No Co Ever (Part 1) (Rerun)

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.

Introducing the NoCoEver Discussion and Its Guests

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today we have a special treat for you. Many of you have seen the NoCoEver video, and that was, it's online, nocoever .com with Carl Truman, James White, Phil Johnson, and yours truly, talking about the Elephant Room 2.

And so today is part one of NoCoEver. It's probably a 45-minute video if you'd like to go to our website to watch it. Josh did a great job doing it. So we're gonna play the audio version today, part one this week, part two next week.

Carl, James, myself, and Phil talking about the Elephant Room, T .D. Jakes, these issues. And so I think it's gonna be thought-provoking, biblical, provocative, in that order. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Feel free to post that video, nocoever .com. This will be part one. I'd like to introduce each three of the men today. First guest today is Dr. James White. James is a director of Alpha and Omega Ministry.

For you New England folks, it's Alpha and Omega Ministries. And he is an accomplished debater. James is a churchman, and that's what I like about all three of these men. Churchmen, loving Christ Jesus' church.

James has written many books, The God Who Justifies, The Forgotten Trinity. And James is known for his blogging as well on aomen .org. James, welcome to the show. It's great to be with you. Dr. Carl Truman is here.

Carl is pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church. Carl is our token Presbyterian, surrounded by Baptists. So welcome, Carl, to the show. Carl is a professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. And Carl has a passion for the gospel.

He writes at Reformation 21 blog. And Carl, we're so glad to have you here.

On No Compromise Radio. It's great to be here, and I like the odds. I like it.

Lastly, we have Phil Johnson. Phil is known for Pyromaniac's blog. Phil has edited the majority of John MacArthur's major books. And Phil is known for his love of Charles Spurgeon. And he is an accomplished writer and speaker, Pastor's Grace Life Fellowship Group at Grace Community Church.

And Phil, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Thanks for having me. On No Compromise Radio, we have a little segment. It's called the Kooks and Barneys segment. And we give an award. What is a kook and a barney?

Well, kooks and barneys are people who try to surf with experts. And they'll try to paddle in, out in the water, and they just get in the way of the surfers. And they are known by the locals as kooks and barneys.

They're in over their head. They're playing in the deep water. And so I like to offer a kooks and barneys award. And so today we're gonna offer that award, not to a particular person, but to a group of people.

And that would be the organizers of the Elephant Room. You think that'll start off a controversy, guys? No. Kooks and barneys?

No. No? Is there a difference between a kook and a barney?

No, it's just a kook and a barney together. They're not necessarily kooks. They're not necessarily barneys, but they're just known as kooks and barneys, affectionately. All right. And so today, let's talk about the Elephant Room a little bit.

What is the Elephant Room, Phil? Give us a little background what it is and what it was.

Why the Elephant Room Was Disappointing

Yeah, the Elephant Room, when I first heard the concept, I thought it could be good. The idea was to bring together some high-profile evangelical leaders who we all know disagree on certain things and put them at a table like this and let them discuss openly the things they disagree on.

And what made it disappointing was, actually, there've been two of them now, two successive years. And it seems to me that the people that have been invited, the guests, have been less evangelical as time has progressed.

Started with some guys like Stephen Furtick and Perry Noble who I would say are marginally evangelical, at least nominally evangelical. But then this year, the sort of keynote invitee was T .D. Jakes, who is anti-Trinitarian, or at least non-Trinitarian.

And worse than that, I think, he corrupts the gospel with a prosperity message. So he's by no stretch of the imagination evangelical. The idea was that these discussions, these debates over things they disagreed on would be profitable, and that they could maybe sort out some of these differences and clarify the reasons for the understanding.

I think, in the end, the way it played out both years, what really happened was we air the fact that we disagree and then we agree to disagree, and in the process leave the impression that these disagreements are all insignificant, comparatively insignificant, simply because we all profess faith in Christ.

And if that's the criterion, then I wonder where this movement is going to go in the future. Because if it's enough just to say, I love Christ, without even defining carefully who Christ is or what is my concept of Christ, then it seems to me there are really no boundaries to that kind of Christianity.

And the effect has been to kick over boundaries and actually muddy the things that ought to have been clarified.

Tabiti said this was not similar to John Piper inviting Rick Warren to come and speak. He said it was similar to Augustine inviting Muhammad. Comments, James?

Historical Clarity and the Church's Doctrinal Struggles

Slight anachronism, but we can let the anachronism slide at that point. I really think what we're dealing with here, and this may be more in the good Dr. Truman's area to comment on, but as I've had the opportunity of teaching church history in the past and also joining to that, working as an apologist, it seems to me that at different periods in church history, the clarity that we gain on particular topics is due to the struggles that the church is facing.

And so, for example, at the time of the Reformation, we have a focus, we have a discernible issue that causes deep thinking on the subject of justification, on the subject of the relationship of justification and sanctification, the atoning work of Christ, the gospel as a whole, and it gives great clarity.

And people in the church are concerned about these issues and they understand why it's important. In the early church, as was mentioned before, the difference between homoousios and homoiousios is a huge gap, but it's only one letter.

And yet the people in the pew would be walking down the streets discussing these things. And so great clarity was gained at that time because there was an understanding of why it was important to be discussing these things.

What we see in an elephant room two situation is clear evidence that for that realm of evangelicalism, we're no longer looking out at the challenges of the church. We're no longer even seeing ourselves in the great history of the church.

What those guys were arguing about back then just doesn't really seem to matter to us much anymore. And what was happening at the Reformation, we might get all excited about it, but let's face it, for many people in our culture today, it was, I believe, John Murray that said that the great doctrine of justification does not ring the bell of the hearts of men when they don't understand the concept of sin.

They don't understand the holiness of God. Why do I have to worry about being justified? And so I think what we see in an elephant room type situation where you have the ability to gloss over major areas of theological teaching is just a representation that what you have in that form of evangelicalism has become divorced from history and is not looking outward, not recognizing the whole world out there that the Christians in Iran who have written and asked, not that we remove them from persecution, but that we help them to defend their faith against the attacks of the Muslims on the doctrine of the Trinity and on the necessity of the atoning work of Christ and things like that.

Man, if we really understood what was going on out there, we wouldn't be having this type of conversation going on in elephant rooms or anyplace else.

Church Leaders and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Yeah, I would add to that, one of the most disturbing things about the elephant room was the fact that these men are church leaders. If you go to a typical congregation and ask a congregant, explain to me the doctrine of the Trinity, it will be often the rare congregant who's able to give you a really coherent, solid answer on that question.

The people in the elephant room, though, they're not your average congregants. These are men who aspire to teach the church. They claim to be competent to teach. They claim to fit with Paul's criteria of what it is to be an elder.

And one of the things I think that got a bit blurred in some of the controversy was the sort of, well, you know, how many people can articulate a doctrine of the Trinity? That's not the question. The question is, can the church leadership articulate a doctrine of the Trinity?

And it became very clear from statements made before the elephant room and during the elephant room that leadership of the big churches that make a lot of noise and carry a lot of weight in the evangelical constituency in this country, the leadership of those churches are not competent to teach on this matter in the way that they should be.

Well, I think with the educational background that both Driscoll has and James MacDonald, they should know the right questions to ask. They should be able to assess, is this man a modalist? Is he not?

Driscoll was asking the questions to T .D. Jakes to see if he was in fact Trinitarian or if he was a oneness Pentecostalist. These are the questions that Driscoll asked and every one, Jakes responded with the affirmative.

You believe there's one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. You believe Jesus was fully God, fully man. Yes. You believe he died on the cross in our place for our sins. Yes. You believe he bodily rose from the dead.

Yes. You believe that he is judge of the living and the dead. Yes. You believe that apart from Jesus, there's no salvation. Then Jake said, there is very little difference between what I believe and what you believe.

But before that, before those questions, Jakes had provided the absolutely necessary redefinition from a non-Trinitarian modalistic perspective, which was when asked initially about the existence of three divine persons, his response clearly was, I can go there, but that's not my favorite way of saying it.

That doesn't do it for me. Well, when someone starts talking about the ancient creeds of the church and says that doesn't do it for me, I want to know why. And when you go back into his teaching before this, he has consistently used the language of manifestations.

He has said that there is one God, but different manifestations going to literally a major textual variant, 1 Timothy 3 .16, where God was manifest in the flesh, even though the earliest reading the manuscripts is he who was manifest in the flesh.

But leaving that to the side, Oneness Pentecostals, Jesus-only Pentecostals, teach that Jesus was literally two persons. He was a human being who came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem, who is called the Son.

And he is indwelt by deity, who is the Father. So he is both the Father and the Son. So the prayers of Jesus, this is not technically exactly like Sibelius had it. There are different forms of dynamic monarchism and things like that in ancient church history, but it's sort of the modern incarnation of this is the idea that Jesus was two persons.

So the Son has not eternally existed as a divine person. He came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem. He's indwelt by the Father. So he's deity, but he's actually two persons. So the prayers of Jesus are the human side of Jesus, praying to the divine side of Jesus.

And then at the resurrection, you have that same deity is now the Holy Spirit. And so this is a fundamental denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. And it would be very easy, would have been absolutely simplistic to press T .D. Jakes to come up with a meaningful response to one simple question, which I would think would be just obvious to a church leader, at least.

And that is this, did the Son as a divine person pre-exist his birth in Bethlehem? Not as an ideal idea, not as a concept in the mind of the Father, but did the Son as a divine person exist prior to his birth in Bethlehem?

Did he have interaction with the Father? And you can illustrate this, Philippians chapter two, prior to the incarnation, the Son does not give consideration to, when he thinks about the emptying of himself, the making himself of no repute, he does not give consideration to holding onto that equality he had with the Father, but instead he lays that aside.

That's the action of a person prior to the incarnation. John 1 .1, the word is in existence in the presence of the Father. John chapter 17, glorify me, Father, with the glory which I had with you at your side, para se auto, before the world was.

These are all clear indications of the divine existence of the Son prior to the incarnation. All you have to do to recognize modalism and to unmask modalism is to say, do you believe that the Son, as a divine person, preexisted at his birth in Bethlehem, was in relationship with the Father?

There was communion and love between the Son and the Father before the incarnation. That question was not asked. And so in light of Jake's redefinition on the basis of 1 Timothy 3 .16 in the variant reading, in the manifestations, he used classic language, classic modalistic language, and simply was not challenged to actually deal with the issue of what the doctrine of the Trinity is.

Don't you think they were falling all over themselves just to accept Jake's in? Let's get through these questions quickly because we want to embrace you as a brother. You've got a lot of people at your church and you can teach us something because of that.

Difficult to speculate about motives, but that's certainly the impression given by the questions. They were softball questions. They didn't approach anything near the kind of questions that should have been asked.

I mean, as James has pointed out, a modalist with a little bit of flex can answer all of those questions in the affirmative. That is not to say that Jake's is still a modalist, but to say that those questions, his answers to those questions do not give us a sufficient basis for saying he's changed his opinion.

And of course, the follow-up question is, so are you going to go back and are you going to change the confession of your church? And are you going to repudiate all of the writings and speeches, sermons you've given in the past that have created this impression that you're a modalist?

Certainly, if somebody confronted me and said you're in error, I mean, let's just say James is able to persuade me of Believer's Baptism rather than Peter Baptism, I would consider it to be basic to my change of position for me to resign as a Presbyterian minister, join a Baptist church, and issue some kind of public statement to the effect that what I've taught in the past on this topic is false and incorrect.

I'd have no shame in doing that. I would consider myself obliged to do that. How much more is that the case when we're talking about something such as the doctrine of the Trinity? As far as I know, and I'm not a big follower of T .D. Jakes on the internet, as far as I know, none of those things have been done well.

I look at his current statement of faith. Yesterday, matter of fact, at the Potter's house, there is one God, Phil, respond to this one, please. There's one God, creator of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three manifestations, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The word manifestations is the problem there because of Jakes' history in particular, because he was ordained by and is a member of a oneness denomination that holds to modalism, and that is a modalistic expression.

It's classic modalistic terminology, three manifestations. It's not an insignificant thing whether you say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different manifestations of the one person as opposed to there are three persons, one God in three persons.

And it may seem like sort of nitpicky particularity to someone who's never studied the issue, but if you just look at the consequences of that view, it actually changes the whole character of God and the gospel and everything.

It's fundamental to everything we believe as Christians. And we were complaining earlier that some Christians today seem to want to take this minimalistic approach where if you believe in the Trinity, that's enough.

The reason they go back to the Trinity is that that really is that foundational. I mean, if you reject Trinitarianism, then you have rejected everything that is distinctive about Christianity.

The people that I think give the greatest clarity to this are people that aren't being listened to at this point. I've had the opportunity of debating a number of Oneness Pentecostals, and Jesus Only folks, in fact, will be doing another debate later this year with one of their apologists.

They recognize, I've contacted them, and I've asked them, what about T .D. Jakes? Where was he, and where is he now? And they said, oh, yeah, of course he was with us. Now he's not with you, but he's not with us anymore either.

He's giving a uncertain sound because he wants to be accepted by a wide variety of folks. They even recognize, oh, the language he uses is ours, but we'd never be going around doing the things that he's doing.

They recognize how vital and important and definitional this thing is. These are not, and I think one of the things we do need to focus on is what Phil was just saying. This is not a subject that should be limited only to church leaders and to, elders in the church should know this like the back of their hand.

This should be absolute. It's part of being competent to teach. Exactly, it's part of the basic competency. But I get passionate here, guys. Sorry if I'm talking more than I should, but I really get passionate about this because I am absolutely convinced that ours is a Trinitarian faith, not simply because that is what has come down to us, but because it is the very fabric of the revelation of God and Jesus Christ.

And I stand in front of Muslim audiences. I just did a debate in a mosque and testified before that audience that their eternal soul is dependent upon believing the amazing statement that God has actually invaded his own creation.

I recognize how radical our message is. We need to recognize how radical our message is. We're actually saying the creator entered into his own creation. But I see no way of looking at this revelation, looking at the prophecies of the Old Testament, looking at the fact that as Warfield very rightly said, the New Testament is not the revelation of the Trinity.

It is the revelation of the religion of the Trinity that grew out of the revelation that took place between the Testaments. The Trinity is revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God.

And I am a biblical Trinitarian. I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity because the Bible forces me to. It reveals the fact there is one true and eternal God. I am an absolute monotheist. I have stood outside the gates of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City for years, witnessing to the Mormon people saying there is one true God.

And yet the Bible says there are three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that are not confounded with one another. They are clearly differentiated from one another. It was not the Father who became flesh.

It was not the Spirit who became flesh. It was the Son who became flesh. And yet the Bible is clear in teaching the equality and co-eternality of those divine persons, distinguishes between them, but teaches their full divinity, their full deity without any question.

If I'm going to believe in sola Scriptura, and if I'm going to believe in tota Scriptura, Scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith of the Church, and in all of Scripture, I am forced to be a Trinitarian.

And when I recognize that, I discover that the Christian life is a Trinitarian life. The Gospel is a Trinitarian message. We see all of these things, and yet so many of our own people, if they really had to admit it, can go through the entire week without never once considering the doctrine of the Trinity, without never once considering that their peace that they have, which they enjoy with God, flows from a recognition of the doctrine of the Trinity.

And the worship that we have amongst the people of God is fundamentally degraded when our people don't know the identity of the God they're worshiping. Sorry for the passion, but I just think it's absolutely central.

The Need to Silence Divisive Teachers and Reject Prosperity Gospel

So, be with the prosperity Gospel and the modalism. Aren't we supposed to silence men like that versus give them a platform for national audience?

I think we need to remember, Paul says at the end of Romans, have nothing to do with certain people. They've been divisive by departing from the true doctrine. You need to remember that guys like Jakes are actually divisive people.

They may come across as very likable and very pleasant, but they're ultimately the ones who are dividing the church. And if you want to know what Jakes truly stands for, I would recommend going to YouTube and looking at the sermon he delivered at Whitney Houston's funeral.

I'm a classic rock guy, I don't know much about Whitney Houston, but I did spend 10 minutes looking at his funeral address at the Whitney Houston Memorial. If that is all you've got to say at a memorial service, then you should not be in a pulpit.

I said, people go watch it for yourselves, don't take my word for it. Watch it, hear how totally vacuous it is, and realize this man has nothing to say and he gets paid millions for saying it.

You're right, it is not merely his confusion on the Trinity. That alone would be a large enough issue that I would say, yeah, he fits in the category of men who really ought to be put to silence. You know, we have a duty to refute them and certainly not give them a platform in the church.

But the way he corrupts the gospel with prosperity teaching is likewise a damnable error.

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.