The Eric Metaxas Show - Tom Ascol

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Tom Ascol is a candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and hopes to win the office to help stop the SBC's sad and deluded slide into woke culture and away from God's word.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. A Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, gang, it's hour two, and I continue my discussion with Douglas Murray. If you haven't heard of him, shame on you. He's the author of The War on the West and other important books.

the madness of crowds. Douglas, we're talking about everything. We're talking about truth and reality. And I think it's fascinating in some ways because the woke left, the crazy people, they're perpetually enraged. They don't know quite with what. They just know that the feeling of rage

makes it makes them feel good, it makes them feel morally superior, and if they can scream themselves hoarse, somehow they get some value out of that. But what I have said in the past, and I know what you're saying in the book, The War on the West, is they're really kicking against the goads of reality and truth themselves. In other words, the nature of things is what it is. They don't like it, and they argue even against truth and logic. They say these are colonial constructs, these are patriarchal. They really don't even know what it is that they're doing. And I think when they're pressed on it, you realize that they don't know what they're doing, that it becomes emotional. Because couldn't we say the same thing about science? We could look at somebody, some figure

from the past and say, you know, Isaac Newton, well, yeah, he invented, you know, the calculus and he did this and he did this and he did this, but he got all these other things wrong. So let's wipe him out. And he said, well, no, we don't do that. In science, we take what was good and we move on with it. And if he got anything wrong, we correct it. Because we believe in the process of discovering truth. We believe in this thing called reality and science discovers what is. but that's not what the left is doing when they go to war with the West. Somehow, as you say, they forget that George Washington and others made tremendous self-sacrifices for many good things and that you take that apart from their failings with regard to slavery in that.

So I just don't think they're consistent, but we already knew that. Well, they're not consistent. And I mean, looking for consistency, it's looking like for wisdom in the end trails of of a chicken with these people. But just quickly, of course, they actually are doing this now, Eric, with science. They are doing exactly what you described with science. I described in one, I did the audio book for this book as for the last one. And there was one passage in particular I couldn't not laugh in as I was doing it loud.

And that's the section on two plus two equals five. This was a serious attempt by people a couple of years ago to hit white supremacy, as they called it by demonstrating that two plus two doesn't equal four, it can equal five. And these morons, as we know, some of whom have PhDs and actually maths teachers and things, are trying to prove this in order to get the white guys. Somebody pointed out that actually, of course, in George Orwell's 1984, there's a passage which says there will be a day when you are told to say that two plus two equals five. And when this passage was pointed out to one of the activists in question, And he said that that was indeed awkward.

Well, I mean, isn't the point that it's the triumph of irrationality? And to me, there is something satanic and deeply sick, morally sick about this. I agree. But that is the goal, in a sense, is to unmake all that is made. Even math, as you say, you think, so what's the bottom? If you keep unraveling and unraveling, do you ever get anywhere? No. Remember we live in an era.

where, for instance, as I show in the bit on math, that we live in an era where, for instance, black children in America are being told that they don't need to learn math effectively because they have what's known as other ways of knowing. Nobody ever says what these other ways of knowing are that appear to be absolutely inbuilt to certain indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. But nobody has gone ever for other ways of knowing to find a cure for cancer or anything else. So there's some kind of voodoo that we're really dealing with in our day. But yes, they want to tear everything apart. They want to destroy everything that's been inherited, including logic.

Remember, and I give examples of this, things like the American Teachers Union, Randy Weingarten, they want to do away with standardized testing. They think testing is racist. They think testing is white supremacist. None of this, I reiterate, none of this is any longer at the fringes. It's right at the center of American and Western life. But the beauty of it, I think, and you mentioned it earlier, is that eventually, you know, it's kind of the old joke of, you know, the problem with socialism or coming, eventually you run out of other people's money. I think that's where we are now.

It's the reductio at absurdum. You say, okay, go ahead. Or it's like having a kid who says, like, I want to smoke a cigar. And you say, really, go ahead. I'll be right. I'll sit here. Make sure you inhale deeply. Let's see where this goes.

as we watch them do this, they're deconstructing, they're sawing off the branch that they themselves are sitting on. It can only go so far. If you have no math, you cannot create bridges, you cannot dig tunnels, you cannot make cars, you cannot, in other words, they are deconstructing the reality on which they are being supported. So we're kind of watching this moment, aren't we? Yes, and I would add another metaphor to that. Effectively, the, the of our time, the anti-Western activists, are in a situation that children are with bicycles. You know, they're very easy to take apart.

Damn hard to put back together. And as you say, a parent can stand back and watch and say, gosh, how good you are at dismantling this thing, how excellent you are. You seem to have a real talent at it. Now put it back together. Now, the children of our time are incapable of putting things back together.

All they are capable, of is deconstructing to take a part. We actually have lived through an era in which deconstruction is the academic game of the day. Well, here's an idea. After deconstruction, people like us, people like those listening and with us, need to enter the era of construction again. We need to go back to building things. We need to get past these people who are wasting our time and wasting our lives and putting waste and laying waste to our civilization. We need to construct. again. And again, for me, it becomes ultimately a moral question. And others, we can talk all day long about ideas and things, but fundamentally, it's a moral issue. I think of C.S. Lewis's

men without chess. If you do not have the ability to say no to a child who is doing something that's either harming himself or someone else, then you are culpable. And so we have a lot of adults and a lot people in authority, many of them, political leaders in America, obviously throughout Europe, but who are unwilling to pay the price, because that's what it is to be brave, to have some courage to say, I'm going to pay a price. I'm going to say something or do something, which may get me blowback, but it's the right thing. And I believe in the inherent order of the universe and in truth that I'm willing to do that. But we have many, many people in leadership that aren't willing to do that. And I think what is happening is,

is as on things unravel as things get worse, more and more of the, as I say, increasingly less silent majority, they're speaking up and they're saying, well, if you don't fight for me, if you're not willing to speak out on this, we will fire you, we'll throw you out. We'll find someone who has the courage. But I think things have had to get this bad in a sense for people to wake up and for the silent majority to become less silent. I absolutely agree. There's another metaphor I like to use, which is this.

on these battlefields never wait for the cavalry never wait for the cavalry the realization is you are the cavalry you it's you that saves yourself you don't get it's not like a fantasy movie and at the very end there's a massive influx of another no no it's just you it's us

it's the people around today that are going to save this or not it's up to us don't wait for anyone else to be heroic do a little bit of it yourself yeah dais ex machina is just bad writing. If you have to do that, then you realize you have failed. Go back.

You're quite right, though. But I think really this is the blessing in the midst of this cursed season is that there are people waking up and understanding, I must do something. I must run for the school board. I must run for Congress. I must do something. If I don't, I'm participating in this evil that's deconstructing

all that is good and true and beautiful. I'm sorry we're out of time. Douglas Murray, I'm very happy to know you're in New York. We will have you back here if you will let us. And thank you so much for the book, The War on the West, and for your time. Thank you. It's a great pleasure. Thank you. Tell me, Eric, why is Relief Factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I agree with them. So the doctors who formulated Relief Factor for them selected the four best ingredients, yes, 100% drug-free ingredients, each helps your body deal with inflammation. Each of the four ingredients deals with inflammation from a different metabolic pathway. And that right there, approaching from four different angles, may be why so many people find such wonderful relief. So if you've got back pain, shoulder, neck, hip, knee, or foot pain from exercise or just getting older, you should order the three-week quick start discounted to only 1995 to see if it will work for you. It works for me. It has for about 70.

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And he is running to head up the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, we don't have a lot of time to go into it, but if you've been paying any attention, the Southern Baptist Convention has effectively gone to hell in what we like to call a handbasket. it's in dire need of actual Christian leadership, which is very rare in the Southern Baptist Convention. And so we thought, let's talk to Tom Askell and find out what he has to say. Tom Askell, my new friend, welcome to the program. Eric, thank you. It's so good to see you again. I appreciate you having to be on your program today. Well, listen, things are bad, and we have to care about what is going on. I don't identify as a Southern Baptist, but, you know, neither do I identify as a Catholic, and I care that the Pope is a Marxist nut in a good way. So it really does matter, and this is very important. Our mutual friend Larry

Taunton reached out to me and let me know that you were running to head up the Southern Baptist Convention. And I said, I've got to get Tom on the program so people understand what's at stake. And so that people who are able to vote in this, folks, if you know anyone, you. who's able to vote in this and they don't vote, you need to, you know, key their car secretly, because this is very bad. This is really serious. Now, a lot of people listening have no idea what we're talking about. So Tom Askell, frame this for me.

What is the Southern Baptist Convention and how has it fallen on hard times, putting it mildly? Yeah, well, a couple of things. One, the Southern Baptist Convention is not like the Presbyterian Church in America or the Roman Catholic Church. There is no the Southern Baptist Church. is a union or an association of 47,000 independent autonomous churches that have voluntarily agreed to get together to do mission work. And so in the course of our history that began in 1845, we have supported, we built and supported six seminaries with the largest missionary sending agency in the world, disaster relief that is better

than the Red Cross. And we do that by pulling our money together as independent autonomous churches. And those institutions that we've created are supposed to. be accountable to the churches, but in recent years, that hasn't always happened. And so we've got things like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission that we funded, that was headed by Russell Moore up until last year, that has just gone in some bad ways. For example, they repudiated the will of the messengers. Those are like delegates that are sent from our churches to vote in this annual meeting last year. We adopted the most clear-cut anti-abortion resolution in history, and only to

have the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission acting president, Brent Leatherwood, turn around and sign an open letter that repudiated the very things that the churches voted for. Okay. So we've got that kind of disconnect. It's one thing to go against the will of the people, so to speak. In other words, their job is to reflect what people want. They're not doing that. And on top of it, they're wrong.

In other words, it'd be one thing if the people voted for something abominable. but here you have the folks coming together trying to put forth good ideas like the sanctity of life in the womb, the most fundamental Christian idea, the most fundamental idea in the West, the idea of the sanctity of human life. And you have the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission nixing that. So some bad actors have gotten involved. Now, Russ Moore, I don't really understand. It's one thing for people to have differences. And I think that you can have.

principal differences. So I don't, I don't want to demonize people personally, but the ideas they put forth, Russell Moore wrote a piece in Christianity today that came out about Easter. I was so astonished by it. It was so disturbing to me that I had to write a rebuttal. And I'm not, I'm not like Larry Taunton who could like sneeze paragraphs in essays. Like it's a big effort for me to write something. But here you have Russell Moore, who, was the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, writing something that was just truly astonishingly wrong. It was effectively bigotry.

It was kind of like anti-white evangelical bigotry. It's kind of like, this is the group you have permission to hate. God gives you permission to sneer and to hate this scuzzy group. And I thought, wow, this is in the pages of Christianity today. So I wrote a rebuttal. People can find it at stream.org. But if you want to know what Tom Askell is running against, go to stream.org, read what I wrote, because I think it's fair to say, Tom, that we wouldn't have dreamt a few years ago that this kind of thinking would find its way into the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention. What happened? Yeah, I think what happened is a lot of churches and pastors like me just kind of fell asleep at the wheel.

You know, the default mode is you trust your leaders. You get good leaders and trust them. That's always been a method of operation for me. And our trusted leaders begin to just let things go. And the cultural influences, as you well know, you've talked about this, write about this a lot. All of these ideologies from Marxism began to just come inside. They've infiltrated every sphere of our society. and the churches of Jesus Christ are not immune.

And so a lot of these ideologies begin to come in, and our leaders were not standing against them and keeping them from coming in the way they should have been. And by the time several of us woke up, which for me was about five years ago, we realized, man, these things are in the house now. We've got to get them out. And I talked privately to leaders.

I went to people I trusted, and it just dawned on me after a while in 2018 that we were not going to get the kind of help that we needed and that the churches of the Southern Maddo's Convention, if we are going to maintain the health that we desire to be useful for the kingdom of God, we're going to have to change the direction and see new leadership arise so that we can get back on track. So I think it's, I blame myself and others like me that we just,

we let things go too long, trusting leaders that were not doing their jobs, trustees that we're not holding the institutions accountable to churches like ours. Well, people need to be able to spell your name to look you up. Last name is Ascal. Asc-O-L. As-C-O-L. Tom Askell. Now, Tom, your background is, you know, dramatic. There's all kinds of stuff that you've done. And I don't want to list it here. But if people look you up, Tom Askell, A-S-C-O-L, they can find out who you are. You've got 15 grandchildren. That's pretty significant. Let me ask you what you're facing. You have two people that are running against you. And I think it's fair to say you're the only person that represents what we would think of as theologically orthodox Christianity.

These other folks have kind of opened the door to cultural Marxism, to CRT, to things that are, we have to be blunt, atheistic. And it's kind of ironic in a sense that that, They're sort of, you know, you talk about turning a blind eye or being asleep at the wheel. These are ideas that are profoundly at odds with the scripture. Why do you think these other folks are unwilling to take a strong stand against it? It strikes me as odd. Yeah, well, and I want to say that both Bart and Robin, the other men, her candidates,

I mean, they're brothers, their friends. I've just gotten to know Robb a little bit. But I don't think they see the things the way that I do. And so that's where the real rub comes in. And again, it took me a while. And so I'm a little sympathetic with guys that don't see it yet, but I hope they will come to see it. And I think our time is running out. And we don't have any more time to try to raise the alarm.

The alarm's been raised. And it's grievous to me that we have men who should be leading the charge to stop these things that are not. And so we're a very populous denomination. We're very democratic in that sense. The churches own the institutions. So it's going to take pastors like me and others who are going to have to stand up and say, no more, stop. These institutions belong to us.

The trustees are not unpaid public relation departments for the institutions. They are supposed to hold the institutions in trust accountable to the churches. And where that's not happening, we've got to see change. So I see that. I've been talking about that, writing about it. that for years. So I think that's what distinguishes me from these other men who are running is that I'm very concerned. I think we must make changes right now. And they probably see things a little differently, maybe not so seriously as I do. So this is happening in Anaheim,

California, when? This is next week. It's June the 13th, 14th, and 15th. And so the Pastors Conference that before the Southern Baptist Convention meets on June 14 and 15th, the pastors conference is the 13th. And my good friend Vody Baalcom is actually running for the president of that pastor's conference. And he needs to be elected to that because that will set the stage for next year's convention that meets in New Orleans. But the election for the president is on Tuesday, 14th of January.

So I always forget, how do we pronounce it, Vody, Votty? Votty, Bacom. Voting. Votie, Bacom is on this program many times. And I want to tell you, that man is another hero, but people need to vote. If you don't take this seriously, wow, it's unraveling. So it's kind of on you. We'll be right back.

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still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metal safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at Legacypminvestments.com. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to my friend Tom Askell, A-S-C-O-L. Look it up. Tom Askell, ASC-O-L. He was the senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church for 36 years. He's the president, of Founders Ministry and the Institute of Public Theology, candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention. The vote is next week. So Tom Askell, people need to get to Anaheim and need to vote. And I'm begging you, folks, take this seriously. If you know somebody who can be there and who's thinking, oh, I don't know if I want to go, this is a big deal. This is the Southern Baptist Convention.

I mean, how many people are involved in Southern Baptist churches? How many people does this affect? Could you repeat that, Eric? How many people in the whole Southern Baptist Convention, roughly how many are there? How many people are affected by the leadership? You're running to lead the Southern Baptist Convention? Yeah, so there's 47,000 churches, over 14 million members in those churches. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, say it again, 40?

47,000 churches, 14 million members. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we should have said this up front. This is huge. 47,000 churches. Right. 14 million members. This affects a few people. Yeah, let me draw it out for you.

It affects far more than Southern Baptist because our six seminaries educate one-third of all the evangelical seminary students in America. So if you're in an evangelical church, it is likely that over the next 30 years, you're going to be directly influenced by Southern Baptist or a Southern Baptist trained minister who got his training at a Southern Baptist institution. We also have the largest missionary sending force in the world. And what happens in the SBC affects far more than the SBC. It affects other evangelical groups and churches in North America. And more than that, it affects the work of the gospel around the world because we explore. what we have here. And if we're not healthy here, it's not going to be healthy wherever we

export our Christianity. Now, Tom, you are not expecting to run for this office. I actually think, you know, Romans 828, all things work together for good for those loved Lord called according to purposes. Now, I think sometimes things have to get really, really bad in order for other things to happen. And the Lord allows these things to happen so that he can work them together for good. and things going to hell in a handbasket, as I so charmingly summed it up a few moments ago, it takes that to get folks like you, Tom Askell, to say, I need to run. Because otherwise, if things were going okay, you weren't going to do this. Right. No, I've got a full agenda, Eric.

I've got a church I serve that I love. I'm involved in other ministries. I love. And what happened to me is men that I respect prevailed upon me. And they said, Tom, you've been talking about these things. You've been writing about these things. You agree that there's problems. And why won't you get involved at this level?

And when I pitched it to the elders of our church, they said, no, we got too many things going on the church. We need all hands on deck. But they agreed to take a week to pray about it. And some folks came and talked to them. And one by one, all the elders came back and said, we changed our minds. We think this is what God has for you. My wife agreed.

And so I said, okay, I'm going to do this. If people have trouble getting to Anaheim, I have. in my notes here. We would like all faithful conservative Southern Baptists to make the effort to get to Anaheim and vote to help change direction of the SBC. There are funds available to those who need it. Now what's your excuse? And Vody Balcom is running for something else. What is he running for and what are you running for? Yeah. Yeah, he's running for the presidency of the Southern Maddo's Convention Pastors Conference. That's a very informal gathering that meets right before our annual meeting every year. And if Vody gets elected, then he will set the agenda for who preaches and what

that conference will be like, which is kind of a springboard in. It sets the tone for the annual meeting. Now, that vote is on the 13th. That is on the Monday before the Tuesday of the convention next week. I'm running for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is one year term, where I'll be involved in all kinds of activities and responsibilities in helping to speak into issues that our convention faces day by day over the next year. And let's talk about some of these issues. It's what you can guess, ladies and gentlemen, the LGBTQ, LMNOP, Yon Beyond Zebra, agenda is in full force at places like the Southern Baptist Convention.

And we need people to say, this is what the scripture teaches. in love, we speak the truth of scripture. There are a lot of people unwilling to do that, or they're too confused, and they don't know how to do it. And so they just kind of let this stuff in. This is happening in churches all around America. But when it happens at the Southern Baptist Convention, you know things are bad.

The issue of pro-life, the issue of the sanctity of the unborn, these are really fundamental issues. And Tom, I think it's safe to say that you're the person, willing to stand for what the gospel says, for what the scripture teaches, these are big things. And I guess I want to say again, it's a little bit astonishing that at the Southern Baptist Convention, these have become issues that need someone like you to get involved with. Yeah. I agree.

I agree. And I wouldn't be doing this if I saw other people willing to do it. And just to your point, yesterday, yesterday, a Guidepost report came out. Guidepost is an organization that the Southern Maddoch Convention contracted with last year to do research to study whether or not we've been covering up sex abuse and where sex abuse may have occurred in some of our entities and agencies, specifically the organization that kind of oversees day-to-day work in the Southern Medicine called the Executive Committee. Yesterday, the Guidepost organization out of D.C. released their statement about how they are LGBTQ affirming, that they are proud of their affirming of this way of living, and they wanted this agenda.

Now, we have just paid millions of dollars to them to give us a report. We're going to go to a break when we come back more on that. Folks, if you don't think this is bad, you're clearly not listening. Tom Askell, we'll be right back. Hey there, folks. Eric Metax is here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life.

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800-978 3057. Folks, we need your help. If you know anybody who could go to Anaheim next week, Southern Baptist Convention and vote for Tom Askell as a president of the Southern Baptist Convention, we're at a very crucial point. Things have to get very, very bad to be at this level. I mean, it's hard to believe what you just said before we went to the break, Tom, that a guideposts, now this is not the guidepost magazine. This is something else. No, no, no, no, no. This is Guidepost Research Center. I forget they do a lot of things. But we adopted a measure last year that appointed, had our president appoint six or seven people to a sex abuse task force. They hired Guideposts. Guidepost received millions of dollars from Southern Baptist tides. And they brought back a report two weeks ago. And they said, you know, yes, there's been all these abuse cases in Southern Baptist circles, which they're all public knowledge. and there's problems.

There's no doubt there's problems, and they need to be addressed. There's been cover up, and that needs to be addressed. But the people who are now telling us how to address it, the recommendations they are making, there's 12 of them, they're very complicated. That organization came out yesterday saying, we affirm LGBTQ plus IA, whatever it is. And that's appalling to me as a pastor of a Southern Baptist church. I've heard from over 40 churches since Saturday that say, if these recommendations are adopted, our churches are leaving the convention. We will not get one dime to an organization

that is trying to rebuild our whole ecclesiology, the doctor of the church, when they come from a worldview that affirms sexual perversion. And I say amen to that. I have to say, I have a book coming out in the fall called Letter to the American Church. And it's sort of funny because a big part of the book, the premise, is comparing where we are now, Protestant churches in America, especially evangelical-leaning Protestant churches, how the parallels are dramatic to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. And it's the exact same case. You have people, rather than saying, we don't believe in Christianity, they are importing dramatically anti-Christian ideas into the church. And that's what you've just said. In other words, you kind of think, well, Southern Baptist churches,

Why would we even go to church if we don't believe what the Bible teaches? And if we're spending money to allow ideas that are fundamentally anti-biblical to infiltrate our churches, what will you be teaching except half-baked tolerance? And, I mean, it becomes a confusing cultural Marxist mess, basically. And you're telling me that that's exactly where we are now, that this organization guideposts has come out. saying that they affirm the LGBTQ ideology. Ladies and gentlemen, do you understand how crazy this is? This is, I mean, and Tom, what do you propose to do if you are elected if these good people

get to Anaheim and vote for you, which I pray that they do? How do you stand against these things? Well, the official responsibilities of the SBC presidency, it's a limited and voluntary job, so that I don't have a lot of official responsibilities of things I can do, but it's a bully pulpit. And one of the things I will do is keep saying what I've been saying. And the number one thing, Eric, we've got structural problems that they've addressed. And I've got some plans for that. And I've written about that.

But before the structural problems, we've got spiritual problems. We've lost the fear of God. And I want to call pastors like myself back to a serious consideration of what the Bible says about God and how we need to fear God. And we need to confess our sins to him and plead with him to come back to us with power to renew us, to revive us, to give us a confidence and a crucified risen Savior so that we will seek his will. We will take his book seriously and follow it regardless of cost or consequences. And if I can rally pastors and churches to that, the structural problems that we have that are not insignificant, I believe we'll be prepared to deal with with humility and with a

submission to the authoritative word of God. So that's number one on my agenda. We need to come back to the fear of the living God. Well, that's a pretty big statement because that's what it boils down to. And I think, I mean, look, we want to be clear, right? When somebody says we affirm the LGBTQ agenda, no one is against not affirming those people as people, as made in the image of God for whom he died. But when you affirm that agenda, you're affirming the very opposite. It's a satanic, broken, anti-biblical view of. of human beings.

And to affirm that is not to affirm those people. It's to curse those people. And at some point, folks, you have to make a choice. What do you believe? Which do you believe? And if you're not really willing to make that choice, then you're just going to drift with the flow. And the flow is woke.

It's theologically liberal. It's culturally Marxist. I guess none of us, not you, not Voddy Baucom, None of us dreamt a few years ago that we could be here now. It's very, it's dramatic. There's no question. You're exactly right, Eric, and I just want to underscore what you said, that we have been hammered by people on the left saying, oh, but for the sake of love or for the sake of justice, you must do these things, you must say these things. And what you just said is right.

It is not loving to let somebody who is caught up in sexual dysphoria think that they can be okay with God in that. We have to tell them there's a better way. There's a savior who heals, a savior who reconciles people to God. And the most loving thing I can do is not to go along with that agenda, but to stand against it. And I would rather be thought cruel while being loving than be thought loving while, in fact, being cruel. And to go along with that agenda or to be silent in the face of it is the greatest cruelty that we could show to people who are caught up in that way of living that is contrary to God that will keep them from experiencing the great. of God in Jesus Christ. Well, look, there are pastors all over the country that are heroic on these issues.

And then there are other pastors that are cowardly. And I think we have to be clear, folks, that you have to pay a price to speak the truth. There are people are going to come against you. People say horrible things about me, crazy things. At the end of the day, you have to choose, do I care what God thinks or do I care what the nattering nabobs of negativism think? You have to really figure out, that's a William Sapphire Spiru, Agnew throwback. You have to really figure out what is true, what is really going to help people.

But what amazes me, Tom, is how many people in leadership are, they're really gutless. It's almost in the CS-Lewis sense of men without chess. They don't seem to have what it takes to stand bravely and to say, I'm going to love you by doing the right thing. And I'm going to pay a price and somebody are going to hate me. but I'm going to do it just as though you were my own children because I know it's the right thing and because God holds me responsible to pay that price. Folks talking to Tom Askell,

who's running for the head of the Southern Baptist Convention next week in Anaheim. If anybody you know can get there and vote, their funds available, we'll be right back. Final segment with Tom Askell, A-C-O-L. We'll be right back.

Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Tom Askell, ASC-O-L, who is running to head up the Southern Baptist Convention. The vote is next week in Anaheim. It is crucial. It is extraordinarily important. It's why I wanted to have Tom on the program to get the word out to anybody that possibly isn't sure how they're going to vote or isn't sure whether they can get to Anaheim. Tom, it says in my notes. that there are funds available for folks who could go there, but maybe they don't want to pay for the plane flight or the hotel or something.

They're concerned. How do they get those funds? Yeah, they can go to we have a book.com. We have a book.com. There's information there about how to become a messenger, and we'll put information there about who you can talk to. There are churches that are making funds available and be glad to make those available to anybody who's willing to make the trek out to Anaheim. So go to we have a book.com, and you can find information there. I would just plead with anybody who's a Southern Baptist to consider that and to talk to your leadership, if you're not a leader,

and see about becoming a messenger to get to Anaheim. I mean, you and I believe in the sovereignty of God. We know God works all things together for good, as you've already said. But what happens next week in Anaheim matters. Now, I just want to be clear. First of all, the website is, we have a book.com. I think that book would be the Bible. We have a book.com.

But are you saying that people who are not qualified to vote right now can get qualified to vote, can become messengers and go to Anahe? We should have said that in the opening segment. I hope people are still listening. Folks, did you hear that? So Tom, tell people who are listening, what would it take for them to be able to do that? This is important. I hope people are listening. Go ahead.

Every Southern Baptist Church can send at least two messengers and then you can send more up to 12, depending on how much money you've. given through the previous year. So every church can send two people that the church says, we want you to go and be our messengers to this annual meeting. All you have to do is register that. You can do it online or you can carry credentials with you, a letter from your church saying, I'm a messenger from this church, and you show up, you get credentialed at the meeting, and then you get a ballot and you can vote. So it can happen. You just have to go through the right steps. We have a book.com outlines those steps, puts you right where you need to be to figure it out. Okay, I'm sorry we didn't say this in the opening segment because this is the headline, folks.

If you're part of a Southern Baptist church, you can go. And the reason I wanted to have Tom Askell on this program is to get the word out to you, folks, that this is everything on the line. The Southern Baptist Convention is outrageously influential in America, in the church in America, in America, in the world. And so the website again is we have a book.com. There are funds available. And I guess my question to those listening is God calling you to do this? Because if Tom loses by one vote, it's going to be on you. Think about that. It's going to be on you. God calls each of us to do something. And we always think, oh, it's on somebody else. It's on somebody else. It's on you.

If you can go and you don't go, and there are a handful of votes that choose this, you're going to say, oh, well, so I want you folks to please consider this. If you are part of any Southern Baptist Church, go to we havea book.com. We havea book.com. Find out whether you can go. And if you can go, please go and please vote for Tom Askell. and please vote for Voting Baucom and Javier Sanchez. We have abook.com. Folks, this is big, this is important. Tom Askell, God bless you, and I hope the Lord gives you favor. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you, Eric. It's great to be with you today.