SHEPHERDS FOR SALE - HOW EVANGELICAL LEADERS TRADED THE TRUTH FOR A LEFTIST AGENDA by Megan Basham

Hello, and thank you for listening to the

Testing the Spirits Podcast. In this episode we're going to be talking about Megan Basham's new book, Shepherds for Sale, How Evangelical Leaders Traded the

Truth for a Leftist Agenda. I have my copy right here and I want to share with you a few things from the introduction.

I haven't read through the whole book, maybe I'll do more videos as I read through, but I've been following this story for a while.

I've listened to several podcasts that Megan Basham has been on. Unfortunately, it seems like the host of these podcasts, they're just making

Megan Basham defend herself, and it's like, I want to hear about the book, but she does have to defend herself because she's calling out some pretty big names.

Tim Keller, Russell Moore, Rick Warren, J .D. Greer, and obviously these men are not going to say, hey,

Megan Basham is right, we're totally compromised, don't listen to us. So she's coming under a lot of scrutiny, and whenever you stand up for biblical truth, you're going to be vilified, so Megan Basham knows what she's getting into.

I'm glad she wrote the book, I've been following these stories for years. If you've been following evangelical news, you probably already know to a large degree what she's going to be talking about in the book.

It's a very important work, it's on the back, it's promoted by John MacArthur, Vodie Bauckham, Ben Shapiro, so some pretty big names on the other side supporting it.

She starts the book, the introduction, by telling the story of James and Bailey Anderson.

This couple, they attended a supposedly evangelical church in California, in Los Angeles, and the women in this church invited

Mrs. Anderson to march in the 2017 Women's March, remember the pink hat march?

March for feminism, abortion, LGBT, every left -wing cause under the sun. So these women in the church invited

Mrs. Anderson to attend the Women's March, and long story short, they left that church, ended up in a church back home, in the

Bible Belt, and they discovered the same thing was happening there. So the compromise is everywhere, and I've seen it myself.

And this really hit home for me. I read this statement, it's on page 16 in the introduction.

Megan Basham mentions in his book, The Devil and Karl Marx, political science professor

Paul Kengor describes the process of the Communist Party USA between the 1920s and 1950s to deliberately infiltrate mainline

Protestant churches and to woo the pastors to their socialist program.

Our church used to be part of the Congregationalist denomination, and it was in that same time period, 1940s, 1950s, that the denomination leaders were telling the local ministers do not preach about the blood of Christ.

They wanted to basically take the cross, take the heart of the gospel out of Christianity and replace it with the real work, which is social justice.

So long story short, many of the historic mainline Protestant denominations, the

Episcopalians, the Methodists, I live in New England, these are the churches that have the rainbow flag out front.

A lot of their pastors would openly identify as socialists. So this has already happened, leftism has taken over the historic

Protestant churches. Now it's starting to take over the Evangelical churches and the Bible churches and the

Southern Baptist Convention, which the Southern Baptist Convention is supposedly the largest

Evangelical denomination in the country. And yet their former president, J .D. Greer, once said in a sermon from Romans 1, he concluded that Christians should be the fiercest supporters of gay rights.

That's the exact opposite of what Romans 1 says. So whether it's J .D. Greer or some of these other guys, all of a sudden, what are they doing?

They're trading the truth for a leftist agenda. That's clearly happening.

And here's the thing about Karl Marx, Karl Marx hated Christianity and he understood

I think what the devil understands. You can attack the church from the outside and have limited success, but if you can infiltrate and dismantle the church from within, you're going to have a lot more success.

So this couple, James and Bailey Anderson, they leave their church in California and they figure, well, it's

California, what do you expect? They end up in this church in the Bible belt and some really interesting things here in the introduction.

They end up in this church and they realize it's a seeker -sensitive church.

So Megan Basham describes the seeker -sensitive model this way, meaning that the worship style is pop and rock music, followed by a sermon that focuses on practical life improvement.

So as I often talk about, the rock concert followed by the motivational speaker. And it's all designed to not offend.

So that unbelievers, when they visit the church, they're not offended. Well, in order to not offend people, especially unbelievers, you can't talk about two -thirds of the

Bible, maybe even more. So you have to ignore biblical truth and just give them some self -help message about your best life now or something like that.

So they realize that the pastor of this seeker -sensitive church, the pastor would not even mention sin.

He would not even talk about sin. Instead, he just talked about our brokenness.

So he wouldn't even use the word sin and later he implied that it is unloving for believers to call homosexuality or even transgenderism, to call it sin, is very unloving.

Of course, this is what Tim Keller said, the founder of the Gospel Coalition. He said, it's very misleading even to call homosexuality a sin.

Very misleading. Shouldn't do that. J .D. Greer, again, he said that the

Bible only whispers about sexual sin. In other words, LGBT, that's not a big deal.

And this is what they're doing, these people that are exchanging biblical truth for the leftist agenda, critical race theory, wokeness, and all the rest.

They're trying to downplay the important issues that are biblical issues, moral issues.

And the two issues that Christians have cared about the most, historically, are abortion and homosexuality.

In the past few generations, those have been the main issues. Here's the thing. This is kind of the crux of the issue.

Megan Basham talks about how the evangelical voting bloc in the United States is the most powerful voting bloc.

So in order for the leftists to get their agenda through, they have to destroy, or at least split, the evangelical voting bloc.

That way, if you can get these big -name leaders to downplay the traditional issues and get people more interested in welfare and climate change and maybe some left -wing issues, then all of a sudden, now more and more evangelicals will vote for the progressive candidate.

And that's the goal, right? So anyways, back to this couple,

James and Bailey Anderson, they realize their pastor won't even use the word sin.

He talks about brokenness, he's defending homosexuality, the sermons are not biblical, the straw that broke the camel's back.

One Sunday, the worship leader told the congregation that God went looking for Adam and Eve after they ate the apple because God wanted to tell them that, quote, there's nothing you could ever do to separate you from my love.

So that's not what God said, obviously, and that's not actually true because sin does separate us from God.

Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, if you remember, but according to this worship pastor, there's nothing you could ever do to separate you from the love of God.

So in other words, God is love because God is love. I mean, it sounds like universalism.

Everyone and everything, gay, straight, communist, it doesn't even matter because God's so loving, he'll accept everyone in the end.

I mean, that's what it sounds like to me. They turned to each other, this couple, and they realized, they said, this is straight heresy, we can't do this anymore.

They left their church and they realized that this problem, it's not just in California, it is literally everywhere, and I can tell you that's true.

I've seen this locally, it is happening everywhere. So, pastors are compromising the truth, and it's these left -wing billionaires,

George Soros, left -wing organizations, they are actually, you know, Megan Basham has discovered, they're actually donating money to evangelical causes, to evangelical organizations, so some pastors might actually be on the take, others are just compromising for other reasons.

But she mentions how in 2020, the largest foundation in the world, the U .S. federal government, leveraged the influence of many well -known ministry leaders to promote its

COVID -19 lies and guilt the average churchgoer into submitting to authoritarian lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

She says the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College went so far as to partner formerly with the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, setting up the website,

Coronavirus in the Church. Anytime churches and ministers are working hand -in -hand with the federal government,

I mean, this is not a good thing. And I think it was actually Franklin Graham who said that you should take the vaccine, why?

Because Jesus would, which to me is just crazy to say that Jesus would take the vaccine.

So Megan asked the question, why have so many well -known evangelical institutions and pastors, why are they seemingly promoting this leftist agenda?

She says, are they dupes or are they deceivers? And at some point, it doesn't even matter anymore.

The Bible talks about those who are deceived and they're being deceived. There's some people that are deceiving others because they're deceived themselves.

Just because you convince yourself you're doing the right thing. If you're doing the wrong thing, it doesn't matter what's going on in your mind.

I personally think that most of them are deceivers. They know what they're doing.

I mean, how can you not know? Megan goes on to quote Rick Warren. Rick Warren boasts about being a global influencer to the

United Nations and the World Economic Forum. So Rick Warren actually went to Davos, took part in the

World Economic Forum, and he brags about it. I mean, what does that tell you? Russell Moore. He talks about how he was invited by President Obama to the

White House Christmas party. I think of King Herod and John the

Baptist. John the Baptist wouldn't have been invited to his party. Instead, Herod had

John killed. But someone like Obama, Russell Moore gets invited to the party.

So obviously, a lot of these big -name evangelical leaders, Russell Moore is the editor -in -chief of Christianity Today.

They're on the other side. Long story short, Megan Basham is calling out some of these big -name leaders.

She talks about the 11th commandment. So some of these big -name evangelicals, they circle the wagons.

They call the people in the pews racist. They aren't afraid to attack the people in the pew, but they all defend each other.

This is sort of the unwritten code in what is called Big Eva, big evangelicalism.

These big -name leaders, they will not disagree with each other openly. So they support each other, even when they're saying unbiblical things.

This is called the 11th commandment, thou shalt not speak ill of another Christian leader.

But they will speak ill of Megan Basham. So this is an important book, an important work.

I hope you'll check it out. If not, you can see what Megan Basham is saying about it on some podcasts that are online.

But I think this is an important work. I'm interested in reading the rest of it. Thanks for listening, and until next time, may the