John Smith 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.

Introducing Sammy Williams and His Ministry in India

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name's Mike Abendroth, and I have a special guest in house. And if I could pick a people to interview, hey, wait a second, I can pick people to interview. This is my show.

I would pick this man sitting right next to me, Sammy Williams. Sammy, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Thank you, Mike. It's interesting, Sammy and I, we go way back, and we've been in the, are there woods in India?

Yeah, there's jungles in India. Jungles.

I wish I had been in a jungle with Sammy Williams, but we've been in the inner heartland of India together, haven't we? That's right, man. Tell us what you do in India, and give us a little background, Sammy, and why would I have you on No Compromise Radio?

Wow. Well, I get to do the best job in the world, I think, and I have several roles, but the main thing that I am is a professor at a seminary that we've started in India called the Pastoral Training Seminary, and I teach there various subjects, theology, Old Testament, Hebrew, and I'm also the dean and administrator.

And then I'm a pastor of a church. It's my second church plant in Goa, India. And then besides that, I'm a husband and a father, just serving the Lord and seeing God work through us in making His gospel known and making Christ known.

Now, Goa, Sammy, since this is No Compromise Radio, I think I'm allowed to say pop culture references. I only know of Goa as a very nice resort place, and I think Jason Bourne was there, wasn't he? Yes, he was.

He was, okay, good. Well, Sammy is a graduate of the Master's Seminary, and that's how I know Sammy, and Bethlehem Bible Church, and so therefore No Compromise Radio Ministry supports Sammy and his family as they do gospel ministry in India.

The Gospel of Christ and Imputed Righteousness

Sammy, let's just start off, first of all, what is the gospel that you proclaim to the people there in India?

Well, the gospel is, you know, I would say, summarize 2 Corinthians 5 .21 in the fact that we are condemned and fallen and judged before God because of our sinful hearts, and He made Him, that is Christ, who knew no sin to be sin, that is, imputed our sin upon Him so that we might receive His imputed righteousness.

And that's the message that we preach, the message of the only way of being freed from sin, and that is Jesus Christ and His work on the cross.

The Background of Indian Students at the Pastoral Training Seminary

Sammy, when you're in India and you're training these laymen who will then become pastors, what kind of backgrounds do they come from? Would they be Catholic, Hindu, all kinds? What kind of men are you getting at the pastoral training seminary?

Yeah, we get a varied background. You know, India is almost like 25 different countries rolled into one, and the only reason why we're a country is because the British made us a country.

They colonized us. So it's kind of Well, they gave you a few roads probably too, and then they oppressed a lot of people.

Yeah, so in that sense, there's that sense of unity with a lot of diversity. So in terms of students that we get, they come from various parts of India. Some of them come from Buddhist backgrounds. Then there are predominantly a lot of Hindus that have gotten saved.

And then we have guys that have come from even some other countries, actually,.

And that's been interesting. Sammy, there's a particular man I'm thinking of who has come from a different country north of India. And when I asked him when I was in India last time, now, when you get to go home and visit and you get to have some of your mother's home cooking, what would be something that you would like her to cook?

Something good. We were just chatting. We had been talking theologically for quite some time. And when he looked at me and he said, my favorite food, and he didn't even smile or flinch, he was telling the truth.

My favorite food was puppy. I about fell over. What's that guy's name?

Silas. Silas, that's right. In fact, I had the opportunity to visit that country, but I got to stay away from the puppy.

Well, maybe you had some puppy slipped in on the side. That could be true. Sammy, you are from India, yes? That's right. I was born and brought up there. And tell me your theological background. How did you come to know that Christ, in fact, was God himself?

Sammy Williams's Testimony and Romans 6

Well, I was fortunate to be raised in a Christian home in India. In fact, when I was born, my dad was already in the ministry and he was a pastor. And my mom was a pastor's wife, but you know how pastor's kids can be.

And so I would say I was as depraved as the worst of them. And the way I came to know the Lord and I keep telling people this is, you know, disciplining your children. Don't ever take it for granted. It's the seeds of the gospel and you got to do it faithfully and discipline is grounded in the gospel.

And I came to know Christ through my mother specifically after she had spanked me real hard. She had a good arm and my rear end was sore, but my heart was soft. And she would always share a scriptural truth with me.

I just praise God for what she did. And I remember specifically, she took me through Romans six and talked to the fact that the reason why I was getting spanked so many times, I mean, it was because I was a slave to sin and that I needed to recognize my helplessness and turn to Christ and be his slave, a slave to righteousness, his righteousness.

And it was those truths that the Holy Spirit used at that time to just break through me, recognize that I am undone and that I need to give myself over to Christ. And I believe I was eight years old. He redeemed me at that point.

And then there was a process, of course, of many, many years of God working and changing me.

Grace to India, John MacArthur, and Verse-by-Verse Ministry

Sammy, when I think about that story and how God saves in his providential backgrounds, it's pretty amazing that God would give you a father and mother like he did. When I go to India and I typically think of the pastors and I know it's not universally true, but I think of charismatic pastors and seeker-sensitive pastors and word-faith, quote-unquote, pastors.

And yet God gave you your father who was instrumental with grace to India and John MacArthur's message and tied in closely with MacArthur's philosophies. That's pretty lucky.

Yeah, I don't know if luck is the right word to use.

No compromise. When we say luck, we have to give $5 to the kitty.

Yeah, it was definitely the hand of God in all of those things. My dad is a great example. I love him to death. He still teaches me so much through his life and his ministry. But one of the interesting things about, it's not luck, it's the grace of God, is my dad was extremely stubborn in his early years of ministry.

He wanted nothing to do with Americans. Or their money. Or their money. And every time he saw an American mission board or a missionary come to India, literally he would walk the other way. And he would see, Grace to You had set up an office there in Bombay, India, and it was not going well for them because they had not found the right people to really run it.

And my dad was very close to them in another ministry that he was involved in and he would always avoid walking into the door of Grace to You because he knew it was run by Americans. And this is what he used to think.

He said, you know, Americans, they come in here, they just ask us for our slides and they give us money and then they control the ministry and it gets ruined. So I don't want to do that. And I just want to serve Christ freely and trust Him for money.

He never used to ask people for money. Well, you know what won him over was somebody gave him a tape of John MacArthur and he had never heard that kind of teaching before in his life. And just to see a man that would preach passionately, boldly, clearly, but it was all in the text and that won him over.

And he turned to Grace to India, went to their office and he said, you know, you guys need to get this out into India and I'm going to help you for three years. Set your office up and then I don't want to do anything with you again.

I just help you set up. And three years turned into 30 years.

Pastors, Expository Preaching, and Revival in India

Well, we're talking to Sammy Williams on No Compromise Radio. Sammy is a pastor and professor in Goa, India. And you also have a conference for pastors there once a year in Pune, right? That's correct.

And would that be kind of a shepherd's conference type of thing where you would equip pastors to teach Christ faithfully verse by verse?

Yeah, exactly. It was modeled after that whole idea of bringing pastors from all over India and just having them be taught. Pastors need to be taught as well. You know, I need to be taught as well. And of course, most Indian pastors don't even know what expository preaching is.

They're influenced mainly by the Warren or the charismatic movement in terms of the gimmicky kind of stuff. And they have never heard a good alternative. And so we want to provide that for them. We bring them together.

And God has grown that to the point now where we get 150 to 200 pastors every year in India. And almost every year, it's a different audience. It's new people that keep coming to hear the word preached.

And we see that as a really useful instrument to start a revival. I think God will change the churches in India when they go back to the book, back to the word.

Church Planting Strategy in a Nation of 1.2 Billion

Sammy, you talked about this the other day at Bethlehem Bible Church. Walk our listeners through the process that you have regarding 1 .2 billion people in India. 99 of them are unregenerate. How do you make a dent in the country of India when you're so small and so seemingly insignificant?

You know, first off, we don't want to draw our strategy from the world and from even secular principles of just trying to be big in the beginning and have typically what's done even in India is have these huge evangelistic rallies and drum it up and have awesome music and great altar calls and thousands get saved.

And you look at the end of that and nothing happens afterwards. It's just a flash in the pan. So you think through that and you say, well, what did God say we should do in reaching the world? Because he made this world.

And Jesus Christ was very clear. He said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not stand against it. So we're committed to doing that. You know, even as you see reflected in the book of Acts, Paul would go around on his missionary journeys and as he saw believers gathering together, he would stay there and he would disciple Timothy.

He would disciple Titus and train faithful men, 2 Timothy 2 .2. And then wait to the point that that church was strong where these men could shepherd, love, teach and live godly lives before these people.

And then he would leave. He would say then the gospel is preached in that city because there's a church planted there. And I think he was even speaking prophetically because everybody in that city hadn't heard the gospel yet, but he said, there's a church there.

They're gonna hear the gospel. So our strategy has been in that sense, I think training leaders through a seminary. That's missions. It's not academics. A seminary is missions. And so we've started a seminary in India so that we can train the future pastors, the future leaders.

And just to give you a snapshot, we're still young in six graduations. We've sent out 26 men and we've seen 21 new churches started in India. And I believe God is gonna use that to turn India upside down like he did in the book of Acts.

Still a lot of work to be done, but that's the strategy.

Why Charismatic and Word-Faith Movements Thrive in India

Sammy, when I was here, I'd see these posters and you obviously see them all around. Benny Hinn posters and the latest word faith quack, thousands of people going. Why are the charismatics so popular in India with the Christian circles?

There's probably several reasons for that.

Just off the top of my head, I think maybe one reason is India is such a poor oppressed country and charismatics in their theology, wrongly so they give them false hope in that Jesus will come into your life and the thing that he will do is he will heal you, he will give you a lot of money and maybe you'll have a nice Ferrari as well.

So I'm joking, of course, but. Yeah, I've been to India three times, I've never seen a Ferrari. There are a few. You know, the most popular teaching really, even within the charismatic movement is the word faith stuff and Joyce Myers is the top preacher in India.

She's disobedient to scripture, just through her lifestyle and through what she's doing, but she's the most popular preacher in India because she's word faith. So I'd say that's one reason why they're popular is because of the false hope that they give a third world downtrodden oppressed country and it resonates with people.

You know, Jesus is gonna take care of all my problems. And I think the second reason why the charismatics are successful is well, there is something we can learn from them and that is that they are so aggressive and zealous in their passion for the lost.

They really are. And sometimes we, in our conservative circles in India and maybe even the States, we love Christ and we just keep it to ourselves and our neighbor doesn't even know about the Christ that we love.

And I think, you know, just off the top of my head, those are probably the two reasons why in India the charismatic movement is growing stronger.

Training Former Charismatics at PTS

Well, some of the charismatics are saved, of course, and then as they learn and grow, I imagine they'd find themselves in places like Pastoral Training Seminary where they can learn theology and learn the languages.

Do you get a lot of charismatic pastors who then decide to come to PTS?

Oh, we do. I could, in fact, I love training charismatic pastors because if you can turn that zeal around in the right way, there's several. One guy, he was charismatic and, you know, when he preached in Preaching Lab, three rows over a neighbor in the afternoon came over and he said, could you guys stop yelling so loudly?

Because I'm trying to sleep. But more recently, you know, an amazing, again, testimony of God's grace, there was a charismatic church up in Northeast India in Shillong. There were a group of guys there that were in this church, young men, and just to kind of cut to the chase, one of the young men, he was engaged to a girl and she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, TB.

Well, the elders of the church gathered around her, prayed for her and said she was healed. They just declared she was healed and they told her to stop her medication. Well, three months later, she died.

And that caused the man who was engaged to her fiance to really think soberly about the theology of that church. And he was devastated, of course, but it drove him to study the scriptures and his other two friends.

One of the things they did, they got online looking for biblical resources. They came in touch with Grace to You and they said, this is the truth. And after about a year of listening to that, they were convinced that the charismatic gifts had ceased and that more than the gifts, they needed the word.

And they decided to confront their elders. Well, they were young. They didn't realize what they were stepping into. Their elders turned back to them and said, you have the spirit of Satan and you're excommunicated.

And these guys suddenly found themselves without a church. So they wrote to Grace to You. They said, you know, Grace to You, your teaching is responsible for us being kicked out of our church. So can you please send Pastor John MacArthur over to Shillong, India so that he can help us?

And a secretary there at Grace forwarded that email to us in India, you know, as the local office. And my dad went and visited. And he said, you know, guys, the way in which God can see a church raised here is if one of you men commit your life to saying, I will be trained in God's word and be that man that would stand in this vacuum here and preach the truth where it's not being preached.

And so we got this student, his name is Danny, and he's been two years now, and we're gonna send him back to plant a church in this area. It's that kind of stuff that just excites me in how God is winning people over.

I think charismatic people, when they hear the truth taught clearly, it's more exciting than even some of the stuff that they've experienced in the gifts and all that kind of craziness.

It's more substantial. I agree. Hey, Sammy, since you're a missionary over in India, give us some of those stories that, you know, the old Baptist churches, you'd have a missionary come and they'd tell you stories about snakes or spiders or something like that.

Tell us about the time where you went to a very dangerous part of India and people came out of nowhere by the thousands to hear the gospel message.

Persecution in Orissa and the Need for Pioneer Church Planting

Oh, wow. Well, yeah, I can share about that. And it's not even something that is confidential, but Orissa State in Northeast India, three years ago, there was a great persecution that broke out there against Christians specifically to the point, for about two months, Christians were being dragged out of their churches, pastors were being dragged out of their churches, just beaten, many of them killed, assaulted.

And it got to the point where Christians began living in the jungles and they couldn't even go to their homes or their churches because it wasn't safe. Well, our pastor's conference that we have once a year, one of the leaders from there came and as a result of that, he invited us to come to Orissa.

He said, you know, after the persecution, nobody comes to visit us because they're scared. Will you guys please come? He told me and my dad. And so we said, okay, you know, Jesus, if this is your call to take us home, that's it.

You know, I'd love to die preaching. Die preaching with your father? That's right. So we went there and we found out that it was really safe at the present time. But like I said, they hadn't had a Bible conference like this in the open for three years because of fear.

And when I got there, they treated it like a wedding.

It wasn't like a conference. And by the way, weddings in India are something.

Oh yeah, you bring the band out and you have a dance through the streets. And I think that was the first time I danced, you know?

Well, I don't think we can support you any longer.

Well, they kind of grabbed me and pulled me right in the middle of this throng where they were beating drums.

Now, Sammy, did you have a dress on and some streamers? Was it liturgical Indian dance?

Well, that's where I draw the line. Okay. So they literally danced me into the hall, well, the shelter that they had built for 4 ,000 people that had come from all these surrounding tribal villages in that part of Orissa, that district in Orissa.

It was literally out in the middle of nowhere, no electricity, no running water.

They were just living in grass huts. Could they hear you, 4 ,000 people?

They had brought in a generator from the city. Oh, good. And they had supplied, so I had to preach over the generator, which was fun. But they had supplied speakers and amplification and everything. And so for two days, I was preaching to these people.

And you know, in many ways, it was more of an exposure for me just to, again, the power of the gospel in those areas. And I began to realize my inadequacy. I really can't be the guy that's working here long-term.

And so through that time, two men in my time there committed their lives to come to our seminary PTS and be trained. And that's what I'm really excited about. We can send these guys back to that area.

It's an area that doesn't even speak Hindi. They speak a tribal dialect that doesn't even have a script. And so they don't even have Bibles in their own languages. It's total pioneer work. And we get to be a part of that by training two pastors that can go back there.

Idolatry, Propitiation, and the Hope of the Gospel

Sammy, that is so encouraging to me because when I was in India those three times to watch people and the blatant idolatry. In America, we have idolatry, and I guess it's pretty blatant, whether it's the Red Sox or the Boston Bruins or sex or something, I don't know.

But there to see women bowing down before huge phallic symbols, monkey gods, Ganesh, all these idols. And whether it's Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, there's only one God who saves and he has one son, Christ Jesus.

And so I'm very encouraged that you would train pastors to go back to the tribal villages and back to the cities because without Christ, every one of these people is doomed. That's right, amen.

When Paul was in Athens and he was struck with the idolatry there and that fear that they had of unknown gods and they would just make idols in all these places where they feared an unknown God, that kind of fear has been there in India, in Hinduism and in the animistic tribes for centuries to the point where today they have 330 million gods and idols.

That's the, somebody sat down and calculated. That's as many people as there are in the United States. That's how many gods there are in India. And it's so exciting to be able to go there in the midst of that lostness and say, we know the true God and he has intervened in our lives, in our world through his son.

And we proclaim him to you. Isn't it interesting, Sami, excuse me, that you have something in the heart of a person who's made in the likeness and image of God. They know that God is angry with them and they try to make propitiation and they try to give the fruit to the gods and the incense to the gods and the tikka to the gods and all this.

And they're trying to assuage their sins and their consciences. But the good news is, we can't make propitiation for our sins, but God made propitiation for our sins through Christ Jesus. And so I'm very encouraged about you and the gospel ministry there.

Can you imagine that God would use people like us to preach the gospel?

I can't believe it every day. I'm a young man and to be involved in all of these things at this time in my life and just thinking about the coming years, I can't believe that God would use somebody as weak and inadequate as me.

Website for Sermons from Cornerstone Community Church

Sami, do you have a website that they can go, people can get onto and listen to some of your sermons over in India?

Yeah, our church has a website and it's something we created. It's for the Indian audience, but we'd love Americans to listen as well. It's called Cornerstone Community Church and the website is www .cornerstonegoa .org.

Good, or you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. Sami, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio.

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.

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