The eighteenth-century writer, Samuel Johnson, once quipped, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Though, to my knowledge, I am not slated for such an end, I can testify to the sanctifying value of drawing near to death. It provides perspective and an opportunity to think simply, critically, and honestly, by reminding one of that unavoidable reality that Scripture announces unequivocally: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
On that day, when called to give an account for every idle word and the stewardship entrusted to us as those who have received the gospel of Jesus Christ, the kind of equivocation that often serves so well when we don’t want to make necessary judgments will be meaningless. As a Pastor, I have a double burden in this regard because I will “have to give an account” as one of those charged with keeping watch over the souls of the people I serve (Hebrews 13:17).
My late friend and mentor, Ernie Reisinger would occasionally exhort me when dealing with difficult, vitally important matters, to speak with “judgment day honesty.” He meant that I should evaluate the matter with the kind of seriousness that recognizes one day I will stand and give an account for what I say and do.
It is in that spirit that I have tried to evaluate the antics of many Southern Baptist leaders and pastors over the last seventeen months. An honest evaluation of several facts should convince Bible believing Southern Baptists who are interested in maintaining—or recovering—the integrity of the SBC that we are fast approaching DEFCON 1 in terms of how fast and far the convention has fallen.
The response to the Covid crisis, 2020 riots, BLM “protests,” governmental tyranny, and violation of religious liberties was in so many ways, abysmal. From Al Mohler’s “Covenant and Commitment” for Southern Seminary and Boyce College employees and students to Danny Akin’s disastrous “How to Shepherd Your Church through Racial Injustice” led by four Southeastern Baptist Seminary faculty to Kevin Ezell’s church planters’ similarly unbiblical assessment of the riots (though it seems NAMB may have removed their video from their website), Southern Baptists were served very poorly by those we employ to give leadership to key institutions and entities.
These are just a few highlights from the last seventeen months. Space does not allow me to elaborate on previous failures like the hiring of a faculty member who has endorsed the damnable Revoice conference or the elevating to seminary Provost of a self-described racist and white supremacist. Nor will I describe the cowardly smear campaign and admission of participation in sexual abuse coverup by Russell Moore (who stayed quiet for months if not years about what he calls “a culture where countless children have been torn to shreds, where women have been raped and then “broken down”) formerly of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
When questions were raised about these events by countless “SBC headquarters” (local churches), SBC elites dismissed or ignored their concerns altogether, scrubbed websites, and accused the pastors of those churches of being troublemakers or otherwise tried to gaslight them. It’s bad enough to be treated this way by those who are supposed to be our leaders. It’s doubly immoral to expect churches to continue to pay those leaders’ salaries as they do so.
Given the disconnect between the elites and rank-and-file Southern Baptists, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the almost complete failure of leadership when Ed Litton’s dishonesty and pulpit plagiarism came to light.
To be sure, I did not vote for Ed Litton to be the SBC president in Nashville. I didn’t like the fact that he claimed that he did not allow women to preach in his church while videos of him and his wife preaching were circulating. I also didn’t like the fact that NAMB (and on at least one occasion, Southwestern Baptist Seminary) sponsored him speaking around the SBC on the campaign trail. For me, those are simple integrity issues.
On June 26, less than two weeks after Litton was elected President of the SBC on the second ballot, I was sent a video clip of Litton’s sermon on Romans 1, along with a sermon by JD Greear on Romans 1. The date on Greear’s sermon indicated that it was preached in January 2019, a year or so before Litton plagiarized it. A comparison of the two was (and still is) bad. Very bad. After watching the video that morning, I sent Ed a letter. I wrote it as a pastor to a pastor. I acknowledged that while there might be an explanation that I simply could not conceive, what he did “looks very bad.” I encouraged him to step away from the demands of ministry long enough to “seek help and encouragement from trusted counselors.”
Those were my thoughts after seeing just the initial plagiarized sermon by Litton. Since then at least half a dozen more have been documented, including one from several years ago where Ed and his wife stole from Tim Keller in one of their joint sermons. There may be many more, but we may never know since Ed removed over 140 of his sermons from the Internet once the scandal broke.
And make no mistake, it is a scandal—scandal of massive proportions. The emperor has no clothes, despite how much certain SBC elitists and those who want Ed to further a progressive agenda try to convince us that he is arrayed in the finest of fabric. Just ask any child. Or think about what answer you will give to the Lord were He to ask you about Ed’s plagiarism on the Day of Judgment.
To my knowledge, only one SBC leader spoke directly against pulpit plagiarism in the immediate aftermath of Litton’s dishonesty being made public. Jason Allen, President of Midwestern Baptist Seminary tweeted this on July 5, 2021.

Re re-preaching other’s sermons, I believe:
One *ought* not preach another’s serm (w/ rare exceptions) even w/ permission & attribution.
One *must* not preach another’s serm w/out permission & attribution.
If this appears to happen, the church’s elders should review & resolve.
— Jason Keith Allen (@jasonkeithallen) July 5, 2021

This is hardly profound but in the presence of the deafening silence of his fellow SBC elites, pastors and churches welcomed it. Al Mohler, who was in an admittedly awkward spot having come in third in the race for the SBC presidency behind Litton and Mike Stone in Nashville, did recently speak on the matter in response to a student question about it. He put it in the context of the widespread practice of pastors using “manufactured sermons.”
There simply is no doubt that this conversation we’re having right now is occasioned by the fact that the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Ed Litton, has been involved to some degree in preaching someone else’s sermon. Beyond that we can see the whole issue of the kind of manufacture of sermons that is now widespread. I would simply have to say that that is precisely not what we are trying to teach or to hold up as an example here.
Again, true enough. But Southern Baptist churches and pastors could wish for the full-throated renunciation of this kind of dishonesty that a younger Mohler gave in 2006. Then, he called pulpit plagiarism “theft” and used unequivocal language to renounce it.
Words are our business, I cannot imagine using someone else’s as my own. It [Plagiarism] is one of the most despicable practices I can imagine… I cannot imagine sitting in the congregation knowing that this guy is simply parroting something he has read, borrowed, or stolen from someone else….He’s not [a preacher] if he is preaching somebody else’s stuff….It is never right to steal [a sermon] and it’s never right to suggest that it’s yours if it’s not….If a comedian stole another comedian’s material he would end up in court.
A simple google search reveals that this kind of plain-spoken assessment of pulpit plagiarism used to be common fare among Bible believing evangelical leaders, including Southern Baptists. Now, however, that we have a serial plagiarist as President of the SBC, our leaders have lost their voices. Or maybe it’s their spines. My guess is that it’s the latter.
So here is where we find ourselves. Southern Baptist Churches are being led by a President who is a confirmed pulpit plagiarist. As I see it, he should resign immediately and seek help from men of integrity who will deal honestly with him in caring for his soul. Ed Litton lacks integrity. He has forfeited any opportunity to lead the SBC effectively.
None of the SBC leaders have issued any kind of direct, public rebuke. None have called for him to resign, though several pastors have done so. Southern Baptists deserve better.
What should such leaders do when confronted with their failure to lead? They should repent and start doing what their constituents rightfully expect them to do. Or, if they refuse, they should resign.
What should churches do when the leaders whose salaries they pay fail to lead? They should call for their leaders to repent or resign. If such leaders are unwilling to respond to these kinds of admonitions from their congregational “headquarters,” then the churches should defund their institutions. If I pay you to guard my house and you stand by while enemies infiltrate at will, don’t expect me to keep you in my employ.
It is a matter of stewardship. I cannot keep count of the SBC churches who have contacted me out of a deep concern over the lack of integrity right now in their convention. Many of them have left or are in the process of leaving the SBC. Some are looking for an alternative—a way to stay Southern Baptist while demanding that the SBC elites quit ignoring simple facts and the expressed concerns of churches.
Here is what needs to happen—and in many places already is happening in churches of all sizes. Churches need to vote to stop sending financial support to those institutions and entities in the SBC whose leaders refuse to lead. Since each agency and institution gets a slice of the money given through the Cooperative Program (CP), this will inevitably mean working around the CP. I take no pleasure in that thought because the CP is an ingenuous mechanism for funding ministries around the world. Churches should determine which SBC entities—if any—they are willing to continue supporting financially. They can then decide to designate to those entities.
From my vantage point, the two entities that I am happy to support are the International Mission Board and the Disaster Relief work through our state convention. I don’t want our international missionaries to suffer for the leadership failures of SBC elites. And Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is second to none. If only half of the 47,000 SBC churches were to escrow or designate their financial gifts in this fashion, the elites would finally be forced to listen. If they are unwilling to confront Ed Litton over his lack of integrity as matter of principle, perhaps they will be motivated to do so as a matter of principal—especially if that principal begins to dry up because they have lost the confidence of the churches whom they serve.
Will this work? Absolutely. Have we reached the point where this course of action is advisable? Sadly, I believe we have. The facts of Ed Litton’s plagiarism are not in dispute. Neither is the God-honoring course of action open to him.
It is foolish to continue financing failed leadership. As long as Ed Litton remains president of the SBC, Southern Baptist leaders are failing. It is past time to hold them accountable.
It’s not complicated. It’s just hard.

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You probably have heard the phrase, “love is love.” Over the last few years it has been made famous by yard signs, songs, movies, and even a comic book. The “love is love” campaign was started six years ago as an LGBTQ+ advocacy initiative with the purpose of “spreading positive images of the LGBTQ+ community, with a focus on increasing visibility in spaces where LGBTQ+ issues may not be well-understood.” The phrase, “love is love” has even earned an entry in the Urban Dictionary where it is defined as “meaning that the love expressed by an individual or couple is valid regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of their lover or partner.”
This notion of love is often used as a trump card to shut down any critique of various perverted opinions and actions that are being pushed into contemporary cultural values. A man wants to have sex with a man or a woman with a woman? Who are you to object, because “love is love.” Adults sexually preying on children? Don’t call them pedophiles, call them “minor attracted people.” Because “love is love.” Will Smith and his wife want to commit unfettered adultery? Who are you to judge, because, you know, love is love.
But love is not love. At least real love isn’t. Otherwise, the Apostle Paul would not have exhorted Christians in Rome by saying, “Let love be genuine” (Romans 12:9a). He is saying that our love must be without pretense or hypocrisy. Why does he put it like this? Because he recognized in his day what modern believers need to recognize in our own, that there is much pretend love in the world.
John Calvin acknowledged this reality in the sixteenth century, as well. He said, “It is difficult to express how ingenious almost all men are in counterfeiting a love which they do not really possess.” In other words, not everybody talking about love is expressing the genuine article.
Genuine love has some intrinsic qualities. These qualities are exemplified in the negative and positive exhortations that Paul adds immediately after calling for genuine love. He writes, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9b). Genuine love hates evil. It is repulsed by evil. What this means is that if you are a genuine loving person, you will hate evil. On the flip side, genuine love clings to what is good.
We see these intrinsic qualities demonstrated in God Himself. God is love and as such, He hates. Proverbs 6:16-19 lists seven specific things that God hates. Psalm 5:5 says He hates “all evildoers.” In Isaiah 61:8 He says, “I hate robbery and wrong.” Jesus says in Revelation 2:6 that He hates the works of heretics. It is because God is love that He hates.
But God, who is love, is also good and does good (Psalm 119:68). His will is good. Christians whose minds are increasingly being renewed by the Word of God will come to recognize this more and more (Romans 12:2). Paul came to understand this which is why he called God’s law holy righteous and good and stated, “I agree with the law, that it is good” (Romans 7:12,16).
Just as the God who is love defines what love is, so too the God who is good defines what is good.
If you are going to be a person of genuine love then you must learn to “abhor what is evil” and “hold fast to what is good.” This is vitally important for believers to recognize. We must teach this to our children and our grandchildren because they are being discipled to think contrary to this by the world in an almost constant 24/7 effort.
If you are going to be a person of genuine love then you must learn to “abhor what is evil” and “hold fast to what is good.”
To stand for this and to live this way will be very difficult. Why? Because we are living in a day that is increasingly dominated by people who, to borrow language from Isaiah 5:20, “call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” And as people of genuine love, we are called to abhor evil and hold fast to good.
Do you see the dilemma? If God’s people are going to “let love be genuine” then we must be willing to be called bigots and haters. This is inevitable because the world, who calls good evil and evil good, will judge us to be vile for hating true evil (which to them is good) and clinging to true good (which to them is evil).
So, if you refuse to applaud the man who changed his name to Lia Thomas as an NCAA “woman’s swim champion” the world will call you unloving. If you refuse to celebrate the man who changed his name to Rachel Lavine and was given USA Today’s “woman of the year” award, you will be judged a bigot. If, as Scripture instructs us to do, you actually hate the evil that both of those cases represent then be prepared to be canceled by those who call evil good.
Love is not love. God is love and love is what the God who is love says it is. Love is neither self-existent nor self-defined. God alone is self-existent and all true love comes from Him and is determined by Him.
The early church father, Augustine, once said, “Love, and do what thou wilt.” He was not advocating a licentious lifestyle. Neither was he suggesting that you can do whatever you want and then justify it by saying that you were motivated by love. Rather, he was arguing for the same point that Paul makes in Romans 12:9. Love is the fundamental principle of the Christian life.
If you get love right—abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good—then you will want to pursue a life that is holy, right, and good.
Do not let anyone deceive you about the nature of genuine love. Love is what the God who IS love says in His Word.
Love is neither self-existent nor self-defined. God alone is self-existent and all true love comes from Him and is determined by Him.
Paul wrote a whole chapter on genuine love to help us recognize it and distinguish it from counterfeits. Listen to part of what he says in 1 Corinthians 13 (vv. 4-8):

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

This is what real love—genuine love—looks like. When someone tries to get you to sin by telling you that they love you or complaining that if you don’t then you really don’t love them, recognize that what they are offering you is a cheap imitation of real love. Genuine love “does not insist on its own way.”
Similarly, genuine love rejoices in truth. That’s why Christians should not attend a so-called wedding between two men or two women or celebrate in any way those who reject God’s good design for sexuality by claiming to be true to themselves. For a Christian to approve these things would be to rejoice at wrongdoing and not to rejoice in the truth.
Instead, we should say, “I will not celebrate evil with you because I love you and I want you to learn to love and enjoy what is good.” And we will also say, “I will not practice deceit with you but will tell you the truth because I love your interests more than my own and I am willing to be castigated and rejected for your sake.”
That is the nature of real love. It is costly, but it is the kind of love that is desperately needed in our world today. Anything less is not genuine.

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And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. Who was before a blasphemer… but I obtained mercy. 1 Timothy 1:12-13
What a privilege it is to be a believer! They are comparatively few, and we by nature were no nearer than others: it was grace, free grace, that made the difference. What an honor to be a minister of the everlasting gospel! These upon comparison are perhaps fewer still. How wonderful that one of these few should be sought for among the wilds of Africa, reclaimed from the lowest state of impiety and misery, and brought to assure other sinners, from his own experience, that ‘there is, there is forgiveness with him, that he may be feared.’
We are called to an honorable service, but it is arduous. What wisdom does it require to keep the middle path in doctrines, avoiding the equally dangerous errors on the right hand and the left! What steadiness, to speak the truth boldly and faithfully in the midst of a gainsaying world! What humility, to stand against the tide of popularity! What meekness, to endure all things for the elect’s sake, that they may be saved! ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ We are not in ourselves, but there is an all-sufficiency in Jesus. Our enemy watches us close; He challenges and desires to have us, that he may sift us as wheat; he knows he can easily shake us if we are left to ourselves; But we have a Shepherd, a Keeper, who never slumbers nor sleeps… When we are prone to wander, he calls us back; When we say, my feet slip, his mercy holds us up; When we are wounded, he heals; when we are ready to faint, he revives. The people of God are sure to meet with enemies, but especially the ministers: Satan bears them a double grudge: the world watches for their halting, and the Lord will suffer them to be afflicted, that they may be kept humble, that they may acquire a sympathy with the suffering of others, that they may be experimentally qualified to advise and help them, and to comfort them with the comforts with which they themselves have been comforted of God.
Cardiphonia: Letters to Rev. Mr. William Bull, 1:590 (taken from Jewels from John Newton, Banner of Truth, 2016)

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