Why churches should leave the SBC - a systematic explanation for pastors

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Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

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Hello and good evening. And as you can see, we're live together.

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We're not on two different computers. We're not in two different states right now. This is

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Dr. Casey Butner, Pastor of Bula Baptist Church in Winter Garden, Florida. And I'm your host,

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Dr. Anthony Silvestro Jr. tonight. And I'm so excited to have you here. We had a great weekend this past weekend, had a wonderful conference, the

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Conference on Worldliness in the Church. And I know for you, this special place was in regards to the

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SBC and all the worldliness that you watched come into the church over the years, which is exactly what we're talking about tonight.

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Yeah. But the conference was Justin Peters, Phil Johnson, you, myself, and Susan Heck for the ladies.

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Yes, she only taught the ladies, by the way. And because I know there's some videos that were blasting you and your church and others, but what a great conference.

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People really enjoyed it. We had people as far as Seattle, Washington fly out for this conference. There's a pastor and his family that drove from Texas.

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And I know it was a blessing to everybody that was here. So I don't know if you had any words for it or not. Yeah, I'm so grateful for everyone who came.

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And we have some amazing testimonies as to how God has worked over the weekend that we just could not have expected.

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So to God be the glory. And I'm so proud of Eula Baptist Church and all of the volunteers that pulled together.

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They were just simply being themselves in Christ and loving on those who came.

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And so our campus was full of visitors, lots of folks that drove an hour and a half and two hours away and stayed in hotels and stayed

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Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with us. And so that was great. Exposing worldliness in the church.

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And that is in the church, not the obviousness of the Benny Hinn craziness and all that kind of stuff, but the things that were creeping inside of our good churches and calling

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Christians to stand upon sound doctrine. So that was a great conference. Yeah, it was great. I'm still kind of coming down off of it right now.

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I was very, very impressed. Phil Johnson said that he had never been invited nor even seen a conference like this before.

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So I thought, ah, I'll take that as a compliment. That's right, yeah. And it really was done absolutely well.

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Amazing to have a church your size, which is a good size. I think it's a healthy church size. You're not in the thousands, but to have 50 volunteers dedicated to just the service and taking care of those that were here at the conference is amazing.

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Let alone the people that were here to set up and tear down and everything.

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It was really, really great to see. Thank you. So having said all that, our main purpose for the show tonight is this.

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Pastor Casey has been on our show, Paul Jecks Live, and we've done shows about the

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SBC and the problems of the SBC. And just to kind of throw some stuff out there,

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I mean, look, you have been born and bred SBC. I mean, I can only imagine.

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You're like, you grew up in a family where like he's gonna be a pastor and you're like SBC blood, everything is

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SBC on you. They can cut you open when you die and you have SBC written on your blood vessels. Like, so I get it, right?

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And you were raised in all this. You actually become an SBC pastor. You rise the ranks.

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You become the head of the Florida Baptist Convention, which is the, I'm sorry, the

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GOLA. Yeah, Greater Orlando Baptist Association, which is right underneath the Florida Baptist Convention, which is right underneath the

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SBC. So you headed that, what, several hundred churches. And talk about counting the cost, right?

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You do these videos with Apologetics Live. You do some videos with Justin Peters shortly thereafter.

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And the next thing you know, you're showing the door. Got the SBC boot. SBC boot.

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And not only that, you also have friends, lots of people who you would have considered close friends as pastors, who, as you told me the other day, could walk past you in a store and not say a word to you now.

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Yeah, yeah. It's sad. You know, there's a culture of being committed to the SBC mechanism, the machine, the cooperative program or the way, however you wanna refer to it.

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And it kind of creeps in and these elephants in the room are not spoken to.

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So the 11th commandment has been called. There's all kinds of different things, but you know, I've experienced all these things and we may smile and laugh about them now, but boy, they do come at a cost.

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And it, you know, it just reminds me of true Christianity. If you will stand upon the word of God, it will come at a cost.

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Yeah, that's absolutely right. So Jason, you're asking a question here and you're asking, was the conference streamed online?

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Unfortunately, it was not. What was streamed online on Apologetics Live and you can find on YouTube right now is the

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Q &A from Sunday night. So we did a special Apologetics Live episode from seven to nine. You can find that on YouTube right now.

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And I think that the Sunday sermon by Phil Johnson would have been streamed as well, right? Actually, every main service in the worship center was recorded.

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And so it's just in the lineup to be edited and slowly uploaded on our YouTube channel.

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So bbcwg .org, and then just click on sermons. And so I perceive here in a couple of weeks that you'll start seeing the conference sermons, yours as well, will be uploaded.

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Yeah, wonderful. So the rest will be up there, but at least you can see a couple of those things now. And the Q &A was a great one.

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So I vowed to answer every single question that came in during the conference and in the chats.

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And we did that. We answered every one of them. And I remember we were about halfway through and Phil's like,

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I think we need to go to a lightning round because you got a whole stack in your hand. And I said, yeah, I think that's a good idea.

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I got two pastors up here. So I know you guys can be long -winded at times.

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So yeah, we ended up getting through them all. So that was good. Well, let's get into the show because the reason why we're doing this show is you did all these videos.

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You lost a lot of friends in the process, but you've had a lot of other pastors that have emailed you, called you, texted you to say, hey,

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Casey, can you explain to me all your thoughts, everything you found out, especially about First Baptist Orlando, what's going on in the

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SBC, and can you tell it to me? And so I said, you know, Casey, it is great.

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You're willing to spend this time, but you know, two hours here, three hours there, two hours there. And before you know it, all you're doing is gonna be talking on the phone all day long every day to pastors trying to explain the exact same thing to them.

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So we thought we would do a show that would have all the information. We're gonna lay out everything tonight to the next couple of hours so that any of you can take this video and share it with any pastor, any church member, anybody, and have a full lowdown on the

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SBC. So on that, we've got a number of topics and we've taken the time now for the show to lay out our main topics, as well as any subheadings underneath those main topics.

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And we're just gonna work through them tonight. So the first question, Casey, is why have pastors and congregants, their members, been proud to be a part of the

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SBC historically? Yeah, that's a good question. And it's really one that's kind of hard to simplify.

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So one of the reasons why they have been proud is because we're better together. We can do a whole lot more as a team when you kind of put your money and pull everything together.

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So when you pull your money together, it's amazing how a small church can have an amazing amount of dignity and participating in four missions.

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So nevertheless, we're better together and you can get more bang for your buck. Another reason is that people and preachers have certainly been proud to be

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SBC historically, because we've been known for being Bible -believing,

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Bible -carrying, those men and women who believe in the word of God as the word of God that has no mixture of error.

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So the SBC generally has been Bible -believing and preaching people who believe the word of God is the word of God without any mixture of error.

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So that's something that we have been proud of. So nevertheless, that's some of the things that I think that we could be historically very proud besides the fact of standing upon sound doctrine.

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Historically, Baptist have been the most sound denomination, not only the largest, but the most sound of Baptist faith and message.

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Yep, that's right. And I'll tell you, it was important for us when we left our old church nine to 10 years ago now, we wanted to seek out a church that was gonna remain solid to doctrine.

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And so we actually at that time said, or I told my wife, I said, we're gonna look for SBC church. And that was really a big thing for me.

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It was either SBC or one that had a MacArthur grad as the pastor, but yeah, and for the same reason, because of doctrine, right?

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They were historically the best denomination overall. So tell me a little bit about the unity.

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I mean, cause SBC has been really proud of their history of unity as well, right? Yep, absolutely.

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The unity that we have as Southern Baptist to me has been second to none. You can, you know, there's a plus to have a curriculum that's produced by seminary professors and distributed through Lifeway.

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It keeps everybody on the same page and such. Now that hasn't been a strength in the end.

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And we're gonna explain that a little bit more as we go on. But the unity in Southern Baptist life has been a real blessing to me.

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The fellowship, the camaraderie, the conferences, the meetings, the annual conventions, both with your association, the state and the national level.

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It's exciting to be able to see what God is doing on a grand level. So, you know,

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I've loved the Southern Baptist convention my entire life. Yeah, amen to that.

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So, okay, so let's transition a little bit further. And I will say someone says they can't get into StreamYard.

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I actually, and Andrew is gonna be so upset when he finds this out, if he's watching right now.

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I actually forgot to go onto the Apologetics Live page and upload the newest, what do you call it?

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A website or web address for StreamYard. So no one's gonna get into StreamYard tonight, sorry. Oh, whoops.

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Whoops, yeah. I mean, we didn't intend on having anyone in StreamYard until later in the show anyway, but the

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YouTube link is out there and that's what people can come on to and watch or through Facebook. And feel free at that point to go on and ask any questions in the chat because once we get through our list here, we're going to go through and ask every question that comes into the chat tonight.

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So yes, I'm gonna hold you to that too tonight is we're gonna answer every question that comes in, at least in regards to the

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SBC. Yeah, yeah. So we might go on Anthony time tonight, Melissa. You might be right.

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Okay, so part two, we first asked why pastors and congregants been proud to be a part of the SBC historically.

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Number two is what have been the benefits of being part of the SBC historically? Now we kind of covered a couple of these points already that kind of went in with the first point, which is doctrine and unity, right?

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So that has been a huge benefit overall. But what are some other benefits? One of them is the collective funding for missionaries.

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Oh yeah, yeah. If you go on to the sbc .net website, you can click on the giving or the amount of funds that have been given to the cooperative program.

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And just by way of example, in October of 2021, $16 million was given to the cooperative program in one month.

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And then you can forward down and look in January of 2022, earlier this year, $21 million to the cooperative program in January.

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In May of this year, 16 million, August 15 million. It is powerful when you have nearly 50 ,000 churches who give to the cooperative program.

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That's how we have seminaries that offer such a high level of an education at such a low price.

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And obviously the education has been tainted. It's one of the biggest reasons why we're pulled out, you know, and, you know, all kinds of different things.

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But nevertheless, the collective funding for missionaries also gives them stability on the mission field.

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So if you're an independent Baptist church that supports missionaries independently, so that missionary is codependent upon that church.

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And if the church has a bad season of life, then that missionary loses their funding.

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But with the cooperative program, there's a huge pool of money that keeps it floating along rather consistently.

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So that's a strength. So, and this is just a question for you, so listeners know, what is the difference between cooperative program and the

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North American Missions Board and International Missions Board, the IMB and AMM? Okay, so the North American Mission Board focuses on church planting and missionaries here in North America.

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The International Missions Board is focused on church planting and missions internationally.

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And so you have these two different entities and the cooperative program gives a percentage of the income to each entity.

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And then you have the other major entities of the SBC seminaries. And within the seminaries, you have our church planters, our educators, our chaplains and preachers and all of that.

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So - Okay, so when people gave money or give money to the cooperative program, that's getting funneled to the different missionaries both nationally and abroad.

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Yes, so your money is getting percentage wise split up into those areas. And so, and that's why we listed this as a benefit for being part of SBC historically, because I mean, churches have a responsibility to one, evangelize, right?

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And you know how big I am. I know how big you are about this. If a church isn't evangelizing, if a pastor is not teaching on evangelism for the pulpit and telling people to go out and evangelize, not saying on the streets, not saying getting up on a box and preaching on a street corner,

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I'm saying in your everyday lives to evangelize. If we're not doing that, we have a problem. Equally, we have a problem if we are not supporting missionaries that are going outside or around the world.

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And so, the cooperative program was really neat because small churches didn't have the ability to often fund even a single missionary family for a year.

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So now you can put money towards a cooperative program, collectively of the churches and be able to support missionaries.

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It's actually a really good idea when you look at it from that perspective. So, okay, so that's one of the great benefits.

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You know, another one is pastoral training, right? So. Yeah, you know, you see passages in the

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Bible where good men were pulled aside for a season of life, you know, John the Baptist, the

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Apostle Paul, and they were trained. Well, nevertheless, whether it's trained by the

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Holy Spirit or trained, however, it's really good for a man whom is called to preach the gospel, to pull aside for a season of life and to submit himself to professors, those that study through books of the

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Bible and really be entrenched in pastoral training. I've often known that if I could just get at a breakfast table with three or four experienced pastors, what

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I gleaned from the conversation could save me years of pain and mistakes. And when you're dealing with souls as you're a pastor over a flock, the wisdom is priceless.

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And so I'm constantly putting myself in a position to where I can learn from those who have gone before me.

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So I believe in pastoral training. In fact, we're gonna be doing pastoral training here at Beulah Baptist Church with about six or eight men in the upcoming year.

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I'm excited about that. So just starting in small areas and allowing them to be kind of under shepherds when it comes to getting involved and serving in particular areas.

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So it's great. But the SPC has been strong in pastoral training and in preaching.

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Power in the Pulpit by Jerry Vines is one of the icons. It's one of the most popular books when it comes to a pastor having a preaching book on a shelf.

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And he was a very good expositor. Yeah, that's great to hear.

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And I know there's, I've talked to some of the guys that are gonna be doing the pastoral program next year under you and they're really excited about it.

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So it's really cool to see. Okay, so another part of the benefits of being part of the

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SPC historically under point number two still is that there is a pastoral unity and fellowship.

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Yeah, absolutely. You're definitely not gonna run low on opportunities to meet with one another and rub shoulders and you're constantly able to see what's going well with one another in the churches and such.

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So pastoral fellowship is essential. A lot of times pastors are going through tough times.

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They need someone else to be able to talk to. And oftentimes it's another pastor that's gonna provide the right amount of fellowship and the right amount of advice to help that pastor stay grounded and not quit.

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Yeah, absolutely. Now, would you say that now, granted, this is a big problem today in the SPC, but would you say that historically when a pastor has needed not just advice, but from an accountability perspective, right?

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So there's a lot of smaller churches that are SPC, one pastor, there's really no accountability for the pastor.

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Do you think that some of the other churches and other pastors may have been able to provide some of that, some accountability for those pastors?

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Oh yeah, historically, like for the association, the association is designed to be able to keep doctrinal integrity.

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So there's a process of being approved as a church that can belong to the association.

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And the association is in compliance with the Florida Baptist Convention or the state convention for where they're at, which is in compliance with the

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National Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention. And we were all underneath the

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Baptist faith and message. So we had a standard there and that was held to. And within that, there was a backstop, not only the word of God, but an explanation to our faith and our practice.

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And so basically there is this standard that kept everyone unified.

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And so when a pastor was going through a hard time, we just talked about what was, and the word of God has always been the standard and there's accountability, and there's always been good friendships in those things.

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Yeah, and so for viewers and anybody who's gonna be watching us in the future, I mean, keep this in mind, right, that there should be, that the structure is there for the accountability.

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It's always been there practically, right, really up until it seems like some recent years.

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I granted there's been some issues in the past that SBC has kind of gone through. So we'll get back to that one in a little bit.

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And we touched on this a little bit already, but what about the benefit of church planting, both

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US and international? Yeah, you know, so it's hard not to just bounce right into the problems in the church planting today in the

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SBC, but historically, Southern Baptists have been given to church planting.

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It's been one of the main pushes, not just evangelism, not just, you know, churches, but starting good solid churches.

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And unfortunately, I need to, you know, it's just not done well today. The church plants are dying.

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They're, anyway, yeah. So historically saying, the church planting has been a good emphasis within the

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SBC. Yeah, now I will say that we had one of my good friends,

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Alan Beach on the show back, oh, it's probably a year ago now. And he's, he came on, he was a

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SBC church planter in Ohio for, oh, I don't know, several years at least.

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And he was so upset about the church planting that was going on versus what it used to be decades ago.

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And that he says, they forced a lot of different church plants and revitalization projects without doing the necessary work.

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They would just throw money at it. But what discouraged him is that there were millions being poured into Northeast Ohio.

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You'd have at least 30 new church plants a year. And within a year after that, only two would survive on average out of the 30.

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So you imagine the amount of money that was wasted. And again, we'll get into that a little bit more later, but it is interesting thinking about that whole church planting thing.

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So, okay. We've talked about why pastors and congregants have been proud to be a part of the SBC historically.

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Two, what have been the benefits of being part of the SBC? Is there any other benefits that you know off the top of your head that you'd like to talk about?

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You know, just basically being the most God honoring denomination.

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And all of these great things have now taken a turn and gone in a different direction, which we're getting to soon.

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But Southern Baptist polity and worship and preaching historically has produced a lot of phenomenal churches.

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And when you drive through the Southeast, you see nothing but Baptist churches. And it's just amazing to see how

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God has used Southern Baptist in the life of this country. So nevertheless, I've always been proud to be a

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Southern Baptist. Yeah. And I mean, really, there are a lot of greats in the last, you know, 30 to 50, 30 to 60 years ago of guys who we all look up to.

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You know, not perfect in theology, right? But I mean, guys like Adrian Rogers, we were just talking about earlier, who, you know, not everyone loves

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Adrian Rogers, but Steve Lawson, that's who he studied under. That was his pastor for years.

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That's who trained Steve Lawson up, in part to be the pastor and trainer that he is today.

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Yeah. In the pulpit. And the same thing with Charles Stanley, you know, he wasn't perfect, but he was willing to take a stand.

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And the same thing with W .A. Criswell, willing to take a stand. That these late greats that are no longer in their prime had the influence.

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And they could pretty much say with clout, we're not gonna do that here. And keep the

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SBC camp clean, but we no longer have the W .A. Criswells, the Adrian Rogers, the

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Jerry Bynes, these guys who were willing to stand up and tote the line and expect others to do the same.

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Yeah. And yet historically, you had them, right? You had those stalwarts who were willing to stand.

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Yeah. And that people would actually listen to, so. Okay, so point number three now is, now we're gonna start to get into the stuff, right?

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Yeah. What are the main problems with the SBC today? And I'm gonna just kind of throw several of these things out here right now.

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Seminaries, liberalism, money and where it's being thrown now, and then some of the dark money that's out there.

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And I don't even know how much you know about the dark money. I know I forwarded some stuff to you, but, and I know this pastor has kind of fallen from grace in sin, but I don't wanna negate the work that he did over the years.

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And that would be Jordan Hall. Some of the money that they traced was unbelievable.

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The dark money that would be behind a lot of like the

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ERLC and a lot of the people behind all that stuff in the SBC that really helped policy shift over the years was dark money through shell companies and went all the way back to George Soros.

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George Soros, right. You know, and I know you saw firsthand that not this year's or this year's, but last year's convention.

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I remember talking to you about the vote, right? You felt there was a ton of conservative churches.

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And I know we talked about this extensively. You were really excited about going into Nashville last year. Because you're like, there's way more conservative churches than there are liberal ones.

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The problem is, is that most conservative churches don't send their delegates to the convention.

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And that when they do, usually the good churches don't have a lot of money. So they're only sending a certain amount of delegates.

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Because as you told me, the more money you donate to, I think it's the cooperative program, the more money,

26:21

I'm sorry, the more delegates you get to go to the convention. And so the liberal churches tend to have more money to give to the cooperative program.

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They would have more delegates therefore. And I remember I was talking about that. And then a month or two after that broke, or after the convention, the story breaks that all these liberal churches that put all this money towards a cooperative program had money funneled to them to pay to the cooperative program in their name.

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And then they were given money to pay for all the travel expenses of the delegates that those liberal churches were sending to the national convention.

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I mean, essentially doing worse than what the Democrats have done for the last two presidential elections now, right?

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Definitely a liberal move. And I appreciated Tom Ascol's movie, By What Standard, if you have not seen that, it kind of exposes a lot.

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But By What Standard is worth watching if you haven't seen it. And speaking of the liberal move there,

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I mean, we kind of felt like it was like the Mellon ballot system and how everything was hijacked.

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And when the conservative Baptist network within the Southern Baptist Convention had its momentum going towards the annual convention in Nashville, we all had a tremendous amount of hope that we were going to get this thing going back in the right direction.

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And our church, we sent a maximum amount of delegates. Our messengers were excited to go.

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Unfortunately, when we were there and J .D. Greer was the Southern Baptist Convention president, we saw the grossest display of attractional worship.

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So, so, so bad that our messengers walked out of the worship there in Nashville.

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And I didn't blame them. I stayed just to see what kind of craziness they were going to do.

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Well, nevertheless, that kind of opens the door to show that this is how you do church.

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This is how we worship as a Southern Baptist church. And some people would say, no, that's just J .D.

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Greer's worship leader. That's their church. But hey, J .D. Greer was the president of the

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SBC because of the amount of numbers that he has in his church. His church runs about 9 ,000 and that's how he became the president because of how much they are able to give to the cooperative program.

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That's how the numbers matter. And then as well, they're pretty much saying that this is how you grow a church.

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This is how you do it. And when you put your worship up on display and you do those things, it was woke.

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It was attractional. It was grotesque in a lot of different ways. I just can't even tell you how sickening it was to see that that was happening because that was not worshiping

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Jesus. That was, look at me. I'm a professional. I'm on display.

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I'm just bringing attention to man and not glory to God. So nevertheless, the shift there was very obvious and the majority of the messengers ate it up.

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So there was plenty in the back hallways who were like, this is for the birds.

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But by and large, 10 ,000 people in that room, so -called worship, was happening.

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I was very disappointed. It was the same amount of disappointment there in Anaheim when Rick Warren stood up and gave his self -exaltation speech.

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And then he got a nearly unanimous round of applause. Everyone stood to their feet. Another 10 ,000 people in the room, it seemed.

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And the messengers ate up what he had to say. So you can tell the direction of the

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SVC by what is celebrated. And it's celebrated on stage. It's celebrated on the floor.

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Those are the ones who actually are able to make things happen according to SVC polity.

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So the writing is on the wall. We have one naval E9 retired man in our congregation who went as a messenger.

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And I thought it was rather wise of his comment. He said, this SVC ship is headed in the wrong direction and it's lost its rudder.

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Yeah, that's about right. So I saw Drew, I'm gonna post this comment.

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There are people today willing to stand. SVC churches just won't hire them. I've tried applying. You are right.

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I know several guys that are pastors can't find a job. They would love to go to the SVC and turn a church around.

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And it just isn't happening. So, okay. So we talked about the dark money.

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What about the wasted money that's going on in the SVC? There's no telling.

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Kevin Ezell will not be accountable for a missing $75 million, period.

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They will not release where things have been being spent, that the budget is ambiguous.

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And how in the world could Southern Methodist churches and good conscience continue to give to an entity who hides things?

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And the North American Mission Board somehow has become heavily invested in real estate. And we're not in the real estate business.

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So all of these different, very expensive homes that have been purchased, the list is forever long.

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So unaccountability with millions of dollars is a major issue.

32:03

And the fact that Kevin Ezell, when asked the questions about these things, gets the same runaround over and over and over again, and talks about how we exist to be able to share the gospel and that type of thing, but doesn't answer the question.

32:17

Isn't it amazing how conservatives, if they get audited and they can't account for even a few dollars, they go to jail.

32:24

We have a federal government who has given billions through Ukraine unaccounted for. And this is, by the way, if y 'all think that this is the first time this has happened with money given to Ukraine and disappearing, every single time the

32:37

United States gives money internationally, it is always money laundered. We've known this for decades.

32:44

This is just the most blatant one that we've seen to date yet. But it's amazing. There'll never be accountability within the government.

32:51

There's never accountability with liberal organizations and all the dark money that they have. And here you watch the

32:57

SBC, zero accountability for millions of dollars. This is fraud. People should be in jail for this stuff.

33:04

It used to be a system that was accountable. And I remember Ted Traylor stood up and he's the pastor of Olive Baptist Church up in the panhandle of Florida.

33:14

And with his Southern drawl, he stood up and grabbed the microphone and said, you need to remember who you work for.

33:22

And what he was saying is to the SBC elites on the stage, they've been elected by the people to work for the people, but that is no longer what's happening.

33:33

What's happening now is that the SBC elites are in positions of authority and they are no longer submissive to the will of the

33:43

Southern Baptist in the pew. So it doesn't matter what the messengers vote for or what they want.

33:50

The people that are in elite positions are gonna do what they want with the money, no matter what.

33:56

To the point, I mean, to the extent of when a good conservative pastor is pleading from the floor at the

34:06

Southern Baptist Convention, this is to the extent, they will turn the microphone off, move the camera and down the lights where that pastor was and he's gone.

34:17

Now in a room of 10 ,000 people, it's easy to disappear. And all they do is just switch over and he's gone.

34:26

And that happened over and over and over again in Anaheim and in Nashville. And it's rather sickening.

34:32

And Tom Buck was one of those guys. And so this is the way that sex scandals get swept underneath the rug.

34:40

They just move the focus over somewhere else. And by the way, there are many people who think that the cooperative program is gonna be bankrupted by these

34:49

Supreme Court cases that are happening right now. So there are many sex scandals and lawsuits that are happening right now.

34:58

And there are many who think that the Southern Baptist Convention is going to be bankrupted because of all of its misuse in this area, which is just a tragedy for the victims.

35:13

For the victims, yeah. Although I must say it might be the best thing for the SPC. Just bankrupt them and knock them out, right?

35:20

Move on. Okay, so we're still on what are the main problems of the SPC today. Let's talk about the seminaries.

35:27

All right. Well, I'm a graduate of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

35:33

And I sent word through the registrar to the new president,

35:39

Dr. Jamie Dew, and asked him if he would take a stand on critical race theory.

35:47

And the response from the registrar on behalf of the seminary was this.

35:54

We're the chill seminary. We don't get involved in any of these issues. And so my response to that was, okay, we'll send word to Dr.

36:03

Jamie Dew that if you ignore cancer, it's a silent killer.

36:10

And critical race theory, wokeness and all these different things are an issue they are creeping in.

36:17

And if they're not addressed and spoken to and you take a stand, it will be the death of the seminary.

36:23

And so all of these different issues compounding up, you may say, well, it's just a little issue. Well, when you add up all of these issues across the board and you play the chill factor, or you say,

36:34

I'm not gonna get involved, or you ignore all of these elephants in the room, you're gonna get what you have today, massive issues because these things metastasize.

36:45

They just grow, they get infested. And all of a sudden, you're not standing upon the word of God for anything.

36:52

So not only in New Orleans, which I would have thought would have been one of the most conservative underneath Chuck Kelly for so long, one of the best seminaries, but we would have a seminary that wouldn't struggle with these things.

37:05

Obviously, Southeastern underneath woke, Danny Akin has become a real issue with critical race theory and wokeness and all of that to the point to where you can't even talk about it as a student on campus.

37:18

And then the same thing with Al Mohler at Southern. So at Southern, they're firing conservative professors and hiring woke professors, and the list just gets worse and worse.

37:31

And so if you're not taking a stand, these things are gonna creep in. Yeah, and think about how many people still trust

37:37

Al Mohler, who I think is the most dangerous man in the SPC today. He says one thing, especially on his daily briefings, after not answering the question at CHEPCON back in 2019 or 2018, whatever year it was, after not answering the question on stage, still has not talked to Phil Johnson since then.

37:58

He's then since gone on to his daily briefings and spoken against critical race theory and other aspects of social justice.

38:05

And yet while he's speaking against it, he's still allowing the professors in his seminary to teach all that nonsense.

38:13

I mean, maybe he should be like Thomas White, who when Thomas White took the presidency at Cedarville up in Ohio, where I'm at, and when he came up there, there was an ultimatum.

38:24

People had to sign a doctrinal statement, every professor. And if they were unwilling to do it, he said, you can teach one more year and then you're out.

38:31

If you teach anything against what our doctrinal statement is, I'll fire you immediately.

38:37

And within a year, they were all gone. They got jobs elsewhere. He cleaned up the seminary in one year. And they're even one of the few seminaries that actually still teaches and believes a biblical creation, young earth, 6 ,000 year old earth, six day creation.

38:51

So he did it. It's not like this can't be done. If Al Mohler actually acted where his words are, if he actually wanted to do what he says he believes, he could clean up the seminary in no time.

39:05

Well, he did. Early on, a close friend of Al Mohler's said to him, and it was then said to me of the conversation that we need the

39:15

Al Mohler of yesteryear. And Al Mohler's response back was that I don't have the support.

39:22

And then the response back to that is we stand upon Christ and Christ alone, Al. You don't need the support of the people or anything else.

39:32

We just need you to do what's right. And so nevertheless, it fell on deaf ears and you're right.

39:38

You cannot listen to Al Mohler. You have to look and see what he's doing. And the Bible says, you'll know a man by his fruit.

39:45

And so the things that he is doing tells you exactly that he's going with the ways of the world.

39:52

Yep, absolutely. So, you know, somebody said it at the conference this weekend that I don't remember who it was now, but if you feel like you're against the world, but God's on your side, you have the majority.

40:05

Yeah, that's great. That's wonderful. One plus God is the majority. I think it's how it was stated, but yeah.

40:11

Yeah. Yeah, so, okay. So, those are the main problems.

40:18

So actually there's one more. Let's not get into the details on this yet. We're gonna get into that a couple of points later, but just the blatant liberalism, right?

40:27

I mean, the Bible teaches conservative values, whether it is straight up stated or it can be inferred based off of the 10 commandments and God's attributes, morality, everything else, which is what 10 commands are based off of anyway, but that's where we get conservative values from.

40:51

Obviously something's gone wrong in the SPC. They're not so conservative anymore, are they? No, there's capitulation in the most important areas, even down to where you would think every conservative

41:05

Southern Baptist would be on the same page in the area of abortion. Yep. And when it comes to electing a president of the

41:12

United States, that's the first thing that comes up, life. And yet within the

41:18

ERLC and others, you've had major capitulation on this area and I'm flabbergasted at those who are not complete, completely against abortion, but yet make room for it in some cases.

41:35

Mm -hmm, that's right. So a couple of comments. And again, if you have questions, post them.

41:42

We now can star in the chat. And so I can bring up all the questions that I star and we'll bring them all up at the end together.

41:49

But a couple of comments is, Melissa, at the end of the day, people are fed up with the woke and left, even

41:54

Muslims and other religions are hating them. More and more people are waking up against emotionalism. So to a degree,

42:01

I would agree with this. I said all along, so I have been teaching against social justice for, it's gotta be eight or nine years now.

42:12

I mean, I went back in my computer and my notes and saw that I had a small seminar on this years ago.

42:19

Even before it was well, the terms of intersectionality and critical race theory were well known.

42:26

I had multiple slides from a Genesis perspective on race, one blood, one race.

42:31

I addressed homosexuality, transgenderism, different things that I knew were coming down the pike.

42:37

So I was speaking on this before it was really known. And then when everything blew up, the

42:42

MLK 50 and the SBC was, or 40, whatever, it was behind all that. And the celebration, which seemed to come out of nowhere, right?

42:50

But it was really planned behind the scenes with the SBC. And the SBC was behind all that. Every evangelical church in America was looking towards the

42:58

SBC when they came out on that MLK celebration and came out with critical race theory and social justice in general.

43:06

So I reformulated my seminar. And again, Andrew and I were, as far as we know, the first people that were out there teaching on social justice as we know it today.

43:18

And I say all this because when people would ask me, wow, is critical race theory or intersectionality, you think that's gonna take down the church?

43:26

Now, first of all, nothing takes down the church, right? Nothing will take down God's church. But I know what they meant. They meant, is this gonna be the one thing that really causes us to start running, that the authorities come after us, the church starts to crumble, right?

43:39

From that perspective. And I said, no, I don't believe it at all. I know it seems like it's going to, but I think people are gonna wake up to the issues of intersectionality and critical race theory.

43:50

And sure enough, four years later, that's exactly true. And just as this comment says is we have atheists who think that critical race theory and intersectionality are ridiculous.

44:02

I mean, after all, we have a Christian organization that hired one in James Lindsay, Sovereign Nations, which by the way,

44:08

Sovereign Nations, stop it. You've got Christians that know how to speak on this. Stop it.

44:14

It is ridiculous. Nobody should support your ministry. I'm sorry. Having said that as a little aside, but even the atheists have figured it out.

44:24

Muslims figure this stuff out. My issue was mostly homosexuality, transgenderism.

44:31

Because once you start to get hate speech laws on the books is when pastors are gonna have to stand up and say, uh -oh, like now

44:38

I gotta count the cost. Am I willing to actually do what I've said all along or am

44:45

I gonna not? Am I gonna back off? And I still think that's gonna be the big issue in the long run is this issue.

44:54

So, okay. So we talked about that. I think there's one other one I was gonna put up here. Yeah, especially when you have so many

45:01

SBC presidents who have soft peddled the issue of homosexuality. James Merritt, his own son is a homosexual and James Merritt approved of his sermon that was supposedly according to James Merritt, faithful to the gospel.

45:18

And it was anything but faithful to the gospel. So let's get to that in here in a few minutes because we are gonna cover that here real soon.

45:25

I'm trying to be a little more high level right now. But okay, let's switch from the idea of liberalism.

45:32

Let's go to our main point number four. And by the way, I'm gonna have my outline in the show notes as well as a couple of videos that Pastor Casey has done just to make sure this is a one -stop for all for anybody who wants to come in and learn more about this.

45:49

So point number four is why have so many churches been in the dark on these issues?

45:55

Oh, so many SBC churches. And I'm gonna share a quick story and then I'm gonna let you just kind of talk through this because I think this experience was very telling.

46:05

So you and I met in what, 2018 it's gotta be.

46:11

So actually, so you were at the Shepherds Conference that you saw the Q &A, right? I'm not sure.

46:17

You're not sure? Okay, so the Q &A that happened with Al Mohler and Phil Johnson must have been 2018 because the first Shepherds Conference we went to then must have been 2019.

46:26

I believe so. So, cause 2018 is when we sold my dental practice. My thumb started to go bad and God, I'm sure was moving me to ministry at that point.

46:35

But so 2019, well, we met in 2018 towards the end at the Creation Museum.

46:42

My wife's son and I came down and visited you and your family at Christmas time that year here in Orlando.

46:47

Spent a couple of weeks and got to know each other well. And then you decided to come to the Shepherds Conference for the first time and join

46:54

Andrew Rappaport and myself at ShepCon. And we all flew out a couple of days early to just kind of hang out, get to know one another more before going to Shepherds Conference.

47:06

And I know we were gonna take you through Ray Comfort's, what do you call it?

47:11

Ministry building and stuff. So you got a chance to see a lot of those cool things. That was great. Yeah, so we had a lot of fun. But I remember just kind of saying, hey

47:20

Casey, what's up with the SBC and all this social justice stuff being brought in?

47:25

And you're like, what are you talking about? I thought you were joking. I did.

47:31

And you were like dead serious. And so sat down and talked to you about it. And I know then

47:36

Andrew came over, talked to you about it as well. And what I do remember though, is that you,

47:46

I don't know if you believed me or not, but what you did do is you said, I need to look into this further.

47:52

And I'll never forget, it was maybe three weeks later after we got back home from Shepherds Conference that you had called me and said,

47:59

I can't believe it, you were right. This has been going on underneath my nose for years.

48:04

And I cannot believe I didn't know it. Which look, in God's providence, there's a reason why that happened, right?

48:11

Because it's caused a fire underneath you that obviously is unquenchable right now.

48:17

So tell us a little bit about, I mean, what happened to you and what you suspect is happening even today in a lot of churches across the country.

48:29

Well, personally, I was so focused on my family and the churches that I was on staff with through my theological education that I had zero time for hobbies, for anything extracurricular.

48:48

So the SBC politics, the whole game that's just right in front of your face, you don't even see it.

48:58

You're so focused on, well, a lot of times when you're a seminary student, you're just in survival mode anyway.

49:04

You're getting pounded with research papers and you got four or five thick books to read for each class.

49:09

And so nevertheless, as you're a student, that's hard to see sometimes.

49:17

And even more so as a pastor, because a pastor's job is never done.

49:23

There's always someone else that your heart longs to go and visit. There's always another email or a phone call or a text.

49:30

There's always the brushing up of a sermon and the Sundays and the Wednesdays are coming.

49:36

And if you're faithful to exposit the text, then you are one who studies the word of God.

49:42

It takes a lot of work to study the text, so you're constantly studying. So nevertheless, there's more work than you can ever get accomplished.

49:52

So you don't really see the elephants in the room. They can be right in front of you, but as soon as you go to a meeting, they're not talked about, they're not mentioned, and you don't even know that they're there.

50:04

Now, that's for the pastoral side, it's for the seminary side, and there's a lot more that could be spoken about that.

50:10

But for the people, if the people are not engaged, if they're not being sent as messengers, if they're not getting reports back from the conventions, the state convention, the association, or the national convention, if there's not things that are being reported back faithfully then they don't know either.

50:29

And so there's a trust factor from the pew to the pastor, all the way to the many levels of the convention, all the way from the mission's money in the pew, all the way to the people groups, there's trust within the

50:44

Southern Baptist Convention. And unfortunately, the trust has been violated along the way and so you just don't know that.

50:55

It's kind of like the Democratic Party of yesteryear has changed. It's no longer the same party as it used to be.

51:03

The whole game has changed. The Democratic Party is no longer about economics, it's about morality. And if you are historically a

51:11

Democrat and you have not really opened your eyes and looked, then you could easily vote for the wrong person these days and believe the wrong things.

51:21

So nevertheless, for the Southern Baptist Convention, for the people who have historically been faithful to their

51:28

God and their church, these things have eroded away and you just don't even know and it's right in front of you.

51:35

And believe me, even going to conferences and conventions, it could be right there.

51:40

It's so smooth when you hear a James Merritt or a J .D. Greer or all of, you know, or a

51:48

David Youth at First Orlando or these guys will say the right things in such a smooth way and glaze right over some of the most evil things that have crept into the

52:02

Southern Baptist Convention. Yeah, it's amazing how good some of these guys are talk, smooth talkers.

52:08

So yeah, you know, I think about all the small SBC churches, right, throughout the country.

52:14

Because I know that the conservatives within the SBC over the last two conventions were really hoping that we're gonna get enough of these small churches to send a delegate or two, right?

52:23

If you just get a few of them to send a delegate or two, then you can flip the whole vote. And of course, that's assuming they're not stacking the vote in the background, which you probably are doing based on some of the things you and others have witnessed.

52:36

But you know, think about that small church pastor who's in the middle of nowhere, which is what the majority of SBC churches, right?

52:43

So you got a pastor who's faithfully expositing the word. As Andrew would say, if you're expositing the word, you're spending minimum 20 hours a week doing nothing but your study.

52:54

Some guys, maybe a little bit more. Then you've got your counseling to do. You've got your shepherding to do.

53:00

You have your phone calls. You have your visits, especially the small churches, right? Pastoring, yeah. You're everything.

53:06

You're wearing your CEO hat and all the other hats at the same time. You don't have time to do all this politics.

53:14

Yeah, I could simply respond all day long to text, emails, phone calls, secretary, people stopping by.

53:21

I could just respond, respond, respond every day, all day long. If I didn't block out time,

53:28

I would not have study time. So the average pastor is one who is just faithful to shepherd the flock.

53:34

Yep, that's right. So that's how it got missed. And that was really the main point I wanna bring up for this point number four is it really has gotten past a lot of people.

53:45

So for every one of you watching the show or will be watching it when it gets downloaded, this gets downloaded a ton.

53:52

You're in the know because you guys are people who study and have the time to do it. But the average pastor just doesn't.

53:58

And it's hard to understand unless you understand the nuance to this.

54:05

So a couple of comments that came up. One is Drew says, we need to do a show on the sovereign nations issue.

54:14

You know what? I agree. Maybe you and I and Andrew and maybe Chris Huff wanna do a conference call at some point and talk about that if you wanna be part of that too, if you know anything about it.

54:26

I think a show on that would be really good. Count the cost because we're gonna make some enemies if we do that.

54:32

But I think it needs to be said. I have a story that I can share maybe later in the show or at a different time.

54:41

Drew also said, so when the famous questioning session of the social justice came from Phil Johnson to Al Mohler, Lincoln Duncan and Mark Dever, it happened in 2019.

54:55

So you were there for that one. Gotcha. And here's one deep dive discipleship.

55:01

Thank you for speaking out in the weirdness that is sovereign nations. Having an atheist is one of the primary speakers. Yeah. And from my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong somebody, but if I'm understanding this right, he is a paid speaker from sovereign nations.

55:17

So you're donating money as a Christian, donating money to a Christian organization who's in turn paying

55:25

James Lindsay and who knows who else to be speakers for them.

55:32

I find that personally, I find that appalling. When they originally came out with their Trojan horse videos, the four guys sitting around a table, unless you knew what you're watching or were careful to listen, there was an atheist on that panel.

55:45

And that was James Lindsay. Anybody who watched those videos just kind of in the background or a podcast or doing something else never would have known that there was an atheist on that panel.

55:56

Wow. And so, yeah, that's one big issue I have with it.

56:02

So, okay, we're gonna move on here. So, okay, again, point number four, why have so many churches been in the dark on these issues?

56:12

Well, we talked about small churches can't send people to convention. That's a big issue. And the other one is pastors are concentrating on the local congregation.

56:19

Yeah. Okay, point number five, which is probably going to be the biggest point of it all today is what are the main issues, right?

56:31

So we've laid out, I believe, a really good understanding for people now as to why the

56:37

SBC people are so proud of the historically, because this is the push. People don't want to leave the

56:43

SBC because there has been a great historical track record to the SBC. Point number two, that there has been a lot of benefits to being part of the

56:51

SBC historically. And then that's as our backdrop, but now we're getting into point three, what are the problems

56:57

SBC today as a high level? Point number four, why the church has been in the dark on this issue, so many of them.

57:03

And now number five, what are actually the main issues today?

57:09

So I'm going to go a little out of order. I hope that's okay on our sheets that we put together.

57:15

The first one I want to hit is this LGBTQ movement. You know, again,

57:20

I'm a firm believer that churches are going to be harmed big time when the hate speech laws come into play.

57:29

You're going to have pastors that are either going to choose to say what they're supposed to say, knowing full well to be in jail, or they're not, right?

57:37

So churches either have to train the next men up or not. There's a lot of pastors, some very close to me in recent times, that I believed two and three years ago would have stood on this issue.

57:50

Good pastors, people you'd call good pastors today. Today, I don't have confidence that some of those pastors would be willing to stand on the word of God, especially in this area, if they know they potentially could be put in jail for it.

58:04

And that's a really, really scary thing to think about. So LGBTQ movement.

58:11

I wanted to bring this one up first because obviously you have a lot to say on this because a lot of your videos that you've done on First Baptist Orlando, kind of the flagship church in the area, right?

58:24

Or at least one of them, has fully gone to the LGBTQ movement.

58:30

So I'll let you go ahead and speak on that. Yeah, you know, you could kind of take it right back down to the

58:38

Baptist faith and message. In the Baptist faith and message, number one on the list is scripture.

58:46

So basically the most important thing is what we believe according to the scriptures.

58:53

Number one is scriptures. Now, we believe, like I said already, that the

58:59

Bible is God's word without any mixture of error. However, in practice,

59:08

SBC life is not united upon the scriptures, but united upon the mission.

59:15

There's a big difference here. What that means is that if we are united on the mission, then the means justify, or the ends justifies the means.

59:30

And so churches can use any type of pragmatic means and it's justified because it reaches the end goal.

59:40

Now, if you're united in the scriptures and the scriptures dictate what you do, how you do ministry, then obviously that's gonna rule out pragmatism.

59:51

It's gonna rule out LGBTQ and anything else. However, what

59:58

I've been involved in and done myself is the culture in the SBC does not lean upon the scriptures.

01:00:06

It leans upon the mission. What do we need to do to get the people in the door? What do we need to do to get them to say yes to Jesus?

01:00:15

What do we need to do to get people in the Baptistry? What do we need to do to get the numbers, get the numbers, the idol is the numbers.

01:00:25

And so the problem, go ahead. Yeah, and that's what I wanna make sure we really nailed here, right?

01:00:31

Is that the mission in general in the SBC and why you think it has gone woke in general is because their mission is not the same mission of the

01:00:40

Bible, right? The mission of the Bible is that we all have a mission field. We all have the ministry reconciliation.

01:00:47

Every one of us is called to go out and share the gospel with every creature we come across for the purposes of God saving them, right?

01:00:55

And the church's mission inside, there's a lot of functions of the church. But when it comes to the outside, the church's main mission is to take

01:01:05

God's word and God's gospel to the world, right? So that should be the mission of the

01:01:10

SBC. I suspect at one time that was the mission of the SBC. But what you're saying is that the mission has completely changed from taking people, equipping them, equipping the saints to go out and do the work of the ministry.

01:01:24

Instead, it's about using worldly and pragmatic means in order to do nothing but boost numbers of people that attend the church, the money that flows in and baptisms.

01:01:36

Yeah, exactly. So basically LGBTQ is just a spark from the flame.

01:01:43

The main issue is the fact that we are united upon the mission and not the scriptures.

01:01:50

And so what's missing in the Baptist faith and message is a core doctrine. It's called the doctrine of sufficiency.

01:01:57

And if you believe that the word of God is the word of God, then you must go a step farther and say, yes,

01:02:03

I believe it, but I also believe that it is sufficient for salvation, that it is sufficient for life and godliness.

01:02:11

And what it says, I not only believe it, but I do it. It is sufficient for my life.

01:02:16

And let me put it to you this way, in a way that you'll probably never, ever forget it. Do you believe that your wife is sufficient for your marriage or do you need another?

01:02:35

So you don't have to answer that. I know the answer is yes, because Julie is wonderful. I mean, you're married, you believe the

01:02:40

Bible, but of course, okay, I guess my mind went to, well, we need Christ in the marriage, but yes, yes.

01:02:47

Otherwise she is completely sufficient, right? Your spouse is sufficient. Yes, you need no other, right?

01:02:54

But that's not how we practice or have practiced historically according to our missions, our ministries.

01:03:05

And so we've taken on another spouse or another means of ministry other than the prescribed ways in the

01:03:13

Bible. And when you do that, you go outside of the Bible to try and help

01:03:19

God's word or help God achieve the mission. And so you're given to pragmatism.

01:03:25

Southern Baptist life has been conditioned to pragmatism. And so we wanna do a circus to try and attract people with cotton candy and hot dogs and popcorn and movies, get them to the church, bait and switch them.

01:03:41

Oh, you know, we're really about dying to ourself and being crucified Christians here. We're not all about fun and games, but we wanna attract you with that.

01:03:49

And so the pragmatism that has been being practiced for decades in the name of Jesus has conditioned the church to take what the world has been doing and craving and bring it into the church.

01:04:02

Now the world's crave, just go to Target and you'll see, the world's crave is affirming the

01:04:10

LGBTQ movement. And so your original question, now we're kind of circling around, I'm giving you the very root of how we've gotten to where we are.

01:04:19

How is affirming LGBTQ so predominant in the SBC? It's because the

01:04:26

SBC has been conditioned to using pragmatic means of bringing in the world's craves and desires into the church as a way to win the world.

01:04:36

And James 4 .4 is very clear, partnership with the world is hostility towards God. And so God is very displeased with this movement, with all of these different means.

01:04:47

And so we either believe that the word is sufficient and we're gonna do fellowship with the brethren, communion, teaching the apostle's word, prayer, giving, these are the main ingredients for a church and it is sufficient.

01:05:03

Preaching the word is enough to save a soul. Doing ecclesiology according to the word is sufficient.

01:05:11

We don't need the world's ways. We don't need to partner with the world. We don't have to do all of these extra things, which leads to a lot of other problems.

01:05:20

Yeah, no, that's good stuff. So the analogy used about the spouse is great.

01:05:27

And I wanna kind of bring that around too now, because one of the issues that has been in the church, played in the church for a long time and it's happened many times in the past is this idea of sufficiency, right?

01:05:38

So somebody can tell you, I believe what the Bible says, I believe every word of the

01:05:43

Bible. And then at the same point, they add to it because while they believe it's all true, they don't believe in the sufficiency of it, that that's all that you actually need.

01:05:55

And that's really the point you're trying to make is that, so like in your Baptist faith of message, I know one of the points you brought out,

01:06:01

I think during the conference, if I'm not mistaken, is that you have a Baptist faith of message that has a really good message in it, but people can get skirt around the sufficiency issue with the

01:06:10

Baptist faith message. Imagine you're a chicken farmer and your coop is missing one of the panels.

01:06:18

That's like the doctrine of sufficiency is missing from the Baptist faith and message. All of a sudden predators can come in and eat your chickens and the chickens can get out.

01:06:27

The whole cage is useless without a major section of it.

01:06:33

And so that is how Satan has shot the gap in the Southern Baptist life is because the doctrine of sufficiency has not been capitalized on.

01:06:43

We do believe the Bible and we will fight until our death that God's word is

01:06:51

God's word. And we believe it's no mixture of it. Yeah, no, that's right.

01:07:06

So, okay, let's, okay, I gotta put that up.

01:07:11

Melissa Owens, answer wisely, Anthony. I thought I answered pretty wisely, but yes, that's right.

01:07:18

Cause she's probably watching right now, so. Yeah. Okay, so LGBTQ, let's talk about this a little bit further because this is the single issue that has waltzed its way in the church.

01:07:32

I mean, we saw it destroy Episcopalian church years ago between that and women pastors.

01:07:40

I gotta tell you a story on that. Please do. So I had a friend pay for me to go to a pastor's conference by John Piper in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

01:07:50

And so when I was there, I saw a newspaper article of the fact of the

01:07:56

Lutheran church across the street from the convention center there in Minneapolis was having the national meeting and they voted for the

01:08:07

Lutheran diocese to accept gay clergy. And at that meeting, a tornado went up the freeway, came down main street and didn't touch a thing, went right down a busy highway and right through a downtown setting and didn't touch a thing, took a drastic turn and ripped the cross off of the

01:08:29

Lutheran church. The hour they voted for gay clergy and the front cover of the

01:08:36

Minneapolis news covered it. And John Piper preached a sermon on it and included that information in there.

01:08:42

Wow. And how many years ago is this? Oh man, I could only guess. Oh, that is wild.

01:08:49

Yeah. So it is an issue. Do you? Yeah, it's a huge issue. Certainly.

01:08:55

That's a great story. So Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, these part of the

01:09:02

Lutherans, other denominations have lottered in. A lot of independent churches or non -dominant churches have allotted in.

01:09:10

And now the last good denomination has obviously embraced it hook, line and sinker for several years now.

01:09:18

Some of it's secretive years and others now wide in the open. So to kind of to your point there, so Florida leads the nation in baptisms in the

01:09:30

SBC. And in Florida, first Baptist Orlando is a leader of baptisms, not only in Florida, but in the

01:09:37

SBC. And so now with, if you've seen some of the videos

01:09:44

I've done with Justin Peters, we've shown evidence of not only a married homosexual being baptized.

01:09:53

So he has not repented of his lifestyle, but yet he has professed and been baptized at first Baptist Orlando.

01:10:03

But now since the videos, he is now baptizing. So he's helping, not only greeting, not only wearing a first Baptist t -shirt, but he's baptizing.

01:10:17

And then beyond that now, he is praying with those who need counsel after the messages.

01:10:26

So this is being embraced. I've gotten some pushback by calling first Baptist Orlando one of the flagship churches, but just by way of evidence, that is the facts there.

01:10:39

Just saying they're not our example, but for the SBC, they would be being an example.

01:10:45

And for example, again, again, David Youth was the president of the Florida Baptist or the

01:10:51

Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference that was supposed to be here in Orlando some years ago, but it was canceled due to COVID.

01:10:59

And he invited David Hughes from Church of the Glades to be a keynote speaker for the

01:11:08

Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference. So the Church of the Glades, if you watch their

01:11:13

YouTube messages, your conscience will be violated because their idea of worship is so secular.

01:11:21

The worst SBC church, I believe. One of the worst. So nevertheless, but David Youth invited the pastor of the

01:11:28

Church of the Glades, David Hughes to speak as an example to all the pastors in the

01:11:34

Southern Baptist Convention. So my point is this, not only are these gross things being tolerated in the

01:11:42

SBC, they're being celebrated and put on display as examples. And anybody who wants to go see this, just go to YouTube and after the show and type in Church of the

01:11:54

Glades and see all the videos that come up about their so -called worship sets.

01:12:00

And I gotta be honest with you. I mean, it looks like a top -notch concert that you go to, you pay several hundred dollars to.

01:12:08

They're phenomenal singers, phenomenal actors, phenomenal dancers, but none of it belongs on a church stage.

01:12:17

So when I did the unfortunate, necessary work of watching it myself,

01:12:26

I thought, okay, I'll watch five or 10 minutes. And I airplayed it to our television.

01:12:31

My wife came downstairs and scorned me. What are you watching? And I felt so guilty.

01:12:38

I'm like, I'm watching church. That's not a church. What am I doing?

01:12:44

It's that bad. Wow. Well, I mean, for my talk on Monday at the conference,

01:12:52

I put up their Stairway to Heaven performance. I think 18 seconds of it, which look, if you want worldly entertainment, that was spectacularly done.

01:13:04

Yeah, and I must say that my wife rightfully gave me the disdain for watching that because when you go onto Church of the

01:13:11

Glades' website and look at their YouTube channel, I mean, you have got immodest women doing provocative moves.

01:13:18

It will violate your conscience. Yeah, that's the worst part. It kind of reminds me when,

01:13:23

I warned you about First Baptist Orlando for the first time. So in 2018, when we came down, that first time met you guys.

01:13:31

And I remember the church was undergoing some construction, so you didn't have a Christmas Eve service.

01:13:37

And so we wanted to go to one. So my wife's son and I were like, okay, well, we're gonna drive up to R .C. Sproul's church and go see, got

01:13:43

Christmas Eve up there. The traffic was horrible. So we're like, we're never gonna make it on time.

01:13:48

So I look at my phone, I'm like, what's the nearest church we can go to? And I'm like, First Baptist Orlando. I'm like, okay, it says

01:13:53

Baptist, gotta be good. And so we pull off and then go in. And before anybody knew

01:14:00

First Baptist Orlando was doing all this stuff, you could walk into a place and kind of sniff out homosexuality happening.

01:14:09

You know, like Target just kind of smells like that when you go in, so to speak. And you just, it's hard to explain, but there's a way that things, the colors and the different things, the way they are, the people walking through, you can tell the environment, right?

01:14:25

Starbucks is very much like that. I got that feeling at First Baptist Orlando, but whatever, we went in, you know, huge, huge auditorium.

01:14:35

They give you all a candle to light up and they do a service. And I'll never forget, there was like an hour of music,

01:14:41

Christmas music. There were females that were provocatively dressed in different spots, which we just bothered to not look at.

01:14:48

At one point during the service, the drummer was hooked up and he's doing a solo.

01:14:54

He's being levitated in the air, like, oh, it's gotta be 20 feet up. Cause you know, it's a huge cathedral ceiling.

01:15:01

Way up in the air doing a solo with a spotlight only on him. And you know, the pastor comes out and he gave a message that had no gospel, no sin in it at all.

01:15:11

Barely talked about Jesus. I mean, it was really a crazy, crazy thing. So, you know,

01:15:17

I got to see it firsthand at First Baptist Orlando with what looked to be homosexuality starting.

01:15:23

People that you could tell were homosexual that were there. But I'm like, ah, Christmas Eve, right? Families are gonna bring their family members to hopefully get saved, right?

01:15:30

Hear a message. And obviously we walked out really disappointed and there was a different agenda going on there this entire time.

01:15:37

You know, the singing Christmas trees has historically been a very good event underneath the leadership of Jim Henry.

01:15:45

But obviously over a decade ago, when David Youth took over, it has been a slow decline.

01:15:51

And that decline now is a steep decline. And the singing Christmas trees for Christmas is no longer what it once was.

01:15:59

It is a elaborate light show. And at the end, you won't hear the gospel.

01:16:08

You'll hear about David Youth. He'll tell you stories about himself. I was very disappointed. I took one of my daughters one time and sat up in the balcony.

01:16:17

And at the end, when you see thousands of people, you know, Christians call those who come to Christmas only and Easter only,

01:16:25

Christers, you know. Thousands of Christers that would come to church during Christmas.

01:16:31

And they were not given the authentic gospel. And my little nine -year -old daughter,

01:16:38

Alyssa picked up on that. And that was rather great for me to hear her say that, but so sad for the fact that a pastor who is supposed to be a preacher of the gospel not give the gospel when you have thousands of people who do not regularly attend church in front of him.

01:17:00

That's right. So obviously, as we're still on this topic, LGBTQ movement within the

01:17:06

SBC as a main issue, just to be really clear as, you know, homosexuality is an abominable sin.

01:17:14

It's mentioned as a sin in both the Old Testament and New Testaments. Now, I don't even use abominable sin as my main issue when

01:17:21

I'm doing my speaking and preaching. I actually look at Romans one where it calls it an unnatural act.

01:17:30

And so when we talk about natural law, you know, we have two eyes.

01:17:36

We have, I mean, there's natural law that's out there, right? So the way that God's designed us, the laws of nature that are in place in terms of laws of chemistry and physics and mathematics and whatnot, the grand design of nature, as I will half jokingly say, as I'm preaching, you don't watch the

01:17:55

Nature Channel and see a male lion jumping on another male lion. You don't look at the neighborhood dog chasing around other male dogs, other than to chase them away from the female they're trying to get, right?

01:18:10

You don't see homosexuality within the animal kingdom. It's not natural.

01:18:17

It's also not natural among human beings. I've also have never seen a male cow go and put lipstick on him and dress in dresses and pretend to be a girl.

01:18:29

I don't see dogs doing this. I don't see cats, right? Like this just doesn't happen in nature.

01:18:35

So it goes to show that this is sin and then mental illness after that, when we talk about homosexuality within the

01:18:45

Christian church, I mean, within people in general, but especially the church that ought to know better. So this isn't just a first Baptist Orlando thing, right?

01:18:53

I mean, this is becoming pretty widespread, at least among the, what they would call elite members of the

01:19:00

SBC, right? The guys that have influenced today, the J .D. Greer's, the Beth Moore's and others have all capitulated to homosexuality.

01:19:09

Yeah, even years ago, I was a children's pastor for Barry Rice, who was the youth pastor for Jerry Falwell.

01:19:19

And as I was a children's pastor for Go Church, a greater Orlando church over in Lake Nona, he put on the list to be baptized a lesbian couple.

01:19:32

And so I called a meeting with him and I said, what's this?

01:19:38

And we talked it through and I quoted scripture and he said, love.

01:19:44

I quoted scripture and he said, open your heart. I quoted scripture and he said, listen, Disney is big in this area.

01:19:51

We need to be able to be more inviting and just give me the runaround.

01:19:57

And so I left that meeting knowing that I wouldn't be there because I needed to resign unless this was changed.

01:20:04

So in the course of time, I worked it out and ended up resigning. In that same week, other pastors also came running up to me and said,

01:20:15

I'd been praying with my wife, we were gonna resign. And all I said to them was, you better do what you've committed to God to do.

01:20:23

And so a bunch of us resigned in the same week and that pastor still did not get the message.

01:20:30

It was sad. So nevertheless, that is the power of pragmatism.

01:20:35

When you are given to try and appease the world and bring the world's ways into the church, it's prostituting the church.

01:20:43

You are using the church to make money or to brag on numbers or to build the bigness.

01:20:50

You're using God's precious holy church for manmade reasoning.

01:20:57

It's so gross. So nevertheless, it's rampant. And that goes back years in my life.

01:21:02

I've been standing upon righteousness, my wife and I for a long, long time. And it comes at a high cost.

01:21:09

Comes at a huge cost, that's right. So LGBTQ is really throughout the SBC, and it's been there for a long time.

01:21:16

It's just been much more front and center in the last three, four, five years now. And Phil Johnson addressed this during the

01:21:23

Q &A. And he said that he views LGBTQ movement to be far worse than anything else in the social justice movement.

01:21:31

Why? Because this is a sign of a culture or a nation that's given over to their sin, to a debased mind.

01:21:38

And so for all those reasons, that is what I would call the number one main issue in the SBC today.

01:21:44

And that is what our church, Buehler Baptist Church, decided years ago was the dividing line for us.

01:21:51

If we saw evidence of the Southern Baptist Convention not correcting these things, but accepting these things, then it would be at that point to where we would call a vote.

01:22:01

And we did that. We said, okay, our messengers have gone to the Southern Baptist Annual Convention two years in a row,

01:22:08

Nashville and Anaheim. And we've prayed, we've tried, and we've seen the exact opposite of what we asked

01:22:17

God for. Now, obviously when God's given this over, you're like, okay, well, it's time to jump ship.

01:22:24

So we gave our church family the opportunity to testify. And for a three and a half hour business meeting, we had nothing but testimonies such as we've been

01:22:37

Southern Baptist our entire life. We've given our lives to our church and our convention, and we love our blessed convention.

01:22:46

But if the Southern Baptist Convention has left the Bible, then they have left us and we have no choice.

01:22:51

We cannot send our missions money and support this direction. And so nevertheless, through many tears and many testimonies, our church voted unanimously.

01:23:03

And now I must say that it was a process of a couple years of slowly putting these issues before the people and letting them comprehend them and think about them, which there's another 50 issues to talk through if we have enough time tonight.

01:23:18

Well, we're gonna have enough time. We've committed to this now. So you wanna be able to share one video with everybody.

01:23:25

So yeah, no, in, yeah, we've probably, we've probably beat this one down enough, but that's a main issue in the

01:23:33

SBC right now. So let's talk about another huge one. And you kind of alluded to this a little bit before, so you probably don't speak on it as much, but what about pragmatism?

01:23:44

Yeah, so pragmatism is whatever works, whatever you think will work, let's do that.

01:23:51

You don't have a standard, which is the scriptures. You're simply going to say, okay, what's the goal?

01:23:57

What can we do? And that's fine in business and in making money and providing for your family. Well, how can you sell the most hotdogs?

01:24:04

Whatever works, that's fine. Don't break the law, you know, whatever. Well, it's kind of the same thing, but that's, we can't break

01:24:11

God's law. We must handle the church accordingly, which is not happening.

01:24:18

So pragmatism is how all of our ministries have begun to erode towards.

01:24:26

So VBS is no longer teaching the children about Jesus and missions and such like that.

01:24:32

It has become a numbers game, a braggadocious game, and a, you know, throw candy at the kids in the crowd, get them excited, raise your hand if you want to accept

01:24:42

Jesus, go get them baptized, and then tell a parent that your kid got saved and baptized today.

01:24:50

Are you kidding me? So nevertheless, VBS has eroded into that numbers game.

01:24:56

And the same thing with Sunday school, same thing over and over and over again. Pragmatism has strangled all of the biblical ministries.

01:25:04

And now by and large, most churches don't even really know how to read the scriptures and just do exactly what the word says.

01:25:15

You know, it's so amazing when sheep are accustomed to shallow topical preaching, they don't even know they're malnourished until they go to a better diet and they see and hear and sense exegetical word by word, verse by verse preaching.

01:25:36

And they're like, I did not even know that of what I was missing out on. It's absolutely amazing.

01:25:42

And so the conditioning, the frog in the pan illustration, pragmatism has made it to where most can't even see what's wrong with their churches.

01:25:52

And of course, you know, the issue with pragmatism is that it's not just certain individual churches doing this, right?

01:25:59

I mean, this is really coming from the top down. It's culture. Yeah, it's the culture in the SBC. So how many of the last leaders or presidents of the

01:26:08

SBC? I'll give you an example. Fire truck baptisms. Heard of that?

01:26:15

No. All right. This'll be good. Oh man. So thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent at a large church to make baptisms, lights, camera action celebrates.

01:26:30

So they took up an entire children's ministry and made it to where when a child gets baptized, the lights go off and it's all kinds of celebrations.

01:26:40

It's wild and crazy. Well, that wasn't enough. So the church bought a fire truck and made it to where there was water in the back like a baptistry and went into neighborhoods and did the, you know, attractional, you know, all the games, all the fun, all the action.

01:26:57

And they were baptizing children in the back of a fire truck in communities, in neighborhoods.

01:27:03

As they're just driving down the street. Just drop to anybody. Come do it. Like an ice cream truck right here. Come have your ice cream, get baptized.

01:27:09

Yeah. And so that's, it's kind of like what First Baptist Orlando does with baptisms at the beach.

01:27:15

And so they'll take a few hundred people to the beach and whoever's walking up and down the beach, they make it a popular thing to do.

01:27:22

It's the same thing on campus at First Baptist Orlando. The rock atmosphere is

01:27:28

Disney -esque. It's so beautiful. The campus is amazing there. And it's kind of like made into a

01:27:35

DJ atmosphere. And it's, it's invitive. It's fun. It's catchy. It's the, it's the hip thing to do.

01:27:40

It's the popular thing to do. Don't you want to be with the crowd? Don't you want to have friends? Don't you want to be in the end crowd?

01:27:46

The type thing. That's what it's made into. It's made into the popular, celebrative thing. It's no longer dying into yourself and what baptism really means, you know, going into a casket or to, you know, death to yourself and coming up in newness of life.

01:27:59

Nevertheless, I rest my case. Pragmatism has manifested itself in all kinds of different ways.

01:28:06

And the important thing is, is that this has been part of the culture of the SBC. It's part of the culture so that one of the reasons why people should leave the

01:28:15

SBC is because of the pragmatism that's everywhere. And this really goes back to the sufficiency issue earlier, right?

01:28:21

Do you believe in the power of God's word to save, to change, to affect people?

01:28:27

Or do you believe you have to use worldly methods to do it? Yeah. Now let's take those extreme examples and boil it down to the local church level.

01:28:35

Okay. You know, you can take in a VBS atmosphere and make these little cars out of wood and you can do lose little races down the race track.

01:28:44

And it is an organizational nightmare when you have a few hundred kids show up to a small church for these exciting things.

01:28:52

What it does is it burns out your volunteers in doing things that are not scriptural ministries for the sake of trying to do like, perhaps friendship evangelism.

01:29:05

If they just like us, if we could just become friends with them, then maybe they'll come and give

01:29:10

Jesus a chance. See, that is not leaning upon the sufficiency of the gospel.

01:29:16

They're not believing in Romans one, where it says it's the power of the gospel and salvation. Romans one 16.

01:29:23

And so it's simply presenting the gospel and letting the word do the work, planting those gospel seeds, being authentic and having your members do scriptural ministries.

01:29:35

See, pragmatism burns them out. And they're so tired of doing all of this stuff, this stuff is busy work and they're exhausted.

01:29:44

And at the end of the day, if you are producing what would be a false convert, that false convert would maybe make a profession, but they never darken the doors of the church again.

01:29:54

So they feel like their efforts are null and void. And so there's no results there. There's no lasting fruit.

01:30:00

You see how pragmatism is really the death grip right now. Well, you know, you think about that. How many hours a week of practice is

01:30:08

Church of the Glades putting in to put on those performances every week? I mean, that's many, many hours to do that.

01:30:17

Get the choreography right, music right, everything each and every week.

01:30:22

So imagine if they just took half that time, every one of the people that did that and just went out to the streets to go share the gospel for a day.

01:30:29

Yep, or disciple their members. Or disciple. It's evangelism and discipleship is enough.

01:30:36

And that's another big thing. The Great Commission has been misinterpreted by and large in Southern Baptist life and culture.

01:30:45

The emphasis has been put on the first word, go, as if it is the main verb. The main verb is make.

01:30:52

So go is evangelistic and make is discipleship oriented. Go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them all that I've commanded you.

01:31:01

And so those four emphasis there are wrapped around make. You've got helping verbs, go, baptize, teach, but the main verb is make.

01:31:11

But we have in practice as Southern Baptists placed all of the emphasis on go.

01:31:18

And so it's the drop and go, or it's the doing, the doing, the doing, to the point to where it has become humanitarian like work, which is no better than a

01:31:28

Catholic who believes that their service helps them get to Christ or to heaven. Now that's right. So that's good.

01:31:35

Okay, so we're still on point number five. What are the main issues today? We talked about pragmatism, LGBTQ. How about women pastors and leaders?

01:31:43

You know, everybody turned a blind eye when Rick Warren ordained women.

01:31:49

And nobody believed me when I said that First Baptist Orlando had women preachers coming regularly, even though I would go to the website of First Baptist Orlando and forward the

01:32:00

Sunday morning message. I don't even think they watched it. I was floored.

01:32:06

But now there is a couple that has taken over Saddleback and they are co -pastoring

01:32:12

Saddleback. Church plants have been proven over and over and over from the North American Mission Board to be being planted by co -pastoring men and women, you know, married couples.

01:32:23

The list goes on and on and on. So the preaching that is going on from women in our

01:32:29

Southern Baptist churches has been going on for a long time. And it's a huge issue.

01:32:37

It violates scripture. God doesn't need to repeat himself. It's in his word,

01:32:43

I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man. That's what the word says.

01:32:48

And so we have to stick to it. Otherwise, we're a bunch of liberals. And if you don't stand for the word of God and you permit it, then you're guilty of doing it as well.

01:32:57

We would be participating in that as Southern Baptists if we did not call it out. And to the point to where Titus 1 .9

01:33:04

says that a qualification for an elder, for a bishop, for a pastor is not only to be able to preach and teach sound doctrine, but to refute those who contradict it.

01:33:15

And so for all the pastors who tolerate these things, I would say to you, take a close look at Titus 1 .9

01:33:22

because your qualification is coming into question. Yep, that's right. And the thing is it probably didn't even start with the preaching, right?

01:33:31

It was SBC and other churches. It was when they allowed a female to get up and give a prayer to the entire congregation.

01:33:38

Or they, in worship, they allow... At the old church we used to go to, had a female that was leading the music.

01:33:49

Now, granted, for those of you who know my story, I got saved later in life. After meeting

01:33:55

Julie, we got married. We were going to her church. And I knew pretty quickly in reading the scriptures that something was wonky.

01:34:03

A lot of things were wonky. It took me two years to teach her and train her before she was ready to leave.

01:34:09

But that church kept putting females front and center for the music. I'm not necessarily against females on the stage as part of a worship team.

01:34:20

I'm not against that. I am against it though, if it appears one of them's leading. If they're front and center rather than the male being there or if they're the ones who are speaking in between the songs, that's where the lines are starting to get blurred and shows women more in leadership type roles.

01:34:45

And it naturally leads to eventually women preaching and doing other things we're not called to do within the church.

01:34:51

I hired a ministry coordinator one year and I fully explained my expectations.

01:35:01

So we wanted a praise team. And yeah, she can be part of the praise team. But when it comes to developing a children's ministry, youth ministry and all these things, which we've abandoned all of that and gone to a family discipleship model now anyway,

01:35:15

I knew on the first Sunday when that ministry coordinator whom

01:35:22

I'd hired took the microphone, stepped forward and started leading in worship and welcome out that I was in trouble.

01:35:29

Like, oh boy, this is not going to end well. And it was a year before we could get that re -corrected.

01:35:37

I say that, you know, ashamedly, but transparently to say that our culture in the

01:35:45

Southern Methodist Convention allows for those types of mistakes. And we're not standing strong upon the word of God.

01:35:52

And so now seeing that type of damage that it does to church and to women, we now see that we have to stand clearly.

01:36:00

I'm so proud of my wife. She taught at the conferences last weekend about how feminism has been creeping into the church and is changing the culture.

01:36:10

And now women are taking over and men are taking second seat. Men are not leading their families spiritually.

01:36:15

They're not leading their wives and their children. Yep, that's right. Melissa put a comment here and said, some churches even allow females to read the scriptures over the congregation.

01:36:25

You're absolutely right. That's one of the things I didn't mention, but that has been happening. It's funny,

01:36:31

I secretly want to listen to what your wife said, and I'm not sure how to listen to it biblically.

01:36:37

It wasn't recorded. It wasn't recorded. I know my wife was in there, but I'm sure your wife did a wonderful job with that.

01:36:45

So Andrew had a couple of ladies on, oh, maybe a month and a half ago talking about feminism.

01:36:51

I would love to get more in depth and your wife would probably be one of them that we should bring on to the show and just talk through this for everybody.

01:36:59

She'd probably tell you no, so you'll have to kind of co -horse her and do any of it somehow. So what

01:37:04

I'll do is I'll just have you schedule her on Apologetics Live and say, oh honey, by the way, you're gonna be on this Thursday night just like you did for the conference.

01:37:12

His wife didn't want to teach at the conference either. So what he did is he put his wife's name and picture on the conference flyer, printed out thousands of copies, and then she just kind of roped into it.

01:37:23

But now she is sold out and knows that the Lord wants her to do it. And I'm so proud of her.

01:37:29

Absolutely, and you should be. So I know she did a great job as I heard it from the other ladies that heard it.

01:37:34

So we talked about pragmatism, talked about women pastors and leaders, unaccounted money.

01:37:41

So we kind of addressed that earlier, but I want to just repeat this real quick. You said there are many millions of dollars each year that go unaccounted for.

01:37:50

Is that right? Oh yeah, we were just looking at one year, 75 million in the North American Mission Board alone.

01:37:57

75 million in just the North American Mission Board. In just one line item in the

01:38:03

North American Mission Board, church planting. Oh, wow. Yeah.

01:38:08

Which means that there could very well be hundreds of millions of dollars each year that are missing off the books.

01:38:18

No idea where it's at. Yeah, it's an amazing amount of money when it comes to the

01:38:25

Southern Baptist Convention. You know, the message that I'd like for you to put in the show notes later is the truth about the

01:38:32

SBC that I shared with our church on June 26th, 2022.

01:38:39

And in that, I started off with saying the SBC is the world's largest Protestant denomination. It originated in 1845, has nearly 50 ,000 churches with nearly 14 million members and averages 15 to $20 million a month in cooperative program giving.

01:38:57

Those numbers are, and it's been in decline for some time and here's the hope that I perceive the

01:39:06

Southern Baptist Convention has because the numbers are declining so rapidly. A lot of churches are closing and a lot of people are leaving the

01:39:15

Southern Baptist Convention. So how do you keep this big tent big? How do you keep the money coming in?

01:39:22

How do you correct this? Well, I perceive that the hope is in planting more churches.

01:39:31

And so this desperate attempt to plant more churches, to reach more people has become so desperate that they're dumping money into church planting.

01:39:40

And if some young guys got a wife, they look like church planting material, boom, you know, you're in.

01:39:49

So nevertheless, the pragmatism that's expected upon church planters is heavy.

01:39:55

The woke agenda and preaching towards social justice means is an expectation as well.

01:40:03

And during COVID, you know, one church planter did a documentary on this, his name escapes me, but he applied before COVID.

01:40:11

And then when everything got shut down, he was forced to go through the process again and the process had changed.

01:40:20

And there were woke questions as expectation to become a church planter for the

01:40:25

North American Admissions Board. So this is going in that direction, even down to the qualifications for church planters.

01:40:35

Yeah. Wow. So I don't know if everyone just caught that. That's, so in order to be able to church plant.

01:40:43

Gotta be woke. You gotta be woke and you gotta be pragmatic. Otherwise you aren't getting the money anyway. Which is, which isn't.

01:40:49

So they're propagating this through the SBC with all the money that faithful churches are giving for the cooperative program.

01:40:58

So your wife actually just said this, he knows how to rope me in. So yeah,

01:41:03

I'm gonna be getting your picture here real soon at Christie and you're gonna be on an Apologetics Live episode and I'll, what should

01:41:09

I tell her? Like on Monday before the Thursday or? Probably, okay. That's what we're gonna do. So good,

01:41:16

I'm gonna, I'll be excited for that show. Okay, point number five. What are the main issues today?

01:41:21

We're still on this. Talked about pragmatism, LGBTQ, women passionate leaders, unaccounted money.

01:41:30

Now let's talk about the plagiarism scandal. Oh, by Ed Linton?

01:41:35

By Ed Linton. Oh man. You know, that's a running joke. But yeah, that was so sad.

01:41:43

It, you know, it's been mentioned several times already that if we as seminary students were to have plagiarized a sentence, we'd be out.

01:41:53

We would not get our degree. We'd be thrown out on our head. But yet the Southern Baptist Convention president can plagiarize over a hundred sermons and even plagiarize gross immorality, like saying homosexuality is not a sin.

01:42:11

This is not only allowed, but it's defended. So, and it's not only defended, it's celebrated.

01:42:20

Let me explain. So Ed Linton plagiarized a ton of sermons. It was all, and by the way, he was co -pastoring the church with his wife before he was a candidate as an

01:42:30

SBC president. And he cleaned all of that up along with his heretical view of the Trinity.

01:42:35

He cleaned all of that up on his website as he was becoming a candidate to be an SBC president.

01:42:41

So those are lies in themselves. And nevertheless. So he was defended by the

01:42:51

SBC elites. Okay, they circled the wagons around him and they justified it, okay?

01:43:00

Not only did they justify it, but they celebrated him by doing what they always do and taking the

01:43:06

SBC president and putting him on display in the chapels of every Southern Baptist seminary.

01:43:14

And so throughout the course of his first year, he was preaching in every seminary chapel of the

01:43:21

Southern Baptist Convention. Now you take the six seminaries of 40 ,000 students, now they have all seen an example of a lying plagiarist who equates his wife as a preaching co -pastor that can get away with justifying homosexuality.

01:43:41

And what do you say to that? Except for like, that's flabbergasting. I don't even know how you can stack so many errors and still be considered a qualified pastor in the eyes of the average

01:43:55

Southern Baptist person in the pew, except for the fact that they have not been studying their

01:44:01

Bibles for themselves. They have not been receiving a good exegetical diet. They don't know the word and they don't know to hold them accountable.

01:44:11

They don't know that the Bible is saying that wolves look like sheep because they have sheep's clothing.

01:44:17

What else can you say except for the bad guys look like the good guys.

01:44:25

Jesus said many false prophets will come. He never said that we have many good prophets. These things are so obvious.

01:44:32

So the plagiarism is wrapped up in a big mess of other issues as well. And that, in my opinion, was the writing on the wall for Southern Baptist people.

01:44:44

If you can't see that, you're very, very blinded. No, that's right.

01:44:49

So it wasn't just the plagiarism and all the errors. It was the fact that he was still celebrated.

01:44:55

They refused to remove him. They said there was no way to do it. They refused to censure him. They refused to call him to repentance.

01:45:02

And then they continued to put him into pulpits around the country in churches as well as into the chapels and seminaries.

01:45:09

So yeah, I mean, when a denomination's leaders are willing to allow rank heresy and errors and a breaking of one of the

01:45:19

Ten Commandments, thou shall not steal with a plagiarism, what does that go to say about the entire organization at that point?

01:45:26

In Proverbs chapter six, lying is in the middle of those things, the six things that the Lord hates. That's right.

01:45:32

Now I will say, I remember you texting me when Ed Litton was up and that there was a heretical, because his statement was not pulled down until during the convention or maybe a day after he became president.

01:45:45

So I remember going and looking at it. And because I enjoy doing my research, I just typed in a line from his, when

01:45:52

I went to his website, found that area. I typed, or I copied that line. I pasted it into a

01:45:59

Google search bar. And lo and behold, there were hundreds of churches that came up. So what

01:46:04

I found is that his doctrinal statements that he had for his church, he probably didn't even know it was up there.

01:46:10

I think to be fair, he probably knows the Trinity, but it was on the statement that was circulated among tons of SPC churches, which means that Ed Litton could have very well, or somebody in the church could very well have said, hey, oh, you don't have a church statement yet?

01:46:27

I'll get one for you, don't worry. We've got an SPC one right here. And that same one was copied with the same

01:46:34

Trinity error throughout. And from what I understand, they've all been taken down, but it makes me wonder, and I can't prove this.

01:46:42

I haven't taken the time to research this, and I know a lot of websites have scrubbed their content because of this, but I would not be surprised if the sermon that Ed Litton copied from,

01:46:54

I think it was J .D. Greer, right? That that sermon, as part of the

01:46:59

SPC's agenda, it would not surprise me if that sermon was given to J .D. Greer and distributed to tons of churches to give as part of -

01:47:09

The conditioning. Yep. And so Ed Litton might've been the guy that got caught, and there may have been hundreds, if not thousands of them giving the exact same sermon, because that's what the powers that be on the inside that control everything caused to happen.

01:47:24

Docent group, I guess. The docent group is who writes, but there's still a group within the SPC that has to say, guys, you're all needing to give this sermon here as we continue to push our woke and pro -homosexual agenda.

01:47:37

Yeah, there's a story. Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. Okay, let's get to the biggest pragmatist of them all, which is

01:47:48

Rick Warren. So, okay, I'm sure you could talk for hours on Rick Warren, and I'm gonna let you say whatever you think is necessary.

01:47:58

My biggest issue with him, other than what you've said already, ordaining of female pastors and his pragmatism, right?

01:48:07

Purpose -driven life is all about pragmatism. Before anybody really knew what pragmatism was,

01:48:14

Rick Warren was already pushing it. I think the biggest issue with him right now is his ecumenism, his pro -Catholic, pro -Islam, like we all worship the same

01:48:25

Old Testament God, just in different ways. Huge, huge problem, of course. And he was given all this floor time at the

01:48:32

SBC. Other pastors were shut down, microphones cut, and Rick Warren gets to go up there and give his self -righteous diatribe.

01:48:41

Yeah, other good conservative pastors waited in line, waited to be called for, but Rick Warren walks right past them all and goes behind the stage and then comes back out, and the floor is given to him.

01:48:54

So he has served all of the parliamentary rules, and then goes on to boast of planting 98 churches in California and being mentored by Billy Graham and having been preaching since before he was 20, baptizing 56 ,000 people, sent 26 ,000 on missions, 78 ,000 members in his church, having 9 ,000

01:49:20

Bible studies, planting thousands of churches and training 1 .1 million pastors and boasted that that was more than all the seminaries put together.

01:49:31

That is gross to think that one could stand up and boast upon himself and not give any glory to Jesus Christ for anything, which

01:49:44

Jesus wasn't a part of all that, but nevertheless, I think the biggest issue with that from our church's standpoint was not seeing

01:49:54

Rick Warren for who he really is, because we know who Rick Warren is. It's the unfortunate standing ovation that he got from the majority on the floor.

01:50:08

So we got 10 ,000 messengers there. And so when we looked around and I took my cell phone and Rick Warren was 20 feet away from me,

01:50:16

I videoed the whole thing, and then when everyone stood up and just kept applauding,

01:50:23

I was floored because everybody idolizes numbers.

01:50:30

He spoke right into what the SBC issue is. And when you have those type of numbers, you can get away with anything.

01:50:39

And so now Rick Warren has, in the SBC's mind, made a bridge with Muslims. You cannot partner with Muslims.

01:50:47

There's no like -mindedness there. They need the gospel. And the same thing with the

01:50:53

Catholic church. If we have Catholics, when they're in our sphere of influence, they need the gospel. They don't need a partnership.

01:50:59

They don't need to be affirmed. They need correction first. Did you hear that, Doug Wilson? Just making sure.

01:51:06

Right. So Rick Warren is also a wolf in sheep's clothing.

01:51:12

He's appeasing the masses, and it's almost like he can lull them to sleep. And the issue of the day is this.

01:51:22

So many churches that call themselves churches are not churches. So many pastors that call themselves pastors are not pastors.

01:51:29

Matt Chandler is now preaching again. He's reinstated himself. This is just an atrocity.

01:51:37

So here's the issue. Jesus said to the religious crowd, depart from me, ye doers of iniquity.

01:51:44

I never knew you. How does that happen? Someone is in church their entire life, and they fully expect to go to heaven.

01:51:53

And when they see Jesus, Jesus says, depart from me. Now, how does that happen?

01:51:58

Well, you have to see these things for what they really are. And you know how much pushback

01:52:05

I've gotten for standing strong. And brother, I'm willing to be crucified for the causes of Christ.

01:52:12

And when you call out guys like this, you're going to have people who give you pushback.

01:52:18

You're gonna have deep friends who walk away from you. But that's okay, because you know what? At the end of the day, when they reconsider and they look for themselves to find out what the truth really is, they'll come full circle.

01:52:33

And we'll be better friends later in life, hopefully sooner rather than later.

01:52:39

We'll be better friends later because they see, wow, I've got a true brother that told me the truth.

01:52:45

And he was willing to do that. And now it's better in the end. And so nevertheless,

01:52:52

I see myself as a true friend to everybody. And it's my hope that the truth would continue to win out in the end.

01:52:59

The truth always rises to the surface, hopefully before judgment for most. That's right.

01:53:04

So the last issue I have written down is for the main issues today, the last one would be social justice.

01:53:11

So, you know, I don't know how much we need to really say about that. You know, we've kind of talked about a little bit already.

01:53:17

But the fact is, is social justice, when the MLK anniversary came out four years ago, whenever it was, this was a shock to all of us, but it was not a shock to the people on the inside.

01:53:32

I mean, when Russell Moore and all the rest of those guys came out and celebrated this, that was well -planned.

01:53:38

Right. So how many years of planning potentially went into that? Meaning the social justice movement, the woke train was already here.

01:53:48

It was already infiltrated, at least all the leadership, if not others, so that when they came out, they were ready and they had the people backing them for it.

01:53:59

You know, Votie Bauckham wrote Fault Lines. And I think that's probably a very, one of the best resources that folks are not really up on what social justice is and how it is affecting the gospel.

01:54:11

It is a gospel issue. Not only is it a gospel issue, but it has been being made a gospel issue from the social justice warriors who have accused, you know, those of us who just simply preach the word of God as not preaching the whole gospel.

01:54:29

And so they would say, if we have not included elements of social justice in the gospel when we're presenting salvation and we're doing ministries, then we are not fully preaching the word of God.

01:54:45

And so this is attached, not only to all of what we would understand as the pure gospel, but also

01:54:52

Black Lives Matter, but also the LGBTQ movement, but also that's why I call it the train.

01:54:57

You know, all of these trains are connected. It's an undercurrent. And when you attach yourself to one of these pragmatic means of ministry, you attach yourself to them all.

01:55:10

And as soon as you give an inch to the liberal direction, they're never gonna be satisfied with an inch.

01:55:16

They're always gonna want another inch and then another inch. And they will scream and yell and accuse and fight for just another little inch, just for us to give another little bit of compromise.

01:55:29

And so we've got to see it for what it is. Social justice is a major issue. And I see this as one of the things that we must be able to expose.

01:55:40

And if you can't see it as a preacher, I tell people this, if your pastor is not preaching against critical race theory, social justice, and LGBTQ, then guess what?

01:55:51

He's woke. If he's not preaching against wokeness, he is going with the worldly flow.

01:55:57

And he probably don't even know it. Yep, that's right. So Robert's story says this, referring to sin as brokenness is like calling the ocean wet.

01:56:08

It totally understates its magnitude and the danger of waiting in. Absolutely.

01:56:16

Even in recent times, it's amazing to hear how many pastors that you would consider to be good pastors not willing to preach on sin anymore.

01:56:25

Not willing to call out specific sin within the congregation, even things that are right in front of them for fear of,

01:56:32

I don't know what, loss of numbers, loss of money, I don't know, loss of a job. And so, yeah, the word sin has been softened for a long time.

01:56:40

That's probably not just the SBC, that's probably churches everywhere. It's diluting the scriptures, it's diluting church, it's diluting

01:56:50

Christ to the point to where it's a different Jesus altogether. Yep, that's right. Jesus never missed an opportunity to confront sin and sinners.

01:56:59

He always brought it to the forefront. And in fact, he would walk away from crowds and leave them dumbfounded.

01:57:05

You know, you must eat my flesh and drink my blood or you have nothing to do with me. What kind of gospel invitation is that?

01:57:12

It's not an SBC one, that's for sure. No, it's not. So, okay. So we've hit number five, one of the main issues today.

01:57:20

Now, as we're kind of wrapping up the show here, these points should be a lot quicker. I know

01:57:26

Andrew was really hoping I'd stay within two hour limit, but you know, this is Anthony, we're hosting the show, so we always go to Anthony time.

01:57:33

But, so number six, why should churches stay and fight? You know, first one,

01:57:40

I've heard people say, and I've said it myself too, right? As a business person, and it's probably pragmatic,

01:57:48

I have to admit, I would hate the idea of leaving the SBC, knowing that there's billions in the coffers of liberals.

01:57:58

Yeah. You know, when you look at just the brick and mortar of just a seminary, you know,

01:58:05

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is larger than a large apartment complex.

01:58:13

It's like five apartment complexes. And it takes a long time if you were to go in the gates and park, and then just walk around the entire seminary, you'd probably be walking for 30 or 45 minutes.

01:58:30

And, you know, two tennis courts, you know, the place is gigantic. You have professors staying in a lot of houses, you have a lot,

01:58:39

I mean, it's huge. So nevertheless, just one seminary, and there's six, and you just go, well,

01:58:48

I mean, all of the headquarters, just the brick and mortar itself, the

01:58:54

Southern Baptist Convention has been being built, and the endowments, all of the money,

01:59:02

I mean, it's just, it's massive. So to replace it at this point, you know,

01:59:09

I mean, the Southern Baptist Convention is irreplaceable in itself being like that at this point.

01:59:14

You could never build another convention like this in your own lifetime. But we need to be very clear,

01:59:21

God does not need the Southern Baptist Convention. God doesn't need America, neither are mentioned in the book of Revelation.

01:59:27

We don't have to be here. Wait, but the SPC's not in there? Not at all. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

01:59:33

So why should we stay and fight? Okay, so billions sitting there, that would be what some people would say.

01:59:40

Another one would be the history of the SPC, right? And that churches have a history along this rhythm.

01:59:45

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, whenever, let's go down to the local church level. Whenever a church switches its ministry philosophy from making disciples to memorializing buildings, you're going backwards.

02:00:03

Whenever money and effort is being poured into history and you're no longer looking forward, you're going in the wrong direction.

02:00:12

That church is facing a near death if it continues to pour more money into history than it does into making disciples.

02:00:25

See, the gospel's moving forward. We have to be sharing the gospel, making disciples and such, moving forward.

02:00:34

And the same thing with SPC life. The past is not where we camp out on.

02:00:43

Now, obviously we were founded upon the word of God. It's our foundation. Christ is our only foundation.

02:00:49

I'm not talking about the word of God. I'm talking about what you're talking about, our history and who we are and that type of thing.

02:00:57

Well, I've always been a Southern Baptist or my grandfather was a Southern Baptist or all of the history.

02:01:06

And I think we're thinking too much of ourselves and placing an emphasis upon us rather than upon Christ and His word and His mission.

02:01:17

We're slaves, we're blood bought slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not about our history.

02:01:24

It's not about who we are. It's about who we are in Christ. And it's about Christ and the direction that He wants us to go.

02:01:31

And so like the parable Jesus gave, the land owner, the vineyard owner, He is the owner of the slaves.

02:01:38

The slaves do His will. It's not about slaves owning land and protecting their rights and their history.

02:01:45

That's not even a subject in a slave's mind. So it's a complete misdirection if people, if Southern Baptists look at their

02:01:57

Southern Baptist history and abandon Christianity, true

02:02:03

Christianity. Yeah, that's a great point. So, okay, so SBC history and family generational history kind of merged into one as why some people say that you should stay and fight.

02:02:16

The really, the last one that I've heard out there is that there's no other good denominations left.

02:02:21

So that's why we should stay in the SBC and fight. You don't need a denomination. Yeah, no,

02:02:27

God doesn't need a denomination. We're Christians, we're followers of the way. Read the Bible. You'll see that we're followers of the

02:02:34

Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said to Peter, follow me. Don't worry about those who are accusing you.

02:02:41

Don't worry about who's gonna betray you. You follow me, Jesus told

02:02:46

Peter in John chapter 21. And so our loyalty is not to a denomination, but to Jesus.

02:02:53

And whenever we get our eyes off of Christ, we'll start to decline and fail. And so a denomination is a man -made thing.

02:03:01

So we should not fight for these things. We should fight for the causes of Christ and put our faith in moving forward with Jesus Christ.

02:03:11

And if the denomination is going down like it is, then I would say 2

02:03:17

Corinthians 6 .17, if there's sin in the camp and it's going in the direction that it's going, like our beloved

02:03:24

Wayne Coleman, who said, it's like a ship without a rudder, heading fast in the wrong direction. It's not making a turn, right?

02:03:31

I would say 2 Corinthians 6 .17, therefore come out from among their midst and be separate.

02:03:38

So we need to vote with our feet and with our dollars. We're taking, we have taken missions in -house and are supporting missionaries personally as a

02:03:49

Baptist church. We are Southern Baptists in faith and history. That's our history.

02:03:55

That's our heritage. And that's a faith that we have. That's our confession, but we're strengthening within ourselves because we recognize the

02:04:05

Baptist faith and message is missing some things. It didn't get them all in that little bitty tiny booklet. If you look at the little booklet, you can't summarize the entire

02:04:15

Bible in one little pamphlet. So obviously something is missing and that something was a big thing.

02:04:22

Big chunk. That's right. So, okay. So before you go to our last point, we're still on point number six, why should churches stay and fight?

02:04:30

The billions that are sitting there, some people will tell you, some it's about the SPC history, some it's about the family generational history.

02:04:37

And then some others say, there will, there's no other good denominations left. You've kind of debunked all those already.

02:04:42

Are there any other reasons you've heard from people? Why churches should stay and fight?

02:04:48

Or is that pretty much an exhaustive list? I wouldn't say it's an exhaustive list. There's a ton of other reasons.

02:04:56

One other that I've heard recently is that there's no other denomination that is a bottom up polity.

02:05:04

And so the messengers, the voters control what's going on in the SPC. That's the way it's designed.

02:05:11

And so it used to work, but my answer to that is that it's been hijacked.

02:05:17

It no longer works. So we've been at two conventions in a row and seen how the entire process is hijacked.

02:05:25

It's just like the last United States presidential election. The system can be manipulated and it has been.

02:05:36

And so we have folks who are very smart. The messengers that went with me to the conventions, they're brilliant people.

02:05:46

And they even showed me some things that I didn't see from the floor than what is happening. So nevertheless, the system is hijacked.

02:05:54

No longer is the messenger's will for the convention being followed through by the elected elites who are in positions of authority to lead the committees.

02:06:06

But the committees are doing their own will. The elites are using the money for different things.

02:06:13

So nevertheless, it's not a bottom -up system anymore. It's a hijacked hierarchy. Yep, that's a great way to state it all.

02:06:22

So then last point, point number seven, and this is where you and your church, well, our church,

02:06:29

I'm a member here, where our church landed. That was before I got here.

02:06:34

But number seven, why should churches leave? So first one we have down, stand for what's right, right?

02:06:42

I think that that's the point you made throughout this entire episode, is that we need to stand for what's right.

02:06:50

Right, yep. You know, Jesus said in Matthew 10, 37, that if you love your father or your mother more than me, you're not worthy of me.

02:06:59

And so to side with friendships, to side with SBC, anything, the denomination, whatever, history, heritage, any of the reasons, above the purity of the gospel, which is even in the

02:07:16

North America Mission Board statement of beliefs and such, you must do social justice as to be part of the presenting the true gospel.

02:07:27

So make no, the gospel has been compromised. And then even in the

02:07:34

International Mission Board, in order to do church planting, according to the

02:07:42

International Mission Board way, you're going to find a community leader.

02:07:48

You're going to equip them to do what would be, in my opinion, a reader response method of doing, it's not even

02:07:55

Bible study. It's seeing what you see in the scriptures. It's not exegesis, it's eisegesis, feel good stuff.

02:08:03

Everybody wins, universalism, basically. And that missionary is to find a community leader, get a

02:08:09

Bible study going, and I use that term loosely, and then move on next week to find another one, and another one, and another one.

02:08:14

And they're counting these little Bible studies as little church plants. And these things are being added up to large numbers.

02:08:22

But at the same time, these things are dying. They're not lasting because they're unregenerate people trying to lead a

02:08:29

Bible study without any leadership from a missionary. But this is their strategy. And so it's hijacked to a pragmatic system, and this is covering over large continents.

02:08:44

So this pragmatic agenda has swept in, and now you have young graduates from our theological seminaries who are being put into positions of ministry strategists who are over the missionaries in the field who give them these boxes to check.

02:09:06

And so they have to do these things. Otherwise, the missionaries will get their assignments canceled.

02:09:13

And so the missionaries will be brought off the field on furlough. Their place of ministry will be moved somewhere else.

02:09:22

That'll be canceled. And so they lose all their friendships, all their ministry progress for years, and years, and years.

02:09:28

They're moved, punished, essentially, placed somewhere else on probation to see if they comply and start doing what they should be doing.

02:09:39

And if they don't, then they'll be brought back again on furlough, and it's not three strikes you're out, it's two, you're done.

02:09:47

So this is actually happening to veterans. So can you imagine a veteran missionary, a man who's been in the field for 30 years who now has perhaps a young lady who was a missionary strategist who was telling this experienced missionary what to do.

02:10:02

And if you don't, these things are actually happening. So these are the firsthand testimonies that I'm dealing with from missionaries who were leaving the

02:10:11

International Missions Board. And so what I'm saying to you is, these are facts that we are simply sharing with you.

02:10:20

This is what is actually happening. Wow, that is so hard to believe. So why should churches leave?

02:10:26

Well, I mean, I could literally talk for another five hours on things. In fact, let me just read through the list real fast because I know -

02:10:35

Give it to us, yeah. I mean, this is your time right now. So we're on the last point and take as long as you want.

02:10:41

Why should churches leave? All right. Jump in it. Well, all I can do is give you bullet points and then perhaps we can swing back around or if anybody takes in a question or whatnot, we'll talk about that because I could talk about each one of these forever.

02:10:55

All right. Burn out job descriptions for pastors is an issue in the

02:11:02

SBC. In the SBC, they're missing the plurality of elders, okay?

02:11:09

Critical race theory in the seminaries, women preachers, co -pastoring, easy believism for numbers, baptizing little kids and even unregenerate people, worldly and woke strategies, self -peddling homosexuality, a culture of non -accountability, a culture of loyalty to the

02:11:32

SBC over the scriptures. The whole system is hijacked. Unscriptural methods and goals.

02:11:40

It's a culture of covering up sin like sex abuse. It's a culture of non -expositional preaching.

02:11:49

LifeWay publishes heresy. Sunday School curriculum usurps the role of the

02:11:56

Holy Spirit to teach the believer the scriptures. John chapter 14, verse 26 says that the

02:12:04

Holy Spirit's role is a teacher. And so I could, nevertheless, hold on.

02:12:11

To continue with the bullet points, lust for big buildings and big numbers, a culture of pragmatism, a culture of tossing our unsaved young children to a humanist system called the public school system rather than promoting homeschooling according to what the

02:12:36

Bible commands parents to teach their own children, Deuteronomy chapter six. It's a big issue.

02:12:43

And so those are some of the bullet points. I have a few more on the back and this is just off the top of my forehead.

02:12:49

If you really wanted to get deep, we could keep going. So misunderstanding the Great Commission.

02:12:55

We talked about that a little bit, the emphasis being on go rather than on make. Dumbing down preaching and education to the fifth grade level.

02:13:05

That is where LifeWay expects the professors in our seminaries to write

02:13:11

Sunday School curriculum at the fifth grade level. And preachers are encouraged to preach at the fifth grade level, the dumbing down of education, numbers, fame, buildings, fear of man, and doing what the majority wants and all of the idols.

02:13:32

So those are just a few things that I wrote down that we've been dealing with for a long time.

02:13:39

These are, I know it's a lot, but. It's a lot. But, and the point of this is that this is coming from the culture of the

02:13:47

SBC. This isn't just a few guys doing this. This is the culture of SBC.

02:13:53

So, you know, when you get all these emails and phone calls from pastors and others to ask, should we leave the

02:14:01

SBC? Why should we leave the SBC? I don't wanna leave the SBC. That's why we did this show, was to lay out all this stuff.

02:14:09

And then, I mean, this bullet point list at the end, we could take hours walking through it, but I think the bullet point really speaks for itself, for these bullet points, right?

02:14:18

It's just, these are all these issues that have somehow crept in unaware and are part of the machine.

02:14:25

And there's just, I mean, obviously you feel there is no way to get rid of it now. It's there.

02:14:31

I would love to be a part of the solution. But to make any difference in the

02:14:36

SBC, you have to pastor a huge mega church. And if I was the pastor of a huge mega church, perhaps, you know, if God wanted the

02:14:47

SBC to be corrected, then maybe that would be a part of the solution. Maybe there would be somebody out there standing firmly upon the word of God.

02:14:55

But unfortunately, I've talked with all of those whom I perceive would have the kind of clout and influence to make a difference, and they are simply unwilling to correct even the grossest of sins.

02:15:06

You would think, okay, leave the gray areas alone and just tackle the main issues.

02:15:13

Well, they're not even willing to tackle the main issues of the fact that unregenerate married homosexuals are being baptized in our own convention.

02:15:24

And if you boil it down to our own state, Dr. Tommy Green, the executive treasurer of the

02:15:31

Florida Baptist Convention, and I spoke extensively on this subject, and his response to me is,

02:15:36

I'm not a church inspector. And so I asked him, I said, well, that's not what I'm asking you to do.

02:15:42

I'm not asking you to inspect if there is a problem. There is a problem, and now we need to correct this problem.

02:15:50

And he said, that's not my job. And I said, I don't care if it's your job or not.

02:15:55

We need to do what the Bible says to do. We have to correct these things. We have to stand upon sound doctrine, expose those things or contradicting it.

02:16:05

We have to be like the Apostle Paul who was there for the Apostle Peter when he stepped out of line with the gospel.

02:16:13

Today, Peter would be in heaven saying, Paul, thank you for being there for me, bud. I appreciate that.

02:16:20

And the same thing for you and I and every other man in ministry or Christian, we need accountability.

02:16:26

Nobody is beyond sticking your foot in your mouth or messing up or backsliding or saying something that you didn't mean.

02:16:34

But that's what we're there for each other for. And so I was simply saying to Dr. Tommy Green, we need to be there for First Baptist Orlando and help correct the ship.

02:16:44

But I had already gone to them personally. So not only are there, I mean,

02:16:49

I talked with Steve Gaines personally in Nashville, showed him the videos with Justin Peters.

02:16:58

He has not responded to me, nor is he willing. I don't think that he wants to get involved.

02:17:03

So who else is going to have the clout besides the executive treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention over Florida?

02:17:10

Well, now you boil it down to our local association. Dr. Tom Chaney is unwilling to address the issue.

02:17:17

In fact, he defends them. So there's just simply nowhere else to go.

02:17:24

And I have worked hard and done my due diligence and done it biblical. I mean, I went to David and Danny first alone.

02:17:34

Which are the pastors of First Baptist Orlando. Yeah, yeah. So if you've got these issues happening right in our backyard, 11 miles away from our church and they're by and large going on around the nation, but they're not being addressed by those who have the position to do so.

02:17:51

And these guys are in these positions for a lot more time. I mean, decades to come.

02:17:57

These guys aren't going anywhere. Those who are in positions right now, they have a lockdown, it's hijacked and it's going to be a long time.

02:18:06

So what do you say to a guy like myself? Well, I asked a professional parliamentarian, his opinion on how

02:18:13

I could make a difference in the Southern Baptist Convention. And he said, Casey, it would take you years and years and years to work your way up the ladder.

02:18:22

And they would just simply pull the ladder out from underneath you as soon as you went against the way, the

02:18:30

SBC way, against the mechanism. They would chew you up and spit you out and not even think twice.

02:18:37

And so his advice is do not give yourself to the SBC convention.

02:18:45

And so you're going to see a ton of younger pastors saying, you know what, all of this, I'm not interested in waste.

02:18:51

I just want to pastor the flock that God's called me to. I just want to be faithful in preaching the word.

02:18:58

And I want to be there for others whom God wants me to be there. And I believe by doing these types of videos and I believe by being a help to others that you're being like the

02:19:09

Thessalonican church who was an example to all the other surrounding churches and how well they got along and how good they stood upon sound doctrine.

02:19:19

And so the Thessalonican church was an example for surrounding churches there. And that's what

02:19:25

I've equated our local churches to be. And so I appreciate the fact of being able to help in areas that I can.

02:19:34

But my primary duty is first of all, God, then my family, and then my flock.

02:19:41

Yep, that's right. So, oh, we got a hacker. I just saw that. Sorry, guys.

02:19:48

We're going to block that user right now. Thank you, KT. I did not see that the last couple of minutes.

02:19:54

So I don't know if you saw that. Somebody was just posting porn sites. Oh, really? Probably somebody from First Baptist or whatever.

02:20:01

I hope not. What an absolute shame. But so. And that comment comes from the fact that on First Baptist Church, just his website, they have

02:20:14

Bible studies. And there is a gospel group there that has open homosexuals in there.

02:20:20

And on their Facebook pages are direct links to porn. And so it's a shame that you could go on a church website and be connected with pornography.

02:20:32

Yeah, I remember you and Justin talking about that the other day. So before I get into the few questions that are here, that people have, are there any other things you want to address to pastors or anybody listening, or that's going to listen to this video in the future?

02:20:51

Anything else you want to address about the SBC? Yeah, you know, within the Southern Baptist Convention, the average job description is being,

02:21:01

I would just simply put it as a burnout job description. If you look at the scriptures, you'll see that pastors should primarily be given to prayer, to studying for preaching, preaching and pastoring the flock.

02:21:16

And all of the other things involved in church life can be delegated to the church.

02:21:22

They can be delegated to the people, to the members. And so Ephesians 4, 11 and 12 says that pastors are for the equipping of the saints for service.

02:21:31

That's a really condensed version of those two verses. But nevertheless, if we focus on training and equipping the flock, the people, to be able to do the things that they can do, and we stick to what we should be doing, then you're going to have a healthy marriage.

02:21:49

You're going to have children that love you and love the church, and they're not going to be your average, you know, rebellious

02:21:54

PKs. They'll grow up and, I mean, think of it. How many of the children of those who have gone before us are actually in church and lovers of Jesus Christ and participating?

02:22:07

You see, as well as I do, a massive exodus in the church. There's something wrong.

02:22:14

If we cannot see the elephant in the room and call it for what it is, the way that we have been doing church for decades is not the best.

02:22:24

And so pastors, you can't just flip over and start doing this. It has taken years and years and years of exegetical preaching and educating the flock to where they appreciate and desire and want their pastor to be studying and protect the study time of the pastor and don't expect him to be moderating every single committee meeting and doing every single funeral and doing every single wedding and doing every little thing.

02:22:52

It is painstaking work to weed yourself out of these little things and to develop and disciple others.

02:23:01

But this is going to be the life of you, your marriage, and your children in the church. And so the pastor's job description, the expectation, it's not church growth.

02:23:11

When I was brought on, I was brought on like this. How are you going to fix our problems?

02:23:18

We're a dying church and we want you to grow our church. I think back now, I should have said chapter and verse, please.

02:23:25

That's right. So that's not the job description of the local church. The job description is not to grow the church.

02:23:32

It's to grow people. It's to develop and disciple them, to preach the word, to equip them. So nevertheless,

02:23:38

I could go on about that, but to slowly move the dial in the direction of a biblical job description, to change that annual review to chapter and verses, according to what a pastor is, to protect the life of the pastor.

02:23:54

There are so many SVC pastors, especially in smaller churches, that are struggling and they're so burnt out.

02:24:02

They want to quit and their wives are done. And yet they're just barely stressed, just barely, they want to leave the ministry.

02:24:11

They want to go to a different church. I'm so blessed to love my church, to love our family, to have a wife that loves me and have my kids that love me.

02:24:22

Everything here is beautiful, but it comes from the hard work of standing upon the word of God and not compromising.

02:24:31

So nevertheless, if there's one more thing that I could say to pastors in the SVC is to start leaning and teaching and embracing a biblical job description.

02:24:42

Take passages of scripture that say what the pastor is to be doing and do those things and start eliminating the displacement principle.

02:24:52

Displace things that you should not be doing with things that you should be doing. Little by little, in the course of two or three years, you'll see the life of the church and your life completely change.

02:25:02

Yeah, amen to that. So let's get into some of the questions we have here. Yukimura Sonata 5 says, is there a site that has a list of credible missions groups that move around throughout the

02:25:18

U .S.? I want to make myself move and do stuff since where I live is isolated and idle. Do you know of any other groups out there that people could donate to that are missions -minded or?

02:25:32

I just, off the top of my head, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think any organization is perfect.

02:25:40

You just have to get involved and see where you have a piece. And when it comes to missions,

02:25:46

I'm a fan of personally supporting a person. You get to know them, you get their newsletters, you get to go support them personally.

02:25:58

And so if you want to go on the website of an organization and ask for a missionary that you can be put in contact with, that's what

02:26:08

I'm a fan of. Okay, so find a website that has missionaries and directly help them, okay?

02:26:16

So next one, this is from Julian.

02:26:22

At what point do you think the SBC started going woke? Oh, you'd probably be better at answering that.

02:26:28

Well, it's been a long time. I mean, again, I said earlier, the

02:26:33

MLK celebration that was, I think it was 2018, if I'm not mistaken, when that happened, that was well -planned, that was in the works.

02:26:45

The thoughts have been in the background for a long time at that point. The way that they came out, that doesn't happen by accident.

02:26:53

David Platt at T4G came out with a full -blown woke message. And so in order for that to be embraced, it had to have been going on for a decade before that.

02:27:04

At least, that's right. Yeah, so when Jim Henry was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, I believe that it was in 95 where the people wanted a statement of apology toward those who had been enslaved, okay?

02:27:27

Now, Jim was torn, but he was one who tried to appease both sides.

02:27:34

And you see, there was a give there. And you see, we cannot repent and apologize for the sins of anybody in the past.

02:27:43

Right. You're responsible for your own sins. You have to apologize, you have to repent. I can't do that for you.

02:27:49

Right. But yet, the Southern Baptist Convention was led to give a head nod towards apologizing for slavery and the evils of slavery in the past.

02:27:57

We all believe that that was evil. American slavery was awful. So we agree in that, but we had to apologize somehow as a convention for some participation of Southern Baptist slave owners that happened in the past.

02:28:14

So that was a compromise in 95. So the zenith of the day of the aura, the crave from that social justice side was showing and rearing its head, even in 1995.

02:28:28

Yeah, that's interesting. I did not know that. You know, I will say I read a book by Greg Bonson.

02:28:33

I'm not a postmill, I'm not a theonomist. A lot of Bonson's writings are harder to understand if you wanna learn precepts.

02:28:43

So I wrote the book I did on precepts and mine's not the only one. Jay Lucas is a really good one too. Actually has a couple of good ones,

02:28:49

Jay Lucas does. But I did read a book by Greg Bonson called Homosexuality and it was written in 1978.

02:28:55

I read this, I think I read this in 2020, year of COVID. And he wrote the book as if the issues were happening today.

02:29:05

I mean, he was 40 years ahead of his time. And he wrote in there are numerous places about how it was the purpose of the homosexual agenda was to get into churches and to force, not just again, not just America, but to force churches to accept it and celebrate homosexuality with them.

02:29:25

So the reality is, is that this has been an agenda for a long time. And it's been an agenda inside the churches, even good ones for a long time because they've forced that onto the churches.

02:29:36

And of course the churches over time have been softened to that and eventually accepted it.

02:29:42

And to your point, one of the seminary presidents, I think it might've been Dallas Theological Seminary in the 70s,

02:29:49

Dr. Francis Schaeffer was speaking at the famous Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

02:29:57

And he predicted in 1970 that our country would be communist by the early 2000s.

02:30:06

And when he preached that message, which I feel like it's still available to find on YouTube, he was revealing some very interesting facts in that the way to crush

02:30:20

America would be to get to the conservative

02:30:26

Protestant churches, cripple them, which is the strength of America, the foundation, the backbones, then

02:30:34

America would start to fall. That's right. So this whole social justice movement, this communism push, all of this stuff, think what you will, it kind of starts to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but nevertheless, all of this stuff is out there, make what you will of it.

02:30:53

It is, yeah, crush the church and crush the family. And you crush America, right?

02:30:58

And you crush culture in general. So, okay, so next one is from Nicholas McCorkle.

02:31:05

So the woke SBC was being funded by George Soros, who's a racist. Well, okay, he didn't fund the entire

02:31:12

SBC, but what Jordan Hall and others have shown is that George Soros' dark money went through shell companies and was going to liberal churches, but mostly it was money that was going to ERLC, the

02:31:27

Ethics, Religious Liberties Commission of the SBC, which is what their political arm, I guess.

02:31:33

And that was money that was being funneled to the churches and one, to essentially get them to say what their message was.

02:31:41

You want money? You're gonna say our message, but two, to help fund, put money back into the cooperative programs so that those churches could send more liberal messengers to vote each year.

02:31:53

So that's what it was found that George Soros was doing, was that type of dark money. And who knows, it could go a whole lot deeper than even that, but that's what we know.

02:32:02

Good question there. The next one is, by unknown feminism and what can only survive during economic prosperity, if Western countries go into poverty, they can't survive long.

02:32:15

Well, that's true. One of my good friends and former board members of Strived for Eternity is

02:32:20

Pastor Frank Mullis, who pastors a church in Atlanta, Georgia area. And he always told me that this whole transgenderism stuff, he goes, these are first world problems.

02:32:31

He goes, where people are worried about where their next meal is gonna be because they haven't eaten in a week, you don't have guys pretending to be girls.

02:32:39

Yeah, right. Like it just doesn't happen. It happens in America where you're in the land of the plenty. So yeah, good point there.

02:32:47

So next one is by Carol Landman. How are you doing, Carol? Good to hear from you.

02:32:54

Never being in a Baptist church, why would the problems in the SBC be of interest to all?

02:32:59

Asking for a friend. Well, because the SBC, number one, has a lot of sway.

02:33:05

Number two, I would say, because the SBC has been considered the best denomination in the world for a long time.

02:33:11

So if the SBC can go down, that means anybody can go down. And really, the

02:33:17

SBC is the last one left. It is. So I don't know if you have anything to add to that or not.

02:33:22

Yeah, well said. Okay. So next one, Jason Cave says, indeed, there are cases of Soros -backed district attorneys who are being pushed to prosecute

02:33:33

Christian cases and ideals. That's correct. And you know who one of them was, was none other than Kamala Harris in San Francisco, who refused to prosecute

02:33:43

Planned Parenthood when I think it was Daleiden and his videos came out showing that they were committing felonies.

02:33:49

They were selling baby body parts. He was taking videos of this. They didn't get prosecuted.

02:33:55

He did. Kamala Harris and George Soros -backed, and there's boatloads of them across the country.

02:34:02

So good comment there. So next one is, unknown,

02:34:10

Luther once said, religious and self -righteous white devils are more harmful than the worldly black devils. I guess

02:34:18

I don't know what that means, but. So next one, Rebecca says, in my observation,

02:34:24

LGBT is the biggest stumbling block for Christians and churches alike. People, including pastors, are fearful of speaking out.

02:34:31

Those sitting in the pews are not being taught how to view the increasingly complex lies that are pro -LGBT through the lens of scripture.

02:34:39

Hence, many are succumbing to the LGBT ideologies. I agree. You've got homosexuals that are infiltrating churches and they're sitting in church service.

02:34:52

And while pastors may be against homosexuality, they know it's a sin, they're unwilling to speak of it from the pulpits.

02:35:01

And so you see a lot of pastors that are being sheepish. And not just about that, just about sin in general, but especially this one.

02:35:10

So yeah, that's been a huge issue. Okay, the

02:35:15

LGBT movement is gonna be the catalyst of prosecution against the church. I plan on being arrested doing street evangelism at some point because of it.

02:35:21

Nicholas McCorkle again. I agree. It's already happening. There's guys that get arrested on a Friday night.

02:35:27

They get let out Monday morning because they recognize they don't have a case. And they're like, oh, sorry, we made a mistake.

02:35:34

But the problem is that guy got put in jail over the weekend before he's gone free. This is just kind of conditioning people.

02:35:42

And it's gonna scare preachers from doing it. They don't wanna sit in jail over the weekend waiting for the prosecutor to say they're not gonna prosecute on Monday.

02:35:51

And two, at some point you're gonna find a judge just willing to use this as a test case. So in a liberal area, of course.

02:36:00

Is G3 almost a denomination now? You know what? It seems like that's what they're trying to do.

02:36:07

I don't know. Maybe we can have Josh Weiss on one day to talk about G3 in general. Might be a good idea because they've been growing a lot.

02:36:15

I would hope not. I would hope it's more of a church network where guys are just kind of linking arms and that's it.

02:36:20

Because once you start to, as you would know, right? Once you start to get bureaucracy involved and make a machine out of it like the

02:36:28

SBC was, it's bound to fail. It's only a matter of time. And the same thing will happen in G3 if they decide to go the route of SBC.

02:36:37

I would say that if you look at it from the outside, there are some things within G3 that make me a little bit nervous because of the bureaucracy and it seems like the centralization of powers with a few people that be.

02:36:54

And I know there's good guys in there. I'm not saying any of them are bad guys. I'm just saying that those are the things that can tend to go bad.

02:37:02

And historically, 100 % of the time has gone bad. It's just what it is.

02:37:09

But Josh, hey, if you wanna come on the show, I think it'd be great to have you on and talk through that some more.

02:37:15

Our church is not hooking our wagon. Yeah, I get it. So Bond Servant for Jesus.

02:37:21

It was this one called International Churches of Christ. I really don't know what that means in real Bible teaching to make a disciple.

02:37:28

Okay, so what does it mean to make a disciple? Well, first of all, the Bible gives a command to evangelize, right?

02:37:35

That's the going part. As you said, going as you go, make disciples. Make is the actual verb, go is the adder to it.

02:37:42

The bottom line is, is that as we go, as we're evangelizing, we're to make disciples. I think the key is that this is not something that churches are just supposed to do organically, right?

02:37:54

That this is an intentional discipleship. So dying into yourself, 1

02:38:01

Timothy 4, 7 says, train yourselves for the purpose of godliness. And so nothing happens in an organized way on accident.

02:38:10

Otherwise, evolutionary theory would be true, right? Good point. We do not become more holy and sanctified on accident.

02:38:18

And so to make a disciple is painstakingly hard. It comes with intentionality.

02:38:25

Just look at the life of Jesus with his disciples. I mean, those guys were still producing some rather foolish statements at the end of the three years there.

02:38:36

And Jesus was still formulating their minds and their hearts.

02:38:43

And like I've already mentioned, Jesus said to Peter, follow me, look at me,

02:38:49

Peter, don't look at them. Don't worry about who's betraying you. You follow me. So nevertheless,

02:38:55

I would say a disciple is fully a disciple when they can make another disciple.

02:39:03

And so when they are able to articulate their faith and they can share their faith to where they can lead someone else to the true gospel and goes through some of the basic doctrines of the

02:39:14

Bible and help refine and have some good sense of discernment there, then they're kind of like a parent.

02:39:21

And like the apostle John said in 1 John, I think it's 3

02:39:28

John, somewhere around verse four, five, or six, I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth.

02:39:35

And so when they're committed to the truth and in John 8, verse 31, when you're a true disciple, if you're continuing in the word, if you're continuing in the word and denying yourself and taking up your cross and you're studying the

02:39:49

Bible, you're serving in the church, you're loving the saints, you are getting rid of the worldliness in your life, you're regularly doing these things, you crave the word like the psalmist said, so my soul thirsts for thee.

02:40:05

I think that you're a disciple maker and that is to the point, I mean, Titus chapter two talks about men discipling men, women discipling women, that is another missing piece of SBC culture, we're not truly making disciples, we're just trying to convince people to come to church, but the church is not the backstop, it's not like you check it off,

02:40:25

I went to church, I went to church, you're not celebrating it, the church is an avenue and so we are equipping people to go and make disciples and so Bible study at church should be looked at as a way to equip saints to do ministry, you're teaching them so that they can go evangelize and make disciples, preaching is the same way, get the lost saved and faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and then you're edifying them, sanctifying them, it's an avenue, it's a conduit, it's a process, it's not like the old school way of saying with a guilt trip, why don't you come to church?

02:41:07

I mean, that is not the goal to get them to church, you're not a disciple maker if that is your way of evangelizing, come to church, you're a disciple maker if you're sharing the gospel and teaching in the word of God, if you are a light,

02:41:20

Matthew 5, 14, you are the light of the world. So that's it.

02:41:25

That's right, so to sum it up, discipleship is not what's happening at the pulpit on Sunday, it's not what's happening in Bible study or Sunday school, discipleship is one -on -one training, so older to the younger, the more advanced to the less advanced, yeah,

02:41:40

I was gonna talk about that in a moment, it's intentionally within the church having relationships set up where the ones that know more about the faith are teaching the younger ones in the faith because a message on a

02:41:54

Sunday morning doesn't do it, so this has to be an intentionally done, this type of discipleship.

02:42:00

And so I was about to say it, I knew exactly what you're grabbing for, so I'm just gonna let you talk about it because you have, now, okay,

02:42:08

I'll say this first, to disciple, there's a lot of ways you can do this, right? I mean, Paul Washer, I love some of his books, he's got these workbooks that you can work through and we did that as a family, we went through Knowing God and a few of the others,

02:42:24

Andrew Rappaport of Strive Fraternity has outstanding, I think some of the best materials out there and all free videos, the books are cheap, great way to help disciple family or disciple other people.

02:42:38

MacArthur Fundamentals of Faith is really good as well, it's a little higher level, but it's good,

02:42:44

I would say Paul Washer's and Andrew's first and then MacArthur's next, but they're all wonderful ways to do it.

02:42:52

You decided, you know what, you wanted to personalize something and so show her what you did.

02:42:58

Sure, so we have a core verse here at Beulah Baptist Church, it's John 8 31 and just a catchphrase of continuing my word, right?

02:43:07

And so we have what's called next steps and in these booklets that we are, by the way, this booklet is in its final editing phase, praise the

02:43:18

Lord, so it'll be reproducible, you can download it in PDF, you can download it and print it, you can have it shipped to you here pretty soon, we're hoping in January.

02:43:28

So here's the thought behind it, this 50 page booklet fits in the

02:43:34

Bible, right? So you can just put it right here and you carry it with you and now you have a very simple transferable way to make disciples and here's how we've designed that.

02:43:46

Basically, there's five chapters, chapter number one is very simple, what is it to believe in Jesus Christ?

02:43:54

So we explain what the Bible has to say about true belief and then what is it to be biblically baptized?

02:44:01

So we explain from the scriptures what that is, then what is it to belong to a local church?

02:44:07

Membership matters and so we explain that from the scriptures and then how do you study the

02:44:13

Bible? Bible study is missing in our cultures, very basic inductive Bible study but it's important, we have a 3D

02:44:20

Bible study sheet that's available as well and then the last element is the Great Commission, how do you pass the gospel baton onward?

02:44:27

And so these five chapters are designed for you to go through these next steps, just simply taking your next step to continue in God's word and so prove that you are a disciple and here's the suggested format and I'll go through it really quickly, meet where you can talk, bring your

02:44:43

Bible, meet weekly for an hour, see how each other are doing, open in prayer, read next steps, discuss the subjects as needed, take your time, ask good questions, seek the truth from God's word, avoid your personal opinions, listen well, end at the agreed time, mark where you stopped and close in prayer and so you're gonna meet for an hour a week with someone whom you're gonna disciple and this book is designed to just be right here in your

02:45:10

Bible from the scriptures, you talk about these basic core things and here's what happens at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the disciple maker whom is discipling someone has taught someone these basic five chapters, basic beliefs in the word of God.

02:45:27

Now you go and disciple someone else so you add another two or three people to the small group and you go through these basic five steps again and you get to know them better and so forth and so on, it's multiplication, it's discipleship, it's transferable, it's really not that hard and you get better and better as you go and so this is equipping your average layman to be able to become a disciple maker and I'm really, really excited to have this thing finally in the editing stage and so I personally disciple men every

02:46:01

Sunday morning here in my office at 9 .30 and it's circular so a man can come in even if we're on chapter two and just jump in and as he goes through the chapters and circles back around, he would say,

02:46:15

I'm ready to take someone on and do it myself in another room on campus and I'd say, great or I would say, how about you stick around for another round if I think that that is probably better so nevertheless, it's that format and as we are developing a culture of making disciples here in the basics way, then obviously they'll crave more so the next booklet is not gonna be next steps, it's gonna be deeper steps, it's gonna be doctrine so you see how the process grows.

02:46:46

Yeah, and I will say when we first met in 2018 and we came down here to visit your church, you were happy to show me all around campus and I remember you had something on the wall that you're like, at some point in the future, this is what

02:47:03

I'm working towards so it is so cool to see that you had this vision, intentional vision of discipleship that has now come to fruition.

02:47:12

I had a chance to go through it with you maybe eight or nine months ago in the initial editing stages of it and so I can't be more thrilled than when this comes out ready to print and there's probably a lot of pastors that can use it and maybe you can make it available to sell and they can buy it and use it in their churches.

02:47:32

Yeah, Lord willing, just give them away. If they wanna order hard copies, we'll print and send them to them but man, kingdom minded.

02:47:40

That's right, that's so cool. So only a couple of questions left. So Christy, thank you for being patient, letting your husband sit here longer because I see you're still chatting away over here but okay,

02:47:51

Kevin, if we know people in our church who follow these social justice preachers like David Platt, should we warn them and if so, how would you go about it?

02:48:01

Yes. Do not delay. Yeah, you know, preachers especially must be warning.

02:48:10

We're called to be warners and Ezekiel chapter three must preach the word and then all the way through it says, we are to warn the sheep and if preachers are not warning and preaching against social justice matters, then they are woke and they are going in that direction and if you know people that are in those churches, it's your duty to help them.

02:48:31

I mean, it's just as simple as seeing it for what it is. They are in danger and many people have asked me why

02:48:40

I've done the videos that I've done and I've simply responded, I care.

02:48:47

I truly care. I care enough to put my reputation on the line and say, listen, you can say whatever you want about me but it's worth it to reach the sheep and so I've always wanted to be the one who would be able to get down to the end of the street, to that dead end road, to reach the last trailer on the left that's off in the woods before that young teenager commits suicide, the one who is so far away from hope.

02:49:19

I wanna be able and that's the hope with Next Steps and discipleship because I don't know who you know but if we do discipleship and you transferably take these concepts to someone else and then they and then they and then they, the hope here,

02:49:33

I mean, we're talking with another pastor in our discipleship group who has grown up in the hood in Orlando and we see how this process of making disciples can reach all the way to those who are the farthest away from a gospel preaching church and so that's the hope.

02:49:52

The idea is definitely to go after those who are in danger and defend the gospel. Yeah, amen to that.

02:49:58

Yeah, so how do we go about it? Give them God's word, right? Let God's word do the work.

02:50:03

Yeah. Okay, so next one here. Yeah, three more, that's it.

02:50:12

Do pastors who had their retirement, do pastors who had their retirement through the SBC get that credited to them or returned?

02:50:20

I know nothing about this. Is there retirement to the SBC? Yeah, you know, retirement, that's kind of a tricky way of saying it.

02:50:28

It's not, it wouldn't be through the SBC. It is the same as if you had your retirement in your own annuity fund and so just because it is an annuity with the

02:50:44

SBC doesn't mean it's through the SBC. These are separate entities on their own.

02:50:49

They stand on their own. They're just connected to and they cater to Southern Baptist pastors and so I have chosen to not be in that area so our church is working towards, you know, investing in my retirement outside of that, which by the way, it's not sufficient to live on and so every pastor who is a pastor, when they retire, like me, will not have sufficient income to live on so we really do live by faith and we invest our lives in this.

02:51:32

I mean, I don't have, nor my wife and I, we don't have a piece about doing extra side work.

02:51:38

We are fully engaged with Beulah Baptist Church, fully committed. I don't do side work on the side for money.

02:51:46

I don't have a side job. There is no way that I could take one hand off of this plow and continue to be faithful to Christ and plow straight so to be a faithful pastor,

02:51:58

I mean, there are bivocational pastors and all but I'm telling you, this is hard work and it's by faith so nevertheless,

02:52:05

I know it's a little bit of a ramble there but we're not codependent on the graces of the

02:52:12

SBC for our retirement fund. So essentially, they do get it. Okay, cool.

02:52:20

Yeah, that was the same question. So okay, looks like this, I think this is our last one.

02:52:26

Are there mission organizations such as HeartCry, TMAI and others who'd recommend a small church or a hundred less to support?

02:52:33

They're both great ones. TMAI is what's connected to the Master's University, John MacArthur's Seminary.

02:52:40

So obviously, that's a good one. HeartCry is Paul Washer, no problems there.

02:52:47

So yeah, those are both great organizations. Here's a novel idea. Start pooling your missions money and raise up your own missionary.

02:52:54

Make a disciple and send them and then by the time you make a disciple and send them, you'll have a stockpile of missions money ready to support that missionary.

02:53:03

Get a long range vision together and pray towards this. I guarantee you,

02:53:09

God will honor it. Amen to that. So that's it, we got through all the questions.

02:53:17

Wow. So - Only 53 minutes of Anthony time. 53 minutes of Anthony time.

02:53:22

Look at Anthony time's evolving into three hours. Almost, almost. So I will say as Pastor Casey, I'll let you have a minute or two to think about your thoughts.

02:53:35

And if there's anything else you wanna close with for anybody that's gonna be watching this video now or in the future,

02:53:41

I will say that we'll both be going to sleep real soon. You'll be driving to your house.

02:53:46

I'll be driving down to where we're staying and I'll have my pillow on me.

02:53:54

That I travel with. So I'll have my pillow and I'll sleep really well on it.

02:54:00

And yeah, that'll be good. So if any of you are interested in my pillow, use the

02:54:05

SFE as your code and you will get the best discounts that are out there.

02:54:11

So I know there's some other codes that give you really good discounts too, but I know SFE is in the highest category. You get the best discounts on that.

02:54:18

And so if you want to buy a new, my pillow or anything else within that spectrum of products they have, use

02:54:25

SFE code. All right, just a couple of final thoughts is that there's a lot more information that could have been said tonight on these subjects, but there's a lot more information that's already has been said.

02:54:39

If you go on bbcwg .org, Buella Baptist Church Winter Gardens, bbcwg .org,

02:54:46

click sermons and then click videos and scroll down to the truth about the

02:54:52

SBC. That message in particular was to our congregation after the annual convention.

02:54:59

And I just shared the truth about the SBC. So there are plenty of facts there.

02:55:05

And then as well, if you go to Justin Peters Ministries YouTube channel, you'll see plenty of videos there.

02:55:12

One, Justin interviewed me about leaving the SBC. So there's more information there as well.

02:55:18

It's been a privilege to be on with you and I appreciate striving for eternity.

02:55:23

I appreciate Andrew Rappaport and yourself. So thank you for any opportunity it is to be a benefit to the kingdom of God.

02:55:30

Oh, you're welcome. And thank you, thank you for being on and thank y 'all for listening. And on that, okay, one last question it looks like.

02:55:40

Can you write out that link? Yes. Once this post to YouTube, probably tomorrow morning,

02:55:46

I will go on and I will put into the show notes. You actually have a couple links. The link that you preached here at your church, the link with you and Justin Peters.

02:55:56

And I will have a link for my show notes that at least you have an outline as you're following the show.

02:56:03

So on that, have a great night and we'll see you next week.