What is Happening with the SBC with Justin Peters

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

All right, we are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your apologetics questions. We're gonna have, hopefully, a very good show for you tonight. We got a lot of things on the agenda and a lot of special guests.

But the fact is, we're gonna have, well, our other co-host, Anthony Especial, was supposed to be back tonight. Not happening, he's not here. Sorry about that. He's got some things to take care of. For those who don't know, his father passed away recently, this year, and he's trying to take care of the estate there.

So that's what's happening there. Be praying for him. Be praying for Pastor Justin Pierce. His wife is not feeling good, so he cannot be here. And since we're praying, or at least asking for prayer, let me also mention to be praying for Matt and Neek Slick.

Their daughter, Hannah, was in Los Angeles, was going in for what was supposed to be a routine surgery. So there were some complications, and now Matt had to quickly fly down to L .A., and he's down there at least now, and he's trying to help take care of his daughter.

So if you'd pray for that, he thinks, last he told me, he thinks that they're out of the danger zone, but there was some complications that they didn't plan on. So that's that. We got a couple people that are gonna come in, give some other announcements that will be coming in.

Books on Hermeneutics and Biblical Interpretation

Let me get one of them in, out of the way early. Let me bring in Pastor Josiah Nichols here. You had been talking with Dr. Svestro about giving a plug for your books that we also end up selling. So I'm gonna give this over to you for a couple minutes, so you could share some information about your books.

Oh, cool.

Hi. Yeah, I'm Josiah Nichols, the author of, When My Ox Scores My Neighbor, and also the author of, What Does It Mean to Me? When I wrote, When My Ox Scores My Neighbor, I wrote it whenever I was, you know, waiting for God to give me a church to minister to, and I thought, well, maybe I can just help people out by showing them how to properly interpret the Bible, not according to how, what we want it to mean, but how the authors intended it to mean.

So I really did a deep dive into, into hermeneutics, the study of biblical interpretation, and I had it almost published when I gave it to Andrew Rappaport for Forward, and he said, we gotta work on some things here.

So he really helped me out with doing the finishing touches on that, and he wrote the Forward for it, and the, basically, When My Ox Scores My Neighbor's written to, it's written in a way it's really easy to follow.

It takes one passage of scripture, Exodus 21, verses 28 through 32, and it just takes you through that passage and helps you to use the principles of observation and differentiating between the biblical audience and the contemporary audience, drawing principles from the passage, applying those principles, and it also, at the end, gives you a way to transition to the gospel message.

What I'd like to say with your book there is that it really is a good primer for learning hermeneutics, which is the way we interpret scripture. It really, it takes one passage, walks you completely through it, and for people who are new to hermeneutics, wanna learn how to interpret the Bible, I find it to be a great resource.

Takes on that people go, what in the world does The Ox Scoring My Neighbor have to do with me? And walks you through how to interpret it, how to apply it all the way through, and so it's very good for that.

That's a little bit longer than your other book. Your other book is a little shorter.

Yeah, this is 20 pages long, 24, you know, if you wanna add notes.

Even Justin Peters would be able to get through that one, 20 pages.

If he, yeah, I think he has a little bit of time. Most of the time we just drink coffee. When I had my surgery a couple weeks ago, I was witnessing to my nurses and asking them questions about their beliefs, and I'd tell them about this booklet, and I took like 25 with me, and I had like, I think six left by the end of the week.

Hey, so real quick, Chris is asking you, in regards to the book, does it come from the historical, grammatical, or Christocentric hermeneutic?

It is a literal, historical, grammatical, contextual. In other words, biblical. Okay. Yes, biblical.

Yeah, that's, so. So where can people get these books?

Strivingforeturning .org sells the first book, and if you buy this book, if you buy this, you get this for free. So there you go.

We also sell the smaller one. I don't know if we have it on the website. If not, I'll make sure Webmaster has it up. I think we have it up there as well. But if not, someone will let me know. So thanks for coming in.

I'm gonna try to get to, I wanna get to someone else real quick before we give you guys more updates. Now, many of you know, and I'll bring, I'll bring, there's Justin Peters. I didn't know you were gonna be here.

How'd you get in here? Just barged my way in. Well, see, if you mention his name, he just shows up. But Justin, you and I have been for a long time now, like, it feels like two years now, planning a trip to Israel.

Yeah. And it's just, if anything could go wrong, it did go wrong. So what I wanna do is bring in the man behind the scenes that has been helping us, Eric Johnson. And this is the guy that's been doing all the work for our trip.

We've got some updates with the trip. And Eric, I wanted to let you kind of go over stuff briefly with what's going on with the trip and how things are breaking out now. There's been some changes due to all these COVID nonsense and problems with, well, problems with vaccines.

So could you quickly give us an update on what's the latest status with our Israel trips and how people can get involved if they wanna go?

Yeah, we have the COVID vaccine policy Israel has that has basically, it's gonna eliminate our October trip in two weeks if it doesn't change. And we don't think it's gonna change. So on July 15th, we're going to go ahead and cancel that trip.

And we've already, we're gonna move the people from that trip into two other trips I happen to have in February and March. One, Justin Peters is gonna go on and that is gonna be February 9th. And that's a 13 day trip that will be happening in Israel.

It's a great trip. And then also we're gonna be going in March, another trip that Andrew, you're gonna go on along with Matt Slick. You mentioned him earlier in the show. And so there's two different trips, 13 days.

We don't have much room on that first trip in February. If anybody is interested in joining that trip with Justin Peters, they can certainly let me know. My email is eric, E-R-I-C, at mrm .org. And that would be a way for you to sign up without having to pay a deposit if you're interested in that trip.

That trip is 39 .95. That does not include the air. But it's a great trip. You can look at that trip, kccisrael .com is the address for that. And then the second trip, we do have a few spots left that you can go on and karmisrael, C-A-R-M, israel .com.

And you can find out all the details there. That trip is 52 .95 for 13 days, flying out of Newark. And Andrew, you're gonna be flying on that trip. We have until November to find out if Israel is going to overturn the vaccine policy.

We honestly believe it will be overturned by then because according to our agency, the authorities they've been talking to from the tourism department are saying they are going to change that in the fall because they're being decimated.

Trips like ours are getting canceled and Israel does not have many tourists. They really need the tourism back. So they're expecting that to happen. And if it happens by November, our trips both will be on.

If not, they would get postponed. But if you wanted to go on either of those two trips, limited room, you can certainly contact me, ericatmrm .org, the February trip, kccisrael .com. And the March trip is going to be karmisrael .com.

I think if you wanted to go through that, it will answer all your questions. But if you wanted to sign up for that, you can do so by contacting me. You don't have to pay the deposit on either one. I will put your name down, you'll be in.

And then once the vaccine policy is rescinded, you'll go ahead and pay the $500 deposit. And the rest of the money would be due in December. So just a few details. Those who are already signed up for the trip, if you're listening to us, you've already made your decision as to what you're doing.

We've had some people who are not gonna go, others who are gonna go. We have 11, actually, who are going on the February trip with Justin, and then 11 more going with Andrew.

And also with this guy right there, right underneath me, Jim Osmond, he's gonna be there.

He will be, Jim will be, yeah. Looks like he's sleeping there.

Oh, there he is. He's just outside enjoying the nice weather, you know?

So this actually, again, this just kind of worked out. God is sovereign and works things out. But you guys all know each other, and Jim contacted me, I don't know, four or five months ago, and was interested in doing a trip.

So we set one up for him in February for 13 days. And so Justin wanted to go anyway. And actually, I told Justin today, we had that one last spot on the air. So Justin will be able to fly with the group Jim Osmond is gonna be leading.

So they have, from Spokane and from Idaho, I think they have like 30, 35 people or so that are going. So it's really a lot of Pacific Northwest type people, but others are gonna be coming from all over the nation, friends of Justin, 11 total, including Anthony's gonna be going on that trip.

Justin Pierce also will be going on that February trip.

Yeah, so it's, so, and I think that one was one that was, if not full, close to full, right?

Yeah, literally probably only one or two spots left on that February trip. We had some people transfer over to even out our trips and it worked out great. So it is

The advantage of the March trip is we have an archeologist who will be with us, Joel Cramer.

Yeah, you'll actually have a chance to

That balances out having Matt on it, right? You have Matt, but at least you need some benefits. So we have an archeologist.

Matt has actually been with me. I've taken Matt in 2013, and he got to spend three days with Joel Cramer. He's a good friend of mine. He does DVDs, he does videos, and he's also an archeologist, lives in Jordan.

He's so good. In fact, if you're part of the group, I will be sending you videos that I have done of Joel on site at some of these locations. So we do get Joel on that March trip. He's hard to get. He has to actually be there for me to actually do it.

And he happens to be there in March. So three days, we're gonna be seeing some sites that a lot of people don't get to see. Bethel and I, I mean, are sites nobody goes to. We'll go to Mamre, we'll go to Hebron.

We'll drink water out of Jacob's well. Some of the same sites that Jim and Justin get to go to, but we'll add a few others because Joel knows where these places are. There are no signs or anything else.

You have to kind of know where these places are.

So Melissa is asking, so did we cancel our 2021 Israel trip? Not yet. Basically what we're doing, Melissa, is we're holding off for two more weeks, but it really doesn't look like, I mean, Israel originally was gonna open to tourism, I guess, the beginning of July.

They pushed at the beginning of August and we have to make a decision by July 16th. And so it doesn't look like they're gonna loosen the policy in time after just strengthening it. So unfortunately, we're 99 that we're gonna end up having to cancel because of the policies that they have there right now, and that we're hoping they're gonna drop in the future.

Right, Eric?

Yeah, that's right. Well, and it was individual tourists. It wasn't even anything to do with us, but they were supposed to open up to it. They already have the groups open, but for individuals, well, because of the Delta virus strain, they decided to move it back.

And by moving that back, it pretty much assured they're not gonna make any major decisions, we don't think, until... And it won't happen in August. It might not even happen in September, but we really think by October, November.

Will it be in time for these two trips? We'll have to see. But we have a certain deadline we have to get to before people would lose their whole deposit, and we're not gonna sacrifice people's money. So the first trip, November 4th, we would just postpone that if it does not get rescinded by November 4th, we'll make it February of 2023.

So that's the latest, folks. So Eric, thanks for coming on in. Now, real quick before you go, you've been helping us with this Israel trip, but why don't you quickly plug the ministry you work for on a full-time basis so we can know about that?

Well, thank you for doing that.

I'm with Mormonism Research Ministry. We're a evangelical Christian ministry that has been around since 1979. You can go to our website, mrm .org. We have written a number of books on the topic of Mormonism, including Mormonism 101 in 2015 with Baker, Answering Mormons' Questions in 2013 with Kriegel.

2018, I co-edited a book with Sean McDowell called Sharing the Good News with Mormons. And I have one with Harvest House coming out next year called Introducing Christianity to Mormons. Mormons are leaving the church in droves and only 10 become evangelical Christians.

45 of all Mormons who leave end up in atheism, agnosticism, or nothing at all. We're having a terrible time here in Utah of a lot of atheists added to because they're losing people in droves. So we also have a podcast that airs five days a week.

It's a tape radio show as well on five different radio stations, and it's made into a podcast, 14-minute show called Viewpoint on Mormonism. You can go to mrm .org slash podcast, and you can listen to the shows.

And also we have a library of over 2 ,500 podcasts that you can go in on all kinds of different topics. Bill McKeever, who founded the ministry in 1979 and I do those podcasts. So yeah, we're very active here in Utah.

Yeah, they're very short podcasts, about I think 14, 17 minutes, 14 minutes long, I think. So some great stuff there. Great research being done there. So thanks for coming in, Eric. And Thanks for having me.

Don't know if you want to talk about SBC stuff, but that's really outside. You talk about different cults. Oh, wait, sorry.

Oh, sorry. I'm gonna get myself in trouble. Yeah, a lot of things going on in the Southern Baptist. I'm gonna let you guys are the experts. I'm gonna let you guys handle that. I'm gonna stay out of the fray.

Well, thanks for coming in, Eric. So folks, just to let you know, this weekend on The Wrap Report, we're gonna be dealing with a very scary topic. I know it's gonna be coming out on July 4th and we're gonna be talking about a threat to America.

So some scary, scary stuff going on within the Biden administration. But some good news, KT was letting us know early that Pastor Tim Stevens has been released. So for folks who don't know up in Canada, the pastor up there who was arrested, if you didn't see that video, man, that was heartbreaking.

Seeing him being dragged away by his children, his children sitting there crying and not understanding what's going on. And I mean, they could have done that anywhere else had they wanted to. He wasn't resisting, but man, that was hard.

And as usual, we're being trolled by Chris Honholz. He says, Andrew getting himself in trouble, what else is new? This is a guy who gets trolled by James White, okay? If any of you guys heard the dividing line about two dividing lines ago, at the end, he's even sitting there and giving Chris Honholz a hard time on his show.

So here's Chris, he trolls us, he trolls James and James trolls him back. I don't get that. I think Jim Osmond may be having some trouble with his screen there. But we have another person to add to the discussion here, Justin.

And it is the guy that has been writing a whole bunch on the SBC lately. We could see his name right behind him there in bright lights. It's Bud the Wiser from the Rap Report. And he just realized, oh, I gotta get my headphones on to hear what they've been saying about me.

But now he doesn't know what we said, he'll have to go back and listen. It's always fun to read his It's recorded, right? It's recorded. His shirt's always great. It's actually, I've seen like three of those shirts there.

The same thing, I like to party and by party, I mean read theology. It's I think the third version of that I've seen. Bud, welcome. Thank you. How are you? Good evening. Justin, how are you, brother? Doing well, Bud, doing well.

Good to see you. You too. So, Bud, you have been like writing up a storm at Striving for Eternity lately. Oh.

Well, there's a lot more that needs to be said and we're counting on Justin to say it tonight.

You even wrote a, you're trying for Babylon B. I don't know, you should submit your last article, the satire one to Babylon B, because that got a chuckle.

Yeah, that was, yeah. You know, sometimes I wake up really early. Usually it's the Lord, I think, just sort of prodding me, nothing mystical or charismatic, but get up, read, you know, tolelegay. And I woke up that morning and that was on my mind.

I'm just like, this is so ridiculous. This is just satirical. If it weren't so true in a lot of cases, it's just crazy.

Well, it's kind of like the Babylon B. You know, they say things as a joke and then find out it's closer to reality. Yeah. It was fun. So let's talk about the SBC, what's been going on. And let me just introduce folks who don't know.

Justin, I think a lot of people know you. I just introduced Bud, but Jim Osmond, the pastor of Kootenai Community Church in the, shall we say the lovely country of Idaho? I don't know. I don't know that he thinks it's that lovely.

We prefer the free state of Idaho. Yeah. What do you think about Boise, Idaho? That's in Idaho.

Yeah, but Boise's kind of like the armpit of the Northwest. I mean, it's in Idaho, but it's really not Idaho.

He doesn't want to say what he usually says. Given the choice between Idaho and hell, which are you gonna choose?

If I owned hell and Boise, I would rent out Boise and live in hell.

We get a great story. That's the same line I use. I'm from the deep South. I'm from Macon, Georgia. And that's the line I always use about it. Where are you from? The armpit of the South. Is it used to be a paper mill town and in the summertime, woo.

Well, Bud, someone is saying that, where was it? I just skipped it. Someone was saying that you have a great radio voice or the best radio voice. Here it is. Melissa says, Bud has the best radio voice.

So there you go. Wow, cool. Thank you. I probably got the best face for radio. I'll take my picture off then. So, Bud, you've been writing a lot on the SBC. Justin, you did a long, I think it was about an hour and a half video on this as well, that we'll put in the show notes.

Both dealing with some things going on with the SBC with the new president, Ed Litton, and some accusations of plagiarism. So I don't know which one of you guys want to start off. Either Bud or Justin, let you guys kind of give us an overview of what's been going on.

We're going to make Bud, let's make Bud do it, because No, let's defer to wisdom. You need to defer, yeah. Well, you're Bud the wiser. So if we're deferring to wisdom, it's got to be you. Oh, no, no.

No, no. No, there's, yeah, there is a lot going on in the SBC. I'll announce it now since I've kind of kept it quiet. I had COVID for two weeks, and by the Lord's providence, I was home when the convention, the 15th and 16th was going on.

So I was able to watch both days of the goings on at the convention. Just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it really is very political. There was an agenda at work, and that sort of played out. And certainly it played out even more egregiously with the events surrounding Ed Litton and the plagiarism.

And, you know, he's touting integrity and humility and transparency. And, you know, I think it was the day after he touted that, he wiped 143, I think Justin said, 143 videos from his website because apparently there's some concern with those in light of the plagiarism accusations.

But there's a lot going on in the SBC, and I am not in the SBC. I have escaped the SBC, was formerly SBC. But because of its size, because of its influence in broader evangelicalism, it's important to pay attention to what's going on here because you've got all the other mainline denominations that have certainly gone liberal, and you have other denominations, Methodists and Presbyterians, they're dealing with some of the same issues that you would expect to see the SBC dealing with.

So it's important to watch. It's the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. What they do has influence, whether you're in it or not. And so watching it and just lamenting over how the direction of the convention is going, I at least wanted to put a few observations out there.

But Justin's video, if you have not watched that, incredible, he just kind of walks through, particularly the issue with Lytton. People need to be aware of this. I mean, sin's not sin anymore.

You know, this It was funny because you and I were talking and you did an article on this whole thing of plagiarism. And I said, you know, I just don't, I find it hard to believe that, you know, that even J .D. Greer, that this was an original sermon with him.

And I said that to you. I said, you know, let's go do some searching. I bet we'll find that that was someone else. And sure enough, watching Justin, you know, his video talking with Justin, it's like, yeah, Tim Keller.

That seems to be the source. Okay, so, you know, and that's one of the things that you and I talked about on our podcast is, you know, Lytton kind of put J .D. Greer in a bad position because he either has to do with what they ended up doing.

He ended up saying, oh, I borrowed it from Greer. And, you know, I just, I should have said that because otherwise he, you know, he ends up admitting that he and Greer both got it from some other source, you know, which you did a really funny satire piece on about Lifeway now selling, having their sermonizing.

Well, look, it's a pragmatic convention. They'll do anything they can for a buck. And, you know, if this works, let's do it.

Yeah, so I did link in the show notes here, the articles that you've been writing and the satire one. So Justin, why don't you give us a quick overview as well with some of the things that you deal with in your video and what you see as a concern with what's going on in the SBC right now.

The SBC is an absolute train wreck. I really believe without any hyperbole that the SBC is under the judgment of God. I really do. I believe it is under God's judgment. I believe it's been under God's judgment for a number of years.

I know there's still some good guys in SBC, good pastors, good churches. Some of those pastors are friends of mine, but I tell you that every time the SBC has an opportunity to correct, you know, right the ship, so to speak, it just continues to list further.

And at this point with all that we're seeing, I really believe God is bringing the ship down. God is taking the, he's sinking it himself. And I'm, you know, I think the point has come where I'm not even sure why at this point we would wanna save a ship that God himself is sinking.

I think it's that bad in the SBC. There is rampant corruption. There is rampant, a rampant lack of integrity. You see from the current and the immediately preceding presidents of the SBC, Ed Litton and J .D. Greer, respectively, you see two men, both of whom are plagiarists, both of them, Greer too.

And neither, and both of these men have said that they believe that the Bible whispers about sexual sin. That isn't a, I can't even wrap my mind around that. I mean, I knew before I was even converted, I mean, I knew when I was in vacation Bible school that the Bible doesn't whisper about sexual sin.

I mean, it's just, I've just found myself at a loss for words. You know, these men, these are the presidents of the largest Protestant denomination in the country, supposedly conservative, and they think the Bible whispers about sexual sin.

And one of the things I said in my video, the Bible doesn't whisper about any sin, much less sexual sin. How many, I mean, my goodness, what Bible are they reading? These men are manifestly unqualified to be presidents of the SBC.

They're unqualified to be pastors. They're unqualified to lead in silent prayer in a church. You know, and I know I'm coming across strong, but my goodness, these are not, this is not high-level discernment here.

This is not high-level theology. This is basic stuff. This is 101, ground-level stuff. And if you think the Bible whispers about any sin, much less sexual sin, as much as the Bible has to say about that, then you are manifestly unqualified to be behind the pulpit.

It honestly makes me wonder about their, the state of their soul. And, oh, and Ed Linton's supposed apology. That's no apology. That's no apology. You know, he only mentioned one sermon, this one that first made news.

And then as Bud was saying, and I said in my video, he proceeds to remove 143 of his videos from his YouTube channel.

Well, there's another video out now. I don't know if you saw it, but there's another video out that John Harris played on his podcast where he has another video of the two of them doing yet another sermons.

I think it was out of Romans chapter eight. His podcast is, I'm trying to look it up now because I forget the name, Conversations That Matter, I think. Yeah, Conversations That Matter with John Harris.

And he played another video. I think it was from Romans chapter eight.

Where it's the same thing. Yeah, it is. It's the same, and not only the same points in the sermon, but even the same illustration. When you watch that, J .D. Greer, now I'm going to paraphrase him. This is the NIV version of what he said, but he said, I can remember when I was in high school taking driver's ed, and the driver instructor was in the passenger front seat, and he had this big brake, and he could stomp on that brake at any time and let me know that he is the one really in control of this car.

And then it goes to Ed Litton, and Ed Litton says, I can remember being a high school student taking driver's ed, and the instructor's over in the passenger seat, and he's got this big brake, and he can step on it at any time to let me know that he's the one in control of the car.

I mean, it's the exact same illustration. One, either one or both of them is lying. One or both of them is lying. For sure, Ed Litton is lying. And who knows where J .D. Greer, whether he's

Well, and you're saying lying because of the fact that I think, Bud, you dealt with this in one of your articles, is the fact that just because he said that he got permission doesn't mean it's not plagiarism, and plagiarism is stealing.

And so when he's saying he didn't steal and didn't plagiarize, that's not true, that's lying. Because he didn't give credit, even if he had permission. He still passed it off as his own.

Yeah, well, I mean, the problem is that the people sitting in the pews in his church, they have no idea where this is coming from. They presume it is coming from the studious labors of their own pastor.

Well, in fact, no. It's just some guy standing up there reading the fruit of someone else's work. And I'm suspicious that that someone else is even J .D. Greer. But to Justin's point, I just wanna make this observation.

On the one hand, with regards to the God whispers about sexual sin issue, you've got the current president and the former president of the SBC having preached the same sermon. We know the one was plagiarized.

But that issue, consider that in the context of the SBC still embroiled in the sexual abuse scandal that it's dealing with. So on the one hand, you've got your president saying, well, just, you know, God whispers about this.

On the other hand, you've got a independent investigative agency to look into the issues of sexual abuse and a potential coverup in the executive committee, and a task force that was created or will be created.

It was passed as a resolution at this most recent convention. You've gotta, how can you not put these things together and say, wow, we may have what really amounts to a theological problem. We may have a biblical problem.

We can say authority, sufficiency, but over here, we're just not gonna practice it.

The SBC, Sexual Sin, and Plagiarism

Yeah, well, let me throw, and I may throw this question out to Jim, but Chris asks this. Would it be fair to say that Ed Litton and J .D. Greer made their statements about the Bible whispering about sexual sin, that it is a public relations move so that the secularists won't go after them?

I suppose it could be a public relations move, but it seems to me that the whole intention behind that is more to soften up the entire denomination, or at least their stand regarding sexual sin, mainly because if they make that claim, then they don't have to defend what Scripture says to their people.

They don't have to defend it, obviously, in the public arena, and they're, of course, being seen as more tolerant and loving and kind, which seems to be their whole motivation, which is why they said publicly at the convention that the whole world is watching.

They seem to be more concerned of what the world thinks of them and how the world will respond to them than what God does, and so they make statements like that, that the Bible whispers about sexual sin.

I would add to that that if you think the Bible, if they think the Bible whispers about sexual sin, what do they think the Bible does concerning the virgin birth of Jesus? The Bible has more to say about sexual sin than it does about the virgin birth of Jesus, so what other type of doctrines, what other theologies now are gonna be up for grabs because the Bible has little to say about those things?

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I brought up on the podcast that Bud and I did on this was, how many cities, Pastor Jim, do you know that were destroyed for greed and materialism? I couldn't get the answer either.

Yeah, how many cities, you know of any cities that were destroyed because of homosexuality? I know a couple. Yeah, I mean, that's not like shouting, not whispering. I don't know. You destroy a whole city, like, that's a little bit more than just, oh, I'm just whispering to you.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I would just add to what Jim said to make the point that we would all agree on, and any faithful believer sitting in a pew would understand if they've had any exposure to Scripture at all, and that is that it only needs to be in Scripture one time for it to carry the weight of a holy God who has inspired it to be there.

We don't weigh, you know, we don't do counts of, well, this one gets 10 verses, and that one's got one. This one, obviously, is being whispered. No, we don't do that. If it's in Scripture, it's inspired.

Yeah. Yeah. Chris Honfeld says, I get the feeling it was to cater to them. JD also said in his sermon that Christians should be defenders of LGBT rights, as I recall, and, you know, this is the thing that, and I think the four of us agree, but the thing that was most striking to me was not the plagiarism, though that is egregious because not only did he play it off as if, oh, it's not a big deal, but now trying to defend that what he did isn't wrong.

But, you know, Justin, you said this in your video as well, as Bud said in some of his articles and we said on the podcast, is the worst thing is, you know, making light of a sexual sin as compared to greed and materialism.

Let me ask you this, Pastor Jim, you know, when we look at this issue, why should we be concerned for these men who are previous president, current president of the SBC, who are making statements like this about homosexuality?

I think it portends a horrible thing in the future concerning the entire denomination. They are heading down a slippery slope and it is the same slippery slope that the rest of the world is going down and other major denominations have gone down.

They have slid toward embracing these cultural hot button issues of homosexuality, LGBT rights, et cetera. What are they gonna say if somebody comes up in their churches and is involved in sexual sin?

Well, you know, if I was in their church and I was involved in sexual sin and J .D. Greer and the elders called me on the carpet for that, I would just say to them, well, the Bible whispers about this, why are you here shouting in my face about it?

And I think that that illustrates one of the dangers of this whole trajectory that they're on is that they are abandoning the authority of scripture, they're abandoning the Bible itself and the authority that they have in that office to confront people who live in sexual sin and to confront an entire culture that seems hell-bent, to use a word advisedly, that seems hell-bent to plunge into those areas of sexual sin.