Ed Litton Defends Himself

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk today about something

I haven't talked about in a while, and that's the Southern Baptist Convention. The reason for that, there's a few of them.

One is after the last convention meeting in June, I felt like I had my say.

I had exposed, we had interviews with people who worked at various parts of the denomination.

You got to hear from Kyle Witt. You got to hear from Randy Adams. You got to hear from Russell Fuller. You got to hear from Bobby Lopez.

You got to hear, I don't even know who else. This list goes on. I did profiles of major Southern Baptist leaders.

We analyzed some of the things they said versus what they did, versus where their money was going, versus who they were partnering with.

We just did a lot of, we did a lot of analyzing, and yesterday, I got a few messages from people just telling me how helpful that was, and I know it is.

I know it is for many of you out there, especially if you're living your life, you're not paying attention to all this, and you need someone to break it down, so I get it, but I think the information's out there at this point, and so I've been kind of reluctant.

I know NAM is requiring all their missionaries, I don't know if it's NAM, IMB is requiring all their missionaries to get the jab, and this is before Biden's supposed mandate, and so I thought, oh, maybe

I'll focus on that, but it just, I'm like, you know, if you didn't think that that was gonna happen in the

IMB, like, I don't, you're not paying attention. I mean, these, you know, have you seen the rhetoric and the articles and everything else coming out from Southern Baptist entities on their reaction to COVID?

Have you been watching? I mean, this was kind of expected, so that's part of the reason I haven't focused on it as much, but the thing is, there are still people in the convention who are, believe it or not, they haven't been paying attention.

They're still unaware, they're still giving. I don't know why you would remain in the convention, especially if you're a pastor. What are you getting in return?

I mean, honestly, ask yourself that question. If you're still in, what are you in for? I mean, I know

Rod Martinez, I did an episode with him where he said, look, stay in because we gotta fight to keep this money from going to the devil, basically.

It's already there, though. It's already, I mean, Southern Baptist Convention's in stage four cancer. Yeah, there's some good pastors, and there's people you could probably cite that, or name that are still in there somewhere, maybe, but it's a huge denomination composed of many people.

Of course, there's gonna be some people who aren't quite aware, and they're still just trying to do the work of the Lord, but overall, from the bird's eye view, if you look at the convention, and look,

I'm gonna use some biblical language later that I'm gonna show you some verses that go way beyond this, but I'd say there's a stink, there's a stench.

It's rotting corpse kind of stuff, guys. I wouldn't wanna be associated at this point.

I wouldn't wanna be, I wouldn't wanna take the money. Look, even if you're a pastor, and you're in a region that NAM is targeting, because that's what

NAM does, by the way. They reallocate finances and money, and then they target urban areas. They target college towns, especially.

It's not the only place, but those are some of the main areas they're looking at, and if you're in one of those areas, you might think, wow, the gravy train's coming here.

I mean, look at all the money that's coming in. Look at all the people they're sending. We can get, we can have three pastors on staff at our church or four pastors when the church can only sustain one because NAM's giving us money.

This is happening all over the place, and you may think that's the advantage, but you have to, where's this money coming from?

Who's getting their cut? And then, and just the moral things, did the whole thing with Randy Adams on that.

Put the moral stuff on the side. I wouldn't wanna be connected with that stuff just because of who's managing this money, the hands that it has to go through to get to you.

And look, it's not like it's the United States government. This is a Christian denomination. There's supposed to be, there's supposed to be some high ethics here.

It doesn't seem like they're there, but put that on the side, right? Forget about that.

Even if that is the case, if you're getting all this money from NAM, look around you. What's happening?

What kind of fruit can you see in your own community from it? And I mean,

I don't have all knowledge, but I do know of several of the places where this is happening. People have reached out to me, and the fruit's not good.

It's not good. It's not like you have droves of people coming to the Lord, which, okay, that doesn't always happen, but it's more than that.

It's the negative stuff that they're pushing. If they're coming into your community, what are they pushing?

Is it community focus? Is it social justice? Is it seeker -sensitive stuff? Primarily, that's the vibe

I'm getting. It's come to our church. We're gonna have a special, you know, I don't know, giveaway, you know, all these draw cards, seeker -sensitive stuff to get people in.

Come to our church, because we're the ones really investing in the community. The Lord's working here because we're the ones that are so focused on, it's becoming community organizers.

I said this a while ago, just watching what I was seeing in seminary. There's a switch from training pastors to training community organizers.

The program I was in at Southeastern dropped hermeneutics as a requirement. They dropped a theology class. They started filling them with these fluff classes,

I call them, because I took some of them. And it's like, you know, how to relate to your community, how to make your church more diverse.

All this kind of stuff is what you start to learn. And you're so man -focused, you forget the reason you're there in the first place.

So that's my little spiel about just the SBC in general. So when we're gonna play this video of Ed Litton, president of the

SBC, talking to Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, just keep all that in mind.

I'm just giving you one more example. There's many out there. I'm just giving you one more example of why I don't think it's wise to remain in this denomination.

I just don't. You can, you know, the Lord's gonna build his church. He said that, he promised that. He doesn't need the

SBC to do it. And I understand for some people, this is also, there's an emotional connection there.

And that's not all wrong, but you grew up with it. I get that. And you don't wanna lose it. You don't wanna leave it.

And look, all the things after 2020, even before that, all the cancel culture stuff, we've had to kind of give up and leave.

You know, this is one I think you can voluntarily throw away. You don't have to remain in a corrupt denomination.

And I would pray, and I hope you would pray, that the Lord would restore this somehow.

But it doesn't mean that you need to compromise yourself or your own finances or expose your church to resources or things that aren't beneficial for them in order to make that happen.

So I remember, by the way, before we get into the video, I just thought of this. Two years ago, two and a half years ago,

I still remember Danny Akin. This is after the last

SBC meeting, the 2018 SBC meeting. So this is actually three years ago,

I guess now, right? So right after that, he said that the Southern Baptist Conventions were unified.

And I don't know if you, some of you remember this on Twitter. A bunch of people who were bigwigs in the

SBC, all, it's like they all get in a room. They probably have their own chat boxes open and they're saying, what's our narrative?

But they all started posting that, SBC is unified. That was the thing they were trying to get across everyone.

There is no division. Resolution 9 is causing no division. The critical race theory, there's no division. We're all unified.

We're unified in the gospel. We're unified, and they just kept saying that. I remember there was a guy on Twitter. What's his name?

Chris Bolt, I think was his name. And most of you probably haven't heard of that name, but he was, if you were following, if you were a political junkie on SBC stuff, you might've known his name because he was posting a lot about it.

And I still remember he made this tweet. I did this whole thing on Southeastern and he had posted something like, he kind of insinuated,

I guess it was a waste of time for him to listen to it or something. But we got into this discussion and basically it came down to, and the central organization we were talking about was

Southeastern. And it got into, well, I don't see any critical race theory.

I don't see any problem here. I don't see, there is no division. I remember we got to that point. There is no division in the

SBC. And the bigger division is Calvinism and Arminianism. That's the real, if there's any division, that's what it is.

If there's no division over critical race theory and now look at where things are. And this isn't like,

I'm not trying to be like, see, I told you so or anything like that. I'm just saying a lot of people felt this way three years ago.

There's nothing coming. There's no, we're not entering a tunnel. It's all free open skies from here on.

And they were in the tunnel already. And now they've had to admit it. And now

I can't even believe how far the SBC's fallen. If you don't think the hand of God is judging this country, judging the denominations in this country,

I don't know what to tell you. I think it's so obvious at this point. We need real repentance over real sins, right?

Not just, oh, well, man, I was complicit because I didn't do enough because of systemic this or that.

And I just didn't really, not, no. I mean, like real sins that God has said are sins that characterize individuals.

We don't repent of those things as a people. I don't know. I don't see much hope. And knowing, knowing the corruption, knowing some of the evil things that are being spouted.

I'm gonna show you one of them here in a minute with Adam Greenway and Ed Litton. Knowing these things, these things being obvious and out there and choosing to fund them.

I mean, it's a voluntary choice. It's not something that's, you know, it just, it's inescapable.

It's, you're saying you're going to give money to this if you're in the denomination and you're funding them. So I just don't know what to say to someone like that at this point.

So anyway, let's get into it though. This is Ed Litton. As many of you know,

I did a number of episodes on it. So have many others on this sermon gate. Some people are calling it controversy using docent research.

I did a whole thing on docent research, but Ed Litton, Ed Litton has plagiarized

Tim Keller. He's plagiarized J .D. Greer and he's plagiarized J .D. Greer a lot, like over 10 times, at least.

And that's just what we know. We don't know about what we don't know about, right? His associate pastor plagiarized J .D. Greer. No apology, no attribution, no like, and now he's in a tough spot.

Now national media has already gone and basically exposed this. And it took like progressives in the national media to really get him to finally sort of say something.

But even then, you're going to see his reaction is very disappointing. And I have some choice

Bible verses at the end of this I want to read to you and just think about it. Think about, compare what you're hearing to what the

Bible states. Because I've come to the conclusion, well, I'm going to save this for the end.

I'm going to save my conclusion for the end. Let's listen to it, let's listen. To describe your actions in terms of your preaching ministry, yes or no, why?

Just help us understand for the benefit of our seminary community, the issue here. Well, first, let me start by saying that I take preaching very seriously.

Seven and a half years as a church planter in Arizona and 27 years at Redemption Church. It is critical that the man of God preach the word of God and the truth of God to God's people.

And that there is a trust relationship built when that is done. And so there is a high value and primacy in preaching.

The situation that we find ourselves in today is that a series of messages we did last year on the book of Romans, which

I'm going to just be honest with you, was intimidating for me. I've preached Romans before, but a lot of things have changed in my life in the last 10 years that I may get to in a moment.

Here we go, now you can hear me. Sorry about the audio quality, I don't think it's the best. I think that must be a microphone issue on their end.

What he's saying is that, what I think is happening right now is he's kind of trying to get some compassion for him, you know, how hard it was to preach through Rome.

I mean, look, the president of the SBC, I don't have a lot of compassion on how hard it is to preach through Romans, I'm sorry. But that's kind of what he's doing is he's setting the stage for his kind of rebuttal to all the critics who have said, you're plagiarizing.

But when I approached that, I noticed that I had my commentaries, I bought new commentaries, preparing for that series, we actually plan our preaching about two years in advance.

And in that particular case, I started listening to J .D. Greer, who had done a series previous to that.

And I was really moved by the way he handled some very challenging passages in Romans.

So I called J .D. and I asked him, I said, first of all, would you notice some of the language he's using very challenging passages, like this is such a hard thing to preach.

And this is the president of the largest denomination in North America, think about it, think about that.

It's just so hard to preach through Romans. It's kind of like your job, right, as a pastor, but like more than that, you're now the head of all these pastors, in a way, you're not, you know, pastors have their autonomy in their local church, but you're like the one that all the other pastors voted for, all the other delegates, including pastors, so, and missionaries,

I don't think we should be, this should actually be a warning sign to all of us, like if it's really this challenging, that you need to go and use the exact sermons of someone else, then are you fit for the position?

Do you mind sharing with me how you broke down Book of Romans to do it in one year, which he sent me a spreadsheet with all that information, that was very helpful, so as a part of the preaching planning.

But then I said, there's material here, do you mind if I use this material? He was very gracious, and I think he even quoted

Adrian Rogers, if my bullet fits your gun, shoot it, and I said, that's fine, and I appreciate it. So there are, in a couple of particular cases, times where I made statements that others have been able to line up with statements that, from the same text, the same passage, that JD, so to answer your question,

I don't consider that. It's called using an entire sermon, over and over, over 10,

I don't even know how, what's the count now, it's over 10. It's using entire sermons, almost verbatim.

Like, it's not just like I took a quote here, I took a quote there, you know,

I didn't know what I was doing, he's saying he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing.

He asked JD Greer, he got the sermons, he never gave attribution. And he used entire sermons, it's not like it was a little portion.

Let me tell you where my sin was. My sin was I did not credit him to my church.

And I've been asked why, and I'm a little mystified by that too, because I'm very transparent with my people, and the goal of using material, whether it's written by R .K.

Hughes, or International Critical Commentary, or any other commentary you use, is to expound on the text and to make sure people understand the verse -by -verse meaning of that text.

So that was my goal, it wasn't to become famous, because quite frankly. Okay, he's getting off topic here.

He said, now he did say this, he said my sin was I didn't credit JD. Okay, now if your whole church knew that that's exactly what you're, you're just gonna preach an entire series almost from JD Greer, and do it with almost like word for word.

And then look, we've, this is the thing too. Haven't we already, doesn't this contradict what his church said?

What was it? I'm having a hard time remembering, there's been so much talk about this. But that first he didn't plagiarize, and then he didn't, he wasn't ripping off JD Greer.

And then, well, I took a few things, and now it's, he's in such a corner, he can't really wiggle out of it.

This is after a lot of hemming and hawing to get to this place. He was not forthcoming with any of this.

But remember, he said there was a whole sermon committee. Oh, the sermon committee. He kind of passed the buck onto them. You know, they, and people were mocking it, saying like, what, you're a pastor, and you need a sermon committee to choose your material?

You know, they chose these passages from JD Greer. This guy's been all over the place.

You gotta keep that in mind. This isn't the first time he's talking about this. This is the man who's now in a complete corner, and he's tried every way to wiggle out of it, and now he's completely caught.

There's nothing he can do, because it's even the people that the Southern Baptist Convention wants to impress in national media, the people they want to like them.

I mean, they have an insatiable desire, the people at the top, to be liked by the liberal establishment.

They, they've even exposed this. So he's gotta say something. So at least, and I'll give him credit for this.

At least he said, look, my sin wasn't to give credit to JD Greer, but the next thing should be, and now I'm gonna step down from,

I'm not qualified here to be a pastor or to be the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, because it's so much more than this.

It's not just I didn't credit JD Greer. It's that you did this, you deceived your entire congregation over and over and over and over, and you didn't do the work that is expected of you that your congregation thinks they're paying you to do.

I mean, it's, there's so much more to this than just, oh, I should have said something.

Should have said, you know, I got some things from JD Greer, but then he downplays it. Well, there's a few areas where quotes lined up.

No, there's not. It's whole sermons. And he did it with Tim Keller too. So this is a pattern.

So he gets into now, watch where he goes with this. That was my goal.

I would not have picked JD Greer as someone to quote. The problem was I did not credit him. I have repented of that to my church.

I have repented of that to our leadership. And quite frankly, we're in a process of changes. I'm fasting from listening to preaching right now.

As it turns out, I have a capacity to remember statements that are made in an audible sermon that I hear that's a little too good.

Sometimes it gets mixed up. That, I'm not buying it. I am not buying it. So he's, this is the defense.

Number one, I, my motives were good.

That's the first thing. My motives were good. Like, look, your motive, you're plagiarizing sermons. Just say your, just be honest.

Your motives were not good. You stole some material. You can't have it both ways.

I repented to my congregation, but my motives were all good in this. I just wanted to explain the text. And it's like, you weren't capable of doing that as a pastor.

You had to plagiarize a whole series. But then secondly, well, you know,

I just can't help that my ability, I've just, I've got such a superhuman ability to remember entire, it's not just passages.

It's like an entire series. I can just remember verbatim, word for word, an entire series. This is different than my pastor, my committee, my sermon committee chose things for me to say.

And they chose these, some Greer things. Remember that, that was the excuse when only there was like one or two or three sermons from Greer and that were exposed.

And he's like, ah, you know, my, I mean, it might've been actually one. I think it was the first one. It's like, well, the sermon committee did this. And now that we're like, the count is over 10, it's like, well,

I just have a capacity to remember things. So I shouldn't listen to sermons anymore. I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous.

No, he didn't listen verbatim. He's reading. In many of the videos, you can go watch them online. Reformation Charlotte's put out a bunch of them.

He's literally verbatim reading from a transcript. It's not just that he remembered. But the truth is this has been a very painful process.

It's been a hot process. Let me explain what I mean. You're very familiar with the fact that the scripture teaches us that we are being refined.

I feel like I'm in a refiner's fire. Now I want to tell you this.

It's easy to criticize the source of the fire. Nowhere does the scripture tell us to do.

The scripture tells us to put our eyes on the refiner. Because he knows when - This is emotional manipulation.

This is trying to over -spiritual. What he's doing is he's trying to gain compassion for himself.

First, like, I'm, look at me, poor me. I'm in a refiner's fire. I just have such a good memory. And my motives were so good.

And you know what? Yeah, I should have done that little thing. I should have said, I got some of these quotes that I used from J .D. Greer.

He's not owning up to the full measure of what he's actually done here, though. And now he's gonna, basically anyone who would criticize him is now gonna be guilty of not looking to Jesus.

You know, you shouldn't be looking at the, I'm in a refiner's fire. Don't look at the process of me being refined.

Look at the refiner. Look at Jesus. So if, you could say this, by the way, to like any of the apostles, any of the writers of the

New Testament, you could say this to. So, well, don't criticize anyone. You shouldn't write that horrible letter to the

Corinthians. They're in a refiner's fire. Shouldn't talk about false teachers that way. They're in a refiner's fire.

You gotta focus on the refiner. Like this is, this doesn't work, but this is where he's going. And unfortunately, it might work with many of the people in the

SBC. This might work. When to turn up the heat. He knows when to allow it to get to a certain place and he knows when to shut it off.

And so through this, I have accepted the reality of this fire and I embrace it by the grace of God.

And God is refining me. There is a depth in me that I have discovered of insecurity that needed praise from my preacher.

That God has been in the process of burning out. Who is that famous prosperity preacher?

I think in the 80s or, well, health and wealth, whatever. I can't remember his name now. I should know it. Was it

Baker, I think? Didn't he come out and apologize? And I can't remember his name.

And I think Baker was his last name. And just, you know, should he do this?

Should people that are swindling others, prosperity preachers, lying to congregations on a weekly basis about healing or whatever, you know, those kinds of, you know the crowd

I'm talking about. Should they come out and just be like, you know what, criticizing me? I'm in a refiner's fire.

I'm just embracing the refiner's fire now. So I'm gonna keep my job. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing. And now you shouldn't criticize, basically.

And it is a painful thing. And there are more things. Matter of fact, some of my critics, if they knew what God knew about my heart, this would be a never -ending

Twitter feed. But the truth is, God is far more gracious than I have ever been.

And what the scripture tells me, and tells all of us, is that we pray for those who say all manner of evil against us.

False or true. We pray for them. We ask a blessing. And I can say, what some may have meant for evil,

God has meant for good. Because at the end of the day, the purpose of preaching is the saving of many souls.

And my church has been incredibly gracious, and loving, and supportive.

And I also have a unique process, too. I've been mentoring young preachers for many years now.

We have multiple campuses. We have live preaching on all of our campuses. And so, we have a process of studying together, and we have a process of working it out.

Now, when that became public knowledge, that opened up even more criticism, that I was perverting or misleading other students.

But we've had honest, candid conversations about how we credit, and what we do with the information that we're sharing with other people.

And so, we're learning and growing through this experience. So I had someone reach out to me not too long ago, and ask me about, they have a friend who is one of the people he just talked about going to,

I think on staff at Ed Litton's church, or being mentored by him. And what should I say, what should I do?

And I was like, look, if this person knows about this whole controversy, and is still choosing to do this, there's not much

I can say. There's not much you can probably say either. This person's just, they're impervious to logic reason.

And Ed Litton, right here, is trying to, he's doing a jujitsu tactic.

He's trying to turn everything around, to make people like myself and others who have a problem with this kind of behavior, the ones who are the accusers, the ones who are the big meanies, who are intended, you know, we're like Joseph's brothers apparently, intending, we're selling

Ed Litton into slavery. But what God intended for, what we intended for evil, God is bringing out for good or something.

It's so dishonest, it's so dishonest. It's not repentance. You don't, this isn't real, like I've repented of that.

And then you give all the reasons that no one should have ever criticized you, that they're all bad meanies, that your motives were good, that you just have such a great memory, and you really didn't do anything wrong.

That's not, I don't see how that's an apology. Ed Litton is disqualified from not only being a pastor, but being the president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. There's no way you can expect the convention to be blessed when you got a guy like this at the helm.

And I do wanna share some scriptures with you. Before that though, I just wanna say one thing. He is right about the

Lord. The Lord is gracious, the Lord forgives with genuine repentance. And it doesn't mean you get to keep your job where you've demonstrated that you are irresponsible.

I mean, if you have for years been stealing from a company, let's say, been pilfering, and you finally, you became a

Christian, let's say, and you're convicted, and you go, and you own up to all of it. Are you gonna keep your job at that company?

Probably not, probably not. You're probably gonna have to look for a different kind of job, a job where that temptation isn't available.

But this is even worse than that though, to be honest with you. This is even worse than that, because this is not just, I was tempted and I took the bait.

This is kind of an admission that I can't do my job. Because Ed Litton's basically, he's ripping off an entire series, just about, and entire sermons from multiple preachers, and saying how hard it is for him to preach through the

Book of Romans, how difficult some of these passages are. I mean, that's just incompetence.

So you're adding that to the moral issue here. So anyway,

I think this is horrifying. I just can't believe. I think maybe part of it is also, coming from a slightly academic background, at least

I have some of that in my, certainly that's not part of my identity, but that is, I had to grade papers for two years, undergraduate papers, and plagiarism was such a thing that was drilled into us.

Don't plagiarize. Plagiarism is bad. And so when I see this, and I'm like, man, you're kind of like, in some ways, in charge, or a model to be looked to by a number of big seminaries.

This is not a good example. So let's read a few verses. I wanted to read for you John 8, 44.

This is harsh stuff, but this is from the Bible. It's the words of Jesus here. He says this to the Pharisees.

"'You are of your father, the devil, "'and you want to do the desires of your father. "'He was a murderer from the beginning "'and does not stand in the truth "'because there is no truth in him, "'where whenever he speaks a lie, "'he speaks from his own nature, "'for he is a liar and the father of lies.'"

Now I'm sure some of the people around him thought, Jesus, man, that's pretty harsh stuff to be saying about the religious leaders of our day.

But one of the things, and you're just gonna see this in scripture. And one of the things that is especially pervasive about false teachers is that they like lying.

And they don't even know sometimes when they're lying. They just lie. It's in their nature. It's kind of like definitional to false teaching, right?

That's a lie. So when you see lies wind up in other areas, you shouldn't be surprised.

Now, I haven't done like a huge deep dive on it. I had someone the other day reach out to me.

I actually have more than one person, I think, probably. But one person stood out to me. He reached out to me about David Platt. And basically, you shouldn't call him a false teacher kind of stuff.

And I've decided I'm probably gonna do an episode soon on just false teaching. What is false teaching?

Because I think, I assume that everyone kind of is on board with me. We know kind of what the essentials are. We know what denying them are, or at least tampering with them.

We kind of had the same image in our minds, but I don't think we all do. I think some of us, we are, we don't really understand maybe what false teaching is.

And which is to be expected. It's not, the doctrine is not taught a lot anymore.

It's not emphasized. So I think I'll do some maybe episodes or at least one episodes on false teaching.

And just like, what is it? In the abstract, not maybe, maybe we'll use some examples.

But I hold to the idea that David Platt is a false teacher. There is no doubt in my mind, actually, that David Platt is a false teacher.

So to clarify, for anyone who is confused, if I was calling David Platt a false teacher, yeah, I was calling David Platt a false teacher, but I felt like I needed to walk people through it.

Because it's hard to just say that upfront. I needed to give you, here's why I think that. And look at the way he views sin.

It's not the way God views sin. Look at the way he views repentance. Look at the works that he injects into part of being a

Christian, this sort of uncertainty as to whether you're even saved. If you've lived without whatever enough is,

I don't know what it is, but without challenging the systemic racism around you enough, you're somehow, you're just like those in Amos who were in danger of God's judgment.

And I only used that one sermon. We could have gone to a lot of other places. This is a twisting of what sin is.

We need to call sin the things that God calls sin. And it's not just items, it's categories. I mean, David Platt is fundamentally changing the

DNA of sin. And that's my big problem. That's why I say he's a false teacher. But there's probably other things

I could bring up about Platt, just to use Platt as an example. Ed Litton, I know I haven't done a deep dive, but I know there was a sermon

I was watching where he did something very similar to that. Where he guilt, I think it was at SBC 2018, he was preaching a sermon.

He just guilts everyone for you're just not doing enough. Because you're embedded in this white privilege system, et cetera.

So, what do we do about that? How do we view Ed Litton?

Well, I'm starting to see some things that characterize, not just him, but a number of the bigwigs in the SBC. I mean, and the more

I've studied them, and there's gonna be a whole bunch of that in the book coming out in a few weeks that I wrote, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

The more I've studied them, the more I've taught to them even personally, some of them I have, in private conversations, the more

I realize, not only are many of them promoting false teaching, but they also fit the profile of a false teacher.

And being very casual with the truth is one of the signs of that.

2 Corinthians 11, 13 says this, "'For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, "'disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.'"

Deception, deception. That's part of it. Ed Litton tried to deceive as long as he could until he was in a corner, and then he kind of had to admit what, sort of, kind of half admit what took place.

Matthew 23, that whole, how many times does Jesus say hypocrites in Matthew 23?

About six times, he says the word hypocrite. And that's what I see when

I look at the upper echelon of the SBC, hypocrites. And then 2 Timothy 3, you can read that whole profile.

And a lot of these things, if your last days, difficult times will come, people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy.

Well, just about all those things, I can say, characterizes most of the people in the upper echelons of the

SBC. Slanderers, I've seen that so many times. I saw that with the Russell Fuller thing, what some of his own colleagues were saying about him, comparing him to the devil.

I kid you not, I still have the screenshots from it. Arrogant, oh my goodness, some of those arrogant people

I've met are academics in SBC seminaries. Lovers of money, you bet.

Look at Kevin Eazell, look at the corruption in NAMM. Lovers of self, I mean, it is, that is obvious from, look at the social media profiles of so many of these people.

But it goes on, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious, gossips, without self -control, brutal. Some of these things we don't know about everything that's going on in their private lives.

If you looked at them closely, I wonder what you'd actually find though. And I don't know. I don't know what

I don't know. But I know a number of these things, if you just read through the passage, they fit. And men also oppose the truth.

That's, those are the obvious things. It's like an iceberg. You see the obvious things and you start to see a pattern. That's what

I've seen. And it's taken, you know, I've tried to be careful, as careful as I possibly can about this. I really have.

Some of you don't believe me probably, but I really, really have. It's taken me years. Danny Akin at first, man,

I did not want to believe this about Danny Akin. I mean, I literally chose to go to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, partially because of Danny Akin.

I loved Al Mohler at the time. I really, it was a process.

And then when I figured it out, when I was seeing, wait, hold on, what you're saying does not align with scripture.

And I have a whole episode, by the way, on Danny Akin. I've been waiting to do, and I just haven't wanted to talk about the SPC, but we'll do it at some time.

But I can be very confident in saying, when you're saying things that do not line up with scripture, when you're corrected and you don't care, when you obfuscate, when you defend people who are defenseless, false teachers in your seminary, you have a big problem.

And I started to see these attitudes on a personal level, from the ground up. I started to see this at the seminary

I was at, among some of the faculty, especially those in the administration who were social justice -minded.

The stuff that you read in that passage describes them. And it scares me. They love the chief seats.

They love the approval of men. And what's missing from all this is, unfortunately, Christ.

And he's used in the way that Ed Litton just used him, as a way to guilt people who actually do love

Christ and believe in Christ, to neutralize any discernment they would bring to bear on a situation by saying, you should just focus on Christ.

That's often the way that Christ is used. And it's very sad to me. So I know this is a lot of negativity for some of you.

And I don't mean to be that way. I don't, you know, a lot of what we focus on, let's just face it, we're living in times that are very negative in some ways.

And there's always been negative things out there, but we're witnessing the free fall of our country and of denominations, of associations we've been part of for maybe for years.

I mean, for me, look, I was a Boy Scout. I mean, I don't like to talk about what's happened to the Boy Scouts. A lot of the things

I love, the historical things I love, being ripped down, many of them, being basically reinterpreted according to memory studies.

A lot of the things that I love are just being destroyed. And I'm with you on that. I see what's going on.

We have to be faithful where we're at, though. We have to, in our own families, teach our children, teach the people we have influence on the right way and give them godly examples.

And it starts with us. And I'm so grateful. There's so many dead people that I can draw upon.

It's not even just the people that presently live, but there's, and there are some good people who presently live that can be heroes.

But more than that, I have all kinds of books from history. I can go read a book about Eric Little. I can go read a book about all kinds of missionaries and all kinds of reformers and just people in church history that are inspirational, early church fathers.

There's just so many people, so many good Christian heroes out there, military leaders. You can read about some of these great men who their lives have been tested and emulated by many people.

In fact, right now, I'm working through Augustine's book, Confessions. I love it.

I love reading that stuff. Maybe you don't, but find something that you do. Find people that are positive examples you can look to because otherwise you will get discouraged.

Now, I did want to say, there is one piece of really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good news. Okay? We're looking for the silver lining, all right?

We got to find the silver lining here. For those who are concerned about the forced mandates and stuff like that, a judge has ruled in New York state that the

New York can't force Christian healthcare workers to get the jab. So that just happened.

We'll see what happens with it. We'll see if that gets overturned or how that works, but we thank

God for that. So hope that was helpful for everyone. A little bit of positivity here at the end.