"akes" Book Burners

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. We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

This is Mike Abendroth, and it is Wednesday. Wednesday, we have a different kind of format, and that is talking about books.

Sometimes we'll talk about books that are good for your library, mostly Christian books that we'll talk about. Sometimes we'll talk about books that are bad for your library.

Do you know, in the old days, it was an aspiration for people to be well -read. Oh, are you well -read?

And that was something that was good, but I don't think we talk about that much anymore. Oh, I wanna be well -read.

We want to be readers. We want to make sure we understand what's not only in the Bible, but also what books teach us about the

Bible, and then history in general. I keep thinking about that question that Jesus gave to the

Pharisees over and over and over. Have you not read? Have you not read?

The Pharisees should have been better readers. They should have retained more, and they should have read more of the right kind of things.

And Jesus, with that constant question, he asked, have you not read?

And so what we wanna do today is talk about books that probably, have you not read?

And it'll be a good thing. You should not read these books. We looked at book burning last time, and so far,

I haven't gotten any negative comments or calls. I guess you can give me those comments and calls if you'd like, but we looked at some books that if you have, you should probably get the kerosene out and just burn them.

I don't wanna try to make a mockery of this or anything, but I will say that you could waste your money and your time with bad books.

It's God's money, it's God's time, and life is short, so why read bad books?

Sometimes you have to, like me, if you're gonna review a book or something like that, but I don't want you to read a lot of bad books.

Today's been an interesting day in my life, and I have recruited my friend from yesterday even,

Pastor Steve Cooley, to help me when I get a mental block today. Can you help me with that,

Steve? Yes, I can, and I'll even help you tomorrow, should that be necessary. All right, 10 books that if you have, you should burn.

The first one I put on the list was A Purpose -Driven Church, A Purpose -Driven Life. You can burn either one, I guess. Actually, The Church Was Better Than the

Life, but by Rick Warren. We talked about no real issues of sin, repentance, justification by faith alone, slash substitution, atonement, resurrection.

We talked about that at length. Another one was Wild at Heart by who?

The name escapes me, now that you mention it. I'm here to help, though. Those guys are real scholars,

Jim Eldridge. And then we have, the final book was The Ragamuffin Gospel, which is basically a

Roman Catholic mystical view of self -esteem. And so we wanna make sure we don't read those. I have another list here.

And Steve, I hate to tell you, but sometimes I just have to put things in categories, and I don't just give you regular books, individual book titles.

Okay, fine. This is a category. Steve, I would say that you should not read any book.

Furthermore, you should burn any book written by Joyce Meyers. I'm with you.

Joyce Meyer. I'm with you. When I first heard about Joyce Meyer, it was probably 10 years ago, not many people knew her.

Since then, she has been named one of the top 25 evangelical leaders in the

United States. That was back in 2005. She's got her home -based ministry in St.

Louis, Missouri, and she's talked about how she's well -known for this, how her father abused her, and how she came to Christ, quote -unquote.

She's got 70 books, daily TV, radio show, called Enjoying Everyday Life.

And people are fascinated with Joyce Meyer. At a social level, at a human level, why the fascination,

Steve? Well, she's got an intriguing personality. I mean, when you see her on TV, she's interesting to listen to.

She is funny. You can listen for a good three or four minutes and not hear any heresy.

I think you're right. I think here's what happens. Preaching today is so effeminate. Preaching today is you can't tell people what to do, thus saith the

Lord, thou shalt not. You can't say things like that for many people to like it.

But then there's now a backlash. And after 20 years of that, people are now yearning for someone to just tell them the truth.

And for Joyce Meyer, to her credit, even though she's unqualified to be a pastor because A, she's unregenerate, which is a pretty big disqualification, and B, she's preaching to men, and 1

Timothy 3 makes it clear, 1 Timothy 2 makes it clear that she ought not to be doing that.

But she speaks forcefully. She speaks with authority. She speaks in a no -nonsense way.

And I think people are starving for that. Absolutely. And I mean, she certainly, when you watch her, she certainly comes across as authoritative, to the point of maybe too authoritative.

Seems like she's getting kind of inside messages, as it were. Well, you know, she is getting inside messages.

I'm glad you brought that up. This is from Joyce Meyer, quote, "'Now, spirits don't have bodies, "'so we can't see them, okay?

"'There probably is, I believe there is, "'and I certainly hope there is, "'several angels up here this morning "'that are preaching with me.

"'I believe that right before I speak, "'some anointed statement to you, "'that one of them bends over and says in my ear "'what

I'm supposed to say to you,' end quote." That's bad on so many levels.

I mean... Maybe it is an angel, but it's the wrong angel. I mean, you would search the

Bible in vain, the New Testament in particular in vain, for some passage that would encourage a preacher or teacher to wait to be inspired.

We're told to preach the word. We're told to faithfully exposit the scriptures.

We're never told to wait for some kind of angelic message. How about this from Joyce Meyer?

"'I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it.'" First of all, I didn't stop sinning until you know it's gonna be bad.

By the way, if you're out there listening, nocompromiseradio .com, you can get the podcast for the old shows.

Next week, whether I get all these bad books in today or not, we'll talk about books that you ought to read and read again.

Maybe you should read once a year. Excellent books, something like The Holiness of God by R .C.

Sproul or The Sovereignty of a God by Pink. There are good books to read, but today in No Compromise Radio land, no

Neville Chamberlain land, we want to be biblical and provocative in that order. And we're talking about books that you should just run from.

And if nobody was reading these books, we wouldn't have to warn people. If somebody's reading some kind of bad guru book, one person out of a million, then fine.

But if people are reading these, they're digesting them, they like them, they get mad at me when I tell them to stop, it needs to be addressed.

I think there's a reason why WV &E doesn't have Joyce Meyer on the radio because she's a heretic.

And so here's what she said. I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it through my thick head. I wasn't a sinner anymore.

And the religious world thinks that's heresy and they want to hang you for it. But the

Bible says that I'm righteous. I can't be righteous and a sinner at the same time. Well, that just shows a complete lack of theological training and understanding.

I mean, that's exactly what we are. We are positionally righteous, but we are still in actuality sinners.

God sees us as righteous because he sees us through the perfect righteousness of Christ.

It's as if he has his righteous glasses on, as it were, when he looks at us.

But we are in fact still sinners and we won't stop sinning until we die and go to heaven.

What ends up happening for these perfectionist kind of people is they then redefine sin down and they redefine

God's holiness down. And so it's not really that big a deal and God's not really that much of a holy

God. I think Luther addressed this topic pretty well. The saints at the same time as they are righteous are also sinners.

Righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, just like Pastor Steve said, but sinners because they do not fulfill the law and are not without concupiscence.

Yeah, what you said. I tried, C -O -N -C -U -P -I -S -C -E -N -C -E.

By the way, I have a Bible that I'm listening to. It's a Bible on tape. And I thought, they haven't told that guy how to pronounce good

Bible words yet, the names of people. He's worse at it than I sometimes am. You just look at this and so you go, hmm, let me just keep going.

And are like sick men under the care of a physician. They are sick in fact, but healthy in hope and in the fact that they are beginning to be healthy, that is they are being healed.

They are people for whom the worst possible thing is the presumption that they are healthy because they suffer a worse relapse.

Well, what does all that mean, Martin Luther? Here's what it means. We are called saints, true.

The Bible rarely uses the word sinner for saint, true. But Paul realized that it still was true of him.

And he said that he is the worst sinner, I am. And so while you might say to yourself,

I'm a child of God, no longer the child of the devil, there still is sin in you. And that's why we have to mortify that flesh.

I think Joyce has got a bigger problem. Could it be any bigger, Steve? I don't sin. Something about the atonement.

Would you say if you've got a heretical view of the atonement that you should be turned off when you come on TV?

Absolutely, absolutely. Because the atonement, without a right view of what

Christ accomplished on the cross, you don't have Christianity. I agree.

1991 booklet, Joyce Meyer, the most important decision you will ever make. Quote, during that time,

Jesus, this is after Jesus died on the cross, Jesus entered hell, where you and I deserve to go because of our sin.

He paid the price there. No plan was too extreme. Jesus paid on the cross and in hell.

He said it is finished on the cross, by the way. He paid on the cross and in hell. God rose up from his throne and said to the demon powers, tormenting the sinless son of God, let him go.

Then the resurrection power of the Almighty went through hell and filled Jesus. He was resurrected from the dead, the first born again man.

Now that is the age -old Copeland, Duplantis, Benny Hinn, T .D.

Mistakes, T .D. Jakes, error of ransom atonement to Satan.

That's right. As if somehow Satan were holding the note on what was owed because of our sins, and that's just totally wrong.

God owes Satan nothing except damage. That's right, and the sins are an affront against God. They're not some kind of credit that Satan then later on gets to collect.

Steve, I noticed you have a watch on and I think you have a wedding ring on, and I would consider that jewelry. Yes, yes.

And so I have a statement here from Joyce Meyer on certain kinds of jewelry that might attract some evil spirits.

I see now is when I need Josh's sound making things. Ooh, ooh.

Oh, by the way, no compromise radio. My wife had this great idea. Here's what she thinks we should do for Halloween for October 31st.

We should dress our kids up like martyrs of the Christian faith. You know, like a head in hand, blood all over, and she said it should be called trick or truth, and then have the kids write up their own little testimony about this particular martyr,

Hus, or Tyndale, or one of the Fox's Book of Martyrs. It could be Stephen for that matter in Acts 8, Acts 7.

And so then you stand there, you knock on the door. They're very open to not open up their door on Halloween night.

I mean, what night of the year are they more open to that? And you knock and you say trick or truth, and there you are with some kind of noose around your neck or some kind of big spike through your heart, and you know, trick or truth, and then off you go.

You can give them tracks. You can give them a little update on who you are. Hi, I'm Jan Hus, and you play it out, and the parents are there to supervise.

If you like that idea, no compromise, radio, trick or truth, Halloween. Would you take a candy, though, if they gave it to you after that?

Absolutely. Okay, so we'll see if we can sanctify all fools' day, all souls' day.

All right, here, see, back to this. Okay, back to this. Jewelry. Yes. There are many different signs and emblems,

Joyce Meyer says, that people wear as jewelry that are straight from the devil, and they absolutely do not know it.

And I'm quite sure there are going to be people here today that probably even have some of these things in your possession.

You may be even wearing one, and what they do is they draw evil spirits.

Ooh. I mean, listen, wrong view of sin, wrong view of sanctification, wrong view of the atonement, wrong view of substitutionary atonement with the sacrifice, wrong view of how to get a message, wrong view of preaching to men in 1

Corinthians 3. How many more wrong things do we need to know before we say, it's time to get rid of those books?

And so that's one of those you just better get rid of right away. And before we turn this into an only anti -Joyce

Meyer show, we better move on. The fifth book that I think that you should dump is Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis.

Wonderful title, very interesting. My brother did a great job on a little review, and he said,

Rob Bell makes me angry. That's the name of the article on the internet, Pat Abendroth. And Pat gives some wonderful bullet points.

And Rob Bell, like Joyce Meyer, but for different reasons, has a wrong gospel. Steve, is the gospel, you should live the

Jesus life. Is that the essence of Christianity? Not at all. Yeah, I mean, in essence, that would boil down to be better, improve yourself, do what

Jesus did. And the point of the gospel isn't to do what Jesus did, it's to believe what he did, and to say,

I cannot do what Jesus did. Jesus was perfect. I am not perfect. And it's because I am a sinner that I need the righteousness of Christ to cover me.

Well, you hit the nail on the proverbial head. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 gives us a priority, a list of importance.

What's your A priority, B priority, C priority? Paul, 1 Corinthians 15, three, for I deliver to you as a first importance what

I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

It is not live the Jesus life. It is not do what Jesus does. It is not obeying the commands of Jesus.

It is believing what Jesus did. His life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his soon return.

Rob Bell says on page 26 and 27 that the virgin birth really isn't that essential. Thoughts?

That sounds like a cult. Sounds like a cult. Now, would you say, Steve, though, if you don't know the virgin birth, you never understood it, you're a brand new

Christian, and then someone then tells you about the virgin birth, and then you say, oh, I believe it. You don't get saved the minute you understand it.

That's right. But there's a difference between denying a truth and not understanding a truth yet. That's right.

I mean, it's a matter of when you hear the scripture explained, when you hear it, when you read it, and you just think, wait a minute, that's true, and I didn't understand it before, now

I get it. I didn't maybe even believe it before, but now I believe. That's the key.

And certainly one cannot read the gospel accounts and come away with any other thought other than Mary was a virgin.

Good, well, certainly in Isaiah seven and in Matthew chapter one, the Greek word in the New Testament, you're right.

But this is the worst one. I'm actually going to read, Pat even draws a little line here. It gets worse. Yeah, it gets worse, yeah.

Rob Bell makes me mad because he downplays the vital role of conversion. Here's what

Bell says on page 167 of Velvet Elvis. The most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people.

Now, I could be ticky -tack and say when the church surrenders her desire to convert people, but maybe he's using a different metaphor or something.

But what he does say is you've got to stop this idea of your job is to run around and convert people.

Now, he does not mean, Christian, you can't convert anyone. It has to be a work of God. Salvation is done by God's work.

He doesn't mean that at all. He means you can't look at unbelievers anymore with the top priority of saying, they're going to hell unless Jesus saves them.

I have to figure out how to pray for them and preach the gospel to them. I think that makes it book -burning material.

That is upside down. I think it was MacArthur, I'm sure it was him, who said, look, we are here.

God, I mean, otherwise God could just take us, you're saved, go into heaven. We are here that we might proclaim the excellencies of Christ.

That's why we live. That's why we're on earth. That's exactly right. There are other reasons regarding giving God glory in our marriage and work and other things, but that's at the top of the list.

Now, maybe you don't know this, but you probably know of Rob Bell. And you probably know him from NUMA videos,

N -O -O -M -A. Classy, clever little videos, but from a man who based on his own book,

I'm not his judge, I will not judge him eternally, but I will discern his words. And based on his own words in Velvet Elvis, unless he's changed his mind, he's not a

Christian. He ought not to call himself a Christian. You ought to pray for Rob Bell that he would get saved.

So why would you take an unbeliever's videos, NUMA, it looks like, it sounds like NUMA, like the

Holy Spirit, NUMA, P -N -E -U -M -A, but it's a little tricky. It's N -O -O -M -A.

That's not my problem is how it's pronounced or what it's spelled like. My problem is

Rob Bell needs to be saved. So don't listen to him in your Sunday school classes and then tell me it's so effective.

It works so well because he's hip and he's trendy. And like we talked about last week, he wears,

I'm looking at a picture of him right here. Seems like kind of cool glasses. I mean, I don't know, kind of nice bleached out here.

Probably a fine fellow in society, but fine fellows don't make it into God societies.

Society perfect fellows make it based on the work of another because of conversion.

You must be born again, Rob Bell. Next book, Steve, we're about ready to run out of time, but that's all right.

How about, well, no, I'm going to save that one because that could be a whole show. How about God of the

Possible by Gregory Boyd, the man who is talking about open theism. I would say that would be good to get a candle or a match or something like that.

Maybe we'll have another ice storm this winter and you could burn your Greg Boyd books. I'd use a blowtorch.

Blowtorch. Open theism simply is that God doesn't know the future.

He doesn't know what will happen. People so want man's free will secured and anchored down that they'll allow

God not to know the future and therefore God is somehow risking something, like the game of risk.

Yeah, it's basically the concept that God is as anxious to find out what's going to happen as anybody else, that life is one big cliffhanger for him.

He's up there rooting for us, but he just doesn't know what's going to happen and he doesn't want to really get involved because that wouldn't be right.

People think that if you believe in the sovereignty of God, Calvinism, Reformed theology, Paulinism, Augustinianism, that somehow it makes

God impersonal, that it's some kind of determination like the

Muslims would believe. But we believe God is personally involved. It's not like that at all. It's with God who determines with a personal care and reason and it's not that at all.

So people run from Calvinism. These people actually run from Arminianism. Arminians would at least realize that God knows the future, but they don't want to have

God know the future. They don't want to have God determine the future. He wants to write a book, The God of the Possible, because I think sadly,

Steve, he's probably had some hurts in his life and some people quote unquote walk away from the faith and so now he's got to redefine

God. Yeah, and this whole idea, again, as you even said earlier, it's this idea of lowering

God and raising man. And this really does make, this puts man in the catbird seat, makes him sovereign and reduces

God to someone who has a lot of power but really can't exercise it.

I think Greg Boyd, they were gonna try to kick him out of Evangelical Theological Society, a very well -known theological society in America, but I don't think they had the heart to do it or did he leave?

No, they didn't have the heart to do it and after they failed, I just thought they need to change the name from Evangelical Theological Society because they're not

Evangelical anymore. All right, next book, thank you, that you should burn. This is a broad category again.

Steve, I think you should burn anything that rhymes with aches. A -K -E -S,

Dake's Bible, Dake's Mistakes, we call it. A very low view of God, his sovereignty, very hyper -Pentecostal.

I love Pentecostals but I don't like hyper -Pentecostals that go too far. But really what

I'm after with anything that rhymes with aches is not necessarily Dake's Bible but I'm after T .D. Jake's.

T .D. Jake's, oneness Pentecostal, meaning he denies the Trinity. And being an ex -Mormon,

Steve, I think that would probably be something that might make you get the taser out. Oh, it really - Spiritually.

Yeah, it really gets under my skin because either the Bible teaches that there is one

God in three persons, not three manifestations, or it doesn't.

And I think the Bible's very clear. T .D. Jake says, when God says, I am that I am, he says, I can become whatever. And he showed off from that point on all through the wilderness.

He just kept turning into stuff. They said, we want meat. He became quail and started flying through the air.

They said, what are we going to do for water? He became water, came gushing out of a rock. They said, we can't drink this bitter water.

He became a tree and turned the bitter water sweet. I mean, he just kept turning into stuff. One God manifesting in a multiplicity of ways.

One God. Now, you don't divide all those manifestations into different gods. The God of bread, the

God of quail, the God of water, the God of tree, the God of cloud, the God of fire. Just one God who manifests himself in many, many different ways.

God is multifaceted, manifold, many shades. Now, is that wrong? You know, just in its interpretation, but it's wrong.

I am that I am does not mean that at all. It didn't mean that he was going to manifest himself in a multitude of ways.

It meant that he was ever existing, that he was all - I am some God of the quail. It meant that he was self -sustaining.

Bob White? He's the only God who never had a beginning, never has an end.

He is that he is. It means I always have been. Excellent. Well, we're wrapping up another show.

Pastor Steve, thank you for the good comments. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and today we dealt with books.

I kind of feel dirty today, so I think next week we're going to have to make sure we look at the good books that you should get.

I don't even think we got through the top 10. I'll figure it out next week. I think that's what I'll do. Okay, you want to give us any kind of hints on what -

No, no, you're just going to have to tune in 760 AM, 3 .30 every day. God bless you. 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.