SBC- Behind the Scenes with Justin Peters, Pastor Casey Butner, and Alan Beach

Apologetics Live

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00:20

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

00:36

Well, good evening out there. And surprise, surprise, it's no

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Andrew tonight. It is no Pastor Justin tonight, which I am actually very sad about.

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But I'm here. So that's cool. And I'm here with Alan Beach, dear friend, and we're going to talk about who he is here in just a moment.

00:56

So one of these days, I promise we will have Andrew, Justin and myself on the show on the same day.

01:03

I'm looking forward to that again. I've been so busy this year speaking and different things.

01:09

So but tonight we've got a great show. Before I get into that, I want to talk about just a couple of housekeeping items.

01:15

Number one, next week, Andrew has been challenged to a debate. Now, there are some guys you don't challenge in debates, right?

01:23

There's some guys you stay away from. Andrew's one of them. So this guy is he's got something coming.

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It's a he's a Filipino who who who this is the topic is that Calvinism is useless and dangerous.

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And so he is going to be debating Andrew on on that topic. And so that's going to be a great show next week.

01:45

I can't wait. Actually, no, I'm sorry. It's not next week. Next week is Thanksgiving. So there is no show next week.

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The week after, it's going to be it's going to be the debate. So make sure you jump in and watch that.

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Pastor Justin Pierce is going to be moderating. I'll just be sitting in the background, probably laughing and enjoying the show.

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Then the week after that, December 9th, is having Bill McKeever, a good friend of Andrew's, who has a huge ministry speaking and how to do apologetics against Mormonism.

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And so Pastor Justin Pierce actually requested this because he's had a lot of Mormons moving into his town in Bristol, Tennessee.

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And so he's he's been wanting to brush up on his apologetics towards Muslim Muslims, towards Mormons.

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You can tell I'm all jacked up for the show tonight. Too much caffeine or something. I don't know. But but that's going to be

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December 9th. That'll be a real fun show. And then we've got some good ones that are in the works for the rest of the rest of the year here.

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But without further ado, I want to introduce our guest. I'm going to bring them all on right now.

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So good evening, gentlemen. Nice to see you. So I'm going to do a couple of quick introductions.

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I am like so hyper tonight. I don't get this. I've got like six months of pent up not being on Apologetics Live, I think is what it is.

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So so tonight we have, first of all, Alan Beach, dear friend who is a member of our church.

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He married my pseudo little sister from one of our employees. My wife and I just absolutely adore her.

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And Alan came in and swept her off her feet and married her. And a beautiful child together now.

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And I've gotten to know Alan and I just love him to death. And tonight we're bringing him in because we're talking about the

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SBC, as we saw in the show description. And he's got a lot of knowledge of the background of the SBC.

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And so I'm going to tell you about yourself for 30, 60 seconds. Yeah. So I was an associate pastor for a few years at a small

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Southern Baptist church. I left that ministry and joined in and became a church planter.

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And I did that for about two and a half years from 2016 into 2018, where I obviously give more input as we go on.

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Yeah, that's going to be fun. And then on the upper right of the screen,

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Pastor Casey Butner. So we met, it's probably been three or four years now, right?

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Mike, I'll never forget it. Mike Riddle and I sit in a hotel lobby as we were just about getting,

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I think we just got done teaching a creation class. And they were talking about creation and you kind of turn around, ask us a question.

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And it turned out you were actually on the right side on creation of the Bible. And not only that, you're on the right side of so many other things in the

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Bible. So that's a wonderful friendship for us. And so, yeah, if you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Yeah, sure. And to add a little bit of how we met, you know, I was kind of in disguise that morning. It was early.

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We're in a hotel lobby, eat breakfast, knowing those free continental things. And so I had not gotten ready yet.

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So I put up to bargain to cover up my uncombed hair and T -shirt that I'd slept in and jogging pants.

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And they were going public like that. But I figured I'd take one of my girls and go get breakfast early, you know, and bring some food back for the rest of the fam.

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And I hear two guys talking about creationism. And we just got back from taking a family trip to, you know, the

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Creation Museum with Ken Hamm. And so I'm like really piqued in my interest. And they're combining creationism and evangelism.

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And so I kind of sit back and think, all right, if these guys are, you know, the true blues, then

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I'm just going to kind of hover around. And one of these dudes is going to share Christ with me if they're if they're legit.

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And sure enough, Anthony, you just leaned over and you started talking to me and shared the gospel.

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And I concur. You got the gospel right. It's kind of like Paul going over to Jerusalem. Yeah, we got the gospel right.

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Give each other a thumbs up. So that was pretty cool. And it's been off to the races since then.

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So that was really, really neat. And I was actually. Oh, your camera just cut out.

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There we go. But OK. All right.

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So I had the privilege of pastoring Beulah Baptist Church in Winter Garden. Sorry. Yeah. Your video's lagging for just a for just a moment there,

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Casey. But, you know, so you're what's unique about you is you were raised Southern Baptist. I mean, from from a young age and tapped to be a pastor eventually.

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And so you'll bring some some fun stuff to the table. And I don't know who this guy is at the bottom of the screen.

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So you might want to introduce yourself to everybody. My name is

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Justin Peters and I'm in full time evangelism, travel, preach and teach.

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I'm most known for engaging the word of faith, New Apostolic Reformation, prosperity, gospel stuff.

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But it's not my only interest. I have my first commitment is to exposition, expositing

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God's word. And like Casey, I, too, have a Southern Baptist background.

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In fact, I was I was going to a Southern Baptist church, I guess you could say, nine months before I was born.

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One of those kind of situations, been in an SBC church from birth all the way up until I was 37 years old.

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And I graduated from Southern Baptist Seminary, Southwestern and Fort Worth, Texas. Two degrees from that.

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So I'm no longer Southern Baptist, but I definitely have that background. And so I guess

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I can kind of work my way around the SBC issues as well, to an extent.

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Right on. My video was a little bit lagging there a minute ago. And but I wanted to say as well that I'm privileged to be able to pastor

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Beulah Baptist Church here in Winter Garden. That's what the website is there on the screen. So it's the western side of Orlando.

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And praise God, I have a wonderful wife that loves me and some awesome kids and a phenomenal church.

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So I, too, Southern Baptist raised educated degrees, you know, such from Southern Baptist Institutes, New Orleans and everything.

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And so like we were talking about before the show, it's amazing how much culture there is in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So much of that. So much. It's one of those things that I didn't see while I was in it.

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I had to get out of it before I could really have some clarity on just how much that is a reality that Casey was talking about.

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How much cultural Christianity there is in the SBC. Well, I think what was interesting is that.

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So, Casey, I mean, you're in central Florida, your big SBC country. Right.

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And you're all SBC. You're your life. And I'll never forget. We were at Shepard's Conference together right before Shepard's Conference.

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Right. And and and I just kind of nonchalantly mentioned to you about the SBC and some of the issues. And you're like, what?

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I thought you were joking at first, but you didn't know. You didn't know anything about what was going on.

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And so, you know, I had to be the bearer of bad news. And then Andrew had to verify. But to your credit, right, you spent the next several weeks looking into it.

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And I remember you calling me after weeks after Shepard's Conference saying, man, I missed it.

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I don't know how I missed it, but I missed it. Right. And and you've been on a tear ever since then trying to get this fixed in your neck of the woods, which is which is awesome.

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We need more guys like you. The first step is inviting you guys to the church. So we've had a social justice seminar with you guys.

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So Andrew and Anthony, you guys did a great job with hosting a social justice seminar. And then the next step is to bring

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Justin Peters in. And so he'll really clean up the rest. That's right.

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So it was an honor to be at your church, brother. I enjoyed it very much. Yeah. So this is the pastor we did that for everyone listening.

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We did this conference back in in May at your church. Andrew, Justin and myself. And yeah,

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I had a blast down there. So, OK, well, let's let's get into it because people people wanted to to tune in to listen to this.

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I read an article. And so as I always do when I do shows, I do a lot of research because I want to make sure that I'm fully ready to go.

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And everybody else is we've got some direction for the show. There's an article written a little over a month ago called

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The Battle Between Southern Baptists is over bricks and bucks. Not one bad preacher written October 3rd by a guy named

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Mark Devine. I have no clue who he is. You got it right there, too. Yeah. So this is this is a fantastic, fantastic article.

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It's a it's a quick two pager. Type it in. Look it up. Find it later. But, you know, one of the things that fascinates me about this whole

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SBC thing is why why in an

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SBC that obviously has conservative roots, they've battled the battles over the years to to try to maintain its integrity.

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It seems like it's been conservative for quite some time. In fact, when when my wife and I left our old church, a non -denominal church that I got saved in back like eight years ago, we left and I specifically found a church that was a

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Baptist church. I'm like, I know these guys believe their Bibles. Right. I mean, of all the denominations, these guys believe the

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Bible. So we found a church through the nine marks website. And this is a nine marks church, so to speak.

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And it turned out to be an SBC church. And so we went there and and that's why we went.

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Right. And so to find out too many years later that there's all these issues that are going on in the background.

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But here's my thing. Why is it that that people who are liberal that join the

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SBC, why? Why don't you just go form your own rather than coming in and trying to take over the

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SBC? I don't I don't get this. Right. And I think this article says it says it really well.

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It says it says this and I'll just I'll quote it right out of it. It says there's there's a competition between Baptists to determine who shall inherit.

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Get this. The 30 billion dollars in assets controlled by SBC elites.

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Thirty billion dollars. Look, you want to have money.

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You want to do your thing. You can roll right into this old institution that is that's got a lot of money behind it.

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Roll right in and take it over. Right. And so it's it's incredible.

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And so atomic apologetics are our chicken man. John is saying, ah, but Anthony, but that's how they change from within.

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You're absolutely right. Organizations, countries. I mean, things always crumble from within for these very same reasons.

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And and this is really what the battle seems to be. That's at the end of this, at the end of the article, the conclusions.

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But make no mistake, the real fight within the largest Protestant denomination in America is not really about the plagiarism of one

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Alabama pastor. Right. Which is what everyone's focusing on right now. And it's and it's horrific. The struggles over which heirs shall inherit the enormous

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SBC estate. Baptists who respect the conservatives who built and own it or those who do not.

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I again, it's it's a wonderful article calling out what happened with with Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Danny Aiken, who started a kowtow to the liberals, started a kowtow to especially

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Matt Chandler and a few others that were going woke 10 years ago. Guys who were going liberal 10 years ago and kept it under wraps.

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And so you've got guys that pretended to be conservative and maybe still are pretending maybe they really are conservative.

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I don't know. It's hard to say, but these are the guys, your

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SBC elites who allowed the liberalism to fester in the background and allowed it to come in and infiltrate the way that it has in this recent round of liberalism.

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So I guess on that, I want to just open up the floor to you guys in terms of your knowledge about kind of what's going on right now.

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And if you do, you feel like the same connection that this guy's making is true. Oh, yeah.

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I mean, I'll go ahead and start for us. I definitely think that there is a direct connection with money.

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We have to acknowledge that the SBC has a lot of money, that money is tied up in a lot of different assets.

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And there is control to be had within the SBC that creates financial gain for some people.

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And it's unfortunate, really, that that's the case. But we

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I saw it even at a much smaller level within the associations that money was being utilized in many facets that I would say were not beneficial for churches within the

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SBC. Well, and I guess what's well, I don't know if Pastor Casey or Justin wanted to jump in.

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I mean, do you guys feel that same thing is an issue right now? Is that what the battle is really over?

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You know, the SBC historically has idolized bigness, numbers, buildings, attendance, number highs and such like that.

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And and so almost pridefully would refer to itself as the largest missions agency in the world.

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And in order to keep yourself on top, I think, you know, the pragmatists rip in as certainly catered towards trying to keep the numbers up, almost willing to do whatever it takes to get people in the doors.

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And in doing so, you're eventually going to cater to the crowd. Eventually, you're no longer going to be looking towards the sufficiency of Scripture.

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Eventually, you're going to change your ecclesiology as to why you do church and what you're doing.

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Eventually, you're going to take your focus off of Christ and put it on the people. And I think that guys like Robert Morris in Texas who have a youth -centered message, everything is is towards the person and not about Christ, essentially, you know, is the problem.

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And that stuff is just creeping in. And wokeness is just the latest, greatest thing that's shining.

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It's the latest dangling thing. You know, it's the latest fad. We have a church here in Central Florida, Discovery Church, that was one that was known for grabbing the latest wave, you know, whatever was the latest fad.

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And that gentleman that pastored that church for so long is now on staff at First Baptist Orlando with David Youth.

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And David Loveless is his name. And he was known for being a great speaker, but it was more or less about, you know, whatever people wanted to hear.

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It was great. And so the whole bait -and -switch thing, you know, was the issue there.

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So the pragmatic approach of trying to keep things afloat, that now is equated to wokeness.

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And, yeah, I would agree with you, Anthony. That's the issue. That's how it's getting in. Yeah. And obviously you mix in the issue of,

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I mean, Rick Warren, right, what we would consider, I think, the father of the emergent church movement and the business plan guy, right?

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I mean, you know, as my wife and I, like, help Dennis on the side, you know, just for free, just help him out in terms of business model.

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You know, there's like a checklist you go through in terms of making your business better, right?

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And there's a legitimate business model ethically done, all that kind of stuff, in the business world.

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But then it's like that model, right, this consulting model is taken, and it was taken into the church, right?

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And so the sufficiency of God in building his church, the sufficiency of God's word building his church, the sufficiency of God's word sustaining his church was now replaced by a business consulting model.

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Yeah. Right? And so on one hand, Rick Warren is emergent church movement. On the other hand, people are walking around with clipboards from Rick Warren behind the scenes.

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They're like, oh, got that one. Check now. Yeah, machines got that one now. Got that one. All right. There's a little book called

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This Little Church Went to the Market. It's a great read. It is. It's even an older read, but it nails exactly what you're talking about.

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Right. I mean, who needs God when you have the five Fs, the church grows, right? I mean, there are so many of these churches, and they'll slap it right on the front wall as you walk into the congregation or into the worship center.

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And it's the live, laugh, love or whatever their five letters are for their church growth.

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These business models that they take out into the world, they're just business models.

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That's all they are. They're not actually based in scripture most of the time. Most Southern Baptist churches are not only run like a business, but they're even structured like a business.

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They're structured like a company. The pastor basically serves as the CEO, and the deacons are kind of the board or whatever.

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It's a very worldly model. It's a business model that the vast majority of Southern Baptist churches have adopted.

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And what we're seeing today in the Southern Baptist Convention is what we're seeing in the broad spectrum of evangelicalism generally.

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But especially what we're seeing, whether it's social justice, egalitarianism, softening of stance on homosexuality.

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Of course, all that's kind of under the social justice umbrella. This soft charismaticism, all of this stuff, the woke, everything, all of it can be boiled down to an abandonment of the sufficiency of scripture.

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Every Southern Baptist would say, at least give lip service. Oh, we believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

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But it's interesting when you read the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, BFNM, for those of us in FBC circles know the lingo.

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2000 BFNM, read the whole thing. You will not find one syllable in the whole thing about sufficiency.

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In fact, I was in on a meeting a few years ago with some prominent SBC people at Southern Seminary.

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Anyway, I won't go into all that. But it was brought up in the meeting that when the 2000 BFNM was written, sufficiency was intentionally left out.

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It was intentionally left out. And so what you're seeing now, you're looking at a denomination that theoretically affirms inerrancy.

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But it says nothing about sufficiency, does not believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

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As evidence, by the way, church has done, and they're catering to the world, trying to curry the favor of the world.

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And honestly, well, I don't want to go on. I'll leave. No, go on. Go on. You're on a roll.

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I really believe without any hyperbole. And I say this as someone who spent the first 37 years of his life as an

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SBC. So I'd say it with the, you know, antagonism towards, you know,

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I still have friends, many friends, some of them pastors in SBC. But without any hyperbole,

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I genuinely believe that the Southern Baptist Convention is under God's judgment.

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I don't think it's headed there. I think it is there. I think it is there.

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That's what you're seeing in the SBC. When you've got Ed Litton, the president of the

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SBC, who is not only a plagiarist, that's established. But the content of what he plagiarized is so shockingly unbiblical.

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Saying that the Bible whispers about sexual sin. What? The Bible whispers about sexual sin.

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And there is not one single president of any of the six Southern Baptist seminaries that are calling for his resignation.

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He would have, any seminary student, you know, actually Ed Litton and I went to the same seminary.

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We were there at different times. He was about 10 years, I think, before I was. But if either he or I had done one -tenth of one percent of the plagiarism that he has done as the president, just from what we know of, as seminary students, we would have been kicked out on our ears, and rightly so.

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And yet, not one president of any of the six seminaries is calling him to resign.

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To the contrary, they are inviting him in to preach in their chapel services.

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Unbelievable. And he's even plagiarized former presidents of the SBC. Yeah.

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It's not like he's plagiarizing some dude from some unknown church. Yeah, no, he plagiarized

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J .D. Greer. Yeah. Just from a sermon that had been written just one year prior.

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And it turns out J .D. Greer himself was plagiarizing Tim Keller. You know, there's something to SBC culture as well that I picked up on a while back that I feel like has added to this being able to creep in and take over like this.

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There's just been a notion as to maybe an 11th commandment that shall not talk about another pastor or you have to be kind or whatnot, that understood notion.

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And I understand that to a large extent, especially when there's so much truth behind.

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There's always another side to the story. But at the same time, we've got to keep each other in balance.

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And iron sharpens iron for real. And by nobody speaking up and pushing back on anything has just given a free grace card to all of this.

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And in my circles, when I start to talk about some of these grave injustices, you can sense real quick whether or not someone is willing to have the conversation or if all of a sudden they check out and start to change the subject and they're uncomfortable with it.

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And I want to respect people to that extent. But at the same time, when we have a platform to be able to share honestly like this,

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I really appreciate this. When we have seminars and conferences and such and we have the ability to speak freely.

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And, you know, I'm the moderator here at the Greater Orlando Baptist Association. There's nearly 300 churches involved in that.

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And so our director, Dr. Tom Chaney, has said very clearly to me that I can speak up to these issues.

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But he himself has to remain neutral as the director of missions.

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So, you know, that's for him to have to stand and, you know, before the Lord on his stance on how he handles his position there.

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But I'm grateful to be able to share. But not able to say.

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Did I check out on you? Yeah, just for a moment. Oh, yeah.

26:10

But but not being able to say Ed Litten, you know, resign because all of us, just like you said,

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Justin, I mean, I went to Fruitland Baptist Bible College, the Baptist College of Florida, New Orleans Baptist Seminary.

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And when you go in orientation, they scare you to death. There's no second or third strike on plagiarism.

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You're out. Yeah. No questions asked. Your papers are uploaded to this massive database.

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And it goes through this checking process with all of the seminaries, not just Southern Baptist seminaries.

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But I'm telling this is a massive ordeal. And if you plagiarize out of it, anything and you don't quote it, you are done.

26:55

Yeah. But not if you're the president of the convention. You're celebrated. I mean, it's yeah.

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I got in trouble as a seminary student for plagiarizing one of my own papers. I mean, I took a section out of an older paper that I wrote and I basically just kind of plagiarized myself.

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I got in trouble for that. So, I mean, much less much less somebody else.

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I mean, but even to a bigger extent and I don't want to hold this off too long there, Anthony.

27:24

But when J .D. Greer, our formal former president, softened homosexuality, when he said that the sin of homosexuality is the same as our sins, when he normalized that and got away with it, where was the pushback?

27:43

I mean, that is I mean, God is not going to turn a good Bible -believing,

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Christ -honoring, God -fearing person over for their sin of cussing or dipping.

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You know, he normalized that. I was so sad. Yeah. Chris's comment here.

28:04

Maybe that sneaky squid spirit is stalking the video stream of Dr.

28:09

Butner to the point where his screen freezes. So I thought I'd throw that out there for you guys.

28:15

Not to beat up on Ed Litton, but this kind of goes to the broader point, to the theological illiteracy of so many of those folks in the

28:27

SVC, both in the pews and behind the pulpit. But one of the lines that Ed Litton plagiarized is this, and I quote,

28:35

Homosexuality does not send you to hell. How do I know that? Heterosexuality does not send you to heaven.

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That's a direct quote that was plagiarized by Tim. I mean,

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J .D. Greer, which plagiarized that from Tim Keller. Now think about that. That statement, homosexuality doesn't send you to hell.

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How do I know that heterosexuality does not send you to heaven? OK, I'm putting myself in the shoes of Ed Litton.

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And granted, I didn't write my sermon, but you've at least got to read over it like Saturday night before you step into the pulpit.

29:09

You know, at least kind of know, have a general familiarity with your plagiarized sermon. And so I'm putting myself in his shoes on a

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Saturday night, reading through this plagiarized sermon, and I come to that line. How do

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I read that and not stop and think, you know, is that right? Something about that just doesn't sound right.

29:31

I mean, he didn't even have enough theological wherewithal to read that statement and realize, now, wait a minute, that's not biblical.

29:39

I can't get away with saying that. He said it anyway. I mean, this is like,

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I knew better than to say something like that when I was in the third grade vacation

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Bible school, for crying out loud. And yet he's a pastor and the president of the entire denomination.

29:58

It's absolutely stunning. You know, I preach at homosexual parades, and every homosexual that I've had a chance to talk to and witness to acknowledges it's a sin more than Ed Litton did in that sermon.

30:10

That's what's amazing to me. Wow. Sobering. Yeah, isn't it?

30:16

I didn't know that Ed Litton was being invited to our seminaries to preach in chapel. Was that?

30:22

I didn't know that Ed Litton was being invited to our seminaries to preach in chapel. I mean, I know most every seminary president is.

30:30

Oh, yeah, he was recently at Southwestern with Adam Greenway.

30:37

And then after that, he was at Southeastern, I believe. This is all recent.

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This is all within the last couple of months. And he's just a symptom of the problem.

30:49

I mean, it's definitely a problem because he's the president of the whole thing. But he's also a symptom of the growing problem over the last 20 years.

30:59

Yeah. Yeah. And of course, this article addresses this thing with Ed Litton, too, because, you know, they understand.

31:07

So here it is. Litton is a pawn on the SBC chessboard, defended by elites fearful of alienating the

31:14

Chandlers upon whom they believe the future of the SBC depends. National disgrace notwithstanding,

31:22

Litton must remain as SBC president. Here's why. If Litton vacates his office, unwoke black

31:28

SBC first vice president Lee Brand Jr. would take over as president and make unwoke appointments.

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So they know who's in the background, ready to come in and get the ship righted.

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And boy, will that look bad, right? Just like Cody Pockham out there on the trail. So these woke guys have got to stay in power so a non -woke black man won't become president.

31:56

But we're all about woke. We're all about, you know, the irony is rich, is it not?

32:02

Yeah. Did you guys get the invite from the Conservative Baptist Network for Dr. Lee Brand tomorrow night?

32:10

No. Yeah. So there's Tom Askall is going to be on, you know, with him.

32:16

And so if you go to the Conservative Baptist Network, they'll send you a link and you can see this discussion tomorrow night.

32:24

I think it's worth listening to. So, you know, it's going to be on the direction of the SBC tomorrow night.

32:30

And I hope that Lee Brand, you know, the vice president of the SBC, is as clear as we are tonight on the concerns.

32:38

Because by and large, it seems like we're the Titanic with a hole that nobody wants to say.

32:43

No, there's not a hole in the boat. No, there's not a hole in the boat. You know, but man, this thing really has the potency of sinking the ship or splitting the ship.

32:54

If we don't have another conservative resurgence and have someone like W .A.

33:03

Chris will stand up and set this whole thing straight. This thing, of course, is bound for destruction.

33:12

I mean, here's the reality though, right? I know,

33:18

Casey, you were giving us kind of a play -by -play as you were at the Southern Baptist Convention where Ed Litton won.

33:25

And so we're texting back and forth through this. And here's the scary part, right? Let's say

33:32

Ed Litton lost in the runoff. It doesn't matter because the

33:37

SBC is still filled with liberalism. I mean, you have obviously around half your convention that is liberal.

33:44

That part is phenomenal to me to think about. So I don't even know, other than an act of God, I don't even know how this thing gets turned around.

33:55

There's a lot of stuff that has to be cleaned up within the SBC. You know, you guys would probably know more abroad how far the liberalism is.

34:04

I know more or less Florida. And I see and hear the larger voices.

34:10

You know, obviously the voices that have the microphone in the SBC right now are by and large the woke voices.

34:18

And for our church, we've really discussed this openly. And we've talked about, well, where's the dividing line for us?

34:27

How long do we stay in this battle, this fight, and fight for our missionaries who have families on the field, and fight for our seminaries, the credibility there, and our history.

34:39

And for those who have gone before us. And so right now the leadership, you know, is clearly heading in that direction and capitulating in that direction.

34:50

What about the people in the pews? You know, where the true voice is? They're being ignored right now by and large.

34:58

But the heart of the SBC is the people. And so where we're at right now is saying, well, the leadership can kind of say whatever they want.

35:08

But until this thing affirms immorality by and large by the people, man, we're just going to continue down that road, you know, until maybe the

35:22

Lord changes our minds in a different path. But that's where we have agreed as a church.

35:27

And I know that other churches have decided to move along right away.

35:32

And individuals like yourself, Justin, I would never fault anybody for leaving this battle.

35:40

I do believe that God is calling some of us to stay and fight as hard as we possibly can, and perhaps change the course of some innocent pastors who have their heart and soul in their church, and just trust the leadership.

35:59

Yeah, it looks like your video cut out again,

36:04

Pastor Casey. But obviously, yeah. So if I could come in real quick while Casey's video's stopped.

36:14

I was listening offline. Hey, guys. Hold on, hold on. Proper intro, proper intro.

36:22

Pastor Andrew Rappaport has joined us. Hey, you guys are mentioning about the guy who's next in line.

36:31

I just want to recommend some articles for folks to go to. If you go to strivingforeturning .org,

36:37

Bud Alheim has written a series of articles about the SBC. One of them that he wrote is

36:45

The SBC's Wrong Brand of Black Man. And that is—basically, he goes through all of that.

36:55

And he has an article on leaving the SBC. So if you go to strivingforeturning .org,

37:01

go to articles. You can see all of his recent articles. He has ones on basically the scandal with Lytton and Al Mohler.

37:10

He even has a satirical one. He tried his hand at Babylon B.

37:16

But I think if you guys want to get more of what you were saying, Bud has gone through and researched that the

37:24

SBC has the wrong kind of black man. And that's an article. I just wanted to throw that out there for you.

37:30

Actually, it just got in your text, but it's better coming from the source. Well, the source would be Bud, but he's not on.

37:36

But for KT, no, I'm not looking for Anthony time. See you. That's funny.

37:45

So thanks, Andrew, for joining us for a moment there. Yeah, Bud's got some great articles on that.

37:50

I do recommend people to go read those. Okay, so I want to change course a little bit. And Chris, I do see in the background.

37:55

I got to tell you, this is hilarious. Chris Hough is in the background. And have you guys seen those videos on Facebook where that one guy who's made several million dollars doing this, where he shows a video of somebody doing something dumb, and he has those looks, right?

38:10

This is what Chris is doing in the background for the last 15 minutes. It is cracking me up. That's why I keep laughing.

38:16

Chris, I promise I'll bring you on a little bit when you have a comment. So I just want to kind of get through a couple things first. But thank you for making me laugh back here.

38:26

Okay, so I want to talk about church planting a little bit. All right, so Casey, you're familiar with church planting.

38:32

Justin, I'm not sure how much you are, but I'm sure you're going to have a lot to say about this. Alan, okay, there's something you told me that just really struck me.

38:42

And it was in regards to there was a quota for how many churches that you were required, the team was required to plant each year.

38:52

And then I was really struck by how many actually lasted 12 months later and the amount of money that was wasted in these efforts because of bad planning and everything else.

39:03

So I kind of want you to speak to that a little bit. Yeah, so the Southern Baptist Convention is broken down into 41 state conventions, which then is broken down into regions, which are local associations.

39:17

Those associations have a couple of different positions. So one's the local area missionary or missionary director.

39:25

And then there's also a church planting catalyst, who obviously is responsible for the church planting aspect.

39:31

So the local area missionary, he's responsible for the local churches that are already established to help build them up.

39:40

Which, by the way, sounds a lot like McDonald's, right? When they're franchising out, they have this type of order.

39:46

Well, he's not a missionary at all, right? Because he's helping establish already established churches.

39:51

It's kind of contrary to the title. But then you've got the church planting catalyst.

39:57

So ours was responsible for planting 30 churches, 30 brand new churches each and every year in the greater

40:05

Cleveland area. So the restrictions or the qualifications, as you might say, of somebody that would be able to plant a church were very loose.

40:18

They were very loose ended and really wide open to one's interpretation, which ended up becoming very dangerous if one's interpretation is not found in Scripture, which often ended up being the case.

40:30

So you end up getting these guys that are businessmen that become pastors. They implement business models, not church models, and they don't last very long.

40:43

And so these guys make a ton of money really quick and their churches fail as soon as they began.

40:49

And so they would plant. They would attempt to plant 30 churches each and every year.

40:56

Now, now, what kind of area was that over? Like the greater Cleveland area, greater Cleveland area. So it's within Cuyahoga County that this would be responsible for, which is which is not huge.

41:06

It's not right here in Cleveland. We're talking one million people ish in the area.

41:12

So they would plant 30 churches. They would grab up a ragtag group of men. They would throw a bunch of money at them.

41:18

Throw a building at them and just let it rip. And so within the within the first two years, 27 of those churches failed almost without without a doubt.

41:30

So all of that money would just be completely and utterly wasted. And for the math out there, that's 90 percent of churches within two years are gone.

41:39

And they're spending, I mean, millions, right? Yeah. Doing this. The year that I started church planning.

41:45

We were one of 30 churches that received funding. It's the only church that's left.

41:53

So 29 of those 30 from that year fail in the greater Cleveland area. So outside of four years, they're all gone.

42:02

And this is what's amazing, right, is you just extrapolate that across the country. And if you're anywhere near those percentages,

42:09

I mean, think about the millions and millions of dollars that people are faithfully giving to their churches. The churches are turning around faithfully giving to the

42:16

SBC elites and then the SBC elites are right. But they're using a business model.

42:22

But even in business, if you're failing at that level, you would be fired immediately.

42:29

I mean, you would just you would immediately say this is a bad business model, even. I mean, it was just unfathomable.

42:36

Is this NAM, Alan, this model North American Mission Board? Yes, it was connected to NAM.

42:43

Yep. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, so it was it was really abysmal.

42:49

The effort oftentimes guys were generating converts.

42:55

I mean, meaning they were claiming people came to Christ so that their numbers would be scooting up and down so that they could get funding in different areas.

43:04

There was a lot of manipulation in attempts to actually extrapolate more money.

43:12

It was really unfortunate. This kind of gets to the to one of the underlying issues. Right. This planning churches franchising it, you know,

43:21

McChurch kind of thing. Right. McChurch. McChurch. I just thought of that.

43:26

That's great. I have to litanize that one.

43:33

Yeah. Pretty impressed with myself. Let's see.

43:40

I mean, churches are by their nature fundamentally different than a business.

43:49

I mean, this is the bride of Christ, right? This is not an organization. The church is not a creation of man.

43:56

Man did not dream this up. Jesus is the head of the church. It is his bride.

44:01

It is his creation, his institution. He gets to decide how church is done, not us, not the business model from Home Depot or McDonald's or Walmart.

44:14

And yet we're operating our churches like their business. You know, we live in the

44:21

United States. We have a constitution, capitalism, and the business model seems to work. Church is not supposed to look like the world.

44:29

It is fundamentally different, intrinsically different. And when we do church after a worldly model, it is doomed to fail because it's not a real church.

44:39

It's not a real church. That's ultimately the problem is that it's not a church at all. Yeah. And some of the things you told me,

44:46

I mean, you talked about they planted church with guys that were unqualified to be in ministry, right, just to get bodies to do it.

44:54

And then I was also alarmed. You said that there were some places where churches failed, right, flat out failed, and they went back and tried to replant in the exact same areas again.

45:02

Yeah. So there were a couple times where they would plant churches on churches. I mean, honestly, there was a road that one church was already established.

45:12

They planted a Korean Southern Baptist church plant, which I was like, OK, that makes sense.

45:19

You're trying to reach a specific population. You're a little too close to the other

45:24

Southern Baptist church for my liking. But then across the street from that Korean Baptist church, you had a

45:30

Trinity Baptist church. They built another church plant because they were simply out of area in the location to plant churches.

45:38

So what ended up happening is the existing church all of a sudden started to break up membership. So some members went to one church.

45:47

Some members went to another church. Those two churches then failed because they lacked leadership.

45:52

They lacked skill sets. They lacked character qualifications. You name it. And the result then is that the existing church that was doing

46:01

OK now started to struggle because all those church members were scattered. So it ended up defeating itself in so many ways.

46:11

So I didn't even know this. So Pastor Chris, our pastor, just sent me a text. And he said, there's a book written by Thomas White and John Yeats called

46:20

Franchising McChurch. Oh, really? I guess we're not the first ones to come up with it.

46:28

Thanks, Pastor Chris. Pastor Chris was watching. Hey, Pastor Chris. I had no clue about that.

46:38

Wow. OK, so Pastor Casey, you were part of the church planting, right? You're one of the few success stories

46:45

I'm gathering. But what was your experience? What did you see in the church planting movement?

46:51

Yeah. So my experience with church planting is going to surprise you. So got to get back to the full story,

47:02

I suppose. So Jerry Falwell had a right hand man. Barry Rice was his guy.

47:08

Barry Rice wanted to plant a church, and he prayed about which city to go to and ended up in Orlando.

47:16

And about that time, I came on. Some years later, I came on as his children's pastor.

47:22

And then from my wife and I just being exposed to the gross, attractional church philosophy and many other abuses, we prayed and found the right time to resign.

47:43

And in God's sovereign plan, we had no idea that four other staff members would resign that same week.

47:51

And it was a big deal. So nevertheless, from there, it took about six or seven months off to kind of recover.

48:03

You know, we got sideswiped here. And that was a church plant that had the basic philosophy of bringing people in the door and getting them serving right away with a message that was shallow and heavy on getting saved.

48:21

So that's basically what the people heard Sunday in and Sunday out, serve and get saved, save and get served.

48:29

And so they would commit, you know, and get baptized and start serving and get burnt out within two or three months.

48:37

And they're like, man, they're expected to a church plant at a high school is heavy on set up and tear down, set up and tear down.

48:46

So there's no time, you know, in our American culture with the husband and wife, by and large, working and the kids going to school and then, you know, sports.

48:56

The parents and the kids are busy from daylight to dark. And the average family only has so many hours a week they're going to give to the local church.

49:04

And when it is consumed and set up and tear down and and serving, there is no time for sanctification.

49:13

So there's no work on their soul and they get burnt. They say, if this is what this is all about,

49:20

I'm out of here. And so it's a church model that burns people out and they're not nurtured and not grown.

49:27

And so I have a obviously you guys would have a problem with that as well. And so it took a while to kind of see what we experienced in that.

49:36

And so after about six or seven months, I just felt the need to nurture all of the wounded people in the area.

49:46

So we started a Bible study and it began to be a church. I didn't go through the

49:51

NAMM church planning process. I didn't go to our local association and ask for funds. God provided and we just started.

49:59

And before I knew it, I had a worship leader and dedicated people.

50:05

And when my wife and I look back on that season with Disciple Makers Church, hence

50:12

I look back and I say, wow, did the pendulum really swing? I was heavily engaged in evangelism, you know.

50:19

And when I came out of that, the church plant name was Disciple Makers Church.

50:24

And so I really poured into the guys. And so that was a great season. We look back, my wife and I, on those couple of years and think, wow, that was a tremendous season.

50:35

God cared so much about all of those wounded people that he planted a church just for nurturing all of those wounds.

50:43

And when that season was over, he called me and my family to go to the Baptist College of Florida. So I got a bachelor's degree and then went to New Orleans and, you know, so forth and so on.

50:53

So anyway, I came back here and now I'm pastoring Beulah Baptist Church. It always cuts out right at the good parts,

51:11

Pastor Casey, when your mic cuts out. So now with church planting a part of the

51:20

Greater Orlando Baptist Association here in central Florida, we got church planting, church revitalization and leadership development.

51:27

Those three core values as an association here. And so what I have seen with church planting is that it just fails.

51:38

You can put money at it and it doesn't work. Church planting. I mean,

51:44

Orlando is known as a church planting graveyard. And the church plants,

51:50

I mean, you spoke to several reasons why they fail. You know, it seems that the

51:56

Southern Baptist Convention has taken on the ideology of the world and that if you build it, they will come.

52:02

And that is just not true. And Ed Stetzer, you know, popularized the idea of planting pregnant, which makes no sense at all to expect a young church that can hardly sustain itself to birth another church.

52:22

It's easy to look at a church as a as a human being. It's going to take 15 or 20 years to mature that church to where it can stand on its own two feet and provide for itself.

52:35

It takes a long time, a lot of teaching, a lot of nurturing, a lot of love, a lot of care, a lot of consistency for it to to really land.

52:46

And it's a delicate process. It's a long process. And it is very hard.

52:52

And most don't make it. And we have, like you said, 30 billion in assets.

52:59

Church revitalization is the need. The SBC is focusing on church planting because they see the numbers plummeting.

53:08

Churches are leaving. People are leaving. And they think that the answer is church planting, plant more churches and then get the numbers back up.

53:16

Right. Well, that's not the truth. We have people. We have buildings. We have churches.

53:22

They need to be nurtured. They need good men. There's there's another issue within our

53:28

Southern Baptist culture that I've seen that doesn't really enable us to revitalize what we have in a in a successful way.

53:36

Is that how does the senior pastor, you know, nurture and pass the baton to the next guy?

53:44

You know, with the whole process of a pastor search committee and, you know, that that whole thing.

53:51

I'm not going to, you know, bad mouth the process because it works.

53:57

But at the same time, is there a better way? I just don't know how the older, you know, established church where the buildings need, you know, a lot of attention, where the systems are, you know, just rutted deeply and need to be, you know, updated.

54:16

How you can take in and revitalize that. Here at Beulah Baptist Church, we're a combination of Powers Drive Baptist Church, where I was called and I followed

54:26

Dr. Gerald Hicks and Powers Drive back in the day was, you know, the church in this area.

54:33

And and so we ended up selling that facility and we took the proceeds and merged in with Beulah Baptist Church.

54:39

So we took two older congregations that were weak and combined them together.

54:45

And then over a process of two years, nurtured those two congregations and blended them together.

54:51

Now we have one stronger church. So, you know, I just speak to these from a personal experience in that I see church plants around me, you know, that come and go.

55:02

But at the same time, I meet with Pastor Steve Reimer weekly and he has taken on an older church on the other side of town and on the east side of Orlando.

55:13

We've met every week for a couple of years now. And he has slowly led that congregation into remodeling their worship center, freshening up the place, making it to where, you know, younger families feel welcome to come in and embracing them.

55:30

You know, we talked about how we don't even know our own culture exists.

55:36

I'll give you an example. I was on staff for the church one time and you'd walk in the door and there was this overwhelming aroma.

55:45

It was mold. The church carpet needed to be replaced. And it was worse than Grandma's house times 10.

55:53

It was awful. In fact, our family would sit back and watch people walk in the door for the first time and you'd see them go, oh.

56:06

And it's funny, of course, the cameras locks on your funny face right there, too.

56:12

So, of course, the biggest issue is that you're talking about people who are biblically qualified who just need a revitalization in their church and that the money would be better spent in those arenas rather than in these new church plants with a lot of unqualified guys and just trying to follow this franchise business model.

56:33

Also, too, we have to look at the fact that the SBC also kind of treats church planting as this illustrious gem that you want in your, you know, in your crown, so to speak, where they, you know, instead of taking on an older congregation that may have issues theologically, physically, emotionally due to their past pastors or whatever, you can just start fresh.

57:03

With a group of guys and just and wing it, you know what I mean? And they kind of create this idea that like, well, if you start, it's like it's going to be your thing, but they don't start with guys that are qualified by character.

57:17

They grab these guys, they're qualified by skill sets, which like you have to have, you have to be somewhat skilled.

57:25

You shouldn't you shouldn't just like throw anyone in the pulpit, but their character needs to be there.

57:31

And a lot of these guys, they're not vetted at all. The character qualifications in many cases aren't there.

57:38

So they fall due to some sort of immorality or they fall because they're not ready to deal with the strains and the pressures of being in a pastorate position because there is a strain and pressure there.

57:51

And they're not they're not qualified because they've never been developed to really be ready for that when that comes.

57:58

And to speak to that as well, a lot of younger men that go through our seminaries have the idea from the professors and the higher ups that it's easier to start a new church than it is to pastor an older one.

58:11

And that you asserts the wisdom of our elders. Our older generation has a lifetime of wisdom and they have seen these fads come and go.

58:19

And you want to combine the wisdom of everybody in your church who loves

58:25

God, who knows how to read their Bible, and they are praying and seeking God's will.

58:31

If you teach a young man and you tell him, listen, you want to love on your people and you want to be with them and grow together.

58:40

You're not above them. You don't know more than them. You're you are a fellow elder, like Peter said, you're a fellow elder.

58:46

And when you see yourself with them, you can grow with them. But if they come in with a hierarchy mentality, then they get frustrated because they can't make change fast.

58:58

And they think that they're supposed to grow the numbers quickly. They've got the wrong goal in mind. The goal is sanctification.

59:04

The goal is knowing Christ. The goal is studying God's word and getting the message right and teaching the text.

59:11

One other thing, it's a hot button, is that you cannot take the message and preach in such a way for change or for changing the church or whatnot.

59:25

It's almost like using the pulpit for your personal goals. That is a serious problem.

59:33

You're using the authoritative position of preaching to achieve a manmade goal rather than just preaching the word and letting the word do the work.

59:45

And that's what a lot of younger men come out blaming ready to do.

59:50

It's just preaching, you know, for a personal vendetta or I'm going to change the world out of their good heartedness.

59:57

They just got some of the wrong ideas there. To your point,

01:00:03

Alan, you mentioned churches that have problems and nurturing them. I would say like the church at Corinth.

01:00:10

Like any church. Any church is going to have problems whether you built it or not. Exactly. Go over there.

01:00:18

Yes, pastor the church at Corinth. Love them. Lead them. Don't plant another church right beside them.

01:00:26

Right down the street. Yes, church planting, especially when it comes to nationalities.

01:00:32

You know, we've got so many languages around here that need to be reached. And every church could facilitate three or four language communities in our area.

01:00:41

But nevertheless, you can teach an existing church, though, to reach those communities.

01:00:47

And the church should be an embodiment of the community that they exist in.

01:00:52

And so that should be part of the mentality of the church when they evangelize, when they do missions, outreaches, when they communicate with people at the drug mart or at the corner store.

01:01:05

They should be working to reach the community that they exist in. Well, Pastor Casey, I think you guys should plant a church next to Paula White's church.

01:01:13

Who's right around the corner from you. I think that that would work well. We do have a couple of questions that came in here.

01:01:20

One is from Chris Hudson, who's another mathlete. So how would you advise a pastor that is going to be a new

01:01:28

Namby church planter? What would you guys do in terms of advice? So the first thing

01:01:35

I would advise is that you're pastoring. You're not a church planter.

01:01:41

So there's a thought process that the church planter is different than a pastor.

01:01:47

Well, the church planter should be the pastor of these congregations.

01:01:54

Therefore, you look at the pastoral epistles, 1st, 2nd Timothy, Titus. You take on the character qualifications.

01:02:02

You make sure that you work on your skill sets, that you're able to teach and preach. But then you also make sure to take on the wisdom that Paul expresses to Timothy and to Titus.

01:02:14

How to work within your congregation to raise up and utilize the eldership or the elder population in your congregation to then work and share with those who are younger and pass on that wisdom.

01:02:30

So the key is really not necessarily to be concerned about planting the church, but then to make sure that you're not using these poor business models that essentially become largely ineffective and destructive.

01:02:44

The key would be to make sure that you're going about it to follow biblical principles, to follow the biblical structure and guideline to build a healthy biblical church.

01:02:58

So, Pastor Casey, I'm going to pull it up right now for you. You want me to share an article? You just want people to see it, right?

01:03:04

And you're going to talk about it, I'm guessing? Okay. So I'm going to share it. You can go ahead and start talking about it here.

01:03:11

So this gentleman, Kyle Witt, went through the whole process of church planting and the

01:03:18

Sin Network. And he has a video that you have to watch.

01:03:24

This genuine young man knows his stuff and what experience needs to be heard.

01:03:31

And he himself was just flabbergasted at the fact that the president of the

01:03:38

Sin Network was expressing clearly a woke agenda, which essentially added works to the gospel.

01:03:50

And this gentleman, Kyle Witt, I mean, his email is on this video and everything.

01:03:55

And he puts himself out there unashamedly, and I commend him for it.

01:04:00

You can ask him any question. But this gentleman went through this process and saw it and is exposing just how woke the agenda is in church planting.

01:04:14

And obviously, Kevin Ezell, he himself should resign. There is so much that he has done and is doing and is affirming and allowing to happen with them.

01:04:25

It's beyond my imagination. I don't know why people aren't calling for Kevin Ezell to respond.

01:04:34

And I would love to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with someone like him person to person, but I don't even know how to get in touch with a man like him.

01:04:42

There's so much bureaucracy. So nevertheless, he came and spoke here at First Baptist Orlando.

01:04:50

And like John MacArthur always warns, if a man is the hero of his own messages, do not trust him.

01:04:57

And that would be Kevin Ezell. And there is testimony after testimony online of the financial mishandlings there, lawsuits that are going on.

01:05:09

It's just embarrassing for Christianity. But when it goes down to the Sin Network and how before COVID, the vetting process was what it was, and then through the lull of COVID when everybody was twiddling their fingers for a year, the process of vetting church planters changed for them.

01:05:33

And woke questions are now on that final test or exam or whatever it takes to become funded.

01:05:41

And unless you're going to platform minorities, unless you're going to do social justice, unless you're going to work towards economic equality, unless you're going to add work to the gospel.

01:05:56

And this gentleman, Kyle Witt, speaks to all of that in the video. And I encourage you to watch this.

01:06:04

That's a different gospel. And it clarifies all of that. Yeah. So Justin, if you want to speak to that.

01:06:12

Yeah, it's just that's a different gospel. Any church that is planted under those auspices and that is their goals, then that's not a church.

01:06:22

That's a goat farm. That's not a church. That's a goat farm. And that's what's happening.

01:06:30

This NAMM model, North American Mission Board, it's planting goat farms.

01:06:36

It's not planting churches for the most part. Yeah, that is just absolutely appalling.

01:06:44

And that's where pragmatism has taken us. So the problem of yesteryear was the attractional church, right?

01:06:53

So all the lights and the glitz in the show and in the attractional model to attract people to come.

01:06:59

And then you bait and switch them and say, oh, we're really about the gospel. We want you to die to yourself. We don't want to feed the flesh anymore.

01:07:06

So that's what we've been doing is feeding your flesh. That that is old news.

01:07:13

But that led us to embracing wokeness.

01:07:18

It's just right out of, you know, the leftist political agenda. And now it's crept into our convention and it's been swallowed, you know, hook, line and sinker.

01:07:30

Because by and large, most have been trained to take whatever the world is doing and try and bring it into the church to win the people.

01:07:39

When we're commanded clearly that to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. So this is a question

01:07:47

I'm going to pull up now. And I know, Justin, you speak about this in your newest seminar. Casey, this happened right around the corner from you.

01:07:54

But here's a question that came up. So, Casey, Justin, wasn't there a scandal at FBC Orlando during the

01:08:02

Pulse nightclub shooting? Scripture twisting at that memorial service. So I know you guys both know this really well.

01:08:10

And, you know, my only time I've ever seen FBC Orlando is my wife, son and I. When we were visiting you,

01:08:16

Casey, as we do every year at Christmastime and New Year's, we made the mistake of going to FBC Orlando because it was close to us for a

01:08:24

Christmas service. And we saw the drummer all of a sudden drumming a solo and then being raised about 25 feet up in the air with a spotlight on him.

01:08:33

And, yeah, we made a mistake that night going to the wrong place. No gospel message given by the pastor for the five minutes he spoke.

01:08:42

It was really awful. But that was that was our experience that night. We ended up handing out a lot of gospel tracks to a lot of people within those walls that night before we left.

01:08:53

But what can I speak to about this? Because this was this is horrible. I've seen the videos on this.

01:08:59

Yeah. Yeah. So the Casey, the Pulse shooting was that in 2016. Is that right?

01:09:05

16 or 17. Yeah. 16 or 17. So the Pulse nightclub, for those who may not remember, it's a homosexual club in Orlando.

01:09:14

And this Muslim guy, I think it was a Muslim guy. But anyway, he was. And yeah, he was. And shot, murdered 50 to 53 people.

01:09:25

And so obviously a horrible thing. But First Baptist Church, Orlando, pastored by David Youth.

01:09:33

They had a memorial service for the victims of those murdered in the

01:09:38

Pulse and the homosexual nightclub. And he brought in pastors from some area churches there in Orlando.

01:09:46

Big deal, packed house. And one of the pastors that he had come up on the platform, for one thing, they ushered in.

01:09:54

They ushered in every single one of those murder victims straight to heaven.

01:10:02

Ushered him in straight to heaven. Not hinted it, not suggested they might be in heaven.

01:10:09

Put them in heaven. And the assumption is that the vast majority, if not all of those that were murdered, were practicing homosexuals.

01:10:18

But hey, let's shoot them straight up to heaven. So that is an outright denial of the gospel.

01:10:25

And then one of the pastors, and I'd have to look up my notes. His name escapes me right now, in case you may know.

01:10:32

But one of the pastors that was tasked to preach, he got up and he actually said, reading from scripture, he actually said that the chief cornerstone is the

01:10:45

LGBTQ community. He actually said that. The chief cornerstone, who is

01:10:52

Jesus Christ, he said, he redefined. There it is, Larry Mills. Larry Mills. Thanks, Martin.

01:10:59

Thank you, Martin. Yeah, so he said that the chief cornerstone is the

01:11:04

LGBTQ community. The very fact that that entire building did not implode when those words left his mouth is a testimony to the forbearance and patience of God.

01:11:22

How could any pastor say that? How could David Youth, who is pastor of one of the flagship churches in the

01:11:29

SBC, not immediately get up and yank that guy out of the pulpit and profusely apologize to everyone there?

01:11:37

I watched the entire service. The gospel was never presented. Not once was the gospel ever presented.

01:11:46

Martin's question, wasn't there a scandal? The scandal was, yes, that should have been a scandal.

01:11:55

The scandal was, is that what happened at First Baptist Church Orlando that night was not a scandal.

01:12:02

That's the scandal. The scandal was that FBC Orlando was not disciplined and kicked out of the

01:12:09

Southern Baptist Convention. The scandal was that there were no prominent SBC voices calling for David Youth to get up and immediately apologize and frankly get out of the pulpit because that man's not qualified to be a pastor.

01:12:24

What's amazing is not one person sitting there listening stood up and shouted from the rooftops to say, this is completely and utterly wrong, right?

01:12:33

Not a single person. Yeah, exactly. Gave him a standing ovation when he was done.

01:12:43

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. This is kind of emblematic of a problem with the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority of SBC churches.

01:12:58

The assumption is that many of those, now granted, they had a lot of guests there, but many of the people in the auditorium that night were members of First Baptist Church Orlando.

01:13:12

How did they not have enough theological wherewithal to realize that what they just heard was blasphemy in the worst of terms?

01:13:23

Not only did they not recognize that as blasphemy, they got up and they gave him a standing ovation, which shows the theological and biblical illiteracy of so many people who are sitting in pews of Southern Baptist churches

01:13:43

Sunday in, Sunday out. So many of them are theologically illiterate.

01:13:51

So I want to speak to what we just talked about, but to answer the question that we left behind, what would we do or advise a church planter for NAMM to do?

01:14:02

I would speak loudly and clearly and make them remove their funding from you.

01:14:08

That's what I would do. If I was a church planter for NAMM, I would be so clear about what the expectations are from NAMM that they got upset at me and removed me.

01:14:19

I wouldn't just quit. So that's what I would do. Now, back to the situation here with the

01:14:26

Pulse shooting. That was a tragedy. I've got a friend that works for OPD.

01:14:32

He was on the inside and saw it all. And I sincerely am so sorry for anyone who lost a loved one.

01:14:43

That was an Islamic agenda against a Puerto Rican crowd that was gay.

01:14:48

And to him, he was rewarded by Allah for that. So obviously, evil was behind it all.

01:14:57

But how much more evil would it be for right inside of what should be a gospel -preaching church, not to clarify for the families and to tell the truth there, but to usher them to heaven and to capitulate there and add to that?

01:15:13

Again, I would love to sit down. If any of this information or this message ever gets to Kevin Ezell or Ed Litton or Dr.

01:15:22

David Youth, I'd love to sit down and have this same conversation face -to -face. And if I was sitting down with Dr.

01:15:28

David Youth, which I really feel like being just 12 miles from First Orlando, I'll have the opportunity one day.

01:15:35

I'm in the same circles and in the same conventions and everything with him often. But if I could sit down and talk with him,

01:15:42

I would ask him why that happened, why he didn't stand up for Christ, why he shrunk back.

01:15:49

Why did he not protect the integrity of Christ and his church, his bride, as a steward of that place?

01:15:57

I would just ask genuinely. And then I would ask, secondly, why

01:16:05

God's holiness? You don't hear anything from Pastor David Youth about the holiness of God, but you hear everything about the love.

01:16:15

And it's at the expense of God's primary attribute of holiness.

01:16:22

And so Dr. David Youth would lean on love and do those things.

01:16:29

And again, as moderator of our association, we had an annual celebration here recently.

01:16:38

And three years ago, Dr. Tom Chaney wanted to invite David Youth to be the keynote speaker.

01:16:45

And so for years, this has been in the workings. And so I talked with Dr. Tom Chaney. I said, now realize that this is going to cause a rift within all the pastors here in Central Florida because David Youth is known for leading a woke church.

01:17:01

For those who are not woke, they're awake. They're paying attention. And for example,

01:17:08

I've sent another video to post if you wanted to. It's called Drummer Boy. I just put it up in the chat.

01:17:16

Fantastic. That's just a small example of how they have transformed all of First Baptist Orlando to not only a complete attractional model, but now what seems to be very clear a woke agenda.

01:17:31

And again, I say this with a broken heart because we need First Baptist Orlando in Central Florida to be clear about the gospel and about Christ and Christ alone.

01:17:41

And doing ecclesiology according to what the Bible says in Acts chapter two, the basics of Christianity do those well.

01:17:49

And we don't need anything else. The word is sufficient. We don't need those things.

01:17:55

But anyway, the problem here is an abandonment of the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:18:01

And at the annual event, I would again ask David Youth why he spoke from the word of God from a very familiar passage and completely missed the point of the passage.

01:18:17

And then drove the wrong point home. And the point was telling the servants inside the church not to serve anymore, a point that was not even the point of the passage.

01:18:32

And so for all of us at the Greater Orlando Baptist Association as pastors, we brought messengers.

01:18:39

We brought our key servants within our churches. And we went to the

01:18:45

First Baptist Church of Apopka. And David Youth pretty much neutralized the servants and said, you don't need to serve.

01:18:54

And I just thought, man, this is so, so sad. And at the same time, you mentioned earlier,

01:19:00

Justin, that most Southern Baptists would claim inerrancy. And they'd be very clear about believing in the inerrancy and the infallibility of the word of God.

01:19:10

But the sufficiency was left out of the Baptist faith and message. That has truly enabled a woke culture.

01:19:19

And so if you asked David Youth, are you woke? I guarantee you he would say no. But here's what he did in practice at the annual event.

01:19:29

And again, I would love to have this conversation with him personally. And maybe this will afford me the opportunity to do that.

01:19:38

He brought what was a young minority man from a neighborhood here in Orlando that's known for crime.

01:19:46

And this man was not portrayed as a saved man. And if he was saved, he's probably newly saved.

01:19:53

Definitely had that deer in the headlights look in the church. And so publicly,

01:20:00

Pastor David Youth said that most people think that I'm mentoring him, but I'm not.

01:20:06

I am learning from him. See, that's a woke tenet of white fragility. David Youth demonstrated the fact that he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

01:20:16

And he needs to learn from a young minority to what he needs to know.

01:20:23

And platforming and all that kind of stuff. So he demonstrated wokeness there. And the list kind of goes on and on and on.

01:20:29

I would like to talk more in depth later with you, Justin, and Dr. Anthony, and even

01:20:34

David Youth himself. Because this stuff is so real. It is usurping the authority of God.

01:20:42

It makes my heart beat. I'm trembling at the fact that this stuff is literally taking over.

01:20:50

And pastors would take on these types of stuff thinking that this is what they're supposed to do. Who's going to speak up?

01:20:57

So we have a comment from Chris Hough. But I thought rather than me read it,

01:21:02

I think I'm just going to have the author read it. And so Chris, welcome on.

01:21:07

I want to bring you on. Because with all your facial gestures, your hands, I don't want you to die of a heart attack.

01:21:14

I want you to just say what you need to say now and put it out there. Well, first of all, gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be listening to each of you.

01:21:21

I love you guys. So there's so much that you guys have covered since I've been listening.

01:21:30

And so let me just start with Dr. David Youth and Ed Litton.

01:21:36

And let me say it the way that George Whitefield said it in his sermon, The Almost Christian. He said concerning the almost

01:21:44

Christian, he said, quote, As to settling his principles as well as practice, he is guided more by the world than by the word of God.

01:21:55

Period. Close quote. And so I would say with Dr. David Youth, Ed Litton, I think the fact that there is no repentance speaks to the fact that maybe

01:22:07

God is not disciplining them. And I think there's a bigger issue here. I think it's bigger than even the sufficiency of scripture.

01:22:14

I would venture to say if we go on the fruits, the consistent fruits that we've seen, that those men have no repentance in their lives.

01:22:23

And in turn, they have no fear of God. So I am deeply concerned for their souls.

01:22:31

If you are going to deny Christ, going back to the

01:22:36

Pulse nightclub shooting, then he will deny you. Somebody put in the comments that reminded them of Matthew 10, 33. That's absolutely right.

01:22:43

So that's the problem. That's the problem with Ed Litton. That's the problem with David Youth. That's the problem.

01:22:48

You know, we can try to say we can try to make excuses and him haul about it.

01:22:53

But ultimately, there's a bigger issue at play here. I would venture to say that their eyes have been blinded by the prince of the power of the air and that they need to repent.

01:23:03

They have shirked their responsibility and their charge given by their king to use any sort of pulpit for any sort of purpose other than heralding the message given to them by Christ.

01:23:17

You have so many. And as a result, you have the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole that's soft because there's soft theology.

01:23:27

There's no fear of God. Now you have a soft ecclesiology. And so ultimately, I mean, and that's seen in the supporting and ordaining of women and the egalitarian push.

01:23:39

The Bible whispers about sexual sin, you know, and it's unfortunately, you know,

01:23:47

Dr. Casey, I would slightly disagree with you, not disagree with you, but add a different layer to this and say we don't need to revitalize some of these churches.

01:23:56

Some of these churches just need to go away. And I think to Dr. John MacArthur and him talking about what the pandemic has done for the invisible church and the visible church and the fact that it's been a good thing.

01:24:10

It's been a good thing that some of these church doors are closing because it's exposed the wheat from the tares. And so I was glad that Dr.

01:24:17

Silvestro clarified, you know, revitalizing those qualified pastors, those qualified men.

01:24:24

Because I think, unfortunately, the SBC and again, this isn't true for all of it.

01:24:29

But I mean, what you're seeing is the fact that there are too many leaders who have commissioned these restaurant franchise managers instead of biblically qualified pastors.

01:24:40

And they've forgotten 1 Timothy 5 .22. Do not lay hands on anyone hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others.

01:24:49

Keep yourselves pure. The pastor is called to be the lead slave, not the CEO. You know, you want to hear a great message on that.

01:24:56

Listen to Dr. MacArthur's message from the Shepherds Conference in 2019. Faithful in leadership. He goes through Corinthians and talks about how the pastors are to be the third level galley slaves, not one who builds a business.

01:25:10

And so when you look at this, ultimately, yes, they affirm inerrancy. Yes, they affirm infallibility.

01:25:16

Some would even say they affirm sufficiency. But here's the problem. There's no fear of God in them.

01:25:23

There's no fear of God. They have a servile fear of man. That's why they capitulate to the world.

01:25:30

That's going to continue. To the person who asked about the North American Mission Board, if I'm going to plant a church, don't.

01:25:38

Don't do it as a part of NAM. Absolutely don't. You know, join the G3 Church Network.

01:25:44

If you're looking for a solid network to join, there's one. You don't have to do this. And I commend the people for staying and fighting.

01:25:51

I absolutely do. But at some point, you've got to go, OK, what's our mission? What's our mission?

01:25:57

Jesus came to save sinners, and he's given us the commission to baptize in the name of the

01:26:02

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and to teach them everything I've commanded. So how much time and energy, and this is just my opinion, how much time and energy are we going to spend?

01:26:11

And time, energy, and funds, and money, and the Lord's money that he's given to churches to shepherd, how much more of that are we going to spend and throw at an organization who doesn't fear

01:26:25

God? And they call themselves the great, you know, J .D. Gerber mentioned, we're going to change our name to the Great Commission Baptists or whatever that thing was.

01:26:32

It's like, no, you don't believe it. Your actions show you don't believe it.

01:26:38

So anyway, that's me rambling. Obviously, I let you wind up way too far, so sorry.

01:26:44

I'll bring you in sooner next time. Great. Thank you.

01:26:49

That was outstanding. OK. Just if I can throw in real quick. I share all of those concerns in watching

01:26:58

Lytton Greer. You're right. There's a parent. There's a youth. You know, there's no repentance there.

01:27:05

Where is the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God in bringing these men to repentance?

01:27:12

We're not talking about minor error here. We're not talking about oops.

01:27:18

You know, we're not talking about some of the nuances of eschatology. We're talking about a fundamental denial of the gospel.

01:27:27

Yes, and refusal of it. Flat out. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the social justice movement is proof positive of that, right?

01:27:35

How quickly that swept in and just taken over everybody, it seems like.

01:27:40

And it didn't creep in. It was invited in. That's right. It's still being invited in.

01:27:47

And we've got to get away from that, ooh, it crept in and we didn't know.

01:27:53

No, there's nothing new under the sun. This is something that's been brought in by wolves who want to entertain goats instead of shepherd the sheep.

01:28:01

Yeah. You know, one of these days we'll probably spend a Striking Fraternity episode,

01:28:06

Apologetics Live, on this subject. I have a three -hour seminar I do on just social justice, walking through the history, going back from the beginning of time, literally, on how it has walked into society, back really through the

01:28:20

Renaissance, medieval times, into the Enlightenment period, and why I bring all this history in is because this is always a slow process behind the scenes that creeps in and is allowed to continue to creep in.

01:28:32

It happened in this country. The church, it goes back to the 19 -teens with Walter Rauschenbusch, the

01:28:39

Baptist pastor, who it infiltrated seminaries back then. So like Vody wrote his book.

01:28:46

It's a wonderful book, Fault Lines, and displaying the issues today. But the history is very incomplete.

01:28:51

And he didn't try to go for the history, right? He wanted to hit today's topics. Critical race theory was not born in the 1990s as was written in that book as was claimed by other guys.

01:29:01

The modern father might be from the 1990s. No, not even. It was in the 1930s.

01:29:08

It was in seminaries. The Frankfurt School in Germany, that's where it started. Critical theory started at the Frankfurt School in Germany. But I'm saying even in the seminary perspective, right, in Christian circles, it's been in seminaries as early as the 1930s here.

01:29:20

We have the Christian Socialist Fellowship that started in the late 1880s that was here in America that Walter Rauschenbusch was part of for a period of years.

01:29:30

I mean this is a deep -seated thing that's gone on. Yeah, you're absolutely right with all that,

01:29:36

Chris. Okay, I want to touch on something you said and that, Alan, you talked about earlier with all the wasted money.

01:29:42

So, okay, practically speaking, if I was a pastor of an SBC church right now,

01:29:48

I would have – I'd be very conflicted. On one hand – and so Casey, this is like directly to you obviously as a pastor.

01:29:56

Chris, you have a lot to say. Alan, I mean you're part of this. I want to hear everyone's opinions on this. Justin, you're part of this too.

01:30:02

Okay, on one hand, you say this is a sinking ship. I can't associate myself with this anymore.

01:30:09

I need to be done with this. I need to cut ties. I need to show my church that I'm a leader and I need to stand up and say

01:30:16

I'm done. I'm done with this. We can't do this anymore. But then on the other side, we say, well, wait a minute.

01:30:23

Do we have some type of – we've been part of this organization for a long time. Should we – do we have something that says we need to continue to fight?

01:30:30

Maybe even as a steward of God's money, his resources, we've poured a lot of money.

01:30:38

Some of these churches have poured a lot of money into these organizations within the SBC that you literally have to just leave behind.

01:30:46

Are we not being good stewards by saying we're done, we're out, and just leave $30 billion behind in the hands of liberals?

01:30:54

I mean I see this as a real battle for guys with this dichotomy, and I know there's other things at play, but man, this is huge.

01:31:05

So maybe I'll start, Alan, first, and then we'll go to Casey, Justin, and Chris. Sure. I mean on one hand, there's a clear struggle here.

01:31:14

On the other hand, the SBC still affirms church autonomy or congregational autonomy where whatever they pass down, you don't necessarily have to affirm as a church.

01:31:27

So there's a struggle here because you can obviously decide to not affirm these things, and you're still fine to be within the bounds of the

01:31:39

SBC guidelines. The struggle comes in how much effort are you going to take away from your congregation to put towards fighting to try and see the

01:31:52

SBC make a turnaround? Is it worth that investment of your time? Is it worth that investment of your resources?

01:31:59

Or is it worth it to take your funding, pull it, and still be a voice?

01:32:06

Because you can do that. You can be basically a silent partner within the SBC and say,

01:32:11

I don't affirm what you guys are affirming, so I'm going to pull my money until you start affirming the things that I affirm.

01:32:19

Hit them where their pocketbook is and say, we're going to stop funding these things.

01:32:24

We're just going to stop participating financially until we start seeing the ball rolling down the other side of this hill.

01:32:31

So I would say that one of the things that I would do as a pastor, and obviously

01:32:36

I'm not, so I'm more at liberty to say this, but I would say I would stop financially participating in the

01:32:44

SBC until I saw the things start to correct themselves. Because that's going to tell them, okay, financially, we're going to put our money where our mouth is, and our money's not going towards you guys.

01:32:58

To be good stewards, right? Okay, fair enough. Pastor Casey, okay, you're in the thick of this, right?

01:33:05

He's got more into it than I do. So you're one of the guys that's fighting, right? And you,

01:33:11

I mean, okay, so Pastor Casey, you look like an innocent Southern boy. You know a lot of people in SBC.

01:33:16

I mean, let's be honest. You know a lot of people, a lot of higher -ups. You have a lot of connections at SBC. So your opinion is obviously valuable for somebody like this, and you have ears and feelers out with a lot of people, especially within Florida.

01:33:33

So what's your take on all this? So I had the privilege of receiving the phone call from Dr.

01:33:39

Hicks at Powers Drive Baptist Church while I was in seminary, and he said, Casey, I'm getting to be an old man.

01:33:45

This church needs a young man. Why don't you consider coming? And so over the process of a couple of years, I followed him.

01:33:51

And so that has helped me to get to know people. Dr. Hicks and Jim Henry at First Orlando were just the greatest of friends.

01:33:59

And I was underneath Dr. Hicks when I was 17 years old. That's who I surrendered to preach the gospel of the

01:34:06

Lord Jesus Christ under his preaching. So he is a gospel preacher. He is a

01:34:11

Bible -believing preacher. Well, Dr. Hicks was in the room with Adrian Rogers and W .A.

01:34:18

Criswell, Jerry Lines and Jim Henry and all these guys back when the conservative resurgence needed to happen.

01:34:25

At that convention, they were all in the hotel room. They all kneeled down, and they prayed and asked

01:34:32

God for a victory because this was the turning point. And so before the liberals could take over, they needed that.

01:34:41

And there's a great book written on it, A Hill to Die On, which I highly recommend reading. And here's what happens when you fight the liberals.

01:34:49

They fight dirty, and they will try and destroy you.

01:34:55

And that's what happened. They fought dirty. It exposes them for who they are.

01:35:02

And so who is going to take a beating like that, like the Apostle Paul who told the Galatians, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel?

01:35:15

Who's going to say that? Well, we're saying that. And we have, by the way, redirected our funds away from them.

01:35:23

And in doing so, we asked that that would be noted. We're sending a letter to the

01:35:30

North American Mission Board and to the SEND Agency and to the Florida Baptist Convention every single month as to why we're redirecting our funds away from WOCNAM.

01:35:38

And the treasurer for the Florida Baptist Convention, Dr. Tommy Green, gave us a call, and he said, we received your note, and we're honoring your request.

01:35:47

NAM's no longer going to get any of your funds. So we appreciated that. So we're being faithful to that extent.

01:35:54

But at the same time, I repeat again what Paul said, you foolish Galatians.

01:35:59

Who has bewitched you, right? So we're going to continue to fight this, not for 30 billion in assets.

01:36:13

We're fighting for people to make a difference in churches. And if I pull out, then

01:36:19

I'm a nobody to them. That's where my seat is. It's different for someone like Justin who's an evangelist.

01:36:26

Your platform is heard. But for me right now, it's very clear that God has given me a platform to be able to be alongside these pastors and to make a difference in the life of churches, in the life of people, to bring light to this evil philosophy and to show what took me a little while to learn.

01:36:46

It takes a while to pull back those onion layers of Southern Baptist culture. It takes a while to pull all that back and to be able to see it for what it is, for someone who is just being faithful to his local church.

01:36:59

Like for example, when I was in seminary, man, between the master's and doctorate work,

01:37:04

I had my head in the sand. I had no idea what was going on in the convention by and large.

01:37:10

I was being faithful to study and just stay alive and feed my family, right? And so you got guys who are working hard and don't even have a clue what's going on around them, but their money and their funds are being used for this agenda.

01:37:23

Who's going to tell them? It's guys like me who are saying, hey, I'm going to let you know what's going on, and then all of a sudden they're shocked and they're heartbroken.

01:37:33

And so for me, I'm looking at our churches, like Paul looks at the church in Galatia, like Paul looks at Corinth, and he is saying, revitalization is worth it, guys.

01:37:44

Wake up, get back, and don't become that church like at Laodicea, who's lost their first love.

01:37:50

Don't slip away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. Don't be fooled. Don't be bewitched. And so that's our approach, and I side with Adrian Rogers when he said, we don't need to meet.

01:38:02

We don't need the SPC. Bellevue doesn't have to exist. You know, at the end of the day, if we can't get it together,

01:38:09

God does not need the Southern Baptist Convention. Amen. Amen. Okay, so quickly,

01:38:14

Pastor Casey, before I move on to Justin, you obviously are sticking around in the fight with the SPC right now. What's it gonna take for you to say,

01:38:23

I'm done? Okay. Church is out. Well, I was flustered at the Florida Baptist Convention.

01:38:30

So last week we had a great convention and a lot of unity, a lot of great preaching and whatnot, but it was all on the surface.

01:38:42

It didn't get deep enough. So here's what essentially happened. In 2018, back over in Alabama, critical race theory was manipulatively voted in, right?

01:38:56

And Tom Mascola exposed that with his documentary on By What Standard. You gotta watch it if you haven't seen it.

01:39:03

So it got into the SPC. In 2019, it stayed through COVID when everybody's trying to figure it out.

01:39:09

And in 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee, that convention there, it did not get voted out.

01:39:15

So critical race theory was voted in in 2018. It was not voted out in 2020.

01:39:21

And now in 2021, we're being called the unity, a strong push to unity, which is cementing in critical race theory into our

01:39:33

DNA. So if you go on our website, Beulahbaptistchurch .org,

01:39:38

and go to sermons, we posted Willie Rice's message from the Florida Baptist Convention. He pastors what used to be,

01:39:45

I believe, the First Baptist Church of Clearwater, which is a predominant church. And he has a great voice.

01:39:50

And he was very clear that the Southern Baptist Convention is in a mess. There is huge problems.

01:39:57

There's embarrassing issues with lawsuits and all kinds of stuff going on. And he identified the fact that there were problems.

01:40:05

But see, we were called to unity, even though there are problems, and he didn't identify the problem, the fact that a woke culture is cemented in.

01:40:17

And the same thing with other pastors that are phenomenal, other preachers that are phenomenal. The overarching theme was the tie that binds us.

01:40:26

So we were called to be united in the mission of Christ, in the great commission to reach people for Jesus Christ.

01:40:36

That's what we're being called towards, the mission. But you see, we're not united in just the mission.

01:40:42

That's the end goal. We're united at the very beginning, which is Christ and Christ alone in the sufficiency of scriptures.

01:40:48

And if we can't get our interpretation of the basics right, then we're not united in where we're going, like Amos 3 .3

01:40:55

says, how can two be agreed unless they agree on the destination? And so nevertheless, right now we're being called to that.

01:41:02

So your question is, what's it going to take for us to leave? Of course, of course.

01:41:10

The video cuts out every time. You're going to have to repeat that. Casey, you have to repeat it.

01:41:16

You cut out that whole thing. What's it going to take? What's it going to take to get us to leave the

01:41:22

SVC? And I would ask for prayer and grace from anyone who thinks that it's just a knee -jerk response, because a pastor is not a dictator of a church.

01:41:35

He's not just going to say something and expect everybody to follow him. And oftentimes, a pastor can see five and seven years down the road further than what the people see right in front of them.

01:41:47

And so you have to lead them and educate the church as to what's going on.

01:41:52

And when they comprehend it and grab on to that as a conviction, then you'll be going together, and you will not cause disunity in the bride.

01:42:01

You will not cause a rift in the church. And so it starts with preaching and teaching the truth, educating the people.

01:42:08

So as soon as social justice hit the floor, I started preaching on it and let our people know exactly what it was.

01:42:15

And so they're up to date more than any other congregation that I know of, maybe besides First Baptist of Winter Garden right here beside of us.

01:42:22

Pastor Tim Foulds is clear, or Tim Groshans. But here's the thing. When you can take and have a business meeting with your people and talk openly and they have the same strong convictions as you and you can move forward in unity, then that church is together.

01:42:40

And a pastor should say, I believe we should do this, but not expect them just to up and run.

01:42:48

It's a settling in effect. It's kind of like when you said that to me when we went to the Shepherds Conference.

01:42:54

It took me some time to think about this because this is my whole life. I mean, man,

01:43:01

Southern Baptist educated, you know, born and bred. And man, this is my life. To walk away from that, brother,

01:43:09

I really got to think and understand this clearly. And you know what it's like for a change in the

01:43:15

Southern Baptist Church. You know, the old light bulb joke. I won't repeat it unless to save y 'all some corniness there.

01:43:20

But nevertheless, change takes time. But if you do it well, then you will be in unity with the people and it will be honoring to the

01:43:29

Lord and you will not harm the spiritual growth of those in your church.

01:43:36

And so there's a lot of people who have joined the Conservative Baptist Network.

01:43:41

We are one of those 4 ,000 churches. And we are speaking up to all of this.

01:43:47

And they've made it clear that they're not trying to start a different denomination. But I wouldn't fault anybody who started a different denomination.

01:43:54

I wouldn't fault anybody who left. I really would not. And if they do not feel the sense to fight for that, if they don't have the right platform, if they don't have a stomach for it, then that's completely fine.

01:44:08

To each their own. Each church is autonomous. Each pastor has different gifts. So that's where I'm at.

01:44:18

What would it take to leave? Homosexuality being affirmed. That's where I would leave. That's a big one. And that's a good one.

01:44:25

So before I get to Justin, I want to bring up one point here. As I teach on social justice in lots of churches, one of the points

01:44:33

I bring up is about this unity issue. A liberal tactic, which obviously has been adopted by pretending

01:44:40

Christians who are liberals, is that you push 10 feet. You really push.

01:44:46

And homosexual agenda is safe. You push in. You expect pushback. And so that pushback happens by the church, by conservatives.

01:44:54

And they gain 5 feet back. But in the end, there's a net loss. And then at that point, the liberals scream, unity, unity, unity.

01:45:02

And it cements it. And then a couple years later, they push again. You push back.

01:45:08

You lost another 5 feet. Unity, unity, unity. And it keeps going on until you keep on losing. And so what you're seeing in the church is the exact same thing that's been happening politically for a long time.

01:45:19

The exact same agenda. It's unbelievable to watch this. So, okay,

01:45:25

Justin, so what are your thoughts about the SPC? Leave, stay, what? I get emails pretty regularly from people saying,

01:45:35

Justin, I'm in a weak church. I realize that now. My eyes have been opened. But should

01:45:41

I stay in this church because I want to be a light? I want to be a source of truth. I know my stuff. I know what the truth is.

01:45:48

I want to be a light there in an otherwise weak or bad church.

01:45:53

Should I stay or should I go? 100 % of the time, I say go. Go. Because you're not going to change the church from the bottom up.

01:46:05

Yeah. A congregation is never going to rise to a level of spiritual maturity above that of its leadership.

01:46:11

It's just not going to happen. And I think what is true at that local level,

01:46:18

I think you extrapolate that to the Southern Baptist Convention. I really believe that it is a convention that is under the judgment of God.

01:46:30

It's not headed there. It's there. I think this is what judgment looks like.

01:46:37

And as you were saying, Anthony, the liberals push 10 feet and they expect some pushback.

01:46:45

Well, CRT has basically been cemented in the SBC now. This past convention, this past year, or I mean, excuse me, this year in June in Nashville, I've told people that was kind of like the, if people are familiar with their history, this was like the pickets charge of the

01:47:07

SBC. This was the high watermark for the conservatives. This was in Nashville, in Tennessee, in the

01:47:15

Southeast. All of these issues had been roiling and were being debated.

01:47:21

And all the conservatives marshaled all of their forces to get up to the SBC and rescue the convention.

01:47:28

And they lost, they lost. That was kind of like the high watermark.

01:47:36

The next convention is going to be in California. You think you're going to marshal the conservatives in California?

01:47:44

It ain't going to happen. I just, I don't, I don't see that there is any, and granted that's kind of an

01:47:51

X's and O's way of looking at it, but I just don't see, I don't see that the

01:47:57

SBC is going to be salvaged. I mean, theoretically, the people running the

01:48:02

SBC right now, theoretically, these are the folks who, who fought for the conservative resurgency back in the eighties.

01:48:11

These are supposed to be, we're supposed to, I say we, I'm not in the SBC anymore, but you know what I mean?

01:48:16

We're supposed to be a conservative denomination. We're supposed to have won those battles already.

01:48:24

But obviously we haven't. I, I think the very fact that, you know, so many of these things that we've talked about, the, the egalitarianism is huge in the

01:48:39

SBC, huge. I mean the very fact that a couple of years ago, Beth Moore was being discussed as a possible president of the

01:48:48

SBC. I've told people, if you're even having that conversation, you've lost. I mean, the fact that you're even debating that, you've lost.

01:48:57

That, that shouldn't even be debated, but it was. And we're having people now in the

01:49:03

SBC. What's that? And Al Mohler supported that. Yeah. He had a video where he supported the potential of her being the.

01:49:13

It's ironic that Al Mohler turned, you know, Southern around when he first came and now he's leading back directly in.

01:49:19

Yeah. But yeah, the, the fact that you're even discussing that you've lost.

01:49:28

CRT is in, it's, it's in, it's in to stay. Nam is worldly.

01:49:33

We've been talking about all that. None of the six Southern Baptist seminaries have said diddly about Ed Litton and calling him to resign.

01:49:43

So like what, what, what, what, how does this look? Like, how are, how are, what's the mechanism for supposedly taking the not the nomination back?

01:49:53

I just, I don't, I don't see how it's going to happen. I don't see how it's going to happen.

01:49:59

We're going to touch on a couple of these things in a moment because this is an important topic. So Chris, what are your thoughts quickly in this?

01:50:07

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, those people inside of the

01:50:12

SBC that are inside of seminaries right now that are, are, are, are going to be coming out.

01:50:18

Uh, the, the, the, they are, they're souls, they're souls who will live eternally somewhere. And there is an importance there and a mission there.

01:50:26

But here's something that, that, uh, and I'm not, I'm not a pastor, not an elder. Uh, but here's something that I think a lot of those who would want to stay and fight.

01:50:33

I would, I would sincerely admonish you to remember this, that those people are, are made in the image of God.

01:50:40

And if they're among the elect, they're God's people. And if they're truly called and equipped, then

01:50:45

God is going to use the word of God through the power of the Holy spirit to open their eyes. As far as discernment goes to leave and to, to be able to fight these battles.

01:50:53

I mean, it's, it's, it's the same for us, right? Now, how did, how did we find out about this stuff? The Lord through the, through the work of the word and the power of the

01:51:00

Holy spirit. We have to remember that. Um, uh, you know, I, we, we've talked about a lot, right?

01:51:05

John eight 44. I'm immediately thinking of this when I think of the leaders of, of Nam and the leaders in the

01:51:12

SBC, uh, you are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

01:51:20

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies.

01:51:31

So let me share that. And with one more small quote from Whitfield, as far as the almost

01:51:36

Christian, because this is what we're seeing, right? Whitfield said this quote, and almost

01:51:41

Christian is one of the most hurtful creatures in the world. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He is the, he is one of those false prophets are blessed.

01:51:49

Lord bids us beware of in his sermon on the Mount who would persuade men that the way to heaven is broader than it really is.

01:51:57

Period close quote. So, and then dr. Craig shared Galatians, you know, and we've been talking about CRT.

01:52:03

Another gospel has been brought in. This is another gospel.

01:52:10

That, that means it's anathema. So what does Paul say? Ephesians, Ephesians five, do not participate in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead even expose them when it comes to unity.

01:52:24

We have to remember that J .C. Ryle said this in his letters called

01:52:30

Pharisees and Sadducees to keep gospel truth in the church is even a greater importance than to keep peace.

01:52:37

That, that that's it. We're not called true biblical unity. Daryl Harrison said this in their episode on, on unity.

01:52:45

True biblical unity is a unity that is inherently divisive. It draws a hard line and, and, and then

01:52:53

I'll, I'll finish up with, with one more quote. I think it needs to be said and emphasized again, that Christianity is not some passive belief system that causes believers to lock arms with individuals, including pastors and preachers and politicians who subscribe to a worldview that is objectively observable as being evil and which loves and promotes the darkness rather than the light.

01:53:17

I, you know, I, the, the next step, the next, the next rung is promoting and, and, and, and allowing, you know, homosexuality inside the church and in church leadership.

01:53:30

And I mean, it's coming. So again, my question is this, why, if we are called to worship

01:53:38

God with everything we have, why in the world are we going to take the funds that people give in their worship to God and give that to organizations who support and have a worldview that is objectively observable as being evil and promoting darkness and not the light.

01:53:56

Amen. Thank you for that. So Justin, you, you texted me. You said you had one more point you wanted to bring up before I move on to the next topic.

01:54:04

So. Yeah. And to what Casey was saying earlier about shepherding the people and teaching the people.

01:54:10

And I agree a hundred percent with that. You can't for these churches that have been SBC since their inception, you just can't get up on a

01:54:16

Sunday morning and say, well, folks were out, you know, that ain't gonna work, but you're gonna, but I think the time has come that, that, that need to start educating the people about exactly what is going on in the

01:54:32

SBC, how deep the problems are, how deep the, the, the fissures are, the, the heresy, start talking about biblical truths about not being unequally yoked.

01:54:44

And I think that's kind of where we're headed with the SBC, so much of it. And, and also like,

01:54:53

I think I said at the beginning of the program, it took me getting out of the SBC to kind of break out of that mold because before I began to realize, okay, we, we can actually do church without the

01:55:05

SBC. It actually is possible. We can, there are good seminaries to go to.

01:55:12

There's the master's seminary. There's grace Bible seminary or grace.

01:55:18

Was it grace Bible theological seminary, Dr. Owen Strand. There are other good seminaries.

01:55:24

And, you know, my church is not, we're not SBC, but guess what? We do missions. We have missionaries that we support.

01:55:32

We just don't send it to NAM or IMB. We actually write a check and send it to the missionaries.

01:55:40

We mail it to the missionaries, go figure, but we're still doing missions. So I think a lot of people who have been born into the

01:55:49

SBC, like I was, they just can't imagine church outside of SBC, the

01:55:58

SBC parameters, but it can be done. You don't need, God doesn't need the

01:56:04

Southern Baptist convention. You can do church, real church outside of the

01:56:10

SBC and not have the entanglements with these, with the theological compromise.

01:56:16

And as I said, I really, I know there's good guys.

01:56:21

Casey is one of them. I've got other friends who are good, solid guys in the SBC, but I'm afraid,

01:56:28

I'm afraid what's happening is, is that some folks are, are holding on to a ship that I, that as best

01:56:36

I can see God himself is sinking. I'm not sure that's a ship I would want to hold on to.

01:56:42

And granted, you can't, you can't just quit cold turkey. It's going to be a process. But I think,

01:56:47

I think that that time unfortunately has come. So, okay.

01:56:54

Did you want to say something past Casey before I switch subjects? I sure do. Okay. It is very, very plausible that the

01:57:02

Southern Baptist convention is in Babylon right now. So under God's judgment dealing with it, right?

01:57:08

So Jesus told, you know, Satan to get behind Peter, right? Jesus told the

01:57:14

Galatians, you know, my children with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.

01:57:21

The agony is compared to childbirth. You know, we don't even comprehend that as men.

01:57:27

And then John in John chapter 17, man, Jesus is praying. Look up that word, keep them in your word.

01:57:35

How many times he says that talking about the believers, he is praying for the believers to be kept in his word because temptation and the evil one is real.

01:57:45

And so nevertheless, the fight is real. And we're not fighting for buildings and bucks. That aside, we're not trying to change the

01:57:52

SBC. It is a huge machine that will run you over and you will be a martyr if you try and I'm willing to be a martyr.

01:58:00

And that's going to be good because the blood of the martyr does what, right? It spreads the gospel. And so, so being if, if a man is called to do that,

01:58:10

God will tell him when it's time to wipe his feet or, you know, the dust off of his feet. He'll, he'll know that when it's time to move on, he'll have a piece with that as well.

01:58:19

But for the sake of the people, not the buildings, not the money, not anything else, by the way, we're doing the same thing with our missionaries.

01:58:26

We've taken on missionaries personally, you know, and are reducing the amount that we're sending to the cooperative program.

01:58:33

And I think that maybe even we would end up taking Tom Ascol's advice and taking the money that we would normally send to the cooperative program and send more delegates to the convention.

01:58:43

But nevertheless, that's not our goal is to change the convention. Our goal is people in churches and to be as Christ -like as possible.

01:58:53

So nevertheless, man, I respect wholeheartedly and I too concur with you,

01:58:58

Justin. If somebody called me and it was just a regular person that was in a weak church, you're not going to change a church from the bottom up.

01:59:06

Let your voice be heard clearly before you leave. Tell the pastor why don't leave.

01:59:11

It's so unfair to us pastors when someone leaves and we just don't know why, you know, we're like, man, is there an elephant in the room that I can't see?

01:59:19

Right. Well, talk to the pastor, be very clear. He may not know. And he may start that journey with being more understanding with what truly is going on.

01:59:31

And so that's the mission. And may decide himself to leave from the convention. So, but I'll know this for sure.

01:59:36

The guys that went before me fought, right? They may have lost the conservative battle, but as I go and sit with them,

01:59:47

I want to be able to say that I too am fighting. We might lose, but I'm not running from the battle.

01:59:54

It's not time yet. I'm going to fight my fight. This is the battle that the Lord has brought me to and I'm here and I'm going to fight.

02:00:02

And our church is in unity in that. Now, if our church was not in unity with that, if I didn't have the support of our people,

02:00:08

I would be the first one to say, we too are leaving. So I think you guys can agree that it's to each their own at this point in time.

02:00:18

So I think, do you guys all have a few extra minutes to stay on? Because I want to celebrate the fact we are in Anthony time right now, officially 24 seconds in.

02:00:28

So sorry, Andrew, we went a little past. So we're going to celebrate by talking about my pillow.

02:00:36

Oh Lord. Yeah. Right. I, you know, I forgot to do this an hour ago, so I've got to bring it up.

02:00:44

Support my pillow. Get your, my pillow. It's an awesome pillow. I use it. I love it.

02:00:49

They've got all kinds of other products. So, so go get them. Use promo code SFE and I will save you money, even more money by doing that.

02:00:58

So, okay. That's my little spiel. Andrew does a much better job with it. So I'll let him take that over next week.

02:01:05

And if you have an opportunity to ever meet Mike Lindell, tell him, he needs some better people, theologically speaking around.

02:01:12

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Well intending, but that's not good enough.

02:01:19

Yeah. No, it's, it's not. Okay. So let's, let's shift gears slightly here. One of the things that I think bugs a lot of people, right?

02:01:28

Is that you've got guys who I think Justin, you mentioned it earlier. And in case

02:01:33

I think he did too solid guys. Like we thought were solid guys for years. Al Muller, who

02:01:41

I think is the biggest double speaker that we know of today. I mean, I'm sorry. He, he's out of both sides of his mouth.

02:01:47

He continues to do so. I would rather have him just stayed silent over the last year, rather than, you know, coming out against CRT and whatnot, because he obviously hasn't.

02:02:01

There's no repentance, as you said, Chris, right? Cause his seminary is still teaching it. He's still promoting it in the background.

02:02:07

So, so he's literally being the double speak that scripture warns against. What about, what about all these guys?

02:02:15

I mean, how is it that all these guys, did they just all kind of fall at once? Is it, is it political pressure?

02:02:21

Is it, is it fame pressure? The celebrity pastor thing? What happens?

02:02:27

I mean, so I'll start with Alan and then I know that everyone's got something to say about this. So Alan, go ahead.

02:02:33

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is something that's been going on for a long time. We've talked about it time and time again, comes down to scripture.

02:02:42

A lot of these guys, they're not in the word, they're not in the word.

02:02:48

And it becomes apparent, it becomes apparent because their lives are not transformed by it.

02:02:54

And then you get guys that get elevated in seminaries because the seminaries aren't holding fast to the word of God.

02:03:03

And then they become caught up in a wind of doctrine. And the result of that is that they fall into left and right philosophies, essentially.

02:03:17

So you got Russell Moore, who then, you know, falls over to, you know, white fragility and social justice.

02:03:26

You see all these guys, they just started falling left and right. Now we do have the social media platforms.

02:03:32

I think that has a lot to do with the modern day celebrity pastor movement. And so some of these guys, they were elevated to a level of stature within the

02:03:43

SBC that they never ought to have been elevated to. They were never set for that.

02:03:50

They were not prepared for it. And the result is that they started to crack under the weight and the pressure of all of that exposure that they started to actually obtain.

02:04:05

So, okay. So one of the things I kind of wonder, and then we'll kind of go to Pastor Casey, thank you for that, as we build on this.

02:04:11

You know, we had a show about Ravi Zacharias maybe a year ago now, right, when everything started to crumble.

02:04:18

And there were guys like myself, Andrew, Justin were saying this, and I can't remember who else was on that one particular show.

02:04:25

But, you know, the stuff about Ravi was going on for a long time, right? This was nothing new.

02:04:30

The fact that he had fake degrees and fake teaching assignments went back 15 years that we know of.

02:04:38

Some of the stuff with females went back five, six years that we know of. Some were longer than that. So the stuff had been out there for a long time.

02:04:46

His ministry, who all knew about it, and were riding the gravy train, just continued to ride the train, make the money they were making, get the conferences they were to speak at, getting their church speaking events going.

02:04:59

They had their livelihoods based off of this ministry, based off of Ravi. And so nobody questions him, right?

02:05:06

And look, I'm a board member for two different ministries, and it's my job to protect the ministry.

02:05:16

It's my job to protect the head guy in the ministry. Like when it's Andrew, Striving for Eternity, right? My job is to protect.

02:05:22

And so if I see something going on, it's like, Andrew, let's talk. You know, maybe this doesn't look good, right?

02:05:28

And we had this issue with Andrew one time. We had a female who was close to the ministry, nice girl, nothing ever wrong, right?

02:05:37

But people had a wrong perception because she was always around the ministry and things like that. And so we're like, Andrew, you know, we just have to back off a little bit publicly because these things look bad.

02:05:48

We know there's nothing wrong here. You know, your wife knows her, you know, all that kind of stuff, whatever.

02:05:53

I bring this up because when Ravi had the first thing in the lawsuit five years earlier or six years earlier, whatever it was, even if Ravi comes back and says, look, these are all lies.

02:06:04

She's lying. Her husband's lying. None of this stuff's true. Fine, Ravi. We believe you.

02:06:10

However, no longer are you going to be traveling with your masseuse in first class anymore.

02:06:16

No longer are you going to own massage parlors. No longer are you going to fill in the blank, right?

02:06:23

This comes to an end. But the ministry didn't do that. They continued on in their ways, and it wasn't until after he passes that they all of a sudden say, uh -oh, maybe we have to have an investigation now.

02:06:37

Why? Because the gravy train's gone, and now they have to save face as people are all coming out of the woodwork.

02:06:43

That's at least how I view this, right? The whole thing was pragmatic in how it was handled with Ravi, who obviously had a lot of bad stuff, a lot of bad baggage there.

02:06:53

Okay, I bring all this up because Al Mohler, big in ministry.

02:06:59

Mark Dever, big in ministry. I mean, these guys have big ministries. They have lots of people under them in ministry.

02:07:04

Is it because of pressure that these guys have for having to support themselves, support their families, responsibility for all of these other people under them in ministry?

02:07:17

Is this part of the larger issue going on, or is there more to it?

02:07:22

Because I can't figure this stuff out, right? I'm trying to get to the bottom of why we're seeing these guys that seem to be so good for so long just boom, capitulate.

02:07:33

I think, too, that there were a lot of people that had a lot of thoughts that weren't expressing them until the opportune time.

02:07:41

So there were a lot of guys that I think that they had these thoughts. Russell Moore is clearly an indication of that.

02:07:48

If you go back and you look at Russell Moore's Twitter before things started to go obviously woke with him, his

02:07:55

Twitter indicated that he was heading in that direction. It was very soft until he could speak out in a more open manner about things and start apologizing for his white privilege and all kinds of stuff.

02:08:11

That's what ends up happening. That's what has happened with several of these guys is they remained more silent about that part of their philosophy or whatever you want to call it, false doctrine.

02:08:28

So you don't think they're just trying to protect their celebrity status.

02:08:33

It's more that these were just wolves all along. Yeah, I think predominantly we're looking at a number of these guys because you could see even before all of this really started to just let the floodgate through, you could see it with some of these people.

02:08:50

Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll was clearly a sign that there was a problem within the

02:08:55

SBC. The fact that guys were very quick to kind of align with him and that was a disaster.

02:09:04

And there's people who look back on Rick Warren. They look back on David Platt. They look back on Francis Chan, and they saw some of these things early on, but they kind of ignored it.

02:09:15

And now looking back, you're like, oh, we missed these signs completely. So okay, Chris, I'm going to let you go next.

02:09:21

I know you're chomping at the bit. Well, yes and no. I mean, so I would be like,

02:09:28

I wouldn't put like Moeller. Like I think of this, the infamous Q &A at Chevcon in 2019.

02:09:36

Yeah. You know, I wouldn't put Moeller, Devor and Duncan in the same category as a

02:09:41

Russell Moore personally. I think with Russell Moore, with Francis Chan, with Mark Driscoll, even with Matt Chandler, there were definitely some things.

02:09:55

If you were paying attention, if you were involved in those ministries at all, that definitely let you in on some cracks, some pretty big cracks.

02:10:05

You know, I think back to that Q &A and Moeller, in a moment of frustration that he was letting show, did say that, you know, he's trying to keep the

02:10:21

SBC, he was very frank, from going liberal again. And so,

02:10:27

Anthony, I think you put it very well. I think he's trying to speak out of both sides of his mouth.

02:10:32

And ultimately, again, it comes back to what I said earlier, I would say a fear of man issue.

02:10:38

You know, now you've got Lick Duncan trying to say that he's not woke. And you've got guys like Eric Erickson, you know, political pundit or talk show guy, trying to say, if you think

02:10:49

Lick Duncan's woke, you're not paying attention. And I'm like, bro, he literally wrote the foreword to woke church.

02:10:57

Literally. And if he did that without reading it, that's a problem. That shows another problem.

02:11:03

So, you know, why those guys like Dever? And I think of those three specifically, just because those three were three that the

02:11:10

Lord has used in my life personally so much throughout the years. But yeah,

02:11:16

I mean, I think with, you know, maybe, again, it's hard to kind of put a finger on intentions.

02:11:25

So I don't know what those intentions would be. I would say there are some people, I think

02:11:31

Pastor Casey mentioned this earlier, maybe who had, I think it was Pastor Casey who said, you know, there may be some with some good intentions.

02:11:39

But yeah, when you were talking about those coming out of the seminaries and stuff like that, there may be good intentions and who's going to tell them about this.

02:11:46

You know, but ultimately, I mean, it's those men have shown that when it comes to stuff like this, if someone comes to like R .C.

02:11:57

Sproul, R .C. Sproul always used to say about John MacArthur and their friendship. I know that if I go to John with something, with Scripture, remember the video,

02:12:06

Justin, at Shepard's Conference? If I go to John with something in Scripture and show him where it contradicts something that he said or done, it doesn't matter what it will cost him.

02:12:18

He will change it like that. And of course, it didn't stop

02:12:23

R .C. Sproul baptizing babies. That's true. That's true. You know, but unfortunately, you're not seeing that with guys like Moeller and Dever and Duncan.

02:12:37

You're seeing them go the opposite direction and trying to hold on to everything that they think.

02:12:43

And that was something else, too. Like, you know, Al Moeller, you didn't build what you have at your seminary.

02:12:49

Mark Dever, you didn't build Nine Marks. Like, you don't understand. Second Corinthians 4 .1, we have this ministry by the mercy of God.

02:12:57

Therefore, we don't lose heart. We have to understand that any ministry that the Lord blesses us with is just that. It's a mercy.

02:13:05

So they haven't shepherded it well. And now, you know, when you think back to the Dallas statement and all the stuff that that made explode in those worlds, you know, you look at where things are now.

02:13:18

And some of them are trying to walk back a little bit. But again, there's no full -on, you know,

02:13:25

Martin Lloyd -Jones, when he talks about repentance, he says it's three things. It's you stop and think again.

02:13:32

You change your mind about it. And then you act on that change of mind. And so you're not seeing those things in those guys when it comes to, you know, oh, well, maybe, you know, maybe we should talk about how

02:13:44

CRT is unbiblical. So anyway, those are my thoughts. I know that's kind of circular. No, I think that's great.

02:13:50

Because, yeah. Okay. So, Justin, so what are your thoughts about all this stuff? These guys.

02:13:58

Yeah, well, I agree with everything that's been said here. And I would say it fundamentally comes down to a fear of man that is far greater than their fear of God.

02:14:08

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how else to get around that. Their fear of man is far greater than their fear of God.

02:14:14

You know, one of these days, I'm not, none of us, we're not going to stand before a board.

02:14:21

We're not going to stand in front of a committee. We're not going to stand in front of a denomination. We're going to stand in front of a risen, glorious Christ with eyes of flaming fire.

02:14:31

And we're going to have to give an account. And we would all say we believe that.

02:14:39

We would all say we do. But very few of us appear to actually believe it.

02:14:45

You know, because, I'm sorry, Al Mohler, he is more afraid of men and the approval of men.

02:14:53

And it's the same thing, unfortunately, with Duncan and Endeavor and certainly with Chandler and all those guys.

02:15:00

But the fear of man is what has been driving them. It's what has been leading them down this road.

02:15:07

You know, I'm not going to, I'm going to, the thought of one day me, even though I know

02:15:14

I'm saved, I know my sins have been judicially forgiven, I still recognize that I will have to give an account for what

02:15:22

God has entrusted to me, the truth that He has entrusted to me in Scripture.

02:15:28

I'm going to give an account for what I teach, how I comport myself. And that thought terrifies me.

02:15:34

And, you know, we say we have a high view of the sovereignty of God.

02:15:41

Act like it. Amen. Do the right thing and trust God for the results.

02:15:48

And if the right thing means you lose your position as president of, you know,

02:15:53

XYZ seminary, so be it. If it means you lose your tenure as a professor, so be it.

02:16:00

If it means you lose your status in the whatever, and maybe it means you lose your position as pastor of whatever church you're pastoring, so be it.

02:16:10

Do the right thing. Trust God for the results, whatever those results are.

02:16:17

And at least you may lose your job. You may lose your position. You may lose your status.

02:16:22

And quite frankly, Al Mohler's succeeded pleasing nobody because he sat on the fence. But at least,

02:16:29

I mean, he's managed to make both sides against him. At least.

02:16:37

Good point. Yeah, I mean, seriously. I mean, he's not woke enough for the woke and he's not conservative enough for us.

02:16:44

And he's managed to, but at any rate, even if you lose everything, at least you'll have the blessing of having a clear conscience before God.

02:16:54

Amen. At least you'll have that. At least you'll know that you've pleased

02:17:00

God because of your obedience. That's right. And you can't put a value on that.

02:17:08

That is invaluable. There's no price tag you can put. I mean, if you really believe these things, there's no price tag you can put on having the blessing of having a clear conscience before God, knowing that you've done what you're supposed to do, and in so doing, you've pleased

02:17:24

God. You've pleased Christ. Yeah. Unless that's as far as they may. So before I get to Pastor Casey, maybe you can answer this,

02:17:33

Justin. In this article, I'm just going to read a part of this again, right?

02:17:38

Going back to the same article from before. The author believes that a lot of what's going on in the

02:17:46

SBC today started with, years ago, them trying to groom Matt Chandler and his megachurch to be the face of the

02:17:55

SBC in the long run. Right? That seems like it's a claim here. And so I'm just going to read this part here.

02:18:03

The substance of the Baptist struggle emerges with clarity in the juxtaposition of the elites in the pursuit of megachurch

02:18:09

Texas pastor Matt Chandler, with those Chandler views variously as fools and morons, through a decade of repeated platforming, invitations to speak at major conferences and participate in exclusive high -profile panels,

02:18:23

SBC elites have been bent upon wooing and grooming Chandler and other celebrity pastors, with Cache among younger evangelicals settled into the denomination for the long haul.

02:18:33

So did you get that sense, and in case you'll be able to answer this next too, do you guys get the sense that the purpose in the

02:18:43

SBC was trying to groom these guys to bring them in to change them? I mean,

02:18:50

I found this interesting reading it. I've never heard that before. Well, I mean, I think one of the things that we have to address is the

02:18:56

Acts 29 network. We also have to address the gospel coalition. Matt Chandler had his hands in both of those projects.

02:19:03

He's the president of the Acts 29 network, which was founded by none other than Mark Driscoll.

02:19:10

These guys, they had their hands in all kinds of projects that they had no business having their hands in.

02:19:18

They just didn't. They should have been told better. The people around them should have known better that theologically, there were significant flaws with Chandler and Driscoll.

02:19:32

There were all kinds of not only theological flaws, but there were all kinds of moral flaws that were obvious from the pulpit.

02:19:42

And so for anyone to have endorsed him was a significant problem.

02:19:48

But then to endorse Matt Chandler, who was closely tied with Mark Driscoll in a lot of ways, would have been something

02:19:55

I would have been shying away from a little bit myself just by the fact that they were so close in a lot of the projects they were on.

02:20:03

But Matt Chandler was obviously being pushed in a lot of ways to be kind of the forefront. And David Platt too,

02:20:10

Moody grabbing onto David Platt and trying to elevate him as well. These guys were very quickly grabbed up from conference to stardom and thrust into the limelight.

02:20:22

And they were not theologically, they were not vetted. They definitely should not have been pushed into that direction so quickly or given that kind of prominence.

02:20:32

Yeah. So Pastor Casey, what are your thoughts about this? You're middle SPC. So the question is, how and why is all this stuff happening?

02:20:42

Well, it's just the providence of God in Matthew chapter 24, verse 24. You see that even the elect, if possible, will be deceived.

02:20:50

So we're seeing predominant men fall away. And why is that? Well, I would think that if you just go to the very basics of what

02:20:57

Satan did in tempting Jesus, he offered him all the kingdoms of the world on temptation number three.

02:21:03

Right? And so the lust and the adultery of the SPC elites is all the king...

02:21:15

More building. Did I go out again? Yeah, for just a moment there. I see a glitch and I wonder if I lost you totally.

02:21:23

But all of this stuff is happening because this world is wearing out like a garment, the psalmist said.

02:21:31

It's going to be like as in the days of Noah before Christ returns. This is to be expected. And so what do we do?

02:21:38

We are clear about the gospel. One of the clearest expectations for a pastor in Titus chapter one is to be able to refute those who are not of sound doctrine.

02:21:49

We've got to be able to speak up and clarify and say these things for the sake of the sheep, for the sake of God's elect, for the sake of those who are in the churches.

02:22:01

And so wherever you're at, proclaim the gospel, expose error.

02:22:06

It doesn't matter if it's the president of the United States. It doesn't matter if it's a little guy. You know,

02:22:12

God is no respecter of persons. And so this whole fear of man, I'm not so sure, guys, if it's all fear of man or if perhaps it is this lust and aspiration for more, like Satan tempted

02:22:29

Jesus with all the kingdoms of the world. If perhaps they in their pride want a bigger church, they in their pride want more, you know, like another network to be a president of, more prestige, more money, whatever the case might be.

02:22:45

And so you're right. At the end of the day, we're going to be judged, and our works are going to add up to either wood, hay, and stubble and be burnt and lost or precious gems and stones which will show for eternity that we were the true blue.

02:23:03

So I think that their lust for more is exposing their error. I would agree with that, and I would agree with that.

02:23:11

Their lust for more, which in a kind of a backdoor sort of way, is a reflection of an insufficient fear of God.

02:23:22

But, yeah. But I would agree with that, Casey. So, you know, we've had

02:23:27

KT bring this up. Paul Tripp. Is he woke? Yeah.

02:23:33

Yeah, he's woke. Yeah, pretty woke, right? Yeah, he's connected with the same group of people.

02:23:39

If you go on some of these individuals' Twitter feeds,

02:23:45

Tim Keller, Paul David Tripp, you just got to scroll a little bit, and you're going to see it.

02:23:51

It's going to pop up. The key, I think, is to become informed on these things, the things we've been talking about, what is woke culture within the church, what is the social justice movement, what is critical race theory.

02:24:04

Become informed on these things, and then you go and you scroll one of these guys' Twitters, and you're going to spot it very quickly.

02:24:12

Tim Keller, I snapped one earlier today of Tim Keller because I see people trying to affirm him as not being woke, and he's just talking to all of the minorities is essentially what he's trying to get at.

02:24:27

I talk to these people. I talk to these people. Know who he's not talking to? God. No indication of going to Scripture.

02:24:35

What I would say that to you is check out Dr. Silvestro's presentation.

02:24:41

Yeah, KT's right. Eric Mason is his pastor, so anybody that stays under Eric Mason needs to be marked and avoided.

02:24:54

Check out Dr. Silvestro's work on CRT. I would be remiss as the public relations manager for Just Thinking not to mention the

02:25:03

Just Thinking podcast and what Daryl and Virgil have done and continue to do with that.

02:25:09

I mean, listen, so anybody out there who's like, you know, CRT is just above me.

02:25:16

Too bad, with all due respect. You've got to learn this stuff. And more than that, more than that, you have to know this.

02:25:24

You have to know the Bible because just like FBI counterfeit agents and those who are in the criminal finance world, what they do to be able to spot fakes is they study the real thing so much that they know it.

02:25:41

And so you study the real thing. You study what Scripture says. You get your theology proper. You get your anthropology, your

02:25:46

Christology, your soteriology. You get it from the book, from the Scriptures. You're going to be able to spot a fake.

02:25:52

You're going to be able to spot, you know, a Tim Keller, a Paul Tripp, an Eric Mason, a Jamar Tisby, a

02:25:59

Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler, by the way, who preached a sermon on Ephesians 1, comparing our inheritance that we have in heaven from Christ as what

02:26:08

Martin Luther King did in the 60s. Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. No, he did that.

02:26:13

He did that sitting in a chair, yelling at a camera, saying how we've given up our inheritance by not fighting the social fight.

02:26:20

That's Matt Chandler. That's the head of the Acts 29 Church Planning Network, who is all about, you know, puffing up lead pastors.

02:26:28

You know, so most importantly, believers, brothers and sisters out there, know the

02:26:34

Scriptures and speak up in love when you see something that contradicts. Yep.

02:26:40

Amen to that. Thank you. Thank you for that. So Tim Keller's name's been brought up. Not only is he woke, but we should have seen it coming for years because he bowed the knee to evolutionism and secular science, and you do that.

02:26:53

He, at this point, just fully claims to be a philosopher. Yeah. If you're just going to openly claim to be a philosopher, there's a clear problem.

02:27:03

We're called to be theologians. We're called to study God. We're not called to sit here and reason through using human logic.

02:27:11

Just for the sake of argument. That's like R .C. Sproul. He didn't call himself a philosopher, even though he majored in philosophy. He was a theologian who studied philosophy.

02:27:18

We're called to be theologians. Amen to that. All right. So we don't give Andrew too many more heart attacks tonight.

02:27:25

We probably should start to close up here. So I'm going to mention one more announcement, and then

02:27:32

I'm going to let each of you guys give a few minutes to close whatever you want to say. And if we want to do another show like this again, we certainly can, because I feel like we didn't cover more than the surface of some of this stuff.

02:27:44

But I just want to remind everybody, next week, no show. It's Thanksgiving, so enjoy your family.

02:27:51

The week after, December 2nd, there is going to be a debate. Somebody, for whatever reason, challenged Andrew to debate, and they don't know what they got coming.

02:27:59

So Calvinism is useless and dangerous is the topic. And so Andrew's going to have some fun.

02:28:06

I'll actually be at Andrew's house for that. So we've got a board meeting that weekend. So I'm just going to sit back, kick back, and enjoy watching the debate that Pastor Justin Pierce is going to moderate for that.

02:28:20

The following week, December 9th, Bill McKeever is going to be on, who has a great ministry to Mormons, and is going to give us practical tips about witnessing to Mormons.

02:28:29

So I'm looking forward to those couple of shows. One of the things that I have in the works coming up, probably not until the beginning of the year, is one of the things that my heart's really set on is the

02:28:42

Great Commission. And it pains me to watch, okay, I don't expect bad churches to evangelize, right?

02:28:50

But I expect good Bible -preaching churches to evangelize. And unfortunately, most good

02:28:58

Bible -believing churches, Bible -teaching churches, aren't pressing evangelism the way they need to press it.

02:29:04

And so what I want to be able to do is gather some guys, pastors of churches, who have really done a masterful job in their churches over the years in making their churches evangelism -centered, right?

02:29:17

And so the understanding that, you know, we're not here in the church to just get fattened up and then walk out for the rest of the week.

02:29:23

We're to be going out and doing the work of the ministry, which is the Great Commission. And so that's a topic

02:29:29

I want to bring up because I think it's really important today. I'm sorry, what happened this last year and a half has been ridiculous.

02:29:36

The church had all the answers for what's going on, and the church just crumbled and didn't provide those answers for last year and a half.

02:29:45

So that's on my heart. We're going to do that here real soon. On that,

02:29:50

I would like us to—we'll start with Alan, and we'll kind of go to Chris, then

02:29:56

Dr. Casey, and then to Justin to close out. So, Alan, any final words? Right, yeah, and I just saw that Katie had posted something about old books from some of these guys, and that's true.

02:30:10

Some of these guys do have old books that aren't necessarily just total trash, but their new books are.

02:30:18

So my general warning is if somebody has gone that way, be very, very careful, even with their older stuff, because it's probably got theological error mixed in there.

02:30:31

It's probably more subtle because they've been heading in the wrong direction. I'm always just a fan of your time is valuable.

02:30:41

Utilize your time to read good resources and stick with those if you can, and then always stick with Scripture, right?

02:30:51

I mean, I think we've all heralded this the entire two and a half hours now.

02:30:57

The inerrancy, the infallibility, the sufficiency of Scripture has to be there.

02:31:02

You have to know Scripture. If you don't know it, then you're going to fall for some of this stuff that we've talked.

02:31:08

We've discussed a whole slew of issues, and we've only just hit the tip of the iceberg with a lot of it.

02:31:14

But we're trying to give a warning because we care sincerely that there are people that are getting caught up in this stuff that don't necessarily know much about it.

02:31:25

So the hope is that we'll get you opportunities and get you resources to kind of get caught up so that you're not blindsided, as many are within the

02:31:35

SBC. They wake up one day and they're like, wow, this is not the SBC that I entered into.

02:31:40

What happened? Well, what happened was a slow progression of events that all of a sudden culminated in a giant avalanche.

02:31:49

And so we want to make sure that we're just being mindful of that as time goes on. And I mean, my prayers are to you,

02:31:57

Casey. Honestly, with everything going on, the fight is on your hands right now.

02:32:05

I mean, you can't let up. But honestly, it's an uphill battle.

02:32:13

Honestly. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Chris? Yeah. Isaiah 66 says, thus says

02:32:22

Yahweh, heaven is my throne and the earth is the footstool of my feet, where then is a house you could build for me?

02:32:30

And where is a place that I may rest? For my hand has made all these things. Thus, all these things came into being, declares

02:32:37

Yahweh. But to this one, I will look to him who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word.

02:32:43

So to kind of echo what Alan said there, you know, one of the things that we're seeing right now, ultimately, backing out high view.

02:32:54

We've talked about it, having a high view of God, a low view of man and desire to be regulated by the word of God.

02:33:04

Part of the problem is there are far too many professing Bible believing churches, professing pastors, professing evangelical

02:33:14

Christians who are too normative in how they approach God. And they don't they're not humble and contrite in spirit and they don't tremble at his word.

02:33:22

And all of us wrestle with that. We all go through that process. That's that's part of sanctification. But be on guard.

02:33:29

Be steadfast. Be immovable. And, you know, be willing to take action, even if it's not popular, as long as it lines up with Scripture.

02:33:36

And, you know, you have the approval of God and not the approval of man. Thank you, Dr. Casey. Yes, sir.

02:33:43

We just want to be like Christ and Christ didn't. He certainly didn't go for the majority opinion and he had odds against him for sure.

02:33:51

And I like what Isaiah said, hear my sin me. And I think that the calling on us today is found in Timothy or I'm sorry,

02:33:58

Titus 1, 10 and 11, where it says that there are many rebellious men and empty talkers and deceivers and they must be silenced.

02:34:06

So a qualification of an elder today is to be able to not only have discernment and doctrine, but also to silence those who oppose, you know, the doctrine that we cherish.

02:34:17

So nevertheless, we got our work cut out for us and we should not shrink back.

02:34:22

And we should really, truly. I mean, we need more good men like you, Chris and Alan in our churches, young men who study the word of God and who are infectious with their

02:34:32

Christ likeness and who love the Lord. Pastors need guys like you around them.

02:34:38

And it only helps and strengthen the church. So I commend you guys and thank you,

02:34:45

Dr. Anthony, for your work. And we all love you, Justin, as well. So keep up the fight. And you're right, Dr. Anthony, we got a lot more to say on this subject.

02:34:54

I know. So we might have to do this again in the very near future.

02:35:00

So thank you for being on as well. Casey, Justin, would you like to close out? Yeah, just maybe

02:35:06

I'll kind of close this out on a on a on a positive note. And I've said this before, but one of the great blessings that is in mind as an evangelist, not only traveling across the

02:35:15

United States, but traveling around the world is that is it can be easy.

02:35:21

It is easy to get discouraged when you look at the broad, visible spectrum of Christianity.

02:35:29

When you see all the stuff that's in the evangelical headlines, all the stuff that we've been talking about here tonight, it can be it can get it's real easy to get discouraged at that.

02:35:38

But there are good churches out there and they are everywhere.

02:35:45

They're here in the United States. They're overseas. They're in Central America. They're in South America.

02:35:50

They're in Africa. They're in Europe. They're in the Philippines or in India. I've been to them. They're all over the world.

02:35:56

And the thing is, is that these churches aren't in the headlines. They're not making news. Nobody knows about them.

02:36:02

But I am so grateful, so grateful for all of the faithful churches and all of our faithful shepherds out there.

02:36:12

And there are a lot of them. And Casey, Dr. Casey is one of those men.

02:36:18

And I'm so very thankful for all of our faithful shepherds out there that are laboring in the word, feeding their flock, protecting their flocks, doing the work of a true shepherd.

02:36:30

And they're not known. They don't have the big platforms, but Christ knows them.

02:36:36

And I'm thankful for them. So there's a lot to get you discouraged, but there's a lot to be thankful for and know that Christ's church is safe.

02:36:50

It is safe. Amen. He's the head. Amen to that. Thank you. Well, I just want to thank you all again,

02:36:56

Alan, for being a guest on tonight. Thank you. I don't know if I should call you Dr. or Pastor Casey.

02:37:02

I mean, they're both high titles. Do I call you doctor or dentist? I, you know, never get that straight.

02:37:08

You don't have to call me either one. You just call me Anthony. I don't care. It makes no difference. We come to Orlando.

02:37:14

We have a good time. That's right. And Lord willing, we'll be down there real soon for a while. So looking forward to it.

02:37:21

Justin, as always, thank you for being on. And Chris, thank you for joining and being patient as I got to laugh at all your hand gestures.

02:37:31

That was a blast for me. But thank you. You always bring some great wisdom to shows when we have you on.

02:37:38

So on that, y 'all have a good night and we will see you in two weeks for Andrew's debate.