NoCo Video

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.

Why This Video Project Exists

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church. My name is Mike Abendroth. I�m your host today. I�m glad to be your host. I think I�m your host every day on No Compromise Radio.

Well, what we�re going to do today is talk about a recent event. It was the end of April. I don�t know if I hear a ringing in my ears, or I�m just getting older. It�s just part of getting older, I think.

Maybe it�s too much Pete�s Coffee today, I�m not exactly sure. I�m celebrating, I think, my 15th month without aspartame, and I think that I am liking� somehow I�m still listening to myself ring here.

If I turn down my headphones a little bit, maybe it�s the whole Wretched Radio set up. Maybe it�s the Wretched Radio contest. I did ask Todd Friel to host two No Compromise Radio shows, and he said, �Don�t bug me.

No, he said, �Sure, he�d love to. So coming up, I don�t know when he�ll send me the shows, but he�s going to host two No Compromise Radio shows, my first ever guest host. Of course, I�ve had Steve here, Tuesday Guy, he�s done some summer shows for me, but he�s not really a guest host, he�s a regular co-host, an under-host, an underling host.

And so Todd is going to do two shows for me, No Compromise Radio shows, hosted by Todd Friel, guest hosted, because he�s let me� I think I�ve hosted� guest hosted five times on Wretched, and some of you are listening because of that very thing.

So if you are a crossover� if you�re a crossdresser, excuse me, if you�re a crossover listener because you were listening to Wretched, and then you heard us on Wretched, and then you�re now listening to No Compromise, we still want you to listen to Wretched.

And so today, I want to give you a little background on the No Compromise Ever video. And what we did is, I had an idea, and here was my idea. It wasn�t that long ago when the Elephant Room 2 fiasco broke, and you had James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll interviewing, for instance, T .D. Jakes about oneness Pentecostalism, i .e. modalism, i .e. civilian heresy.

And they asked him some really cheap questions that were easy for T .D. Jakes to affirm. Let�s get that over with so we can talk shop and talk about how many people at your church and what you do and are so blessed to have you as the bishop.

And it was an unmitigated disaster. Now people at the Elephant Room probably thought it was great, but we had men like Mark Dever, who we were glad dropped out ahead of time. Because if you�re going to sit down and talk other religions, then fine, invite all kinds of people.

But if your premise is, let�s invite Christian brothers who believe the same thing so that we can talk about our differences in a manly, godly way, we can talk about the elephant that�s in the room, our differences, then we can�t have T .D. Jakes, who to this day denies the Trinity with his talk of manifestations and his talking of 1 Timothy chapter 3.

So I watched the whole thing develop and everybody was listening to what was happening, and MacDonald leaves the Gospel Coalition, and you know, all this kind of drama. So it�s easy for me to critique things, but it�s harder to do something positively.

And so while the people at Elephant Room, I�m sure they don�t listen to No Compromise Radio, I bet you they listened to the one where I interviewed Carl Truman. But I thought I�m going to do my own video.

Plain-Speaking Men for Evangelical Critique

And so who are the plain speaking men? Charles Spurgeon said, in the midst of his controversy in London in the late 1800s, Spurgeon said in days like these, we need some plain speaking men. A little plain speaking would do us well.

And so who are the men who would just answer questions? And my premise isn�t Elephant Room, my premise is, let�s talk about compromise in evangelicalism compromises, and then let�s talk about gospel-oriented, Christ-centered solutions.

It�s not enough to just say, this is what�s wrong with our modern Christianity, but let�s talk about what�s needed. Let�s talk about what�s right. I ask the guests, what do they like about evangelicalism today?

And so out of this whole idea, I was on my bicycle, and this is where usually the good ideas come from. Oh, let�s write an S. Lewis Johnson book. That comes from the bike, and when God tells me things on the bike, not.

And this also came to me while I was on my carbon fiber Bianchi. And so what happens? I said to myself, I need to get the plain speaking men to ask them questions, and then I need the kind of men that will give me answers, not, well, I have to be careful, be politically correct, parse the answers, discuss things properly, I have a constituency, well, in other words, I don�t really want that.

I want plain speaking men who will talk about this evangelical state that we�re in. Of course, the Lord is building His church, and there are good things that we can see, and we are thankful that God is still saving and building the church, and the gates of death won�t stop it.

But as we analyze things, I want plain speaking men. The Bible says of the Bereans that they were commended because they studied, they discerned, they examined. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul commanded the church at Thessalonica to examine everything carefully.

And so at No Compromise Radio Ministry, our slogan is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. Let�s do the same thing, except instead of giving slow-pitch underhand softball throws to T .D. Jakes, let�s talk about what they did with T .D. Jakes.

Let�s talk about what is faithfulness slash fruit that the elephant room miffed on, and let�s talk about the gospel. Let�s talk about, I don�t know, the gospel coalition. Let�s discuss mysticism and sola scriptura.

Let�s talk about controversy. What is controversy, and is it always bad? Actually, good things can come from controversy, like creeds, like confessions, like saying to ourselves, �This is what we don�t believe.

Let�s talk about insipid, inscripturated slogans, like, �We want to be known for what we�re for, not what we�re against. And let�s just sit down with men who will give us answers, and then they can teach us about God, His Word, and gospel-oriented solutions.

The Three Guests and Their Ministries

So what I did is I thought, all right, who are the three plain speakers that I need to get? Carl Truman, OPC pastor at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, academic dean of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, teaches church history there.

I think he went to Cambridge for his undergrad, and he got his Ph .D. at Aberdeen. I�m just, this is all out of, I have no notes in front of me this morning, I�m just talking like usual. And so let�s get Carl Truman.

He writes also for Reformation21 .org blog, and he is, in my opinion, the Presbyterian version of Phil Johnson. And he�s a plain speaker. I�ve had him on the radio a couple times before. Ask him about Stephen Furtick, ask him about Perry Noble, ask him about James MacDonald, Gospel Coalition, that kind of thing.

And so let�s ask him. So he�s the first person I ask. The second plain speaker, since he is the Baptistic version of Carl Truman, I ask Phil Johnson. Phil Johnson pastors Grace Life Fellowship at Grace Community Church, where John MacArthur is the pastor.

Phil has edited the majority of John MacArthur�s major books. Phil is the executive director of Grace to You, hosting MacArthur�s sermons. Phil is the main one I read on Pyromaniac�s blog. He used to be Pyromaniac Phil, and now it�s Pyromaniac�s.

And Phil, I think, is a member of the Martin Lloyd Jones Recording Trust. So Phil has been on the radio. Phil has been here to preach, and I thought, �Phil is a plain speaker. It�s amazing. If you ask him, �What do you think of something he just gives you the answer.

And he likes Spurgeon, spurgeon .org, of course. The third one that I thought about asking was James White, commonly known as Dr. Oakley or NAS97, I think he helped edit it, edit the NAS97, alphaandomegaministries .org.

He is the director there, I believe. And he writes books like The God Who Justifies the Forgotten Trinity, and he is an accomplished debater. I would hate to debate James White. I would hate to James Debate White.

That�s probably his name, James Debate White. He�s an expert these days on Islam. And so they�re all plain speaking men. Everyone that I�ve had on No Compromise Radio, and I�ve had everyone on, they just answer the question.

It�s amazing to listen to their frankness, their gospel-centeredness, their bluntness, their matter-of-fact, candid response to questions. In the day of hedging, in the day of blockplaining your answers, in our era of contouring, sharp gospel corners, these men just tell it like it is.

Planning the Shoot and the Interview Questions

So I thought, �All right. Step one, come up with the idea. I�ll interview them, and it�ll be my own version of the elephant room, except we�re not going to talk about the elephants in the room. We�ll talk about the elephant room and other issues in evangelicalism, No Compromise Radio style.

So then I needed to ask them to come, and it was hard to try to get all three men coming to Boston. But we finally got dates. We booked flights, and they actually all arrived last Thursday night. Well, Phil took a red-eye and got in on Friday morning.

And so Thursday night we went out for dinner, and that was good to go out to a steakhouse. My friend Ray and I took Carl and James out, and then the next morning we picked up Phil with the red-eye. So we had the studio ready.

There�s a studio in Marlboro, and we had all the lights, the three camera people, the desk, background, Josh scrambling for background things, my wife scrambling for what the set should look like. And, of course, we don�t have the budget.

My name is Mike Abendroth. By the way, this is No Compromise Radio. The elephant room charged $99 to go to a satellite feed to sit in and watch. And I don�t know how much it was to go in person, but it was a lot of money for a satellite feed.

Maybe it was the same amount of money in person. I�m not sure. There was a live studio audience. Then I think now you can get the DVDs for $49. So since my theology is a lot different than the elephant room, my methodology certainly is different, philosophy is different, I�m not saying everything about those men and I are different.

I mean, there are many things we agree on. But a lot of it wouldn�t be No Compromise style. And so we�re not going to charge. So it�s going to be free. We�re going to put about eight episodes on YouTube, slash Vimeo, slash our website, and you can just watch those things for free.

I guess if you want to donate, you can try to figure out where the address is and send them some money since production costs are production costs. But if I was charging $50 a shot or $20 a shot or donate $5 to watch, then maybe we could get a bigger studio.

But if you�ve got honorariums, flights, hotels, food, studios, lights, camera, action, recording, deals, and of course what I�m going to bring in, which is zero. Well, I got some coffee out of the deal and a couple of nice dinners is what I got.

And basically no sleep for a week. So then we�re just going to play it online. It�s going to be happening in probably June you�ll see the first episode. And we�ll just leak out episodes as time goes on.

So, I�m trying to tell you this today because I want you to be able to do some homework on James White, Carl Truman, and Phil Johnson so you can be ready for the No Compromise Ever video. Now what we did is we got to the studio and we taped four to five hours of me asking them in questions.

And I have to tell you, in the small studio, sitting about four inches away from James White, it was pretty intimidating. James White, Carl Truman, and Phil Johnson, and Mike Avendroth, you know, which one doesn�t really fit in.

And so at the beginning I was nervous and didn�t really contribute much except for the questions. I mean, I knew what the questions were. I was the radio host. And even on the radio here what I�ll do is I�ll ask a question and then I�ll let the guest run with it because you hear me enough.

And so when I have a guest on, I like the guest to talk. And even before we go tape the show, I say to the guest, now listen, when I ask you a question, please give me a long answer because otherwise it�s going to be me talking.

Why have you, the guest, on? So, I would ask a question and off we�d go. But towards the end of the day, I was becoming more comfortable and I would add a few things and I would give my two cents worth and it was a little more, I don�t know, it was just not as stressful.

At the beginning I thought this is maybe one of the hardest things I�m going to do. Right now I�m sitting in the studio and I�m just looking out the window. I�m looking at the Spurgeon transcript that�s in front of me.

I�ve got my notes. If I need them, I�ve got a Bible and I�ve got the message Bible. Allegedly. So, we tape for about four to five hours and again I ask them all kinds of questions. What about charismatic Calvinists?

I ask them, what about Together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition? What is the gospel? Why is the historic event of Jesus being raised from the dead important? What are trends in evangelicalism you like?

What are trends that you don�t like? What about feminism in the church? What about discipling men? I think I ask them about elder polity. We talked about Matthew 18 with our culture today. If you criticize a public figure, oh, did you call them and do what Matthew 18 says and the fallacy of that very issue?

We talked about all kinds of things and I just want it to be no compromise style. Edgy, provocative, biblically oriented and then we�ll splice it together for shows. How are we going to do that? Well, we�ll work on that next.

Cemetery Filming and Outtakes

And so we had a wrap. It was tiring. The guys were getting tired. A lot of funny outtakes towards the end. And then we went and had dinner. Well, the next day I told them, that�s last Saturday, meet me at this particular cemetery.

It�s the Sterling Chalks Cemetery. It�s not that old. There was one in Lancaster that was older, but this was a little easier for access. And I want the guy who�s driving you around to bring you to the cemetery at 9 .30 on Saturday morning.

And then I will ask you questions in the cemetery. And James White kept saying, now what are these questions again? And all the guys, of course, wanted to know the questions ahead of time so they could bone up on them a little bit.

But I didn�t want to tell them. I wanted it to be just radio, impromptu. And, of course, all three of those guys can just talk and talk and talk and talk super smart. If anybody needed the questions ahead of time, it was me.

And so we went to the cemetery. Cool old cemetery there. Ebenezer, Ezra, Gomer. I didn�t see any ladies named Gomer there. Who else did I see? Ephraim. There was a lot of Ephraims there. And verses all over the tombstones.

You know, you go to today�s cemeteries and you see a shellacked Boston Red Sox banner or a dog on top of the tombstone. There you would see harvest, a sheath of wheat. Or you would see the death angel on top.

And then Bible verses. For me to live is Christ and die is gain. That kind of thing. So it was a cool setting. Cool old cemetery limestone. War down over time. I think this is only about 200 years old.

Still, it was cool. And I asked them questions. But here I asked them funny questions and serious questions. And we just had all kinds of outtakes. And so I had asked them questions like, does Calvinism kill evangelism?

I asked Carl, why do you love Baptists? I asked Phil and James, why do you love Presbyterians? I can't tell you everything about this right now, but I will give you this little teaser. Ed Young Jr. is completely off the deep end.

His latest thing is there's a dog service. I think it's in April sometime. Bring your dogs. It's wild dog days at whatever this church is called. Small C. It's a nonprofit group. It's not a church. And so somehow we talked about, Carl was talking about newts.

And newts are people too, and newts should have a service, and it's a newt service, and it's better at the Baptistic Church because you can dunk the newts and all that. It was absolutely hilarious. So wait till you see the outtake with Carl and the newt service.

I want you to be ready for that. And I also liked it when I asked Carl, what is his favorite rock band? And so we're going to play that rock band's famous song in the background when we ask the question.

So those kind of things will be fun. But I think overall, listeners, you're going to learn that James White, Phil Johnson, and Carl Truman are going to answer the questions about evangelicalism. They're not there to try to make themselves look good and tear other people down, but just plain speaking.

Faithfulness, Not Numbers

Francis Schaeffer said a generation ago that our world of evangelicalism has accommodated herself to the system of the world. She has exchanged compromise for truth. And in the day and age where there's modification to the gospel, alterations to the gospel, subtractions to the gospel, smoothing off those contour edges that I talked about before, compromising the gospel, then let's have our own version of No Compromise video.

And so now we have the camera, we have the chairs, we have the table, and so this will probably launch us into a variety of videos that will play on the website. And I'm not going to ever be the caliber of Todd Friel, but we'll do the best we can at No Compromise.

You might actually get to see what Pastor Steve, Tuesday guy, looks like. And also there's a book deal brewing in the background that you might just like, No Compromise Ever book with some of these guests in the book as well.

So that's it, 20 minutes in, and what have we done today? We've talked to you about No Compromise Ever. If you go to our Facebook page, No Compromise Radio Facebook, you'll be able to see some of the pictures, you'll be able to see some of the intro video, and then we're going to just start making this happen between Bob, Josh, and I.

We'll start editing the video and start playing it and put it up for free. Can you imagine? For free. And then I'll start planning next year, and I think next year will even be better as we bring in the men who can help us look at evangelical Christianity.

I'm very thankful to the Lord that he would allow this to happen, for the idea, for the money to back it, for the men who would be willing to fly from all around the country to get here. A lot of taping, it was intense, and then now to be able to put it up.

So I think it will benefit the church. I picked these men because they're churchmen. These aren't just academic authors and throwing scuds from far afield. Each one of these men is a churchman, and so I like churchmen because they help me in my pastoral ministry.

In these days when numbers mean everything, Carl Truman is the pastor of 100 people show up on a Sunday, 50 members. James White, I think it's the same thing. I think 100 people show up on a Sunday at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

He's an elder, he's not the pastor, but he's an elder. I want to say 400 people show up to Grace Life Fellowship, where Phil Johnson is the under-shepherd there. I think that's the right number. It might be more.

And here at Bethlehem Bible Church, we have 350 to 400 show on a Sunday. So four mega-church pastors talking about evangelicalism, talking about Jesus Christ and His church and what would please Him.

And at the end of the day, there's a theme, and here's the theme. It doesn't matter what works. It matters that you're faithful. That's the issue. Stewardship. Gospel fidelity. MacArthur's right. Take care of the depth of your ministry, the biblical, gospel-oriented depth, and God will take care of the breadth.

That is, God will take care of how far your ministry goes, and how large it grows, and what kind of impact it has in the community and beyond. But our goal is not to say, let's see how far it can go. It's to say how biblical and how faithful we can have that ministry be by the strength of the Spirit of God through our dutiful exercise.

So, when it comes to your ministry at your church, where you are, whether you're a Bible teacher, or whether you're a Sunday school teacher, or whether you're a dad who teaches your kids at home, or a mom who teaches your kids at home, it's fidelity.

It's faithfulness. And when you get these hucksters talking about numbers all the time because they want to show you that they know what they're doing. I wonder how many followers Christ had in John 6.

I want to know how many followers Isaiah had after God told him it was going to be a hardening ministry that you'll have in Isaiah 6. What about Jeremiah? So, see, numbers don't mean anything. And I'm quite convinced that some of the people in this world are going to be shocked when they get to heaven and see that the people behind the scenes, the Pastor Rathbuns and Lowell, who hardly have anyone there compared to the megachurches, but faithfully teaching the Bible verse by verse by verse for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.

So, when it comes to gospel fidelity, you take care of the depth of your ministry, God will take care of the breadth. So, today I think it's about May 2nd. This will play sometime in May or June. And you will then see some of the videos at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I just got a letter saying that I was too soft, I was not loud enough, so I've turned up the volume just a hair. And we'll see what we have to do with the mixing board to help that problem as well.

Carl Truman, Phil Johnson, James White, ask me asking them questions about evangelicalism, compromises, and gospel-oriented solutions.

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 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. 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.