What More SBC Issues with Justin Peters

Sponsorship Reads and Show Introduction

Hey, Scott, what brings you into the pharmacy? I'm thinking about getting one of the updated COVID -19 vaccines. Great. Do you know which type of vaccine you'd like? There's more than one? Yep, there are different types of vaccines available.

You can learn more about them at wedovaccines .com. If you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call. What was that website again?

Wedovaccines .com. Thanks, I'll check it out. This message was brought to you by Novavax.

Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry? Ooh, a book club. Computer solitaire, huh? Ah, sorry, we were looking for Chumba Casino. Ch-ch-ch-ch-chumba. That's right, ChumbaCasino .com has over a hundred casino-style games.

Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Ch-ch-ch-ch-chumba. ChumbaCasino .com. No purchases necessary. Full word.

Only limited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. One, two, three! Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community.

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

The SBC, Ed Litton, and the Plagiarism Scandal

All right, well, welcome to another edition of the Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, here with my trusty sidekick, Bud the Wiser. How you doing, Bud? I'm good, sir. How are you? Good. Hey, today we're going to talk about something that nobody else has been talking about in Christianity.

I know. Let's talk about what's going on with the SPC. We've got a scoop. You've got a scoop. No one else is talking about this. So to do that, we brought in some big guns, didn't we? Oh, yes. Yes. We brought the man who sits on a throne of pride.

No, literally, because the name of his scooter is from a company called Pride. So the one and only Justin Peters. How are you, sir? Hey, Andrew.

Doing well, brother. Doing well. Guilty as charged. I do sit. Not only do I sit, I ride on a throne of pride.

You know, I don't know how many people have seen you on your scooter riding around and nobody picked up. I remember when I picked up on it when we were at a Shepherd's Conference and someone was asking me to take a photo.

And as I'm sitting there waiting for them, I just happened to notice Pride right there on the handlebar.

And I went, wait a minute. And you leaned forward and I went, oh, it even says it on the back of the seat.

Yeah. And nowadays, you know, that term pride, that conjures up a whole other set of issues.

Hey, you know, this is your month. Yeah. Oh, no, we're past that month now. That was last month. That was last month.

Yeah. Yeah. So now you're safe for a whole nother year. Yeah. Don't ride around wearing bright colors, Justin. No kidding. You're sending the wrong message. Yeah, don't put a rainbow sticker on the back of my scooter.

You know what? If we put a rainbow sticker on the back of his scooter, he wouldn't even be able to see it. So we could do that, bud. We could do that. So, you know, we scheduled to talk about it at the SBC.

And I forget, Justin, if it was you or bud when we said, well, let's, we couldn't figure out the timing. We'll record a little bit later. And one of you were like, well, there's probably going to be more to talk about.

This stuff keeps breaking. Like, I mean, we're going to, we'll air this in a couple of days. And yet maybe by the time we air this, everything we say will be old hat because something new will be happening within the SBC.

But we've talked with bud and I, we did a podcast on this. You just recently, Justin, had your previous pastor, Jim Osmond, on your podcast and on your YouTube channel. And you did an episode on the SBC.

Bud has been like cranking out article after article. The one that has gotten the most traction, you know, well, at least before, the one that got the most traction was a satire one from Lifeway selling sermons.

That was pretty funny. And the one he just recently wrote is getting a lot of traction. We had, all of us were on Apologetics Live and we were doing, we were again talking about some of these things. So we were addressing this again.

We're going to take a couple of new things that we want to look at and address some of the things that's going on. But folks, this is important. And you say, well, hey, I'm not SBC. Why is this important?

This is important because one, you know, the SBC is, and maybe you guys know different, but it's the only denomination that I know that started to go toward a liberal bent that at least had a conservative resurgence for a period of time.

Though it looks like that resurgence is over. And this being right now the most conservative and largest denomination, a Protestant denomination, this is going to say how a lot of churches are going to go.

If there's six major seminaries from SBC, right, Justin? Right, six of them. Okay, so if they all go woke and go liberal, it tells you where these churches are going to go. There's 44 ,000 churches represented by the SBC.

So, is that about right? Yeah, somewhere in there. They claim, yeah, 40-something thousand. They claim 16 to 18 million members, but I guarantee you the FBI couldn't find about 15 million of those. They're way inflated numbers.

But it doesn't matter. Massively inflated. There's nowhere near that many SBC people. Well, they count baptisms, right? No, not even that. They count the decisions. They make the DNC blush with shame because they count people that are dead.

They count people that have been on church membership roles that haven't been to that church in half a century. I know. The church that I was reared in, First Baptist Church Vicksburg, there was an article a few years ago in the Mississippi paper about First Baptist Church Vicksburg, and the article said that there are 3 ,000 members of First Baptist Church Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Well, that's the church I was raised in on a good Sunday. On a good Sunday. There's 300 people there on a good one, and yet it boasts 3 ,000 members. And that's typical of the SBC. So, that's why I say these numbers are massively inflated.

Yeah, but I think the concern we have is that this is the influence that a lot of these future pastors, future church planters are having. And this is going to affect even the churches outside of the SBC.

This is going to be what people think of with Christianity going forward. And I think that's why this is so important. I think that's why it is important for us to address yet again what's going on. And so, Justin, let me start off with what we discussed on Apologetics Live and then what you and Jim talked on your podcast.

Some of the issues of concern, just in case this is the first episode people are listening to, bring people up to speed with what's the concern that's going on right now with Ed Litton, the president of the SBC?

Why is it a concern? And then, you know, we do want to tap in from there. I want to tap into this SBC Voices article that we have, and then we'll wrap up with some of the stuff that Bud has brought out in his latest article.

So, Justin, why don't you start us off?

Sure. So, Ed Litton is the newly elected president of the SBC. And a couple weeks ago, someone found a sermon that he preached on Romans 1 and realized, wow, this sounds a lot like a sermon that J .D. Greer, the former president of the SBC, preached on Romans 1.

He found it and watched both of them and did a mashup, I guess you'd call it, when you take clips of each sermon, you put them together. And Ed Litton plagiarized large, large portions of J .D. Greer's sermon.

Not only the general outline, not only the major points, not only the sub points, but the phraseology, the jokes, and even personal illustrations. And so when someone found that, then others started looking, and sure enough, it wasn't just that sermon.

It was sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon. And now, I mean, I've lost track of how many examples of plagiarism that have been found by others. I found a couple myself. And it's not just that he's, I mean, he's actually taking personal stories that J .D. Greer said happened to him and claiming those stories as his own.

He literally looks his congregation in the eye and straight up lies to them, telling them this illustration, this anecdote that he supposedly experienced himself, and he didn't. He's stealing it from other people.

Well, wait a minute.

I guess the first question is, are they actually original with J .D. Greer? Because we do know that one of these stories, he comes from Ted Tripp. And that J .D. Greer says is his own personal story. But as you pointed out on a previous episode on Didache, you pointed out that, yeah, J .D. Greer doesn't remember where he saw that temple, but you remember where you saw yours?

You know, Ted Tripp remembers where he saw his? So there's things there that do indicate that maybe even the personal stories of J .D. Greer's are not personal stories of J .D. Greer, but ones he's getting from somebody.

But let me give you the challenge. The challenge that Ed Linton is saying is he's not lying to his congregation. He's not plagiarizing, because he had permission beforehand from J .D. Greer to use the sermon.

So is that really plagiarism, Justin? Yes, it is plagiarism.

And he is lying. Let me say that real quick, because J .D. Greer gives the illustration of being in driver's ed, and the driver's ed instructor had this break and all that. And Ed Linton takes that exact same story and claims it as his own.

So that is straight up, flat out lying. Now, specifically to your question, is it plagiarism if you have permission from the original source to use his material and then you present it? As long as you have permission, some are saying, then it's no longer plagiarism.

Well, yes, it is. Plagiarism is plagiarism, irrespective of whether or not you have the permission of the original source. For example, if I had been, I went to south, ironically, the same seminary that Ed Linton went to.

I went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was there probably about 10 years after he was. So we weren't there at the same time. But as a seminary student, if I had gone to one of my friends, you know, down the hall in the men's dorm, Fort Worth Hall, and said, Hey, Lance, a friend of mine from seminary, Hey, Lance, I got this paper coming up and I know you've already written a paper on this.

Hey, I'm really in a bind. Can I use your material? And he said, Yeah, OK, sure. Which Lance would never have done that. But if he said, Yeah, sure, you can use my material. And so I took his material and basically copied and pasted it.

Maybe changed a phraseology here and there. But it's basically Lance's paper. And I turned it in with my name on it. Is that plagiarism? Absolutely. It's plagiarism. It doesn't matter if I had Lance's permission.

If I had been discovered doing that, I would have been I would have not only been given a zero on my paper, I would have probably been kicked out of Southwestern Seminary. So, yes, it is still plagiarism, even if you have the permission of the original source.

Absolutely. And just to note, and you pointed this out with your video with Jim, this kind of behavior, since the world is watching, would not even be tolerated in a secular university. No, no. So don't lose sight of that fact.

Right. Yeah. Think of the irony here. I did my undergraduate when I left high school and I graduated high school. I went to well, I went to junior college for a year, but then I went to Mississippi State University and I got a degree in economics from Mississippi State.

If I had done one percent of the amount of plagiarism that just that we know about from Ed Litton, forget being kicked out of a theological institution, I would have been kicked out of a secular, godless institution, Mississippi State University.

I would have been kicked out. I would have been kicked out of the university. I would have been kicked out of seminary. Well, that doing one person. And yet Ed Litton is the president.

So let me bring this in because let's talk about how he became president, because this is one of the things I kind of think interesting. Like everyone's kind of forgotten about that now. But just before the elections, they were doing some things that were, you know, basically it came down to a runoff between Stone and Litton.

Mueller didn't even make the cut. Yeah, I was. So I was wrong. I actually thought Mueller was going to be going to be the president. But, you know, so they were doing some things before the vote to Stone with women crying and telling stories.

And this is what brought out the world is watching comment. So could could you go over that? Because because I think when we say, you know, Bud said the world is watching when we look at what they did to try to make sure that Stone didn't get the votes.

And now we look at how they're handling this. I think we see hypocrisy here because especially with what we're going to say later about how these things came to light. You know, could could you go over kind of what brought about the you know, what was the shenanigans that were being played before the election?

You know, and but I know you were watching all this, too, with, you know, the whole the woman crying and and all this.

Well, go ahead, Justin. No, no, no. Actually, I was going to say, I just I kind of know the basics of that. But Bud would be better to speak to that than I. Well, the thing I would just want to add to your focus, your emphasis on what the big scandal is right now is with the plagiarism.

My observation, if you back up from this, is is what we're seeing is sort of a and I don't mean well, it is kind of a pun, a litany of problems because it started out with before the convention occurred, discovering that Lytton co-preaches with his wife.

Yeah, that's right. That's kind of a problem. And at the moment, the convention is ongoing now. It's subsequent to the first election where it turned out to be a runoff. There was an issue with his doctrinal statement regarding the Trinity on his church website, and it was heresy.

It was partialism, to be specific. In the course of the runoff vote, you have that being wiped off the church website because a messenger came up to the microphone, asked a question actually of Al Moeller, where Lytton had gotten his doctorate degree, asked Moeller, what are they teaching about the Trinity?

And because Lytton's website has this heresy on it, Moeller deferred to Lytton, who did not address it, but just sort of in an ex cathedra kind of papal move, had it wiped off the website. So you've got issues with the egalitarianism with his wife preaching.

All right. Now we've got issues of we're not really that focused on doctrine. It's okay. We just had a statement. We put it up there. Who cares? Well, there are people that do care. The Lord cares. The world may be watching, and they don't care, but the faithful believers do.

So you've got the co-preaching with his wife. You've got the heresy statement on the website. Well, now this is just the continuing fruit of what I would argue is unfaithfulness to the Word. You just kind of see this.

I think it's going to progress. I want to see repentance. I want to see him do the faithful thing, repent and bear fruit consistent with that repentance. I don't know that we'll see that, but that's kind of the summary I would add to what your observations were.

So then bring us up to speed with this whole claims that they had with mishandling themselves sexually with this woman who is crying and all that, because there were shenanigans that they were playing, covering stuff up and trying to make Stone look bad, right?

Yeah, and a lot of that ties to these apparently positionally leaked letters that came from Russell Moore, and my goodness, that's a two-hour show to kind of exegete all that nonsense. But yeah, all of this was being positioned so that Mike Stone was implicated in a cover-up of the ongoing sexual abuse scandal, and that doesn't carry any weight.

I mean, just on the surface, what he did as president, he had been president of the executive committee. They're responding to investigations that had been brought to them, and he was overseeing that, and the EC was responsible for adjudicating that in some way consistent both with Scripture and with the SBC's polity.

And so for folks who may not be completely up to speed with SBC and the politics there, so Russell Moore was part of an ethics group of the SBC, and he was president. He steps down just before this convention, he steps down and somehow leaks letters and emails implicating Stone in having known about, for like 20 years I think it was, knowing about some sexual, a cover-up of a sexual sin, and they end up having some poor girl up there crying about how this abuse hurt her.

One of the interesting things Stone had said about it was, so if this was like 20 years ago, why did Russell Moore do nothing? These leaked letters and emails from Russell Moore seem to indicate that Russell Moore knew, he's claiming he knew about it for like 20 years, right?

So Stone's argument was, well, why didn't he do anything? He's saying that Stone knew, but Stone's saying he doesn't, but clearly Russell Moore would have. If he's the head of, if he's the president of the ethics committee, why did he do nothing, right?

And this is what you end up seeing, they shift it all to Stone. Now, this is going to come into play for this reason, I think, because the whole thing against Stone was these leaked letters that were from Russell Moore, no one knows how it got into the public, how it got to, you know, media, just kind of leaked out there, okay?

And I think that's going to be different when we look at the argument that people are making for Ed Linton. Here, what he did was out in public, you know? I mean, these, one of the things we know is these YouTube videos from J .D. Greer and Ed Linton, they were public, well, up until a few weeks ago, right, Justin?

When 140 of them went, 140, some of them disappeared and some came back. Yeah.

Yeah, he took down 143 videos, I think.

Yeah, and so this is public information. So this isn't like something that is private that's being leaked. This is someone who is noticing the videos, noticing these same lines. In fact, Justin, on one of your previous Didicate podcasts, when you were dealing with this, you even pointed out where you wanted to go see whether Ed Linton was going to address that in his most recent sermon.

So you listened to his sermon and he made some comment about, well, you know, Jesus being a crutch, Jesus is my iron lung, and you went, oh, that's kind of strange. And where did you find that when you went and searched for that?

Yeah, so the plagiarism thing really kind of blew up Saturday a week ago, so whatever that date was. I can't do it in my head right now. So a week ago this past Saturday. And people were really talking about it.

Well, literally the very next day, Sunday morning, Ed Linton got up in his sermon and had this line where he said he was talking about having a conversation with a friend of his. And his friend said, well, Jesus is just a crutch for you.

And Ed Linton said, I told my friend, though, that Jesus isn't my crutch. He's my iron lung. And I thought, well, that's a pretty catchy thing to say. You know, that's pretty neat. I've never heard that before.

And so I just, given the plagiarism that people were finding, I just Googled it. Sure enough, it's a line out of a book by a lady named Nancy Hicks that I've never even heard of before. But some kind of, you know, female Christian speaker has written a couple of books, kind of like a Beth Moore type, best I can tell.

So, I mean, literally the very next day, after everybody was talking about his plagiarism, he plagiarizes again. So he's pathological. He is absolutely pathological. There have been, I mean, there's dozens and dozens of examples now.

But wait, we should have to cut him a break, because we can't say he's the one that's pathological, because he explained this. He's not the one writing his sermons.

Yeah, he's got an eight-member team that gets together, and they all do a little bit of research, and they somehow cobble together a sermon, and that's what he does. And he even admits this is how he does each of his sermons.

He doesn't write his sermons. By his own admission, he doesn't write them. I mean, that is stunning to me. That is, he is so seared in this. It's so normal for him that he doesn't even have the thought in his head.

You know, I probably shouldn't tell the whole world that I've got an eight-member team that helps me write my sermons. It's perfectly normal for him, and so he just does it. That is, as I told Jim Osmond, y 'all have heard me say this before, when I sit under a man who's preaching, I want to know that that man has been in the Word, that he has done the work, that he has studied to show himself approved, that he has wrestled with the text, that he's gotten the meaning right, and that has impacted him.

The Word of God, the Word of Christ dwells richly within him, per Colossians 3. That is, his heart and mind is saturated with the Word of God. It's impacted him. Then and only then do I want to hear what that man has to say about the text.

Why a Plagiarizing Pastor Is Dangerous to the Church

So now I'm curious with this. This is going to be out of left field a little bit. So when we look at a guy like Ed Litton, who is paid to be a pastor of a church, who isn't working on his own sermons, he's got eight people writing the sermons, either they or him are plagiarizing these sermons, even after getting caught, now making excuses for it, who do you think is more dangerous to the Christian community?

Someone like an Ed Litton or someone like a Benny Hinn, who is upfront about what he believes. He tells you he believes in word of faith and little God's doctrine. He doesn't hide it. He doesn't try to cover it up, right?

Ed Litton was on his website having heresy there up until he got caught with it. And this is, I don't know if you'd be ready to answer this to think through it, but I'd be curious with your background in studying word of faith, who do you think is actually more dangerous to the, because I know we've talked about this in the past, Justin, about when you look at the Muslims or you look at word of faith and that word of faith is more dangerous because they're preying on Christians.

But here you got someone that is really within the more conservative Christian community versus someone that is kind of seen as not in the Christian community by most Christians. Which do you see would be more dangerous to the Christian community then, an Ed Litton or a Benny Hinn?

Well, I suppose it would be the parameters that you put on the Christian community because of professing Christian community at large globally, I would say Benny Hinn. I would say Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer and that group.

Now, if you narrow that down to the SBC, then I would say Ed Litton because most SBC people are not listening to Benny Hinn. A few would be, but most are not. Now that number becomes exponentially greater when you broaden those, when you go outside of those SBC parameters and you open it up to, you know, all the charismatics, all that kind of stuff.

But specifically SBC, yeah, I would say Ed Litton because of the horrific example that he's giving right now. And aside from that, not only the horrific example, the horrific theology in these sermons.

I mean, people have pointed out, if you're going to plagiarize somebody, at least plagiarize somebody that knows what they're talking about. But in this sermon, he actually said that, and this is plagiarized from Tim Keller, who's no bastion of doctrinal soundness, but he said, he said, homosexuality does not send you to hell.

Do you know how I know that? Because heterosexuality doesn't send you to heaven. That is one of the most mind-numbingly dumb theological statements I have ever heard outside of word of faith. I mean, that is just, that is Theology 101 bad.

You would have flunked out of Theology 101 class. In vacation Bible school, you would have flunked out. Just unbelievably bad. And then, to make matters worse, he said, the Bible does not even have a word for homosexuality.

I'm like, man, what are you talking about? The Bible doesn't have a word for it. Arsenikoitai. There's your word. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9. That's, there's your word. It literally means men bedding men.

I don't know. What do you think that describes? Sounds like homosexuality to me. I mean, and this is a guy who's president of the SBC and claims in his interview that he does the work in the languages.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, maybe he never heard of the word. Maybe he never heard of the word sodomite or read about, you know, sodom. What were you going to say, Bud?

Well, I was going to say, but this is the problem. The theology that they have is not biblical. It's cultural. Yeah. And so, as those winds change, we've got to, well, we got to keep the people in the pews happy to hear something that's nuanced, but also we're concerned about the world watching and what the culture is doing.

It's crazy. I mean, the problem that I just can't get past is those people sitting in that pew under Ed Litton, they have no idea. The best they know is not who produced the sermon they're hearing, just who's performing it.

Yeah. Unbelievable. It's just crazy. And, Bud, to that point, I would also say, okay, if my pastor or your pastor, or Andrew, if you had gotten up, folks that are coming to your fellowship, any of us who go to a doctrinally sound church, if our pastor had gotten up, and said what J .D. Greer said, and Ed Litton plagiarized J .D. Greer's essay, and made it his own, but if they had said anything like that, every member in our churches would have been lined up outside the pastor's door.

No, they wouldn't. I'll tell you what would happen, Justin. If I was preaching at something like that, and you were there, I'll tell you exactly what would happen. If I was up at a pulpit and preached that, you'd ride right up in your scooter while I'm still preaching, and you'd stick your finger in my face and say, that's wrong.

You wouldn't even wait until I got to my door. Yeah, that's basic stuff. I mean, the vast majority of everybody in the churches that we attend would have recognized that as heresy, and the fact that J .D. Greer preached this sermon in January of 2019, And he did get flack for it at that time.

Yeah, he took some flack for it, rightly so, at that time, from some others, apparently nobody in his church. But then Ed Litton, a year later, plagiarized the same sermon.

Having known that there was some flack on it, right? Oh my goodness. So instead of correcting J .D. Greer, he goes, that's brilliant, can I steal it? I mean, borrow it. It's just unbelievable. So Bud, let me ask you, you brought this up earlier.

Do you really believe that the SBC really cares that the world is watching? I mean, what Justin had done on his video and one of the articles you did, Newsweek, it's Newsweek that's pointing out that he's not only plagiarizing, but getting rid of.

Videos and things like that. Do you think the SBC really cares that the world is watching? Or do you believe more that that's just a line they used to try to silence stones so that they can get who they wanted elected?

No, I think in the context of that specific convention that occurred on two days, I think that line was used as a political ploy and sort of a cliche to minimize any dissent against any of the resolutions that they were going to be facing that were being brought to the floor.

Minimize any dissent. Emphasize, we're all in this together kind of thing. And unity, unity, unity without regard for doctrine, without regard for truth. And the world is watching means, oh, we've got to do something that is going to be favorable in the eyes of the world.

Oh, well, good job. Look what you've just produced. I mean, you've produced a guy who preaches with his wife who has heresy on his website and now is stealing his sermons. Well, the world is watching.

But I don't know, you know, if repentance is going to be forthcoming. I think you've seen Lytton's church sort of close ranks around him to protect him from further scrutiny. And I think that you've seen the SBC elite, not wholesale, but a number of well-positioned SBCers come out in support of him.

I mean, Danny Akin, you know, he's essentially redefining what integrity and transparency and humility means. It's what Lytton has just done in light of this scandal. No, that's not right.

Sponsorship and a Call to Use the Right Tools

And I want to get to that just right after we explain to Justin how he can get a better night's sleep because he looks like he needs a better night's sleep. Look at him. He looks like he hasn't gotten enough sleep, right, bud?

I think the reason he hasn't gotten a good enough sleep is he needs a MyPillow mattress topper. That's what I think he needs. Right? Justin, you'd love it because it's made right here in the United States.

You like that. America. Yeah, I mean, so they're a sponsor here with The Wrap Report and with Apologetics Live. And so not only could you get yourself a good night of sleep, you'd be supporting this program as well.

But I will admit, I was willing to have them as a sponsor because I absolutely love their products. Justin knows I travel with my MyPillow. When I go, when we travel all over the place, I have MyPillow that I travel with because it is that comfortable.

But I'll tell you, the mattress topper that they have, I got it recently and that I'm absolutely loving. That is, and I've said this before, folks, other than getting my sleep number bed, that mattress topper has probably been the best thing for my sleep that I've had.

I absolutely love that mattress topper. I think they're still having the discount with the promo code of SFE. It's $100 off. I think you may even be able to get the two free pillows. But, you know, it is worth the money for a good night's sleep.

So if you want to go out and do that, there's a lot of other products they have there. If you go to MyPillow .com, just use promo code SFE and that gets you the discounts or you could call 1 -800 -873 -0176.

That's 1 -800 -873 -0176. Use the promo code SFE. Not only will you get a good night's sleep, support an American-made company, but also support Striving for Eternity. And maybe then we would see Justin looking like he had a good night of sleep, you know?

He looks a little groggy there. I don't know. He was too much celebrating for Fourth of July, you know? He lives up there in the land of the free where they probably were allowed to do fireworks and things like that.

I don't know about that. It was like the western front at my house last night. It was crazy. It was good because the dogs were all scared and they were under the bed so they left me alone but never mind.

Well, you know, I will admit that moving from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, you know, New Jersey fireworks are not allowed. I moved out here and man, everyone and their brother were setting off fireworks.

I didn't get to see any of them, but I heard them from every direction. You see, Justin wasn't having that up in Montana because it's like, what's your nearest neighbor like ten miles away? Oh no, we live in a neighborhood so my nearest neighbor is less than ten feet away.

Oh, well, then be careful with those fireworks you were setting off. There was an article.

You sent to us, to Justin and I, from SBC Voices. How should Ad Litton's borrowing sermons situation be handled? Now, Justin, just with that title, it kind of gives away the position that the author here, Adam Blosser, has.

I think we've already made this clear, but we just want to emphasize this. Do you think this was borrowing a sermon? No. No, it was stealing a sermon. I mean, people say, well, he had permission, but again, you're getting up in front of your people and you're preaching that material as though it was your own.

And it's not. It's not. In fact, when you look at these mashup videos, it's almost cringeworthy, embarrassing how bad Ad Litton's delivery is. It's so artificial and wooden. Now you know why it is, because he's just reading a script.

That's all he's doing. I mean, you can get a trained monkey to get up and do that. I mean, hire some... I could get up and I could read, I don't know, I could read a book on brain surgery and I could probably read it really well and it might look like I know what I'm talking about.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. I mean, anybody can get up and read something. It's just, it's so fake. Both Greer and Litton are reading it. I pointed that out on the podcast we did a couple weeks ago on this.

They're both reading it, which tells me, I think both of them are borrowing it from someone else, stealing it from someone else, paying for it from someone else. Greer's doing that. I know he's doing it some but how much, I don't know.

We don't know but the thing is, at least, you're pointing out, at least when Greer does it, he's got his notebook in his hand, he's reading it but he at least seems to read ahead and then, you know, kind of be a little bit more dramatic in his explanation where Ed just kind of is looking down, reading it and talking about it and it's like, when you compare the two, you really see that not only is it a bad sermon, not only is it not an original sermon but Ed Linton can't even do a good delivery or at least J .D. Greer can do that.

Yeah. Let me just insert this. This was too hilarious. You guys will know Don Green from his association with John MacArthur but Don Green, early this morning, posted this and here's the quote. It says, I have a small favor to ask from the seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention if they continue to support Ed Linton and his plagiarism scandal.