Covid and the SBC and the PCA

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.

Cycling, Recovery, and Getting Back on the Bike

Steve, this is a first. This is the third show in a row. Without me or you getting up to take like a two-minute break in between the shows.

Which just goes to show that we�re totally old and immobile.

My knee, you can see the little, that�s where they put the ACL up and through there. The other ones are a little smaller there for just the meniscus, but slowly but surely. I get fitted for the brace next week, and then you have to wear the brace for basketball running or ballroom dancing.

Forever and ever, or? 18 months, I think. Okay. Because you don�t want to twist or something, and you find it interesting. So I�m allowed to bicycle outside now or inside, but I�ve had to take off my clips on the road bicycle and put just, I put mountain bike pedals on there, and the new mountain bike pedals, they have almost like little screws, you know, 15 screws that come up on both sides so your tennis shoes don�t slide off.

Okay. And then I have to do those because you can�t take your heel on your surgical knee and take your heel and move it out with your toes in. You can�t have that motion, and that�s the clip-out motion.

So you can�t do that. And so I�m riding around my bicycle with tennis shoes, feeling like a real gomer.

There�s a guy, he lives two houses down from me, and I need to go talk to him. I�ve never actually met the guy. He�s got this, I mean, they�ve overbuilt their house for the rest of the neighborhood. Super nice, right?

And I just see him out on the street the other day, and he�s got this brand-new bike, like a Trek, really nice, and he�s all kitted out, and I�m looking at him, and I�m like, he�s a little big for, you know, so I think it�s probably just his, but I thought, yeah, I probably should.

And all he did was just like trip up and down the street a couple times, and I thought, yeah, he�s new to this whole thing, you know?

I remember, and you probably do too, you first start riding a road bicycle, and with your clips and you�re clipped in, and you�re trying to figure out shifting and everything else, and then you come up to a stop sign, you�re looking both ways, looking both ways, and then you just fall over.

Yep. Off you go. Yep. I�m not going to get clipped out! I think that�s how I first hurt this knee, because the doctor said the knee that I just had surgery on, it�s pretty much just a compilation of just life, basketball, falling, and I�ve fallen, you know, skiing or whatever, and on the bike a few times.

And so, boom! Over you go. Steve, anything new in your life, something you�re studying? What book besides the Bible, theological book, have you been reading and enjoying these days?

I can�t even think of the name of it. I�ve just been reading about the covenant of works. Just reading different things. I�ve been listening to R. Scott Clark, you know. Were you taking a class on Saturday, maybe?

Yeah, this last Saturday I couldn�t, so I have to email the guy and see if I can get the recording.

Okay. So, that�s all summer on Saturdays. Right. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, a couple hours. And, you know, what�s funny was, I was listening to the other day and Janet had to get up during the break, and she got up and she was like, came back real fast after, she was like, �I�m liking this.

And I go, �Okay, well.

Well, I think Scott did that class, or is doing that class originally for your friend Chad Vegas and his congregation in, I wanted to say Barstow, but Bakersfield. Bakersfield, yeah. Are there a lot more?

It�s through his church, and there�s probably about, I think, 80, 90 of the class are people at his church.

Okay. So, what are the over-unders for that church becoming Presbyterian or United Reformed?

Oh, I don�t know. I mean, right now, Chad�s just trying to hang on because they were meeting in a school. I mean, I�m. Oh, now the school said, yeah. Yeah, and I�m reading through all his struggles, and I�m like, �Boy, I�m glad, you know, as lousy as this building is, that we have a building, and we don�t owe anything on it.

Amen. Well, No Compromise Radio, we just try to talk about current theological issues. We try to, I don�t know, I think sometimes people on Tuesdays, they say, �Well, do they have a theological point

And then it�s almost by absorption, by this implication, you have this Fred Craddick preaching moment where you just go, �Aha. Right? See, that�s how he told people to preach. You create this story, this narrative, and you go along, you go along, you don�t have a lot of deductive points, you don�t have a lot of doctrinal things, you don�t have a lot of dogma.

You set the story up so at the end of the sermon, they go, �I get it, the reveal. So that�s the Fred Craddick method. He died, I think, a while ago. I used to watch Fred Craddick sermons, because most of them you have to pay for, but the ones that were online for free, I just listened to them, Steve, because it was so unlike our preaching style and so weird, weirdly just hypnotic.

It would pull you in. Fred Craddick. He�s a liberal. I don�t suggest people listen to him unless you are weird like me.

Well, I knew he was a liberal, that�s why I�m like, it was hypnotizing. It was.

I couldn�t resist. It�s something about even unbelievers who are good storytellers, and you just get drawn in. What�s going to happen next? What�s going on with the story? They gave me a little information.

I need closure. Steve, there�s that book we were looking at the other day, just as a springboard theological miscellany by TJ McTavish, and there�s a section in here called Children of the Popes. And I have to tell you, when I first saw that section, I was thinking about children of the corn.

Okay. Have you watched any virus movies since you�ve been locked up in the last three months? No, I have not. No, I, no. So my girls are in town, and we�ve been trying to get a lot of things done around the house.

And, you know, I actually cleaned the shed up and all this other kind of stuff. And the girls had school. And then we would say Friday nights, it�s Spanish night, you know, and we would have, we would dress up in whatever clothes we could think of, Mexican, Spanish, something like that.

And then we would have tacos or, you know, whatever. And then the next week it was Hawaiian night.

We wore Hawaiian shirts. Russian night, borscht, beet borscht.

So we were trying to have fun. And then, you know, one night we would have, it would be movie night. And so Kim and I have different tastes than the girls do, but we watched World War Z again. And it�s about a virus.

Yeah, it is. I didn�t know that. It�s like, oh, this is Virus Central.

It�s really an escape movie, right? Yeah.

I know. Escape from New York, something like that. All right. So, Children of the Pope. So here�s what it says. The Catholic Church traces the origin of the papacy to the Apostle Peter, who was married, Jesus healed his mother-in-law, Matthew 8, before 1139, that is 1139 AD, when celibacy was made a requirement for Latin Rite clergy.

False. At least four popes and many bishops, priests, deacons were married. Pope Adrian II, he reigned in 1862, was a married layman, a relative of the rival Pope Anastasius, murdered his wife and daughter.

Well, you know, a man�s got to do what a man�s got to do.

Now we�re tying this all back around. Did you watch the two popes on Netflix? No. So they�ve got, you�ve got Francis and Benedict, and it kind of shows, you know, in a sketch with, you know, not all perfect info, it�s a sketch of the transition between the two popes and how they kind of, you know, were horsing around and they liked each other, the two popes.

Yeah. Okay. Are you writing that down? Yeah. Okay. I�m sending myself an email. Okay, good. The two popes. Here it goes on to say, �A few popes were sons of popes. Innocent I was the son of Anastasius I, was the son of Silverus, was the son of Harmony, was the son of Arminius, and John XI was the son of Sergius III.

How does that all work?

I don�t know, but Innocent II led to Guilty IV, so I don�t know how it�s going to go.

Roman Catholicism, Mary, and the Problem of Images

One of my favorite things in life, Steve, is we�ve got a Christmas service or maybe there�s a special concert, spring concert or something like that, and then I�m standing at the door greeting people, you know, like we would on a Sunday morning, and we�ve got a visitor.

And they come by and they say, �Thank you, Father. And it�s not one of my four kids. And I walked into the Clinton, Massachusetts Catholic Church downtown, and it is a marvel inside. It is unbelievably ornate and intricate.

And I sat there and I kept thinking to myself, what do you do with people who can�t really read? They�re illiterate for the most part. And how do you teach them theology? Maybe you want to keep them illiterate and not teaching them, but you�re going to use these pictures, right, and the Stations of the Cross and all these other paintings and frescoes and everything else.

It�s fascinating. Well, I think probably a little intimidating too, right? I mean, if you�re just in awe of the building, then maybe you don�t even think, �I can never understand this is what I�d be thinking.

I can never understand all this, and I�m just going to kind of look around and then I�m good to go for the next week.

Oh, is it right for me to sit in those buildings in Europe and here even in Clinton, Massachusetts and then have my gaze drawn upwardly where they�re designed for you to think of transcendent realities?

Is that a good thing compared to, let�s say, a Puritan congregational meeting house in the 1650s where it was just a room with a pulpit?

Well, I don�t know if it�s a good thing or not. I mean, it�s like, you know, should you have stained glass windows? I don�t know. You know, I think if you�re going to say that the standard should be a plain room, therefore you�re not distracted by anything and it�s more pure and holy and reverent, I just think that�s an opinion, right?

I mean, if the Church, let�s put it this way, if the Roman Catholic Church called us and they said, �Hey, by the way, we want to give you that building in Clinton. You guys can do whatever you want with it.

We just want to get out of it. And you can�t paint over the murals. I take it. Yeah. Right? I mean, I just feel like, well, okay, can we get rid of all the things to marry?

As long as we can do that. And by the way, when I went there with my kids, we put our masks on. There's no holy water because you can't touch, you know, it's COVID stuff, right? So there's no holy water.

You can't dip your finger in there. And they have little shrines, right? Lots of times those churches, it's like a cross that's standing up and then you lay the cross down and that's the shape of the building, right?

So a long narrow part and then two sides, you know, perfectly 90 degree angles and then the front. Well, the one side, that little chamber there that was for Mary, that was the most popular.

You know, it was so weird. Actually, I think the only time I've ever been to a Roman Catholic wedding and they got to that point where they went up and they gave a gift, you know, to that little area of the church.

A gift? No, no. This was a gift. Oh, nice. For Mary, you know?

And I just thought... What's she like, by the way? That is really weird. Is she like cheese? No, it was cash. She prefers cash.

She's like, don't give me any perfume, no cheese. No candy. I'll take cash.

Malted milk balls. So Steve, when I remember S. Lewis Johnson's sermons in particular, he discusses the wonderful sensual ornate visual masterpiece of the temple and even the tabernacle, you know, had wonderful things too.

But just how glorious this was and opulent and magnificent and beautiful. And then he talks about the New Testament and here you have Jesus and you have bread and you have wine and then you have water, of course, with communion and baptism.

And it's simple and it's all that other stuff is gone, right? The veil has been torn from top to the bottom. 70 AD, there's the exclamation point of God through Titus smashing and wrecking Jerusalem. And so here's my point.

S. Lewis Johnson would say, when you go back to that gaudy, ornate visual, everything else, it's really a return to Rome. I mean, Rome's return is to the Old Testament, old temple, excuse me.

Well, I mean, that's their whole system, right? I mean, the priest stands in for the Old Testament priest and, you know, you've got this human intercessor who's not also deity, right? He's just a man.

So, yeah, I think it's the whole, but it's to keep people in the dark and ignorant because the longer they are ignorant, the easier it is for the church to do what it does.

Now, down the street from that church, I wish I remember the name, I think it's the Catholic Church of St. John, the guardian apostle of Mary or something like that. Seriously.

Well, I mean, everything's, it always winds up going back to Mary.

Remember the one up in Lunenburg is something like Our Lady Guardian of the Lake or something. She guards the lake up there.

I'd like to have one, you know, Our Lady of Perpetual Dunkage. It's Mary, you know, throwing down over shack or something.

When I went to my daughter Haley's, that just finally hit me, that finally hit me, the shack thing. Haley said, you know what, Dad, it's Christmas time. You can come and give a devotional if you'd like to the folks at the assisted living home that I work at.

I said, okay, great. And I did. And just simple gospel, tried to be encouraging. And then I took questions afterwards and this Catholic lady asked me a question. She's a nice lady, but she was telling me all this stuff about her prayer journals and she has different journals for people, 26 journals.

If your letter, if your last name's A. Bindroth, you're in A. And so she prays through for all these people, including dead people. And so every day of the week, you know, and then she gets four days off, right?

Because there's 31 days and there's only 26 letters in case you miss a day. Anyway, I said, well, Paul made it very clear that we're not to pray for dead people. And I explained the reason why. And I said it nicely, just like this.

And she said, well, I've been to Medjugorje or whatever, Fatima and, you know, Mary said such and such. And she said to pray for these people. And so I said, well, if I had to pick between Paul and Mary, an apparition of Mary, I'll pick Paul.

And then she looked at me in front of the group of 20 people. And then she, and this is after I've already preached the gospel of grace and the only works accepted are God's works and his son. And then she said, I'll pick Mary.

I'll never forget that. I'll pick what, and this is not even what Mary said. If Mary would talk right now, she would say, believe Paul, right?

Well, you know, just a mashing of things, but it winds up being my experience trumps the scripture. It trumps the Holy Spirit because why can't Mary talk to me is kind of the idea, right? Mary is portrayed as supernatural.

So I always think, you know, sometimes these sweet Mary pictures that people envision as the real Virgin Mary, and then all of a sudden there's some kind of like their eyes turn all red and kind of like these monster things, you know, is the Mary that they worship a demon Mary.

That's what I think. Yes. I know.

It's scared you. I mean, you want it, you want it. I mean, who is delighted by the Mary stuff? Is it, you know, God, the father, is it Jesus or is it Satan? And the answer is Satan.

What's the church in Rome that I think on a cross on one side is Mary and the other side is Jesus. And then there's the other church downtown that I always take people to. And it shows Mary with a big cross that looks like a lightsaber, and she's got her foot on Luther's throat.

And it's captioned, the Italian, I can't pronounce it, but in English it's Mary destroys the heretics. And it's got these little imps, these little demon imps, like ripping pages out of the books that Calvin and Luther wrote.

And when people say something along the lines of, well, Catholics are Christians too, you know, the response is, well, maybe. But if they're believing that kind of stuff, it's a little harder to swallow.

And don't we say, Steve, that, you know, of course, Roman Catholics can go to heaven, but not good ones.

Yeah, the better Roman Catholic you are, the less possibility there is. Right.

There are Baptists that aren't saved, obviously. And, you know, there are people in the Roman Catholic Church who are Christians. I'm just trying to get them out of there.

Now, are there people who subscribe to the Westminster? Who aren't? I'm sure.

I'm sure. Steve, there's right down the street from this Clinton Church, the Church of John the Apostle, the Guardian of Virgin Mary of the Lake of Fire. I give you fire. Is a Russian Orthodox icon museum.

And I think it's one of the largest museums of Russian Orthodox icons in Eastern America.

Like, did they give you an estimate how many years out of purgatory you get for going through there?

I don't know, but I've been there a couple of times because I get the free library pass and Kim and I go in there.

So you probably got like centuries out of purgatory.

Yeah, but what about when I crawled up the Scala Sancta in Rome, those special steps that Jesus is on? That's got to be more than that. Did you do it on your knees? Well, they started hurting because there are people going too slow doing the apatra, our father's stuff.

Right. There's no fast lane I couldn't find. So I just got up and didn't go all the way to the top.

So it's probably, I don't know, what do you think? Maybe 65, 70 of what you'd normally get. What are the formulas for that anyway?

I'm sure they can say different things and there's different Jubilee years that probably you get more or something, but I think there are 28 steps in the Scala Sancta and I've been up and down a few times, but one time it got aborted because there are too many people.

Now, if you go to that library enough, can you have excess merit that could go to the super irrigation?

Somebody asked me that the other day, what's super irrigation? And super is just, you know, above, right? Super. Or if you're in Germany and something really good happens, they say super. Uber. That's right.

And irrigation comes from where we get the word erg, work, right? Super works. There are some people that do so many works, they have extras they can give you. That's not extras. That's extras. That must be Nebraska speak.

And by the way, here's why I bring up the icon museum. The one thing that I really liked, because I don't like pictures of Jesus. I don't want to see his face.

I hate it. Even Christians do that sometimes. I know. It's so bad.

We used to have a little study Bible for the kids and it didn't have any faces of Jesus, right? They showed him standing on a boat, but, you know, from the side. Or with his back turned. I like that. People used to say their favorite movie of Jesus was the robe because you couldn't see his face or something.

So anyway, they use colors to try to help people understand. And so it looks blue, but it's technically purple that they'll have some of his garment. And sometimes they'll have his garment red. So purple is divine and red is human.

And therefore you can see different pictures like at Gethsemane, for instance, I'm making this up, but he would be, he would be all in red because here's Jesus, the human, and he's praying, you know, not my will, but your will be done.

And, you know, or he's on the cross and it's red because, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is what it means for a human to suffer. So that's the only thing I found redeeming out of the whole deal.

That's not a lot.

If I'm being honest, that's not a lot.

I know, but I felt kind of highbrow afterwards. I'm going to a museum. What'd you do today? I went to a museum. What kind?

Oh, an icon museum. Oh, really? What kind of icons? Oh, Russian Orthodox. Hmm, getting rather ecumenical, aren't you? I know.

I memorized the Apostles Creed a while ago. It's simple, easy. And then just today I started the Nicene Creed.

Now you get years out of purgatory for that too, right?

But Steve, what I didn't really think about before, I think it says something like, I believe in God, the Father almighty maker of heaven and earth and in all things visible and invisible. So right after you acknowledge that God's the Father and a maker and almighty, there are invisible realities that are existing.

I thought that was kind of cool because that's not in the Apostolic Apostles Creed rather.

Well, I mean, there are things that we can't see, right? Those would be invisible, but they're still there. I know. That's weird to think about. Yeah.

Demons and angels. Oh, what are they doing? Do you think they're over by the Russian Orthodox Museum? Or do you think they're like here? I don't know. Where are they? I don't know. Have you ever met a demon possessed person?

I wouldn't know. I mean, I could guess that maybe I have. I've told you about the guy who was eating his own flesh. You know, I. And you had to tell him to stop it several times. Yeah. So I would think that maybe.

He's eating his arm. Yeah. I would think somebody like that might be demon possessed.

So they say if you bite hard enough to bite a carrot in half, that's what it would take to bite your finger. But your mind can't really do that. But I mean, just. Oh, eating your own arm. It's like his forearm or his bicep.

He was he was chowing down, right? You know, it's just.

You should see Steve.

I do these Facebook live once in a while. That would have been a good time to do Facebook.

It was it was ghastly. I mean, just.

Did you get. Did you have to get gloves on or something?

Well, because I didn't I didn't want to touching him. I was above that. Okay. You know, so the guys. But I think the guys had gloves on anyway, because we were we're doing accounts. So they would be in there with the inmates.

And then we ran down the stairs to or down the ramp to get him. All right. Last question.

We've got 45 seconds. Our Lady of the Lake, Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. If you could name a church, you could start from scratch. You're going to plant a church. What would you name that church? What would Our Lady be in there or would be something else?

It would not have anything to do with that. You know, it would be nothing to do with Our Lady, but it would have to do with, I don't know, maybe maybe I'd call it Redemption Church or, you know, Christ Church.

Yeah. Christ Church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ Church. I don't know. You know, I mean, I just want to Good News Church. I would just want to proclaim the gospel that Jesus Christ lived the life I ought to have lived.

He died the death I deserved, and he was raised on the third day. And that's what I would want to focus on. Sign me up.

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