Whispering Sexual Sin, Ed Litton (SBC)

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One, two, three! Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Hi Bud, this is The Wrap Report. Greetings Andrew, wonderful to be here.

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We are whispering today. Why are we whispering? We're whispering because that's what we're going to talk about on the show today.

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Oh, now I know. Welcome to The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, here with you on an episode.

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We're going to talk about whispering because, well, that's been in the news quite a bit in lots of different contexts, but we'll talk about that in a moment.

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But it's good to be back, Bud, you and I recording on kind of a regular basis again. Yes, it is very nice.

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You've been jet -setting and hobnobbing and all those things that people on the platform like you do.

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How was MacArthur's birthday party? We're not supposed to be sharing that I was at MacArthur's birthday party. I mean, really, I thought that was a secret between us.

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No, it was a suspicion of mine. All right, well, today we're going to talk about whispering because, well, this has been in the news.

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If you've heard, well, let's play a clip of Mr.

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Biden and see what he does when he does press conferences. I'm not being critical of you all. I really mean this.

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It was legitimate questions you're asking me. Asking me, well, you know, guess what? Employers can't find workers.

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I said, yeah, pay them more. Okay, so he's got a knack for whispering, not just once, but, you know, he seems to do it regularly.

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$1 .9 trillion relief so far. They're going to be getting checks in the mail that are consequential this week for childcare.

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And so we see that he has a strange behavior in whispering to people.

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It's weird. You know, he recently came out, but I don't know if we talked about this a little. You didn't read the articles and stuff or didn't see this so much.

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But he came out with a thing recently talking about guns because he's very much against use of guns.

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He doesn't want guns to get in the hands of criminals like his son. Oh, wait, no, wait,

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I'm sorry. His son did have guns and they just covered that up. That's right.

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Even though he legally wasn't supposed to have one because he's, well, a criminal. But that being the case,

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I guess maybe he only wants criminals to have guns. But he said in arguing against guns in the hands of citizens like you and I who don't break laws and are responsible, he said that he was trying to say we don't need guns to hunt with 40, 60, 80, 100 rounds of ammunition.

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You don't need that to hunt. And he realized that's not the argument people make.

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People make the argument that we needed to prevent a tyrannical government.

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And so he made the claim that you can't take over a government with those guns because we got the nukes and the

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F -16s, which, of course, made everyone say, well, then we need F -16s and nukes and tanks.

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Right. OK, the gun control should be that we get all that. I mean, that really should be the case then.

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Let's privatize that. There's two observations, and I did not hear any of this.

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I read a little bit about it. So is he following the political philosophy of speak softly and carry a big nuke?

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Is that what he's doing? Yes, maybe that's what it is. So it is interesting because, of course,

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Babylon B being Babylon B, they started finding a whole bunch of things. They got a guy that's with an

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F -16 behind him, and he's got his own private F -16 to go to work. There's one where they ended up saying they have

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Biden with the quote and basically arguing that here's the party who they claimed the democracy was at stake on January 6th.

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We almost lost the entire democracy by one peaceful protest. Of course, they called a riot.

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Insurrection, man, that's not good. Yeah, and so there's one where Babylon B has a thing saying the party that says we can't take over the country without nukes and F -16s thought we almost lost the country with one riot on January 6th.

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And here's the interesting thing with it. If you put those two together, if we're taking this at face value, he's afraid.

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He's claiming that just with our guns, we can't take over the government. We can't prevent against this tyrannical government, and yet we almost took over the entire government without even having a gun.

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Yeah, yeah. I mean, all you need is a Viking helmet with antlers. Yeah, because they didn't find a single gun that day, right?

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I mean, it's the whole narrative that they end up having is here you're going to – you can't take over the country because you don't have nukes and F -16s, but we're afraid that you took over the entire country without even a gun.

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So I guess he shouldn't worry about guns. We don't need guns to take over the country. We just need, yeah, a guy with antlers.

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And so what you end up seeing with this is that you have the fact that when we look at these things, there's a thing that we always say within Christian circles is that theology matters.

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No, no. I mean, you're correct. We do say that, and I do hold to that. But actually, narrative matters.

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That's what matters. You know, you seem to be right, because as we're going to talk about today with the

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SBC and the new president, Ed Litton, it does seem to be that narrative is what matters more.

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Let me tell you what. I watched that thing for two days. If you don't see a narrative there, then you must have been out at the coffee shop.

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It's unbelievable. Yeah, and so here's the thing. So you and I talked about doing this.

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And as usual, I mentioned to you earlier in the week, hey, let's do this as a topic.

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And so you do it. Usually what ends up happening, folks, is I'll look at something.

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I start researching something. I go, hey, let's do this. Or sometimes Bud will say, hey,

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I'm looking into this. We should talk about this. And we'll come up with something.

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But this week, Bud, in his research, because we'll both do individual research, and Bud's doing research, and then all of a sudden says,

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I'm going to write an article on this, because I got too much together. So we're going to link that article.

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But you have an article with a nice title,

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Sex, Whispers, and Sermon Swapping. Swiping. Yeah, Sex, Whispers, and Sermon Swapping.

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There should be an N in there, right? I don't know. Yeah. And so this is going to cover some of what we want to talk about.

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But there was a recent thing that Ed Litton, who is now the president of the

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SBC, that he made this quote. And this is what triggered me and got me to say, you know, we need to address this to see how accurate this is.

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And then after we deal with the initial comment, I think there's some things you brought up in the article that would be really good for folks to understand.

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But he had said this, quote, in the Bible, sexual sin is whispered compared to the shout

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God makes about greed and judgmentalism, unquote. Let's break this down and see if it's accurate.

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I mean, that's really, there's two aspects that he has here. We have the aspect of God being soft on sexual crime, sexual sin, and loud on greed and judgmentalism.

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Let's see, shall we, if the Scripture bears this out. Now, you actually dealt with many of the passages that I wanted to deal with.

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You dealt with them here in your blog post. Well, it's important just for the context to note that what he is preaching from Romans one.

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Yes, that sort of giving over section that Paul speaks here at the end of the chapter.

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That's the that's the text he's preaching from. So he's preaching. Well, let's let's read this.

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This is Romans one, 22 to 32, 22, 24 to 32.

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This is the passage he was preaching. Let's see if this speaks quietly, softly, whispering, shall we say, on sexual sins.

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Therefore, God gave them up to vile impurity in the lust of their hearts so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

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For they exchange the truth of God for falsehood and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

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Amen. For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions for their women exchange the natural relations for that which is contrary to nature.

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And likewise, the men to abandoning the natural relations with women and burned in their desire toward one another.

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Males with males committing shameful acts and receiving in their own persons and do penalty of their error.

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And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind to do those things that are not proper.

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People having been filled with all ungodliness, wickedness, greed, and evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.

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They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unfeeling, and unmerciful.

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And although they knew the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.

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This passage does not sound like he is whispering about homosexuality.

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No, no. This passage is really clear that when a nation is given over to homosexuality, that is the judgment of God.

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It's not bringing the judgment of God. That is. Right. Given over.

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Yes. So what we see here, this is, as we look at the language here, he's saying it's an impurity.

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It's dishonoring. He's saying that it's for this reason they're given over to their passage, their degrading passions,

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I should say. He talks about it being unnatural, shameful, error.

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I mean, these are not things that seem to be whispering. It's like I wonder if he actually was engaging with this text as he's preaching this and making this claim, because this whole text is pretty strong against homosexuality.

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And, you know, I don't see an emphasis when I'm looking at this, the greed and judgmentalism.

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Well, yeah, there's greed right there. Yep. Verse 29, it's mentioned. Right. With a whole list of other things, unrighteousness, wickedness, greed and evil.

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So greed is mentioned. Judgmentalism, let's see. I'm not seeing that there, but maybe we could try to fit it in somewhere.

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You know, unmerciful, maybe that would be unmerciful. I don't know. But you know what,

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I'm seeing that listed in a whole list of other things that it says people having been filled with all unrighteousness.

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Huh. It almost seems like once people give themselves over to homosexuality, all these other things become the norm.

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It almost seems like the homosexuality is the one he's shouting about, because that sounds like that's the bigger issue here in this passage.

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Yeah. I mean, a simple reading of this text would not leave you thinking, wow, well, that's not really a big deal.

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He's, you know, yeah, it's a problem, but it's just not that big a problem. That's right. You wouldn't come away with that impression.

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And if you did, if you don't see what's going on here, you might just be a natural man who cannot understand.

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Well, see, and this is the thing about the narrative. It's more about the narrative. The narrative matters, not theology, not the truth of God's word.

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And to say that you could be supposedly exegeting, expounding on Romans 1, 24 to 32 and miss the point completely.

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You know, I love when you've probably heard the account with John MacArthur when he was in seminary.

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And Dr. Feinstein, his professor really wanted to impress the guy and worked very hard in his preaching class on putting together a sermon.

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And all the professors take their notes and they'd hand them to you as they walk out.

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And here's his professor that he really wanted to impress and hands him, you know, a,

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I think it's Feinberg. Feinberg, yeah. Yeah, hands him a, hey, it's a

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Jewish name. They all sound the same. That is oppression right there now.

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You can't do that. I'm impressing myself. I'm sorry. But, you know, he goes up and Dr.

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Feinberg just hands him this one thing. And all it says is you missed the point completely.

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Well, I think if we had a note to give to Ed Litton, it would be you missed the point completely.

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I mean, he comes to the exact opposite conclusion that the text would. You know, how do you come to this text?

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Now, here's the thing. Let's examine. Does God whisper on the issue of homosexuality as compared to judgment or greed and judgmentalism?

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Well, you know, in your article, you actually deal with a lot of different articles or a lot of different passages that deal with homosexuality.

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There's one that was missing in your article. And that was this. You dealt with, you know, the

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First Corinthians 6 and Galatians, Colossians. You bring up Genesis chapter 19,

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Leviticus chapter 18, Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 1,

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Jude 7. So, obviously, there's a number of passages that we could look at where there are lists of sins and sexual sins are mentioned in those.

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Sexual sins always seem to lead the pack in those. But here's the question. We have Romans 1, the passage he's expounding, where he seems to get the complete opposite understanding.

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But can you name the city? I don't know if you could do this. The biblical city. Which city was it that was completely destroyed because of the sin of greed and judgmentalism?

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It's a test question, and it's early as we record this. I can't name that. Can you mention the city that was destroyed because of their homosexuality?

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Let me think. Wow. Lot was there. Oh, Sodom. Good morning. Sodom. Wait.

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Isn't that where they got the term they used to call what homosexuality was before they came up with the word homosexual?

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That old KJV word? Yeah. Sodomite. Oh. Yeah. Gee, that's strange.

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So, God wiped out an entire city whispering. Yeah. I don't see him.

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I mean, we could say he, you know, Acts chapter 5, he did take two people's lives because of greed.

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But it really wasn't the greed, was it? Because Peter was quite clear it was lying to the

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Holy Spirit that they were. So, we can't even say with them. Oh, man. I don't see that fire and hailstorm coming from heaven like dew landing on Dixie.

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I don't think it was soft and gentle. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so. So, I mean, this quote by itself just does not align with Scripture.

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And this is the problem. What we end up seeing, the narrative that we see, is the fact that so many of these quote -unquote

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Christian leaders, they want to go along with the world. They want to get the narrative right rather than the theology right.

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In fact, you know, I want to play a clip from, this was from television, that is, this is

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MSNBC. And let's hear what Ed has to say when challenged about the wickedness, you know, of Christians.

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Ready? Pastor Linton, before I let you go, I have encountered way too many

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Christians who express zero gentleness and zero respect when talking to people who don't share their views.

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Whether it's atheists, agnostics, gay people like myself, or just people who don't share their politics.

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And that is not biblical. That is not scriptural. That is not what the Bible teaches believers to do.

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So, before I have to let you go, what do you plan to do as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention to make people of faith more palatable, less contemptible, and maybe a little more

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Christ -like in the way they deal with the rest of the world? Well, let me say this. First of all, you're right.

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Pastor Linton, before... You're right. Wow. So, I mean, right off the bat there, you know, the reality is everything that guy was describing, described himself.

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How about he becomes more palatable with Christians? How about he stop being so judgmental with Christians?

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How about he start listening to what other Christians have to say? And he's going to lecture Christians on what the

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Bible says? As a practicing homosexual. Sorry, first repent and then talk to us, right?

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It's like... Yeah. I know the Bible better than Christians. Well, you're not living it for sure.

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I mean, the reality is his first thing is, you're right. Well, the narrative matters because I'm on MSNBC.

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We have some longer clips that I'll put in show notes, but the reality is there's a whole bunch where he was on these different shows and he's just placating with the world.

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He's not standing up, you know, he was on the news on MSNBC.

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And it really frustrated me because as he was there, you know, I'm sitting there and I think about John MacArthur when he was on Larry King.

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He would make it a point, even though he had short segments, he would explain the difference between whatever topic they were talking about and the gospel.

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He'd always somehow mentioned the gospel that we need Christ, we can't work our way to heaven, that we need to repent.

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He would mention these things. When he was interviewed by Ben Shapiro, he did an extended, because it was an interview, he did an extended time of going through and talking to Ben Shapiro about his need for a savior.

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I mean, he does that. Ed Litton, he didn't do that.

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No. Instead, he was trying to agree with the interviewers. Yeah, and we didn't discuss this, but you could go back and do some research and I don't have it in front of me.

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I did write another article, which I listed some of these things. But as you saw, post election of Ed Litton at the

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SBC last week, you started seeing, you know, these mainstream media outlets come out with articles.

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Now, what they were doing was trying to juxtapose far right and ultra conservative, and they were favorable about Ed Litton as being a moderate.

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Well, you know, from a Christian standpoint, he's not a moderate, he is a liberal, he is a progressive, he falls on that side.

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But the narrative that you've just pointed out that he's supporting is precisely the narrative that the world wants to hear.

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They expect to see this in Christians. It's not what Christians are called to do, but it is what

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Litton is playing to. And, you know, I'm reading some of those things, researching last week, and it just kept coming back to me what, you know, what the

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Lord said in the Beatitudes that, woe to you when all people speak well of you for their fathers used to treat the false prophets the same way.

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Why do you want to curry favor with the world? But that's precisely what he's doing.

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That's what the SBC has been doing in its pragmatic approach to cultural relevancy and all the other nonsense.

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Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things when I looked at the two, even before the election of Ed Litton, the thing that I saw in the news was the way they're framing it, their narrative.

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Yeah. Referring to Stone as a far right extremist, an ultra conservative. I mean, for believing the

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Bible, right? The fact that the media was favoring

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Litton over Stone tells you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. When the world is supporting him.

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Yeah, when the world is supporting you, as a faithful Christian sitting in a pew somewhere, that should cause a flag to go up.

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Wait just a minute. What are we doing here? This is contrary to what Scripture tells us is supposed to happen.

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They will hate you for my name's sake. You will be persecuted. All these things for the name of Christ that you are told you will endure.

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If a guy is not enduring that, there's something going on there. There's something worth looking at.

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Yeah, and the fact that he's on all these shows as the hero of the

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SBC from the left. This is the thing. I watched several of these interviews, and you have people who are—the one interview on MSNBC, there's three different people.

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They're all—one guy's joking, well, I'm a—basically, I forget the term he used.

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He used to be a Baptist, but he's a recovering Baptist or whatever. I mean, they all were anti -religion, anti -God, and he's being praised by them.

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And he wants to curry favor with them. Yeah. This is—I mean, this is where you see guys like MacArthur stand out because when you have all this, it's not that MacArthur—there's something super special about MacArthur.

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It's just—I think that what this comes down to is why did so many people vote for Donald Trump?

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Because there is a vacuum of true leadership in this country. People who have a backbone and will be able to stand up and say right is right and wrong is wrong.

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And truth matters. And what we see so often is, as you said, narrative matters.

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And what you have with Leighton and some of these other guys in the SBC is that narrative matters.

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They want to curry favor with the world. If you read your Bible, the world—the fact that we have homosexuality in this country means, according to Romans 1, the passage

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Leighton was preaching from means that we are under the judgment of God. Not that we're going to have it.

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We're now currently under the judgment of God. God has given us over to sin.

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And he wants to curry favor with that same world? Yeah. And if you go and watch his whole sermon, which we don't need to spend too much time discussing, he corrects himself for having taught previously, apparently, that what this section of Scripture did was sort of show this hierarchy of judgment.

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He kind of rebuked himself for that and said, I apologize. It's not what it's doing. Even though sin—if you enter one sin, it can lead to other sins.

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But precisely what is happening here, when you see, just like you said, the homosexual, the

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LGBTQ thing become pronounced, it is God's judgment. You're already in it.

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And you see from Romans 1, this section, what that path is going to look like.

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What does the next level of being given over to your sin look like? Ultimately, it ends in a debased mind.

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You're not able to use reason. Oh, let's think. Is there a big transgender agenda out there now?

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Is that narrative? These people, seriously, they don't know if they're male or female? That's a debased mind.

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We have a male bodybuilder, weightlifter, who's going to enter the Olympics as a girl.

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He's 40. He's going to be the oldest athlete, being 46. And now as a girl, he can compete.

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And if you've heard, the one reason why he wants to win is so he can burn the American flag in front of everyone.

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I didn't hear that. He wants to be able to receive the award so he could burn the flag.

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It's amazing. You have all these people that hate America that want to lead it. This is a debased mind.

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You have people that think chanting USA is a horrible thing at a protest, but they want to lead this country.

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Well, you don't like this country. You hate this country. Why lead it? Oh, because you want to lead it to destruction because everyone has a debased mind now.

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Truth doesn't matter. Theology doesn't matter. Narrative matters. That's the problem. We should top it off with this, though.

27:54

If you want to get a good sleep, but you need to get a good mattress topper. Is there a good narrative behind this?

28:05

Well, the mattress toppers from MyPillow are made in the United States, so that is consistent with what we're saying.

28:12

Chant USA and buy USA. That's contrary to the narrative.

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Yeah, you can't do that. That's true. Hey, but I'll tell you, son, before we left for the last trip, the one you spilled the beans of where I was supposedly at, but we had just gotten the

28:32

MyPillow mattress topper. We keep trying to get some different products and try them out so we can actually know how we enjoy them or not.

28:40

One thing with me is I'm not going to promote something that I don't really believe. I got the mattress topper, bud, and I am absolutely loving it.

28:49

I had this sleep number bed for years, and I loved it. I finally was getting good sleeps after that because I always used to wake up with back pain.

28:57

Other than getting that bed, this has been the biggest thing that's improved my sleep, which I don't get much of, but I'm actually enjoying my sleep.

29:06

It is so comfortable. I know that it is an expensive – it's not a cheap thing, but they end up having three different layers to this thing.

29:17

They have this foam layer. There's the bottom -most layers, like this foam layer that is for support and durability.

29:24

Then they have this second layer that's designed for comfort, and then they end up having a third layer where they just basically have this cover over it so that it keeps your body temperature regulated.

29:37

I got to tell you something. It has been great for my sleep. I thought, okay, this seems a little –

29:45

I got it using the promo code SFE, and that supports striving for eternity, but at the same time, it got me a discount of like $100 off this thing.

29:55

I wasn't sure about it. Because it has the guarantee, I figured I could always return it, but man, it was comfortable.

30:03

If you guys want to check out, get yourself a good sleep, support a company that hires in the

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US, makes in the US, and also support striving for eternity, go to MyPillow .com.

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Get yourself a MyPillow mattress topper. I think the promo even comes with two pillows, but you can also get the pillows on discount.

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You just use promo code SFE or call 1 -800 -873 -0176.

30:32

That's 1 -800 -873 -0176. You can not only support this show as they are one of our sponsors, but you can also get yourself a good sleep, which is important because when you're talking about things like the

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SBC and Ed Lenton, you might need to have a pillow nearby because you want something to cry in because this stuff is very frustrating.

30:58

And so as we look at this stuff, you put this article out, and I wanted to spend a little bit more time today where the plan was to go into homosexuality and these other sins, the list of sins.

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Because we have several lists of sins in scripture. But there were some things in this article you brought up that I had noticed online

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Thursday or Friday. I guess someone sent me something. And you found somewhere, went into more detail.

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You have a video at the end of your article of J .D. Greer and Ed Linton preaching under the same text.

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And it seems like the same sermon. Yeah. Yeah.

31:44

Wow. It really seems like the same sermon. Yeah. So here's the thing that you had said.

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Let me quote Bud the wiser. And you said, in some cases, or let me back up.

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You said a substantial portion of the message preached by Linton very, very, very closely mimics the message preached by Greer a year earlier.

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In some cases, very, very, very closely means nothing short of identical.

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I love I love the way you were. You know, for folks when they read your articles, you know, they have to I read your articles with your voice in my head because it just it sounds so much better.

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Am I am I whispering when you hear? No, you're not whispering here. You got that that nice base voice and the humor comes out in your articles.

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But here's here's here's some of the observations you noticed. The same opening warning about the sermon's text is given by each pastor.

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In the same, quote, turn to your neighbor, unquote, gimmick is employed by each pastor.

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The same line, quote, we believe God's word is good, unquote, is stated by each pastor.

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The same anecdotal story about pagan temple idolatry is given by each pastor.

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The same earth and sun story is recounted by each pastor.

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The same category of disorders, sexual, economic, social, spiritual family are stated by each pastor.

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The identical equip, the identical quip about Facebook and social disorder are repeated by each pastor.

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The exact three ways the church has gone wrong summary are outlined by each pastor.

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The same gospel message, quote, the gospel message is not let the gay become straight, but let the dead come to life, unquote, is stated by each pastor.

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The same line about the camel going through the eye of the needle is repeated by each pastor.

34:02

The same biblical reference to First Timothy 115 is given by each pastor. The same line, quote, homosexuality does not send you to hell because heterosexual heterosexuality does not send you to heaven, unquote, is repeated by each pastor.

34:18

The same references to Rosaria Butterfield with the identical quote by her on the big screen behind each pastor is given.

34:28

And so, you know, when we look at that and how I don't forget how long is that video?

34:35

I think it's six minutes or so. Six minutes. So maybe before we end, we could play that. But here's the thing is some of these when we look at this.

34:44

So let's go through this. And first, we'll start with giving the benefit of the doubt here. If you're dealing with a passage such as Romans, chapter one.

34:54

Could each of the people, each of these men from their own research come up with some of the same references?

35:02

Same, you know. Same kind of, you know, as far as biblical references like First Timothy 115.

35:12

Yes, I think that's that's fair. You could you do have passages that could relate to one another.

35:19

Could but where I look at this is go could both of them. Confuse the gospel in the same way.

35:27

I mean, both of them claim that the gospel message is the gospel is not to let the gay become straight, but let the dead come to life.

35:37

That's not the gospel message for both of them to use the line that homosexuality does not send you to hell because heterosexuality does not send you to heaven.

35:48

Now, there are cases where we have quotes that people would use.

35:55

And there they I mean, I have a couple of books on my shelf over there where, you know, it's illustrations and quotes.

36:02

So when you're looking at a passage, you look for a topic and they have lots of different quotes. And so a lot of pastors use those same books.

36:08

And yes, they may find the same quotes. That's possible. Sure. So when

36:15

I when I looked at this, I was trying to think of some different arguments of why this could be. Could it be that, you know, here's

36:24

J .D. Greer. He's the president of SBC. Here's Ed Layton, who wants to be the president of SBC, mimicking him, maybe just copying everything he's doing, trying to be like him.

36:37

Well, if that's the case, then we should see more of this. Right. But you had an interesting idea that I didn't think of with why maybe these two men had such a similar sermon on the same text.

36:52

And this is very disturbing to me as a pastor, this thought.

36:59

But what was your conclusion? Well, the thing that I wrote, and it's funny because my pastor called me last night.

37:05

He had read the article and what really gave him a kick in both a good and a bad way was the line that said,

37:12

Is there some SBC sermon scripting service employed by both men?

37:19

Now, I phrase that as a question because I don't know what they've done, but I do know and you and I have talked about there are those services out there.

37:28

And in my opinion, the wiggle room for Lytton to get out of the just superficial appearance of plagiarism here, because Greer preached his sermon in 2019.

37:40

Lytton preached his in 2020, both in January. The only way for him to get out of this appearance of plagiarism is to say, well,

37:47

I actually used another service to produce the outline for my sermon.

37:54

And so that content was provided to me by this sermon scripting service that it just so happens

38:03

Lytton used and that Greer used, which would raise a whole other series of questions.

38:10

Correct. I mean, there was a time that there was a student at the college there where Charles Haddon Spurgeon was president.

38:19

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, for folks who may not know, when Spurgeon preached, people typically got tickets to go to church and you only went, you got to go to church three times a month, just because the number of people that were trying to fit in and people would be outside listening.

38:35

And so there was a student and he was not in Spurgeon's service that week. But that week he was preaching this in preaching class, the same text that Spurgeon had preached that Sunday.

38:47

And in the middle of his sermon, the professor got up, grabbed the student and marched him down to Spurgeon's office.

38:56

Student didn't know what he had done wrong. And he's brought into Spurgeon's office, sat down, and the professor explains, this student stole your sermon and tried to pass it off as his own in preaching class.

39:10

And the student said, what? I wasn't even here Sunday. In which case

39:17

Spurgeon said, son, what did you use for your research?

39:23

And the student said, Matthew Henry. Spurgeon said, so did

39:29

I. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Now, what that goes to say is that the reason both of their sermons sounded so much alike is because both of them got so much of their insight from the same source.

39:44

So if Lytton is not plagiarizing Greer, I think, bud, you have the only other option that I could think of is that they're both getting this sermon from a same source.

39:56

Either Lytton's getting it from the source of Greer or they're both getting it from another source. And it's the latter that is very disturbing because here are men who are presidents.

40:09

They're both now are the president at one time, right? Greer just stepped down.

40:15

Lytton is now in there. And so for Lytton to step up as the president of 46 ,000 churches, the current and previous president, if they are not writing their own sermons, but getting it from some sermon service, and there are people that do that, okay?

40:33

Yes, there are. There's services. I would get emails, you know, oh,

40:39

Pastors Week is so busy doing ministry. You don't have time to put into the study, you know, to have a sermon ready.

40:47

We'll provide that for you. You can even go through the whole year and lay it all out. And just for, you know, 300 whatever dollars, you know, we'll provide you the sermon.

40:56

There are men who do not sit and spend their time with what the priority of a pastor is.

41:03

The priority of a pastor, why did we establish deacons in Acts chapter 6? It was so that the pastor would be devoted to the study of the word of God and prayer.

41:13

Not so he'd be devoted to ministry, building a platform, getting the word out to the community.

41:20

No, it's so he would be devoted to the study of the word of God. This is what is lacking.

41:26

And if you have guys that are standing as the president of 46 ,000 churches, and they are not doing their own sermons, that is seriously lacking.

41:40

That is someone who has given up his primary responsibility. Oh, exactly.

41:46

And I would even take it down to the level of the local church. These guys are pastors.

41:52

Their first calling is exactly what Paul told Timothy. Preach the word.

42:00

Well, you can't do that if you're not doing your study, if you're not doing your research, if you're not meditating on Scripture, if you're not preparing the message to bring to your congregation.

42:10

So that local church is suffering. They have no idea who's producing what they're hearing.

42:16

It's anonymous. But see, this is the thing. The pastor has to be a man who studies the word of God, so when he gets up there and presents it to the congregation, it's coming through him.

42:34

Why do you see the faithfulness of a John MacArthur and not the faithfulness of a J .D. Greer?

42:40

It may be because he's not really engaging with Scripture day in and day out. He's busy running to be president of this and do this and do that, and he's got all this that he's got to do, but he's not doing what

42:55

MacArthur does. From what I understand, even today, after 50 years of preaching at the same church,

43:01

MacArthur still hides himself away for hours to prepare for Sunday morning service.

43:09

He's in a position where, yes, he takes the summers off. He takes a two - or three -month sabbatical every year.

43:16

But you know what? Whenever he comes back from his sabbaticals, listen to those first couple of sermons.

43:24

You could tell that is months of study that just boom. Those are his best sermons usually because he was preparing and he's studying.

43:34

He's not just all month sabbatical, I'm going to go relax. I'm going to go travel and speak here and there and there.

43:40

No, he uses that time to study to prepare for the next nine months of preaching.

43:46

And then his focus is the study of the Word of God. That is a pastor's primary responsibility.

43:53

And if a pastor is not focused and spending the time every week in the study of the Word of God, then he should not be pastoring.

44:00

Furthermore, if he's not doing that, he definitely should not be standing up representing 46 ,000 other pastors.

44:10

Sorry, maybe I'm a little passionate about this. Unless, Andrew, your agenda is not to preach the

44:18

Word but to preach the narrative, in which case that might be acceptable.

44:24

And evidently it is. Yeah, and that's what we are seeing with the SBC right now is that narrative matters.

44:33

These guys should be, and okay, so let's say, either way, let's say we can give

44:39

Greer the pass and say, well, he studied and he did the first sermon. You can't say that with Ed Lenton.

44:46

Because either way, he seems to have plagiarized it. Whether he plagiarized it from Greer or someone else, we don't know.

44:55

But that's the thing. What they need to do, these guys, is they need to just get alone in their office with their

45:03

Lagos Bible software and start studying. Because the reality is that's what's lacking with this.

45:10

And we're going to end up doing, I'll give you a little secret, folks, because it's something we're working on coming up in July.

45:18

We're going to be doing a special presentation of Lagos Bible software.

45:24

And during that presentation, and we're going to have the date set, and I'll notify everyone here, but during that, we're going to give huge discounts.

45:33

We're working with Lagos where they're going to do a presentation showing you how to use it so that you can understand how to interpret the

45:41

Scriptures. You have the tools there, and they're going to offer large discounts. But if you have

45:47

Lagos, you want to get Lagos right now, we do have a way of getting it. Striving Fraternity has a partnership with Lagos.

45:55

They support this show. We have a shorter link for you. Just go to bit .ly, B -I -T .L

46:01

-Y slash S -F -E Lagos. It's in the show notes. Click that link. If you're upgrading or getting a new package, you will get five free books from Striving Fraternity that you can choose from.

46:13

So go and do that. But that's what these guys need. They need to be studying. They need to be in the Word of God every day preparing for sermons.

46:22

Now, you look at a guy like MacArthur. He's the president of a university, president of seminary.

46:29

He has the Grace to You. He travels and speaks, and he preaches every

46:35

Sunday. And yet, what I notice when I look at some of these guys, it seems that for MacArthur's 50 years, that last one's his priority.

46:45

For most of these other guys, it seems like that last one is last. And so this is what happens when truth doesn't matter, when theology doesn't matter, but when narrative matters.

47:00

Yeah. Folks, if you're following these guys, there is someone who is friends with me on Facebook who is defending

47:10

Lytton, saying how he knows the guy, the guy's solid.

47:17

I said, but he and his wife are on stage preaching. No, no, no. They're just telling, say there's things his wife is explaining from her side of view.

47:26

It's not really, you know, she's not, but she's called the pastor. No, no, no.

47:32

It's just because she's, you know, the wife of the pastor. I'm like, you know, it's like whatever you say, it doesn't matter.

47:40

But look, he had heresy in his doctrinal statement. It didn't get changed for years until it was pointed out when he became the president.

47:48

Well, that was just an accident. They didn't know. How do you not know? I mean, I'm sorry, but if you didn't see partialism in there, then you should not be the president of the

48:00

SPC, of churches, because if you don't know your theology well enough to notice the heresy of partialism, and for folks who don't know what that is, he had in there, under the doctrine of God, the idea that this, the idea of partialism, that God is part the father, part the son, and part the spirit.

48:20

So 33 % of each, I guess. And so it is partialism. And that is heresy.

48:27

For him to have that up there and not know it's heresy until it's pointed out. Now, they said that some web, and this bothers me as well with that, because the argument was, well, there was some web developer that just put that in.

48:42

I mean, he just slipped that in. That's a really good excuse.

48:48

Well, I have done web development for, I think, three decades, okay? I've worked for very large companies.

48:56

I've worked for small companies. I've done things on the side for people. One thing about a web developer, okay, or a software engineer, you know, someone who's developing code that's going to be front -end interfacing, in other words, a user is going to be looking at it, okay?

49:14

You never put in the information yourself. You always get those requirements from someone else.

49:21

You do the web development in this case. You don't write the material.

49:27

That's provided for you. I find it impossible to believe that some web developer wrote the doctrinal statement or just added something to the doctrinal statement without permission.

49:41

This whole thing is just so absurd. It reflects the fact that there's no emphasis on doctrine.

49:51

And what's amazing is that what they had before, the heresy line in their what we believe about God statement and what they have now, it doesn't even come from the

50:04

Baptist faith and message. It's not like they flipped and pasted, which they could have done, and it would have been at least orthodox.

50:14

They didn't even do this. Somebody had originally come up with this on behalf of the church and said, here's what we believe.

50:21

But then, I mean, like in minutes after the question hit the floor last Tuesday about the issue, the whole thing changes.

50:31

So it's like a pope on the throne ex cathedra saying, here is now what we believe.

50:38

We've just changed it. There's no discussion of the church, the elders, nothing.

50:43

It's just done by pastoral fiat. Wow, that's a problem. But it's not a problem if doctrine doesn't matter to you, if it's just something you got to have.

50:53

And the fact is we would understand and appreciate the fact doctrine does divide.

50:59

Well, let's recognize something. The SBC realizes doctrine divides, and they're more concerned with unity, so therefore you're not going to have doctrine in the

51:09

SBC because it divides. It's absurd. Well, the problem with that is that doctrine unites.

51:17

Doctrine unites people together around a belief system that they agree. And the reason that the SBC is having such problems is because they don't have a doctrine that unites them.

51:27

They don't have something that brings them together, and they all agree on it because their idea of unity is we want numbers.

51:35

And they're about to lose a lot of those numbers, and then they'll have unity on progressivism. And when everyone else starts realizing what they're really unified around,

51:44

CRT and things like this, then they're going to start to realize that there's a problem.

51:50

And you're going to have this just trickle effect of people leaving. Now, here's the thing that you end up seeing that concerns me even more.

52:00

So you had just pointed out when we talked about this change, and you said that it could be done by pastoral fiat.

52:09

Yeah, right. Okay. So done without the church having a, you know, but here's more concerning to me is it sure looks like it was done not by pastoral fiat, but by protection of Ed Litton.

52:26

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Now all of a sudden, oops, there's heresy on our doctrinal statement.

52:32

Instead of coming out and saying, you know, we had that in there. It was an error.

52:39

Maybe it had been there for years. Hadn't noticed it. No, but to protect self, self -interest or to protect, you know,

52:50

Litton's image, whether he did it or someone else, well, we got to get rid of this.

52:58

That is concerning to me because now all of a sudden, this is about protecting a person rather than dealing with what is truth.

53:06

And we're saying this over and over again, because it is important. Truth matters. Theology matters, but to these people, narrative matters.

53:17

Apparently God whispers about sexual sin. He whispers about plagiarism and he whispers about doctrine.

53:25

All those things. Not really a big deal. Yeah. And this is the problem that we ended up seeing here.

53:31

So let's, I want to play this, the six minute video that you had put in there and, you know, as a way of wrapping up and I'll play this and then, then we'll close out.

53:42

And I will say, I mentioned the Logos presentation for folks that do want to participate in that. That's going to be

53:48

July 12th at seven o 'clock Eastern time. It will be on the Striving for Eternity YouTube channel. We'll have it on Facebook as well on my wall and in the different groups that I manage.

53:57

So if you're interested in that, mark your calendars for July 12th, 7

54:04

PM. It will be about less than an hour or about an hour and you will get discounts that they're going to do special discounts for us with that.

54:15

So with that, let's let's hear how similar these two sermons actually were.

54:22

It's, it's kind of interesting here, bud, but let's, let's give a listen. Shall we? Yes, sir.

54:29

Give you a warning here that this might be the toughest week that we will have in the book of Romans, Romans one, the end of it is tied in difficulty only with Romans five

54:38

Romans nine and Romans 11. This may be one of the toughest passages we face in the book of Romans.

54:44

This is the steep climb I talked about. So in fact, let's just sort of loosen things up right now. Everybody turn right now to your neighbor, look them in the eyes.

54:51

If you know them, if you know them, put your hand on their shoulder and say, this is going to be a really tough week for you. Okay. And tell them, say,

54:57

I'm praying for you to have the faith and humility to receive this word. I want you to turn to your neighbor right now.

55:04

And I want you to say, I know this sermon is going to be really tough for you, but I'm here praying that you will listen and obey whatever

55:09

God says. Go ahead and do that right now. But y 'all, we believe that God's word is good. Do we not? You see, we believe that God's word is good.

55:17

And some of my travels overseas, I'll I'll go into these temples that are erected to a foreign God. I remember being in one of them, um, uh, a while ago over in, uh, somewhere in Asia.

55:28

Paul David Tripp is a favorite pastor of mine to read. He's a pastor in Philadelphia. He was on a mission trip to Nepal and he went, he was taken by a missionary into a temple.

55:38

And there was a going to this temple. It's just gigantic. I mean, beautiful temple. And right in the middle of it is about a 25 foot statue of a goddess who has multiple breasts and multiple arms.

55:49

And he said, and I will not go into details, but he does explain it, uh, that there was an idol in the center of this temple.

55:56

He said it was one of the most grotesque things he's ever seen. Watch these worshipers come in and they would prostrate themselves before this statue.

56:03

And many of them were very emotional. Many had traveled a lot of miles to get to this.

56:08

I'm very poor, some of them and taking the little money they had and pointed out an offering before this statue of this

56:14

God. But what really turned his stomach wasn't the shape of the idol. It was how people were bowing down to it, kissing it, putting money on it.

56:22

He met a family that had walked for four months to get to this idol later, finding myself just going back over that incident in my mind and, and feeling sorry for the people there and thanking

56:32

God kind of in my heart that I wasn't, I wasn't like them. But he walked out of that temple saying, thank

56:39

God I'm not like them. Then in the middle of that thought, it just occurred to me. I had a whole list of things in my heart that have taken

56:45

God's place, just like that statue had when the spirit of God said,

56:50

Paul, you are exactly like them. I compared it to if the earth were to say to the sun,

56:56

I am sick and tired of you being in the middle of the solar system. If the earth were to ask the sun in our solar system,

57:02

I'm sick and tired of floating out here and nothingness surrounding you constantly. I want to be the center of this solar system.

57:10

The sun might just say to the earth, all right, have it your way. The earth is 30 ,000 times smaller than the sun.

57:15

And would not have the ability to keep all the planets in orbit. And so the solar system would begin to unravel simply because the sun gave to the earth.

57:23

What it asked for folks, our entire solar system would fall apart. Why? Because the earth doesn't have the power of light and it doesn't have the power of gravitational force to hold this solar system in existence.

57:34

Oh, sexual disorder. That was the first thing versus 26 to 27. Now we've got economic disorder.

57:40

There's economic disorder. Look at verse 29, social disorder. He says there's social disorder, social disorder.

57:47

Just think Facebook. And that's just on Facebook. Then you got spiritual disorder. There's spiritual disorder there.

57:54

You can think of that as family disorder. And there's family disorder. They disobey their parents.

58:00

You see, there are three ways. I see us really going wrong with this in the church at large. I'll tell you three ways.

58:06

I think we've gone wrong. Number one, one, we believe that God doesn't really care about this. First one is that we don't think

58:14

God cares about this issue. We make the gospel message is not let the gay become straight.

58:19

The gospel message is let the dead become alive. And the gospel message is not let the gay get straight.

58:25

The gospel message is let the dead come to life, which leads me to the second way that I see us going wrong here.

58:32

Number two, we think it's the worst sin. Here's the second thing I think we do, we go wrong and that is thinking homosexuality is the worst of all sins.

58:39

Jen Wilkin, who's one of our favorite Bible teachers here, and who's actually leading our women's conference. She said, she said, we ought to whisper about what the

58:47

Bible whispers about and we ought to shout about what it shouts about. And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

58:59

In the Bible, sexual sin is whispered compared to the shout

59:04

God makes about greed and judgmentalism. Throughout Jesus's ministry in his life.

59:10

We see him demonstrating great, just incredible sympathy for those caught in sexual sin and great animosity toward the religiously proud.

59:19

Jesus forgave prostitutes, but he was harsh with religious materialist.

59:25

In fact, Jesus one time, not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same sex attracted to go to heaven.

59:31

He did say it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. I have a needle than it was for a religiously proud or materialistically successful person to enter into the kingdom of God.

59:42

Matter of fact, he said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one of these.

59:49

Only when we grasp, only when we grasp this truth, when we become ministers of the gospel, when we understand like Paul did, that we are the worst center that we know.

59:59

Only then when you, only when you understand that, will you understand that if Jesus came to die for you, that there is nobody he didn't die for.

01:00:06

We can't grasp this gospel till we confess with Paul, these words in first Timothy one 15, he says, this is a trustworthy saying, deserving full acceptance that Christ has come into the world to save centers of who

01:00:21

I am the foremost. Here's the third way that we go wrong. Number three, assuming it's hard for LGBTQ people to get to heaven early.

01:00:30

We go wrong thinking LGBT people can't go to heaven. Homosexuality does not send you to hell.

01:00:37

You know how I know that? Cause heterosexuality does not send you to heaven. Homosexuality does not send people to hell.

01:00:44

How do I know that? Because heterosexuality doesn't send people to heaven. Rosaria Butterfield, whose story

01:00:49

I've shared with you before here, she was a practicing lesbian, very outspoken professor of literature and women's studies at Syracuse university.

01:00:56

She was a practicing lesbian in a committed lesbian relationship, a culture warrior on the far left.

01:01:03

She said it was Romans one that brought her to faith in Christ. And then she said, and I quote homosexuality is not the core of our rebellion against God.

01:01:13

I desire to be goddess. I desire to be the one who gets to declare good and evil to play judge rather than be judged a desire to use

01:01:21

God's creation for our own gratification rather than with pleasure for his glory.

01:01:28

And so, you know, one of the things I did notice in that is they're both reading from something.

01:01:35

You know, they're not the Bible. No, the Bible was on the, on the podium behind J .D.

01:01:41

Greer. I couldn't see if the Bible was there on the podium with, with Lytton. I mean, the reality is

01:01:47

I do sometimes preach with notes. I'll have some quotes or things that I want to make sure

01:01:53

I get worded correctly. But when you see a guy that's reading notes like that, Even you look at a guy like a

01:02:01

Phil Johnson. Now for folks who don't know Phil, Phil Johnson doesn't preach without every word being written down.

01:02:08

He preaches from a manuscript. However, watch Phil Johnson. My challenge to you is watch

01:02:13

Phil Johnson preach and see whether it looks like he's reading from a manuscript. Like those guys, if you watch the video and I'll have that video in the show notes, you watch that video and you can see they're clearly reading from something.

01:02:24

They're not looking at the audience with each of those things. They're, they're getting this right. They're reading something that's written down and it's probably because they don't know it.

01:02:31

Why can you not know? Why do you not know that Phil Johnson is reading? Because he has so studied that even though he has got everything written down and it's before him, he knows his own material.

01:02:44

Why? Because it came through him. He studied it. I don't think these guys studied it. That's why they're having to keep look for this stuff because they don't know their key points.

01:02:55

Anybody does who's preaching and doesn't know the key points of his sermon. That's that's not good. If you have studied this text, that text that they particularly were preaching, if you had studied it, would you have come up with the conclusions that they came up with?

01:03:09

That's the, that's the problem. Yeah. Because that's the whole thing is why either one.

01:03:15

Okay. I might be able to give Greer a pass, but I'm sorry, Linton doesn't get one because either he copied from Greer or copied from someone else that he got it from somewhere because the, you're hearing even the same usages of words.

01:03:31

Now, some things you're hearing that they're, they're obviously good where they they're good enough. I should say, where they're not going to, you know, repeat everything.

01:03:39

I had a, I had a pastor came to me once and he, he was trying to figure out what to do.

01:03:44

His brother in his brother's church, his brother came to him and said, look, I got a problem.

01:03:50

I discovered that my pastor is preaching John MacArthur sermons every week. And I asked this,

01:03:57

I asked this pastor, how does your brother know it's MacArthur sermons? He says, well, what happened was is that he here's this guy and the pastor had never left the state of Georgia in his life, but in the sermon, he talked about growing up near Philly and, and it triggered the guy, wait, wait a minute.

01:04:16

You've never left the state. How like, what do you mean? And so what ended up happening is that he ended up, you know, going in Google searching, or we should do duck, duck, go searching because Google is, you know, not allowing, if you don't realize this folks stay away from Google, use duck, duck, go or something else.

01:04:36

It's really interesting how Christian sites go. You go do a search. And Matt's like, and I did this, go do a search on what is the

01:04:42

Trinity on every search engine. Every search engine. CARM is going to be in the, on the top, like one, two or three on, on Google.

01:04:51

It's like page three. You have Wikipedia, like in every country before you have CARM, you know, just interesting how they're trying to, to downgrade.

01:05:00

We we've seen it with striving fraternity as well, but if you duck, duck, go it and, and you, you go and see, and he says he got some quotes and realized it was

01:05:08

MacArthur sermon. And so for 30 weeks, he, he printed up the next text and it was word for word, even the illustrations.

01:05:16

And so these guys are at least smart enough to realize, okay, don't do it word for word, kind of put your own stuff in it, but there's too much of it where there wasn't their own.

01:05:27

It's it's getting it from somewhere. And it, it sure seems like Linton got it from someone and whether you're someone else and that's concerning.

01:05:39

It does. The, the one thing that I don't know, a lot of, maybe a lot of people picked up, but the first thing

01:05:44

I heard was, you know, the little story about the pagan temple, Linton attributes it to Paul, David trip, something that he had read and Paul, David trip, but Greer attributes it to himself.

01:05:55

So, you know, there's some smoke there, which what's the truth. Was it actually Greer and trip stole it from him or did

01:06:02

Greer just, I said, he'd himself into Ted and Paul David trips story. I mean, it's just one.

01:06:10

And that's where I was. I was waiting for that one. When I heard Greer to see how Linton was going to do it. Cause like, okay, is he going to say, is he going to do it as a personal story?

01:06:18

Because that would have been a real tell. Oh yeah. It would have. So, but this is the thing.

01:06:24

I mean, I see, I see a drift. There, there was maybe a blip in the

01:06:30

SBC of returning to some conservative values, but it sure seems like it was just a blip.

01:06:37

It sure seems like they're, they're now going to be on a, a downward trajectory. I mean, there's a lot, there's been a lot of folks on the internet that had been talking about different aspects of the convention and different views of this.

01:06:51

We're going to hear more of it. I'm sure. But I think the thing that, you know, we wanted to highlight here is not so much what's going on with the convention, but you know, what is being told by quote unquote,

01:07:03

Christian leaders. What do we see here from people who are claiming to speak for God, not just to God's people, but to pastors.

01:07:13

Yeah. And, and they can't, they, they don't seem to be exegeting the scripture on their own, seem to be stealing it from others.

01:07:21

They seem to be not understanding the clear meaning of the text.

01:07:28

That's disqualifying in my mind for any pastor. If you completely missed the point and come to the exact opposite conclusion of the text, you are not properly handling the text and you should not be pastoring, let alone leading pastors.

01:07:47

No, if your integrity in the pulpit, if your integrity in the study is based on what's going on with the narrative, then that narrative is going to necessarily mean your integrity will continually be compromised.

01:07:59

And I think that's, that's largely what you're seeing here. And that's the thing that we want to point out is

01:08:04

God does not whisper about homosexuality. He shouts about that. That's what he shouts about the greed and, and judgmentalism that we don't see him destroying cities over that.

01:08:18

We don't see him putting, devoting whole texts of scripture to focus on it the way he does with homosexuality.

01:08:24

He clearly says that homosexuality is something he is grievously against, mentions the sexual sins over and over and all those lists of sins that you see, sexual sin is, is almost always mentioned at the beginning.

01:08:38

Yeah, not at the end. And so this is the thing that, you know, we ended up seeing.

01:08:43

So I'm sorry, but Linton got it wrong. So did Greer and whoever wrote this original sermon,

01:08:52

God does not whisper about sexual sin. He shouts. No.

01:08:58

And, and you know, the other thing, and we won't go into a lot of detail on this, but the other thing is just ask yourself, you've got an inspired authoritative, sufficient word.

01:09:08

How many times does something need to be included in there for it to have weight and divine authority?

01:09:16

One time, if it's in there, it matters. Well, that's because to you and I truth matters to you and I theology matters to Greer and Linton narrative matters.