Grove City, SEBTS, Platt, & an Autopsy of the SBC

Conversations That Matter

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00:13

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a few things, more than a few, to get to today.

00:19

People have asked me to comment on a number of news stories, so I'm gonna be talking fast. It is a lightning round, evangelical news roundup.

00:28

It's also gonna be fast because I've only had to do this, probably could count them on one hand, maybe even just two or three fingers, where I've had to re -record a podcast because something went wrong.

00:39

Well, this is one of those times, so all the information's right here, but some things I wanted to let you know about before we get into all that.

00:47

Some people have asked me about this mug in particular because it's my favorite mug, and it's custom made with the

00:52

Conversations That Matter logo by Susan Payne. She is a supporter of the podcast. If you wanna support a good business that believes what you do on many things, then you can go to the link in the info section.

01:04

And people were wondering when I showed this last time, where can I get one and I didn't have the link and I'm gonna put it in the info section for you.

01:10

So the other thing I wanted to mention is a very generous family in Virginia.

01:16

They say they're Virginia's only organic maple syrup, or they make Virginia's only organic maple syrup.

01:24

Mill Gap Farms sent me some bottles of their maple syrup, and it has Colossians 323 on the back,

01:30

Christian Company, and I just appreciate so much them sending this to me. So I want you to know there's some good maple syrup out there that people that market it and make it believe what you believe, and it's not cracker barrel syrup.

01:44

I mean, it's good stuff, and it'll go on your blueberry pancakes, your waffles, your

01:49

French toast. I mean, look, if you live up north especially, in fact, this week you don't have to even live up north.

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You can live anywhere in the country and you're wanting some good hot chocolate, some pancakes with maple syrup because it's cold no matter where you are.

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So just wanted to let you know. Of course, the farther north you get, you start calling them flapjacks. They're not pancakes anymore.

02:09

They're just flapjacks. I'm not quite that far, but those are the two things

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I wanted to let you know about. One last thing that concerns this podcast directly is speaking.

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There's gonna be more dates added to this calendar. In fact, today I should be starting the ball rolling on an event in Virginia, possibly

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Maryland, Pennsylvania. Just talked to someone else last night about another Idaho event, and let's just say there's a lot going on.

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So I'm gonna be all over the country, and I don't do this just because I like to travel. I do like to travel, but it is a little grueling, especially when

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I add some more dates to this. And I do it because I really do believe that there's fruit that's born when there's people that won't read the books, there's people that won't go to the conferences, there's people who they're just living their lives, and then they're hit upside the head by the social justice movement out of nowhere.

03:02

This is how it happens most of the time. And if I can be there at your church or your political organization, whatever it is, and, or someone, it doesn't have to be me, but we talk about this with you, prepare you a little bit, what to expect, how to handle it, especially from a

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Christian perspective, I think this really, it helps. And so I've been told that it's helped others.

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And so that's why I do it, is to help. I really think that this is a temporary thing in my life, but it is something that I think is important.

03:36

So the next available time to, well, let me just go over the next three.

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So I'm gonna be in Kentucky at the end of this month, January 29th, 30th, 31st, speaking on all three days at different places in Kentucky.

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So the first one is in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and this is Reformation War Room. You might've seen the advertisement on this podcast already, and you can go to fivesoulesspress .regfox

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.com forward slash warroom5. If that's too hard to remember, just go to worldviewconversation .com.

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Link is in the speaking engagements tab. So that's where you sign up.

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This is a men's conference. Now, some people are asking, hey, I wanna come, but I'm not a man.

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Well, if you wanna come, you can join me in Caneyville, Kentucky on January 30th, and RSVP information's there, or January 31st in Bowling Green at the

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Coffee Emporium, Bagels and Artisan Bakery. And I think there's gonna be some of that, some hors d 'oeuvres available there, and you can contact

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Brian Schutt. The link or the phone number and email address is right there.

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So those are the next three dates that I'm gonna be traveling, and I wanna let you know about that.

04:48

All right, let's get in to the subjects for today. Let me give you a brief overview. We are going to talk about Grove City College.

04:58

We're gonna talk about Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We're gonna talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. We're gonna talk a little bit about David Platt and McLean Bible Church.

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We're gonna talk about, first though, this. Now, some of you recognize this, some of you don't.

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Written by Brian Auten, September 4th, 2019, Notes on the Evangelical Dark Web. And I include an analysis of this in my podcast.

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I thought it undercut itself because it was asking, basically, it's in directions to evangelical leads for how to handle people like me.

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But it doesn't mention me. It mentions new Christian intellectual, pulpit and pen, sovereign nations, enemies within the church.

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How do you deal with these people? And it gives a number of actually probably pretty helpful things.

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Now, I don't know how ethical some of this is exactly. You wanna minimize, it doesn't say demonize, but it's usually what that kind of goes towards, minimizing the insurgency.

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I mean, he treats this like you're at war. And in some ways, I guess you are. But it's very much written from the perspective of someone who knows something about intelligence or is very interested in it.

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And that's not a coincidence. I'll show you something in a minute. So one of the things he says, though, is he says to basically make people like myself, make us cite every single fact that we, when we cite a fact, make us source it every single time.

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Make sure that, let's see if I can find, demand citations and evidence for every assertion.

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Now, of course, this whole article, though, doesn't have citations and evidence. So that's why I said it undercuts itself.

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But there's some, actually, probably some advice that might've helped the evangelical elites. They didn't take most of it.

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Some of that happened on Twitter, but it's too late now. And so here's the interesting thing, though.

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Brian Auten wrote this, and he worked for Patrick Henry College as an adjunct professor. This is from last year, but I didn't see it till yesterday.

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And that's because it was being passed around on Twitter. I barely ever go on there, but I went on there for something real quick.

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And all of a sudden, I'm seeing people sharing this around. Meet the

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Russiagate prober who couldn't verify anything in the Steele dossier, yet said nothing for years, March 30th, 2021.

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And it's a picture. And it says right on the picture, Patrick Henry College.

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It's Brian Auten. And I read it, and it's extremely damning.

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It's just, this is someone who suppressed information. I mean, working for the

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FBI on research teams, leading them, allowing the mistreatment of Trump's staff based upon lies that he knew were lies, it's incredible.

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And it's just one of the most maddening things. And so I remembered, well, people online were actually remembering, and they were saying, hey, isn't that the guy that wrote this?

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And it's, yeah, it is the guy that wrote that. Giving directions to evangelical elites on how to handle people like yours truly.

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And yet this is the same guy caught up with the Russiagate scandal. Part of the

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Durham probe. Has to hire top lawyers to defend him right now. This is amazing.

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Absolutely amazing. And if this doesn't show you where the lines are, I don't know what will. Now, I don't know if he's still with Patrick Henry or not.

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I would assume no, but who knows? I don't know. So I wanted to share that with you.

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I thought that was very interesting. Now let's get into the meat of this. We'll talk about Patrick Henry, not

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Patrick Henry. We just talked about Patrick Henry. Let's talk about Grove City. Grove City College supposed to be, from what

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I understand, not just politically conservative, but a Christian college. And for those who don't know,

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I'm not gonna take you through the full history, but myself, Doug Wilson, Rachel, or Megan, sorry,

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Megan, Basham at the Daily Wire, and then Josh Abatoy at the

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American Reformer, all have said things about what's happening there.

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And probably more than I'm not thinking of. Now, it was the American Reformer that started this essentially. Really, before them, it was a bunch of parents who got a petition together and so they had some demands.

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But it wasn't starting off with we have demands. It was very nice. It was very loving. It was we are concerned.

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And we need to see a course correction because you have implicit bias training among the RAs. You have a course you're offering that pushes social justice blatantly.

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You have a chapel series that promotes critical race theory with a number of speakers, including those on the faculty at the college.

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Very concerning. Now, what happened was what typically happens. The shields go up. And I've seen this.

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Of course, I've been part of it at Southeastern, at Southern. They attack me. They attack everything they can that they feel threatened by but they will not actually deal with the issues.

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And this was no exception. The president made a statement.

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It was a horrible statement. I went over it. It just did not deal with the issues. It vilified the parents and it was shameful.

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And then, of course, Carl Truman comes out and then he tries to, I don't even know what to say about this.

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I did a podcast that was almost an hour, I think, on it. But either he doesn't know what's happening on his own campus, or he does know and he's covering for him and he's engaging in what seems to be a level of,

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I don't even know what to say because I don't wanna call the guy dishonest, but I don't know how else, how do you categorize it?

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If he knows what's truly going on and then he minimizes it, moves the goalposts and excuses it, and it just, it was bad.

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It was really bad. And so this is what they typically do, though. So I wasn't very surprised. Now, the thing that is different, there's two things different about this

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I want you to think about. And when we get into Southeastern, I'll talk about it some more. Number one, the

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American reformer and the Daily Wire went after them. And not in a mean way.

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It was, again, the whole intention of everyone has been to see a course correction. Those preventing it are those putting up the shield and saying, oh, nothing to see here, or you're being mean or trying to deflect.

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Deflect, disguise, deny. That's kind of the, that's the pattern.

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That's what we always see, deflect, disguise, deny. Now, I don't think, someone like a

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Doug Wilson, someone like myself, they can just ignore us. Now, not truly ignore us because they have to mention us.

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They have to say discernment bloggers or they have to say something about the voices online.

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And you know who they're talking about, but they won't give us the dignity of mentioning who we are. Once you get the

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Daily Wire in there, though, they don't have that luxury anymore. They have to kind of acknowledge it. And it's because the pressure's coming from very much outside.

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It's not in, it's more, it could be read by people in their circles.

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And this is one of the points I've tried to make about elites. Doesn't really hit them hard until it affects their social circles.

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And this is, I think, what, it's the tragedy of what's been happening at Southeastern and Southern is, my intention has always been, and others from the beginning has always been, we actually love the

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Southern Baptist Convention. We love, look, I graduated from Southeastern. I love the institution. I've said that all along the way from the beginning.

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Here's some information. And the hope was that they would course correct. And if not, that this would eventually be picked up by more conservative voices with some influence in the

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SBC. It would eventually be picked up, if not by them, by political conservative outlets like the

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Daily Wire, that kind of thing. It doesn't happen though. It doesn't happen in the SBC. I want you to hold this thought and wonder, think to yourself, why is that?

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I have some ideas on why that might be, but think to yourself about it. Back to Grove City. So then there's a podcast that comes out, the

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Anchored Podcast. And they have Megan Bashin, Lee Wishing, Carl Truman on the podcast to talk about Grove City.

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And this was very eyeopening and interesting. If you have an hour of time and you're interested in it, Lee Wishing, I believe that's who

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I was listening. That's what it says on the podcast title here. But he couldn't give specifics about what was happening at Grove City.

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Very offended by what he calls, really, he actually used the word

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I think appalled, about people who were writing in and treating image bearers of God in horrible ways, hate mail, this kind of thing.

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So people who spoke during the Critical Race Theory series, he didn't call it that, but in the aftermath of the

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Floyd incident and all of that, he's appalled that he's getting the kinds of emails he is.

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And so this is an attempt in my mind to kind of deflect from the issue. Because he really goes on about this and it doesn't offend him nearly.

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He doesn't seem as concerned that Critical Race Theory is being taught, has been taught without any kind of qualification on campus.

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Yet he's very offended that people outside the campus that he doesn't actually have any purview or authorization or influence over are writing in and saying apparently nasty things.

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He won't share what they are about people that are pushing this stuff. This is typical in my mind.

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It's all about fashion and optics and style and tone and winsomeness and caution and quote unquote respect.

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But where is truth in all of this? That's the question, right? When you're way more offended about people you can't control who are saying things that offend you because that's my colleague and you shouldn't be so angry and upset at him for teaching

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Critical Race Theory stuff. Instead of getting upset that Critical Race Theory was taught here. So you saw that.

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You saw that he kept repeating we're staying true to our Christian foundation. And really just a wall of words, a lot of taking air out of the room.

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I don't know why, if it was a stall thing or if it was just nervousness, but a lot of repetition.

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And then Carl Truman tries to introduce us to the possibility of maybe they're the teaching

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Critical Race Theory course. Maybe that's just teaching the Critical Race Theory, not teaching it, but teaching about it, right?

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This is a defense I've seen many times before too. We have to read the

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Communist Manifesto, but we're not communists. Well, of course, but the problem is that's the whole issue from the beginning was not teaching about it, it was teaching it.

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And then he tries to baptize the motives of the chapel series that pushed

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Critical Race Theory and invited Jamar Tisby by, well, it's worth taking risks to talk about race.

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We might make some mistakes, but it's worth taking the risk. Really? Worth taking the risk? Does he understand what this stuff does?

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What it actually at the root level implies? And we'll talk about it as we get into this more because I have an opportunity,

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I think at the end to talk about this. But the root issues are not being discussed.

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And then the context seems to justify what Grove City did. Well, everyone was questioning about the

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Floyd incident. Everyone was, in fact, Lee Wishing even talks about, well, I'm concerned about systemic racism, or maybe it was the host.

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I think it was the host said that, the host of the program. And here's the thing though, that I would wanna say to Carl Truman is, not everyone was doing that.

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Not everyone was doing that. I wasn't doing that. A lot of people listening to this program weren't doing that.

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I don't think half the country was doing that. We weren't sitting around thinking like, oh, maybe the police are systemically racist.

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Maybe that's just characterizes them. If you're a police officer, that's what you are. Maybe that is fundamental to what

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America is. Every region of America. And we need to take down historical monuments.

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And not just the ones in the South, but the ones to Lincoln and Columbus and some of the past presidents like McKinley and some of the missions out in California.

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I mean, maybe that's really what America is. It's just systemically racist. And no, half of us weren't saying that, in fact.

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So it's very concerning to me that Carl Truman tries to go down this line. And he says some very true things. But like Carl Truman, I've said this many times, he's very good in the abstract.

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And then when it gets concrete and the closer it gets to him, the closer the proximity, it's like the wheels come off.

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And I don't quite understand it. He can describe what wokeness is in the interview. He can articulate why we should be concerned about it.

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And then the wheels come off. And I think Megan Basham did an excellent job trying to keep things on track and catching them in all the kinds of deflect, disguise, deny things that they tried to do.

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Now, one of the things you'll notice about this, would this kind of thing ever happen?

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Would there ever be like, we got to do damage control, get AD Robles and JD Hall on a round table discussion?

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No, it wouldn't. And that's my point. One of my points I'm trying to make is that the pressure came from a social circle in which they want to have some measure of clout and respect.

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They respect Megan Basham in the Daily Wire to some extent. And so they can't, they have to try to clean this up.

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Well, after that, this happened. Grove City College's supposed wokeness national review, horrible article, just terrible article.

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Basically the long and short of it is, hey, conservatives who are concerned about what's going on at Grove City, they don't believe in freedom of speech.

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That's my summary, my 30 ,000 foot view of that article. Megan Basham had a very good analysis of this.

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And she says, having reported on the dust up at Grove City, I can tell you this essay at national review is disturbingly disingenuous.

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And she gets into all the details of why, and she's 100 % correct on all of them. I'm very impressed with how she's handled this. Cause I can't imagine there was probably some pressure on her.

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I understand what that pressure is, but you have the Daily Wire and the National Review now contradicting each other.

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If you think there's a war in Christianity, there's also a war in political conservatism. It's fractured and fracturing is bad.

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Once you're fractured, an all powerful globalist government is very capable of doing all kinds of things.

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And so it does, well, National Review was just plain wrong on this and they need to be called out for it.

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But it is disturbing that you're seeing these conservative, quote unquote, conservative organizations kind of splitting off.

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And I don't, National Review is just, I don't even know what to say about it anymore. It's not worth the ink that it's printed, the paper it's printed on.

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I just don't even, I used to, thing is I used to actually get it years ago and I stopped and now

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I'm just so disappointed with the direction of it. Anyway, here's what I think, and Doug Wilson made this point first.

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So I think this is what they could do. Crown College leader pushes to display torn down controversial statues, okay?

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Monuments that have been torn down. And of course in the article they're saying, let me see if I can find it. There's a whole thing here.

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Here it is. Dr. Sexton at this particular college would include

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Nathan Bedford Forrest, because it's in Tennessee. Nathan Bedford Forrest was taken down from Memphis. And his grave and his wife's grave were dug up.

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He was a Confederate general and he defended the city of Memphis. And they literally dug up his graves.

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And so Dr. Sexton at Crown College says, we'll take it, we'll take any of these statues.

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And of course the media says, well, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan enslaved black Americans and killed union soldiers during the civil war.

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That's the only thing they have to say about him. And of course it shows, guys, I just wanna make this point to you. Even on things you don't know about, you haven't read books on, it's almost good to start off.

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No, it is good. Start off with this assumption anytime you're dealing with the media at this point. I'm just, I'm serious. Assume they're lying to you.

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Assume they're lying. They're giving you half truths. They're not giving you the full picture because they're doing it here. They're doing it here and they do it all the time.

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They're pushing an agenda all the time. Anyone who studied Nathan Bedford Forrest, even a very slight study of Nathan Bedford Forrest reveals the fact he's the one that called for the end of the

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Ku Klux Klan. He was an early civil rights leader in Memphis, kissed a black lady on the cheek and pushed for political equality, quote unquote, at the time, which meant basically that they should have the right to vote.

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They should have the same kinds of rights that everyone else does in Memphis. Yes, Confederate general, his slaves were his cavalry.

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He freed them. They were some of the most notorious and feared units in the entire war.

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And if you wanna talk about he killed, he killed you Northern soldiers, guess who killed more of them? His slaves. And after the war, former slaves sharecropped on his land and loved him.

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There was one story about a slave who tried to basically get Forrest in trouble and claim that he was abusing him and all this stuff.

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And it was the people, the former slaves that worked his, sharecropped with him and stuff.

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And the people that lived around him all knew it was an absolute lie. They all defended him because they knew the character he had.

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He converted to Christianity. This is not someone that you can paint with just the one color.

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And so this is what they're doing. And they're trying to put that around the neck of Dr.

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Clarence Sexton. But I'll tell you what, I don't think it's gonna work. And I think it's actually gonna really work in favor of Crown College, because you know what?

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This is a bold move. And if you're gonna send your kids to college, I don't know much about Crown College, but do you wanna send them to Grove City where they just deflect, disguise, denies the wokeness?

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I happen to know one thing. I will say this about Grove City real quick. They are inviting someone to chapel who is the opposite of wokeness and social justice.

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And I don't know if it's to do more shielding, if it's to deflect, I don't know if that's the motive or they legitimately wanna provide a countervailing voice, but it should concern you.

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It took all this pressure and time to get it done. And it's one voice to come in. I mean, they should be doing series against social justice, knowing that it's like being in Mormon country and like having a bunch of Mormon speakers show up at your

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Christian college and push Mormonism. And you don't ever lift a finger to oppose it until the rest of the country and the parents sending their children start raising the roof about it.

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So would you rather send your kids there or would you rather send them to Crown College where they're saying, yeah, we'll have a monument garden.

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We'll take these stats, we're against social justice. I mean, what proves that you're against social justice? Your words or your actions?

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And I say Crown College is leading the way on this and Grove City should be doing this. And Doug Wilson suggested it.

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Why don't they do a monument? They could call it the diversity garden because you'd have union and Confederate soldiers, explorers, presidents, you'd have all kinds of people, diverse array of people that have been canceled.

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Why don't you do that? And I agree with Doug Wilson on that. But guess what? Most modern conservatives don't have the guts and if they even are conservative or the understanding to be able to even do something like that.

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We lack leadership, we lack courage. And when people are afraid of being called names and they wanna be liked, especially by the left.

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And that is what keeps moving the Overton window, left, left, left, to the point now you have some of the

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January 6th folks when the FBI raids their house, taking copies of the constitution and declaration of independence in for evidence of extremism.

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Yes, that's where we're heading. And it's because of courageous conservatives, in my opinion, supposedly, who keep kowtowing to the left.

25:31

I would send my kids to Crown College before Grove City any day of the week at this point. Now, that doesn't mean

25:37

Grove City can't course correct and we should pray for them that they do because it's been embarrassing the way they've handled this so far.

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It should be an admission of we goofed. There's been some bad things that have happened here and this is what we're doing.

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Our actions are showing what we are going to do to course correct and maybe that will still happen. Now let's get to another college now.

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This is Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where I graduated from. And we're gonna talk a little bit about why the pressure on Southeastern has been different.

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And the reaction has been different than the pressure on Grove City. I've known about this information now for a little while.

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And so I don't, I just say that to let you know that I've seen the primary sources on this.

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It's not just because of these blogs, Capstone Report or Reformation Charlotte where they've organized some of this. I actually do have the actual emails and everything that they're citing here.

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But this is where you can go to find it online if you wanna go find it. SBC Seminary requires admissions trips to graduate and all valid trips require proof of vaccination.

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By the way, the SBC convention in California looks like it's kind of going that direction as well. But Southeastern has put out a policy and they're just completely giving in to the quote unquote

26:55

OSHA requirements that are illegal that the Biden administration is handing down that have not even gone through the court system yet.

27:03

But Southeastern is going along with it. And so you have to get regular testing if you're an employee and don't want to get the jab and you, otherwise you have to get the jab and you have to wear a mask if you're not gonna do that.

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And you have to report your status. I mean, talk about draconian. And then you have the,

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I guess this is the, I don't know, vice president or something of the institution emailing the student body.

27:28

This is the students. Encouraging them all to get the jab and mocking those who have concerns.

27:36

He says, I've been fully vaccinated at this point. This is Ryan Hutchinson, the executive vice president.

27:42

On a positive note, I've started to regrow hair in my head although it's a glow in the darker green color.

27:48

And he goes on about this. He's got like an extra, his right foot accommodates an extra toe.

27:55

Google tells me this is temporary. There's nothing to worry about. He's mocking the people who say that the vaccine has issues.

28:01

And let me tell you, every day the evidence mounts more and more and more. You wanna help grandma? You wanna stop the spread?

28:08

Then maybe the best thing to do is not to get this because the people getting this, it's proven now, are the ones that are susceptible to getting the variant and spreading the variant.

28:20

So there you go. That's Southeastern. And then of course, Reformation Charlotte did this last month.

28:26

More proof critical race theory is being taught at the seminary. And I've said this for a while. It just went underground. It didn't stop.

28:31

Matt Mullins, Walter Strickland, these guys, they never stopped pushing their either critical race stuff or liberation theology.

28:38

It just went underground. And so you can see that this is, I guess, fairly recent within the last year or two, you have the

28:45

Invention of Whiteness, Unit 2. And I think this is American literature, if I remember correctly. I have the source of this.

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But it's a link to, there's a link to a video called the Changing of the

28:57

Gods, the Invention of Whiteness by Johnny Powell, professor of law, UC Berkeley. And yes, if you watch it, the whole premise of the video is that really no one ever thought of race.

29:06

Race was never, it was a complete social construct. No one thought of it until a bunch of elites got together and said, you know how we can really oppress people?

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We gotta divide them along race. And then if we divide them along race, they're easier to control. And the history of, if you wanna talk about the concept of race and the history of it and stuff, and the term itself and where it originated, sure,

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I'll give you during colonization when Europeans started exploring the world, they noticed people were different.

29:35

I mean, hey, some tribes had polygamous relationships. They didn't have the same technology. There was cannibalism.

29:41

There was all kinds of things that, and sometimes horrific, read, I just read of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford.

29:49

And some of the things described that the natives would do, some, not every tribe, but the ones that they were familiar with and William Bradford was writing about were horrific, absolutely horrific.

29:59

Just the worst kind of torture you can imagine. And anyway, this kind of thing didn't really give

30:07

Europeans the impression that they were arriving and encountering a civilization that had advanced more than they had.

30:15

They saw their technology and their economy, the way they arranged their civilization, and they saw room for improvement.

30:26

Doesn't mean that there were some things that the natives, depending on the tribe, may have had, or things they may have valued that were superior to the

30:34

Europeans. I'm sure there definitely were. But the concept, you wanna talk about the concept of race, you're seeing not just an ethnic group, you're seeing religion, you're seeing culture, all kinds of habits that, and formed by the region they were in.

30:54

There's all kinds of streams running into this lake. And they saw that and they thought, this is different, this is different than, and we need to account for this.

31:07

What is it, Christianity, what is it? And I'd say for a lot of Europeans, it was. That's why they sent in missionaries, and I mean,

31:15

Christianity was the element that made sense. That was the missing element, the fundamental thing that, now, when you have the proto -Darwinists come along and scientific races who are genetic determinists, they start saying, no, it's not religion, it's their genetics.

31:30

That's what makes sense of the state of affairs. And critical race theorists, though, want to, they wanna act like it was, no one ever thought of race until some people wanted to use it for power.

31:44

Some elites wanted to use it to control, and then they started categorizing people by this. No, it just kind of naturally occurred as observations were made, as people interacted.

31:53

And that's the thing that they're missing, and ideology tends to do this. Ideologues, everything's abstract, they don't have room for organic development.

32:04

So that's what's happening at Southeastern. Now, this is the question

32:11

I have for everyone. Why, why the pressure on Southeastern?

32:17

Why has it not worked as much? What's the difference between Southeastern and Grove City? Grove City, this all happened very quickly.

32:26

Parents got involved, you had parents petition. So you had pressure from the, what I would say is the bottom -up, okay?

32:33

Then you had pressure from the top -down. So I shouldn't say the top -down, we'll say outside.

32:40

So you had pressure from the bottom -up, parents, students, pressure from the outside. And they thought, we need to respond, we need to do something.

32:51

And so they come out and they start responding. With Southeastern, it was different. You did not have pressure from the bottom -up.

33:00

You didn't have parents. There's a few here and there, but there was never any organizational attempt. And that's one of the things that is different about the

33:07

SBC. When you're in that guild, there is an unspoken hierarchy. You are not supposed to rattle that cage.

33:14

It's not the local church. It's not the hierarchy you see in scripture. It is the SBC machine hierarchy.

33:22

I've faced this firsthand. Hey, parents even contact me, or more often, not students.

33:28

I remember one time there was like 10 students or something like that there. Wanted to, one of them had a great idea.

33:33

Let's make a petition, let's really, and I thought, great, let's support this. And there's a hesitancy.

33:41

When you get to the edge of the cliff to jump, you're so hesitant because, am I going to bring disrepute upon this institution?

33:51

And there's a loyalty to the institution that people that go to Grove City, I don't think, they don't have that as much.

33:58

There's more of a loyalty to truth and to their principles and their families or the communities of their country.

34:05

And in the SBC, there's a different loyalty that trumps those things sometimes in some situations.

34:12

So you have that. And then you also have the fact that outside political organizations, if they were interested,

34:20

I've been told on good authority by people that I trust to some extent, at least, that you get the call from someone like an

34:26

Al Mohler. I've also been told Danny Akin does this. You'll get the call preemptively.

34:32

Even if they find out you're thinking about, you're upset or anything, a wine and dine strategy comes out, there's a big incentive to not go that direction, not rattle the cage, not disrupt things too much.

34:48

And so they have a larger network. There's more money there. And there's, let's just say, more of an incentive, not to disrupt that and to make an enemy of this entire group of Christians, because that's the threat.

35:03

Now, the reality is you're not doing that. It's just the elites. But that's what you think is gonna happen.

35:10

So that's one of the things, I think. So you don't have, there's two kinds of pressure being brought to Brown Grove City that are not being brought on Southeastern.

35:17

And they need to be, frankly, they need to be. I don't know how to make that happen. And it's not something that is within,

35:25

I'll talk about it more at the end when we talk about the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, but that's,

35:31

I think, the major difference. And they're a lot more impervious to outside forces as well because their feeder churches are within their network that send them students.

35:45

And at this point, Southeastern's got a niche. I mean, it's known to be more the social justice school. And so it's, you're gonna get people who are of that mentality coming to the school.

35:57

And if you change that image too much, you won't get them coming now. So I think there's a number of reasons that this is the case, why things at Southeastern and other

36:05

Southern Baptist schools have not worked in the same way that things seem to be working a little more at Grove City, though we'll know more in time.

36:14

Now let's talk about the, before we get to the

36:19

SBC in general, let's talk about this, David Platt. Some things floating around there online.

36:26

He is speaking at the Exiles in Babylon, which is a Preston Sprinkle conference.

36:35

And for those who don't know Preston Sprinkle, an advocate for the homosexual orientation variety of Christianity, the celibate gay thing.

36:46

You have Jackie Hill Perry there who's moved, I guess, in that direction. And Greg Coles, of course, I did a review of his book, terrible book, also in that same vein, as well as I'm sure a number of others

36:59

I'm not recognizing here. But you have Derren Gray, Thibedien Abouile, both very social justice minded.

37:04

And there's David Platt. And so people were pointing this out that, look, David Platt is showing where he's at.

37:12

He's willing to speak at a conference that is organized by Preston Sprinkle.

37:17

Now, this is further, let's just say vindicated, I guess, that view that David Platt is moving in that direction by this.

37:28

Now, this, you can see, is from McLean Bible Church. That is the channel that this particular video appears on.

37:39

Let me play this for you. This is David Platt's church, McLean Bible Church. And I guess this is one of his associate pastors.

37:49

Let's hear what it has to say. How do I love my transgender neighbor? Hey, what's going on?

37:55

My name is Eric Saunders, and I'm a pastor here at McLean Bible. And my question today is this, how do

38:01

I love my transgender neighbor? See, Jesus is the ultimate hope. And in Jesus, our transgender neighbors find a friend closer than anyone else.

38:12

You see, we have a God who has not left us alone. We have a savior, Jesus, who has experienced the ultimate feeling of not belonging in his body.

38:22

First Peter 2 24 says this about Jesus. It says, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

38:32

By his wounds, you have been healed. I want you to think about this. Jesus, the sinless and holy son of God, perfect in all of his ways, he bore our sins in his body.

38:44

And in doing this, listen, Jesus experienced something completely foreign to his understanding of who he is.

38:51

What did he experience? The holy son of God experienced sin in that moment. You could say in that moment that he experienced a kind of dysphoria.

39:01

He did that for what? For us. Well, that was very cringe, and I'm not sure it requires a lot of commentary.

39:09

So that's part of what's happening at McLean Bible Church. If you go to Reformation Charlotte, that's where I saw the link initially.

39:18

You can see the whole video. It's like six minutes long. But Jesus apparently experienced some dysphoria, according to a pastor there.

39:27

Now, these are some of the goofy things, of course, going on every day now in formerly what used to be called evangelicalism.

39:35

I wanna talk about something that I consider to be very positive, and there's positive and negative in this podcast, all right?

39:43

So we've talked about some negative things. We've talked about some positive things. Positive, the pressure.

39:50

If Grove City College does the right thing, if this works and they truly do repent and they course correct, that gives so much hope to other colleges, okay?

40:00

And I see more progress in a very short period of time with Grove City. Now, I don't know that they're gonna come out of the woods, but I see more progress than in years at Southeastern.

40:08

So we can look at that as a positive. So negative, obviously,

40:15

Southeastern's still going down a bad track. Negative, of course, what's happening at McLean is they're going down a bad track, continuing to.

40:26

Some of the things that have happened there on the local church level are just very shocking in my mind.

40:34

Some of the things that haven't even really made it to the public yet, but things that I've seen, and some of them

40:41

I've been told from people who attend there, it's amazing to me that the legal action that's taking place right now, it's just, how do you get there?

40:51

And David Platt's still going and he's speaking and some of the conferences he's speaking at seem to be very much in favor of some kind of a same -sex attracted orientation

41:02

Christianity so that's a negative.

41:09

When it comes to the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole I wanna give you something very positive, but it's with some sorrow.

41:18

So I wanna set this up. It's very positive in my mind that people, 30 ,000 foot view here, it's very positive that some more conservative minded people more

41:31

Orthodox minded people, let's use that word, are seeing that there's a problem in the SBC and they don't wanna fund that and they're leaving.

41:40

It's a sorrow, it's very sad to me that it took this long and the resources that were used to try to reclaim the denomination and how they were managed and just how everything was strung out.

41:58

And then the conservatives haven't, they didn't really win much, they didn't win anything really.

42:06

That's sad to me. So I see a positive and a negative here and I'm gonna talk more about that. I know there's some people that are listening who just should have gotten out of the

42:14

SBC a long time ago. There's some listening that still wanna stay in and fight and I'm gonna navigate that a little bit with you.

42:21

I wanna do it though by starting off with this. This is a blog, and for those who don't know who

42:28

Josh Bice is, Josh Bice wrote this. He's the founder of the G3 Conference. Why we are no longer an

42:34

SBC church, a statement by Josh Bice. You can go read it at the G3 blog and a lot of it focuses on, in fact, if I did a keyword search, gospel, 10 times, the word gospel comes up and it talks about basically social justice being a false gospel.

42:49

Now I don't see in this where he explains why that is. I usually explain that there's an attempt to merge works of social justice with grace and it's very parallel to the

43:01

Galatian heresy. I don't see an explanation. It's just more of a, it's just a statement that he makes that there is this false social justice gospel.

43:16

This isn't an in -depth article. I don't think it's meant to be. He points out some of the hypocrisy from the

43:23

SBC, like years ago, boycotting Disney, but they're not willing to boycott Derrick Bell or Kimberly Crenshaw, these kinds of things.

43:32

Focuses a bit, I think, on the complementarian stuff and we're getting out because of social justice.

43:38

In fact, I think that's the hashtag up here, social justice. And Josh Bice has, at G3, a network of churches that he is trying to get together.

43:48

I don't know how loose it is. I'm not overly familiar with it, but my understanding is you do need to subscribe to the

43:55

London Baptist Confession, 1689. And this means that it would be limited to people who are more

44:03

Calvinist. I suppose that would probably mean they would be more covenantal in their theology as well.

44:10

So this isn't the whole Southern Baptist Convention that would be candidates for this network.

44:16

This would be specific to 1689 Baptists. And that's fine.

44:22

Hopefully that's a good thing. I think, pardon me, I'm torn on this.

44:28

There needs to be organization. There needs to be local church autonomy and organization. I think that's what probably is trying to be balanced even here.

44:35

That may not look, I helped create discerningchristians .com. And so you can go and you can look at churches in your area that aren't on the social justice train.

44:44

And it's a very broad statement of faith and it includes even Pentecostals. I mean, it's very broad and I let people know that.

44:51

It's Calvinist, it's Pentecostals, there's Charismatics in there, there's Arminians, it's

44:56

I'm sure Wesleyans and Methodists, but it's a starting point. To help someone find a church just isn't on that bandwagon.

45:06

And we're trying to customize that according to denomination as well. And so it's just a tool.

45:11

That's all it is. It's not a network, it's a tool. I think what Josh Bice is doing is probably forming more of a network, a

45:17

G3 network for specifically 1689 Baptist folks. And so I have a few thoughts on this.

45:27

I just, I wanna use this kind of moment as a opportunity to just look back and analyze kind of what's happened over the last few years.

45:39

There's some data and there's some good in the way that things have been handled in the SBC. And I don't know that, maybe this could be used as a model for others who are fighting similar battles of what not to do and maybe what to do.

45:56

There was an effort early on to try, and this is among more orthodox, conservative type folks, to separate themselves from quote unquote fundamentalists.

46:09

I saw it, I remember it. And I don't wanna question anyone's motive, but we're all fundamentalists now, okay?

46:21

There's no way to escape really the pejoratives the left is gonna throw at you.

46:26

You can try to run all day long and you can separate yourselves from all the bad guys in your mind, the quote unquote discernment bloggers, whatever.

46:35

The left is going to come after you, no matter what. Of course, they'll go for low hanging fruit, but they'll go, it doesn't really matter.

46:43

They'll go for you if you stand in their way, even a little bit, even a little bit. And there was, there seemed to be an effort to soft, kind of ally with, try to find common cause with, reason with people more to the left, and distance oneself from those to the right among conservatives.

47:13

And I saw this, I still see this. And I think it's a very bad tactic. What it does, it's moved the

47:19

Overton window. And we can see that the SBC is a great example of this. It has moved the

47:25

Overton window so far in the SBC that you can have a guy who's the president, who is a plagiarizer, a serial plagiarizer, and it's justified because, let's be honest, because he's got the right political views.

47:40

You can have the entire board kind of basically kamikaze themselves with denying attorney client privilege.

47:52

And it's okay because it's for this higher purpose of me too, and church too.

48:00

Reason has gone out the door in the SBC. There is a false gospel being cranked out of, in some quarters of these seminaries.

48:10

It's been promoted with the North American Mission Board. And it's very serious.

48:23

The sense of proportion, I think, was very off. And some of that is ignorance. I'm not naming anyone.

48:29

I'm not questioning anyone. I'm saying that there was kind of a loose group of some who could see the problem, but there's this desire still to kind of, and I get it, tried to be reasonable with and liked in some way, at least work with those who had some kind of power in the denomination and evangelicalism in general.

48:55

And if you could get brownie points by kind of distancing yourself or throwing overboard someone who was more to the right or more quote unquote fundamentalist, then

49:06

I did see examples of that happening. And I think it moved the Overton window left.

49:11

I think it just set in stone a precedent that we are acceptable on the left.

49:17

Those to the right are not acceptable. And then they kept shifting it. The goalposts kept moving.

49:26

We had a window. We had a window, I think, from 2018.

49:33

It should have been really before that. It should have been probably 2016 to 17. Some people did know what was going on, but I'll just put it at the point in which

49:41

I saw it going public. 2018, the MLK50 conference should have been it.

49:49

And then the T4G right after that, that should have been the time right then, 2018, gotta do something now.

49:56

This is wrong. Let's go after it. We don't want to, this is the moment of, you need to repent of your false teaching, not the moment of, well, you're still brothers and we really wanna reinforce the relationship with you that you're brothers.

50:14

That should have been the moment. And the window, I think, extended probably to 2020.

50:21

I'm gonna say the, let's say the statement that Southern Baptist made after the George Floyd incident, that was a window.

50:29

Now, I've somewhat, I've extended it on this program to 2021 because there wasn't a

50:36

Southern Baptist convention in 2020. I really did think that that was the end of the window, that was 2020, because you let the rot go for so long, you teach it in the summaries for so long, you just, it becomes overwhelming.

50:48

You can't let the rot continue. It doesn't take that long, but if you get five years, because by the time it was, people understood what was happening in 2018,

50:56

I could see that it had been happening years before that. I saw how the sausage was made. I was at Southeastern.

51:02

I was wondering in 2017, is anyone gonna say anything? And in 2018,

51:08

I was glad that finally, this was more public and some people like James White were starting to say things, but before that, who was saying anything?

51:16

Pulpit and pen? I don't know. There weren't many, at least publicly, okay?

51:23

There were probably whispers and things behind the scenes, but publicly, it was outlets like Pulpit and Pen.

51:31

And they were mocked and ridiculed and maybe there's things you disagree with the way they handled it.

51:39

My only point is they were almost the only game in town up to a point talking about any of this.

51:48

And so you had a window and last -ditch effort, I thought would have been the convention in 2021 since it was canceled in 2020.

51:56

And that was the moment conservatives were defeated. And I know some who wanna look at that very positively think, well, we almost won.

52:04

Yeah. That was probably though, based on the circumstances of where it was, the fact that in Anaheim, they're probably gonna have requirements as far as masks and vaccines, and it's not typically a conservative area anyway.

52:22

SBC's bleeding conservative churches. If you think you're gonna have a better showing of conservatives in Anaheim, I don't know what,

52:28

I could sell you the Golden Gate. I don't know what to say. I don't see the leadership. I don't see the rallying cry.

52:35

I don't see it. I think that was probably the last moment where you could have maybe done anything.

52:43

And just cause you captured the presidency wouldn't have meant, oh, it's all saved at this point. I think we've seen that with national elections enough.

52:51

Now with everything going on in the executive committee, it's just, I don't know, there's no way short of God does a miracle and just revives the hearts and minds of people.

53:01

There's nothing that can be done from a political human standpoint that I can see. I don't see a solution politically there in the

53:08

SBC. And so some of the strategies, these are broad overviews, but trying to separate oneself from the extremists, and it's again, a moving bar.

53:21

FBI is taking copies of the constitution into evidence for people that were at January 6th.

53:27

They're extremists. They have the constitution on them. This is, look at where this is going.

53:34

Look at where this is going. So separating from the fundamentalists, bad move.

53:43

It's actually, it's almost ironic cause it is kind of like, we're separating from the separatists.

53:48

But the other thing is the issues that conservatives wanted to fight.

53:57

And I'm talking about anyone with any institutional kind of influence in the SBC. The issues they seem to wanna fight were pragmatism and complementarianism.

54:08

It's just, this is all pragmatism. It's all pragmatism. And I pointed out before, there is a pragmatic element here, but at the root of it, this is a different religion.

54:15

This isn't pragmatism. This is, pragmatism might be causing some people to go along with it when they wouldn't normally out of ignorance, but pragmatism puts a very innocent face on the whole thing.

54:28

It is a way to complain about what's happening in the SBC. I'm not saying it's just that, but one of the things it is, is a way to complain about things that are happening in the

54:38

SBC without questioning people's motives as much. So let me give you an example.

54:43

If you said to someone, you are preaching a false gospel, you are a false teacher, your gospel needs to be anathematized.

54:52

It's pretty strong, right? It's what Paul said. It's what Russell Fuller said. Pretty strong stuff.

54:59

If instead you said, you're just being pragmatic, you're going along the get along, you're trying to get the best outcome from the situation, but you're not seeing that you're having to compromise for the ends that are justifying the means here, which has a worse motive attached to it.

55:24

And when you have a combination of people who are pragmatic, and then who are blatant false teachers, giving and they're getting a pass, who do you focus on?

55:36

Well, you can focus on both, but you can't ignore one, you can't make it all about one thing. And what

55:41

I saw with a lot of conservatives, that they didn't wanna fight the false teacher thing. They didn't wanna go there. They're always good brothers.

55:47

Jarvis Williams, Matt Hall, Walter Strickland, good brothers, even though blatantly heretical things.

55:54

Read about it, where's my book? I have it here somewhere. Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. I catalog it.

56:01

False gospel, they're good brothers. Sometimes it seemed maybe even getting more benefit of the doubt than quote unquote a discernment blogger might get.

56:15

And I am speaking a little broadly here. I do have examples of specifics and I don't think it matters at this point. And I'm just, this is for, this is the autopsy.

56:23

This is for other denominations and organizations that want to avoid this. And I'm just giving my thoughts for those who are interested.

56:30

So this is my opinion. But that was a fundamental error.

56:37

It should have been, this is a false gospel from the beginning. So that's one thing.

56:47

The other thing that conservatives were very comfortable fighting was complementarianism. And let me tell you how this went.

56:55

I do think it's an issue. I've done podcasts on it. It's a sideshow, okay? It's important.

57:01

I'm not saying it's not important, but when you look at the big picture, what's being cranked out of the seminaries, what is quote unquote systemic, to pick a word that social justice advocates like to use?

57:11

Critical race theory, liberation theology perhaps linked to that, but it Neo -Marxism of sorts.

57:18

And mostly operating along racial lines. This really could have been nailed a lot harder.

57:27

This is what's being cranked out. And here are the examples of it.

57:34

And we've done that on this podcast. Chapter and verse, here's where it's happening. Here's what they're doing. Some of that happened, but it was often a talking point.

57:46

It wasn't, there was a hesitancy with conservatives who had any institutional clout,

57:54

I think on that issue, for fear of being called a racist. Possibly, now I'm getting into the motives here.

58:01

I just know how terrifying that is for people. And especially during 2020, and even the time leading up to it.

58:11

Complementarianism felt easier, I think, because there were specific passages where Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach.

58:16

And you could say, I'm taking my sand on the scripture, the sufficiency of scripture. That's usually what you say. It's a battle over the sufficiency of scripture, right?

58:23

It's also a battle over inerrancy. And I think if people really push the

58:28

CRT thing, that's what they would find. That was a battle over inerrancy too, and the foundation of Revelation itself.

58:35

Is there any objectivity? Can we even know? Did God communicate in such a way we can all come together, study, understand?

58:48

We don't have to be from some oppressed social location to give special knowledge. It was an attack on inerrancy.

58:58

But I think a lot of conservatives, they wanted the talking points were pragmatism, sufficiency, and that was usually tied to complementarianism.

59:08

We're complementarians, because Paul was a complementarian. Here's how it went. Look, here's a church that has a female pastor, and it's in the

59:16

SBC. Here's the response from SBC elites every time. Well, that church is doing its own thing because we believe in the autonomy of the local church.

59:27

So that church is autonomous. Who looks like the bully in that situation?

59:33

It looks like the conservatives, and that's the way the left was able to frame it every time. Conservatives are bullies. They're going after this tiny little church.

59:40

They're going after a girl, right? They're gonna hit a girl. Look at the girl, and look, she's crying, she's upset. Look how, you know, what they're doing.

59:48

And this is not something endorsed by us. This isn't endorsed. You're claiming that the SBC endorses this. And they were able to strawman it.

59:56

They were able, and I'm not saying the conservatives were wrong. They were right. But they could have very easily shown that in the very halls of power, critical race theory was being pushed.

01:00:07

And they could have easily shown how that undermined the inerrancy of scripture, and it undermined biblical ethics, and it merged with a gospel to create a false gospel, and it flatlined reality into ideology.

01:00:26

And I point all these things out in my book, "'Christianity and Social Justice, Religion and Conflicts." I talk about it on this podcast. They could have done all that.

01:00:33

That's not really what happened, though. It was very surface level, and then complementarianism was where there were debates and fights, and that was a sideshow, in my opinion.

01:00:44

Now, that'll probably be more important moving forward, because as conservatives leave, that might be cranked out of the seminaries more and more.

01:00:50

But it hasn't been, not to the point that critical race stuff has been. And I agree, the same people that were promoting that are gonna promote feminism, promote

01:00:59

Me Too. I agree, it's all connected. But it was very easy to deflect, and to show that this wasn't endorsed by the organization, the denomination as a whole.

01:01:10

It was some rogue churches. So this was the ground the conservatives chose to fight on, and it wasn't, it was ground that they ended up having to be defensive on, in some ways, and it was ground that just, it wasn't very strong.

01:01:24

The other thing, and I'm going over negative now, I guess, but the other thing is, we were pretty leaderless when

01:01:33

I was part of the SBC, but even after that, and I was working to help people who, trying to help people who wanted to take the denomination back for orthodoxy.

01:01:44

There weren't a lot of leaders. Like, I know there were people who were conservative within the denomination,

01:01:50

I get that. But I'm talking, let me give you an example. If you go back, study the conservative resurgence,

01:01:58

Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, and what they did. Very firm, very direct, very aggressive against the error.

01:02:10

Issue, this is what I could have seen happening, issue ultimatums when those aren't met, issue deadlines, give people a very clear direction of where you're heading and where they need to be going, and if things aren't met, you're gonna leave an exit, use, leverage the, all you have are the layman.

01:02:29

You don't have any institutional clout. Leverage the layman. I know this for a fact, and I wish

01:02:35

I could share more, I'm not, but I know for a fact, one of the strategies that conservatives try to do was they,

01:02:42

I think they overestimated their institutional influence.

01:02:48

I don't think they realized how bad it was. I think some of them do now. But there was, and I'm not blaming anyone for ignorance, but I'm just saying there was, it was leaderless.

01:02:59

You didn't have strong leaders like that sticking together, and it was, it was not that.

01:03:08

It wasn't, I don't know how else to say it, but a lot of timidity, a lot of trying to choose the ground in a way that was more favorable, but it wasn't.

01:03:19

It was weaker, just weaker ground. And then trying to do the political game without leveraging the most support, without really inspiring and inspirational people, and speaking the, there was no populist kind of uprising.

01:03:38

There was no way to speak the language of the people in the pews. I didn't see it. It was nerdy things.

01:03:44

It was, it was complimentarianism. Laymen aren't gonna sit there for a discussion about that.

01:03:50

They will respond when, they will respond when you talk to them about how the gospel that they love and the person who died for them,

01:04:01

Jesus Christ, to pay for their sins is being tarnished, and their money is going towards the, basically the tearing asunder of the

01:04:16

Bible that they love. You gotta go to the heart of what these people in the pews care about and what they think that they're funding without putting them to sleep.

01:04:25

And I just don't see that that really happened. So this, this window closed, and I think this

01:04:32

Josh Bice exiting is just, it's further evidence that the window is closed. And I know that people will disagree with me.

01:04:39

We can't let the SBC go. There's a lot of money there. I know, but we have to deal with reality too.

01:04:47

And we can't keep funding something. People can't keep funding something that is going to continue to work towards their own demise.

01:04:58

So, so that's some of the negative. I think we, the window was missed. I think there was a lack of leadership. There was a vacuum there.

01:05:06

I think there was a lack of resources that were produced about this.

01:05:12

A lot of wasted, you know, whatever resources were used, many of them were probably wasted.

01:05:19

Let me say some good things though, okay? Some encouragement here. I think it's good that some people are moving out.

01:05:27

I think it's good what Josh Bice did, and I wanna give him credit right now for doing this. It's not an easy thing.

01:05:37

It was a lot less easy years ago. It's easier now, but it's still not easy. I was looking at,

01:05:43

I saw something. This is from Josh Bice three years ago. And it's,

01:05:51

I'll just show you. That's a link someone sent me. So you gotta pull it up here.

01:05:59

It's from the Bible Thumping Wingnut website. And it's in a post called,

01:06:06

David Platt despised being at the G3 Conference. And it's a very short post. It's a guy who works for G3 named

01:06:12

Fred Butler, I guess, had made an observation about G3. And I'm not gonna get into the specifics of the post because it's really irrelevant.

01:06:20

And this is old, old news. The thing that's relevant to me is, Josh Bice is three years ago.

01:06:26

So this would have been, I guess, the G3 2019. It was pretty defensive. And these men,

01:06:35

David Platt included in that, Mark Dever, John Piper, they're not heretics. He disagrees with their social justice positions, but he does not believe it to be sinful to insist, let's see, to put them, they're not heresy.

01:06:49

He thinks it's simple to place them in that camp. Anyway, he goes on about this.

01:06:55

He defends Platt, Dever, and Piper to some extent. While he disagrees with their social justice, they can speak at the conference.

01:07:03

I want you to contrast that as three years ago with what Josh Bice is saying now and how social justice is a false gospel.

01:07:13

This is improvement. This is, hopefully what this is, is it's a learning.

01:07:18

It's seeing, but it took time. And I think many people have gone through the same transformation.

01:07:29

You did have churches. You had, since we're on the Bible Thumping Wingnut page, you had J .D.

01:07:35

Hall's church in Montana. They had left,

01:07:41

I don't know, three, four years ago, something like that, over the same issues, pretty much, social justice.

01:07:50

I asked this, I asked J .D. Hall when he came on my show a while back, because I said, how did you see it so early?

01:07:56

And he said, oh, I was political minded, I think. That might be part of it. And I can see how

01:08:02

Marxists are subversive. So there may be something to that. I don't know that I even have the full answer.

01:08:07

It's something that I'm still curious about. I started seeing it in 2017, like fully,

01:08:13

I started seeing it. I started noticing it, if you watch the podcast from earlier this week and last week,

01:08:19

I started noticing it as early as 2014. But it was in 2017 when

01:08:25

I thought, this is a religion, and this has actually captured the school, as far, not that everyone's on board with it, but that this is being cranked out by the institution itself, the administration's on board.

01:08:40

And I knew not everyone could see it at the time. After MLK50 and T4G, I don't know.

01:08:47

I don't know what to say after that. It was obvious, I think, at that point. But some people were slower to realize than others.

01:08:54

And I understand, and I have grace for that. I get it. I think there's a lot of hindsight's 2020, looking back, thinking we could have done better.

01:09:04

Maybe Josh Bice thinks that. Maybe some of the Dallas signers think that. They put together this document and wanted to hedge against it.

01:09:13

And then, that was probably the biggest resistance perhaps that took place within the window that I'm talking about.

01:09:26

There wasn't a lot after that. And I mean, there was things here or there.

01:09:31

I'm not saying there was nothing. You had, but you had kind of Founders Ministries doing its thing. You had kind of G3 doing its thing.

01:09:38

CBN kind of rose up. Each one had different pieces of the pie. Like, for instance, I just mentioned that G3 caters to more 1689 reform,

01:09:48

Calvinist. CBN's broader than that. CBN is like, hey, if you're in the SBC, join us.

01:09:53

You could be Armenian. You know, just join us. And a lot more of a big tent. But they don't have the infrastructure.

01:10:01

They don't have all the events. They don't have the resources. So, more of just a loose affiliation.

01:10:07

You have these different, and there's more than even that, but you have these different organizations kind of doing their own thing.

01:10:13

There wasn't a big united front. And I know many wanted that. But the thing is,

01:10:20

I think now, things have changed. And God, in his, has perfect timing. We can live in regret all we want.

01:10:28

I think it's helpful to go over some of this, just for other organizations, for other people that's realized maybe some of the mistakes that might've been made.

01:10:36

But that being said, God's timing's perfect. And where people are now, who see it, especially after 2020, they see it.

01:10:48

They know the battle's coming. The battle right now is who's the head of the church? Is it Caesar? Is it

01:10:54

Uncle Sam? Is it God? Is it Jesus Christ? The battle's for the church right now.

01:11:00

Can we trust the word of God? Or do we need some oppressed lens to figure it out?

01:11:06

Because we can't trust ourselves to read it, because we're coming from a bad social location or something like that.

01:11:17

Is, you know, is the church, what is the church? Is the church a good thing in history?

01:11:23

Is this the way that God forwards the Great Commission? Or is it this oppressive, horrible, evil thing?

01:11:29

And it wasn't until two seconds ago we figured that out. I think those on board with ripping down all of America's monuments, including those to great

01:11:40

Christian men, including conservatives who won't lift a finger to stop it, their silence is speaking.

01:11:48

I mean, there's a lot of battles, but they're lining up under this social justice movement. And I think people now are realizing this is where the battle is.

01:11:57

It was confusion. For a while, people didn't wanna believe these things. And now they're realizing,

01:12:04

I've gotta leave this denomination. People that maybe I even used to defend, I can't defend them anymore.

01:12:11

And it's not like their teaching, David Platt's teaching did not change significantly. He was, in fact,

01:12:17

I only used his famous 2018 sermon at T4G to show that this guy's a false teacher.

01:12:23

Just look at this sermon. You know, and we could look at other things, but look at this sermon, you know, it was known. It's not that a lot changed, it's that I think we changed.

01:12:35

Conservative fundamentalist is the way the leftists wanna call people like us, I guess. But hey, historic fundamentalism, if you understand what that means,

01:12:44

R .A. Torrey is the fundamentals. If you're talking about theological fundamentalism, there's no problem with that. If you're talking about the separatism and these kinds of things, maybe there's a problem perhaps.

01:12:55

But we're talking about what the word was intended to mean from the beginning. I have no problem with that. Sure, I believe that.

01:13:01

I believe in the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Anyway, it's helpful to look at the autopsy, but it's encouraging even knowing that maybe this battle failed in the temporal realm, not in the eternal realm.

01:13:23

God's plan never fails and his timing's perfect. And we know that what's happening right now is within his plan.

01:13:33

People realizing now who didn't realize before, people waking up to what's happening now, people understanding the working issues theologically, all of that, it's happening.

01:13:42

And it's happening more and more and more. And the Lord is using people. He's using Josh Bice with this even now.

01:13:48

People who probably believe what he believed in three years ago about David Platt and stuff.

01:13:53

I don't think they believe that anymore. He's using even people that don't get along with each other that are against the social justice, but they don't like each other.

01:14:03

He's using them in their separate little areas. And I think one of the things that could be concerning, but I actually wanna present it to you as a hopeful thing is how decentralized everything is right now.

01:14:17

You have new affiliations forming, new cooperations, and then a whole lot of people that are just independent churches.

01:14:25

You know what? It's a lot harder to steer independent churches towards error.

01:14:31

Now it's easier in one sense, right? If you get one charismatic leader that goes in there, they can create a lot of damage.

01:14:37

But I'm saying, let's say you have 10 good solid churches and you would need 10 false teachers going into each one.

01:14:48

Whereas in a denomination, you need one guy at the head and he can do a lot of damage. And so the local church autonomy, these organizations that are smaller, more of a hopefully a localist approach, a think local, an act local,

01:15:04

I'm all for that. I really think in your local community, don't see yourself as a

01:15:11

Southern Baptist or a Presbyterian. I'm a Christian living in this region. And maybe it is the

01:15:18

Baptist in that area, but these are the people that I'm getting together with because we wanna reach the tangible real people in our backyard and serve them.

01:15:26

And that is, if we return to that, which I suspect we're going towards that in some ways, that can be a really good thing and the best resistance against what's coming.

01:15:38

And if you would have, if you rewound the clock and you did everything differently and you had some strong leaders and they issued ultimatums and they retook the convention, they inspired the base and they fought the ground on right where they should have and all of that, and they retook the

01:15:55

SPC, how many years would it have been before the SPC drifted left again? It didn't take long after the conservative resurgence.

01:16:02

So my only point in all this is God has a plan. We don't know. We don't know what alternative histories would have been like, but what just happened with different pastors leaving the

01:16:16

SPC at different time periods and forming their own things or being just a local church,

01:16:22

God has a purpose in this. And it was not all in vain. It was not all in vain.

01:16:28

It's because the battle's for hearts and minds. It's not for denominations and organizations and political posturing and image and fashion.

01:16:37

It's not for that. It's for hearts and minds. If you stay focused on that, then I think life is a lot easier.

01:16:44

And guess what? I think it's a lot less stressful. You think someone like a Josh Bice is less stressed?

01:16:50

He doesn't have to deal with all the ridiculousness of the SPC anymore.

01:16:56

He's out. I mean, there's less stress and you can focus more on things that actually matter. So that's something that I think is inspiring.

01:17:04

And I hope others follow that example. Hope this was helpful for you all. God bless.

01:17:10

And by the way, I should mention, next, tomorrow's episode is a blockbuster. You're gonna wanna watch it, okay?

01:17:18

I don't know how long it's gonna be on YouTube, but you're gonna wanna watch it. And you can go see it on Rumble if it disappears.