SEBTS Doubles Down on James Merritt

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Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk today about something going on in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Again, for all you Southern Baptists, there is a current controversy that arose right before Thanksgiving, and it's continuing.

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And so we're gonna take a look at what that controversy is, because it can get a little complicated, I think, for people who are uninitiated into the

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SPC and understanding the politics that are at play and some of the characters at the upper levels.

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And for those who are into that world, you know exactly what's going on, but many people in the pews do not, and for good reason.

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We have lives and we don't pay attention to all these people, but people who are in Southern Baptist churches are giving to these entities through their cooperative program giving.

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And so I think it's important to know kind of what's going on. And this is something

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I knew a little bit about because it focuses on Southeastern, which is where I have my MDiv from. So I thought this wouldn't take me very long to explain the controversy, just to inform you all about what's going on.

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And it also illustrates some things, I think, about where these institutions that refuse to repent, to admit, to somehow make even a statement acknowledging their complicity in the social justice narrative, it shows you where these institutions go over time.

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They end up hardening themselves. And it's actually very much like a immune system when the immune system is not capable anymore of rejecting diseases, it becomes weakened.

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And that's what we see at Southeastern and honestly, many other entities in the SBC. There's a weakened, compromised immune system, and they are able to take in error in smaller doses, but those doses then get bigger and different kinds of errors can come in.

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And I've been pretty clear, I think, about this from the beginning when I started talking about Southeastern maybe two and a half years ago, after I graduated, right after,

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I said, social justice isn't even the big thing. It's not the main issue here.

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It's more of a symptom of the disease. The disease is the acceptance of erroneous theology and a lack of discernment, letting it in the gates, letting it be taught to students and written on blogs and preached in chapel.

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And then when you're caught, when the light is put on, you scurry for some kind of a dark place where you can hide.

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And you accuse those who bring the light of being slanderers, liars, questioning their motives.

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They have some other motive for bringing this up and that makes their concerns illegitimate somehow.

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I mean, it's everything but just admitting the problem and repenting, which I think if they did that, people would be more than accommodating.

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People who have been critical of Southeastern and other SBC entities would say, praise

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God and let's talk about the steps for restoration. But that has not happened.

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And now it's gone on for too long. And I think conservatives had a window. They had a little bit of time in 2018, 2019.

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They could have done something. This is just my opinion here. I think that window of opportunity though has closed at some of these places.

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It would take a cleaning of house to get rid of some of the problems that are going on at some of these places.

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And again, that doesn't mean, I've said this many times before, that doesn't mean that every professor is compromised in every way.

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That doesn't mean that every person there is woke or on the social justice train, but you have a large enough percentage of them that and a failure on the part of the rest of the school.

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There's no, in other words, there's no mechanism in the rest of the institution to root out the virus.

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There's no immune system they're capable of getting rid of the problems that exist. That those faithful professors who may not be on that bandwagon, well, they're really not able to do much about it.

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And that was my experience when I went there even in 2017, 2018, that that was already happening.

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The conservative professors who were against this stuff either compromised or retired or kept their mouth shut.

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And some of them still are to some extent, or they feigned ignorance. And I say feigned because it's very hard to be involved in the institution, at least when

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I was there, and not know what was going on. Now, I think to some extent, they've tried to go underground with this stuff more.

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They've tried to soften things. They've made it, the rules are you cannot record in class anymore without permission.

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The rules are, well, it's not the rules, but they've become much less likely to post lectures and blog posts that are woke.

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But from the students that go there in certain classes, from what I hear, it's still that way. They still are going full throttle towards the social justice direction, but they're just doing it in a more subversive manner because the spotlight was shown on them.

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So before we get into this whole controversy, which I think just, it illustrates one more time that the errors are still there.

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The lack of discernment's still there. The problems are still there. I wanna show you this because I have had pushback before with people saying,

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John, you're really not a Southeastern graduate. People who go to Southeastern, they know they're just about the

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Great Commission. They're just about church planning. They're not about social justice. So I figured I'd just show you. Well, I don't have this displayed.

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I have it buried usually, but I brought it out. I do have a degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and it is an

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MDiv, and there's Bruce Ashford's signature, Danny Akin's signature,

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Marty Jackuman's signature, who I did have as a professor at one point, and then I guess that's, not sure who that is.

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Anyway, I do have a degree, so it's not like I'm speaking from ignorance here on the issues there, and I wanna be as faithful and honest as I possibly can be.

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I wanna be straightforward. Look, I have talked to Danny Akin about this. It was kind of a round -in -circles conversation where he just wouldn't admit what was actually going on at his institution.

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I was reading quotes, and he couldn't even, either that person didn't say what I said they said, or when

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I was reading a transcript, it was I wasn't reading in context. I was misunderstanding, and there was never any, well, what's the understanding?

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What are they actually saying? There's never an explanation, and that's the kind of thing. It's not unique to Danny Akin. That's just the kind of ring around the rosy you get whenever you try to confront these things at almost any

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SPC entity, it seems like. And I know this just from all the stories of everyone else who's come to me and said, look,

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I work in this institution, or I've given to this institution. I tried to ask them, hey, what's going on over here, and played for them the video, or I gave them the quotes.

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I showed them where my issue was, and it's the same response. Circle the wagons, protect the institution, and don't ever, above all, don't ever admit that the institution was wrong or made an error.

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It's the error, it's actually kind of like, I was watching the show of Soviet era, showing how the

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Soviet Union kind of reacted to Chernobyl and these kinds of things. Anyway, one of the things that you find, though, is very common in that time period, in that context is truth is totally secondary to the party, the government, the state preeminence is always there, and so if you criticize anything that the state has done, or even if you're trying to help, and you say, hey, we should do this because it would be better, but some party official above you has said otherwise, you are the one that's in error, and it's up to you to admit your error.

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It's up to you to repent. You're the slanderer. You're the one who doesn't care about the country. It's the same kind of thing at these institutions.

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If you don't support them, if you even try to, out of the goodness of a good motivation, try to help and have some constructive criticism, you will be attacked, especially if you go public with it.

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You will be attacked. There will be a strategy to whine and dine if they see you as a threat, but then it's going to be if you persist and you just say, no, this is the truth, then you will be shut off.

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You'll be attacked. You'll be marginalized, all those things, and this happened over and over, and I'll give some illustrations of it as we go, but this is the situation.

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This is why I don't think you can, in good conscience, give to the Southern Baptist Convention, knowing that some of the money will go to these kinds of places.

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If you're going to give, at least, if you're at a church that's going to give, at least try to make it so you're itemizing it so it's going to missionaries, specific missionaries that the church trusts, that kind of thing.

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So here's where this whole issue starts. It's with James Merritt, who's a previous president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he says, we'll start, this is giving you a little backstory, and there's probably a lot more that could be said here, but let me just give you a little backstory first, and then we'll get into the current issue, but James Merritt said at the

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SBC Convention, you can watch the video, when there was a resolution offered on the floor to oppose critical race theory, and it was actually an amendment to a resolution that said, could we be explicit about denouncing critical race theory, and James Merritt said, if some people were as passionate about the gospel as they are about critical race theory, we'd win this world to Christ tomorrow, and then he posts, and this is

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July 1st, because people were upset. Some people, understandably, you don't even have the willpower to bring in some language that opposes critical race theory.

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You're not capable of doing that. Again, the immune system's failing. What's the problem? And so he posts this thing on Twitter, a note that he got from someone that says, please don't let your associates within the

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Southern Baptist Convention bully you, and he basically calls, and James Merritt basically calls everyone bullies, and that his dad taught him to stand up to bullies, when meanwhile, actually, this is projection.

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James Merritt was the bully. James Merritt was the one on stage bullying those and questioning their motivation that they don't care about the gospel somehow because they want to oppose critical race theory.

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I mean, the SBC has resolutions opposing other things like abortion, but you don't stand up there and say, well, if some people were as passionate about abortion as the gospel, that's ridiculous.

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You wouldn't say that, but they will say it about critical race theory, and this was very much, I mean, this wasn't on the spur of the moment.

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They were prepared for this. Many ministries like Founders and CBN had already said that they were going to say something about this.

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They were gonna offer resolutions on, or a resolution against critical race theory, so this wasn't a surprise.

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This was thought out. You had the resolutions committee. They seemed like at least united on this, and James Merritt basically took the conservatives to the woodshed and said they don't really, they have, he questioned their care and their motive as far as their understanding and concern for people hearing the gospel, and so that's the problem,

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I guess. They just don't care about the gospel because they're obsessed with taking out critical race theory, and it just shows either a great amount of ignorance or a great amount of evil, and I'm not sure which one, or there's a balance in there somewhere, but there is a problem there when you understand what critical race theory actually is and how it does function as an alternative religion.

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So James Merritt defends his son's preaching. This is the new controversy. This is what has been sparked recently, and it sparked because Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary decided to hire a number of professors, and I probably should have put that in here.

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Let's see if I have it up so I can name you the professors. So James Merritt was one of them.

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There are probably a few that could be, let's see if it comes up here.

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Yeah, so Crawford Loritz, J .D. Greer, we got

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Al Jackson, Matt Carter, and James Merritt, right? So these people are all hired, and Danny Akin says that,

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I'll just read his quote. He says, for years I have asked the Lord to bring more gifted and talented men to teach in these programs.

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Little did I know that God would answer my prayers beyond my wildest imagination. With the additions of these five men, a great doctoral program just got better.

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So very excited to have these guys. And of course, most of you probably know something about J .D.

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Greer and how he's been in league with the Caring Well Initiative and says

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Black Lives Matter's a gospel issue and the Bible whispers about sexual sin and wants to rip down all hierarchies.

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This is J .D. Greer's on the social justice bandwagon. Very much so. I'm not familiar with all these people.

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I knew though Crawford Loritz was, I recognized the name and I knew that on some level he was woke.

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And actually I'll play that clip for you right now. It's just not good enough to say, okay, well, I'm not a racist.

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I'm not a racist. Well, what we need to be is to be anti -racist. You see in the mind of every

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African American young man, sometimes older man these days, is that when they see blue lights behind them to pull them over, often they're not afraid.

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They're not just afraid that they're gonna get a ticket. Some of them wonder, am

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I gonna make it home? So that was Crawford Loritz. Now let's get into the controversy though that's currently going on because there's not a controversy over Crawford Loritz for some reason.

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Maybe you can only handle so many. James Merritt though defended his son's preaching.

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Now his son is a, well, he's a homosexual according to his own, is what he said this year.

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He posted that in 2012, just days before my 30th birthday, I was publicly and painfully outed by a person who had earned my trust only to betray it.

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It took many months and a boatload of therapy to process the trauma of that experience and to learn to love the delightful human that God made me.

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Some of you may not know this part of my story. I've learned to live authentically in my personal life, sharing with friends. So he goes on and on.

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Basically though, he's saying, I'm gay, I'm out, I'm homosexual. I was outed back then and now he's kind of coming to terms with this, being public about it.

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And really the tragic thing to me is, I'm not showing this just for the sake of time, but how many big

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Southern Baptists names under this post were commenting and it just seemed very wishy -washy, very trying, overly trying to act just so accepting and loving to Jonathan Merritt and with neglecting what he's actually doing here, which is going public and normalizing his lust for other men.

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That's what it is. So James Merritt then recently, so this is right along the same time that he's hired by Southeastern.

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He posts a video from Good Shepherd, New York, New York City. And it's a

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YouTube, I guess, this is what I'm looking for, I think it is. He says, I don't agree with my loved son,

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Jonathan Merritt on everything to be sure, but I encourage you to listen to this message on Mark 13. It is both brilliant and faithful to the gospel and the coming of Jesus.

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So he's supporting his son and his son, by the way, did make a statement, thanking his dad so much for his dad's support.

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And James Merritt then tried to defend himself because some people were saying, wait, hold on, your son's homosexual. James Merritt said, regardless of who preaches

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Jesus or speaks truth, I rejoice when they do because I love Jesus and truth. I can approve a message even when

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I have disagreements with the messenger. I agree with Paul, love rejoices with the truth and that is truth.

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So let me show you something here. I'm very thankful for Woke Preacher Clips and much of the work they do because they really do get into the nitty gritty of some of this stuff.

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And they did a great tweet thread on, and videos included in this of Jonathan Merritt's sermon that James Merritt, his father, who's now working at Southeastern part -time at least, is commending.

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And so I'll just go through some of these. And by the way, if you listen to the tone, if you wanna listen to this sermon, if you've ever listened to mainline denominations that have been totally, thoroughly compromised, they have a certain tone.

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I don't know if it's listening to too much NPR, I don't know what it is, but Jonathan Merritt mimics that tone perfectly.

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He sounds like that very mild kind of, that soft voice that is so into the nuance and the,

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I don't know, into all the complexities and what it means, the esoteric, vague, what it means to be human kind of stuff.

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And so that's how he sounds in all of this. Which, I mean, that's neither here nor there. It's a style thing, but it does reflect,

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I think, the crowd he's running with. And his message is consistent with that. Highlights from the

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Jonathan Merritt sermon endorsed by his father. Mark 13, it's on about, so this is what woke preacher clips say.

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Mark 13 isn't about the judgment of God, it's about recognizing nothing lasts forever. That's the moral he gets from this.

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Mark 13 isn't about judgment, it's about nothing lasts forever. So talks about the grass withers, the flower fades, and let's see,

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Jesus foretelling the destruction of the temple. And Jonathan Merritt says, hating change won't delay or deter it.

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The future is always breaking into the present and it never calls ahead to ask permission. So we need to learn to love the worlds in which we live and when the times come to let them go.

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And then he edits Mark 13 four to reinforce his don't fear change theme.

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Tell us, when will these things happen and what will be the sign that things are about to change? No English translation says about to change, it's be fulfilled or be accomplished, i .e.

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God's plan completed. So it's very man -centered. He quotes Willimon, a

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Duke divinity professor and former Methodist bishop who pushed for queer affirmation to say that Jesus is not predicting the end, he's speaking of the precariousness of the present.

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Quote, God is not interested in propping up obsolete institutions and status quo. The cold hard truth is that the world is always ending somewhere for someone.

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The end is always near. Jesus says that the anxiety and loss that you feel at the end of your world is not reliable indicator for the end of the world.

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Waiting for the literal second coming of Jesus was admirable for simple -minded black slaves, but we, sophisticated folks, can simply open our lives to the truth that just as the world is always ending,

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Christ is always coming again. So this is a quote edit.

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So he didn't say that we sophisticated folk. Woke Preacher Clips is adding that in and mocking it.

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But the point here is that Jonathan Merritt, he's turning the passage on its head and making it man -centered, being very vague and esoteric and just everything's figurative.

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Christ is always coming again. It's not a concrete truth that you're looking at in the passage.

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It's this deeper poetic meaning. The conclusion, receive the good news of today's gospel. This is a quote, that God, whose name is love, is waiting for you everywhere, that the

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Holy Spirit is hovering over the chaotic, deep of your crumbling world, and that Jesus is always coming again and again and again.

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Sounds kind of new agey, doesn't it? And Woke Preacher Clips concludes, this is not the actual gospel.

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The death has been defeated. The death has been defeated by Christ rising from the grave. This is just self -help pablum, that living through eviction is the real point of the eschaton.

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But if you'll allow me to isogee, Jonathan, as he isogees his mark, it goes deeper. This is the gospel of the

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Great Reset. You see that the social world around you is changing, and it seems like it's not for the better, but don't resist it.

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The power is affecting. So Woke Preacher Clips starts reading into this and saying, that there's the deeper figurative meaning is not to resist the political changes happening around us.

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Either way, this is not a faithful reading of a text. It's not just that it doesn't hit the mark exactly.

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It's that it totally hits a different mark. It's whole intention is not to read the text faithfully. And it's that hermeneutic.

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And then the gospel that is presented at the end won't really actually get anyone saved. It's not a true gospel.

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It's a very man -centered gospel, and he's not giving the bad news in this. He's not, this is not faithful preaching at all.

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So this is what Jonathan Merritt thinks is so great. This is his son did this great job, even though he disagrees with his son on some things, which

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I'm assuming is his son's homosexual lifestyle. He commends this sermon as this faithful sermon.

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And so that's been the controversy. And so this sparked reactions from CBN and others, but CBN put out a statement,

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Conservative Baptist Network, citing the social media post, and then saying that scripture is clear that homosexuality is a grave sin.

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Sin separates us from God. It goes through that. And then for one who is employed by a

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Southern Baptist seminary receiving cooperative program tithe dollars to promote an unrepentant sinner, no matter whose son he is, as a trustworthy preaching source is a betrayal of trusting

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Southern Baptists. The Conservative Baptist Network calls on Danny Akin and the board to give sincere attention to this grievous situation.

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And so it goes through how this is incongruent with the Baptist faith and message. And while some have accused

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CBN of being divisive for accusing people of departing from biblical orthodoxy, they say that this demonstrates that that actually is happening.

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And then they rope in and that they include Ed Litton's plagiarism and other things.

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So this is the statement made by CBN. And it's a good statement, I think, that look, this is a preaching source.

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You should show sheep, hey, go listen to this person who had a horrible sermon and didn't give the gospel. And you're saying this is the gospel and this is someone in unrepentant sin, according to scripture.

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And they're saying, this is bad. And they're right about that. Well, what has been the result? The wagons are being circled.

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And I didn't do a deep dive on everything. But I wanna show you a few things that were interesting to me. First of all, Danny Akin retweets

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James Merritt on November 24th, which might have been the same day. No, it's the day after CBN made the statement, they did.

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James Merritt says, Lord, today, guard my words, govern my heart, guide my path, grow my mind and above all, glorify yourself. And Danny Akin retweets this.

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And I've explained before, I think I did it on the last podcast or two podcasts ago, that this is often a tactic.

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And I've just gotten used to it where sometimes you won't address something head on, just like Jonathan Merritt's sermon.

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It's vague, it's nebulous. It's the dog whistle thing that liberals are always accusing conservatives of.

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You put the dog whistle out there that we support James Merritt. That's what this is communicating.

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We support James Merritt. And the timing is the important part. Right when he's under fire from Conservative Baptist Network, we're not backing down.

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And Danny Akin is the president of Southeastern. He's still gonna hire James Merritt. And it's overlaying this piety over all of it that I'm still

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Christian, I still care about God. And how dare people come after me? I'm a good man. So Danny Akin also retweeted this.

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And this is where I wanna get into Southeastern a little. It's because of professors, oh, actually, let's read this first.

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So Dr. Ergen Kainer comes out and says, just a reminder, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is now headquartered in Woke Forest, North Carolina.

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I know this is an old joke that, yeah, I've heard this since like 2018, people calling it Woke Forest. And if you live there,

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I gotta say this. If you live in that area, it is very different than a lot of other places you could be living.

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If you live in Louisville, if you live in Raleigh area, and you're part of an

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SBC church, especially, it is way under the shadow of the seminary. It's under the shadow of Southern.

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If you're in Louisville, it's under the shadow of South Eastern, if you're in Raleigh. And it really does change the whole atmosphere.

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I mean, my wife and I looked for churches forever, I remember. And we had to eventually settle at a non -SBC church. I could not find one that was not in some way, shape or form on that Woke bandwagon, somewhere.

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And I would go, we would go to a church sometimes two weeks and think, okay, this seems like a great fit. I think this will be fine.

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And then of course, the pastor says something or you find out they're doing a seminar on racial reconciliation.

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And we know what that means, that it's gonna be infused with critical race theory. This is the kind of thing

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I went through. And that was in 2018, I think that we were looking, 2017, 18.

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And just having a very hard time of it. And so yeah, Woke Forest, for the people who live there, they're the ones that call it that.

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That's where I first heard about it, is people who live there just said like, it's in the water here. Like this is kind of what's going on.

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So he makes this joke. And then George Robinson, who by the way, was my missions professor at Southeastern still works there, says, tell that to my

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SCBTS students who are out in the harvest weekly sharing the gospel with people who are far from God, baptizing those who believe in making, reproducing disciples.

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That jello doesn't stick to the wall when you actually come to campus and observe. Shaking my head. Okay, George Robinson. Dr.

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Robinson, I have been to campus. I have observed, I've been in your class. Many others have too.

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And I'll give you some names of them. There's many, there's way more who won't come out publicly, but I'll give you names of people who actually have come out publicly.

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And it does stick, unfortunately. In fact, there's a big montage, probably 20 minutes long, just from,

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I think it's 2018 to 2021. All the, you can't get all of it, but a lot of the woke junk that goes on there on video.

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And it doesn't stick when you accuse people who are making very legitimate claims and from hopefully the good motivation of their heart, because they love the school.

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They want the school to repent. They want the school to course correct. It doesn't stick when you start accusing them of slander.

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And this is, by the way, two things can be true at the same time. You can have some students who are out there sharing the gospel and making disciples and have an institution that's going downhill.

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And both can be true at the same time. It can be woke forest, and you can have students that are doing the right thing.

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So it's like, the sensitivity is just off the charts with the people who work at these institutions.

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They just, they can't abide any criticism of their institution, even if it's a joke. Now, Matthew Daniel, I don't know who that is, but he retweeted, or he, yeah, he retweeted

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George Robinson's comment. And then he added this. It's because of professors like Dr. Robinson that I'm proud to be an

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SCBTS scrat. Don't believe the lies of people who seek to sow seeds of discord by calling

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SCBTS woke or liberal. It is a great place to go. All right, so it's all that. And this is, you have obviously, you have two groups of students.

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It's like with the creation debate or any debate. You have two sides of this. You have people who believe one thing and say that, you know, based on my experience, no one who knows what, but then you have people with the same experience.

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You have people like me who are graduates from there who say, uh -uh, no, it is compromised.

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And there is woke stuff going on there. There is social justice stuff being endorsed by the institution. Like, and it's very easy to see.

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In fact, go to the info section. I have links. You're gonna wanna check out the link from Scott Crawford because it has a montage that's about 20 minutes long that just shows you video clip after video clip of professors at Southeastern saying all kinds of really woke stuff for years, and even into this present year.

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So you're gonna wanna go watch that if you have any question about this. I'll put that in the info section. There's gonna be a bunch of links there.

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But this is the circle of the wagons. This is dismiss any kind of criticism.

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I guess that whole thing with James Merritt, it never actually happened. I don't know. It's just, there's no actual attempt to try to interact with the accusations and the concerns actually being leveled.

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So then, I just wanted to point this out, just because it stuck in my crawl a little, like that you have these guys that can make these statements that we're not woke.

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George Robinson isn't exactly known for being the woke guy at Southeastern. But almost all of these guys have, there's some, they have some bone in them that it sympathizes with that stuff to some extent, or they at least, it's the immune system analogy.

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They're not able to locate a virus and identify it and get rid of it. And I'll give you some illustrations of this.

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George Robinson, grateful for the privilege of serving alongside Walter Strickland, right? Walter Strickland, who is someone who is very woke there and preaches heresy, liberation theology.

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You have, again, George Robinson, one of my great joys is learning from you as both a colleague and as a friend, replying to Walter Strickland.

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You have him liking this tweet. This is, we're grateful for you, J .D. Greer, and your three years of service to Great Commission Baptist.

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And this was in June of this year. So, I mean, this is pretty recent stuff.

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How about on the Beth Moore go home controversy? I happen to remember this, because I remembered I made a video on that whole controversy when

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John MacArthur said, Beth Moore shouldn't be preaching. She shouldn't be preaching to men. She should go home.

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George Robinson, we cannot say to women, go home. And he quotes Charles Spurgeon, which is an irrelevant quote.

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It wasn't what MacArthur was saying, but he says, Spurgeon is greater than John MacArthur. And then someone else puts out,

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Ryan Lott. I wrote a biblical response to the Truth Matters Conference. This is where John MacArthur said, Beth Moore, go home.

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And George Robinson says, well done. Well, what was he saying well done to? Well, let me give you some clips from the article.

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Nowhere in scripture does it say that God's spirit gives certain gifts to certain genders, but it does say that only men can serve in the function of elder pastor.

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It is not unbiblical for a woman to preach the word of God to a church. It is unbiblical for a woman to thwart

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God's good design for the church in serving as a head ship figure, elder pastor, when God did not give headship responsibilities to the women, but to the man.

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John MacArthur needs to come out with a statement formally apologizing to Beth Moore for his words and seeking forgiveness and unity for the sake of Christ, who died for her sins as well as his, and who is her

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Lord as well. Phil Johnson likewise needs to come out with a statement addressing his comment of Beth Moore as a narcissist.

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So anyway, they need to correct themselves. So there is apparently, when it's not your institution, you can, it's perfectly fine to criticize them.

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Criticize Phil Johnson, criticize John MacArthur, but you can't criticize Southeastern. That's the moral of this.

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Now, let me give you the big one. Here's the quote that George Robinson says, well done to in this article. I attend

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Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Thankfully, they understand this important distinction, a distinction between the office of elder and the function.

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And they're working with women like Jen Wilkin from the Village Church to get women into the word of God so that they can accurately teach and disciple others to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

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Now, listen to this. This is the new wave of Christianity which seeks to embody the

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New Testament more entirely than we see those before us have done. And I am part of this movement unashamedly and unapologetically.

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Can we say, can we just for a moment say that that is one of those arrogant things, a student saying this, we're gonna do better than those who came before us.

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Where we know those scripture better than them and women can preach, doesn't make the distinction here.

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Women can preach to men, I'm assuming. They just can't be elders or pastors. George Robinson coming in and well done, well done to this article.

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This is the George Robinson who's not woke, who's upset that anyone would challenge

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Southeastern. Well, this is the church that George Robinson is also an elder at, North Wake, where Robinson is an elder.

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Four reasons to wear a mask, even if you hate it. Gospel Coalition article, they put it on their blog, their public blog for their church members.

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Podcast on gospel and ethnic unity. And another Gospel Coalition podcast with Shailene. They have the, and this is interesting, a prayer to turn my back on evil and be allowed to fight injustice.

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Published on July, looks like 20th, 2020. So the context is very important. This is when the country's burning down because of BLM and this whole statement of repentance for injustice and we need to fight injustice.

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So, what do you think that's signaling? What do you think the point of that is? This is the church where George Robinson is an elder,

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North Wake. So it's in his own backyard, in his church, at his school, in his denomination, and he doesn't see it.

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This is the kind of person you want teaching people about missions. I had him as a missions professor and it wasn't bad.

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It wasn't, I mean, it wasn't great, in my opinion. The class, it was okay. I learned a little bit.

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It was, I mean, again, though, I grew up in a pastor's household. I had missionaries coming to my house all the time.

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So it's not, maybe I was used to some of the things, but I didn't go there for his missions class.

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It was a hoop I had to jump through to graduate. It wasn't bad though, at the time. In fact, I remember this.

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I remember at the time, George Robinson said in class, my car won't make left turns because I'm so right wing.

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I remember this. I remember him saying how conservative he was. And to see kind of what's happened since then is just amazing.

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It's the protecting the institution becomes the main focus. Now, his whole thing, and this is what

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Southeastern typically people from there say is, well, the students know that it's not this way. Let me introduce you to some students who have tried to blow the whistle on Southeastern.

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And I have some screenshots here for those watching of the faces of different students who have tried to warn about the direction of Southeastern.

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James Riddle, Bill Roach, Scott Crawford, Andrew Daniel, myself, Matthew Tarpley. And there are more.

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In fact, I couldn't even remember. There's one I was trying to find. I couldn't remember the guy's name. It was years ago now.

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And there's others who won't. There's many more who won't come out publicly because they're afraid of what it's going to do to their future in the

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SBC and that kind of thing. I'll say this. I remember, now, I think I can say this now because now it's been about two years down the road, but I remember going there in 2019.

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And I had dinner, I guess it was, with like 10 different SCBTS alumni and students, mainly students,

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I think it was like nine students, all of them concerned about the school, all of them wondering what they could do. And their names are not,

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I think one name from that list was there, maybe two, maybe two names. So there's students who go there who are concerned.

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But as far as going public, as far as putting it out there, there's not many. But here are some.

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These are some names. So you have six names right here of people who went through the degree program.

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They saw what was going on there and they were very concerned. So don't act, you can't act like, well, it's those who don't know us, who criticize us.

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No, it's actually coming from those who do know what's going on, who have been there, who had the experience. And to keep repeating this slander all the time, it's, well, you just don't know, it's just not true.

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So that's my take on this whole thing. If you want information, if you want the links to some of the things that I was sharing in the slideshow, then please go to the link in the info section.

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I provided a number of those links there, but I've also provided the slideshow itself. Patrons can download that.

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So five bucks a month or more to be a patron, you can go download that PowerPoint and have that information if it'll help you.

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But the information, most of it's already there in the info section. I have the links for these things.

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I would recommend, if you're still doubting any of this, go to the link that says Scott Crawford, okay? Whistleblower Scott Crawford, and click on that link.

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It'll take you to an article, and in that article is a video. Click on the video, and you will watch a montage about 20 minutes long, and it'll show you exactly what's been happening at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's campus.

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Is that all that's been happening? No, there's other things. There's some good things happening too. But again, the virus analogy.

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This is a virus that is infecting the school, and it's taking away the school's ability to fight future viruses, and the viruses can get worse.

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And you see that with James Merritt. You see that this guy who endorses a homosexual preacher, unrepentant, a horrible exegesis with a false gospel, endorses that sermon, and still, the president of the institution is very excited to have him come as a lecturer, as a speaker there.

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And I haven't looked into all the other professors. They just hired, but Loretz, same thing. You got a woke guy there.

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There's problems there, and the school just won't even admit that there is one. So I hope,

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I know that's a downer. I hope that encourages some of you, though, at least knowing the truth. It's better to know the truth. Some of you,

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I know, have just started listening to this podcast. So a lot of this, for those who have listened over a period of time, you know kind of what

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Southeastern is like, but some of you may not. So this is just a reminder, and just kind of letting you know there is information out there if you wanna research this further.

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And don't take my word for it. Don't even cite me. I'm irrelevant to this whole thing, other than I'm showing you here are the primary sources.

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And even if my motive was bad, which it's not, my motive is I wanna see course correction here, but let's say my motive was really bad, and I just wanted to hurt this school for whatever reason, which wouldn't make sense.

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I went there. I love many of the professors there, but let's say that's my motive. The question is, is what I'm saying true, regardless of my motive?

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Is what I'm saying true? And if it's true, then you need to stand on that. So I hope that was helpful for those in the