Life Behind Bars (Part 3)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.�

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

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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

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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio. This is Steve Cooley. I�m in for the,

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I don�t know, did Mike resign or something? It�s Tuesday, he�s gone, I�m here, and I�ve seized the reins of power, and I�m on the non -golden microphone here at No Compromise Studios, and I�ve got my good friend

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Matthew Feldmuth on the line for our third installment here, and we were just talking about, he was just mentioning how in state prison, he would hear the same message in the chapel over and over and over again.

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Really? The exact same message? Yes, the chaplain felt that there were going to be people that had never been to church before, ever, and that it was his job to give them the same message over and over again, and it was never geared for people like myself that studied the

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Bible and that were going there to get fed. It was just strictly for the unsaved coming in there, and he geared it like, �They�re never going to hear this again, and it�s my job to get them to the altar.�

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And I was kind of like the face of the chapel. I�d been there so long, and I�d worked under the chaplain, and I led the prayer ministry for ten years and Bible studies, and when he would call them forward on an altar call, he would call people that asked for prayer, and then he would have an altar call.

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And it was the same thing every Sunday, and so he asked if they ever had anybody else come in, and that was like a huge treat, just to not have to hear that same sermon again, you know?

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Well, I mean, what about discipleship? Did he spend any kind of time, you know, like, with the guys who wanted to learn more?

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Yeah, but he would allow certain inmates to lead

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Bible studies, but the chaplain was, he, well,

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I don�t know, he believed that you could lose your salvation. Okay? He was anti -Calvinism.

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Very, very, well, some people would come in and preach to us, and then if they preached an eternal security message, they were never welcomed back, and he was very, had tracts and flyers that he encouraged inmates to pass out on how you could lose your salvation.

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And one time, I couldn�t understand him, he was hard to get along with, but one time

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I saw him cry, giving a sermon, and he was quoting, I think it�s like Hebrews, what�s the last chapter of Hebrews?

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13? 1317, where I get where he was coming from. He said, it was 1317 when he said, �Someday

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I�m going to be held accountable, and God�s going to hold me accountable for you guys.�

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And, you know, he�s going to say, �Did you give them the gospel message ?�

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And he did give the gospel message, I�ll give them that, it�s just that the rest of it was, you know, different than anything

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I�d ever heard before. So, I�m trying to be kind. So would you say that a lot of the inmates in the state prison, or even in the jail, a lot of them study the

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Bible? Yes, but here�s the thing, Steve, this is what I teach in Bible study.

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There�s three staples to being a Christian. Three things that you have to have.

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You know, just like a human being�s got to have food, oxygen, and water, let�s say.

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There�s three things that every Christian has to have. One is prayer, two is the

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Word of God, and three is fellowship. And the one thing lacking in prison is fellowship.

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So many times, you come to a new building, or you�re on the yard, or some new guy comes on the yard, and they say, �Oh, that guy�s got an

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AA degree in, you know, Theology 101, and he�s this and that, and yet he never goes to church, and he never fellowships with anybody, and he can, you know, quote scriptures back and forth, and he�s got more degrees than a thermometer, but he�s got no love towards anybody else.

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He holds up in his cell, and he would rather argue scripture than be edified with you, fellowshipping with scripture.

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And so that would be the number one thing that I see that there�s a lack of is fellowship. Okay? Amongst people that really study the

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Bible. And you know, one of my favorite verses that was in the Daily Bread today is James 1, 22, and the crux of that verse is to be a doer of the

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Word. You know, what good is it to study the Bible all the time in your cell, and just retain it, and never use the gifts that God�s giving you?

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Whether it�s leading a Bible study, whether it�s your guitar, and providing the music and the ministry, whether you�re a prayer warrior, whether you�re a minister, you know, and you have access to books and can help the guys that are leading the

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Bible studies, whether you have favor with the cops, and you can get the doors open for the guys to get out.

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You know, whatever your gifts are. But you know what, what you�re describing, though, applies to people who call themselves

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Christians and never go to church, or won�t serve in a church. I mean, this is not unique to the jail, right?

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I mean, this is not unique to the prison. This is something a lot of people do. Pete� Sunday Christian. Pete� Yeah, exactly.

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Or for some people, excuse me, some people say, well, you know,

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I can worship God wherever I am, so I�m going to go to the beach this Sunday and just kind of chill, you know, and I�m like, you know what, if somebody did that a couple times a year, okay, fine, but if they do it, you know, six times out of seven or whatever, you know, you kind of have to wonder.

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They don�t want to exercise their spiritual gifts. They don�t want to sit under the teaching of the

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Word. They don�t want to sing the hymns and hear the Word of God read aloud, and you know, they don�t want to have a lot of prayer without the

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Christians, and they don�t want to bear one another�s burdens. You just go, okay, what kind of Christianity is this? You know, what

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I like to call, you know, Lone Ranger Christianity, and you know what my seminary prof used to say, the

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Lone Ranger is the Dead Ranger. You know, there�s no such thing as Lone Ranger Christianity, so.

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Pete� And wouldn�t you agree that if we are Christians that God has ministered gifts to us?

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Pete� That�s right. Pete� We may not know what our gifts are in the early part of our walk with the Lord, but eventually if you keep walking with the

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Lord and you keep seeking him and fellowshipping, and I was just telling my mom this yesterday on the phone, you know, in my own personal experience, you know how a

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Christian comes to find out what his gifts are? And this is my own personal thing, and I teach this in the

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Bible study. It�s from fellowship. You know, it�s not like you realize that you have this gift.

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You don�t even know that you have the gift until somebody in your Bible study says, �I noticed that you really have a way of expounding on the scriptures and everything.�

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And then two weeks later, somebody else will say, �I heard you talking the other day on the yard when you were witnessing to that guy, and you really were able to expound on the scriptures, and you keep hearing it from other

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Christians, or whatever, and that�s kind of when you start to realize, �Maybe I do have a gift in this.�

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And then you see that that matures, and usually it comes from other Christians that are, you know, that have been, that are mature

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Christians and see your gifts. Pete I hope people, excuse me, but I really hope people are listening to that.

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You know, Christians who maybe go to church every week have no ministry whatsoever.

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You know, their ministry apparently is beating a path to the parking lot. But if you are a

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Christian, the Bible will tell us that you have spiritual gifts.

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If you read, you know, in 1 Corinthians 12, you know, through, well, 12 and 14 or Romans 12, if you read in scripture long enough, you're going to see that Christians do get spiritual gifts.

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And how do you identify them? Well, usually it's by exactly what you said, fellowship, having other people identify them for you.

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Or even, you know, just by serving, you find out, �Hey, I'm really good at this, and I like it.� You know, it's funny because, you know, one of the first people to tell me that I should be in full -time ministry was

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Bill Lineberger, who was a chaplain back there at NCCF. And he used to say, well, he heard me one

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Sunday morning in giving my testimony in our Sunday school class at Grace Community Church, and he said, �You ever think about full -time ministry ?�

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And I was like, at that point, I really probably wasn't, but, you know, what did

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I know? Let me ask you this, state prison, what was the most, the scariest thing that you can remember?

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I mean, no names or anything, but what was the scariest, what was the most frightened you ever were? Is there one experience where you just thought, you know what,

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I might not live? There was one. I was in my cell, and there was two

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Aryan Brotherhood guys on the yard. Aryan Brotherhood are the white supremacists.

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They were probably the oldest gang before the Mexican Mafia or the black guerrillas.

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And I was moving out of my cell. My cellie, my cellmate, was involved in drugs.

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I had only been in prison a short period of time. I didn't know how to act in there. I rejected violence.

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I was rejecting drug abuse in there. I was walking with the Lord, and I tried to get a cell move out of there, and my cellmate had a friend that worked in the program office, and he got that move squashed like two or three different times, because I had money, and I was nonviolent, and he could take my things off my shelves, my coffee, and get into things like that, and he knew there wasn't going to be retribution.

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And so he liked having me in there. And he was at work, and this time

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I outsmarted him, and I got the cell move done while he was at work. And two

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Aryan Brotherhood guys, they had locked the yard down, and they couldn't get back in their cell, and my door was open for the move.

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And they came into the cell, and they were moving my stuff, and I was scared, and one of them grabbed my cellmate's headphones and said, he owes me money,

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I'm taking these. And right then I was like, oh, I prayed a silent prayer,

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God, this situation is bigger than I can handle right now, and this is going to be all bad.

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And immediately, one of the Aryan Brotherhood said to the other one, put those headphones back.

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He said, if you want to take those, then you take them from him out of his hand, but you're not going to take them while Matthew's moving.

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And so I was like, oh, thank you, Jesus. And I hid the headphones under my cellmate's pillow.

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And later they were moving some stuff, and they saw them, and the one guy said, hey, you don't have to hide those. I told him, if he wants to take them, he has to take them from him.

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But I know that sounds crazy to you, but there was implications on that, that it would take more than a half an hour to get them to you.

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It doesn't sound crazy to me, because your cellmate's going to know that they're gone. And he was a big, huge guy that was violent and everything, and it was going to get all ugly.

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And it's going to go right back to you, and you're either going to have to... And Steve, I've seen plenty of people stabbed.

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I've seen people shot on the yard. I've seen a guy that was beat to death by his cellmate, and he was still alive.

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I saw him maybe two to three minutes before he breathed his last breath, and they wheeled him right past me, and his face looked like hamburger.

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His head was throbbing. You know what? Those aren't as bad as the one guy that sat next to me one day, and he killed himself that afternoon, hung himself on the vent.

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And I knew he didn't know Jesus, and that was hard. One time

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I ate breakfast with a guy that was in a wheelchair. My job in prison was to push people in wheelchairs, to take them to their doctor's appointments, to clean their cell.

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It was called a caregiver, and usually the guys in wheelchairs were child molesters.

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They were people that usually, if they were old and they were in a wheelchair, you know, more than 50 % of the time they had sex charges.

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And I sat with one guy and ate breakfast with him, and you know what?

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By lunchtime at Sully, it choked him out and killed him, you know, and never saw him again.

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And that morning they gave us pears that were hard as a rock for breakfast, and I remember the guy said, here

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Matthew, would you like my pear? And I said, okay, and I took the pears home and I put them in a brown paper bag to ripen and I put them under my cellmate's bed, and two days later, you know, that afternoon the guy was dead, and two days later

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I pulled the pears out and they were nice and ripe and my Sully were eating the pears and it dawned on me that these are the exact same pears that that guy had given me, and the pears lived longer than the guy did, you know.

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And in 2012, three people were killed on that yard in less than three months.

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From January to March, three people were killed, a fourth committed suicide, and they finally stopped letting, and it was on the way to the chow hall, walking to the chow hall, and it was so violent and so bad that they just permanently self -fed.

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They came with welders, they cut holes in our doors, and they put a slot in there and they just fed us three meals a day through the door.

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So, if you're living in that kind of environment, and I mean, with all the pressure and everything else, do you ever,

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I mean, what would you think? Would you think to yourself, I need to be more careful, or would you say,

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I need to, you know, I need to think about how to preach Christ to people because there might not be another chance for them to hear the gospel?

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Yes. And the one that gets me, not the people that were killed or died, it was the guy, the one guy that I told you that hung himself, you know?

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I could have preached Jesus more to him, you know? And that guy was my age, he wasn't covered in tattoos, and, you know,

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I knew Jesus and he didn't, and, you know, he killed himself, and no one saw it coming.

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Nobody saw that coming. And I look back on it now, and he knew I was a Christian and I had witnessed to him, but I didn't really go after him as hard as I could have.

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And that one, that one, that one's one that I think about. And I wrote a letter to my mom and it was so poignant when

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I told her about that I felt that I failed, that she had that typed, and I still have that letter that I wrote her today.

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That letter's heavy duty, I'll tell you. I read it to this day and it's just like, man, I still feel the pain of not witnessing harder to that guy.

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So tell me, I mean, I think we have some mutual heroes, who would you say, you know, just somebody that you would really want to meet before, you know, who's on your bucket list to meet?

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I want to go to John MacArthur's church, that's on my bucket list, and that's one of them.

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And I really like him as a preacher. Charles Spurgeon was another one that I really enjoy, and some of them are ones that you're not big on, though.

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James McDonald, I like James McDonald, I love Charles Stanley. Well, we'll just, we'll just cut this out of the tape.

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No, I'm just kidding, it's all right. Yeah, and I like, I like James, James McDonald was where I got the saying, if your faith hasn't changed you, your faith hasn't saved you.

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I like Chuck Smith, I used to like Chuck Smith. You know, here's a

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Chuck Smith story, one night on, you know, on TBN, I don't watch TBN anymore, but one night on TBN, I saw him say, prior to this evangelistic outreach event they were having at the

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Big A, he said, he said, I just know that thousands of people are going to get saved tonight.

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And I was like, Chuck, you don't know anything. Yeah, and no, and I agree with that, you know, and we don't know, and we can't judge people's hearts, because, you know what, people think that people are saved, and then guess what, the

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Bible says later that they were apostate, you know, and they were among us, but they weren't,

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I mean, they were among us, but they weren't one of us, you know. I mean, some of the books in the

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Bible were written like that, you know, 1 John, you know, with the

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Gnosticism, you know. Well, let me ask this, what amazes you the most about Jesus Christ?

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That, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I get emotional thinking about that, and that he said, not my will, but your will, and he knew he was going to the cross, and he knew he was going to get beat down, and he knew that he was going to suffer.

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And when it came down to it, I think when he said, not my will, but your will, I think that that was, some of it was the flesh talking, and some of it was the spirit talking.

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And another thing, Steve, I really don't think, we'll never know until we get there, and it's one of the first questions

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I'm going to ask him, but… I doubt it. Huh? I doubt it. I mean, we think we have a lot of questions, but I just,

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I think once we get there, you know, we… It'll all be, well, this is one that I have is this, do you really think that he knew before he went to the cross that he was going to suffer for all of our sins?

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Okay, maybe, I know he knew that, but do you really think that he knew that there was going to be a separation from God for the first time in eternity past, okay?

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When he said, my Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me? And the answer is,

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I think he knew that, but I would also say this, I don't think he knew because he'd never experienced it,

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I don't think he knew how painful it was going to be. Okay, and I'll agree with that.

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And you know, the other day, we were in a Bible study at a Baptist church, and the Rev and I were debating that, the

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Reverend that's here, and we came across the scripture that it said it pleased God.

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Yes, to crush him. To crush him, because that's how holy God is, okay?

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And if God is that holy, and Jesus hung on the cross and he couldn't look at him when he was bearing our sins like that,

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I don't think that Jesus really fully knew what that was going to be like.

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Well, and see, some people are probably listening going, how could they say that Jesus didn't know this or that? Well, I think, here's the thing, and I read this book by Bruce Ware, and I may not agree with everything that Dr.

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Ware said in this book, but he said, basically, that Jesus, we understand, especially reading

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Luke, but some of the other gospels too, that he grew in wisdom and stature. Well, what does that mean?

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It means that as he grew, I believe the Holy Spirit was teaching him more, you know, but never more than he needed to know at any one given point, because he was still a human being and we forget that.

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We think of Jesus Christ as God, which is true, but we forget that he was, you know, once just a little boy and then he grew up and he was a young man, but he didn't need to know everything that he needed to know to be

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Messiah until he was Messiah. So… Petey And doesn't that apply to us? Petey Yeah, well,

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I think there's some truth to that too, right? We don't need to know everything that we need to know until we need to know it.

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So… And Christians in prison would come to me and say, Matthew, my Bible feels like it's a hundred pounds.

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And I'd say, oh, I know that feeling. And you go to open it up and it's like, you finished like a correspondence course and you go to open it up.

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Where am I going to read? I've read everything in here so many times and the gospels so many times.

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And they would say, I just feel like I'm stagnant or something. And you know what, at those times

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I say, then go do something for somebody. Give something that's a prized possession of yours away. And then when you go to open your

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Bible the next time, go back to the gospels. Because inevitably, whenever you go back to the gospels, the

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Holy Spirit knows where you're at. You know, it's quoted, you know, Mark in two of the gospels, if ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your

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Father in heaven give of the Holy Spirit to them that ask. And when you get right in prayer before you do that, you need to come to God and you need to tell

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Him, I've read all of these epistles, I've read the gospels, I've read this over and over and right now

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I'm struggling. I need you to speak to me. And I tell Him to go back to those gospels.

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Because what happens is, is you go back there and it's like, why is He telling me to go back to the... If there's anything that I've read more than anything else, it's the gospels.

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But when you go back into the gospels, inevitably you're going to see something that you haven't seen before, or not that you haven't seen it before, but the

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Holy Spirit's going to put a different twist on it and it's going to apply to something and it's going to spark something in you.

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I mean, let's look at it this way. Can you ever know too much about Jesus? Mark. Never. You know, and I think we're going to spend a lot of eternity just kind of focused on that.

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So, now that you spent all this time in prison, now that you're out of prison, what do you want to do now? I mean, you spent 18, 19 years in jail, what do you want to do now?

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I want to ministry, and I don't know what it is. I have these tracts that I pass out continually.

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They just made a video, a Hollywood studio made a video of my testimony and it's being edited and it'll be on the internet and I'm just waiting to see.

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But you know what? I'm not worried about that right now because, like right now, I'm supposed to be on this phone with you right now, okay?

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And when I get off this phone, whoever God puts in my path, then that's who I'm supposed to minister to.

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Okay, I have to ask you one question because we're just about out of time. We've got about 30 seconds left. What's the best pizza you ever ate?

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The best pizza? Probably, well, your wife made some pretty good pizza for me.

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That was this wheat bread pizza that was pretty good. And other than that, there was a place called Angelo's in Alhambra.

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All right, well, Angelo's in Alhambra doesn't count. Sorry, you know. Well, thank you so much for being here on No Compromise Radio.

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I really appreciate the time, Matthew. You're a blessing to me and I appreciate all that the Lord has done through you and all that he will do.

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Thank you. All right. Bless you, brother. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.