Russell Fuller on the State of the SBC

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Welcome to another edition of the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and we have someone who's been with us before,
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Russell Fuller. I should say Dr. Russell Fuller, who's a former professor of Hebrew at the
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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, now runs his own teaching ministry called
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Theology Classroom. And Dr. Fuller, you were at the Southern Baptist Convention, so we're hoping to hear a little bit about that and maybe give some direction to folks going forward given the results of that.
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So welcome. Thank you, John. It's great to be with you once again. How are you doing? I'm doing very well.
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Even though I was at the convention a few days ago, I'm doing very well. Things are going very well.
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The school is doing well. I'm hoping, though, that we have many more will come and be with us this year.
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And, you know, summer, we're looking forward to being with family and friends. And so I'm having—things couldn't be better.
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The Lord has really taken care of me in ways far beyond what I could have asked and thought after I lost my job or was fired at Southern Seminary.
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And I tell you what, the Lord is faithful, and I want to testify to this day how faithful the Lord is. And I tell you what,
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I wouldn't go back. I would not go back. I love what the Lord is doing. John, let me just tell you one thing
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I'm doing. On Saturday mornings, I'm teaching about 135 pastors.
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I don't want to say where, but it's underground pastors on Saturday morning.
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And I tell you what, the Lord, again, is just blessing in so many different ways. And so teaching these pastors—many of these pastors are under real persecution, and yet I'm able to teach them, you know, every
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Saturday morning, and it just couldn't be better. And so the Lord is blessing me in so many ways.
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And again, I'm very thankful to the Lord for what He's doing in my life. Wow, that's amazing. I think so many people were praying for you and concerned about what might happen when you left—when you were kicked out, really, of Southern Seminary for your views on social justice and other things, as you explained in some of your interviews.
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So the Lord is faithful. He's good. The people that are worrying out there about, what am I going to do? How am
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I going to feed my family if they come after me, if I say something that is true? Your living testimony—so was
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Juan Riesco. So are others that we've interviewed and highlighted. Your testimony is that the
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Lord is faithful and that He will provide. He will. And I tell you, don't be afraid of man.
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Trust the Lord. Let's really—the Lord has given us many precious promises in His Word.
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Let's take Him at His Word. If our jobs, if our friends and all these things mean more than speaking the truth, then, you know, we just don't—we're not truly living by faith.
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And I hope to encourage every pastor out there, listen, speak the truth. Speak the truth in love.
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And don't worry about the consequences. The Lord will take care of you. And I tell you what, and John, you hit the key thing, because a lot of—I get contacted by a lot of people.
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What can we do for you? And I tell them the same thing. Just pray for me. And here's what especially
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I want you to pray for, that I will stay faithful, that I will be faithful to the Lord.
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The Lord will take care of me. And so—but I need to be faithful to Him, because listen, we can all fall away.
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I've seen it too many times now. I want to be faithful to the Lord in all that I do. One day we're all going to stand before the
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Lord. And if we're scared of speaking the truth, we're going to have a lot to answer for on that day.
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Amen. Amen. I think we all need that, that encouragement, that reminder. The fear of man is so powerful, especially right now.
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It seems like I've never seen anything like it, with people behind sometimes closed doors who will say the truth of what they really think.
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And then when they go out in public sometimes, it's, you know, hey, where were you? Where was that spine that I thought you had?
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And I know this is happening in every institution just about, that the evil people, you know, what did
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Edmund Burke say about, you know, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is good men to do nothing. We're seeing that everywhere.
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Yes. And you're one of the good men in my mind. I have a lot of respect for you who did something, and you're continuing to do something.
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And one of the things that you did last week was you attended the Southern Baptist Convention. I know you endorsed Randy Adams for president.
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I saw you in line at the microphone. I watched hours of it. I don't think you ever got to say anything, but you were there.
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I'd like to give you an opportunity to say what you would have said. And then I would like to also hear your analysis of what happened, what went wrong or what went right, depending on your perception of that.
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Yeah, I was getting up to make a motion on something that Ed Litton would be investigated because, and his church should be investigated because he was allowed, you know, he and his wife would preach sermons together.
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And I think we should, that's not consistent with the Baptist faith and message. And so what
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I was looking for was some type of, that we should look into this to see if they're truly cooperating properly with the
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Southern Baptist Convention. I don't think they are. I think the way they're operating is outside of that. I read some of his justifications for having his wife co -preaching with him.
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And what he said is, look, I was preaching about marriage. I was preaching about the family.
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And he goes, and I don't have all the answers. And so I wanted my wife to help me. Well, as human beings, none of us have all the answers to any issue.
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And that clearly shows that Ed Litton doesn't understand what a minister and what a preacher of the gospel is supposed to do, whether it's marriage, the family or any other topic.
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It's not what does Ed Litton and his wife think or Russell Fuller thinks or anyone else.
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What does the Bible teach? What is God's word on this issue? And what we have to do is take our positions and get them lined up with scripture.
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But here's Ed Litton basically saying, listen, I don't have all the answers.
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Here comes my wife. We don't want your answers. We want the answers of what the Lord says in his word.
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That's what we need. He also talked about, look, he says, I'm a complementarian. You see, they know the right words to say.
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But then he goes on to say in that context, but I believe in the autonomy of the local church.
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Well, what does that mean? We have the autonomy to go outside of God's word? No, you see.
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And so he acted like each church should have the autonomy, whether they want their wives to co -preach or have a woman preach in their church.
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And that's what it sounded like in the context. And I'm sure he would probably disavow that. But when he talks about in that context, talking about the autonomy of the church,
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I mean, it's really sad. So that's what I was going to get up and say. My overall take on the convention is very negative.
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If I could summarize it in one phrase, I would call it the convention of apostasy. So I really do believe we're going away from the
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Lord and going very quickly. When you look at the vote, I know some people are very excited.
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It was only the final vote between Stone and Lytton. It was only basically a four percent difference between the two.
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But the vote that I think people ought to really look at, though, was that first vote when you had the four candidates, because Mueller Lytton got 60 percent of the votes, where Stone and Adams only got 40 percent of the votes.
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And I really think that told you where that convention was. And really what also I think affirms that it's not that close is that basically every vote that came on, whether it was sort of amendments or motions or resolutions, all those things, it did not go this conservative way.
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I can't really think of one resolution or any of these things that are brought up that went the conservative way.
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Perhaps the only victory was for the I think it's the first vice president. I believe we won that.
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But see, that's that that position has absolutely no power whatsoever. And so when you really look at all the votes, we lost every vote.
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The conservatives lost every vote as far as I could tell. And it was a disaster for conservatives.
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And remember, this convention comes on the heels of the twenty nineteen.
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Remember, we didn't have one last year because of covid at which they were pushing things like critical race theory as a useful analytical tools.
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They were pushing all sorts of things like we should be able to not just vote for one party because of one issue.
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It wouldn't even say what the issue was. Of course, it was abortion. But you could tell they were trying to move the messengers to say, look, we don't belong to any of these political parties.
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We should be able to vote for whatever political party we want to. It was opening the door to vote for the
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Democratic Party is what they were trying to push there. It was all sorts of things pushed in 19. So the conservatives have sort of rallied and they they saw this was the convention that they were going to try to take it back.
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And again, we came up short. And again, I think we're more like 20 points away from really taking over the convention as opposed to the four point swing that you saw.
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So overall, I think the convention was a big disappointment for conservatives.
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And I know I've seen and I've talked to some of the conservatives and they were many of them are encouraged and think that in the coming conventions that will even do better and probably win.
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But when you look at where these conventions are going to be like the next ones in Anaheim, California, it's going to be very difficult.
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It's very expensive to go to these conventions. Even Nashville was quite expensive. And it's very difficult to rally the troops to go to these things where the other side, you know, if you work for a
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Southern Baptist agency, they will often fund fully fund you to go. So really, conservatives start off with probably a three to 5000 vote deficit just to begin with, because people are going to vote their pocketbook.
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And a lot of people who work for these agencies are going to vote for these agency heads or people they know are going to keep it going as it's going now.
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You know, John, I think the real power in the Southern Baptist Convention now is NAM and Kevin Ezell.
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I think that's where the real power is. I think the Southern Baptist Convention is simply a fully owned subsidiary of NAM and Kevin Ezell.
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He spent, of course, we won't know. That's the problem. We won't know how much he spent sending people to the convention this year.
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Listen, he with his gift cards and so forth, he was spreading the money pretty thick. I saw a lot of shirts with NAM written on it and so forth.
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And of course, he puts on this huge conference the day before the convention starts. It's a training conference where he pays for many people to come to the convention.
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And beating that group, especially when we get outside of a centrally located place in the South, is going to be very difficult.
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And so I think conservatives have their work cut out for them. And let me say one other thing. A lot of conservatives are leaving the
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Southern Baptist Convention. In the last 12 years, last 10 years, what you see is that we've lost over 5 ,000 churches.
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And I think that's going to accelerate in the time to come. I think many of the conservatives were very upset about what happened.
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I think the rank and file conservatives. Because if you listen to the two major sermons of the convention by J .D.
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Greer, the president, and then another man named Rice. I think it was Pastor Rice who spoke as well. J .D.
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called basically the conservatives a bunch of legalists. In the past, of course, he's compared conservatives to neoconfederates and to closet racists.
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Though he won't name names, of course. They never do name the names. They just make those, they basically put out a slander about all
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Southern Baptists. Matter of fact, what he said back in February was that we're more hospitable as Southern Baptist churches to neoconfederates and closet racists than we are people of color.
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Again, this is slander. There's no other way of saying it. This is just, this is just pure slander to the conservatives.
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And then when this Pastor Rice got up, instead of calling us legalists, he called us jerks.
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And so let me just say this to you, John. You know, we're supposed to be a cooperative. You know, we believe in a cooperative program and all these things.
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But when one side's calling the other side jerks and they're calling them legalists, neoconfederates, closet racists, you can see what they think of the conservative side.
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Now, look, I'll be blunt with you. From my side of the aisle,
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I see these guys as supporting false teaching, as thoroughly corrupt. For instance, the teachings that have been going on.
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And again, you can just, anyone can see some of these videos on YouTube and so forth, where critical race theory is clearly being taught in our seminaries and in our institutions.
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And it's not just the seminaries. I mean, Dehati Lewis at NAMM is pushing the same narratives, the same heresy.
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It's being pushed by NAMM itself and their SEND conferences and so forth. And so it's clearly going on.
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And the dishonesty about this is really appalling. But that's what false teachers do. They teach their, they teach false teachings, things against scripture, and then they lie about it.
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And that's what's going on. It's very sad. And so when I look at the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention, I'm not encouraged,
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John, at all. It was very discouraging. Only certain people that I ran into, again,
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I didn't know these folks who would come up to me. And I could tell they were very burdened about where the
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Southern Baptist Convention were going. And those people gave me some hope. But John, I'm telling you, it's going to be very difficult.
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Yes, I hope these people who, you know, some of the leaders of these organizations that are trying to do well, you know,
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I applaud them for trying to do the right thing. But, you know, we were defeated pretty handily,
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I believe, at this convention. And it's going to be very tough to beat the establishment.
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The establishment has a lot of money. They can, like, take NAMM, just very quickly. NAMM's budget, if you go back to around 2014, was only like 23 million dollars.
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Today, it's over 75 million dollars. You can buy a lot of favors. Matter of fact, they've bought over 100 houses, as you know.
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Some of them are worth over a million dollars. And so they can buy a lot of favors. They can buy a lot of votes.
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And it's a very sad truth, but a lot of people can be bought for just a little bit of money.
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And a lot of people's theology is very flexible to, again, their income, their job prospects, and so forth.
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We have a lot of flexible people with, very flexible people with flexible theology.
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Wow, that was a lot. And it is discouraging, I know, for many. I know you mentioned there's some conservatives who want to take back the convention still for orthodoxy and return it to maybe what it was.
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I don't even know when, but 20 years ago or something like that. You've talked a little bit about the practicality of that.
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It doesn't seem practical. But one of the things you mentioned was the false teaching going on.
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And you called it an apostate convention. Yes. And for those who have listened to this program,
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I think they all know what you're talking about there. But I was hoping maybe very briefly you could just sketch out if someone were to ask you or challenge you who has not listened before.
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Dr. Fuller, what are you talking about? False teaching in the Southern Baptist Convention? We're all Christians, right?
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We should have unity, and maybe we have some political difference. But what do you mean false teaching? Because that's a pretty serious charge.
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It's a very serious charge. And I know when I say that, I don't want to speak lightly when I say that.
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But here's what I call false teaching. Again, I taught at Southern Seminary for 22 years.
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And during my 22 years there, I saw, I'm just going to say it, a lot of false teaching.
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And let me give you some examples. One, we hired a guy, and this was recently, we hired a guy who made it very clear that he believes that the
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Old Testament teaches mythology. And I asked him in the interview, I said, after reading your work,
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I said, it seems like you're saying that death is not just being spoken of, as we would call personification, but you believe that the
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Old Testament teaches that death is not a state, but a real person. And his answer was, well,
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I don't think you have to believe that, but I wouldn't have any problem if you did. And that's a serious problem, you see.
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The Bible's teaching mythology on many points, according to this professor that they hired.
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Postmodernism. A lot of postmodernism is being taught at Southern Seminary. Again, the professor was
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Jonathan Pennington. If you want to look at his book, Reading the Gospels Wisely, you'll read it and you'll be shaking your head going, what is this?
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And if you're not familiar with postmodernism, you're being baptized into postmodernism when you read his book.
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And then, of course, the critical race theory, social justice. These things are very common in our
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Southern Baptist institutions. And again, it's not just Southern Seminary, but it's other seminaries as well.
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Southeastern being a prime example. But there's also evidence of it going on at New Orleans.
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There's evidence going on at Midwestern. And there's even people at Southwestern who have, again, pushed these types of narratives as well.
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These are false teachings. And not just differences of opinion on things that we can have differences of opinion on.
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Sometimes eschatology, for instance, people have different opinions on that. But we're talking about things that strike to the heart of the inspiration of Scripture.
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Scriptures cannot be inerrant and teach mythology at the same time, because mythology, by definition, is error.
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And the apostles knew what myth was. And they always contrast myth with error.
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And what they see that they're teaching is truth, the perfect truth, absolute truth.
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This is what the apostles believe they're teaching. And obviously, any Christian should see it that way as well.
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So this is going on. And then you have, of course, people like Al Mohler teaching things like sexual orientation.
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And again, the Al Mohler, if you go back to the year 2004, 2005, he'll say it was sexual orientation is the linchpin, that it's the key teaching of the homosexual movement to mainstream it in America.
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Well, just a few years later, Al Mohler is now teaching that he accepts sexual orientation. And when people like Brian Fisher, who works for the, you know, he's a
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Christian radio host, ask him point blank, are you saying that people are born homosexual?
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Al wouldn't answer. And the reason he wouldn't answer is he couldn't answer. Because however he answered that, he's going to show the problem of the view of sexual orientation.
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If you're not born with it, then what is it? And when do you get it? You see, he couldn't answer any of those questions.
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So he just ignores questions like that. But he's pushing secularist teaching, bringing it into the church.
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These are serious errors that we have to watch out for. And so there is, and again, it's not just Southern Seminary, where I worked for 22 years.
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But it's all the seminaries, I see some real serious problems of things being taught. And what
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I'm telling you is the tip of the iceberg, to be quite honest. Well, I want to ask you about three things in particular that are recent.
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I mean, you're bringing up things that maybe a lot of the audience listening has not, if they haven't been listening to this podcast, they may not be aware.
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So I'd encourage them, go back, watch the video interviews with Dr. Russell Fuller that I did last year, where he goes into details about this.
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And there's a whole document dump at Enemies Within the Church that catalogs all this. Three things, though, very recently, three issues,
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I should say. One is, two of them, I should say, are related to the new president,
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Ed Litton. His church, as you know, he was called out for a statement on his church website that had partialism as part of their view of the
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Trinity. And I've mentioned this, but I never really explained it. So I was hoping you as a theological professor could explain this and why this is a problem.
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This was in their statement of faith. And they changed it within like a minute after someone brought it up as an issue.
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And which doesn't give you a whole lot of confidence in the person running the convention. He also, as you said, you briefly mentioned, he co -teaches or has co -taught with his wife.
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And then the other thing, and I think Ed Litton has preached variations of this, but J .D.
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Greer, I think, displayed it very clearly at the convention. And of course, recently with Kyle Witt's interview, which
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I did, which I talked to Kyle Witt, I should say, about, he talked,
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Kyle Witt mentioned that NAMM or Send Network, Dottie Lewis promoted this teaching, which is that there are certain social justice -driven categories of law that are part of the gospel.
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So you heard Dottie Lewis talk about this great requirement. That's part of the Great Commission and the gospel.
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If you don't have the great requirement, you don't have the full gospel. J .D. Greer at the convention, I heard him,
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I talked about it on this show, said that Southern Baptists need to unite around the gospel.
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And that if you, you know, if you look at the issue of abuse or back in the history of the convention, the issue of whether or not to ordain someone who held slaves,
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Southern Baptists were corrected and are being corrected in their abuse right now of abuse by the gospel.
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It's the gospel that's doing this work of correction. So it's a, I know as a historian, it drives me nuts because it's completely, there was a war, there was emancipation.
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There's a lot of things, political things that changed. It wasn't the gospel that just corrected their views.
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But the thing is, though, it seems like the hidden assumption behind saying something like that is that there's this category of law, these ethical things that must be done or believed or something like that, that you don't really have the full gospel or your gospel is, it's lacking something if you don't do this or that, or you're not fighting abuse or something like that.
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So it seems to be this smashing of categories between law and gospel. So those are the three things, if you wouldn't mind just commenting on Trinity, partialism, co -preaching, why is that a problem with your wife?
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And then this law and gospel conflation. Sure. The partialism was what he said on his website, at least just a few days ago, was that the
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Trinity is in three parts, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there are three parts of the
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Godhead or three parts of God. It's almost as if you have to take the parts, put them together, then that equals
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God. So it's as if God the Father is a third divine.
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The Son is a third divine and the Holy Spirit's a third divine. And when you add that up, now you have
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God, you see. It's as if the Son in and of himself is not
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God. That's what it's teaching. He's only partially God. Matter of fact, only a third God.
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The same goes for the Father. The same goes for the Holy Spirit. This, of course, is a horrendous heresy.
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And remember, one of the first issues that the church faced back in the early days of the church was the person and work of Christ and the
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Trinity. And this was carefully worked out by some very, very good Christian men.
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And this notion that the Godhead is made up of three parts is something they saw as absolute heresy.
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And all churches have seen that through the years. Even at Southern Baptist Convention, if you read the
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Baptist faith and message, it goes against the very same thing. So really, we just elected a president who, after we elected him, if you looked on his website, was teaching something that would be seen as historic heresy by all groups, all groups, you see.
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But yet we tolerate this in the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, he talked about, again, I mentioned this notion of autonomy of the church.
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Well, apparently, his church is able to, it's so autonomous that they can change their statement of faith within minutes that this is put on the, that is brought up and put on the internet without even apparently any kind of meeting.
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It's amazing how autonomous his church apparently is. They can do things without votes.
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That's an autonomous church right there to make his statement now look orthodox.
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But that's a terrible. What the Bible teaches is that the complete fullness of the
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Godhead dwelt in Christ, even when he was on this earth, the fullness of deity of God dwelt in him, you see.
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And so what we would say is the Father is 100 % God, the Son is 100 %
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God, the Holy Spirit's 100 % God, and they're all one God. They're one divine substance, is what we would say.
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Not three parts. You add them up. There you go. But by themselves, they're a third
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God. So a 33 .3 % of the fullness of the deity dwells in him.
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No, that's pure unadulterated heresy. And here we are. This is our president now in the
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Southern Baptist Convention. The other issue you mentioned was, again,
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Lytton's wife preaching. Again, the Bible, I think, is very clear that the office of a pastor is for males only.
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That's what Scripture says. And again, I know that's not popular with this culture.
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And I think Randy Adams made a very good point when he said, look, it's more difficult, especially when you're talking to young Christians, but especially sometimes older Christians.
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They can understand why homosexuality is wrong, because even nature itself teaches you this, the
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Bible says. But at the same time, wait a minute. That's not fair.
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Why can't a woman also be a pastor, you see? Well, we go by what Scripture teaches.
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And so if you look, he'd be a husband of one wife. That's the requirement of an elder, you see.
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And so the Bible makes it very clear that women are not to teach men, adult men, in the church.
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This is what Bible... Now, again, that's not popular with the culture. But the
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Southern Baptist Convention and the culture are becoming one. They've already basically become one.
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And so I'm telling you now, that's going to change. If you go back before the original conservative resurgency, so go back to the 80s when it was being fought,
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Al Mohler was one of the biggest supporters of women in ministry. But he had a very flexible theology.
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And so in his own words, he switched overnight. And he meant literally overnight.
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Now he was against it in order to be elected the president of the Southern Seminary. But watch.
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I'm not saying he personally is going to start shifting on it, though he has in many ways. He's accepting the
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Me Too narratives and so forth. So he's moving in that direction as well. But in the Southern Baptist Convention, I expect that to continue to move in this way.
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Because again, the Southern Baptist Convention, you watch what the world is saying. Watch what you heard at the convention, by the way, consistently.
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The world is watching us. The world is watching us. How about the Lord is watching us?
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And what we do should be consistent with God's Word. But we're trying to get as close to the world as we can.
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That's what we're trying to do. So the Bible makes it very clear. The pastorate is for men.
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Just like in the Old Testament, whether you thought it was fair or not, the high priest only could come from one tribe, only one family within that tribe, and it had to be the males in that tribe.
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We might say that's not fair. Why can't an Ephraimite become a priest? No, it had to be a
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Levite. Okay, now that Levite might live in Ephraim, of course, but no, it can't be that way. Then the confusing of the gospel.
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And that is a big issue, John. They're constantly saying the gospel, and they use that word in a very confusing way.
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And so at one point, they mean by the gospel, we're just saying that's what the Bible teaches. And at the next point, though, that's what it, when we say the gospel, this is what's necessary to be saved.
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So they're speaking in very unclear ways, and I think they do this purposely.
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John, you talk about mixing law and gospel, and again, one of the first heresies of the church was doing exactly that.
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When you think of the Judaizing controversy that you see in the book of Galatians, for instance, it wasn't that they were rejecting
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Jesus's divinity. They weren't rejecting that He died on the cross for our sins. They would accept everything.
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They would say, yes, yes, yes. But the Old Testament, and even there's law.
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And so it's not just Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.
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It's not that, but it is that, but we need to add one thing to it. We got to keep the law, too. Don't you believe that?
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I mean, you don't believe in antinomianism, that we can just live any way we want to, you see. And by the way, if you read the book of Romans, you can clearly see this is what the critics of Paul were saying.
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With Paul's doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, many were saying, ah, you think you can live in sin.
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And of course, what Paul says is, God forbid. No, if we live under grace, that does not give us a license to sin.
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As a matter of fact, he says in Titus, the grace of God instructs us to deny ungodliness and so forth, you see.
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But we must be careful about law in gospel. The law is a good thing if it's used properly.
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The law is good, for instance, to preach to people to show them of their need of salvation.
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But the law is not good to preach to people to say, you do this law here, and when you get good enough, then
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Jesus can save you. And that's what they're sort of doing when they say this is the, what was their term again, the sort of the great requirement or something?
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Yeah, Dottie Lewis talks about the great requirement. If you don't include that in your gospel message, you only have a half gospel.
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Yeah, see, this is very dangerous because what he means by that is we need to have, you have to work for social justice, and they are defining what that social justice is, of course, which, you know, again, following the world.
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The great requirement is that we look to Christ, God who came, took on flesh, lived a life of perfect obedience to God's law.
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Remember, he's the second Adam, the final Adam, the last Adam. Our first father,
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Adam, he was supposed to live perfectly under God's law. He failed.
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But the second Adam comes, he lives a perfect life without sin. But that wasn't enough because we and Adam are all sinners.
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First of all, his sin is imputed to us, but also we personally sin. For both those reasons, we're under condemnation.
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But what Christ did by going to the cross, our sins were put to his account, and his righteousness is put to our account.
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The great requirement is that we look to Christ totally by grace through faith, repenting of our sins.
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And again, don't think that faith and repentance is some kind of work that we'd even do within ourselves.
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It was not only given to you graciously by God to believe, but also to suffer for his namesake,
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Paul says to the church at Philippi. What we have here, John, it was graciously given to us to believe.
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You know, in Acts, it'll talk about God opening the hearts of people to believe. See, we're saved by grace alone.
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Even our faith is not a work. It's the Holy Spirit who convinces us of the truth of the gospel.
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It is his work. Even repentance. God grants people repentance in the
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New Testament. Not that by my repentance, I'm saved. My repentance is filthy rags.
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My faith, uh -uh. No way. What the Bible teaches is we're saved solely by the grace of God.
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And that's why we can be so joyful this morning.
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We may have lost in Nashville, but the gospel hasn't changed. But you got to be careful what's being taught out of the
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Southern Baptist Convention now. The great requirement is for us to look to Christ in faith.
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But again, as again, what Paul says in Thessalonians, he tells us, the word of God did not come to you in word only.
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It wasn't just a sermon. But when that sermon was preached, it wasn't word only, but also in the spirit, and in power, and full assurance.
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In other words, when the gospel is preached, the power of the Holy Spirit has to convince us of the truth of the gospel.
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When Paul talks to the church at Corinth, he says, when I came to you, I didn't come to you with the wisdom of men, but I preached to you in the spirit of God and in power, that your faith may not rest in man, but in the power of God.
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That's where our faith comes from, the power of God, not in ourselves. There was nothing that I saw that I said, oh, that's me.
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And God looked at me and goes, well, look at that. Russell, he picked me. He had the great faith.
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He's the guy, okay? No, I was a hell -bound sinner. And without the
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Holy Spirit convincing me, I would still be a hell -bound sinner. It's the pure work of grace of God.
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And to say, no, wait a minute, you need to be fighting for social justice. Well, you have just destroyed the gospel.
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What Paul wanted to know was Christ and him crucified.
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He wanted to know who Christ was, who was this Messiah, the one who was going to fulfill all the
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Old Testament promises. He was God of very gods, who he was. And then him crucified.
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That is the gospel. You add anything to it. I don't care how good it sounds. But notice what we do.
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We inevitably do this. We take something that's popular in our society, and we try to bring it into the gospel.
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And that's why Paul told the church at Colossae to be careful of these, to be led captive like a spoil, like a booty to vain philosophy and deceit.
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And that's exactly what Dehadi Lewis, many of the professors in the
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Southern Baptist Convention, and so forth. What is very sad, John. Let me just say one more thing about this. You know, the presidents, the six presidents of the
37:44
Southern Baptist Convention came out with a statement, I think it was back around November, where they said, we are against critical race theory.
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John, that was an act of camouflage. And I'll just say it like it is.
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It is nothing but prevarication. It's a lie. Because while they're doing that on the one hand to convince me and you, or not me necessarily, but the rank and file
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Southern Baptists out there, at the same time, they have professors that they know are teaching these things.
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And again, Al Litton, he's come out, and he made the statement that in our seminaries, no one believes critical race theory, and no one has taught critical race theory.
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John, that's simply, again, prevarication. It is a lie, pure and simple.
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And when you see the lying that's going on, you can see that we have an apostate convention.
38:43
Dr. Fuller, what you just shared is very compelling. These are winning issues for orthodox believers who understand the truth.
38:52
I'd like to hear your analysis briefly. Why did conservatives only, at this year, when they probably have more numbers than they will have perhaps ever, or in a long time moving forward, this was the year that angers were high, people showed up.
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Why did they only make it to 40 %? Can you identify maybe what went wrong?
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And the reason I ask is many people are asking this question. We're going to get to some other questions people have asked.
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But does this reflect upon the convention as a whole? Is this just the leadership played tricks and they convinced conservative orthodox believers to vote for them?
39:33
What happened and what went wrong? You know, John, some of the reasons you just gave, it's probably a little bit of each of those things.
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But let me just give you my opinion on just a few of the major reasons I think we lost. Again, it's very difficult to get rank and file
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Southern Baptists to a Southern Baptist convention. It's very expensive. I don't want to tell you what
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I paid for a hotel room and stuff to go to Nashville to do this. It's expensive.
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Most people, most rank and file Southern Baptists, listen, they got a life to live. They don't know what's going on in the seminaries.
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They don't know what's going on at the Southern Baptist convention. You know, they've got a life to live.
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They're working hard out there. They can't know all these things. I'll tell you one thing that the establishment, you know, those in charge, something that Randy Adams was pushing for, but they will never allow, and that's remote voting, because then it would not be expensive.
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All you'd have to do is maybe go to a church near you and then you could vote. They will never allow that because then the rank and file, even the smaller churches that don't have the money.
40:48
Most of those folks there, I believe, were of two types. One, those who had either their whole way paid or a lot of their way paid from NAMM, because NAMM is the banker.
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Let me tell you right now, NAMM has the money. They're throwing it around. We know, for instance, in many communities, they know who the influential pastors are, and they'll be giving them $1 ,000, $2 ,000 per month just to keep them in friendly cooperation, shall we say.
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And so they're paying for a lot. And then you have, of course, the affluent churches, your city churches, some of your mega churches.
41:27
They're pushing for this as well, because a lot of times they want to go along with the world. They don't want to be embarrassed, you know, to be with some, you know, hit guy who's going to come out and just absolutely say, look, abortion's wrong, period.
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Oh, that makes us look uneducated. That makes us look, you know, like a caveman.
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And don't be so harsh about women who have abortion. Don't say they're victims.
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They're not in sin. They're victims, you see. Well, why don't we just say what the scripture says?
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Why don't we be honest about these things? So I think it's your more affluent churches, and of course, as I told you, the different organizations are bringing their voters with them.
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If you think of Al Mohler's votes, by the way, you know, Al Mohler had more name recognition than the other three candidates by far.
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I would say probably at least 95 % of those people in the room knew the name Al Mohler. And remember, he brought a big crowd from Southern Seminary to vote for him, and he was only able to get about a little over 26 % of the vote, which shows you that conservatives have stopped listening to Al Mohler, of course, long ago.
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And now the more moderate wing, or the liberal wing, let's just call it like it is, the more liberal wing, they're not listening.
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Al Mohler's words now are hollow to a lot of folks in the Southern Baptist Convention.
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I'm not saying he couldn't win it again in two years, because if he's the establishment candidate, and if NAM is supporting him, and he can get the big churches, if he can reinvent himself yet once again, he has a shot.
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Because again, the whole, the main purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention now is keeping the machinery without any type of transparency.
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You know, you can go to, there's a website that will show you how transparent some of these religious organizations are, and so forth, and nonprofits.
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And do you know that like Planned Parenthood, the Clinton Foundation, we know more about how they spend their money, and we know the agencies of the
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Southern Baptist Convention. So, John, this is terrible.
43:46
We have no transparency. We have no idea how the money's being spent. Oh, they'll tell you, this much for missions, and this much for that, that, that.
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But no, no, no, no. Give us, I mean, precisely, let's get it down to,
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I mean, the very nickel. How are we spending the money? They won't tell you. And they're hiding, they're hiding stuff.
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This is why, again, this is why I supported Randy Adams. I liked his call, because I tell you what, you open the books, and I'll make a prediction for you right now.
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You open those books, the rank and file will have pitchforks and torches. You know, if you open those, that's why
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Randy went for it. But beating them over a 10 -year period or six -year period, I seriously doubt it.
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But if you can get those books open, some people might even be going to jail. Yeah, well, that was one of the points that a friend of mine had made a while ago.
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He said, look, you're not going to take all these social justice guys down necessarily. It's not going to be easy going after their social justice advocacy as the issue.
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But you can take them down in a heartbeat if you look for the scandals that they're likely involved in.
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And that's something that is not a surprise. Generally in scripture, don't we find that false teaching generally accompanies some kind of moral failure somewhere?
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And so if you look for the second one, generally, it's more of a strategic thing he was telling me.
45:09
But I wanted to—that's very good information. I wanted to ask just some practical information.
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There are Southern Baptists who attend churches that are in the Southern Baptist Convention, and they're concerned now.
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They don't know what to do. So there's really two levels to this. The first level is pastors and elders at churches.
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Should we stay or should we go from the Southern Baptist Convention? And I'll let you make that case. Second is members in churches that are
45:42
Southern Baptists, which I'm assuming that would include you. What do you do? Do you leave your church?
45:49
I mean, some people are saying this kind of thing, and I'd like to hear your advice on that. Yeah, let me talk about what the church
45:57
I'm at right now. I had to leave the church I was involved with, and I've even gotten letters from churches here in town rebuking me for exposing the corruption and the heresies that are being taught.
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So there's not many churches in Louisville, Southern Baptist churches that I could attend. They wouldn't let me in there, I'm telling you, because of what
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I've done. But the church I'm in now, what I've done—and this is what
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I would recommend to real conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention—you know, when you give money,
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I don't care if it's to Southern Baptist causes, you know, the cooperative program or whatever, you've got to know where your money's going to make sure that the money that you're spending is going to what they're telling you it's being spent on.
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Let me just give you an example of this. The other day I got a phone call. You know these robocalls or whatever you call them. Scam calls.
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That's the better way of saying it, I think. And at first they almost had me hooked. Of course, the rule is don't say no to everybody on the phone.
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That's the rule. Unless you really know who you're dealing with. But they said, hey, we support the police and, you know, we want to encourage police.
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And I was like, huh, you know. But then what I did is I looked them up online.
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These were scammers, you know. I'm sure they probably give about $2 to the police so they don't end up in jail, you know.
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But these guys were phonies. Complete phonies. But, you know,
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I was going to make sure if I were to give money to support the police that it was really going to go to the police.
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But we should do the same thing in the Southern Baptist Convention. And the fact is, you can't know. You cannot find out.
47:40
Try to contact these folks and find out how they're spending the money. They will not tell you.
47:47
According to at least the way the rules used to be, you could request to see even what the salary structures, what's the main guy, you know.
47:55
Some of these guys, at least this is what's being heard. Now, again, we don't know for sure.
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Some of these agency heads are making like anywhere from a half a million dollars to three quarter million dollars a year.
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Now, tell that to the bivocational pastor out there that his money is going to fund guys who are making, you know, three quarter of a million dollars a year.
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It's not going to go over well. But again, they guard this like top secret. I wish our nation could hold its secrets as well as the
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Southern Baptist can. Matter of fact, our nation could learn a lot. And the CIA and all those folks,
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I think they, you know, I think national secrets. Matter of fact, I was in Maryland once and I asked the people at the
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NSA, I said, how long do our secrets last? And the guy said to me, point blank, he goes, we're lucky if they can last six months.
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And he says, not all secrets, but most of our secrets within about six months, they're out there.
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Well, they need to talk to Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptist Convention could really. One swamp could learn from the other swamp.
48:57
Oh, absolutely. You know, they could learn how to keep things quiet, you know. But what
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I do at my church, let me get back to the point now. What I do is I designate my giving.
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Most Southern Baptist churches that I'm familiar with, what they'll do is they'll give like five, 10 % to the state convention.
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And then the money goes from there. Some of the money goes from there to the national Southern Baptist Convention.
49:24
But if you designate your giving, then it will not go to the state, nor will it go to the
49:30
Southern Baptist Convention. And it's not fungible money, OK? It's not like, OK, since Fuller put his money over here, then we can loosen up some money here and go now.
49:40
No, no. It has to be what's called undesignated funds.
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I designate my funds because I am not going to support any organization.
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I don't know what they're going to do with the money, much less, you know, I mean, I don't care who it is. So I think it's just poor stewardship of resources that God gives us if we give money blindly, not knowing what they're doing with it.
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So I would encourage every Southern Baptist out there that, look, if you don't know where your money is going, when you give it to the
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Southern Baptist Convention, designate it. Keep it within your own church. That's the first thing
50:17
I would do. Number two, I would go to my pastors, I would go to my elders, and I would say, who did you vote for and who would you have voted for?
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And if they say Ed Letton or Al Mohler, I would start looking for another church.
50:35
Just I'd say it just I mean, I'm just telling the way I see it. I would look for another church.
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And what most of the time of which I'm afraid what most pastors would do is they would start hem -hawing.
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They're not going to give you a straight answer. Well, you know, start looking for another church.
50:54
If they can't tell you who they would vote for, even if they weren't there, then again, they're afraid.
51:02
They're afraid. And if they're afraid on something to tell you who they would vote for as leaders at the church, and they won't tell you, oh, you know, it's a complicated thing.
51:12
Each of them had good things to say. They're all good brothers. No, they're not. Good brothers do not teach cultural
51:21
Marxism in our churches. Good brothers don't teach sexual orientation.
51:27
These are not good brothers. OK, false teachers. And let's use the word that scares everybody, heretics.
51:35
They're not good brothers. And what people will say was, if you call them a heretic, you're calling them not a Christian. Look, if they teach heresy, they're heretics.
51:44
If they don't repent of that and come clean, you see, that's the problem, John. What they'll do is they'll say, oh, we don't believe in this.
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But yet they'll never come clean. But you did teach this. They don't come clean. John, these are not good brothers.
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And I'm not going to call them good brothers. I'm not going to recognize them as good brothers. If they don't repent, as a matter of fact,
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I would consider them not brothers at all. But people are afraid to say this.
52:14
But John, look, this is a different gospel. I said that to you a year ago. I'm saying it to you again.
52:19
You cannot mix social justice, critical race theory, postmodernism, mythology, sexual orientation, all of these modern movements into the gospel without creating another gospel.
52:39
That's what's going on. Ask your pastor, see where they are on these issues. And if they don't give you straight answers, look you straight in the eye, tell you like it is, find another church.
52:54
That's what I tell you to do. You know, John, when I was at the convention, this couple came up to me. Dear couple, good faithful couple, good ministry in the national area, as a matter of fact.
53:05
Give me a good reason to stay in the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Fuller. I had to look them in the eye and go,
53:11
I'm not sure I have one for you right now. Now, look, I met many good folks there.
53:17
And the only thing I could possibly say, and I said this to them, the only possible reason, there are some good folks in the
53:23
Southern Baptist Convention. And perhaps we're still in the majority, but we just can't afford to go to these things.
53:28
Especially when it goes to Anaheim, California, and so forth. But I'd love to fight for these folks.
53:35
But maybe leaving might be the better move, to be an example to them, to say you ought to do the same. It's getting that way.
53:41
If you look at the Presbyterian Church in America, you see the exact same problem. They're a little ahead of us by a year or two, but I think only by a year or two.
53:51
And again, what's their problem? Same thing. Their establishment runs everything.
53:59
The city churches, the megachurches, they're the ones pushing the false gospels and so forth, and going soft on a lot of issues.
54:09
That's what you're seeing in the Southern Baptist Convention as well. And I'll tell you this, John, my pastor, he's getting close to retirement.
54:19
He's a converted Jew, by the way. And the first time I met him, and the words critical race theory came up, immediately he goes, not only is it anti -Christian, it's anti -Semitic.
54:32
And that is exactly true. One of the reasons you have so much anti -Semitism on our college campuses is because of critical race theory.
54:40
If you look at Derrick Bell, one of the founders of critical race theory, he was one of the most vile anti -Semites you'll ever see, ever hear.
54:50
This thing was, I mean, again, not only do they target, you know, if you're white, you're an army oppressor, but the ultimate to them is the
54:58
Jews. They have the money, you know, all the stereotypes, you see. It's a very anti -Semitic.
55:05
So my pastor, both from his own past being born Jewish, but also as a
55:10
Christian, rejects this. But see, he's retiring. And here's the thing, and this is where I disagree with Pastor Jeffries.
55:17
I saw an article from him the other day where he says, look, what goes on in the Southern Baptist Convention has no effect on our churches.
55:24
And I know what he meant. They can't tell that local Southern Baptist church what to do. I understand what he's meant by that.
55:31
But I think that's a bit deceptive. And I'm not saying he's lying, but what he's saying there is not totally true.
55:39
You are funding a false gospel, number one. Number two, when you look for another pastor, you're normally going to look for a seminary graduate.
55:49
Many of these seminary graduates have been infected with these things. It will affect your church.
55:57
Do not be deceived. It will affect your church. And so know where your pastor is on these issues and watch out, because I'm telling you what they're going to do.
56:07
Many of them, well, that's a complicated issue. Then tell them, you know, you're leaving is a complicated issue as well, because you ought to leave.
56:17
That's what you have to do. Now, again, John, in my own heart, I'm really thinking right now.
56:23
I'm thinking, is it best to stay or to go? There are a couple I talked to you about.
56:29
The wife said to me, you know, but there's missionaries and I'd want to support those missionaries. And I understand that.
56:35
But even she then said, but you know, the missionaries we're going to be sending out, they're going to be problematic.
56:41
The IMB has already been caught sending out messages, email messages that were encouraging, again, social justice, critical race theory.
56:50
What you're going to have is we're going to be sending out missionaries in the future. What we're going to be sending out is anthropologists.
56:59
It's not going to end well. What I would tell a local Baptist church, find a faithful missionary, one that you know is truly faithful to the gospel.
57:09
And as a church, fund him, fund that missionary that way, if you have to.
57:15
I agree. There's probably still some faithful missionaries out there that we have. But unfortunately, John, we don't know.
57:25
And when you don't know, it's best not to just throw money away. We just don't know until the agencies come clean.
57:33
Again, I would tell you not to do it. So, John, I'm struggling right now. Yeah, there's many good guys who want to keep the fight.
57:40
I understand. I like to stay in the fight. But sooner or later, I am thinking in my heart, when is it time to say, hey, look, we've got to.
57:50
And also, we do have to answer this question. Is the Southern Baptist Convention, as a convention, worth saving?
57:58
You know, Christ didn't die for the Southern Baptist Convention. That's often said, and that's correct. I mean,
58:04
I like the idea in the abstract that we, as Bible -believing churches, get together, pool our resources for missions and education.
58:12
I like that. I do like the idea. But unfortunately, what history has proven time and time again, especially in the
58:20
Southern Baptist Convention, that it does not stay faithful very much. You know, John, the real problem I see is we have very few faithful men out there.
58:29
And ultimately, that's going to be our demise. We don't have faithful men in the pulpit.
58:36
We don't have faithful men as elders in the pews. And ultimately, that's going to be our downfall.
58:42
We can talk about how corrupt this group is. And I'll be more than happy to name names about the corruption
58:49
I see out there. It's awful. I mean, when two agencies at the
58:54
Southern Baptist Convention lie in filing briefs to the Supreme Court, to the Fifth Court of Appeals, when they lie and say the
59:05
Southern Baptist Convention is like the United Methodist Church. We're a hierarchy. I mean, that's just pure lies.
59:10
No one says a word, John. Nobody. Other than Will McGraney, of course. But nobody says anything.
59:18
And you look at your leaders and you go, why? You see. And when you see something like this, it's very discouraging.
59:26
And that's why I'm struggling. Again, I may stay in the fight a little longer, but John, it's not going to be too much longer.
59:33
I'm telling you. Because after a while, I'm going to say I want to fight for it. But on the same time, you've got to realize if you look at history,
59:43
Southern Baptist Convention has been a problem a long time. But it's not a political organization either.
59:48
I can see someone who wants to, for the sake of this country or some political reason, try to take back the
59:55
Southern Baptist Convention. There's millions of dollars of assets there as well. Right. There's some pragmatic things
01:00:01
I can think of. But the thing is, the whole purpose behind the convention is to cooperate for the gospel, for missions, the
01:00:09
Great Commission. And if it's ceased to serve that purpose,
01:00:15
I can't find a justifying reason either. That's the purpose of it. So unless the purpose is now political, then
01:00:22
I can't think of a ministry reason to stay. And you can put your resources, invest your time into other things that are going to actually draw a profit and please our
01:00:34
Lord. And that's the goal. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about anyway, is pleasing
01:00:39
Christ. It's not about winning America back or anything like that either. That's right. It's interesting.
01:00:46
J .D. Gerr keeps saying, you know, our goal is not to win the country. It's not to be part of a political party.
01:00:52
But when you listen to what they're saying, you can see what they're trying to do is open the door so that don't feel guilty when you vote for the
01:00:58
Democrats. Now, look, I'm not a fan of the Republicans or Democrats. I'm not.
01:01:04
But I tell you what, I would never vote for the Democrats. I mean, they're the party of death. And so there's no way
01:01:11
I can vote for them under almost any circumstances, you know. But yet you can see in the last two conventions that I attended, the last two, that's what they're pushing for.
01:01:21
You know, they want to be able to vote for the Democratic Party and so forth. So let me give you one other thing that I thought was very telling at this convention.
01:01:28
Just a quick story on this. You know, when Resolution 9 went through, not one seminary president got up and said a word.
01:01:36
They stayed quiet. This year, there was a there was a it wasn't a resolution. It was something else that would have.
01:01:43
It was an action. I mean, it was something like an amendment that would really do something.
01:01:49
And what it was, it was going to enable one agency to cut off money to the seminaries.
01:01:56
I saw that. All of a sudden, Danny Aiken gets up and he says, and I'm speaking for all six of the seminaries.
01:02:03
I tell you what, they couldn't find the microphone two years ago when it came to critical race theory.
01:02:10
They could find the microphone this year. All six of them through Danny Aiken could find the microphone this year when their money could have been cut off.
01:02:18
I think it was very telling. I think that was very telling where those seminary presidents are.
01:02:25
Yeah, and there's a lot of telling things, unfortunately. Yes. I want to ask on a more of a hopeful note.
01:02:33
How you're doing with I know you've put your time and your resources into teaching now online, and that is something that's a service that's available for those who want to take advantage of the classes that you offer.
01:02:48
Can you talk a little bit about that? How's that going? What classes are being offered? What can this be something that churches can use who maybe want to get some theological education?
01:02:59
They don't want to go to a Southern Baptist seminary where they're going to also get error. How's that going for you?
01:03:06
I'll tell you, John, it's doing really well. Last year, of course, we started with only about two months notice.
01:03:14
I got fired. I didn't know what I was going to do, and somebody just recommended it to me, and when they first recommended it to me,
01:03:20
I thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever heard. But then I thought, well, why not? And I'm going,
01:03:26
I'm 61 years old. I've never done anything like this in my life. And I thought, let's do it. And the people had been wonderful.
01:03:35
And we averaged about 100 people for two semesters, and it was absolutely wonderful.
01:03:42
And so I've been very pleased. And let me tell you what we're going to do in the fall. In the fall, when
01:03:49
I first started, I offered like five classes. We're going up to 11 classes this year, and so I'm hoping that people will sign up.
01:03:58
And what I'll tell you is, you're not going to be taught critical race theory, social justice, none of that.
01:04:07
We're going to teach you the Word of God as best we can. And again, we basically follow the
01:04:13
Second London Confession, if you want to know where our theology is. We're pretty much in line with that.
01:04:20
What we're going to teach is, I'm going to teach a class on New Testament introduction. I know I'm an Old Testament guy, but New Testament introduction, theology one.
01:04:29
So we're going to talk about inspiration of Scripture, person of Christ. You'll learn in there that there's not three parts to the
01:04:36
Trinity and so forth, those kinds of things. So I'm going to teach a class on that. I've got a very good, faithful man teaching,
01:04:45
Richard McDonald's his name. And he's going to be teaching the Book of Judges and the Epistles of John.
01:04:51
And then he'll also get the letters to the churches in Revelation. He'll teach that.
01:04:57
And then I have another, a good dear brother in Korea named
01:05:03
Kyungwon Choi. He'll teach most of the languages, but I will do two Greek classes. He'll do most of the
01:05:08
Hebrew classes as well. So he's going to help on the language side. And then
01:05:13
I'm going to announce something new on your program today. I have someone who's going to be teaching ministry and evangelism.
01:05:21
And this man has years of experience. John, I think you know him pretty well. Tom Rush is going to be joining us.
01:05:29
And I'm really excited. Tom Rush, as you know, is a very faithful man who,
01:05:35
I mean, who sees the truth. He doesn't care about his position and so forth.
01:05:43
He cares more about the truth. And so I was thrilled that we could get him on and have him teach as well.
01:05:49
So, and remember, the way we do things on here is we will tape, it'll be
01:05:55
Zoom sessions. We'll tape them so you don't have to watch them live as I'm doing them, though I will do them live in front of students.
01:06:04
And you can just download them. I'll send you the link. You can download it. And it's yours forever, really. It's what it is.
01:06:10
And we're probably the most inexpensive school out there that I know. One class, $250. If you take three classes, we'll give you a fourth one for free.
01:06:19
If you want to take all 11, it's going to be like $2 ,000. And again, no one can touch our prices. And I'm telling you, we're going to teach you the scriptures.
01:06:28
Now, we may not always agree, but you're not going to get the heresies. You're not going to get these things that are common in society.
01:06:34
And we'll go, oh, yeah, yeah, sexual orientation. Yeah, no, no. And so if you want something, and again, we're not accredited right now.
01:06:44
And right now, I'm not sure I want accreditation, because accreditation can sometimes cause a lot of problems.
01:06:50
And it makes it more expensive, by the way. And so and right now, the way we teach the classes, they're like audit classes in the sense that I'm not going to, we'll tell you assignments you ought to do if you really want to learn the material well.
01:07:03
But we're not going to make you turn in a paper. But I'm telling you, this is for self -motivated learners, you see.
01:07:11
And so we had a great turnout last time. I tell you what, if you're interested, let me know. I've got a website,
01:07:16
Russell. That's with two L's. RussellTFuller .com. And from there, you can, if you look under, if you look at my bio, you'll see an email under there if you want to contact me.
01:07:27
Also, you can contact me on Facebook, on my Facebook page. And so I'd love to, you know, if you want to just see some things,
01:07:35
I might be able to send you a video just to see what goes on in class. I won't call on you in class. No intimidation factors or anything like that.
01:07:43
But we do have time for questions sometimes at the end of class. And I have a, usually a class on Thursday nights where you can come and ask anything you want on.
01:07:52
You know, again, I don't know. Sometimes I'll tell you, I don't know that. But we'll talk about what's going on in the classes or if you just have a general question for me.
01:08:01
And that puts me on the spot sometimes. But so, and then again, it's a great,
01:08:08
I think you'll really enjoy it. And it's for all ages. I've got folks who are teenagers. I've got folks who are in their 70s, pushing 80 and so forth.
01:08:18
I haven't been to school in a long time. Don't worry. Don't worry. Come, you'll just enjoy it. We're going to have a good time.
01:08:24
Okay, so this sounds really good. Is there a plan to have a certificate of some kind in the future? Yes, I'm hoping to announce in the next two months before the semester starts that we are going to put out a certificate to show that, hey, look, you have taken these courses.
01:08:39
And again, it's, I think it'd be good for churches to see this. And we do work with churches.
01:08:45
We have some churches who are bringing a lot of folks and we really appreciate it.
01:08:51
And we're getting great support. And so again, if you're interested in this, let me tell you, seminary education is very expensive.
01:09:00
Like it's a lot, even in Southern Baptist schools. I mean, a typical class, one class will often be at least a thousand dollars, usually more than that.
01:09:09
Yeah, more than that. Much more than that. And again, some of these classes, what we're teaching is the core.
01:09:15
We're teaching, you know, English, Bible, theology, Greek, Hebrew, ministry. Now about the
01:09:22
Greek and Hebrew, just one quick thing about it. If you're not taking a Greek or Hebrew class, you don't have to know
01:09:27
Greek or Hebrew to understand the other classes. Okay. So don't worry about that. Don't say, oh, I have to know
01:09:33
Greek and Hebrew. No, you don't. Now, if you start taking Greek and Hebrew, you may have to start over if you want to really get good benefit.
01:09:39
But again, we're teaching the core and we're not teaching fluff. Okay. A lot of the courses in seminary, in my opinion, most of them were kind of fluffy.
01:09:50
They weren't on the core of theology. And so we're really going to press teaching what the word of God teaches.
01:09:57
That's what we're really all about. And even if we don't always agree on everything, that's fine. But hopefully we can learn about what the
01:10:05
Bible teaches. And this will help us in our walk with the Lord. Because that's what I want it to do. If it's just putting facts in your head, but the
01:10:13
Holy Spirit, again, has to take these facts and work in us. That's what we want. Praise God.
01:10:19
Well, all right. So if you want to sign up, they go to RussellFuller .com, right? RussellTFuller .com.
01:10:24
Sorry. Okay. RussellTFuller .com. And then...
01:10:29
Russell with two L's. That's right. Did you change your website? I thought it was Russell. No, I did not change.
01:10:37
One time we had it under a different code completely. But then we switched it and it's
01:10:43
RussellTFuller .com. I found it. Yeah. It's RussellTFuller .com. And it's all there. You can go to the tab.
01:10:48
It says Fall 2021. Yes. Assuming that's the right tab. And then it's got everything listed there.
01:10:56
Where do people go to sign up? Is it on the website yet or is it coming? Yeah, I think it is.
01:11:01
Up in the— When you go to the first page, up in the right corner, like get started. Oh, sign up. And there's also a donate tab, just so everyone knows.
01:11:08
Donate. Yes. If you don't want to take a course, but you want to support what Dr. Fuller is doing, because this has so much potential.
01:11:14
I— You know, Russell, I've said that to you since you mentioned this. I said this has amazing potential.
01:11:21
I know there's other seminaries and startups and things like that.
01:11:26
But what you're doing has— It's not— It's not just creating a separate niche away from the social justice stuff.
01:11:35
It's also the fact that this can be used for laymen who have—
01:11:40
And that's the world that we're living in now, especially after last year with everything that happened with COVID and people staying home and the lockdowns.
01:11:48
They're looking for something that they can do. They can download to their iPhone that they can participate in on the go.
01:11:56
If they miss the class, they can listen to it later, watch it. This has so much going for it.
01:12:05
And this is the future of education. And— You know, John, we've got many pastors who just can't afford to move somewhere to take seminary.
01:12:14
Remember, a lot of our pastors are bivocational. They can't afford seminary education. You can afford what we're doing.
01:12:21
And one other thing I want to mention on this, and that is it's surprising how many people going to Southern Baptist seminaries are taking courses from us as well.
01:12:33
So I think that's very— Well, I can testify to that. You actually— There's a friend of mine who took one of your courses, and he was going to Southern.
01:12:42
At the time, he took your course and said how helpful it was. And you even gave him a break. You let him do it for free.
01:12:47
I know that's not something to expect from Dr. Fuller necessarily, but I know you've been gracious with those who really, really need the class and want to understand things and really can't afford it.
01:13:00
So we appreciate— That's right. Talk to me. Yeah, talk to me. We don't want money to keep you from help equipping you to really preach
01:13:09
God's Word. So contact me. I do have some sources of— I've got some generous fellows who've helped give some scholarships out.
01:13:17
I really appreciate those men who've done that. And so, listen, if you say,
01:13:25
I can't afford $250 ,000, contact me. We'll talk. One time, I think an 80 -year -old person, do you have a pay scale for people 80 and over?
01:13:34
I said, yes. You name the price and you pay it. So once you hit 80, you get whatever you want.
01:13:41
You truly— I mean, Russell Fuller is the real deal. You really do trust the Lord, and I appreciate what you're doing.
01:13:47
If people want to just contribute, I recommend it. If you're looking for a place to park some money that's going to go towards not just providing a place for people to go who don't want social justice, but is really the future of education, then this is a good place to put it.
01:14:02
We'll be talking to you more as time goes on. I think maybe we'll try to get one in before the fall semester.
01:14:09
And I didn't even talk to you about this off the record. You don't even know about this, but I already had a conversation with someone the other day about a conference, maybe this fall, that we're thinking of doing, and you were one of the names that came up.
01:14:20
So maybe we'll figure that out as well and have more information on it. I wanted to mention to everyone also, this is a little off topic.
01:14:28
It's on the whole vein of people leaving the Southern Baptist Convention, finding alternatives, not just in education, but a church.
01:14:35
Check out discerningchristians .com. discerningchristians .com.
01:14:42
You can go and you can register there. You can put your church on the website. If you have a church that is fighting against the social justice movement, read our statement of faith that we have that I helped craft.
01:14:53
And it's a place you can go to also find a church. And I looked this morning, the map is just filled up and there's more churches popping up there.
01:15:01
So create an account. It's free. It's easy. It's very simple. And there's also now tools where you can put in that you're looking to pastor or your church is looking to hire.
01:15:11
And we're hoping to make that even more simple and streamlined in the next few weeks. So there's
01:15:17
Theology Classroom. There's discerningchristians .com. Grassroots stuff. I mean, people that don't have a lot of money that aren't part of any machine anywhere.
01:15:26
We're not trying to take back any convention or insert ourselves into any political operation.
01:15:33
Just people who want to see the gospel go forward, see the church go forward.
01:15:38
And God's always going to have a way, whether it's with us or with someone else. He doesn't need us.
01:15:44
The stones will cry out, right? That's right. So the Lord is always going to...
01:15:49
It's like water running. It's always going to find a way in to wherever... Whatever soul needs to be saved,
01:15:56
God's going to find a way in. And it's whether he'll use us or not is the question, right? So anyway,
01:16:02
I appreciate your faithfulness. And any final thoughts before we end? Well, again,
01:16:07
John, I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you've done. You've opened many eyes, not just those outside the
01:16:12
Southern Baptist Convention, but within the Southern Baptist Convention. So you've had a great influence there on many people.
01:16:20
And again, what we need is true
01:16:25
Christians who want to truly serve the Lord. We need to get together through discerningchristians .com
01:16:33
and so forth. And we need to help each other out, pray for each other. And the main thing is we must be faithful to the
01:16:42
Lord at all costs, even if it costs us our friends, our jobs, and so forth.
01:16:47
Let's be faithful to the Lord. Because the Lord has clearly been faithful to all of us.
01:16:54
On that note, God bless you, Dr. Fuller. And we look forward to hearing from you again soon. Okay, John.