The Rise and Fall of The Gospel Coalition - Chapter 1: The Guild

AD Robles

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

The Rise and Fall of The Gospel Coalition - Chapter 2: The Game (Ed Litton Case)

00:00

Hello there. My name is A .D. Robles, and you are listening to The Rise and Fall of Gospel Coalition, Episode 1.

00:09

Where did those charges come from? Do you know? No, they're unnamed. That's part of the problem. Right.

00:14

So unnamed sources are presenting these things, which should make everybody take a pause.

00:23

I believe Jesus would teach us to take the vaccine as a part of God's gift to humanity.

00:36

...about what the 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.

00:50

And you're wondering why multi -ethnicity isn't happening at your church. It's because you have a person that's black on the outside but angloid on the inside.

01:08

All right. It is the first episode of a brand new podcast. And so what I wanted to do is basically set the tone and cover some foundational stuff that you're going to need before we go into the meat of this podcast.

01:22

What is The Rise and Fall of Gospel Coalition all about? Now, obviously, if you're here and you know the

01:28

Gospel Coalition, I don't need to explain so much about what Gospel Coalition is. But really, that's a smaller subsection of what

01:35

I want to talk about. What this podcast is about is how Big Eva operates.

01:42

And before we can even talk about that, we've got to talk about what Big Eva actually is. Why should you care? And all that kind of thing.

01:49

Now, I first heard the term Big Eva from Phil Johnson. It was in that panel where there was a little bit of a scuffle, so to say, a verbal scuffle with Al Mohler and things like that related to the social justice controversy.

02:03

And Phil Johnson was using the term to really just describe the hierarchy of evangelical leadership in America.

02:11

It's like a term like Big Tech or Big Oil. It's just a way to describe sort of the organization of evangelical thought leadership.

02:20

These are the people that write the books that end up in Christian bookstores. These are the headliners for Christian conferences, the speakers.

02:28

These are the people that get interviewed by mainstream media when they need an evangelical perspective on a certain issue.

02:36

They call up these people. This is Big Eva. These are the household names, so to speak, the people that drive the conversations amongst evangelicals in America.

02:46

Now, the other aspect of this is it's an industry, essentially.

02:52

I mean, let's just face it. Millions upon millions of dollars change hands as part of the evangelical

02:59

Big Eva operation. And this happens through donations and giving, grants, advertising, book sales, ticket sales.

03:08

Some people call Big Eva the evangelical industrial complex or evangelical ink.

03:14

It's a business. There's no question about it. Big Eva, big evangelicalism is a business.

03:20

The whole thing operates as a massive delivery system for evangelical ideas and teachings, and it utilizes all different kinds of media.

03:31

Now, this is all fine. You know, you might be thinking, what's the big deal? I mean, obviously, there's an industry around evangelicalism.

03:37

What's the big deal? And quite frankly, there is no big deal, and it's all fine until it isn't.

03:43

So, in other words, as long as the message that's being promoted is biblically sound and it's helpful, you know, having a well -funded organization to, you know, deliver messages and ideas is good.

03:58

Having quality content is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with any of this until the message becomes corrupted.

04:05

See, when the message starts becoming corrupted, having this huge complex, this huge industrial force behind a corrupted message can be extremely damaging.

04:16

And the reality is that we need to have mechanisms to recognize the corruption and then contain the corruption before it starts affecting everybody, every little church from here to Timbuktu.

04:30

But before we get into all this, let me just give you a quick story about myself and how

04:35

I kind of got started with all of this. Now, I came to faith as an adult. So, providentially,

04:42

God had put me in the business world for a number of years before I became a Christian. I was an executive recruiter, and I still am to some degree, and I was working at the time on Wall Street at a financial, you know,

04:55

I'm sorry, in the financial tech market. And, you know, when I would talk to candidates, one of the questions that people would ask me about the company

05:03

I was representing, they'd say, hey, well, what does the career growth look like at this organization or this company?

05:09

And that's a good question, right? I mean, a good company to their minds was one that had, you know, upward mobility, right?

05:15

So a chance to grow into higher level roles, maybe management opportunities. You know, that's a natural desire.

05:21

You know, people don't want to be in a dead end job. Who could blame them? They want the ability to advance their careers and maybe make more money or have more responsibility or things like that.

05:31

And that's natural. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, think with me for a moment, though, about evangelical pastors, right?

05:39

Evangelical pastors, how do they grow in their careers? Now, I'm not saying that pastor is a dead end job.

05:47

Not by a long shot. I mean, being a pastor of God's flock, God's congregation is a high calling.

05:54

I'm not trying to disparage that at all. But think about people who are in those jobs.

05:59

Right. There is no in the evangelical world. There's no hierarchy in terms of working for God's service.

06:05

Right. There's no archbishops. There's no cardinals like in the Catholic Church. Right. There's definitely no popes.

06:11

And so evangelical leaders, it doesn't really seem like they've got a job with any upward mobility.

06:17

But I don't think that evangelical pastors lose the desire to kind of advance and grow.

06:24

And so they still have those desires. And like I said, that's totally natural and fine. But in their chosen profession, there really isn't any where to go.

06:33

Like there's no archpastor, so to say. And so my opinion on Big Eva, the industrial complex surrounding evangelicalism,

06:41

I think that Big Eva provides the growth opportunities for pastors who otherwise wouldn't have any.

06:49

So there's no official archbishops or cardinals in evangelical land, but there are unofficial examples of hierarchy within Big Eva.

06:58

And I think you think of men like John Piper or Tim Keller or Al Mohler or even John MacArthur to some degree, even though he's—I would say he's a bit on the outs when it comes to Big Eva.

07:08

But all of these men kind of have their own like—almost like archbishopships.

07:14

Is that a word? Archbishopships? I'm not really sure. But they've got large followings of zealous disciples.

07:21

And, you know, they're pastors, right? So there's not like—it's not like they became an uber -pastor, but they sort of unofficially did.

07:28

And you even have people that emulate their writing styles, emulate their preaching styles, even sometimes their turns of phrases.

07:35

And, you know, they become apologists. A lot of people will become apologists for their particular leader.

07:41

Now, I've noticed this in my channel when I've criticized certain leaders.

07:46

Like if I criticize Matt Chandler on my YouTube channel, I'll receive harsh rebukes from defenders.

07:53

And these are people that I would argue are in their diocese, right? It's like—it's almost as if I criticize the pope himself.

08:00

And I'm talking about criticism beyond sort of, hey, A .D., I don't agree with you. I don't agree with what you said about Matt Chandler here.

08:07

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about things like, A .D., how dare you question Chandler?

08:12

How dare—who are you? He's got a track record of ministry a mile long, and you're just some YouTuber. How dare you even have the nerve to question him?

08:21

That goes a little bit beyond sort of like, I disagree with what you said here. And in my opinion, that shows me that Big Eva operates very similarly to like a hierarchy for evangelical pastors.

08:32

The way, you know, the diocese and things like that would operate in the Catholic Church. Also Big Eva, I would say, operates like a medieval guild for evangelicalism.

08:43

And so, you know, the guild operates in evangelicalism without any kind of official charter or any kind of official rules.

08:52

It's like it wields a lot of power the way a guild would have yielded power back in medieval times.

08:58

But it does so without any official authority, without any official recognition. And the way it does this is through a whole maze of unwritten rules and codes.

09:09

They're not written down. I could not find a charter that says here's the rules if you want to participate in the evangelical industrial complex.

09:17

But you do have to abide by these rules. Even though they're not written down, you have to abide by them in order to be promoted, in order to, you know, get any backing or any support at all.

09:31

It almost reminds me of like the convict code in prison, right? Like you ever watch a prison show?

09:36

And in prison shows, you know, regularly there's a whole list of rules. When you first arrive onto the prison yard, somebody will come up to you and will tell you what the rules of the prison are.

09:47

Now there's no rule book, right? This is not like the official rules of the prison. Like there's not the guards that are telling you this.

09:53

This is the other convicts. And they're like, look, you're white. You've got to sit over here. You know, if something pops off, you've got to do this.

09:59

You've got to do that. You know, if you see a child molester, you're going to have to punch him in the face. You know, whatever it is, there's a whole list of unwritten rules.

10:06

They call it the convict code. And you have to abide by them. Otherwise, you'll pay the price. And so in Big Eva, they've got a code as well that if you don't abide by it, you know, you're pretty much on your own and you will be attacked.

10:20

It's open season on you if you don't abide by these rules. And these are extra biblical rules, by the way.

10:26

This is not something that you could find in the Bible. This is something that they've created for themselves. And you're either in or you're out.

10:32

And if you're out, you're fair game. If you're in, you know, it's like you're a made guy kind of thing.

10:39

And so adherence to these rules, if you want to have a career in Big Eva, you've got to adhere by them.

10:46

It determines who's promoted versus who's derided. It determines who gets funding and who gets fired.

10:52

Right? So we're not talking like just criticism here. Like this is a matter of being able to feed your family or not sometimes.

10:57

Right? Pastors who want to advance their careers, you know, they want their blogs promoted or their books sold or they want to be offered a speaking slot at the next conference, you know, they quickly learn how to abide by this code.

11:10

And those who don't, they're the naughty boys. And they might be able to keep their job or they might not.

11:15

They might get fired just for breaking one of these unwritten rules. And that's how

11:20

Big Eva operates. And let me give you a little story as well about this. I actually had a little bit of an experience at the very beginning of the

11:31

Big Eva ladder. So when I was—I worked in Wall Street, like I said. I came to faith.

11:37

And my pastor at the time said that he believed that—he was a bit of a charismatic guy. He believed

11:42

I had a calling on my life. And so I started to think the same thing. And I thought maybe I'll become a missionary.

11:47

Maybe I'll become a pastor. I wasn't really sure. And then I ended up—what I ended up doing was leaving my job.

11:53

I quit my job. And I took an unpaid internship in Vermont with Pastor Jared C.

11:59

Wilson, who was pastor in a church in Vermont at the time. And so that's—I kind of got introduced to kind of low -level

12:06

Big Eva at that point. And he eventually left. It's kind of a funny story.

12:11

Like my first day of the internship, he told me that he had quit the job. And so—but it worked out.

12:17

He stayed for a while. And we got to know each other kind of thing. And then that church had me stay on. I preached at that church for a couple years after that while they were looking for a pastor.

12:27

And then—and at that time, Jared Wilson asked me to write for his blog.

12:32

I wrote for the For the Church blog, the official blog of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

12:38

It's like five articles, something like that. Nothing too crazy. And so if you go to that website and you search my name, you're not going to find it.

12:46

And the reason why you won't find it is because I broke this unwritten code. I think it was—I can't be sure because I was never told.

12:53

I've even asked, but I've never been told why I was deleted from the blog specifically. But I'm pretty sure it was an article that I—or a video

13:01

I did criticizing either Russell Moore or Matt Chandler. And because I dared to criticize some of the social justice stuff that they were saying, and I did it in such a nice way.

13:11

Like back in the day—go back to my old videos. You'll see I was super polite, very humble.

13:18

Like I bent over backwards saying that I thought these guys were still good, you know, all that. And just questioning them publicly, though, was enough to get my stuff yanked.

13:28

Without any warning, without any explanation, I was done. I was no longer going to be promoted by the machine anymore.

13:35

No longer going to be promoted by the guild. I ran afoul of the code. And so now I was on my own.

13:41

And so that's just a small example. Now I was in a good place because my career didn't depend on it.

13:47

I was never—I did go into ministry. I ended up pastoring a church for a while. But I was never vocational.

13:54

I always had my side business, which is my primary business. I never relied on income from Big Eva.

14:00

So for me, being kicked off this blog wasn't a big deal. But for a lot of people, being on your own and no longer being promoted by the guild and stuff like that, that is a huge deal.

14:11

And this is how Big Eva operates. And we're going to expose a lot of this in this series.

14:17

These men who are unelected, they're in positions of no real authority, so it's very hard to pin them down, with no real constitution or laws to abide by.

14:28

These men determine the agenda of what can and can't be discussed. And what can be discussed, they determine how it's to be discussed and the proper tone of the discussion.

14:38

And they do this through a complex network of associations, commissions, foundations, coalitions, all this kind of stuff.

14:47

Through all this, it's all unofficial, right? There's nothing in the scripture that talks about a coalition having authority over your local pastor or having any kind of ability to control your local pastor.

15:00

But chances are, these associations, coalitions, commissions, foundations have a lot of sway over what your pastor says and doesn't say and how they say it.

15:11

And that's a big deal. In many ways, these organizations, Big Eva, they control and establish the bounds, the very bounds of orthodoxy in American evangelicalism.

15:23

And they do it, and they don't even have to convene a council, they don't even have to get together a synod. It's completely informal, but just because it's an informal authority structure does not mean it does not wield a ton of power.

15:38

But all of this, in my opinion, is coming to an end. That's why this show is called The Rise and Fall of Gospel Coalition.

15:45

I believe that Big Eva and the Evangelical Industrial Complex, their organizations have peaked in influence.

15:54

And I believe that it's now in a decline. This series is going to expose how they've been operating over all these years, why it's been so harmful for the church, and what the future could look like if things don't change, and change in a big way.

16:09

And so I hope that this is going to be helpful to you. In my opinion, I've seen so many people that—

16:16

Actually, let me say this, let me do this. Here's my target audience for this podcast.

16:22

There's really two groups that I'm speaking to here. The first group are people that know that there's a problem with Gospel Coalition and Big Eva in general.

16:31

And I believe this group is in the minority, but the numbers of this group are growing every single day.

16:36

I want this show to be encouraging to you. I want you to be affirmed in some of the things that you've been saying, yeah, this kind of stinks.

16:44

I don't really know how to put my finger on this, but something's not right here. I want you to know that you're not alone, and you're not crazy.

16:52

You are seeing what you're seeing. Your eyes work, and it does stink. And I want to expose some of this in a way that brings clarity and encourages you that you're not alone.

17:03

Now, the second group of people that I'm targeting with this series are people that maybe they know there's a problem, maybe they don't, but they're trying to keep the peace.

17:16

They're like, yeah, I don't really like what's going on, but we got to have unity, we got to get along, and stuff like that.

17:23

And so they don't talk about it. They pretend it's not happening. They kind of try to go with the flow.

17:29

You guys, I want this series to be awakening. I want you to wake up is what

17:34

I want to do. I want you to wake up, and I want you to get to work, and I want you to start changing things for the better.

17:39

And the thing is, you guys have a lot of power here. You guys have a lot of power. I'm talking about pastors who maybe haven't made any moves because they don't want to rock the boat.

17:48

I'm talking about leaders that they know there's something, or maybe they're not quite sure, but their people are coming to them and saying, hey, what about this article, things like that.

17:57

I want to encourage you guys that we will have your back, man. I know it's scary. I know sometimes they threaten you with pulling your funding or stop promoting you or coming after you, things like that.

18:09

It's like the mafia. It sure would be a shame if something happened to your missionary budget, like stuff like that.

18:16

I want to encourage you. We're going to get your back, man. We're going to get your back. And even if we didn't, it's the right thing to do to start speaking up about these abuses.

18:24

And I don't mean abuses like the way Me Too uses it. I'm talking about abuses of authority that they don't even really have, like the way they wield power.

18:34

We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. In any case, things are bad, guys, and I want to encourage these two groups, right, people that know there's a problem, people in the pews, regular

18:45

Joes that can't quite put their finger on it. They think they might be going crazy. You're not crazy. The second group are people that are kind of in the middle, don't want to drop the boat, want to try to keep the peace by not saying anything, pretending it's not happening.

18:59

Yeah, it's happening. I want to encourage you to get off that fence. There's a third group, though, and this is a group that, you know, you guys can listen to it, and I hope you do, but quite frankly,

19:10

I don't care if you're encouraged because I hope you're not encouraged. I hope you're discouraged by this podcast because here's the reality.

19:16

Big Eva capos and soldiers, like people that are in Big Eva and that utilize these tactics and just thugs, to be honest with you.

19:26

You're thugs. You guys are on your own, and quite frankly, if I were you, I would be worried about this podcast because I'm going to be exposing your little scams, and they're going to be further exposed every single day, and people are going to see, you know,

19:40

I always thought that was weird, and now I'm seeing, yeah, this is exactly what's going on. Look, good luck with all of that.

19:45

I don't care if you're encouraged or not. I hope you change, but quite frankly, I'm not going to try to convince you to change.

19:51

What I'm going to do, though, is I'm going to hold up a mirror to you guys to show you how far you've fallen.

19:58

Maybe that will wake you up. I remember when I used to be, when I was an unbeliever, and I'd go on a bender.

20:06

I'd be drinking and doing drugs for a few days in a row, and you wake up that one morning, and you look at yourself in the mirror, and you don't even recognize yourself.

20:14

It's like, what's going on here? How did it come to this, right? All it took was just one good look in the mirror.

20:19

That's what I'm hoping to do with this podcast because you guys have fallen, and hopefully you'll see.

20:26

But you know what? Whether you change, whether you don't, that's not up to me. I hope you do change, but this series,

20:32

I don't care if it encourages you or not, quite frankly. It's not for you in any case. So in this series as well,

20:39

I will be interviewing people to talk about things and kind of get into things a little bit further.

20:46

Today what I wanted to do is I wanted to talk to the director of the great film, which

20:51

I highly recommend, Enemies Within the Church is the name of it. Judd Saul, the director, he is a solid dude.

20:58

Anyway, he did a film, and in the film, there was like a three -minute segment where he talks about the organizations of Big Eva and how they operate, how the board of directors operate and who's on these boards and how they're connected and stuff like that.

21:13

And I want to let him kind of present that information, and then I'll get back at the end, and we'll kind of wrap this beginning episode up in a little bow, and hopefully you'll be interested in seeing some of the next episodes.

21:26

I hope you find this interview helpful. All right, so I've got Judd Saul.

21:31

Judd is the director. Are you the producer of this movie, Enemies Within the Church?

21:37

Tell me your credentials here, Judd. Producer, director, production assistant, sometimes cameraman, bed carrier.

21:50

We had quite the team, but I played so many roles on it. Researcher, troublemaker, you name it.

21:59

I'm so glad I got the two big ones right. I didn't get all the other ones, but I assumed you did some of that stuff as well.

22:05

Well, anyway, I wanted to interview Judd here because this episode is about really why should we care about Big Eva?

22:12

Why does it matter? What is it? That kind of thing. And there was like a five -minute section in Enemies Within the

22:20

Church right around one hour and 47 minutes, something like that, if you want to start the movie there. Watch the whole movie.

22:26

But if you want to see what I'm talking about, it kind of goes into this whole idea of the different evangelical leadership groups.

22:34

They share a lot of board members and the board members change all the time. And in the movie, it's called the socialist shuffle.

22:43

And so, Judd, I wanted to ask you, because actually you presented that information in the movie, which you didn't present all the information.

22:49

Why did you feel like that was important to have in your film? We wanted to get people to kind of be aware and to keep their eye on who some of these key players are that are pushing the woke movement in Big Eva, in the evangelical world.

23:09

And you want to keep an eye on them. So look at Russell Moore. He was with the Southern Baptist. First, he started off as a woke professor, and then he got his way into being in charge of the

23:21

ERLC. Well, now he's no longer with the ERLC. Well, who is he with now? He's with Christianity Today.

23:26

He's still with the evangelical immigration table. He's still in with all these other organizations with his influence.

23:33

Just because Russell Moore is no longer with the Southern Baptist convention does not mean that he's still not pushing his nonsense.

23:41

And so here's a prime example of a guy who's going, boop, to this board, going to this group, going to this group, going to this group, who still has a major white influence, and no one has, other than us and maybe a few others, have rebuked him.

23:54

They called it out for what it is. And so when they push too far in a conservative organization, oh, they have a bunch of other organizations to fall back on, which

24:08

I would say 95 % of evangelicals don't know how bad these organizations actually are, but there's a cushion.

24:16

There's a job, there's money, there's still influence, there's conferences where they can make a living, and they all fall back into all these other organizations.

24:23

And that's why you just see them shuffle around, shuffle around, and they promote each other's stuff, they endorse each other's books, and the money train keeps going.

24:33

In the movie, it was so effective, and you kind of pointed out a few of the main hubs of where this influence comes from.

24:40

We'll get to that in a minute, but it seems to me, Judd, and tell me if you think this is right or wrong, but it seems to me that because a lot of these organizations,

24:50

Gospel Coalition, ERLC, Oikonomia Network, stuff like that, they share board members, it almost makes, it gives the illusion that, you know what, evangelicalism is just all this way.

25:04

It creates this illusion of a consensus, and really it's not a consensus, it's just a consensus of a handful of people that are on all the boards.

25:12

Exactly, and then the same message is being delivered in different avenues. So we talk about Oikonomia Network for a second, their whole thing is faith, work, and economics.

25:22

So who do they get? They get a lot of students, they get into business classes in universities, but they also get the attention of Christian entrepreneurs and business people, okay?

25:33

So then they're getting a subtle message of social justice into these areas. And then look at the seminaries, they're getting the same message over there.

25:44

Okay, let's say a bunch of people love the National Association of Evangelicals, you know, what a great organization.

25:49

So all these people then are getting the same message from them, but what the funny thing is though is that all of these are interconnected, and each people share one another's boards, and they're on this board and this board, and what it is is it's a small tiny group of people that create a big echo chamber.

26:06

You mentioned the seminaries there, right? How do the seminaries factor into all of these organizations?

26:14

The seminaries are the arm that are carrying the message to the next generation.

26:20

They're the mechanism and a major target for all these other organizations.

26:27

So if you're a seminary professor or you're a seminary and you're going to these conventions with the

26:32

National Association of Evangelicals, you're wined and dined by the Oikonomia Network, all of a sudden you have all these other organizations that you're a part of now that have endorsed you, and you bring it to your students, and it says, look, we're with the in crowd.

26:48

We're with the next generation. We have the new information that's going to carry Christianity into the next world.

26:56

And you and I both know it's garbage, and any Christian worth their salt can look at it and know it's garbage, but if you want to be in the cool crowd, you got to join in and be in with these other organizations.

27:06

You also mentioned there that they get wined and dined by these people. I don't know if you know about my background,

27:11

Judd, but I'm a technical recruiter, and I used to work in the Wall Street area for the financial technology companies and things like that.

27:19

And when it comes to how my career would progress or people's careers, that's what usually happened.

27:26

You go to happy hours, you go to dinner with people, and your career kind of progresses. And in business, that makes sense.

27:32

That's what you got to do. You got to do what you got to do, right? But I think sometimes when we think of like,

27:38

I'm not trying to insult pastors here, but pastors are like, where's their career progression, right?

27:45

It's not like the Catholic Church where there's cardinals and bishops and archbishops. So where are they going to go, right?

27:50

Well, I think that a lot of these networks provide almost career progression because there's no senior pastor.

27:58

So I know some churches have that, but I'm just saying like there's no like arch pastor, but there are people on the conference circuit that get promoted by these networks and these organizations, and that's almost like a career progression for them.

28:11

Right. And that's a telltale sign, an easy way for someone to tell the difference between somebody who's actually called to ministry versus a hireling.

28:19

And we see a lot of guys get into ministry with the goal of being the next gospel coalition writer, the next guy on the speaking circuit, the next guy to do this.

28:30

And it's really not about ministry. It's just a stepping stone career path.

28:37

And the Southern Baptists from what I've discovered over the last three years are just renowned for this kind of thing.

28:42

Because the young guys, the young guys in the seminaries, they want to be the next cool guy. They want to be the next cool guy that speaks at the conferences instead of worrying about spreading the gospel and taking care of your church.

28:53

It is a stepping stone. And unfortunately, that is the difference between Christian industry and Christian ministry.

29:00

And we see a major, major shift from ministry of people who want to be in the industry.

29:06

And then the crazy thing that I've noticed is that the guys who want to be part of the industry are the first guys to ignore truth, ignore what's going on.

29:21

They don't want to have the wrong reputation for citing for truth. They just want to be the guy to go along, get along because he has a higher position somewhere else.

29:29

And you're, you know, in all your research, Judd, which organizations or networks are like the, you know, the movers and shakers, which are, which are calling the shots.

29:37

Like this show is called the rise and fall of gospel coalition. Obviously I've got a, I'm attacking the gospel coalition, but I mean, in your view, what, what is, what are the most important hubs here?

29:48

Because I'm not saying that gospel collision is even the strongest hub or the most important hub. It depends on which camp you're looking at.

29:56

It depends. Like I would separate it based on theological camps. Okay. So if you are in the

30:02

Baptist ish, reformed world, even, even

30:07

PC USA and you want to be in the cool crowd in there, the gospel coalition is the main organization and the mechanism that has been used to shift, uh, reform

30:21

Baptist, um, modern, I say reform Presbyterian types and shift them to the left.

30:27

And this was a brainchild of Tim Keller. This really was a brainchild that Tim Keller starts off a little conservative.

30:35

Then all of a sudden you start seeing all this stuff shift to the left and all and giving platforms to people that should never have platforms into really legitimate

30:44

Christianity. Right. And, um, and so I would say with that, you see that portion and then you start getting into organizations, um, like the evangelical immigration table, where some of the gospel coalition are involved with them all funded by Soros, by the way, the evangelical immigration table.

31:03

And then, so, and, but you see those guys partnering then with Jim Wallace types, you've seen them partnering with Joanne lion, uh, total leftist operative within the

31:11

Wesleyan denomination. And, and then what, what the interesting part is, so you have gospel coalition.

31:18

Now they're flirting with groups like our national association of evangelicals, which have tons of leftists into their organization.

31:25

They're all working together, but it's like each one's targeting their theological camp.

31:31

Yep. But in the big scheme of things, Oh, we're all joining together for the gospel. We're all together for the gospel in the larger evangelical picture, but each one kind of nitpicks their own theological, uh, um, sector.

31:43

So you have evangelical immigration table, you have Jim Wallace and you have these other types. But then what we found out is, and working through this whole puzzle is we have operatives directly connected to like communist party

31:57

USA. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're faith outreach groups. Okay.

32:03

So you have communist party USA faith outreach people that are in the network and working with, and sometimes speaking at the same conferences as some of the other guys with the gospel coalition, with the evangelical immigration table, with national association for evangelicals, they're all working together.

32:20

And the funny thing is, is there's no one out there holding anyone accountable. Right. If you're a Christian with yourself, it's obviously that these people are pushing a false gospel or, or pushing a gospel that's adding to the gospel.

32:33

Right. That's right. And there's no accountability, but wow, what, what a nice echo chamber.

32:39

But then what I'm saying is you see all these influences starting to come in from the far left and you're going,

32:45

Whoa, this is where it gets crazy. And then, you know, look at campus crusade.

32:50

Another example where we went and found. Okay. So you have campus crusade, you have people that speak at campus crusade, but then they're also affiliated with other organizations.

33:01

One of those organizations is the freedom road organization, which are left -wing activists who are now instructing campus crusade.

33:10

So, so with a socialist shuffle, it's like, yeah, it is a socialist shuffle because once someone gets too much heat, boom, they go over to this other organization here.

33:18

Right. It's, it's, it's amazing. And one of the more effective parts of the movie, I don't want to give up too much of the film.

33:23

Cause if you haven't seen it, you need to watch this, this film, but there was a man who I guess, I don't remember exactly which seminary or college he was a part of, but someone had offered to give him like $2 million or something for his college and specifically said, you know, you can't have it unless you kind of alter your message on the

33:43

LGBT stuff. And this man turned down the money or whatever. But think about how many times that exact conversation has happened and not just with LGBT, with anything, it could just be anything.

33:54

And so money being thrown around, and this is not $2 million. It's not a small amount of money being thrown around that way has a, has a big influence.

34:03

And it's interesting how you said they kind of chop it up depending on theological distinctives, right? It's almost like they have their own, uh, they're like capos of their own units, right?

34:11

You're the reformed guy. You're the, you know, you know, charismatic person. You're the kind of squishy progressive, you know, evangelical, you know, leader guy, you know, that kind of thing.

34:20

Yeah. Yeah. And they, they, oh yeah. And they definitely target it. And, uh, the, the gentleman you're referring to is

34:26

Dr. Everett Piper, who was the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan university. Um, and Dr. Everett Piper, uh, wrote a book called a not a daycare and why he runs a university and not a diversity.

34:38

And he, uh, um, and, and, and so they were, he was a major target to target his university, but, um, it's

34:46

Dr. Everett Piper was brave enough to come on camera to talk about it, but I've talked to other seminary, uh, presidents that would not come on camera that have said the same situation, similar stories where big donors come in, they dangle this big carrot right in front of you to, to change your, change your direction just a little bit.

35:04

Okay. But it's not just them dangling the carrot. Okay. In front of you with a phone call, a lot of times they say,

35:10

Hey, we really loved what you said at this thing over here. Come on this trip, first -class trip to us over to Europe.

35:17

I want to fly you to this conference and meet these people over here. They'll pay for your plane tickets. They whine you and dine you and butter you up.

35:23

And then they throw in the big money to try to get you to compromise, but not after working real hard on trying to get you to switch.

35:31

So it's a dual kind of thing. It's not only money for your organization or your college or university. It's also, you're going to be platform.

35:37

You're going to meet these people. Your career will be enhanced. I think this explains, and look,

35:43

I'm not trying to throw conspiracy theories out there. You know, Judd, I don't know if you know, I'm, I'm no stranger to, uh, to conspiracy theories.

35:49

I enjoy them as much as the next bloke, but, um, but anyway, I'm not saying anything in particular, but what I'm saying is there's a lot of times when, when someone major changes their position on something like just suddenly, and we don't understand why, and we're just kind of left scratching our heads like this doesn't make any sense.

36:06

This could actually help make it make sense in my opinion. What would you do if you get a call tomorrow and said 80, we really love you.

36:13

We're going to get you a first -class plane ticket. We're going to bring you to a Ritz Carlton resort, uh, in, uh, in, you know, in Palm beach,

36:20

Florida, uh, we're going to have you meet all these high dollar influential people and that, and they get that whole crowd and they love you to death.

36:26

They're shaking your hand, wanting to help you out and do everything. I've actually been to these kinds of meetings before.

36:32

Yeah. I know how they operate, but I get disinvited because I don't play the game. And, uh, but that's how they do it and how they work it.

36:39

So how tempting is it of the flesh? How tempting of it, of the flesh, all of a sudden you're somebody important.

36:44

And now you're in a hotel in an exotic location that you've never seen or experienced before.

36:51

And they want you to be part of their club. Yeah. That is how a lot of compromise is done.

36:59

Judd, this has been so helpful. And, and, and the movie, like I said, uh, you know, for anyone who's listening to this podcast, who has not seen this movie,

37:06

I'm going to attach a link to it. Definitely go check it out. You can stream it. You can get a DVD if you're still using

37:11

DVD players. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's really helpful in this regard. I've got one more thing to ask you,

37:18

Judd, in your opinion, the information that we've covered about the social, the socialist shuffle and how all the board members, you know, they're all on this, they're all the same, you know, they just kind of shuffle them.

37:30

It's not this huge consensus that you think it is. It's just, they've kind of engineered it to appear that way.

37:36

Um, why should the regular person in the pew care about this? Right? Like why, why does, cause they're, they're pastors, not necessarily in this club, right?

37:45

They're not, they're pastors, you know, he's a low level. And I don't mean this as insult. It's just like,

37:50

I have a small church, you know, I'm making, you know, you know, um, you know, a few bucks on the side, you know, working a normal part -time job just to survive.

37:58

Like I'm not connected in any way. Like why, why should they care about this? And everyone needs to be vigilant.

38:05

And this is why your main pastor might not be involved with this, but guess what? That, uh, lady who wants to start a

38:11

Bible study, got inspired by reading this book from over here that she got from a bookstore and wants to teach a Bible study on it.

38:17

You have no idea what they're teaching. You have no idea what she's reading. And there's so much outside influence from all these books, these organizations and people.

38:27

Oh, I saw this great thing on YouTube. We should go watch this DVD series from this particular guy, but there's no discernment.

38:34

There's no discernment in it and it's infiltrating the church that way from, from the ground up with, with, cause it's popular.

38:41

That's what everybody sees if they type in want to get Christian knowledge or, or, or insight on a, on a topic in the

38:47

Bible. These are the top websites that come up first and then, so you have it from the bottom up, but then you have it from the top down because the guys that are being trained in seminaries, the new crop of pastors that's going to replace that conservative pastor is saturated with this stuff.

39:05

They're saturated with it. So that's why you have to be, uh, um, vigilant and you have to do you do, do you do diligence on people and what information and books are coming into your church?

39:18

That's why people need to be paying attention. It's such a good point because even though it's not this huge consensus, you know, like we've been discussing, they do have, you know, kind of an undue influence, like you said, because they're well -funded.

39:32

They they've got the ability to sort of listen. I'm not, again, I'm not throwing any conspiracy theories out there, but I don't think it's an accident that, that, you know, gospel coalition is so heavily promoted, even though their engagement is pretty piss poor on YouTube and just in general, like it's awful.

39:48

But yet when you, when you type something in, their stuff comes up, you know what I mean? I don't think that's on accident.

39:53

And, and so, you know, they've got undue influence over people in your flock. Uh, if you're a pastor or just your congregation in general, you know, they, they put these blog posts out all day.

40:03

They've got decent SEO. They're going to come up and they're going to have articles. And the thing is that's so dangerous is that they also produce some good content as well.

40:13

So it's like this mixture where it's like, Oh, this is such a helpful article about my daily devotions. Oh. And by the way,

40:19

Trayvon Martin is like a saint. Wait, whoa, hold on. We mixing that up a little bit.

40:25

No, that's such a good point. Even if you're not connected, it's still affecting you. It's still affecting you.

40:30

You got people in congregations in, in 80 since the films come out. I can't tell you how many people have reached out to us and said, uh, their church has gone through a church split because of, because of a young assistant pastor, they let in that was saturated with this stuff or a

40:45

Bible study group went rogue, went full social justice and caused division in the church because of this stuff. It is.

40:52

People have to be very, very vigilant on what is coming into their church and what their, and what their church is listening to.

41:00

And that also goes upon the pastor to be paying attention to what's going on out there in the world.

41:06

And the, and the, and part of the thing we talk about in our film is one of the problems is, is a lot of pastors are not addressing situations that are outside in the world with a biblical worldview.

41:18

They're not, they're not addressing these issues from the scriptures. And so people have questions. What, you know, transgender stuff, gay stuff, all this terrible cultural stuff happening.

41:28

And where do they go if they're looking at it from a biblical perspective, gospel coalition. That's right. One of the first things that comes up.

41:35

That's right. So it's also on pastors to, to be able to prep themselves to handle these difficult questions and to educate their flock from the pulpit, because people are going elsewhere to find these situations and they're getting rat poison.

41:49

Judd, thank you so much for your time. That was very, very helpful. Is there anything else you want to say before I, before I let you off?

41:57

Yes. One thing I want to say, and it's one thing I wish I would have elaborated more on the film with is a

42:05

Michael Ware. So in some of our research that we've done and, and I'm just going to come out and say this.

42:13

I believe he is one of the key recruiters in bringing some of these evangelicals to the left and connecting them with money.

42:23

Michael Ware was an Obama faith advisor, operative worked in the

42:29

Obama administration and this guy, you can tie him into almost any major leftist movement that has been happening within evangelicalism, especially within the conservative side.

42:42

And you have to watch if he's part of an organization or part of a board or they're bringing him in to speak, that should immediately throw up a red flag and you need to disown that organization.

42:51

Sorry to drop that bomb on you at, but, but this is a, this is a guy that most people have not been bringing up and paying enough attention to.

42:57

And I want to draw a lot of attention to him. And you can tie this guy directly in with oikonomia, ERLC gospel coalition.

43:06

He's all over the place, but he's a political left -wing political operative that keeps popping up in these organizations.

43:15

And, and there you have it, you know, if you can connect left -wing political operatives and all of a sudden an evangelical movement shifting left, you go,

43:24

Oh, well, maybe there is a real connection here. Well, I really hope you found that, that interview interesting.

43:33

And thank you so much to Judd Saul for being the very first interview for the rise and fall of gospel coalition.

43:40

Just a couple of quick thoughts to close this out here. It, you know, one thing that I want you to take away from this episode is just to be encouraged.

43:49

You know, I know it seems, and I've talked to so many of you, probably hundreds of you at this point.

43:54

And it seems to you that, that things kind of changed overnight. You know, one, one day you went to bed and, you know, you trusted all of these evangelical leaders and it felt like things were, you know, kind of, you know, everything was, was going along just fine and things like that.

44:10

And then you woke up the next morning and felt like you were in the twilight zone that you woke up and every evangelical leader seemed to shift overnight.

44:19

And it almost seemed like, like people wondered, is this what heretics feel like? Like, I just don't get it.

44:25

And, and this was all engineered. This is all by design. The evangelicals haven't all decided to go socialist.

44:34

All of a sudden evangelicals as a group have not decided that they're going to throw away the law of God.

44:40

They're going to throw away the moral commands. They're going to throw away, you know, the commands to not be partial and they're going to start embracing socialism and embracing critical race theory.

44:48

And that's not what happened. What did happen though, is that the leadership that, and again, they share board members.

44:55

So it seems like they've engineered it to appear like this is the direction evangelicalism isn't going.

45:01

And really it's just a handful of people that are, unfortunately in command at a lot of these organizations, they kind of all shifted around the same time.

45:11

And again, it makes it appear like this is the will of the people. This is where the Holy spirit is leading.

45:16

And really it's a handful of operatives that are funded by dark money. We're going to go into some of this stuff that have all changed to be on message at the same time.

45:27

And they're on message still to this very day, although it's becoming more obvious to everyone that has an open mind.

45:34

And so be encouraged because the people in the pews, they haven't all changed. They are still dedicated.

45:40

Many of them to the word of God and to doing what God says in everything and applying the word of God to every area of life.

45:47

Even if the leadership is not, by the way, this is not the first time in Christian history that this has happened.

45:53

This is, this happened all the way, even from the days of Jesus when he confronted the Pharisees for their many errors.

46:01

Anyway. So that's the first thing I wanted to say now. And, and, and, and just to kind of set the tone here, we're going to start to go in to some of these unwritten rules that Big Eva and Gospel Coalition use to continue to operate.

46:14

We're going to talk about some of the specific rules that if you run a foul, you will now no longer get their stamp of approval and they'll go on the attack.

46:22

They'll call you every name in the book. I've listened. I've heard it all. I've heard it all. And I've got personal experiences that I'm going to continue to reveal more and more as this series continues.

46:33

And we're going to do more interviews about it as well. So we're going to start to go into how the guild operates, what these unwritten rules, what's the convict code, so to speak of the, of the guild.

46:43

We're going to also talk about specific examples and we're going to use them as case studies for, for kind of how the guild works, how it operates.

46:51

And some of the severe, I don't want to call them challenges.

46:57

They're way more than challenges like the severe sins that the guild engages in on a daily basis in order to maintain the appearance of authority, to maintain their appearance of power and to pretend like they're still faithful when in many ways they are not.

47:13

Look, I am not saying that everything that these teachers have taught in the past is bad.

47:19

I am not saying that everything they teach even now is bad. But what I am saying is that without serious structural changes to how the evangelical industrial complex operates, that we're on a, on a, on a collision course with just a tsunami of apostasy.

47:37

We're on the cusp. And I think we're already seeing it. We're seeing people apostasize all the time.

47:42

The Christian deconstruction movement, for example, that's just a fancy word for apostasy. I saw a pastor the other day talk about how people that are deconstructing their faith and leaving the faith, they're actually, that's

47:53

Christ -like. It's actually Christ -like to commit apostasy. It is absolutely, it's gone absolutely topsy -turvy.

47:59

It's upside down. And we're going to go into the inner workings of how this has all been allowed to happen, but be encouraged because as things get more and more exposed, the true church is rising up.

48:12

And there are people that are, that are breaking ranks with big Eva every single day. And we're going to interview some of those people on this podcast.

48:20

Honestly, if I were in your position and I was listening to this, wondering if I was crazy kind of thing,

48:25

I would be super encouraged because every day that passes is one day closer to the fall of Gospel Coalition and Big Eva, the industrial complex that has been set up essentially to be carrying water for the enemy.

48:42

In any case, I hope you found this podcast helpful. I hope you're looking forward to the rest of them.

48:47

God bless. Don't forget to tune in next time on the Rise and Fall of Gospel Coalition.

49:00

Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes people ask me like, why should I care? Right. Like my pastor is not

49:05

Tim Keller. You know, my pastor is not Matt Chandler. And, you know, to be honest, like I always kind of chuckle at that because, you know, what

49:12

I want to say is, well, okay, well, why don't you check out your pastor's bookshelf? Right. Because he's probably reading a lot of these guys and he's probably, you know, yes and amening a lot of their more crazy blogs.

49:25

Right. And I think that he's doing it not necessarily because he 100 % wholeheartedly agrees, but I think a lot of it has to do with, that's how you, that's how you rise up the corporate ladder.

49:35

You know what I mean? Like it's like, it's like in, in, in corporate, in, in corporate environments, right? You get those stupid chain emails where it's like,

49:43

Hey, you know, today's my third year workiversary. And like everyone and their mother is, is, is, is replying all saying,

49:51

Oh, congrats, congrats. And it's just like a nothing thing. It's like, I've worked here three years. What big deal. You know what I mean? And it's like, you get a hundred emails, congrats, congrats, congrats.

49:58

And it's like, well, man, like why does, why do people do that? Well, if they don't do that now, all of a sudden they're not a team player.

50:04

And I think that's a lot of what goes on with, with some of the low level people that aspire to big

50:10

Eva positions. Like they have to be like, Oh, this is so helpful. Even when it's clearly not helpful. You know what

50:15

I mean? Like it's, it's just, you get this, this, this, like a, this tweet that's totally vague and ambiguous.

50:21

All it does is muddy the waters. And you see a hundred pastors saying this was so helpful. And it's like, what are you talking about?

50:26

I don't even know what it says. You know what I mean? I think that's what goes on. And so you should care.

50:32

Look, you might not care about Matt Chandler, but Matt Chandler definitely is interested in you and your pastor and controlling your thoughts and the bounds of orthodoxy.