Alan Atchison on SBC Turmoil

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We got a guest with us today.

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We got Alan Atchinson. Alan, thank you for joining me and being willing to discuss the

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Southern Baptist Convention and whatever else we get into. Well, I appreciate you having me and there is certainly a lot to talk about.

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Yeah, well, you haven't been on the show before. We've talked a few times, more recently, but I've been familiar with your blog since I think, honestly,

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I think it was like right after Resolution 9 or right before Resolution 9. We don't even call it the SBC Convention anymore.

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We just call it Resolution 9 from 2019. But before that,

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I think you were blogging about like sports and other things and somehow now you're like the go -to guy for like what's the latest in the

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SBC. So, and I think your numbers are like, they exceed the other more progressive like SBC voices and some of these other blogs that no one reads.

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But so here's the thing, I wanted to find out first of all, how'd you get into this? Because I don't even know this story.

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Well, I guess it was about 2015, certainly by 2016, I started detecting there's something wrong with what

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Russell Moore is saying. So I started writing about this. I wasn't, the more I researched, the more

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I thought, no, there's significant issues with Russell Moore and you can start seeing some of the connections where you started seeing, well, he's advocating policies that are not necessarily conservative.

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And so I started writing about that and I got a lot of reaction and the more pushback you would get from some of the more leftist woke folks that as we would know them now,

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I just got more committed to doing it. They just wanna silence any dissent. And so instead of engaging the dialogue, which could have taken place back 2015, 2016, 2017, they just wanted everybody to be quiet.

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Well, that doesn't work with me. I tend to, that tends to make me wanna talk more. So I just kept doing it.

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And certainly I think that by the 2019 convention, that was that turning point with resolution nine because finally it validated everything that a lot of us had been saying that critical race theory and social justice had taken over the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Yeah, well, your website is Capstone Report. People can go check out your articles.

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You come out sometimes with like five a day, like you're really on top of what's going on. I don't know how you do it with just a family and I don't know everything else, but you're quick.

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That's the other thing I've noticed. You're quick and you get the information out there. So I just wanna say thank you from me and from others who have benefited from that.

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You are doing a service. And I think this past convention, especially in the Southern Baptist world, your influence meant something.

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It really did. And so I wanna talk about where the SBC is at now and kind of, cause like you could literally sit here for like three hours probably talking about this.

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I don't wanna do that, but like kind of high, just give me like the high points. Like, where's the

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SBC at right now? And I know you're a conservative, you're probably discouraged by what just happened.

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What do you think now though, that Ed Litton's being kind of pursued by people that normally wouldn't say anything, but now all of a sudden, and I know all the woke stuff didn't seem to phase him, but all of a sudden plagiarism is now like taking him out kind of for lack of a better term.

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What do you think, what's going on? Well, I think we're in like a stage five dumpster fire in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. It is a total disaster. And it's become this total disaster because it's the 11th commandment has been the controlling thing.

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So the leadership had decided to go down this woke path and they did not allow dissent.

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What happened is it platformed a lot of people, apparently like Ed Litton, who was willing to repeat anything that finds approval with other

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Southern Baptist entity heads. And so that's how we got,

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I think, Ed Litton. He said the things that people wanted to hear. He was the kind of grandfatherly figure that could be managed.

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So I think that's where we are right now. And unfortunately, a lot of that was just a veneer.

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It was a facade that he covered up lack of theological depth and some other serious faults.

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And I think that's what people are alarmed about. The hypocrisy is at this point from Ed Litton and his enablers just too clear.

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When there's ambiguity there and they can say, well, we're just applying critical race theory, we're not teaching it or something along those lines, people can make excuses.

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But when you see a 25 minute long video like dropped last night from some anonymous

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YouTube user, it just hits you in the face. He's copying word for word. He's delivering like an actor.

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How many are we up to now? That's a good question. I think maybe six sermons that have been documented.

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I think there's six, most in Romans. And then the one that we wrote about from Acts that Greer preached in 2013 and Litton preached in 2015.

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That to me was an eye -opening thing because at first it was limited to the

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Roman series and that was the narrative that they were pushing. But we know it's far more extensive than that.

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The question really I think everyone's asking is, who else did Litton copy from?

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And we don't have an answer to that yet. I think it's gonna be harder because they made a lot of stuff disappear, which is constantly,

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I mean, you wanna talk about honest conduct, let's cover up the evidence. That probably speaks more about the lack of character and virtue amongst

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Litton and his supporters than anything else. Instead of just owning up to something, they deleted or tried to hide all the evidence.

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How many lies have been documented in trying to hide evidence or get pressure off them from this whole plagiarism controversy?

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Because I do know that he had said one thing on like a, I think I remember it was some,

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I can't even keep track. There's been so many mainstream media stories. It was a mainstream media story. They said one thing and then he said something different to someone else.

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So how many lies are we talking about? Well, that's a good question and I haven't counted them up, but yeah, he told the

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Washington Times, well, the sermons were removed for web space issues were migrating to a new web serving environment.

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And previously to that, just like the day before, Baptist Press had run a statement from the

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Redemption Church elders saying they took them down because they didn't want anybody going through them, taking things to malign their pastor.

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So those things don't mesh. They're not accurately or they don't work together.

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Either you took them down for renovation from your website or you took them down to cover up the evidence and not, so he wouldn't look bad.

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So then he goes on SPC this week and he compounds the lie because he tells us, no, no, no, both of those things are true.

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That was the, that was, so. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. They were renovating the website so he had to take sermons down from YouTube.

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Again, it's one of those things that doesn't make sense and also - Not buying it.

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I don't either, but even if they were going through this type of transition, which probably,

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I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they are, but that's a lie of omission. When you tell the

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Washington Times, no, no, no, these things came down because we're going through a website renovation, but the other people on staff told the truth, probably to Baptist Press.

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He's just being so Clintonian at this moment. Okay, I just remembered something.

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When Southeastern did this, do you remember this was what, two years ago now, when they took out a bunch of Kingdom Diversity stuff, like 90 % of Kingdom Diversity stuff was scrubbed and there's still some videos out there and stuff of some of the crazy things that were going on there, but that was the same reasoning that was used.

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It was, well, that was a website renovation that we're doing right now, but the interesting thing was they didn't take down everything. Some of the articles were still there.

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It's like 90 % were gone and I think maybe they did do a website renovation, but it was awfully convenient.

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At the very moment they're being challenged and they're being exposed, all of a sudden, website renovation.

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I see the same thing happening again and this is what's leading some people who have just been paying attention over the last few years to conclude, these guys are all corrupt.

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This is just a corrupt enterprise. You get the sense people think that about the upper echelons of the SBC? I get that sense and they aren't doing anything to discourage that view.

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Look at the conduct, whether it's the North American Mission Board or a couple of seminary professors and presidents excusing blatant plagiarism.

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I mean, it's clear what, I think Bart Barber had a video that came out that he was saying, I don't agree with what

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Lytton said, but I don't want CBN getting the vice president to become president because I don't like those guys.

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It's a total ends justify the means argument that he was making, but he was saying out loud how they really feel.

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They want power and they're not gonna share it with anyone. And that's, so when people say it's corrupt, it's about money, it's about power, good evidence there.

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Yeah, I think, and I don't think I saw that video, but just for people who don't understand the situation, you have

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Ed Lytton, who's kind of social justice minded, more progressive candidate who won in Nashville, the

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SBC presidency and the vice president though, what's his name again? Lee Brand, I think.

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Lee Brand, right, Lee Brand. I've never met him or talked to him, but I understand he's conservative. He was a conservative

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Baptist network guy. If Ed Lytton vacates or resigns, whatever, Lee Brand takes that position.

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And I know I had said on a video about a week ago, this is the moment. Like I made this video,

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I said, look, here's eight reasons to leave the SBC. But I wasn't expecting that literally right after the election, all of a sudden there's this huge controversy that people are even willing to chime in on who aren't willing to chime in on social justice.

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And the guns are all pointed at the SBC president and not just him, but people who would defend him.

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Danny Akin is one of those guys. I know the provost, Keith Whitfield at Southeastern defended him.

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I don't, I remember there was like maybe six people upper echelon SBC guys. So this is certainly a turn of events that I was not expecting.

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And there's only one person I can think of, maybe you know of more who is, could be considered an

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SBC elite. And with the exception of maybe Rod Martin, but like actually like works for an entity.

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And that's Jason Allen who actually opposed the plagiarism. What do you think about that?

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What do you make of that, that Jason Allen is breaking ranks? That does not happen often. There is a,

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I think what we have to understand now about the SBC elites, there's a fracture in the hierarchy or the oligarchy.

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It's really an oligarchy that it's kind of in control of things. And I think what you're seeing here is a fracture. Al Mohler has been totally silent.

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Akin supported Litton. Greenway retweeted a thing in support of Litton.

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So we know where they stand, but Dr. Allen made a very brave statement saying, re -preaching sermons, particularly unattributed is wrong.

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And of course you noticed the blow, there's immediate blowback from the woke wing of the

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SBC, the Hillary Clinton voting, Dwight McKissick attacked Dr.

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Allen for that very simple. And a few weeks ago, that would have been uncontroversial statement that you don't preach other people's sermons without proper attribution.

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So I think it does show there's a fracture going on because some people just can't, they just are going to refuse to endorse such blatant hypocrisy.

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Because we know in our colleges and seminaries, people would be expelled for what

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Ed Litton did. They should be at least. Or at least they would be disciplined.

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They would not get away without any type of penalty.

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Why should Ed Litton be different? Because he's a pastor and because he's woke or he's just going to give them a get out of jail free card, so to speak.

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So there has to be a consequence here. Okay, let me ask you this.

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There's been, so I don't remember who it was. I don't even know if we know who it was who first kind of discovered, hey,

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Ed Litton is taking from J .D. Greer and J .D. Greer was taking from Tim Keller. And it was this whole like God whispers about sexual, the

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Bible whispers about sexual immorality. And actually I think the phrase that they took was that heterosexuality doesn't get you to heaven or something like that.

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Homosexuality doesn't keep you from heaven and heterosexuality doesn't get you to heaven. And so someone just made that connection, right?

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They say, hey, there's a similarity between these sermons. That led into, and that was like two weeks ago. Hey, hold on,

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Ed Litton copied this whole sermon, which led into, wait a minute, he copied like major portions of this whole series by J .D.

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Greer, which led into, it wasn't just this series by J .D. Greer, he copied another sermon by J .D.

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Greer, unrelated, which has now led into, and this is the thing I want to ask you about, a sermon preparation service that apparently

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Matt Chandler and J .D. Greer both use and commend. What can you tell us about this?

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It's a very new development that has kind of, Apathio's blog a few days ago, found in the

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Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive, J .D. Greer endorsing Docent, which provides some sort of illustration help, historical help, deep research to kind of help make sermons better, sort of to add vivid illustrations or more concrete historical examples.

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Apparently Matt Chandler has also utilized the service, and in fact, Reformation Charlotte had tweeted out a video an hour or two ago before our interview showing

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Matt Chandler endorsing it and explaining he may not understand the sociological issues or some other historical things going on, but that research service allows him to focus on the exegetical work.

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So it's a very disturbing, I think, revelation that a lot of these megachurch pastors like Greer and Chandler have in the past at least, and perhaps still currently, we don't know.

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I think they require NDAs or something like that to utilize their service, but we really don't know if they're still using it or not.

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And I think it raises a lot of questions about the messaging that Southern Baptists are hearing.

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Is this really an exploration of God's word or is this something that we don't know who is putting out and sending out to all of these pastors?

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You know, Alan, when I was in seminary at Southeastern years ago, I remember in preaching class, one of the questions that was asked from our professor was what pastors do you like, who do you like?

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And we were encouraged to copy them. If you're purposely trying to copy someone's style, to dress like them, to talk like them, to use their mannerisms, you're not yourself.

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There's something artificial about that. I saw that years ago in the incubation for Southern Baptist pastors, right?

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A seminary, and this was what was going on at that time. Find a personality, find a guy you like, act like him kind of thing.

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And so I think we can recognize there is an element of discipleship where you're gonna become like the one who's tutoring you, but then there's also a fakeness that people have when they copy every element that they can of someone in the most unnatural way, because they think that's the only way to be recognized or accepted, et cetera.

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It's not the Holy Spirit and the text of scripture doing the hard work, diving into the text, being a

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Berean, being a faithful workman who should not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

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But instead I'm of Apollo, I'm of whoever, I'm of Greer in Lytton's case, and then preaching their whole sermons without doing the work yourself.

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There's a difference there. And it's wrong to your flock to do that. It's wrong to those who are streaming online now as he's the

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Southern Baptist Convention president, it's wrong to those who he leads in the Southern Baptist Convention for him to continue to do this, which he probably won't now that he's been kind of caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

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But there's a culture of that. And that's all I wanna get across is there's a culture that kind of can lend itself to that potentially in the

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SBC. And I wonder whether or not we're gonna see a lot more examples of this kind of thing coming forward of people stealing sermons.

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What can you tell me about the prospects for conservatives with this controversy? I mean, we were hopeless, right?

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Southern Baptist conservatives. Now all of a sudden there's this glimmer of hope. Will Ed Lytton step down as a result of this?

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Will Lee Brand take over? Will Al Mohler somehow figure out a way to benefit himself in this? What's gonna happen?

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We don't know yet. But I do think it illustrates something that conservatives have to stay involved in some way because you never know what's gonna happen tomorrow because after the election, who would have thought we would be here just a couple of weeks later talking about will

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Ed Lytton resign? But here we are and he should resign. He has disgraced himself.

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He has disgraced his church and he's disgraced the Southern Baptist Convention. An honorable man would step down.

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He's not doing that. He's clinging to power, which says a lot more about his character and the character of the people who funded and promoted his campaign.

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They are committed to, I guess, staying the course. So in that sense, he may stay in there, but certainly he will not.

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I can make this prediction. I don't think he'll be reelected in Anaheim. I think he will not even be re -nominated if he lasts that long.

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And I just don't know. I mean, every day we're finding out something new and who knows how far back this goes.

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At some point, it will become too much and it will become a distraction and it will begin to hit the bottom line.

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And when it hits the bottom line of the SBC, that's when people really start caring. Yeah. I don't know if I'm as optimistic as you are.

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I could be wrong. I thought that there was gonna be a lot more angry conservatives at the last convention that would kind of overturn things potentially, but there is that, the swamp is deep.

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And so we'll see, I guess, what happens. If he does not resign, if he just refuses and the wagons are circled and he's entrenched as the leader, how should churches think about that?

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Because in my mind, that's like, we're really on the knife's edge right now. If he resigns,

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Lee Brand takes over, maybe there's an opportunity there. If he doesn't resign and the swamp just gets, you know, even more ingrained, that this is how we do things in the

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SBC, that will prove to you that there are not, there really aren't men of character at the top levels.

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What is Jason Allen, the only guy who's really spoken up about this? I mean, if no one else comes forward, what do you make of the

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SBC? Do you put a gravestone on it? Well, if there is not a decided push amongst a broad grouping of Southern Baptists, yeah, you can just go ahead and start engraving the tombstone.

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But I think there will be. Blatant lying, blatant stealing is just, it's a bridge too far.

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People are not going to be able to tolerate that and explain that to their churches. Because for the first time, this is the thing

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I think that should give us all hope. People are standing up to the woke leadership, wherever they are, whether it's at McLean Bible Church, or David Platt is in the fight of his life, because people don't like the woke social justice heresy that they're getting.

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The Southern Baptist Convention was deeply divided. Again, the entrenched bureaucracy was able to mobilize their vote and get people to turn out.

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That may not always be the case, particularly after we find out a lot of things in this coming year.

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And this is where conservatives have some hope. What's next in the Lytton scandal? What happens when the

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Will McCraney case gets to depositions? Because we all know the corruption in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, the bad conduct, mostly centers around the North American Mission Board.

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So who knows what will come out when they get to depositions?

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And we're getting closer to that, day by day. After McRaney's win at the Supreme Court, there was a new story.

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It's been so busy, I haven't even been able to come out and write about it, but there was a new story that came out regarding the other bad conduct by Zell against another state executive.

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So there's a lot here. People are talking. We may be in a scandal that is so big that it does shake the foundations of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, but that may be the hand of God. It may be God putting some judgment down, disciplining the church for allowing such bad behavior through its leadership, both locally and in the denominational hierarchy.

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Well, tell us a little bit about, you mentioned David Platt, and being he's in the fight of his life, you said.

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So you have Lytton, you have David Platt, I guess, J .D. Greer, I don't know who else, but who right now, what kind of,

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I don't know, scandals for lack of a better term, but just what situations are going on that could really bring down some of these

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SBC elites that you're referring to? Well, I think one thing that needs to be, that's happening kind of, all these scandals are happening concurrently.

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There's a big division at McLean Bible Church in Virginia. It's a very, it was a very large church,

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David Platt, social justice stuff is, 40 % drop in attendance, people are angry.

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This, I think, provides a model for concerned people in their local churches, is if they wanna start fighting against their woke pastor, these guys in Virginia are showing the way.

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I'm not gonna go ahead and say it's completely like a shot heard around the country in terms of these churches, but it's something that woke leadership should start to fear.

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So I think as that develops, I mean, I'm working on an article now, what David Platt, he lied multiple times in his sermon

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Sunday. So I'm working on an article going through that.

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This guy is motivated by power and wants to cling to it. It's the same things motivating

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Ed Litten. It's the same things motivating most of these seminary presidents and other

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SPC elites. And so I think chipping away in multiple, think of it in terms, if you wanna think of it like a battle or war, it's multiple theaters of operations.

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There's local churches, there's the denominational stuff, and we have to chip away at all of it. And the great thing is that it's not a movement of one individual led.

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It's a grassroots movement throughout evangelical churches, whether they're

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Southern Baptist or not. And that's one of the funniest things coming out of the situation in McLean. They are showing as a

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Southern Baptist church, they gave money to the cooperative program. But yet they said they're not,

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David Platt said they're not associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Yet they planted 43 Southern Baptist churches through their church planning network in partnership with the

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North American Mission Board. There's a lot of money and there's a lot of, it's just odd that the way that these churches and these elites are doing things.

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And I think that's what should give everyone hope. It's being revealed. These people are finally being held accountable and who knows where it's gonna end up tomorrow.

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Wow, well, something to pray for, for sure. That the eyes of people would be further opened, that God would grant conviction, that those who are pharisaical or just opportunists would be thoroughly exposed and leave, vacate the denomination.

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It's just, I wasn't expecting this. I know you weren't, I'm sure most people probably weren't, but it's out there.

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There's movement going on that we were not expecting. So let's just keep this in prayer.

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For people who appreciate what you do and getting this information to people like myself and others who are interested in it, where can they go to support your work?

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Or, I mean, I know that Capstone, is there like a donate tab there or? No, there's not.

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Maybe I should look into putting something up. I hear that there's a lot of good options out there in that, but no, we're just pretty much have been ad supported.

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But it's just something that we've - So go click on an ad? No, that will get me in trouble with Google.

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I encourage people that, no, no, no, no. But at some point we may consider doing it because there are just so many stories to tell.

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Having been in newspaper publishing and print publication, most of my adult life,

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I'm stunned by how much news is here right now. There are too many things to tell.

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And every day there's like five or six more things and you just go down that list. And at some point you need to hire a staff to get people to get all of this stuff covered.

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And that's just how much is going on. And I think there's a great interest out there amongst the public about this.

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Finally, they're learning. And I think most people, even though in our groups online that were educated about critical race theory and the like,

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I think a lot of people who even who went to Nashville were just, they didn't know. They thought

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Ed Linton was a nice guy. Well, that was an act we find out. He's really apparently not.

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It certainly is not qualified to be a pastor or the SBC president. So I think that's one of the things that all of us, the things that we do, what you do, what so many other websites and podcasts do is educating people.

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Because that's the only way we're gonna make a difference in the SBC or in evangelical churches in general.

28:59

Well, Alan, I appreciate your time. I know you've got a lot going on and you got to write an article it sounds like about this

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Ezell situation. But God bless you. And we'll keep our eyes on things and maybe have you back on when things change.