Tom Rush and Russell Fuller Weigh in on the SBC and Overturning of Roe v Wade

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:12

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We have two special guests today who have been on before.

00:19

We have Dr. Tom Rush and Dr. Russell Fuller, and they have both been very vocal about the, for lack of a better term, drift that's taking place in really a bad direction at Southern Seminary.

00:34

Dr. Rush is, I believe you're still on, I should have checked this out. You're still on the trustee board or are you off of it?

00:41

No, I'm still on the board. You are on, okay. Southern Seminary, correct. Yep, okay, so you're on the trustee board. Dr. Fuller taught there for decades before just recently, and I just wanna get their take on the

00:55

Southern Baptist Convention. Maybe we'll talk about some of the things that just happened last week, but both of you, thank you so much for just being willing to talk about this publicly.

01:05

Yes, well, thanks, John. It's great to be with you. Thanks for having us. I just saw a social media post.

01:12

I think it was a tweet from James Merritt, who declared that there is no liberal drift in the

01:20

Southern Baptist Convention and that we are not going liberal. He had congratulated Bart Barber on getting elected as president.

01:28

And it's like, the idea is that they're the conservatives and those of us who feel like there is a progressive liberal drift are now being referred to as neo -fundamentalist.

01:43

And so they just changed the terminology. And I think the difference is that those of us that are true conservatives are those who have biblical convictions and are willing to stand for them.

01:57

I think there's a lot of our Southern Baptist friends, I'll call them friends, that are on the more progressive liberal side.

02:05

And John, they perceive themselves as conservatives, but what they have is conservative preferences, not convictions.

02:14

They would prefer, for example, that we don't press CRT. They would prefer that people not behave in a homosexual way.

02:22

They would prefer that women not be the lead pastor of a Southern Baptist church, but they don't have any courage of conviction to stand against when that drift begins to come.

02:35

Well, you were just at the convention and you saw what happened. It seems like, I think, Conservative Baptist Network, if memory serves me, they did not win anything of the elections that they were trying to win.

02:50

And of course, we saw the way that the resolutions committee and various other committees behaved on stage.

02:56

It's a discouraging thing for true convictional conservatives, theological conservatives, and political conservatives to see.

03:04

What was it like being there in person? And, I mean, was it even, I just saw a video, but I imagine being there, was it even more prevalent or obvious that there certainly is a drift and there certainly is corruption?

03:20

Well, yeah, there was an obvious, you're gonna talk about the temperature of the room.

03:26

Initially, most of the motions that were made in the first business session seemed to be coming from a more conservative perspective.

03:35

I made a motion, we had several motions. I was privileged to work with my friends at CBN to try to have some influence in the convention, to make some motions that would, at least if nothing else, point out the direction that we are going.

03:51

And so it seemed like there was a good, solid contingent of conservatives at the convention.

03:58

But as things progressed, it became very obvious that we were about a thousand votes short of where we needed to be to regain control of the convention.

04:07

John, the way the convention works, the only way to control it is to elect a conservative president and then get control of the committee on committees, who selects the committee on nominations, who selects the appointees to all the trustee boards.

04:22

And our trustee system is broken. And one of the things that CBN has been working to do is to try to point out the need for good governance of our entities.

04:32

Obviously, with the things that have happened with the ERLC and the North American Mission Board in particular, it is critical that we get that control.

04:41

In the last two years in both Nashville and out in Anaheim this year, we've come up about a thousand votes short in the presidential election.

04:49

And we came out in about that same kind of situation on all of the other issues that were voted on, such as the

04:56

Sex Abuse Task Force report recommendations and the resolutions that came out and the resolutions that were not presented.

05:06

That created a whole nother set of issues. And if Southern Baptists don't wanna lose the convention, they have got to show up to the convention to vote.

05:17

I'm fully convinced that the vast majority of our Southern Baptist churches are conservative.

05:24

What happens in the convention is not a reflection of where Southern Baptist churches are.

05:29

It's a reflection of where our entity heads and the elites who are in the leadership positions in our convention, it's a reflection of where they are taking us and the direction that they are going.

05:41

And I think there's too much at stake just to let it go. Yeah, okay. So you wanna keep fighting, supporting

05:47

CBN's efforts. You'll be there next year, I'm assuming. That's correct. I've already made my reservations for New Orleans next year.

05:55

Gotcha. Dr. Fuller, you were not there this year at the convention. I know you were the previous year.

06:02

Is there a reason for that? Yes, there's a couple of reasons. One is it's way too expensive to go to Anaheim.

06:11

So cost was a problem. Number two, I do see the system is virtually rigged.

06:18

You know, when you sign up for the Southern Baptist Convention, you do it online. They know what the numbers are.

06:24

They know the numbers that they need in order to win. They know how many convention employees or agency employees are going to show up.

06:34

They, NAM with its SEND Conference, that's where they can bring in a lot of people to make sure they win.

06:44

So it's very difficult. This is not the 1980s. And now they know how the system works and they know how conservatives used it back in the 80s to do the conservative resurgence.

06:58

And these people are, again, I think they have the system virtually rigged. And I, to me, what the issue that I see out there, it goes back to Ed Litton.

07:12

You know, I think most people in the Southern Baptist Convention, and I'm talking about the pastors in particular, knew that Ed Litton was a plagiarist.

07:21

And yet you saw very little uprising from the pastors of the

07:28

Southern Baptist Convention on this. And I think that tells us that if we can't even call out

07:35

Ed Litton and have him resign, and you just make people making calls to say, hey,

07:41

Ed Litton needs to resign. If we can't even get Southern Baptist pastors to do that,

07:46

I'm not sure they're gonna show up in New Orleans or any other place in order to do what is necessary to be done to turn the

07:54

Southern Baptist Convention around. Let me just give you a brief story on this. My son, he lives in the

08:00

Bratton Rouge area and he one time went to one of the association meetings and he made a resolution.

08:08

He says, why don't we publicly call on Ed Litton to resign for his plagiarism?

08:15

Well, that caused an uproar. And the pastors were not too happy with him.

08:20

And of course they put it off a few months saying, we need to work on this statement, this resolution, you know, and so forth.

08:27

And of course I knew what they were gonna do. They were going to basically trash it and they did. And then my son went to the

08:34

Louisiana State Convention, did the same thing. Of course he was ruled out of order for making that motion.

08:41

It was overturned, but again, two thirds, at least two thirds of the pastors that were at the

08:48

Louisiana Baptist Convention did not wanna even debate the issue about Ed Litton and his plagiarism.

08:56

Now, again, Louisiana is a deep Southern state, very Southern Baptist, and yet the pastors there are not willing to stand up and say,

09:06

Ed Litton, you ought to resign. And so when I see things like this, John, I'm not encouraged that we have the troops, as it were, to do what needs to be done in the

09:19

Southern Baptist Convention. So I'm not at all positive about the future of the

09:26

Southern Baptist Convention. If we can't agree, as a matter of fact, our new president believes that God inspires people to commit plagiarism, like the

09:35

Apostle Mark, excuse me, not the Apostle, but Mark, the gospel writer.

09:42

I mean, this is, we're in very serious trouble in the

09:47

Southern Baptist Convention. And the fact that pastors are not crying out, showing people their sin, they're not, as it were, exposing the unfruitful works of darkness, shows you the

09:59

Southern Baptist Convention, it's more than just a problem with the agency heads. It's a problem in the pulpits, and I believe it's a problem in the pews as well.

10:09

You could say systemic, to pick one of their words, but. That's correct. So you both are in different places then, and I'm glad I'm having both of you on, because we're going to get to some areas where I think you're going to shed light on things at Southern Seminary with Al Mohler, et cetera.

10:23

But to start off though, I really find this fascinating. Dr. Rush, is there any, since you have a different perspective on wanting to keep in and stay fighting and everything, what kind of encouraging things can you point to, or what strategy might be employed in a convention that was not previously employed that could perhaps cause a conservative victory?

10:50

Well, John, let me address one thing that my dear brother, Russell Fuller, spoke to, and that is the cost of going to the convention.

10:59

And it's always kind of bothered me that we go to California to have a convention when the vast majority of Southern Baptists are in other areas of the country.

11:09

And of course, anytime you have a meeting like that, it's going to be expensive because you have to, you know, it's got to be in a convention hall that's large enough to hold everybody.

11:18

And I understand the difficulties of getting a meeting like that orchestrated, just the pragmatics of it, and those things have to be done.

11:25

What I have been suggesting, and I've had a lot of churches, small churches, and a lot of lay people contacting me and saying, you know, what can we do?

11:37

And then a lot of the smaller church pastors are saying, I can't afford to go to the convention, it's too expensive.

11:43

My suggestion to them is to take their cooperative program funding, and if necessary, their mission offering funding, you know, the

11:52

Annie Armstrong Easter offering, the Lottie Moon Christmas offering, take those funds, use that money to send your pastor and his wife to the convention.

12:00

In other words, stop giving it to the convention, use that money, give enough money to the convention so you have at least two messengers, and then use that money to send someone.

12:09

Every year at the convention, there have been motions, and this has been going on for the last, I don't know, eight to 10 years maybe, but consistently, we've had a motion to make an online voting at the convention possible.

12:25

In other words, to have regional sites, or even to be able to do it from your own home computer to be able to plug in, be a messenger, and vote on the important issues of the convention.

12:36

The elites that are in charge don't want that to happen. One of the reasons they would have a convention in Anaheim is they know it's too expensive for a lot of the pastors to go, and so they can control it that way.

12:49

And another thing that they do, and this was very apparent at the convention in Anaheim, and also in Nashville last year, they have learned how to use the platform as a bully pulpit, and they'll work the floor into an emotional frenzy almost, and they have complete control over what's said and who's allowed to speak.

13:12

I mean, this was very evident in the fact that a sex abuse victim, Jennifer Buck, was rebuffed at the microphone, and yet Rick Warren was given six minutes to address the convention without any opposition whatsoever.

13:28

So they know how to control that. And again, the only way to change that is to change who's in charge of the platform, and that begins with electing a conservative president.

13:37

The conservative resurgence took almost 20 years. It started in 1979. It was the mid to late 90s before we really had things turned around.

13:46

It takes that long. The SPC is a huge organization, and to get a change in the trustee boards would take that many years to do it.

13:55

So it is a long fight. I don't disagree with anything Dr. Fuller has said about the concerns and the direction where the convention is going.

14:04

You know, Rush Limbaugh used to talk a lot about low information voters, and that that was part of the problem in our political elections.

14:12

Well, what we have at the Southern Baptist Convention is low information voters. They don't know what's going on.

14:18

They're not watching your podcast. They're not watching other podcasts. They're not reading the discernment blogs. They're not aware of the seriousness of the problem.

14:27

And then you couple that with what I think is the biggest problem within our Southern Baptist Convention with the entities is the duplicity.

14:36

In other words, obviously for me, I would not want Southern Seminary, for example, to be teaching

14:43

CRT, but worse than the fact that they're teaching it is that they are denying that they're teaching it.

14:51

You know, they will say, well, you know, in fact, we passed a resolution at the convention this year, essentially that said same -sex attraction is sinful.

15:03

And we have seminary presidents who will agree with that. And yet they platform people like Sam Albury, who is a champion for same -sex attraction, and that you can have that and be a

15:16

Christian and there's no problem. So it's the duplicity. You have Danny Aiken at Southeastern Seminary who says, you know, we're not woke.

15:25

But yet when you look at the people that he platforms, you look at the people that are championed by that, people they invite to speak like Kevin Smith, and the things that he said at the nine marks meeting at the convention this year were horrendous in terms of his attack on Christians and so forth.

15:45

And so this is where the problem is. It's a duplicity, but the only way that we can stop it is to go to the convention in New Orleans and vote our convictions.

15:57

Now, is it possible? I'm hopeful, but doubtful. Let me put it that way. And my doubt comes from the fact that people won't rise up and do it.

16:06

So a lot of people are saying, well, it's just not worth it. But consider this, the

16:13

Southern Baptist Convention represents 11 % of the evangelical churches in America, but our seminaries train 33 % of the pastors.

16:24

33 % of pastors that are getting a seminary degree are coming through our Southern Baptist Seminaries. If we lose the

16:30

Southern Baptist Convention to these progressives, that's not gonna just impact the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches of the

16:37

Southern Baptist Convention, it's gonna have an impact in evangelical Christianity. So that's why

16:42

I think it's worth us continuing the fight. Yeah, so one of the things you brought up,

16:47

I think this is probably something we won't get to the bottom of necessarily, because I don't know if the information's there, but it's something that I wanna highlight because it's fundamental in my mind to whether or not the convention can be retaken or not.

17:01

And that is, is the convention composed of conservative churches who just don't understand what's going on, which

17:08

I think you've just advocated to some extent, and that may be true. I've wrestled with this myself. Is it just that people aren't aware?

17:15

I think that would probably be the situation of the conservative resurgence initially, is you have all these seminaries pontificating modernism, and then the churches that still believe the

17:25

Bible don't realize. But we are at a different age in the sense that there's so much information easily accessible, and you have podcasts like this one.

17:34

I mean, you couldn't probably during that time just jump on a podcast from your study and tell the whole world if you wanted to about what's going on at Southern Seminary or the convention.

17:44

So that, I mean, that is a difference. And what I've wondered is maybe whether that's the case or it's a combination of that and something else, which is

17:53

I worry sometimes that even the listeners who are possibly listening to this podcast who are

17:58

Southern Baptists are doing so in closets, are doing so with headphones on because they don't want anyone else to hear.

18:07

And the reason I'm saying that is because I will get messages, this is very frequent, from pastors or from laymen, especially in the

18:15

SBC, who say things like, we just got a woke pastor from Southeastern who just replaced our pastor.

18:23

And he's saying all these things that we don't agree with it. And generally this process hits them in the face.

18:30

They weren't part of it. They should have been probably, but it's not until they hear something that contradicts what they believe that they realize something's afoot.

18:39

And then there's an apprehension about confronting it.

18:45

And it's easier for people to just leave their church. And if they do, they do so generally quietly and amicably and they don't wanna make a noise.

18:54

And this is what I see happening more often than not.

19:00

And so I don't know whether it's, it probably is a combination of there's probably some ignorance.

19:07

There's some, there's wrong beliefs out there. So the CRT and the

19:12

Me Too and all that stuff is coming in. But there's also just a lack of courage. And that's one thing, that's the thing that I guess concerns me the most.

19:23

Dr. Rush and then Dr. Fuller, do you see this lack of courage being one of the driving things or at least a problem?

19:33

Well, absolutely, John, a lack of courage. And really it's not so much a lack of courage as is it a lack of the fear of the

19:40

Lord. It seems like that we're more interested in pleasing the world. As you know, as well as I do, there's an awful lot of virtue signaling going on.

19:49

And particularly with our entity heads, it's just that they wanna be loved by the world and loved by God.

19:56

And Jesus said, if they hated me, they're going to hate you. And so there's a lack of courage to stand up to that.

20:06

And I think it's good that some of our laymen in our churches are recognizing their woke pastor. And they're recognizing the fact that the guy comes in and that he is woke and that he is speaking in ways that are contradictory to our

20:19

Baptist faith and message, in ways that are contradictory to common sense and biblical standards.

20:26

So that's a good thing, but they've got to have the courage to stand up and stand against it.

20:32

And I think there's a lack of courage on the part of our pastors across the convention and also of our laymen to stand up against it.

20:43

I think there's a lack of courage in our boards. There are men on the board at Southern with me who will tell me privately that they agree with me, but they won't vote that way.

20:56

They won't second a motion that I make. I had a faculty member at Southern who wanted to meet with me privately.

21:05

And I thought that to be a little bit unusual. And he said, well, I can't be seen talking to a trustee, which meant that he was fearful, obviously.

21:13

So I agreed to meet with him and I gave him confidentiality. I won't mention his name, but he thanked me for what

21:20

I was doing and told me about a lot of different things that he knew, which were things I could use in a trustee meeting, except I knew that as soon as I did, the question would be, well, what faculty member told you that?

21:32

Well, I can't tell you that. Well, then they're not gonna believe it. But at the end, he asked me this question. He said,

21:39

Tom, what can I do? And I said, you can't do anything until you value the truth more than you do your paycheck.

21:48

In other words, until you're willing to stand up and be counted for the truth, there's nothing that you can do.

21:54

And that's true across the board. Until we fear the Lord more than we fear the reaction of men, unless we love the praise of God more than the praise of men, there isn't anything we can do and we will lose the convention.

22:08

Yeah, that's my big concern. Dr. Fuller, how do we get the Nicodemuses to stand against the rest of the

22:13

Pharisees? Oh, that's very difficult. And I do believe there is a lack of courage, a lack of obedience to God's word.

22:24

And again, I think, John, you said it, it's a systemic failure. The pastors of the

22:29

Southern Baptist Convention, if they cannot stand up to Ed Litton, how are they gonna stand up to critical race theory, the

22:36

Me Too movement, these other, really the revoiced stuff, they call it

22:42

B -side, but once you accept B -side, it's the same record as the A -side, so it doesn't really matter to me.

22:49

How are they gonna stand up to any of these things? And the answer is they're not. And so the pastors are failing and our church leaders are failing.

22:58

I was at a church down in Florida at First Baptist Dover, very faithful church down there.

23:04

And they told me they've had a lot of growth because many members at woke churches are now coming to their church because they're remaining faithful.

23:16

And they had me give a talk on critical race theory. And I had people coming all the way up from Naples, from First Baptist Naples.

23:22

And I gave them the floor to speak because they could tell us the truth about what social justice and critical race theory and that religion is doing to their churches.

23:34

And so, and I just talked to a pastor out in Phoenix area, and he said the same thing, that they're getting all sorts of social justice, critical race theory, refugees from other churches coming to their church now because they're gonna remain faithful.

23:52

So what we need to do, what pastors need to do is, look, if you'll be faithful, the Lord will honor this.

23:58

But if you want to please the world, if you want the praise of men, if you don't want to be blackballed and all these things, you shouldn't be in the ministry anyway.

24:07

If you can't speak out against Ed Litton, you shouldn't be in the ministry. And the problem is in our churches, we have many ministers who should not be in the ministry.

24:18

We have many churches that are just full of tears. I don't think, I'm not sure there's any much wheat in them anymore.

24:25

And it's a very serious situation we're in right now. I wanna talk about - By the way, let me just say one more thing.

24:31

It's something Tom Rush brought up about Kevin Smith. By the way, Tom, I hope you know,

24:37

Kevin Smith is a professor, an adjunct professor at Southern Seminary, still is. And so, you know, but I'm sure

24:46

Dr. Moeller will not deal with him. Well, it's funny, I'll just - He's afraid to, to be perfectly honest,

24:53

Ross. That's right. Let's get into Al Moeller in a minute. I just wanted to let everyone know who's listening to, one of the things, it's a perfect illustration of what you're talking about regarding that Kevin Smith situation.

25:04

Someone reached out to me this morning and, you know, essentially I'm trying to phrase this the best way

25:10

I possibly can, because I don't wanna give away too much, but they wanted to let me know that privately, one of the members of Nine Marks who was on that panel is saying how embarrassed they are by that situation, how shocked they were, how just, just how much they are against what

25:31

Kevin Smith said. Right. And it was just, you know, they were deer in the headlights. They just couldn't say anything.

25:37

It was just so offensive what he said that, but here's the thing. When you look at the video, you have two pastors.

25:43

I forget the first guy, but the Matt Chandler's the second. They talk for over 10 minutes at least. I mean, they talk for a while and they affirm passively what

25:53

Kevin Smith said. They affirm his analysis. And no one, even in that time period, thinks to say to the room, you know what?

26:02

We wouldn't phrase things the way Kevin Smith just phrased them, or we appreciate it. Not even a slight pushback.

26:07

And even now they could make a statement. They could go out there and say, you know, this has gone mainstream.

26:13

You have the occupied Democrats using this statement to bludgeon the other pastors of the

26:19

SBC. We do not agree with this. We actually are embarrassed. They could say what they're saying supposedly, privately, allegedly out loud, but they're not gonna do it.

26:29

And they're not doing it. And to me, that illustrates what you're saying, Dr. Fuller, that these people all claim to be conservative, which is what

26:36

Tom Rush, you said at the beginning, that there's so many people claim to be conservative. And then when it comes time to actually show me some of that conviction and strength, and it's gone, where did it go?

26:47

But privately, you can't attack them because they'll tell you they're on your side. And it's like, I don't know what to do with that.

26:54

That's just cowardly. So - Oh, and let me tell you this about Kevin Smith.

27:00

Yeah. If you go back, and perhaps it's on Southern Seminary's website, but if you go back to the year 2016, the day of the election, which would again be probably what, the first Tuesday in November of 2016,

27:15

Kevin Smith was the preacher in chapel at Southern Seminary. And he went on a long screed, basically saying, if you vote for Donald Trump, you're a racist.

27:24

So this is not the first time he's done this. And in my 22 years teaching at Southern Seminary, I walked out of chapel one time, usually when we had a liberal chapel speaker,

27:34

I wanted to hear what he was gonna say. But when I heard Kevin Smith just basically calling, if you voted for Donald Trump today, or if you're gonna vote for Donald Trump today, you're basically a racist, and all these types of things.

27:46

That was the one seminary chapel I walked out of in 22 years at Southern Seminary.

27:53

It was so bad. So this is not the first time he's done stuff like this. And again,

27:59

Mueller has no problem with it, really. Oh, and let me tell you another story about this. Two days later, after Trump was declared president,

28:06

Matt Hall's wife was sitting beside my wife, and she said to my wife, boy, it's a very dark day.

28:12

And my wife goes, what happened? I didn't hear about this. Trump got elected. This isn't the way they were, and this is the way they are.

28:23

And it's just pitiful. It's just pitiful. But again, a total lack of courage.

28:29

I remember when I taught at Southern Seminary, in the hallways, all the professors, oh, we need to do this, we need to do that.

28:34

And then you get in a meeting, and all of a sudden they're hiding under their desk. So people talk one way in the hall, you get into the meeting where things have to be done, and it's amazing how people will change.

28:47

Tom, you know all about this. Well, you know, John, it's this business of pastors not having any courage to stand up for what they really believe, and they'll say privately one thing, but publicly they won't stand against it.

29:00

This is not new. I have said for years that the vast majority of pastors are sissies. They're cowards.

29:07

Because we can just eliminate all these issues, the woke issue and the sex abuse task force issue and all that kind of stuff.

29:15

Just set that aside for a minute. Pastors have lost their courage to stand up against tyrants in the church for fear of losing their job.

29:26

In other words, they won't speak the truth. Back in the day, there were many of us who would preach against the

29:35

Masonic Lodge, for example. But I had pastors that said, oh, I'd never say anything negative about that in a sermon because I might lose my job.

29:43

When you're more concerned about your job than you are standing for God's truth, you have a serious problem.

29:51

You probably should resign from the ministry. I remember Dr. Patterson saying one time, and I don't remember if he gave any timeframe on it, but essentially he said, if you're a pastor and you've never been fired, you're probably not preaching the truth.

30:03

Yeah, true. So I wanted to ask you about Al Mohler because Mohler is now, you saw what he said in the convention floor, and now he's the conservative champion again for opposing

30:18

Rick Warren and women pastors. And what do you make of this since Dr.

30:23

Rush, you're a trustee at Southern Seminary? And then, well, yeah, let's start with you and then

30:29

Dr. Fuller, we can get your take since you've known Al Mohler for years. Well, I want to be as charitable as I can.

30:38

I've tried to maintain a positive relationship with Dr. Mohler because I felt like that's the best way for me to have an opportunity to make a difference at Southern.

30:48

And we would certainly, I think most of us agree with the positions that Dr.

30:55

Mohler took on women pastors and on equal protection for the unborn.

31:00

I mean, he made the strongest statements of anyone on those two positions.

31:06

Seems like maybe he's trying to recast himself as the conservative champion now.

31:13

I almost thought, maybe he's got some fear that the CBN is going to be successful and is going to cause the convention to turn back to the right, at least to some degree.

31:25

I don't know if that's the case or not. I think that it sort of,

31:33

Al's pretty good about judging the temperature of the room. And I think sometimes when he speaks, he speaks based on what he thinks the reaction is going to be of those that he's talking to.

31:45

If he's talking to the guys that are woke, he's probably going to sound a little bit more woke. If he's talking to you and Russell and I, he's probably going to sound less woke.

31:57

He absolutely categorically denies that Southern Seminary is teaching

32:04

CRT. And it is. Categorically denies it. And I mean, all you have to do to prove it is read the book that he commissioned that was edited by Jarvis Williams and Jones removes.

32:19

This book is full of CRT terminology and concepts.

32:25

And then of course, Williams has written a new book that's come out now.

32:32

And here's that book. And it is absolutely chock full of CRT terminology and concepts.

32:40

And yet we're going to say that we're not teaching CRT. I know enemies within the church has

32:47

Jarvis Williams class notes up on their website. Anybody can go and pull those down and you read what's being taught in the classrooms.

32:56

It's CRT. You as a trustee, can you, I don't know what extent you can get class notes or I mean, you might have access to things that we don't or do you not?

33:08

You have the same access we do. Well, I pretty much the same access you do. I mean, what's interesting is, is that the trustees are told very little and the trustee meetings have been shoved down to one day's worth of meetings.

33:23

They don't want the trustees on the campus any longer than they have to have us there. And unfortunately, many of the people on the board, in fact,

33:32

I'd say the vast majority of them there are in such a jaw dropping awe of Dr.

33:39

Moeller that they're not about to stand against him on anything. I mean, it's even rare that anything is questioned.

33:47

We know very little about the finances of the seminary. We have absolutely no control over the faculty.

33:55

Before I came on the board a number of years ago, Dr. Moeller orchestrated it to do away with tenure so that trustees would no longer be involved with the removal or firing of a seminary president.

34:08

In other words, there was, when Dr. Fuller and Dr. Orrick were fired a couple of years ago, there was literally nothing that we as trustees could do.

34:17

Now I objected, you could object to it, but there's no control. So the trustees now, the only person that works for the trustees is the president of the seminary.

34:29

Everyone else works for the president. He has complete hire and fire control over the entire seminary.

34:36

So if the trustees want to do something, the only person that they can hold accountable is the president himself.

34:43

So there's not much hope for big changes coming from the trustee boards at these institutions.

34:49

A trustee board could change all of those rules. Okay. It could change all of those rules, but you'd have to have a majority, really almost a super majority of trustees who feel like the change needs to be made.

35:01

That's what happened in the conservative resurgence. We elected conservative presidents who got conservatives put on the trustee board, men that they knew would stand for the truth and do something about the problem.

35:14

Without that happening, nothing is going to change. Dr. Fuller, I have a, just an inkling that you might give a more aggressive answer here.

35:25

Maybe, I don't know. About Al Mueller. Do you think he's changing his positions or this is who he's always been?

35:34

Or could he be the guy CBN runs next year? Who knows? I mean, I doubt that, but -

35:39

I doubt it. I do think Al is repositioning himself.

35:44

He wants to be the most conservative of the seminaries in order to attract students.

35:51

Moreover, I think he's very sensitive to the criticism that he flip -flops all the time.

35:58

And I think he's getting close to retirement. He's thinking about his legacy and he wants to look like he's been a principled conservative all these years, where in essence, he flip -flops is what he does.

36:12

Even on this issue, let's say of women preachers, as you know, back in the 80s until the very last moment, he was championing women in the pulpit back in the 80s.

36:24

He took out a full page article in the Louisville Courier Journal here in town, going against the

36:30

Southern Baptist Convention at the time because they were saying that the pastorate was only for men.

36:36

He was totally against this. Now, today, what you got to watch out for when

36:41

Dr. Mohler speaks one way, you've got to look at where he's speaking a different way.

36:47

For instance, he's really leading the Me Too movement in the Southern Baptist Convention right now. If you read the

36:54

Guidepost recommendations and their summary of what happened and so forth,

37:01

Al Mohler is seen as a hero there because he is confirming Jennifer Lyell's story.

37:08

He is really pushing Me Too stuff big time in the Southern Baptist Convention. Well, most people who are pushing

37:15

Me Too stuff are also pushing egalitarianism, that women can be pastors as well.

37:20

As a matter of fact, in the last, it was the last semester

37:27

I was there at Southern Seminary. It was at the, I think it was the first seminary, the first sermon in chapel that year.

37:38

He did one on women in ministry, saying again, women should not be in ministry.

37:44

But then in the last 10, 15 minutes, he started the Me Too stuff where women must be heard.

37:51

And if she says something, we must always basically go with her side of the story and so forth.

37:58

Here's the thing. After that meeting, we had a faculty meeting and Denny Burke gets up and says, have we changed our position on women?

38:07

Because it was so confusing that even Denny Burke asked that and of course, Mohler went off on him in rage.

38:13

I was clear what I said. But again, he was double talking. And even though he sounded very strong on the floor, be very careful.

38:22

He's also leading the Me Too movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is really moving in a direct opposite position.

38:30

Again, I think he is positioning himself against the other seminaries to try to look like, look, if you're conservative, you come to us, not to them.

38:41

And I think Adam Greenway really fell into Mohler's trap by sort of defending the credentials committee and so forth.

38:52

I think Adam Greenway made a tactical blunder there in what he did.

38:58

And I think Mohler was probably very pleased about it. Yeah, I thought that was interesting to see two seminary heads kind of contradict each other there.

39:08

And remember this, John, as well, even on his views on abortion, remember he wrote about five years ago that a woman, if she has an abortion, she should not be punished for it because she's a victim.

39:20

Again, this was part of the Me Too mentality. Even though he's talking strong in that area, he never goes back and says, well,

39:28

I was wrong here. The only time he really corrects himself is on conservative positions that he held to.

39:35

Those he will correct. But when he's, but in other words, if he was conservative and now he wants to go liberal, he goes, oh,

39:42

I shouldn't have. I repent that I did not hold to sexual orientation and stuff like this.

39:47

But again, when he makes these strong statements, you've got to remember before he's made statements in the other direction.

39:54

And so who's the real Al Mohler? One other thing, Mohler in one of the faculty meetings one time says,

40:00

I never speak on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention. That would be counterproductive.

40:06

I do that behind closed doors in order to make a real, be effective in the

40:12

Southern Baptist Convention. Well, now you see that's not true. And why didn't he get on the floor when critical race theory was put through in 2019?

40:21

Why isn't he speaking from the floor on many of these issues that are troubling the Southern Baptist Convention?

40:28

And the reason why is he is for where the Southern Baptist Convention is going. Remember it wasn't, it's not just Brett Barber who's, or James Merritt who says there's no drift in the

40:41

Southern Baptist Convention. Al Mohler and Danny Akin have said there is no liberal drift in the

40:48

Southern Baptist Convention. So you must be very careful about Al Mohler. He's on both sides of almost any issue you can bring up.

40:56

Yeah, let me clarify. I don't disagree with anything Dr. Fuller has said there.

41:02

And as far as an entity head speaking on the floor, I questioned

41:08

Dr. Mohler about this in a trustee meeting after the convention in Birmingham in 2019 when

41:14

Resolution 9 was passed. And I suggested, because he came out in his podcast the day after that convention to speak against Resolution 9.

41:25

Well, I said, well, Dr. Mohler would have been really good if you had come to a microphone to speak against it in the convention.

41:30

And that's when he said the same thing to the trustees that he had said to the faculty. Well, you don't want an entity head speaking to a resolution or a motion from the floor.

41:40

The duplicity in that is, is that after that, he announced that he was running for president of the convention.

41:46

Of course, we all know the results of that. I'm thinking, if you can't speak to a resolution or a motion, how can you be the president?

41:54

And then of course, at this convention, he did speak. Now, in one case, he spoke in answer to a question to the seminary report, that would be a different issue, but he actually came to the microphone to speak on the credentials committee report.

42:09

And so I think the answer to the question, who is Al Mohler? We don't really know, but we've got enough evidence to make a pretty solid discernment as to where he is.

42:20

You know, one of the things that concerns me, we talk a lot and we hear a lot as trustees about how great

42:29

Southern Seminary is in terms of its financial stability and the number of pastors that we're training.

42:37

And the mantra has been, you know, never have more pastors been trained at one place than are being trained at Southern.

42:43

We have more MDiv students at one place and one time than - David, I thought Rick Warren, no,

42:49

I'm just kidding. No, I did tongue in cheek mentioned to Dr. Mohler that he had to stop claiming to have trained the most pastors because it was clear that Rick Warren was the one who had done that.

43:02

You know, I never realized this, but if all of the pastors that Rick Warren trained were

43:07

Southern Baptist, that means that one in every 13 members of your church is a Southern Baptist pastor trained by Rick Warren.

43:14

And that would explain the problem in the Southern Baptist Convention right there. That's pretty funny.

43:20

Sorry, I derailed you there. Yeah, but no, the problem is that, you know,

43:26

I've made this statement in a trustee meeting. I really am not all that concerned that we're the biggest and the most financially sound.

43:35

What I would like to know about Southern Seminary is that we are the most faithful to God's word, that we're training pastors to stand on the absolute inerrancy and infallibility, authority, and the sufficiency of God's word.

43:56

And if that means we need to be smaller, then let's have a smaller seminary. In other words, we don't have to be bigger.

44:04

I saw a clip of Adrian Rogers, and I believe that it was from his last pastor's address in 1987 at the convention.

44:16

And he had been on the peace committee that had been established in 1986 to try to resolve issues between the

44:22

CBF type folks and the others and the conservatives. And Dr.

44:28

Rogers made this statement. He said a friend of mine on the peace committee said,

44:33

Adrian, if you don't compromise, we'll never get together. And he paused.

44:39

And then he said, I told my friend, I said, friend, we don't have to get together. The Southern Baptist Convention doesn't have to continue to exist.

44:48

I don't have to continue to be the pastor of Bellevue. I don't even have to continue to live.

44:53

But one thing I will not do is compromise the word of God. That's the kind of courage that we need.

45:01

Those are the kind of statesmen that we need to lead the Southern Baptist Convention right now, and we don't have them.

45:08

Yeah, I think you nailed it right there with the pernicious issue. And I wasn't around for the conservative resurgence.

45:15

I would imagine that the liberals at that time, the modernist liberals were more consistent, or at least you could nail the

45:22

Jell -O to the wall a little better. Is that true? Because today it's just, we're having a discussion that seems silly in a way.

45:30

It's like, what does one guy who's powerful in the SBC believe? And two people who have known him for years don't seem to really know exactly.

45:38

And this is not just on Al Mohler, this is on so many in the convention. But at that time, weren't the conditions different?

45:46

Wasn't it easier to figure out what someone believes or was it the same? Well, no, it was more or less the same because they were liars too.

45:55

I mean, there was the duplicity there. For example, Randall Lolly, who was president at Southeastern Seminary, I graduated from Southeastern in 1985.

46:04

And Lolly had said to the convention, we're practicing the

46:09

Southern Baptist way of being conservative. And one of the things that he stated was, we're not teaching the documentary hypothesis way of interpreting the

46:19

Old Testament. But I'd been sitting in the classroom having J -E -P -D crammed down my throat. I knew they were teaching it.

46:25

Anybody that was in the classroom knew they were teaching it. But we were able to document what they were doing and people began to listen to us.

46:34

Things were so egregious in the seminary classroom back in those days that I was a young man then.

46:43

And when I would speak to pastors that are my age now, what I was saying to them sounded so egregious, they could not believe that was happening in a

46:52

Southern Baptist seminary. But we were able to produce the class notes. We were able to produce the evidence.

46:58

We recorded them. That was before they were recording all the classes and you had easy access to see what was being said.

47:05

Well, now you don't again, because they - Right, right. Now they've stopped that again. I agree, because they don't want you to know what they're saying to the students in the classroom.

47:14

Right. And they're very pick and choose with the trustees about, they'll give you a list of the classes that they suggest that you go and attend.

47:25

Right. You were able to produce the notes and people, that moved people. And today I wonder, it moved some, but if we produce a montage of this is what's being said, you still get people watching it saying, yeah, the person who showed that on his podcast or produced that, they're just liars.

47:40

That's not happening. And I'm like, wait, what? Like, didn't you not see? That's what I don't understand, where it's like, my eyes must be deceiving me.

47:49

I did not actually see that. Yeah, John, I had a pastor who said those videos, like your videos,

47:59

John, he goes, they're just lies. And I said, well, would you sit down and let's watch it together.

48:04

And would you demonstrate to me where there's lies? No, I can't do that. Of course you can't do that.

48:10

Or I'll hear them say about your montages. Those are just cuts taken out of context.

48:16

And I will always say to them, well, why don't we look at the full video and you explain to me where John is wrong on this.

48:24

No one will take me up on this. I've never had anyone either take me up on it. Yeah, I've said the same thing.

48:30

It's easier to say he lies. Yeah, the evidence is there, John. You know it as well as I do.

48:36

The podcast are there, the videos are there. And now we have the books. I mean, they've written it.

48:42

It's in writing. It has been for several years. All you have to do is read this stuff. And when you read it, it's absolutely full of woke nonsense and CRT terminology.

48:53

A fellow trustee of mine made this point in one of our committee meetings about a year ago.

48:59

He wanted to, he had suggested that we bring Matt Hall and perhaps

49:05

Jarvis Williams into our committee meeting in the next trustee meeting so that we could have a discussion about this.

49:11

Because it seemed to him that the direction was certainly going in woke. It seemed to him that even though we're denying that we're teaching

49:19

CRT, we're not. And of course, I'm thinking, okay, well, great. Finally, I may have another trustee on my side.

49:25

And he made the comment. And he talked about the documentary hypothesis being taught when he was in seminary, which was probably about the same time

49:33

I was. And so he said, you know, the thing about that is that seminaries then were denying they were teaching it, but they were using the vocabulary of the documentary hypothesis.

49:43

They were teaching the concepts of it. They were coming to the same conclusions. And he says, when

49:50

I look at what we're doing, what we're teaching here in the classroom, when I look at the class notes, when I see the video of Matt Hall saying

49:57

I'm a racist and will be a racist until I die, it sounds like we're using the vocabulary of CRT, using the concepts of CRT and coming to the same conclusions as CRT.

50:09

If you're doing that, then it sounds to me like you're teaching CRT. So that was plainly said, and it was said by a gentleman who

50:19

I think has a lot of respect at the seminary, pastors of a large church, all that sort of thing, but nothing was ever done about that.

50:27

In other words, that suggestion was ignored. We came back to the next trustee meeting, a meeting with Dr.

50:35

Hall and Dr. Williams didn't happen. And it's sort of like, well, just let's sweep it under the rug. And if nobody says anything else about it, we'll just press on.

50:43

We've got to hold them accountable. Yeah, and remember in a faculty meeting, Al Mohler gets up and says, critical race theory sees the problem of racism in America correctly.

50:56

He believes in systemic racism. So he'll talk about every structure in America is tainted with racism.

51:04

And you don't even have to have a racist in your organization, but it's still tainted with racism.

51:10

He believes in the problem of whiteness and all of these things. He made that very clear in a faculty meeting.

51:16

So he says, I don't agree with all of their solutions, but he clearly agrees with some of their solutions.

51:25

And he clearly believes that CRT sees the problem correctly. Well, once you say it sees it correctly, you really are believing in CRT.

51:35

And by the way, who's the real Al Mohler? Mohler himself said, judge me based upon whom

51:41

I platform. We know who he platforms, Kevin Smith, Jarvis Williams, Curtis Woods, people like Sam Albury.

51:51

We know who this man platforms. Okay, Jonathan Pennington. Yeah. So we know who he platforms.

51:59

And by the way, if you stand up against it, we know who he deplatforms as well.

52:05

Yeah, I'm talking to him, yeah. Well, this is all probably discouraging to some extent to Southern Baptists who want to take back their denomination for orthodoxy.

52:16

And I would just pitch it to you, Dr. Rush, as far as again, strategy.

52:23

And well, as a trustee, I'd say at Southern Seminary, let's take small bites instead of let's take back the whole convention.

52:30

You know, what would you like to see from people who are Southern Baptist members?

52:37

How should they interact with Southern Seminary? Or what would you like them to see as a trustee there? Well, I mean, it would be helpful.

52:45

Yeah, I think it would be helpful if, you know, people would contact me. I get very few contacts other than people that I know who know where I stand.

52:56

I get very few contacts from people saying, you know, what's going on at Southern Seminary?

53:02

What can we do about helping it? What they could do is write the president a letter and say that they disagree with his direction and that they want to know why.

53:11

It certainly appears that there's this duplicity of, we're not teaching

53:17

CRT, yet the evidence is that you are. I think that needs to be called into question.

53:23

And again, as far as the strategy goes for saving the convention, you have to go to the convention and vote, but you gotta know, you gotta be informed.

53:34

It's just like going to the polls and voting for political candidates. If you don't print a sample ballot, if you don't look at who's running and you don't check out what their platforms are and you don't know what they believe, you don't know which one to vote for because we're still electing a lot of RINOs.

53:52

And so it's the same thing in the Southern Baptist Convention but it would be helpful for people to contact the trustees.

53:59

Now, there've been motions at the convention to make trustee contact information more available.

54:06

It is not easy to find out who the trustees are and how to contact them.

54:12

But certainly the trustees in your state convention, if you're in a state convention, find out who your representatives are on those entity boards that you've got concerns about.

54:23

I mean, I have contacted our Georgia representatives on the ERLC and one of them who recently was replaced, he finished his term and he was as frustrated at the

54:34

ERLC as I have been at Southern because he couldn't get any backup. And he would say, well, Tom, I'm doing everything

54:39

I can but I'm just one person. My congressman is very conservative and he gets a lot of heat for not changing everything in Washington.

54:50

And I have to remind people, he's one of 435 congressmen, he can't do it by himself.

54:56

And so it's the same thing in the Southern Baptist Convention one conservative trustee cannot make a difference.

55:02

I can be a thorn in their side, but beyond that, there's no power to act unilaterally.

55:09

We need people to contact the trustees, we need them to contact the entity heads.

55:15

I'm not on the board at Southeastern, but I'm an alumni of Southeastern and Danny Aiken is fully aware of where Tom Rush stands and how

55:23

I feel about what he's doing there. It concerns me. In fact, I told him I was embarrassed to be an alumni of Southeastern Seminary.

55:32

I'm a former president of the alumni association and I'm embarrassed to be an alumni of Southeastern.

55:40

So if we don't contact them and let them know, I mean, they're being patted on the back and told how great they are by the majority of people that are actually contacting them.

55:51

Yeah, that's probably, that's a good point. I hadn't really thought of that, that they're probably, the wind is blowing in the direction that they're going from the emails and messages they're getting.

56:01

So yeah, that's a good idea. So is there a way to get the list of the trustees at Southern Seminary for people?

56:10

Or, I mean, I can put your email in the info section for this podcast, but. You're welcome to do that.

56:17

Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, so I'm assuming there's gotta be a list out there somewhere that you probably have access to.

56:24

Maybe you can't release that, but we ran into the same thing at Southeastern where someone wanted to contact all the trustees and you go to their website and you're like, there is no way to contact, you just know their names.

56:38

Right, right. So - And again, that's a motion that's been presented at the convention several years ago.

56:44

I mean, I thought about presenting a motion that every single trustee at every entity be removed and I'll be the first one to volunteer to go and let's start all over again.

56:55

You know, that's really, we need to clean house because the way the process works, it would take 10, 15 years to begin to see a difference.

57:05

Right. Which means you gotta, you know, hunker down and get in there for the long haul.

57:14

You know, generally wars are not short, they have to be fought. And this is a spiritual war. We're talking about a spiritual battle and the results and I think the impact is critical.

57:25

I agree, I agree. You know, John, I think that pastors need to start again, lifting up their voices about what's going on at the seminaries, make their voice heard.

57:37

Money, they need to stop funding the seminaries until they come clean and start cleaning up the mess.

57:45

And so by pastors speaking out, by faithful lay people speaking out about this, that's what's going to help turn the seminaries around maybe a little bit, hopefully.

57:57

But the Southern Baptist Convention as a conservative, let me just say this. We can't sit there and say, we're gonna go hire these political consultants.

58:05

We can't use tactics like that in order to turn back the Southern Baptist Convention.

58:11

You know, bring in some people who ran some political campaign somewhere. This is a recipe for failure.

58:18

Number two, we must quit calling these people good brothers. These are false teachers who are pushing critical race theory,

58:29

Me Too -ism, all of these things. There's a real distinction about what's the true gospel.

58:35

There are at least two gospels going on in the Southern Baptist Convention. And we as conservatives need to be more clear about this.

58:44

Stop blurring the lines and calling these guys good brothers as if they're just misguided people.

58:49

I'm sorry, these are leaders in our seminaries. These are leaders in our convention. These are people who know what they're doing.

58:57

Our new president, he is very confusing in his words, but listen, he's doing this purposely.

59:05

He's a deceiver. He's a false teacher. And until we're clear and make a clear distinction between the true gospel and what's going on in our seminaries, what's going on in the convention, and we call these guys good brothers, we're just confusing the matter as well.

59:21

We must make it clear that there is a false gospel going on and it's being pushed by these false teachers.

59:29

And we need to say it like it is and tell the people of Southern Baptist Convention, choose you this day whom you're gonna serve.

59:37

That's what we need to be doing. One little caveat there, because that was excellent, Dr. Fuller, with Bart Barber, because I know you just referred to him as one of the false teachers.

59:46

One of the things that I saw online, I was doing some research on him, yeah, he is like Jell -O.

59:53

I mean, it's just different positions on different things depending on what's in vogue and pushing the needle left, certainly.

01:00:02

But one of the, I really wanted to find out what he believed about the gospel. So I was looking at what he has said about the gospel on Twitter.

01:00:10

And so Lee Brand had made a statement about that there's confusion over the term gospel in the

01:00:18

Southern Baptist Convention, or at least there's a watering down of that term. And Bart Barber says, what is he talking about where?

01:00:25

Give me one example. In other words, that's not happening. And when I saw that,

01:00:30

I thought, Bart Barber, I don't have evidence in front of me that shows me that he's mixing works with grace or anything like that, but he can't see when it's happening right in front of him or he refuses to see it.

01:00:44

And it's like, whether or not he's a false teacher, I'm like, he's covering for them.

01:00:49

So effectively, it's the same thing. You're like, I don't really care whether or not he's propagating that false gospel, but because he's allowing others to come in and he'll probably be appointing others to these positions who are.

01:01:04

So what difference does it make that he has a broken compass there? And that's what

01:01:11

I think the Southern Baptist Convention is full of more than even false teachers is people who don't really care.

01:01:18

It's not the priority for them, whether or not the purity of the gospel is intact. What matters to them is what you said,

01:01:25

Dr. Rush, it's their paycheck. It's keeping the gravy train rolling. And that is the thing.

01:01:31

That's the broken thing that God has to fix that. God has to do something.

01:01:39

Don, let me say something about this because Russell alluded several times to this

01:01:44

Me Too movement that's going on. And what we had at the convention this time, of course, was the task force's recommendations on what the

01:01:54

Southern Baptist Convention should do in reaction to this. And here's the thing. It was, we have to do something.

01:02:01

And if you do a knee -jerk reaction, oftentimes what you do is worse than having done nothing at all.

01:02:08

Do we need to respond to the sex abuse problem? Yes, we do. But we need to do it in a just and biblical manner and not a knee -jerk reaction.

01:02:19

And so it was all orchestrated for the platform to control the recommendations of the report and the resolution.

01:02:28

Resolution number six was on lament and repentance for sexual abuse.

01:02:34

And so several of us were at the microphones trying to speak against resolution six. I'd already voted against the task force's recommendations and the way the platform made it sound,

01:02:44

John, if you voted against this, you hate women. Right. You're in favor of protecting sexual abusers.

01:02:53

We know that that's not the case. We just think there's a better way to run the railroad. We think there's a better way to do this.

01:03:00

One of the things that has not been pointed out in any of this research that Guidepost did and that the task force in terms of their recommendations, no one has said, thank

01:03:10

God for the thousands upon thousands of churches and pastors who have handled sex abuse correctly, who have treated victims with love and respect, victims that are truly victims, right, where there's been clear and obvious evidence.

01:03:27

They've turned the information over to the authorities as they should and are required to do. Thank God for those people that have done it right.

01:03:34

And when we look at the percentages, the percentages of the people that have been impacted by sex abuse in terms of Guidepost, you know, they're researching it out.

01:03:46

It's very small based on the size of our convention. But the inconsistencies that were in resolution six just really bothered me.

01:03:56

Let me just give you one example of that. One of the, whereas it says our institutional responses at times have caused irreparable personal harm to survivors of sexual abuse, leaving them feeling isolated, powerless, and without a voice.

01:04:11

Then they turn around in one of the resolves and say that amid our failures, we express our hope in Christ who never fails to care for those who have been harmed, that he watches over the vulnerable members of our churches, that he can bring healing to survivors of sexual abuse.

01:04:28

Well, I want to say, which is it? Do we believe the Christ who can bring healing or do we believe that sexual abuse is irreparable harm?

01:04:36

That's completely inconsistent. But if you stand up and you speak against that on the convention floor, you're going to be looked at as if you're a bigot, as if you don't care.

01:04:45

And then we turned around and we take and set up a fund, $3 million, which is coming from Send Relief for victims of sexual abuse.

01:04:57

John, if you were to Google Southern Baptist Convention and sex abuse, you would come up with dozens of law firms who are seeking victims of sexual abuse.

01:05:09

And then to say from the platform that the money coming from Send Relief is not coming from your cooperative program, our missions giving, is an absolute joke.

01:05:22

It's a lie. The North American Mission Board only has three sources of income. The cooperative program, the

01:05:28

Annie Armstrong Easter offering, and their investments. Now they've become real estate magnates and so they may have a good bit of money that they've made on their investments.

01:05:36

But the bottom line is the money that's given to NAM is given to them to do church planning and missions work.

01:05:44

And so if you think the money that they're going to take and set aside and create this pot to give money to victims of sexual abuse, if you think that's not going to come out of your missions dollars, you're just foolish.

01:05:56

Well, they're learning from the federal government on that. My phone's been blowing up next to me. I just want to get your reaction real quick.

01:06:02

Roe v. Wade was just overturned. What do you think? Well, praise the Lord that it was.

01:06:08

Yeah, I just, and I was ignoring it. And then I'm like, why am I getting so many messages? And so this is a momentous occasion.

01:06:16

I'm shocked that this just happened. I think it's a day that I thought would never come to be honest with you,

01:06:21

John. I never thought the Supreme Court would ever overturn Roe v. Wade.

01:06:27

And so, but let me just say this, the Supreme Court needs to go further and say what is obvious that the unborn has every right as the born has.

01:06:39

And therefore all abortion should be abolished in every nook and cranny of the

01:06:47

United States. They should, the unborn should have the full legal rights as born people do.

01:06:54

Again, the Southern Baptist Convention are very confused about this. Apparently if a mother kills her children one day before birth, she's a victim.

01:07:05

One day afterward, she's a murderer. This is the way our ethics people think in the

01:07:10

Southern Baptist Convention, it's twisted. Just like the Me Too movement. Remember, a lot of this is not true sexual abuse, it's consenting adults.

01:07:21

It's what we're doing on some of these issues is we're justifying adultery. We're throwing out the seventh commandment is what we're doing.

01:07:29

And let me just tell you, the case that they really paraded in that guidepost was of course,

01:07:38

Den Hollander and her defense of Jennifer Lyell. I'm sorry, starting at 26 years old, a 12 year relationship.

01:07:47

The Southern Baptist, not only do we not know what a pastor is, we don't know what adultery is either. Yeah. How do you feel about your votes for Donald Trump now?

01:07:56

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good today. Kevin Smith is not happy probably, but not about the abortion thing being overturned, but about your votes for Trump.

01:08:05

And it's just amazing. Well, if we hadn't have voted for Trump, we wouldn't have had the justices that we have.

01:08:10

Bingo. They made this great decision. That's correct. And did I believe that they would? I'm with Russell.

01:08:16

No, I didn't think that they would, but they did. But here's the problem. We have to now operate in a post -Roe environment.

01:08:23

And this is the leadership that we're getting from the ERLC. Oh my goodness. You actually have it.

01:08:29

I haven't seen the hard copy. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And I thought when I first heard that statement, making abortion unnecessary,

01:08:35

I thought it was simply Brent Leatherwood making a tweet and just being brain dead like he is.

01:08:42

I'm sorry if that's offensive, but my soul and body, that is absolutely ridiculous to make that statement.

01:08:47

Then I realized that that not only is a statement that he made in a tweet, it's actually the theme for a conference that they're gonna do about how we're gonna get along in a post -Roe environment in our nation.

01:09:01

We need equal protection. And people say, well, we don't wanna...

01:09:08

Well, here's what he said. This was what he said at the convention. I'm quoting him as best I can. Here's the reality.

01:09:13

You're never gonna get me to say that I wanna put mothers behind bars or throw them behind bars. I don't remember exactly how he worded it.

01:09:20

If you murder your child, you're no longer a mother. You're a murderer. We don't want mothers behind bars.

01:09:26

We want murderers behind bars. Now, the Bible and our law code recognize degrees of culpability and murder.

01:09:35

We have first degree murder, second degree murder, third degree murder. We have manslaughter. We have a negligent homicide.

01:09:44

We have involuntary manslaughter. The example that they always bring up, John, is the young gal that's been sex trafficked and her pimp takes her and forces her to have an abortion.

01:09:55

Nobody in their right mind would see that young girl as anything other than a victim, nor would we want her to be behind bars.

01:10:02

But you could go and you could Google it. You can see the videos of women shouting their abortions.

01:10:08

There's even been some recently who have made videos saying they would get pregnant intentionally to kill a baby.

01:10:16

That's sick. Yeah. And the unborn deserve equal protection under the law.

01:10:23

And so I'm concerned if this is the kind of leadership that we get, if we're gonna make abortion unnecessary and another term that Leatherwood uses, unthinkable, well, that means if we have to make it unnecessary, that means that he thinks it is necessary under some circumstances.

01:10:40

Abortion's never necessary and it's always murder. Yeah. And so we as Southern Baptists have to stop funding that.

01:10:48

Now, there was an attempt at the convention to disestablish the ERLC, to eliminate it.

01:10:55

And of course, there were more votes, I think, to do that than they realized on the platform that they were going to see, but that failed.

01:11:04

And it would have had to had a two -thirds majority two years in a row. What we can do on the convention floor and what

01:11:11

I'm intending to work towards in New Orleans is to, when the executive committee presents the budget, to amend the budget to eliminate every single dime that goes to the

01:11:22

ERLC. That is the only way to stop it is to take the money away from them. And I think that there needs to be an uprising about that.

01:11:30

If for no other reason, that is a good reason for Southern Baptists to go to New Orleans and to defund the

01:11:36

ERLC. Well, I knew when Roe was overturned, which just happened, that was going to trigger the beginning of the war over abortion, not the end.

01:11:47

Right. Because now it goes to the states and every state is going to have, well, most states are going to have a fight on their hands.

01:11:55

And even in very red pro -life states, like where you live,

01:12:01

Tom, I'm sure there's probably going to be some kind of a fight and it's going to be over things like exceptions and the punitive nature of the penalty for it.

01:12:12

And all these things now even are going to be debated. And so having

01:12:18

Southern Baptists who are in the ERLC who don't seem to understand that this is actually murder, just like any other murder, is going to be one of the things hampering even political conservatives in some of these places.

01:12:34

Like they did in Louisiana recently. Exactly. Louisiana, I think, was a pretty good law and here comes the

01:12:40

ERLC arguing against it. Along with other pro -life organizations. And I would say about Brent Leatherwood, he's not pro -life with exception, he's pro -abortion with exceptions.

01:12:54

That's a strong statement, yeah. But I can see why you would make it. Yeah, I mean, that's a ridiculous...

01:13:00

I mean, it almost looks silly. I mean, it looks silly under any circumstance, but even in this environment where Roe v.

01:13:05

Wade was just underturned, to have a conference in the Southern Baptist Convention, the conservative convention or denomination supposedly, make abortion unnecessary.

01:13:16

We have the momentum and they're still playing major defense, if not capitulation.

01:13:22

I mean, it's just weird to me. Like, who are you trying to please? What are you trying to gain here?

01:13:29

Well, I, for one, regret that I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 at this point.

01:13:36

I voted third party and I just couldn't do it at that point. I did the last time, but I'm realizing now,

01:13:43

I mean, this is one of the guys... And not to sing his praises too much, because he's a man and he has some great, very publicly obvious flaws, but he kept his word on this.

01:13:55

And so it is a wonderful day and a day of rejoicing that this will at least significantly reduce the number of children who are killed in the womb.

01:14:08

So, well, we've gone over an hour now. I appreciate you both for joining me.

01:14:14

Any final thoughts you want to leave with people who might be watching or listening to this? Unless the pastors of the

01:14:20

Southern Baptist Convention have a fire lit under them. The Southern Baptist Convention is, again, like I said a year ago,

01:14:27

John, it's over. And again, it's going to take the hand of God to turn the

01:14:33

Southern Baptist around. We are an apostate denomination or a convention, excuse me.

01:14:39

We're an apostate convention right now. Watching what I saw at the Southern... And again, I wasn't there personally, but what happened at the

01:14:46

Southern Baptist Convention did, shows how fast that the rot, that the apostasy is working.

01:14:55

It's working far faster than I thought it would. And so the Southern Baptist Convention is in terrible situation.

01:15:02

If the pastors do not wake up and the church leaders do not wake up, there's no way to recover it.

01:15:09

And again, let's stop talking about using, bringing in political consultants.

01:15:16

If the pastors will not get concerned enough to do anything and to cry out against the wickedness going on, then we've got the leaders we deserve.

01:15:27

Well, John, let me say in closing, I just want my Southern Baptist pastors, my fellow

01:15:34

Southern Baptist pastors to get themselves informed. Get on the

01:15:39

Conservative Baptist Network mailing list, you know, the email, get the email from them.

01:15:45

Listen to what they're saying. Listen to John Harris's podcast. Listen to other, you know, read the discernment blogs and be aware.

01:15:55

Do discernment blogs always get it right? No, nobody ever always gets it right.

01:16:00

But they're pointing out things that we need to be looking into. And I just want to encourage you.

01:16:06

And I wanna say this to all of my evangelical brethren out there that are standing for the truth and standing on God's word.

01:16:15

The gates of hell will not prevail against the true church. The Southern Baptist Convention doesn't have to continue to exist.

01:16:23

God's plan and purpose for this world are not gonna fall apart because the Southern Baptist Convention does.

01:16:29

It would be a shame and it would be awful for that to happen. But God's purpose and plan is gonna go on.

01:16:37

If you're saved, you're still gonna be saved. And so keep championing the truth. Keep preaching the truth to your local congregation.

01:16:44

Don't give that up. Don't give up the ship. Continue to stand for the truth and speak the truth from your pulpit.

01:16:52

Encourage your people to speak the truth to their friends and family. Keep pointing people to Jesus and keep pressing on for the

01:16:58

Lord. Well, on that note, you can find both Tom Rush and Russell Fuller on Facebook.

01:17:03

I know they're fairly regularly active there and also at the theology classroom.

01:17:10

Is it russelljfuller .com? How do people find that? russelljfuller .com. Why did I say Jack? russelljfuller .com.

01:17:17

And you can go - I'm your sponsor. I'm your sponsor. You can sign up there for next semester,

01:17:24

I guess, with - Yes, absolutely. And I know you both do things there.

01:17:30

Are you both offering courses yourself that you're teaching? Yeah, I'll be teaching evangelism this fall.

01:17:36

Would love to have pastors that join me for that. And if they wanna know more about my ministry, how to get ahold of me, my website is tread,

01:17:43

T -R -E -A -D, ministries .org. Okay, treadministries .org. And so you can go and even use it for your church.

01:17:53

If you're looking for resources to help train people at your church, you can go to theology classroom and russelljfuller .com

01:18:00

and sign up there. And you get to ask questions to both Dr. Fuller and Dr.

01:18:05

Rush. And I know you have other faculty there who are - It's seminary level stuff, but without all the ribbons and honestly the headache that you have to go through to be in seminary.

01:18:17

So it's just the knowledge. It's just the training. So go check that out. And I know we haven't finalized anything.

01:18:25

In fact, we're very early in the planning stage here, but we're looking at doing a men's conference this fall and having

01:18:33

Dr. Fuller come out and talk about, we haven't decided yet, but someone, maybe a figure from the

01:18:38

Old Testament. And so that should be really good. And I'll open that up to people on the podcast who are listening and want to come out.

01:18:46

And it'll, of course, probably be in upstate New York or Pennsylvania or something. It'll be in the Northeast, but we're going to make that available.

01:18:54

And we'd love to see you there. And thank you so much once again for joining me, Dr. Fuller, Dr. Rush, and look forward to when we can talk again sometime.