Saturday Special: The Liberal Drift of the SBC (Part 2): Sex Abuse Politics

Welcome to a Saturday special edition of When We Understand the Text. Looking at current events and responding to them with a solid understanding of scripture.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

The Liberal Drift of the Southern Baptist Convention, Part 2. Sex Abuse Politics.

Pastor Gabe's blog for July 8, 2022. In 2 Timothy 3, 5 -7, the

Apostle Paul warned Timothy to watch out for those holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power.

Keep away from them, Paul said. For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women, weighed down with sins, being led on by various passions and desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth.

As I come back again to examining the liberal drift of the Southern Baptist Convention, the

SBC, this second article will consider the sex abuse politics that were played at the annual meeting, held

June 14 -15 in Anaheim, California. I meant to publish Part 2 of this series last week.

However, as some of you know, I was unjustly banned from Twitter. All the links to quotes and videos that I had saved there are gone.

It has taken me a little while to recover some of that information, but other things have happened since then, causing this article to grow.

I have been responding to seven questions asked by Dr. Nate Brooks, Professor of Christian Counseling at Reform Theological Seminary.

In Part 1, I responded to his first three questions having to do with liberalism, the presidential race, and the acceptance of women pastors.

In this second part, I'm going to focus on only question 4 having to do with the political games in the

SBC. Questions 5 and 6 have to do with homosexuality and abortion. A friend of mine is working on a video that will expose some of the ways homosexuality is being accepted in Southern Baptist churches.

I want to wait for him to finish that video and come back to that subject next week. To understand liberalism and the signs of drift,

I refer you back to Part 1 of my article, which was published on June 22nd. Let's consider how the widely covered sex abuse crisis has contributed to the drift.

Picking up where I left off, question 4, did the SBC play abuse politics?

It's interesting to note here that this is the only one of Dr. Brooks' seven questions where he did not give a yes or no answer.

My answer is yes, the SBC has been playing abuse politics.

Consider that Dr. Russell Moore, former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, sat on sex abuse allegations for over a year, then leaked them in May of 21 to prevent

Mike Stone from becoming president of the SBC. In Moore's own words, these are mafia tactics, and he played them.

Now I don't doubt that there are people on the other side of the aisle from Moore and the liberal drifters who have also played abuse politics.

The Guidepost investigation accused the executive committee of stonewalling and covering up sex abuse, and it would not surprise me if that is indeed true.

But that would still prove my point. While there are people who genuinely care for sex abuse victims, there are others playing the sex abuse issue and using victims to their advantage, falsely accusing their opponents in the process.

There is a particular matter that Dr. Brooks had in mind when he asked and responded to this question.

That matter has to do with my church's senior pastor, Dr. Tom Buck, and his wife,

Jennifer. The twists and turns and allegations in this situation are many,

Dr. Brooks said. But as I have been personally involved in this story, let me give you a brief summary of events.

In March, I and another elder from our church were with Tom when he privately approached

Willie Rice with a matter of urgent concern. Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Florida, was running for president of the

SBC at the time. If he won, he would be expected to lead the reform initiatives recommended to the

SBC in the wake of the sex abuse scandal that made national headlines. Tom discovered

Rice had a deacon in his church who had sex with a student while that deacon was a teacher in a public school years before.

Rice knew of that deacon's former sins and made him a deacon anyway. Tom first consulted with Rachel Denhollander, who verified that Tom acted immediately and did not sit on this for political advantage, unlike what

Russell Moore did. Long story short, Rice withdrew his name from consideration as SBC president, but not before a plan was hatched to blackmail

Tom in retaliation. Someone connected with Rice had obtained a rough draft of an article by Tom's wife,

Jen, who had written about the struggles that they had early in their marriage, specifically a trial they went through while Tom was in seminary.

This was before he became a pastor. In the draft, Jen recalled a moment when

Tom smacked her arm, and that was when Tom realized he needed help with his anger issues.

The two were reconciled to one another in a beautiful story of Christ redeeming a marriage.

Jen did eventually publish her story through G3, and you can read it there. However, that first draft mentioned more than Jen intended to have published, including details to sex abuse before she ever met

Tom. She never wanted that to be made public. She was just jotting down thoughts to have someone help her write her article.

The person she and Tom asked for help was Karen Swallow Pryor, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Pryor was the only one who was given Jen's rough draft. Somehow that draft made it from Pryor to someone else who circulated it among many others in an attempt to use it against Tom to keep him silent.

The private story of a sex abuse victim was distributed to use for political blackmail.

Tom and Jen attempted to track down the person who distributed her draft, but who would help them?

Pryor said things that made it sound like it was Tom and Jen's fault. Todd Bankert, pastor of Oak Creek Community Church, lied to Tom about Bankert's acquisition of the draft.

Rob Collingsworth of Criswell College has refused to tell Tom who gave him the draft.

Southeastern refused to do an independent investigation, stating the matter was closed after receiving an anonymous email from a couple claiming they were the ones who circulated

Jen's draft. Despite all of this, Dr. Brooks said, quote, Our convention decided to trust the testimony of those who have faithfully backed survivors for years, rather than the calls for an independent investigation from a group who has consistently bullied survivors online, harassed our seminary leadership, identified with neo -Confederates, insinuated that the

SBC has gone apostate, and argued that women should not be allowed to receive MDiv degrees from our seminaries.

Unquote. Who consistently bullied survivors online? Who identifies with neo -Confederates?

What in the world is he talking about? A sex abuse survivor's story was used as blackmail.

Dr. Brooks responded, Who cares? That statement right there is

Dr. Brooks playing abuse politics. I care a great deal about victims of sex abuse, but the liberal drifters seem to only care about certain kinds of survivors.

Jennifer Buck was just not the right kind of survivor. I'll come back to the abuse politics in just a moment.

To play or not to play. While I have your attention on political games, consider a

Baptist 21 panel hosted Tuesday morning before the annual meeting officially began in Anaheim.

On the panel were the two most prominent presidential candidates, Tom Askell and Bart Barber, as well as Danny Aiken, president of Southeastern Seminary, Juan Sanchez, who would be delivering the convention sermon,

Dana McCain, vice chair for the Committee on Resolutions, and Albert Moeller, president of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Near the end of the one -hour panel, Dr. Askell had to leave to speak at a breakfast.

Immediately after his departure, Dana McCain spoke up to oppose

Dr. Askell. McCain is a political columnist for the Birmingham News. I remember her speaking passionately at last year's annual meeting in Nashville when she tearfully opposed the notion that women who get abortions are guilty of murder.

McCain waited until Dr. Askell was out of the room before she said the following.

I'll tell you this. I'm a lot like Bart. And what I see in my local church and what I know of our seminaries,

I am so proud to be a Southern Baptist. But at the same time, I'm a little bit interesting and I'm an outlier in this discussion and in many ways in this room because I'm a layperson and I work in the secular media and politics.

And so I'm out there every day crossing swords with the secular left.

And to hear people within this convention point fingers at their brothers in Christ who are theological conservatives and accuse them of being the secular left makes my eyes roll all the way back in my head.

This is a straw man argument. McCain is giving the impression of refuting an argument, but the actual argument is being replaced with a false version of the argument.

That's easier for her to knock over. I don't know of anyone pointing fingers at brothers in Christ and accusing them of being the secular left.

If McCain has actual examples, she needs to give them. Otherwise, she's making false accusations, which she's accusing the other side of doing.

The concern is not that these theological conservatives are actually the secular left, rather, there are leaders who claim to be theological conservatives, but they have embraced liberal ideologies.

I gave an example in part one. I don't doubt that Danny Akin is a theological conservative by confession, but he has embraced and teaches at his school standpoint epistemology, which is opposed to believing in the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture, which

Dr. Akin claims to value. He has professors who think and teach the same way.

This is evidence of liberal drift. So, again, McCain is not framing the argument fairly when she says that conservative

Baptists are slandering brothers in the Lord by calling them the secular left. The audience applauded her straw man takedown, but they may or may not have been aware that she was calling out

Tom Askell and his supporters. Listen next. I do business with those people every day.

They are not in this building. They are not here. And I have seen so many lies of that nature hashtag to change the direction in the last few months as to really sour me on that whole idea.

Change the direction was Tom Askell's campaign hashtag. That's who she's calling out.

Now, if McCain means to say that there is no one in the building who is on the left side of the political aisle, that would not be true.

There are Democrats in the SBC, according to the common nomenclature. The Democrats are the political left.

This is not the same thing as calling them the secular left. According to Pew Research, at least a quarter of Southern Baptists admit they are

Democrats. More than half of those SBC Democrats believe homosexuality should be accepted by the convention.

While the vast majority of Southern Baptists confess to being political conservatives, there are

Southern Baptist Democrats who have held influential positions. Stephen Harris worked for the E .R

.L .C. before resigning and volunteering for Joe Biden's presidential campaign. Representative Al Green, the first to call for articles of impeachment against President Trump, is a

Democrat and a Southern Baptist. I have had exchanges on social media with Southern Baptist pastors who told me they voted for Joe Biden.

The reason I point this out is because McCain was not being truthful when she,

A, misrepresented the arguments of conservatives and B, claimed that there are not people in the building who are ideologically on the left.

She was either out of touch or deliberately dishonest. Either way, it was unkind of her to say this behind Tom Askell's back.

This next part gets especially schemey. That sounds just like Beth Moore.

That was not true. And McCain was being disrespectful toward her brother in Christ.

When Dr. Askell left, he went across the hall to a breakfast with the conservative Baptist network.

McCain accused them of hatching a political ploy to change the order of business in order to get

Dr. Askell elected president. That was not happening across the hall. I talked to almost a dozen people who were in that room, and they all told me no such plan was in the works.

I'll come back to that here in just a moment. Let me finish out McCain's comments. We can debate these issues on the merits.

I'm fine with that. Debate is what I do. I'm a political columnist. I'm not afraid of a good debate, but we've got a debate in spirit and in truth within the body of Christ, and we're losing our grip on that, guys.

We're turning into a wing of a political movement that is of this world rather than the people of God who are on a great commission movement.

We've got to get it back. If McCain is not afraid of a good debate, then why did she wait until Dr. Askell had left the platform to make these accusations of him?

If she believes we must debate in truth, then why accuse Dr. Askell of something that wasn't true?

Just minutes before Dr. Askell left, he had said something that Bart Barber disagreed with.

Barber looked at Dr. Askell and said he disagreed and explained why. That was fine.

It was brotherly disagreement. Why couldn't McCain do that? Did she not just say that we need to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ with respect and honor?

Instead, McCain perpetuated a rumor that the conservative Baptists were hatching plans to tilt the power in raw political gamesmanship kinds of ways.

Where this rumor began is hard to say. Earlier that morning, Griffin Gulledge, pastor of Madison Baptist Church in Madison, Georgia, said on Twitter, quote,

There is a plan to change the agenda and move the presidential election to the very beginning so that Tom Askell can win right from the start without the room being full.

Be in the room. This is pure manipulation of our system, unquote. Danny Akin, who had been sitting on the platform right next to Dr.

Askell, shared Gulledge's rumor on Twitter after Dr. Askell left. Dr. Akin said, quote,

I pray this is not true, but we all need to be in the hall at eight o 'clock anyway to do the SBCs and God's business, unquote.

Bart Barber also spread the rumor, and he liked a comment by Aaron Harding, who accused Askell of deceit.

SBC Voices participated in the gossip. They said, quote, CBN breakfast is happening now.

The report is that they're going to go over in mass at the beginning of the morning session. They are going to seek to move the president election, unquote.

Joel Askell, Tom's son, said his phone started buzzing while they were at breakfast. One friend said, hey, man,

Griffin Gulledge just said your dad and CBN are going to try to change the schedule. Then pastors at the

CBN breakfast started coming up to Joel and asking him about it. The breakfast was packed.

How were they going to get Tom Askell elected president when everyone who could have voted for him was at the breakfast where they were supposedly hatching a plot to move the order of business?

I did not see one apology when that whole spectacle was proven false and the games were completely unnecessary.

The liberal drifters had the votes. Conservatives did not win anything they came to Anaheim to achieve.

Barber defeated Askell 60 to 40. The drifters would have won straight up, but they chose to be conniving and unkind.

This was not the first time Gulledge has been in the middle of something like this. Last year in Nashville, he used an alleged sex abuse survivor to gossip about presidential candidate

Mike Stone in tweets that Gulledge has since deleted. He also deleted the tweets accusing conservatives of manipulation at Anaheim.

Stone was narrowly defeated by the plagiarist Ed Litton. Who knows how much the

Gulledge gossip affected the results. Crisis or no crisis. A sad aspect of these political games is that many

Southern Baptists cannot be bothered to actually investigate how credible the accusations are.

Just the fact that there's an accusation is enough for most people to determine guilt. Who tested

Gulledge, McCain, Brooks or Moore's accusations? Were they telling the truth or was this a morbid interest in evil suspicions and constant friction?

First Timothy six, four and five. Bring this back to the sex abuse scandal in Southern Baptist churches.

Ask yourself honestly. How much of a crisis was this really?

Do you know what the numbers are? Or because it was reported in the mainstream media, acknowledged by Southern Baptist leadership, became a focal point of the last few annual meetings.

Whistleblowers blew whistles, Russell Moore leaked letters, abuse victims cried tears, Beth Moore spouted off on social media, an investigation was voted on by the messengers and a sex abuse task force was assembled.

You're convinced the Southern Baptists are at least as bad as the Catholics. The investigation that was done by Guidepost Solutions resulted in a 288 page report of their findings.

Wow, 288 pages. Surely they mentioned all kinds of instances of sex abuse cover up, right?

On pages four and five, Guidepost discovered that August Bodo, former vice president and general counsel for the executive committee, had a staff member who was maintaining a list of accused ministers in Baptist churches, including the minister's name, year reported, relevant news articles, state and denomination.

The list contained the names of 703 abusers with 409 believed to be

SBC affiliated at some point in time. Guidepost went on to say, quote, our investigative team reviewed the list and conducted significant research to assess whether any of the alleged abusers were still associated with an

SBC church. Based on these efforts, it appears that nine people remain in active ministry or connected to ministry.

Two of those people appear to be associated with an SBC church. The remaining seven appear to be associated with churches that are not

SBC affiliated. We will provide this information to the credentials committee for further review, including whether the seven additional churches mentioned above are in fact non -SBC affiliated.

We will also continue to review the latter material to determine whether any referrals or other action needs to be taken, unquote.

So again, out of 409 abusers going back decades, only nine are connected with an active ministry in any way.

Only two are in an SBC church from 409 accused down to two active.

Do you know what that looks like to me? It looks like most autonomous Southern Baptist churches did their jobs.

And this is not really the crisis everyone has been saying that it is.

You have a one in a 100 chance of walking into a Southern Baptist church where sex abuse by a volunteer or staff member happened in that church sometime in the last few decades.

And that's a loose estimate, granting that there's surely abuse that goes unreported.

By the numbers we know, it's more like one in 125. By comparison, one in 10 public school students claims to have been sexually abused at school.

One in 10. There is no way to completely eradicate any and all forms of abuse from happening in Southern Baptist churches.

We live in a fallen world full of sinful people. Sin will happen. We must continue preaching law and gospel and follow what the

Bible says about how to deal with sin. If someone is guilty of abuse that amounts to a crime, he or she must be turned over to the local authorities.

Romans 13, one through five. If abuse occurs, that is certainly sinful, but not criminal.

The church must exercise church discipline. Matthew 18, 15 to 17. If an elder has committed abuse, he must be reproved in the presence of all, but do not accept a charge against an elder, except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

First Timothy five, 19 to 20. The Bible gives us everything we need to deal with these issues, even to convict abusers and heal the abused.

So why did the SBC call for an outside third party to investigate a crisis that's not that big of a crisis?

I say this to your shame, says first Corinthians six, five. Is it really this way that there is not one wise man among you who will be able to pass judgment between his brothers?

As for what's in the other 286 pages of the report, there was nothing groundbreaking other than an accusation against Johnny Hunt that was not previously known.

Why had he not been investigated? Given his financial connections with Ravi Zacharias, his massage parlors, a dozen or so pages were given to how the

SBC is structured. The widely covered story of how Paige Patterson handled a sex abuse accusation was over 10 pages.

The Jennifer Lyles story was over 30 pages. In short, it was not page after page of sex abuse cover up.

The report contained a lot of editorializing, not honest investigation. For example, the report said something like we considered so -and -so's account to be credible or we do not consider so -and -so's statements to be credible.

Whether or not you consider someone's statements to be credible is not proof of wrongdoing. About the

Guideposts report, Megan Basham of The Daily Wire said the following. Lyman Stone, demographer at the

Institute for Family Studies, told me the actual data in the abuse report, the result of an eight -month investigation by Guidepost Solutions, does not come close to meriting the hyperbolic terms that are peppering coverage in The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN.

Statistically speaking, he said there were not that many cases. This is not actually that common of a problem in this church body.

Stone went on to estimate that there are about 100 ,000 to 150 ,000 staffers in SBC churches, but many thousands more volunteer in their ministries.

Of all the allegations that Guidepost investigators reviewed, they found only two that appear to involve current

SBC workers. If you wanted to argue that, based on this report, executives of the

SBC mismanaged the cases that were brought to them, then fine, Stone said. But if you want to say this shows that the

SBC is corrupt, hypocritical and rife with sexual abuse, the report doesn't demonstrate that.

Stone added that he was shocked that Guidepost investigators found only two current cases, given how many exist in the general population.

I mean, if I had been betting beforehand, I would have bet for a couple of hundred, he said, because if you're talking about 100 ,000 to 150 ,000 people who are disproportionately men, just your baseline rate of sex offenders tells you you should have gotten a couple of thousand sex offenders in there just by random chance.

He concluded that while the report may show the need for reforms in responding to allegations, it does not show an endemic problem of sexual abuse, adding it is important to distinguish these.

Basham went on to investigate something almost no one wants to touch. Among the alleged abuse victims mentioned in Guidepost report, are their stories true?

However you feel about that question, it is a godly question. If someone claims to have been sexually abused, then they are accusing someone of sexual abuse.

The accused has as much right to a fair hearing as the accuser. Due process is right and biblical.

Innocent until proven guilty. Deuteronomy 19 15 to 19 says a single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established.

If the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had intended to do to his brother.

Thus you shall purge the evil from among you. Basham looked into the most prominent allegation of abuse in the

SBC report, the story of Jennifer Lyle. She said that story alone should set off alarm bells for anyone interested in maintaining a biblical standard of justice.

I won't go into further details, but I recommend that you read her whole story. Jacob Denhollander, Rachel's husband, had a fit on social media yesterday over Basham's article, swearing and calling her a hack journalist.

Childishly, he posted a comic that compared Basham to a nagging sea lion with the caption

Go away, Megan. Basham replied, quote, I have no problem hashing out critiques of my guidepost story.

I'm open to hearing if you think something in it is unfactual. But what's not fair is throwing out insults, then sneering.

Go away. When I defend my work, I know it gets cheers from your crowd, but it's cheap.

Unquote. Dr. Aiken got involved and said, quote, I am extremely disappointed in the attacks and misrepresentations of what happened to Jennifer Lyle.

I know how well this was investigated by Albert Moeller and SBTS. Victims of sexual abuse should not be abused repeatedly on social media, especially by followers of Jesus.

Unquote. Where was that concern for Jennifer Buck? Where's the investigation on her behalf?

Again, Jen Buck was just not the right kind of survivor. Questioning the validity of the story of an alleged sex abuse is not attacking the victim.

It's actually doing justice for the alleged abuser and the one claiming to be abused.

But Jacob lashed out at anyone who would believe Basham's article, saying, quote, you get to live your lives abstracted from it all.

But this sort of trauma doesn't get put away in the cupboard for them at the end of the day. Unquote. As if the only people who would ever ask questions about the legitimacy of the guidepost report are people who have never experienced sex abuse.

That's absurd. One in every six men and one in every six women have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether as children or adults.

Even people who disagree with the way the SBC sex abuse matter is being handled, as hard as that is to believe.

What's happening here is the rotten fruit of intersectionality, taking social and moral credibility away from the privileged, in this case, men and entitling the oppressed based on intersecting points in their identity.

People, particularly women, become experts and authorities simply because they claim that they are victims.

Consider the ways that some of the alleged SBC abuse survivors have attempted to assert authority over me regarding matters completely unrelated to whatever happened to them.

Jules Woodson accused me of being an abuse enabler because I pastor with Tom Buck, whom she claims is permanently unqualified as pastor because he slapped his wife's arm while in seminary.

Meanwhile, Woodson has been on social media offering to drive women to get abortions.

Another, Krista Brown, called for the SBC to remove me as pastor because I listed sins that the

Bible says are worthy of death, Leviticus 29 -16 and Romans 1 18 -32, even though I also said, turn from your sin to Jesus Christ and live.

These are the people who are in control of the Southern Baptist Convention. Though they are few and hold no authority, everyone is scared of them and no one will dare challenge them.

Just for asking questions, you will be ostracized as being heartless and uncaring.

You will not hold any positions of authority or serve on any committees unless you are willing to go along with the new narrative.

They gain this power playing abuse politics. The outcome of at least the last two annual meetings was steered by abuse lawyer

Rachel Denhollander. After last year's meeting in Nashville, Jacob said, quote,

In the space of three years, Rachel Denhollander basically single -handedly introduced the phrase third -party investigation into the wider vocabulary of Christians, showed how it could be done, and now has helped the largest denomination in the country do the right thing in a denomination we don't even belong to, unquote.

Do the right thing. How? Exactly how have sex abuse victims been helped by anything that has been done in the

SBC other than Jennifer Lyle? She got a million dollars. The greatest thing

Rachel accomplished was she brought a third -party non -Christian organization in to investigate the

SBC, and they wrote a report that did not practice any biblical standards of justice.

This is not based on what the Bible says. It is based on feelings and emotionalism.

I feel like Jennifer Lyle is the right kind of survivor, but I feel like Jennifer Buck is not.

All of this is evidence of liberal drift. Go back to the characteristics of liberalism that I listed in my previous article.

Two of those characteristics were true religion is not based on external authority and Christianity is a movement of social reconstruction.

That is evidenced in the sex abuse politics. If the people in charge of reforms in the

SBC actually cared about sex abuse victims, they would be following what the

Bible says, not appealing to subjective feelings and speculation and certainly not appealing to non -Christian third parties.

They would have the fear of God and not the fear of man or perhaps the fear of woman.

It is astonishing how much influence Rachel Denhollander has over the

SBC. Whenever you read a story in mainstream news regarding sex abuse connected to a church or an evangelical group, which names are you most likely to see referenced as experts?

Just about every story I read will quote either Boz Javidian or Rachel Denhollander.

Boz recommends Rachel and Rachel recommends Boz, and they both recommend guidepost solutions who fund

LGBTQ plus pride causes. But I'll get to that next time,

God willing. Conclusion. In the words of the Apostle Paul, bear with me in a little foolishness, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy.

Second Corinthians 11, 1 -2. I know a Southern Baptist pastor who has cared for many people who have been sexually abused.

He has helped get the abuse to safety. He has sat face to face with rapists and pedophiles, even right next to them in their jail cells, telling them to repent of their sin and turn to Christ before they fall under the judgment of God.

He has counseled the embittered, hardened by the abuse they endured. He told them to humble themselves, helping them to understand they were not saved just because they were victims.

If they did not come to Jesus, they would go to the same place their abusers would go at the final judgment.

But in Christ, they would be forgiven. And they would find the healing and strength to forgive those who had sinned against them.

This pastor has wept with the broken and hurting, counseling with the Holy Scriptures, for there are no words of hope greater than what

God has spoken in the Bible. This pastor was abused and his wife was abused before they met, but the

Lord Almighty has been their Redeemer. Isaiah 54, 4 -5. On behalf of such a man,

I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast except in weakness. 2

Corinthians 12, 5. I have been guilty of sexual sin, but by the grace of God, I have been forgiven.

Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sin. He rose from the grave for my justification.

All who believe in him will be forgiven and have everlasting life. Beware those who have a form of godliness, but deny the power of the gospel to transform hearts and lives, to heal the hurting and mend the broken.

They capture weak women burdened by various sins, using them for their own political advantage.

But they will not get very far, Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, 9. For their folly will be obvious to all.