My Thoughts on All Things SBC

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. We are doing another sort of semi -road trip dividing line here from the mobile studios, the mobile command center.

00:42

It's a fifth wheel RV, let's just put it that way. And it's not straightened up the way

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I'd like it right now, but that's okay. We've had a busy time up here and we press on.

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This is the fourth program now that I've done in the past two days. Just finished up Iron Sharpens Iron with Chris Arntzen, and so here we are.

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Yesterday, of course, I even found the live feed so that I could sort of follow along with what was going on in Anaheim.

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Anyone with a concern for the progress of biblical truth in the

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United States was interested in and concerned about what was going on at the

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Southern Baptist Convention. I did not start streaming until after the

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Warren monologue where the man actually claimed to have trained 1 .1

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million people in ministry. That's 42 per day. Obviously, that works at the

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Southern Baptist Convention because if you know, and I was Southern Baptist for many years. I was ordained the

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Southern Baptist Church. We would have, and Rich will remember this, we would have a special baptismal

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Sunday right before the end of the recording period to be turned into Southern Baptist Convention because the pastor of our church wanted to be the president of the

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SPC, and generally at that time the person with the largest number of baptisms in their church was in the best position to possibly become the president of the

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SPC. That obviously changed over time, but back in the 80s that's the way it was. We would have a special baptismal, the whole sermon was about baptism, and then you had all these volunteers standing by and you'd get people from the altar, come forward and let's do this today, and so you'd be taken back.

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It's a big huge church so there was plenty of room to do all this. The choir would sing a few songs and then the pastor would appear up in the big old baptistry that was really central.

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North Phoenix Baptist Church, 4 ,500 people could sit in that place comfortably, and you'd just get a deep seat in the saddle because it could go for a long time, and it wasn't a type of thing where you'd ask for testimonies or anything like that.

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You just get a name, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and move them through, move them through, get them done to get as many baptisms as possible so that you'd have the best shot at it.

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So the point is numbers, and so when Rick Warren is sitting there doing his, that was the most humble brag thing ever.

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I mean I looked it up later and watched it, that was the most humble brag thing ever.

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I just love the SBC because you allowed me to do this, and to do this, and to plant this many churches, and also to name your own successor in your church as a husband -wife team.

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We all know that this church does not follow the Baptist message in the definition of the pastorate, and now the

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SBC is going to be studying between now and next year to find out what is a pastor. I already saw a meme,

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SBC, a question, what is a pastor? SBC, we're not theologians. That's where we are in the world today, unfortunately.

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So anyway, I missed the Rick Warren humble brag stuff, and he did take a few shots in the process.

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You know where he's coming from. I never defend myself against anything anyone says about me, yada, yada, yada, yada.

05:39

Okay, anyway, we've done a few things about Rick Warren in the past.

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I've never made it a big project of the ministry, but it is so obvious that he is way out in the ozone layer as far as the

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Baptist faith message is concerned. What I did see, you know, the election for president, then the runoff, and of course, when

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I saw the initial numbers, I knew it was going to happen one way or the other. Then I saw

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Tom Buck's dear wife attempt to get the

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SBC to wipe some of the dirt off of its face.

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I haven't gotten into all this. I've left it to Tom to do what Tom wants to do, the way

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Tom wants to do these things. To be honest with you, not being in an SBC church, some of the names

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I don't know, but others I do, obviously. If you have followed the saga at all of the attempted blackmail of Pastor Tom Buck, what you know is the politics, the political machinations of those in positions of authority within the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Tom has obtained a loud voice in evangelicalism, despite being my friend, despite sitting right there.

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There's video evidence that Tom Buck sat right there in this unit. We talked, and he's had me preach at his church.

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I did my entire expose of Erickon Cantor at his church. He's the troublemaker from Texas, and all that stuff.

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Despite his association with me, he has somehow managed to be successful anyways.

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It's pretty good. Anyway, you may be aware of the fact that fundamentally, the people in control of the convention have been in control of the convention for many years now.

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J .D. Greer, three years because of COVID. Lytton had to go because everybody knew he was a plagiarist, and his church didn't even have an orthodox

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Trinitarian statement of faith initially. He didn't want to hang around, so he stepped down after one year.

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Everybody knows there's a deep state in the SBC. You're not allowed to talk about stuff like that when you're in the

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SBC because of the 11th commandment, which has proven to be the death knell of the

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SBC, in my opinion, anyways. Someone else had thrown their hat in the ring to be president from that perspective.

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Tom was aware of issues that certainly would have caused major problems if an individual had been elected.

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To make a long story short, he was blackmailed.

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We will put out an article that your wife wrote that reflected stuff that Tom and his wife have been talking about in marriage counseling and stuff like that for a long, long time.

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Shockingly, it is a reality that there's a lot of immaturity in marriages, especially when both people in the marriage are immature.

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I remember being told when I first got married, which as of 10 days from today, was 40 years ago.

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My 40th wedding anniversary coming up 10 days from today. I was 19 years old.

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She was 18 years old. You do a lot of maturing between 19 and 18 and say 25.

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That causes issues. It causes stress. It causes difficulties.

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I remember being told, watch your seventh year of marriage. That can be a real tough one. I'm like, well, it was.

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You've got kids coming along. You're poor as a church mouse. Both you and your wife are changing.

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They had told their story. About how the

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Lord had saved their marriage and matured them.

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They did this to help other people. The background of all this is that they had shared the unpublished manuscript with Karen Swallow Pryor, who is a professor of English and therefore allegedly should be a person with skill in copy editing.

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Not just copy editing, but higher level how to handle certain topics type of assistance.

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Nothing had come of it. Other things had come up. COVID had come up. All of a sudden,

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Tom starts getting anonymous phone calls about this article. They had only shared it with one person.

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It was obvious where things had gone. I remember Karen Swallow Pryor is at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is the wokest of the seminaries, though they're all woke to some extent these days.

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It's been the center of CRT wokeness for a long, long time.

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Everyone's known it. They've tried to deny it. It's like saying that it really doesn't get hot in Phoenix in July.

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There have been videos that have been put out and articles that have been published.

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I have not kept up with everything, but I did see one. I'm going to play a clip.

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It looks like, I don't know, there's so many of these things now. Zoom, maybe it was

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Zoom, maybe it was who knows. It's Danny Akin. You can tell he's really interested and really engaged.

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He's wearing a 2021 National Champions T -shirt.

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I'm not sure who the champions are, but he just looks bored out of his mind. Then you've got the bucks and you've got

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Karen Swallow Pryor. In this clip, Tom asks a direct, clear question that, if answered honestly, logically, rationally, would pretty much answer the whole issue.

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The whole issue is, why do you have staff members at SCBTS engaging in blackmailing a

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Southern Baptist pastor in a bold political move?

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Why is this happening? You may be aware of the fact that, what, about 10 days, two weeks ago now,

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SCBTS put out a statement, I think from the trustees, exonerating themselves.

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We have investigated ourselves and we's innocent. I got to admit,

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I didn't think it could get any crazier than it has, but it has. They have exonerated themselves.

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What happened at the convention, if you saw it, is she tried to bring to the convention floor emotion in regards to examining

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Southeastern and how they've handled this situation. She was shut down instantly by Lytton.

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Turn that microphone off. They were told that all motions like that are automatically sent to the trustees of the institution.

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You're saying Southeastern, as an institution, is corrupt, is engaged in blackmail and politics.

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It's supposed to be a theological seminary, but we know what's happened with that for years. It's supposed to be a theological seminary, but you're going to refer it to them to investigate and they've already exonerated themselves.

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What? Like I said, I just found the stream.

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I got to listen as it was said, well, if,

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I think it was two -thirds of the delegates vote, they can change that to where it's not just sent to the trustees of the institution, but someone else.

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I'm not sure who else it would have been, but at least there would have been some outside influence, some outside investigation or something, but didn't get two -thirds and that was it.

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That's all we're going to do. We're not going to, yeah, we got caught with our hands in the cookie jar and it's plain as day that corrupt politics have been involved from the very top of this

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SBC, but well, we followed the rules. So anyway, in this discussion that I'm going to show you the video from here, the sound is not real good.

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You may have to turn it up a little bit. It really almost seems to me like someone, yeah, someone was, this is actually a phone recording of a screen, but it was the only one

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I could find. Maybe there's a better one somewhere, but it's a phone recording of the screen.

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Tom asks the question, I want you to just listen to Karen Pryor's response.

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Now I've had two or three, maybe, relatively calm, friendly, very brief interactions with KSP in my entire life.

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I think she was on Sheologians once, years and years ago, so I know that my daughters had far more interaction with them than I have.

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And I've always just sort of watched and I've found a lot of strange things, not sure what that's all about, but there's a lot of strange stuff going on in the world.

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I don't have time to engage all of it, nor an interest to, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But this, and then she goes southeastern, it's like, okay, that seems to fit the pattern of what's going on there.

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But this video, once I saw this, I'm just like, really? This is, okay, all right.

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So having described it, let me show you what it is and we'll send this over and hope that this is going to work and let's try it.

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So you knew something was nefarious or they wouldn't come and ask you to authenticate, they just go to the author.

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So if you knew that Jennifer, so you had a very intimate relationship with this story. If you knew that the story was trying to be used by somebody for giving them the details, let's say it was a, let's say she was publishing a story about a poem of flowers.

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Why would you not go to the author and say someone's trying to publish your story and without your permission?

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I mean, that is, that is a fair question and, and probably maybe it was and my, my honest answer,

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I'm just giving you my honest answer. My honest answer is that I think you are abusive and a bully and I'm literally afraid of you and I don't want really anything to do with you.

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I mean, I'm having this meeting because I believe it's the right thing to do and because I trust Dr. Aiden and I trust

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Rachel, but I really, really don't want anything to do with you because I'm afraid of you.

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Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah, there you go.

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So I've, we all know of one particular individual who, for example, back in 2018 said that Kyle Howard, that he would, did not want to be in, in the same room with me because he was physically afraid of me.

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And I've always recognized that that is pure irrationality. It's at best, it's childish, but it's probably much more.

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It says for him, I really do get the feeling.

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Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. There we go. I really do get the feeling that with Kyle Howard, there's just something not functioning right there.

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And, you know, maybe he is that, that means he's not a rational individual, not functioning real well, but the whole idea of him being physically afraid of me and allegedly this is some guy who was a gang banger and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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Yeah. Well, maybe I'm hiding a Claymore under my kilt. Well, it's irrational, it's childish, all the rest of that kind of stuff, but it's, it's a way to, for him to avoid actually having to engage with any of the meaningful criticism that I was offering for his every day, getting wilder and wilder claims.

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Now, of course, he's so far out there that I don't think anyone takes it seriously, but that's neither here nor there.

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So here's Karen Swallow Pryor, she's asked the question, you, you say someone is, and I don't know how she said anybody got hold of this,

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I don't, a lot of the details are difficult to follow, but why wouldn't you tell someone that someone is nefariously using this article?

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And her answer, see, the, the, the reality is because of politics,

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Tom. I'm at SEBTS, we are a part of that part of the convention that wants control for the people pushing

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CRT and wokeness and everything else, because that's what we've been doing at SEBTS for years now, despite the fact that we've lied through our teeth to everybody saying that we weren't,

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I've talked to far too many students there, I know what's going on there, and so we were doing dirty politics, that's, that's the actual answer, but you don't want to do that with your boss sitting there who had his reading glasses on,

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I'm not, didn't even, didn't even look to me like he was paying attention, because when, when she started saying

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I'm afraid of you, man, I would have been, huh, what?

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But that's not what he did. He was like, um, so I found that very strange, but I think you're abusive, and I'm afraid of you, and I don't want to have anything to do with you.

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So that's why I didn't tell your wife, who is not abusive, um, about the nefarious use of this article.

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Okay, we all know that she's lying through her teeth, okay, it's just obvious, you can just, she's not a good liar, um, but it, the question is why even bother, because it does not make a lick of sense.

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It is just so disconnected from reality that you sit back and you go,

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I have seen this stuff before, this is, this is Clinton asking what's the definition of is, this is, this is whenever the left gets caught with its fingers in the cookie jar, this is, this is not supposed to be happening at theological seminaries, unless those theological seminaries are part of a dying denomination, and that's the case here.

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Now, I cannot imagine what it has been like, um, for the

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Bucks over the past, what is it now, month and a half, probably seems like a year for them, since all this stuff started, um, and all, and I don't see,

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I'm not sure why, again, it's because I don't use some of those programs, but a couple times

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I've followed a thread or someone has sent me a link to some of the stuff that I've seen online that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

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Aaron Harding, oh my goodness, Mark and Avoid talk about a, oh my goodness, the, the behavior of this woman, her willingness to slander, it's just astonishing, and the arrogance, um, but so many other people, it, it's the exact same, uh, motivating spirit that you see in, in the politics of personal destruction in the left, in politics, is in the church, and in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, so I've, I've seen the, the stuff that the

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Bucks have haven't, haven't been dealing with, I, um, I, I can't imagine, uh, what it's, what it's been like, but I, I want to,

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I, I know Tom Buck far better than Karen Swallow prior to this. I jokingly mentioned earlier that he has, um, you know, through teaching through, for G3 and teaching on homiletics, hermeneutics, uh, a lot of people have come to really appreciate

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Tom's ministry. He, he's got a voice larger than the role of his church in the

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SBC, and, but I've known him for a number of years now.

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I put up with the fact that when you're driving with Tom Buck, Tom feels like he needs to look at you when he's speaking to you, even when he's driving.

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Now, this bothers me, because there are big things out there, and we're going fast that way, and, and things can happen quickly in front of you, and stuff like that, and so we, um,

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I, I've experienced that. It's not, you don't have to just hear it from Gene Clyde or somebody like that, you know, that I survived driving with Tom Buck, but I have all the way to Dallas from Lindale, um, and, and I'm actually only 43.

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This happened, uh, the looks happened during that trip, um, from Lindale to Dallas, um, but, um, so I've, I've been at his church,

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I've, I've preached to his people, we've driven together, um, I just learned to eventually just look out the window, so I don't,

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I don't see what's going on, but we just recently drove down to seminary, spoke, I spoke on CBGM there, um,

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I guess, that he sat right here, uh, we, we communicate pretty rarely, rarely, pretty frequently, um, and so, and, and this has been going on for quite some time now, and I remember when

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Tom first picked me up in Dallas the first time I came in, and I think that was for the

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Eric Canter thing, and then I, then I spoke the next night, as I recall as well,

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I think that was a Tuesday night, Wednesday night, if I recall correctly. We stopped at a restaurant, you know, one of the roadside things along the freeway type thing, it wasn't a fast food place, it's a little bit nicer, and started to, you know, you tell, you tell stories, and you find out where somebody is in their life, and, and where they've been going to school, what they've been studying, and stuff like that, and I just simply learned very early on, um, that, that Tom is a large -hearted, gentle, considerate

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Christian man, um, his love for Christ, and for the church, and for God's truth is first and foremost in his life, it conditions how he responds, how he understands controversy, um,

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I was just, from the very beginning, deeply impressed, especially with his gentleness, and so I can tell you a story, he came to the, uh, uh, premiere of the film, uh, that Emilio Ramos, and Paul Washer, and myself, and others were, were in it, um, it starts with you, and for some reason, my mind,

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I, again, this is the fourth program I've done in two days so far, um, unpopular, unpopular, it's a great movie, uh, share it with everybody, it's very evangelistic, um, and he,

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I swear that I have the clearest memory in the world that Tom Buck was wearing overalls that night.

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He swears that he owns one pair of overalls, and that's because I bought them for him after he and I started arguing about this.

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I, it's so weird, I have a clear memory of him wearing overalls that night, but he says, nope, not possible, but I know he was there because a young man came up to me afterwards, you know, you, you get a line of folks that want to sign a book, ask a question, take a picture, and the young man had a question about his future ministry in the

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SBC as a person convinced the doctrines of grace, and so I caught

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Tom's eye, he was standing there wearing overalls, and I asked him to come over, and I introduced the young man to Tom, and they went and sat down in the movie seats, it was a movie theater that had been rented, and they had a long and fruitful conversation, and I knew that they would,

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I knew that I was inviting this young man to sit down with a mature pastor who would function in that way for him, who would hear where he's coming from, and would have his own experience to share, and would do so with wisdom and maturity, and I was really thankful to be able to have someone that I could ask to take that role in that situation that night, and I would do that again in a second.

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Tom Buck is top quality all the way along, just, that's just all there is to it.

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There are, you know, there are only, there are only a certain number of ministerial friends that I have that I've had for a number of years, and hence really know pretty well, and Tom's one of them, and he's top tier all the way.

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He's one of the best you're going to find, and so when

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I find someone slandering him and saying,

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I believe you're abusive, and you're a liar, who is actually simply refusing to tell the truth about her role in blackmail and politics to protect a denominational entity,

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I'm rather incensed. It's so obvious, it's so plain, she can't lie worth a darn, and we all know what's going on here.

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The facts are clear, and the Southern Mass Convention chose yesterday to do nothing about it, which gives you a really good idea of where the convention is going to end up.

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So basically everyone, as far as I can tell, that was a part of the change, the direction, lost, so the convention does not want to change direction.

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So here's, here's my prediction, I am not a prophet, nor a son of a prophet.

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This is not a prophecy. This is me with a real interest in church history.

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I am a professor of church history. I do teach church history, and a person old enough now to be, to be, have been observing modern

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American denominations as they have committed hairy carry, because there have been a number, you know,

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I have this clear, clear recollection in my mind of my dad years ago making a comment about the

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United Methodists, who have been veering way off to the left for a long, long time, and when that started, or when that actually reached a certain level,

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I remember him saying to me, he says, you know, it's just amazing, son, I remember when

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I was in school, it's been the 50s, you could find United Methodist ministers that just preached a hot gospel, and you know, we had areas of disagreement, but man, there were, there were

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United Methodists that still believed the gospel, and they still preached the gospel, and I don't know if you could find those type of people any longer.

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So I've been observing for years the suicide of quote -unquote mainstream denominations, and how it works, and who starts it, and what the process is, and we are watching that with the

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SBC. The, the, all the actors have been in place for quite some time, and here's what

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I think is going to happen. Over the next year, my guess would be that by the next meeting, 20 to 25 percent of Southern Baptist churches will no longer be

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Southern Baptist churches, they will no longer be contributing to cooperative fund, cooperative program gifts will diminish, and many churches that as of today are technically

36:58

Southern Baptist will not be in the next year, and then over the next like three years, that'll, that'll continue, but at a slower rate down, down the, down the road, because the, the sound churches still believe that the

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Bible is the standard rule of faith of the church, and you don't get to culturally accommodate it, will have already left, and many already have.

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We already know many churches that have left the SBC just over the past couple of years.

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They've seen this coming, they, they've seen the people taking charge that they know is going to go this direction, but there have been many, and I understand it, and I appreciate it, who have hoped for a miracle, have hoped for a change, and yesterday that change didn't happen, and by a 60 -40 percent vote, um, the status quo was re -elected for the next two years, and hence all of these big questions simply are not going to be addressed, and cannot be addressed, and because the, the, the institutions are now solidly under the control of this one group that has one direction that they, they're going to go, and the results will be obvious.

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I think there's going to be a, a name change, you know, we've been hearing about Great Commission Baptist for a long time.

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I think there is a fundamental, um, embarrassment at the, the phrase

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Southern Baptist, and its alleged historical connections to whatever, and so I think pretty quickly it's probably gonna be a, a name change, um, and then what you're gonna see, given that Rick Warren was applauded so strongly, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna see a functional redefinition of the

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Baptist faith and message, and if you'll redefine the Baptist faith and message in regards to the pastorate and the preaching ministry, and again this is where just, just go back over the past 120 years amongst

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Presbyterians, and Methodists, and Episcopalians, and it always starts here.

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They all have their female bishops, and priests, and everything else now, and in fact many of them, they're now the majority, and many of the ultra -leftists, they'll be dead in 20 years, there'll be nobody in the church left, but the majority of their quote -unquote preachers, and priests, and bishops, and everything else, they're all women, and it all started someplace, and so, uh, you're gonna see, and, and they don't even really have to worry about changing the

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Baptist faith and message, you really, why, why bother? Um, Saddleback didn't, and they can do whatever they want, and when someone said that Saddleback should be disfellowshipped, man, their microphone was turned off like that, you're not allowed to say anything, so I don't know if they'll change it, because once everybody's doing it anyways, who cares?

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They're not taking it seriously anyways, right? The problem is, once you don't take that seriously, then nothing else in the

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Baptist faith message will be taken seriously either, so none of the theology, uh, the, especially on cultural issues, marriage, abortion, human sexuality, if you can ignore what the

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Baptist faith and message says over here, you can ignore it over there too, so just like most of the historical confessions, and creeds, you know, there's that one utterly ditzy, uh,

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Lutheran chick that wears the rainbow stole, I've played her a couple times, she keeps popping up, um, six months or so ago, she was saying that we, we shouldn't, uh, quote the

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Nicene, no, the Athanasian Creed, uh, at this time, because it was a part of the regular liturgy, because of some woke concept, so it's still in the book, the

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Athanasian Creed is still in the book, but she doesn't believe it, she doesn't believe a word it has to say, because she doesn't believe a word the

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Bible has to say, she doesn't believe it's the actual word of God, so who cares, believe what you want, and you can leave all the creeds and everything right where they are, why, why even bother, why even take the time, it, it doesn't make any sense, so I don't know if there will be a change, but there will be a functional redefinition of the

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Baptist faith and message to where you'll get your egalitarian, uh, female preachers, you know, who knows,

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Beth Moore might even come back if she gets tired of the, uh, stoles and stuff she has to wear wherever she ended up, um, and so the change, however, you see that the fact that there have been so many sound men and churches still in the

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SBC has functioned as an anchor that has slowed the progress of the progressives down, and again, this is what happens in every denomination.

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If you've ever watched the debate that I did with Barry Lynn on homosexuality in 2001,

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I believe it was 2001, that was at a PCUSA church, that wouldn't happen in a

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PCUSA church today, they were one of the last conservative congregations left.

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They wanted to make a stand, make a statement, and we did, um, but it was too rotted by that point in time for the

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PCUSA to be saved, and so you, you see that once there comes a point where the

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Bible -believing Christians look around and realize, we're alone, um, we need to find some other place to go.

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Now in, in many denominations, that means losing your property and your church and, and everything else.

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It's not the case with the SBC. The SBC doesn't own your church, but they will own, uh, the seminaries.

44:35

That's, that's always how it's happened. Look how Westminster was formed, you know, the, the liberals end up with the buildings and the libraries and the endowments, and the conservatives get to start all over again, and that's basically what you're looking at with the

44:51

Southern Baptist seminaries too, um, and so once there's this initial, they're, they're, over the next six months to a year, you're gonna see some big names, well -known people, and I already know some of them, um, they're gonna go, we hung around to see if there was hope.

45:14

We hung around to see if, if something could be done, and the convention has said no, we are going to continue toward wokeness, uh, and man, all this goes back to Resolution 9, isn't that amazing?

45:30

That doesn't seem like it was all that long ago, but that, you can see that, that, that's where, where it was, uh, going, um, though obviously there was lots of stuff going on before this.

45:43

Russell Moore was not sitting around twiddling his thumbs all that time at the ERLC, um, he was getting people in where they needed to be to be able to start influencing things and, and preparing for this kind of stuff, but once the, the anchors cut loose on their own, all of a sudden, it's going to speed up, it's going to speed up quickly, and that just causes the rest who are, you know, just don't want to make that kind of change to go wow, look how fast this is happening, yeah, we got to get out too.

46:21

Now where do those places go? Very frequently you see formations of new denominations, um, you've got the

46:29

G3 Fellowship of Churches, already made up of a lot of former Southern Baptists, um,

46:35

I think they may see an influx at the same time, they do have a confessional standard that is significantly more specific, than the

46:46

Baptist faith and message was, and I think they're going to be challenged by certain forms of confessionalism, that, those, that's some stuff

46:58

I'd like to have a hamburger and talk with Josh over, uh, dinner sometime about, but anyway, um, there may be, you know, local cooperative fellowships that develop, um, but that's going to end up having massive impact upon, uh, the

47:23

Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, because the reality is, conservative

47:29

Bible -believing churches give a whole lot more than liberal churches do, and once the anchors let go, um, and it's no longer a, hey, we have to keep giving so that we can have our voice and make the

47:49

SBC what we want it to be, once it becomes, you know, gets its new name and becomes the woke denomination that it has decided it wants to be,

48:02

I, I think you're going to see major changes in the seminaries, uh, certainly who's teaching in the seminaries, what's being taught in the seminaries, and, you know, cooperative giving, missions, all that stuff is going to change, because the people coming out of your seminaries don't believe the same thing about the gospel they did only 10 years ago, and you're not going to send out people who aren't woke, and so you're going to see, you're going to see a lot of that type of stuff, uh, going on, and so, you know,

48:41

I don't know how many years, but Lord willing, certainly in my lifetime,

48:48

I would expect to see formally SBC churches still part of whatever the denomination ends up calling itself,

48:56

I just can't see it maintaining that terminology, to be honest with you, um, I can see them blessing same -sex marriages, and, you know, ordaining women, and there's no, there's no, there's no place else to go,

49:11

I mean, that's the path, and every denomination that has started down that path and said, there's lots of places where we will be able to pull off and think things through, no, it's all downhill, um, the brakes don't hold, uh, no one's ever done it, you know,

49:32

I mean, there have been times where, uh, awokening denomination has at their synod or whatever, tried to tap the brakes, frequently that's, that's resulted, resulted in splits, but most often what it results in is within two or three years, the people who tap the brakes are gone, and the accelerator is back to the ground, and away we go, that's just, that's just how it's worked, uh, historically, and so I can't see how that's not where the

50:11

SPC is going to be going, and, you know,

50:17

I just saw a friend of mine on Twitter saying, you know, it's not over yet, we could, you know, if we, if we get the right people in the right places, and I'm just like, well, lord bless you, um, but is, is there, is there really a reason to think that, well, yeah, look at those buildings, and look at those institutions, it's like, yeah, so, um,

50:49

Ichabod, if, if they're going to be used to teach the emptiness of CRT, and, and cultural

50:58

Marxism, and everything else that we see going on already in many of those, in many of those schools, so that's my thinking, that's, that's where it's, that's where it's going to be going,

51:09

I, I think there's a lot of people who would agree that that's, that's the direction that it's headed, but I don't know, it's sad to see, like I said,

51:21

I, um, was ordained in the Southern Baptist Church, I, I remember when

51:29

I first started realizing the deep political nature of what a future in the

51:41

SBC would require of me, when I, I started understanding why we did the things we did, even in our own church, because, you know, when you're, you're a part of a church, if you're not looking at convention -wide stuff, you know, well, it's just how we've done things, and then you start realizing, no, we, we're doing that to enhance our position in the convention, and we're, we're preaching these sermons because that's what someone who wants to become the president of the convention does, and, hmm, and, and I remember starting to realize just how political things are, and I, I talk with especially young believers who have maybe found a home in a, in a

52:35

Southern Baptist Church, and they're now starting to see the politics and seeing these things, and I, I'm thinking of one particular young believer that I knew when he was a very young believer, and when he started getting into the field that he got into,

52:51

I knew he was going to be seeing just so much stuff, and I was really concerned, and there's, there's reason to be concerned in those ways.

53:04

Politics is an ugly thing, but when you get people trying to work together in this world, there's no way around it, there's just no way around it, and if we are focused on if we apply

53:21

Philippians 2, looking out for the, the things of others rather than for ourselves, humility of mind, there are certain kinds of politics that can be exercised to the glory of God, but man,

53:37

I'm going to tell you, in a day of judgment, it's, it's hard, it's, yeah.

53:47

So let me just start wrapping up by once again, thanking

53:57

Tom Buck and his wife for standing firm, and my hopes and prayers would be that in the future, you wouldn't have to do this again, and you would not have to endure this kind of stuff.

54:16

Reality is, if you take stands, and if your voice starts being heard, I can tell you horror stories about what people have tried to do to me, and do to us as a ministry, or Apologia as a church, for example.

54:37

We live in a day where that's part of what we're facing, but I hope that you'll be able to have some peace and rest now that Anaheim's over, and my sincere thanks to Tom Askel.

54:52

I'll be honest with you, Tom. I knew that you would make a tremendous president, and that your election would make a statement, and could be a rallying point, but there is a part of me,

55:09

I, I love you too much to even want to see you go through it, and I'll bet you there are a lot of people who love you that had the exact same thought.

55:21

Draining the swamp, to use the political phrase, is an exhausting and pretty much 24 -7 task.

55:34

The swamp is not going to be drained, and I know you wanted to, you were willing to give your life, literally, in that sense.

55:50

I don't know what the future is going to hold for you and founders, but may God bless you for having taken a, taken a stand.

55:58

Bless you and your wife, and your family, and bless your health, especially.

56:04

We don't want any more of this passing out stuff, please.

56:09

We'd appreciate that, or being struck by lightning. That's, yeah, that was, we can skip that too, if you, if you'd like.

56:18

And to everyone in Southern Baptist churches, I, I know many faithful brothers, and you're, you're now faced with a decision, and you don't want to just, there's a part of you who goes,

56:34

I don't want to jump ship. I want to keep fighting, and then there's a part of you going, how can

56:41

I take the gifts of my people that are given in the context of our proclamation of the gospel, and give them to an institution that is going to be using them to promote wokeness, and CRT, and, and all this compromise, all this watered down stuff.

57:06

How can I do that? Well, God give you wisdom, and then once he's given you a clear understanding, the strength to take the stand to do what you need to do.

57:17

Um, we as Christians need to cooperate together. The toughest, toughest, toughest thing is always finding maturity and balance.

57:28

That's what call the Christian life is, and as elders in churches, how we cooperate with other churches, and work with other churches.

57:40

It's important stuff, and I pray that God will give you grace. There's no reason for anybody to be doing something next

57:49

Sunday. Um, season of prayer, conversation with other churches, and bodies, and godly men, and then you take a stand, take a stand, and um,

58:06

God bless you as you, as you seek to do all that. All right, well, I've been talking for a long time now.

58:13

I know it's not exactly 415, but close enough for government work. Um, hopefully, all of this has been of use to you.

58:23

Uh, this of course will be in lieu of tomorrow's program. Uh, I'm not sure.

58:29

Next week's could be a challenge. I may be doing some, uh, DL shorts type stuff.

58:36

We'll see. Um, but thanks for watching the program today, and Lord willing, we'll see you next week.