Unconditional Election Quiz (Part 3)

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.

Taping Multiple Episodes and Upcoming Ministry Events

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today for me, this rainy day, you can't really hear the rain in the background anymore, although earlier you could. Today, this is episode number five that I'm taping today.

My goal is usually to tape five in a week. It's actually Friday for me, and I hadn't taped any shows, so I need to do five today. I feel exhausted, so I better ramp this up and have a little, I don't drink Red Bull, but maybe I should, at least for today, some five-hour energy thing or something like that.

I do have on my desk here the holy land of water from Jordan, holy soil, and some holy oil. It's olive oil. At least it looks like olive oil. Who knows? It's probably rancid by now. If you'd like to go with us to Israel, No Compromise Radio is going to Israel, along with Bethlehem Bible Church and Omaha Bible Church, on February something.

I think it's the 15th, February 15th. You can go to bbcchurch .org and look for information regarding the trip to Israel. I think we have a few slots open, and we have the extension to Egypt, and so if you'd like to hear Mike Ebenroth and Pat Ebenroth, I don't know if we're sons of thunder or not, but if you'd like to hear the brothers, we would love to have you go with us, Bethlehem Bible Church and Omaha Bible Church, off to the holy land.

Also, we have Rick Phillips, November 5th and 6th at Bethlehem Bible Church, talking about a mandate for masculinity of his book on Friday night, November 5th, and that would be for men only, and then on Saturday, he's standing up regarding current issues, kind of a no-compromise style, attacks in the atonement, attacks on six-day creation, and attacks on men and women's roles in the local church.

So that'll be a conference. Rick Phillips used to study under James Montgomery Boyce. Today is part three on our Unconditional Election Quiz. Each day we do something differently here at the radio show, and I have been teaching a class at the New England Institute for Biblical Studies, a college-level set of classes at Bethlehem Bible Church, Thursday nights from seven to nine, complete with homework and syllabus and all that stuff.

You can always go to the website and pull up our old current issues classes, our evangelism classes, our presuppositional apologetics classes, church history, theology one, two, and three, and the list goes on.

That's at bbcchurch .org. If you'd like to listen to no-compromise radio, you just go to iTunes or you can go to bbcchurch .org as well. Boy, all right, let's get back to the quiz. This is the quiz on Unconditional Election, and without rehashing a lot of things, it's important for you to understand Calvinism.

Calvinism, the Doctrines of Grace, and God as the Initiator of Salvation

It's important for you, all right, let's pick a different term, the doctrines of grace, that God is indeed sovereign and he is the initiator of salvation, and all of salvation is the work of God. Salvation isn't something that you do, salvation that is something that has been done for you, and of course, in response to what God has done, you respond with faith and trust and hope and those kind of things, but God is the Savior and God is the one who saved, and if you have any of the unbiblical notions in your mind, like I accepted Jesus in my heart, and what you mean by that is I accepted him, therefore, now he's able to save me, then you need to be changed in your thinking because that's not the most biblical, most God-glorifying, most praise-stimulating way to think of salvation.

Frankly, it's not even biblical. You want God the Father to accept you in his heart, and he only will based on the finished work of Christ Jesus Calvary, both his life and his death confirmed by his resurrection, and so you need to understand these biblical terms, remember the old slogan when I was a kid, my mom, I think maybe my mom had it on her bumper sticker, even as a Lutheran, I found it.

Remember the I found it bumper sticker campaign? And then you're supposed to say to people, I found what? And then you go, oh, I found Jesus. What about you? We've got Jesus. Yes, we do. We've got Jesus.

How about you? You didn't have to say that last part. It just came to the top of my mind. I found it, like somehow I found this thing from God called salvation, this person from God called Jesus. And so it is not wrong to say I found it.

I guess technically it might be wrong, but if you mean it this way, then I wouldn't condemn you. I can condemn you, but I wouldn't chasten you. If you say based on God's revelation in nature and in scripture and the Spirit's work in my heart, opening my heart, making me a new creation, making me born again.

And in light of what he's done, I found it. I guess you could probably do it, but it just smacks of man-centeredness, doesn't it? That's what we want to root out. As your man-centeredness and your view of salvation in a man-centered way decreases, praise for God increases because you see more of his glory and salvation, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, or as we say in New England, that Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega.

The first time I was in New England and somebody was reading scripture and said Alpha and Omega, nobody laughed. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to just chuckle. I wanted to kind of just giggle, but I didn't.

And so Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. So where are we today? We're talking about unconditional election and we're using the format of quiz today because I like quizzes. If you don't like one question, then you maybe like the next one.

It also makes you think you should be answering the question. Back in the old days when Hank Hanegraaff and the Bible Answer Man was a good show, I don't recommend it these days, but when I used to like it, I'd try to answer the questions before Hank did to see if I could get the right answer.

And so now we'll do almost the same thing on No Compromise Radio with your host, Mike Abendroth. P .S. I'm nicer in person. As I've said many times before, if you only know me from the radio show, you probably think I'm arrogant, spoiled brat.

You know, know-it-all kind of guy. I think he knows it all. But if you know me outside of the show, I'm not sure you'll say that. Maybe you still would, but I don't think so if you saw me as a dad and as a husband and as a friend and as a pastor.

I don't think you would say it. If you only know me from this radio show, maybe you do say it. Probably some of the young guys want me to turn it up. You know, whenever I completely blast something, you know, the shack book or something, and I say the only thing worse than reading the shack book and thinking it makes you understand who the triune God is, the only worse thing is pastors who are out there pushing that blasphemous pablum on their people and not warning them.

That's worse when these emasculated pastors are afraid to stand up against error found in some blasphemous books. The young folks, they like it when I talk that way. The older folks and the grandmas in the faith say, okay, just tone it down here.

Reprobation and the Justice of God

Unconditional election quiz part three. If God is, is God unjust if reprobation is true? Why or why not? Is God unjust if reprobation is true? Well, let's talk a little bit about reprobation. What is reprobation?

What happens when people are reprobate? And if you would pick up that book sometime, The Five Points of Calvinism by Edwin Palmer, he has an excellent section at the end of the book called 12 Theses on Reprobation.

And he gives a definition of reprobation. Reprobation is God's eternal, sovereign, unconditional, immutable, wise, holy, and mysterious decree whereby in electing some to eternal life, He passes others by and then justly condemns them for their own sin all to His own glory.

So people have a problem with election, unconditional election. And I grant that, that they have a problem with that. It is a very, very hated doctrine by unbelievers and immature believers. They don't like the doctrine.

But if they don't like election, whatever their angst and hatred is towards the doctrine of unconditional election, can you imagine how much they must see at the notion that some people like me teach the doctrine of reprobation?

And he gives these 12 theses. I don't think I'll read them all. The Bible is the infallible, inherent word of God and is the final arbiter in all teaching, including reprobation. See, that's important because if we think of reprobation, where God elects some and doesn't elect others, passes them by and then condemns them justly, therefore the quiz question, it is not unjust for that to happen.

The people have deserved it. They've earned it. You can't go on feelings. You can't go on emotions. You can't go on implications. You can't say, well, then that logically means such and such. The Bible is the word of God and you can't read Romans 9 for very long without thinking, you know, this is true.

Reprobation, 1 Peter 2, verse 8. Romans, excuse me, Proverbs 16, verse 4. These things are true. These things are true. If you look at some of these other theses in the Palmer book, preterition is the reverse side of election.

God does not effectuate sin and unbelief in the same way he effectuates good deeds and faith. Objections to the teaching of reprobation are usually based on scholastic rationalism rather than on humble submission to the word of God.

A person does not know if he is reprobate, but he may know if he is elect. Reprobation should be preached, et cetera, et cetera. So we believe that the Bible is clear on that and I may like the doctrine, I may not like the doctrine, but the Bible is the word of God.

Why the Unevangelized Need the Gospel

Next question, if heathens live up to their inner light, God will give them more light. If heathens live up to their inner light, God will give them more light. Well, what do we do with this sticky problem?

People living on islands for the last 6 ,000 years and until missionaries have shown up, those generations over thousands of years, let's just say 1 ,500 years. How many generations lived on the island of Australia?

I guess it's a pretty big island. On any other island, the Canary Islands, before a missionary showed up to tell them Jesus is the way. Every one of those, and I'm not gonna get into the argument about infant salvation, et cetera, but every one of those people, without knowing that Jesus is the son of God and died a substitutionary death and was raised from the dead, every one of those people were not forgiven.

Every single one of them who did not know the specifics about Jesus Christ are not in heaven. And that creates quite a conundrum in your mind, doesn't it? And what about God and why did he do this, et cetera, et cetera?

It should motivate you to be a missionary. It's what it should do. But it just stirs up, you can just imagine this kind of, you know, you take some kind of ladle and you take some cream and you just start churning it up and hopefully you'll get some butter.

And it just stirs up all kinds of problems mentally for the finite and fallen human being. So what do we do with all these people? You know, R .C. Sproul was asked the question, do innocent pygmies in Africa who haven't heard the gospel go to heaven?

And he said the answer is yes. Problem is there's no innocent pygmies in Africa. If you're not fallen, if there's no sin that's touching you, then you're gonna go to heaven. But since pygmies are fallen, pygmies in Africa are the Maori in New Zealand before missionaries got to them, that they don't know about Christ, they aren't saved.

And that's right from Romans chapter 10. And they need to hear because the preacher needs to go preach the gospel to them. So instead of having the terribly disappointing from the human perspective view that says these heathen are all damned without the knowledge of the gospel, let's create some kind of thing where if they live up to the light that's in them, God will give them more light.

Well, the problem with that is it ignores depravity and it ignores Romans chapter three and nobody's good. Nobody's living up to any kind of light. They love the darkness, John three would say, the words of our Lord.

So even though there is a problem from the human perspective, and that is what about all those people? You mean not one of those people is in heaven? No, not one of those people who did not know that Jesus was the sin bearer is in heaven.

And we just have to let that be. That is the sovereign choice of God. God could have chosen those people to be in England in the 1500s and the 1600s. He could have chosen them to be in Scotland in the Scottish Reformation.

He could have chosen them to be in New England and the first great awakening and the second great awakening. He could have chosen them to be John Calvin's children. I mean, anything could have happened, but it didn't happen that way for a reason.

And so we leave these things with God and it should be motivate us to go preach the gospel to these nations. And I think of Jim Elliot and the other men that went down with him to the Akka Indians. And they had guns.

They just didn't bring the guns because it was a non-starter for them. They weren't going to use the guns because if they were attacked, and they were, they were speared to death and killed. If they were attacked and they shot these Indians, theology prevailed in their minds.

And so they knew that the Indians would go straight to hell. They couldn't communicate with them. Here's what the gospel says. The Indians would go straight to hell. These Akkans would go straight to hell.

And so if these men, Saint and Elliot, and forgot the other guy's name, if they got killed by a spear, they'd go straight to heaven. And so let's not kill these people even in self-defense because we want them to go to heaven now.

That is life-changing truth. That is earth shattering. And that's why theology is important. And that's why we're going to talk about theology on this show. Other shows might like to talk about sports and politics and those kinds of things.

But frankly, they bore me. And I'm a fair-weathered friend and a fan. And, you know, you root for some teams and you're glad when they win. And you watch a couple games here or there. But I have other things that thrill my soul and that I'm concerned about.

Things that are eternal. That doesn't mean you can never watch football again. That's not my point. What time does that game start again on Saturday? Nebraska Cornhuskers. No, see, that's not my point.

My point is, though, theology matters. These things are wonderful revelations of God. And these things are mysteries now revealed to us. This is not mysterious. But these things could not be found out by the mind of man.

Yet, in 1 Corinthians chapter two, we find that through the apostles especially, God has revealed these truths. Truths that angels would long to look into. Now he's revealed them to us and we know. And therefore, if we know, then we must do.

My name's Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. And frankly, if we can just put all our cards on the table and be as open and honest and frank as possible. We all like our homes and where we're from and places where we like to live.

It's not that I hate New England, but I wouldn't choose to leave here.

Oops, that was a slip of all slips.

I wouldn't choose to live here. Actually, I wouldn't choose to leave here either because that would have to be God's choice. I've been here for 13 and a half years and I feel like I'm a missionary because there are plenty of people who need the gospel and who are involved with the religious work system thinking that their baptism is going to get them to heaven.

Thinking that Mary is going to get them to heaven. Thinking that the Pope and indulgences is going to get them to heaven. Thinking about justification by faith that not alone is going to get them to heaven.

I feel like I'm a missionary. I'm no different than Jim Elliot. This just happens to be in America still. And it happens to be an English speaking country. And I'll stay here as long as the Lord would have me here until I know otherwise.

And it won't be a still small voice or anything else. I'm sure it'll be something different than that. I'm positive it will be because if I hear a voice that says, go to someplace, I know it'll be my own gizzard talking and it's not God.

And so I do something different. So here's my point. You need to be a preacher of the gospel wherever you are because even though God chooses people for salvation, he's also chosen that the way they come to faith is through the preaching of the gospel.

Why Evangelize If God Elects People?

And that's the next question. Since God elects people, why evangelize? Answer, because A, God told you, I said something to my daughter the other day, leave that door open. I normally say, leave it shut, leave it open.

She said, dad, I will obey you, but why do you want it open? I like that, that was a good answer. The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus says, Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And for with the heart a person believes resulting in righteousness. And with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. For the scriptures say, whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. So they have to hear about this message.

And that's why it says in Romans, that exact thing. Whoever will call in the name of the Lord will be saved. And then will they call on him? How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a living up to dinner light? How will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they're sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.

However, they did not all heed the good news. For Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed our report? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. You know these things to be true, therefore you go preach the gospel.

God saves people that he has already chosen through the preaching of the gospel. Ends and means are ordained by God. Next question, is God obligated to explain everything to mankind? Why or why not? No, we haven't, we are in his counsel.

God's Freedom to Reveal and Conceal

And we don't inform him of things. And he has the pleasure of revealing certain things to us. And he has with great condensation, condensation,.

Condescension, oh brother.

This is why, this is the fifth show today. So see, I have an excuse. If I had, you know, a $3 million budget, we'd have it all edited, and I could put the holy oil on it and everything. Maybe that's a problem, is I didn't gargle this morning with some of these, this holy water that sits here.

I'm going back to the holy land this February, and I might have to get some extra holy oil, holy water, holy soil. He has stooped low to reveal himself to us so that we may know. But he hasn't told us everything.

After all, he's an infinite God. Did you hear that? He's an infinite God, and we are finite people, and we would not be able to process everything. And so he has told us what he has wanted to tell us, and nothing further.

And so we ought to be students of what he has told us, and not say, yes, but I want to know more. Where scriptures are silent, we need to be silent as well. And if God has spoken clearly, then let's grab hold of what he has said clearly.

He doesn't, he's not obligated to give anything to sinners. Anything we get is above and beyond grace upon grace. The doctrine of election shows up in the Bible in just a few places. In other words, it's not really, the sovereignty of God and salvation isn't really a big theme.

Well, I think it is a big theme. And the more you know about this theme, the more it pops up. When my fife, my fife, there we go again. When my wife was first pregnant, there weren't extra pregnant people out there.

I just noticed more pregnant people. I just thought, man, everybody I see these days happens to be pregnant. Well, I was tuned into the fact that my wife was pregnant and I could identify at least from an outside source, one who loves my wife, some of the discomfort and some of the troubles and some of the trials and some of the weight and all these other things that come along with it.

And I could identify and I just was more cognizant of the fact that there were pregnant people. I was perceiving them more, even though there just was the same amount. It's the same thing with scripture.

When you see the sovereignty of God and you have been given a second blessing, that is you understand Calvinism, you begin to see it everywhere. It's like jackrabbits in the spring, just multiplying and reproducing everywhere you go.

These doctrines from John chapter six, verses 37 and 45 and 44. And then all of a sudden you look at John 10 and then you look at first Peter one, you look at Romans chapter eight. I mean, everywhere you go, Romans chapter nine, and you're looking at the sovereign God and choosing, you see how he chose Israel.

And it just is a wonderful thing. It is just amazing when you are enlightened by God to see that salvation is of the Lord, that salvation is from the Lord, that he is the great initiator, that from him is all things.

Why Pray for the Unbeliever?

Then you see it everywhere. Since God elects people, why pray for the unbeliever? That's the last question on the quiz. Well, because I think it's in your heart to do so. You have a desire to say, Lord, please save them.

And you go to your father when you need help and it just seems like the natural thing to do. Secondly, you are to pray biblically for these in a biblical manner as well, but biblically you should pray for them.

And lastly, that's another means to the end that's ordained and those means are evangelism and prayer. And so it just works perfectly with human responsibility, the sovereignty of God, Calvinism, doctrines of grace, the reformed faith.

It all goes together. We're not saying one or the other. These doctrines are compatible. They both are true. Now we can't fix them together and we can't tie the knots all out and say, this is how they're all true.

This is how they all work. We just have to accept both as true because both are clearly taught in the Bible. The responsibility of man, you must repent and believe, but the sovereign grace of God as he chooses with distinguishing grace some people and he doesn't choose others.

And if you'd like to call that passing them by, fine. If you'd like to be double reprobation, we can talk about that as well. You need to read R .C. Sproul's book, Chosen by God. That's what you need, R .C. Sproul's book, Chosen by God.

And it will explain to you reprobation, election, how they're not symmetrical, what are the differences, and you'll be very, very encouraged as you look at the doctrine of election found in R .C. Sproul's book, Chosen by God.

Mike Abendroth here on WVNE, NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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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