I know they deny that. And by denying that they have no hope of heaven. They have no hope of heaven because they don't have the God man. They can say whatever they want from John 17. They can try to say, what about this verse and that verse?

And I just tried to get them back on the subject. And 1 John 4, when people tell you things like you're telling me, the Bible says it's the spirit of the antichrist. And so I thought, you know, I'm never gonna see these people again.

And I need to make sure I tell them, this is why Jesus has to be God and is God. And how redemption is accomplished and applied. And I looked at the little girl and I just said, you know, your grandma is teaching you things that are the spirit of the antichrist.

And you don't wanna die and go to hell, do you? And she just looked at me and you could tell she didn't wanna go to hell. She's shaking her head. I said, I don't wanna go. But her grandmother quickly said, so you believe in a literal eternal hell?

See, bait and switch, cut and paste, get our mind off the issue. I said, sweetie, looking back at the little girl, Jesus is fully God. The son of God, the second person in the Trinity always existed. And he's the Alpha and the Omega.

He's the first and the last. He's the beginning and the end. And he is the one who was born of a virgin and cloaked himself with humanity and died on the cross for sinners and was raised from the dead.

He's the God man. And your grandma is telling you false antichrist things. And if she dies believing these things, and if you die believing these things, you're both gonna go straight to hell. And I don't want that.

Then the grandma was trying to move her body almost in between the granddaughter and myself. And I wasn't acting in a threatening way. I wasn't getting closer. I wasn't trying to make myself taller. I was talking like this.

And she, the grandma, started saying something else to try to change the subject and say some dishonoring thing about Jesus. I don't like when people dishonor Jesus. At my door, I talk in my house about honoring Jesus.

And now you're not gonna just show up and try to damn my children to hell by giving a spiritual strict nine saying, Jesus Christ is less than the eternal son of God. So I said, okay, how about this? Let's try it this way.

I'm in an airplane. I have 30 seconds before the plane crashes. The engine's out. We're all gonna die. How do I get to heaven? What's your good news? And that's the second thing I'd like you to know on No Compromise Radio when people come to your door who are Jehovah's Witnesses or who are Mormons.

What you do is you talk to the trainee and then eventually you need to ask them what's their good news. And this lady went on and on and on, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds. And then I interrupted her and I said, you obviously don't have any good news.

And the essence of your good news is to work because you don't have a God man who could finish, who finished the work. Jesus said, it is finished. And so you're trying to add to the finished work of the eternal son of God's work.

And I said, now let me give you the good news. And then I said, and you must repent and believe or you're gonna go straight to hell. And that's what I want you to do, is to repent and believe. And then I walked on.

So I'm hoping that little girl, I know she heard the words, but I'm hoping those words sink deeply into her and the mom as well. There are people, the grandma as well, there are people who have gotten saved out of Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness cults.

You say, well, sociologically, they're not a cult. Well, theologically they are. They're adding works. They're denying who Jesus is and they're adding works to his finished work. And so let's not parse those things, but let's talk to the trainee.

Let's ask them to read certain Bible verses about Jesus's position as God, God man. And then let's call them to repentance. And then let's pray that God saves people through the preaching of the gospel because he does save them through good news.

And as much as I despise Jehovah's Witness theology, as much as I despise Mormonism, I want those people to go to heaven. Can you think of anybody in the world that you seriously want to go to hell? You're just dying for them to go to hell.

You're just hankering them to just enter eternal judgment. I don't think the answer should be yes. That's not love. We have enemies in this world, but they're not the people. These poor people are enslaved to the system.

Now, I'm not going to give them a vehicle to talk to my family. And I'm going to shut them down in terms of me preaching to them the good news and not giving them a platform of my own house. But I'm doing that because I love the savior.

I don't want the son dishonored. And I love them. For them to just spout all their stuff isn't going to be loved. So anyway, maybe if you have an interesting story with a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon who comes to your door, you might want to write us.

Info at No Compromise Radio. If you have other questions as well, my name is Mike Abendroth. And we will, I don't know, I guess we're going to record some more shows. We've got five more seconds. Www .nocompromiseradio .com.

Ministry Sign-Off and Station Disclaimer

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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