Dr. Albert Mohler: His Battles, Breakthroughs, and Legacy

[00:00:09] Speaker A: At the development of stories and how these things go and what's embedded in these newspapers. And so the CIA really came up with this content analysis. So I even pulled papers to what the CIA did. You know, I rip it. So you got a page of newsprint, fold it into a fourth, and I use a red and I mark it all up. What you do is you're looking for all the key points and turning points, key quotes, et cetera. And so that's what, if you're in the intelligence business, you'd use as the basis for an intelligence brief. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Welcome back to Code Red Talk. I am your host, Zack Terry. And on this edition of Code Red, we are honored to have Dr. Albert Mohler, a man who has had a tremendous impact on my life personally as well as on the denomination that I am a part of, the Southern Baptist Convention. We are focusing on Dr. Mohler's personal life story in this episode. So tune in, like comment share, help us get the word out. You will want to hear this episode of Code Red. Welcome to Code Red Talk. Doctor Albert Mohler, welcome to the Code Red studio. [00:01:31] Speaker A: Zach. It's great to be with you. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Dr. Zach Terry, finally, after many, many years. And I put a lot of professors through a lot of grief to get there, but finally you conferred my doctorate. [00:01:41] Speaker A: On me twice, proudly. [00:01:43] Speaker B: And I haven't talked with our board yet to figure out if there's any raise that's associated with that, but I'll get around to that eventually. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Well, you know what, it ought to come with ramifications. They've been very, very good to me. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, what I wanted to do in this conversation, we've had conversation at the church and I wanted to focus on your story and just your beginnings, your roots in Southern Baptist life and some of the urban legends that surround your ministry over the years. And in particular, let's begin with just how did you come to know the Lord? [00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I grew up in a very privileged Southern Baptist context, kind of picture perfect. I had Christian grandparents, both sides, and they were very close by. They were in Plant City, Florida. I was growing up in Lakeland, Florida, so, you know, just 11 miles from house to house. My parents were godly Christian parents. They had us at everything in the church. My dad worked in the grocery business in Publix, started right there. And my mother was just a wonderful, faithful stay at home mom. And we were very tenuously middle class, tiny little house, two bedrooms, no air conditioning. But church was the center of our life other than family. [00:03:02] Speaker B: And that was a Southern Baptist. [00:03:04] Speaker A: Yes, Southside Baptist Church in Lakeland, Florida, which was then a tall steeple kind of very establishment Southern Baptist church which became a part of the story, but also warm hearted evangelical gospel faith Christian people. [00:03:16] Speaker B: When were you baptized? When did you make a profession of faith? [00:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah, interestingly I'd heard the gospel all my life and I've been surrounded by it. But I grew up in a time when as a Southern Baptist kid you did not go to vacation Bible school. You went to vacation Bible schools. My mother with four kids in the house, that was one way. We went to several. So one of the vacation Bible schools I went to was at Crystal Lake Baptist Church in Lakeland. And it was just kind of a neighborhood church bivocational pastor, very different than the tall steeple pipe organ church I was a part of. And you know, the last day in the assembly the preacher came in and presented the gospel and it convicted me. I was convicted of sin. I had this horrible nine year old feeling that I had just been nailed. But the difference between sinning and being a sinner in that nine year old mind came together in a way it never had before. And then he preached Christ and I seized upon Christ and so I went home and my dad was still at work and I talked to my mom and she was just very reassuring. But it was in your dad's home. We'll talk about this. My father was just a wonderful Christian layman and he was tired when he got home from work. We had that conversation and they prayed with me. And then my dad made an arrangement for me to go with him to see the pastor. And Dr. T. Rupert Coleman, Titanic figure, PhD, did his PhD at Southern Seminary under at Robertson. But he was so warm hearted and he reaffirmed the gospel and later baptized me. So I was baptized at 9 years old, but I was baptized in a church which is not where I made the profession of faith originally. The gospel really affected me by that bivocational preacher where it penetrated my heart. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Did you excel at academics as a child? [00:05:14] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. I mean I was born for this. And I've had severe vision problems my entire life. So I couldn't see a ball, but I could read a book. And I just had a tremendous aptitude for such things and so I gave myself to them. [00:05:35] Speaker B: At what point did you discern that God is calling you to do something full time in ministry? [00:05:40] Speaker A: You know, I really wasn't headed in that direction. It wasn't out of any antipathy at all to the ministry. I had such great admiration for preachers, went over to hear them, which should I think have been a clue. But I didn't catch on then. So I really wanted to go into law and politics. And so when I was 16 years old, I became the county organizer for Youth for Reagan in the 1976 campaign. Now those were the glory years. You know, Reagan was running for the nomination, almost got it, you know, came very close in 1976, but he didn't get the nomination. I shifted to working as a volunteer for the Gerald Ford campaign. It wasn't all the same thing. The Reagan campaign was a campaign of ideas, passion. The Ford campaign was very much established on politics. Well, let's just say as a 16 year old boy, I just felt like I really don't want to give my life to that stuff. And I was fascinated by preaching and preachers and listened. Back then it was cassette tapes. I would listen to cassette tapes and I would find myself thinking about preaching that text. And honestly, one day when I was driving on I95, just after school, after class, it struck me, is this what a call to ministry feels like? I'm fantasizing about preaching. I'm imagining myself preaching that text. I find myself listening to the preacher preach the text on Sunday morning and loving it and thinking, okay, here's how I think I would preach that text. I was listening to enough preachers that I could tell there were different methods of looking at a text. And that really caught my attention and I began to really just understand, maybe this is it. So I talked to my dad and I talked to the pastor and that really began the process. [00:07:38] Speaker B: Did you have a hero at that point in preaching? [00:07:41] Speaker A: My hero was John MacArthur. [00:07:43] Speaker B: So John, his tapes were circulating in Florida by that time. [00:07:46] Speaker A: His tapes were circulating, but that is exactly what it was. He was on the radio, but, you know, I don't even know what time he was on the radio. But this is before digital, so you either heard it or you didn't. It was like television. You either saw it or you didn't. That was it. And so I didn't have really any time during the day to listen to John MacArthur's preaching. But I had a friend who was the minister of music in my home church and his dear wife, they invested in me. His name was Al Fennell, Lee Fennell was his wife. They invested big time in me. She got the tapes and she would just share them with me. And so I was listening. And I can still remember the first couple times I heard John MacArthur preach. I thought, number one, that is a very long sermon. I thought number two, I want it to be longer. And that's when it was just that, verse by verse, walking it through. And John became a dear, dear friend, and I wanna honor him in that way. There were some others, too, people that are lesser known. Ray Stedman, who is a pastor at Peninsula Bible Church in California, just again, walking through a text. And I just started to hear that later there'd be other heroes, but early on it was that. And then Jim Kennedy, who was pastor of Coleridge Presbyterian and never a model of biblical exposition for me, but a model of the engagement on key theological issues. And he befriended me. And when I was just a teenager, was very kind, had a big influence on my life. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Did you ever. When did your paths cross with Falwell? [00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, my paths crossed with Falwell mostly immediately after I was elected president of Southern Seminary. Now, they had crossed before. I was editor of the Christian Index in Georgia. And there were some reasons why we crossed, but we ended up sharing platforms together. By the way, there was a pastor in Arkansas who was putting some of these things together. Mike Huckabee. He would later be governor of the state of Arkansas. He's now a US Ambassador to Israel. But back then. And so actually, at different points, it was me and Mike Huckabee and Jerry Falwell. And anyway, I got to know Dr. Falwell. He befriended me. And I just want to say to older men, you have no idea what a gift it is when you take a younger man and you encourage him and you befriend him and you kind of pour into him. So Jerry Falwell, next thing I know, he's invited me to come over to Liberty and to preach in chapel. And then he's got all these things set up and all these people. I just want to say he was so gracious. Can I tell you a Jerry Falwell story? Please. Okay. So one of the times I preached in chapel for Jerry Falwell was in the middle of the Y2K issue. You remember that? I do. Everybody's buying up toilet paper and storing it for the apocalypse that's about to come. And Jerry Falwell was a big, big part of that. So on the Old Time Gospel Hour, Jerry Falwell had actually told people to take the money out of the banks and all this. Well, it caused a run on the banks. I mean, that's how much influence Jerry Falwell had. So I am preaching in Chapel at 10 o'. Clock. He said, Al want you come by my office at 9. We'll just catch up on some things, just the two of us, and then we'll have some others at lunch. He said, I just want some one on one time. And by the way, he knew exactly the questions to ask. He was a genius in that respect. But I got there to his office, and There were these four men, and they were wearing $2,000 suits. I like clothes. I didn't have a suit like that. I looked at it, I knew exactly what they were wearing. They had the banker look down, and I had no idea who they were. And Jerry Falwell, like so many other people, he had a secretary who was like Air Force General, you know, she could control anything. And she knew who I was and why I was there. And she said, Dr. Mohler, we've got some important folks here. Dr. Falwell, we'll see you. But we've got an urgency here. You'll understand. I said, of course, of course. So I sat down. Jerry Falwell comes bounding out of his office, ignores those four guys, calls me into his office, puts his arm around me. He sits in the office. I said, Dr. Falwell, I understand there's kind of a crisis. Those guys need to see you. He said, those are four governors of the U.S. federal Reserve. [00:11:57] Speaker B: Wow. [00:11:58] Speaker A: He said, they're going to ask me to go on the Old Time Gospel Hour and kind of pull back what I said about pulling all the money from the banks. And I said, well, I understand if you need to talk to them. He said, they need to sit out there and wonder what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk with you. And then when I'm good and ready, I'm going to give them what they want, but I'm going to make them sit out there for a while. I thought, that is sheer genius. Brilliant. He knew exactly what he was doing. [00:12:24] Speaker B: So I'm skipping around a little bit. Let's go back to you graduate high school. You go to a Southern Baptist college. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Well, not immediately. Okay. So I graduated from high school. I was 17, because I was really young. October birthday. So I entered college at 17. But I entered college as a college junior at Florida Atlantic University, what was called the Faculty Scholars Program. I didn't come from a wealthy family, and so I didn't really have an open door to pick a college and just have the tuition covered. And so this appeared to be a way I could do this in a financially reasonable manner. A lot of what made me a theologian happened in that year, which was a miserable year. And I'm not saying Anything against the university at that time? It was an unusual experiment. I've been thrown into many of those. [00:13:16] Speaker B: I'm curious, what specifically are you referring to? [00:13:19] Speaker A: That it was only a junior and senior institution. So Florida had this idea that we'll have all these junior colleges and then we'll have these regional universities that will do the third and fourth year. So they didn't have any freshmen and they didn't have any sophomores. So you tested in. And so I clapped out. I tested in so that I went from being a high school senior to being a College Junior at 17. Sociologically, it was a disaster. And I was with really liberal people, and far more liberal because what Florida had done, they're building instant universities, so they're hiring all these faculty. So we talk about critical theory. Today I was confronted with two products of the Frankfurt School in professors I had at FAU at that time. Look, the Lord used it for my good, but I was miserable and I really understood this call to ministry, so I wanted to get to where I could prepare. So when you transferred to Samford, when. [00:14:16] Speaker B: You were confronted with those ideas, were you familiar with the conversations when you left high school? Had you studied that far in depth to understand? [00:14:25] Speaker A: Well, no, no. However, I had really studied the history of philosophy, so I did know I could hear the Marxism. I knew that part. But again, I'm 17 years old and I'll admit I'm pretty academically prepared as a 17 year old. But I didn't have all these dots connected. And you know, Zach, back then it was difficult to connect the dots. There was no Internet, there was no digital world. And so your ability to connect dots was rather difficult. But I'll tell you why. I'll never forget the idea of oppression being the dynamic. And the Frankfurt schools approach. And there are many different dimensions to it. One of them is, you know, the false consciousness of the oppressed. Clear Marxism. And you know, the thing is, I'm just thinking that's a perfect intellectual game because you can tell the people don't feel oppressed, it's just because they don't get it right. You know, and so. But I didn't think it'd go anywhere. And let me just cut to the short. I don't think critical theory would have ever gotten anywhere in the United States if not for the intersection with identity politics. So the critical theory by itself is just like radical nonsense. But the moment you have identity politics, it all of a sudden has a program. Right, Right. [00:15:47] Speaker B: And you grew up in the south, so you're familiar with civil rights and that trajectory. And when those two things crossed, it went to a different level. Going to Sanford. Tell me about your experience there because you were kind of tapped early on as a leader in that institution. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah, you know, I went and wherever I am, I'm going to be as involved as I can be. And so there was a ministerial association and it was just, you know, preacher boys is the way the Alabama Baptist saw them. And we had a fellowship, we met on Thursday nights and you had an officer. So I was elected. So what would. My senior year, second year, I was elected president of the ministerial association. That meant two things. Number one, we had a program where we went on into churches association by association every Sunday. So I got to go. I mean 18 year old kid, 19 year old kid. [00:16:36] Speaker B: Had you preached your first sermon at that point? [00:16:38] Speaker A: I preached my first sermon at my home church, First Baptist Pompano Beach, Florida. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Do you remember the text? [00:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, I sure do. It was Matthew 11:36, 12, 2. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Was it a good sermon? [00:16:51] Speaker A: I will say all the points that I made, I believe were true. I think I used a couple of atrocious illustrations and I mean, I was 18 years old. [00:17:03] Speaker B: Were you channeling John MacArthur at that point? [00:17:06] Speaker A: I would have wanted to. I did not have his sermon on that text. I would have wanted to do that. I think I was channeling a whole lot of things. First of all, Billy Graham told the story. He was told to prepare two or three sermons and he preached the first one and it had taken 15 minutes, so he preached the second one. And so it was kind of that situation. But you know, I look back at it and it's one of the reasons why I firmly believe in theological education. I also believe in pastors investing themselves and others teach them how to preach. I think that was a missing link when the time when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. But at Samford that put me in the position where the president of the university is taking me to denominational meetings. He wants a ministerial student to show because the money that came from the state convention was designated for the teaching of young men to be preachers. [00:18:05] Speaker B: Did you have a good relationship with him? [00:18:07] Speaker A: I did. I learned a lot from him. He was very different. He was very non theological, very southern gentleman was very kind to me. I didn't aspire to that job just because it just didn't. I'm really into intellectual engagement and he was really not. But I learned a lot from him. How a president carries himself, how you have it all, you have A president's office, how you meet people. So he was very helpful. I really messed up one time and got in trouble with him, and the way he handled that. Who was invaluable in my life? [00:18:42] Speaker B: Tell us about it. [00:18:46] Speaker A: I didn't do anything like go out and get drunk. I invited Herschel Hobbs to speak to an event. I was president of the Ministerial Association. I always thought, you know, aim high. So I invited one of the most famous Baptists of the age to come and speak at an event. I knew that he had been a pastor in Birmingham years before, and I knew he had a sister in town, and I thought, maybe we can get him to come. Well, he was so kind, and he said yes. I got awakened one morning by the president's office, and the president's secretary told me I would appear immediately at the president's office. I walked in, and Dr. Leslie Wright, that was his name, he looked at me and he said, al, did it ever occur to you that it would be a courtesy to let the president of the college know that you've invited this famous figure to the campus and he's coming? He said, Dr. Hobbs assumed that I knew, and in a conversation, just said, looking forward. He said, I was very embarrassed. Well, instantly then, I'm the one who's embarrassed. And I could see exactly where I'd made the error. It was not an error of the heart. And he knew that he could have crushed me at that moment. He didn't do that at all. He said, I want you to understand, you've done a great thing. This is a great thing. It's a great opportunity, but you should have told me. But now I know. And he said, how are you going to take care of Dr. Hobbs? And I told him, and he said, how are you going to pick him up at the airport? I said, I'll pick him up. And he said, where do you drive? And I told him, a Ford Mustang. He said, no, no, no, no, no. He said, you're going to take my car, and you're going to go get Dr. Hobbs and you're going to bring him to my office. And so I saw how that worked. Here I am, I'm driving this giant Oldsmobile 98. I'm going to the airport to pick up Dr. Hobbs. And I took him to the president's office. I saw how this worked, and I thought, you know, this is glorious. I'll also tell you this. Dr. Hobbs, after this, said I wanted to go see my sister, where he was staying. He was staying with his sister. I Took him to his sister's house there on Shades Mountain. And he said, you come back at 5 o'. Clock. Pick me up and I'll be ready to speak at the dinner. So I came back at 5 o', clock, and his sister answered the door and she said, herschel's on the back porch. He wants to see you. So again, at that point, 19 years old, Titanic figure. I went in. He's sitting in long. His boxer shorts and socks with sock suspenders. Old men used to wear those, and a strap T shirt. And he's holding a pellet gun, shooting squirrels off the bird feeder. And I walked in and he says, here's another gun. Have a seat, son. Have at it. And we sat back there, and Herschel Hobbs just is having fun shooting squirrels away from his sister's bird feeder. And I thought, I'm sitting here with one of the greatest preachers of the age in his underwear. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Did it occur to you what a monumental moment that would be for you? [00:21:40] Speaker A: I mean, first of all, I'm just trying not to mess things up. [00:21:44] Speaker B: Sure. [00:21:45] Speaker A: But I just want to tell you what I learned right then is that here are these titanic men of God. But he's sitting in his sister's house in his boxer shorts shooting squirrels off the bird feeder. He was just so kind to me and so normal. I realized this really recast my understanding of some of these guys because I had them as marble statues. They're just real people. He said, I'm going to go in and get dressed. He came out dressed exactly like the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City. And he could not have been more kind. So forgive that long story, but it's one of those things where I realized, you know, it was really helpful to me as a young man to realize this is just. This is. This is a great man, but this is his sister's house, and he's just passing some time. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Well, the audacity to reach out and invite him, that was ignorant audacity at the moment. But that served you well over the. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Course of your life? Oh, it really did. Look, I got to know so many Baptist leaders, and so I'm 66 years old as we're having this conversation. But my Baptist life, in terms of getting to know people, began when I was about 10. So I think I met Duke McCall when I was nine. Baker James Cawthon, president of the International Mission Board, or what was in the Foreign Mission Board. You know, he came and preached at our church. My pastor was chairman, I believe, of the board at one time. And so there are all these people. So I just. I grew up around them thinking that this is what Baptist leaders look like. And look, I was so warmly treated by them. So when you talk about the old moderate leadership in the sbc, I would not be who I am if many of them had not been so kind to me. And so one of the main things I want to say to people my age is be very, very kind to young men. Young women, too, but very, very kind to young men. Amen. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Give us kind of the. The story. What got you into publishing from and of the Georgia paper? [00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I did a lot of writing, and I wanted to learn how to be a good writer. I wanted to learn how to communicate. So I wrote a couple things for publication. Conservatives in the sbc. Adrian Rogers had the perfect metaphor. He said, conservatives in the SBC are like the dog that's been chasing the garbage truck for years, and it finally catches it. Now the question is, what does a dog do with the garbage truck? The conservatives had, all of a sudden control of some of these boards. They didn't have people in the jobs. And so I was assistant to the president at Southern Seminary. So I'd been on all these meetings. These guys all knew me. I was also trying to find myself theologically, and I clearly came to conservative convictions. And I had joined the Evangelical Theological Society, which, of course, has an inerrancy requirement. You have to actually sign every year a commitment to biblical inerrancy. And I'd signed that. So I'm in an awkward position. I'm assistant to the president at Southern Seminary, which is a very liberal institution, very liberal president, who, again, was very kind to me. Very kind to me. But we were not on the same page in Georgia. They had a very liberal newspaper editor who had been there for years, very much really disliked, I'll say, by conservatives. They forced him out. Well, then they needed an editor, and they ended up coming to me. And there's a hilarious story about how all this happened, because Nelson Price, who was the chairman of the board, at least he may not have been chairman at the time, that was Chess Smith. But he was very influential, the leading conservative. He was then at the church in Marietta, Roswell Street. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Roswell street, right. [00:25:30] Speaker A: Yep. And look, Nelson Price was one of those Baptists who knew how to size up a room immediately. He had an incredible savvy, and he was very, very kind to me. And anyway, Nelson is on the phone with Paige Patterson. And so Paige says something like, well, I know you're on the board of the index. You know, what are they trying to pull there? And so Nelson said, well, they're trying to bring the assistant to the president of Southern Seminary as the editor. And the conservatives, we're going to block that from happening. And Paige Patterson said, you mean Al Mohler? And he said, yes. And he said, well, here's what you're going to do. He said, you're going to go in and you're going to ask Mueller the hardest questions you can ask, and then you get all the fellow conservatives, you vote for him. Because Paige knew me when I went to present a paper at the ETS meeting that was at Criswell College. I'm assistant to the president of Southern Seminary, like the moderate bastion, but I'm in Paige Patterson's house. And by the way, I would have done this just as a matter of courtesy, but it wasn't just courtesy. I let him know I was there. Page's secretary, she was quite accustomed to telling people, no, she said, he's busy, whatever. Well, she took my business card, Assistant president of the Southern Baptist theological seminary, into Dr. Patterson. Next thing I know, bundle of energy is coming out of his office. And again, so kind, so incredibly kind. [00:26:56] Speaker B: And he was at Criswell. [00:26:57] Speaker A: He was president of Criswell College at the time. But I really got to know him, he got to know me, and we talked very candidly of theological issues. And so all of a sudden you're thinking, God's providence. Here's a phone call between Nelson Price and Paige Patterson. Paige Patterson could have squashed me like a bug, but he didn't. He said, here's what you're going to do. You're going to. The conservatives are going to vote for him. That gave me the opportunity. Zach, every week, this is before there's an Internet. So all there is is print media. And I have the ability to interpret these issues for Southern Baptists. And so I did my very best as a theologian and as a Southern Baptist statesman to define the issues theologically. The SBC was so allergic to any theological definition of the issues. [00:27:41] Speaker B: What years are we talking about that you were at the paper? [00:27:43] Speaker A: 89 to 93. [00:27:45] Speaker B: What was the circulation roughly, would you say? Or was it outside the state of Georgia? I guess is more what I'm. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it was outside the state of Georgia. It was over 100,000. Now it's plummeting simply because the conservatives didn't like it under a liberal and the liberals didn't like it under a conservative. It's kind of a foretaste of the Internet disequilibrium. [00:28:03] Speaker B: And, you know, for those that aren't aware, newspapers, state newspapers at that time were very influential. I mean, even in the Independent Baptist movement, you had the sword of the Lord. [00:28:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:28:13] Speaker B: And they were in on the front pew of churches all over America. [00:28:16] Speaker A: Those newspapers shaped the news and opinion. In fact, the only way Southern Baptists knew even who had died or who was elected president of the convention or who's gone to what church and what are the issues were these newspapers. [00:28:30] Speaker B: So walk us through. Was there a vacancy at Southern or what happened that transition that caused the search team to consider you? [00:28:39] Speaker A: Oh, well, I'm sorry, it's complicated. But what happened in the conservative resurgence is the conservatives started being appointed to boards because, you know, conservative presidents and committee on committees, committee on nominations. Eventually you'd end up with conservatives on boards. Took a long time. Southern's board terms were five years, and you could serve two terms and you could serve part of an expired term. So, I mean, it took a long time. So the conservative resurgence began in 1979, and it wasn't really until the early 90s that conservatives started to have any, you know, major numbers in Southern's board. So about 1992, they are going to force Dr. Honeycutt, who was the president, to agree to hire a conservative dean of the school of Theology. So I was one of the candidates for that, and I just graduated my PhD, you know, a couple years earlier. [00:29:33] Speaker B: Was that an ambition of yours or was that on the. On the. [00:29:36] Speaker A: Oh, I certainly would have taken the job. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I am a product of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I understand this is the mother seminary of the sbc. I have felt a sense of stewardship to it and look, a connection to the entirety of his life. I mean, one of the first things I did as president was to go back to the founding address by the first president and say, this is where we stand. Glorious heritage. But I was not offered that job probably because I think I was so young. The irony is a year later, they. I'm just a year older and they let me president. I think a part of that, let me be really honest, is I don't think there are a lot of, like, really there weren't a lot of candidates for a lot of these positions before I let that, though there were very credible candidates to be president of Southern. Richard Land, who was then president of the what's now the erlc, the Christian Life Commission, was one. Timothy George had been on the faculty at Southern, then was at Beeson Divinity School. So I didn't expect to be elected president, but I was. [00:30:42] Speaker B: It doesn't seem like if you were mapping out your career path that you had planned on a career in academics to that level. Is that accurate or is that inaccurate? [00:30:54] Speaker A: Well, I certainly wanted to be very much a leader in that area. Okay. But I didn't know where that was going to be. I was one of the finalists in the presidential search at Southeastern the year before. So I guess a part of what that says is that the SBC is a giant denomination, but the leadership ranks were really thin. And the fact that I appeared as a candidate on all these things. I was flown out to Dallas when they were looking for a president for Criswell College after Page had gone to Southeastern. I can see God's hand in all of this, but, no, I fully intended to have a role in developing an evangelical conservative theological consensus, and not just on doctrine, but on worldview. I didn't know how that would be. I think I mentioned Jim Kennedy at Coral Ridge Presbyterian was one of my mentors, and I could see it could be done from that kind of platform. But the great need in the sbc, Zach, was for people with the academic background to be able to walk in and take these jobs. [00:31:59] Speaker B: Culturally, you know, you're coming into a time. I came to Christ in 94, so I'm familiar with the landscape in that time. Culturally, you were influenced by John MacArthur. [00:32:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:10] Speaker B: Reformed viewpoints were really influencing you. Those were not the most popular perspectives in that season, from my understanding. But, you know, it may have been different in academic circles, but when you step into that lane. [00:32:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:26] Speaker B: You have Dr. Patterson, you have, you know, some of your great evangelists that were revivalists, that were traveling. [00:32:34] Speaker A: How. [00:32:35] Speaker B: How was that culturally amongst the conservatives? Was that any issue at all at that time? [00:32:40] Speaker A: What's the it? [00:32:42] Speaker B: I'm curious how your upbringing, your. Your Reformed leanings. [00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:48] Speaker B: And were you. Would you consider yourself fully Calvinistic Reformed at that point in time? [00:32:52] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. No, Absolutely. [00:32:56] Speaker B: And so, you know, I'm imagining you working with Bill Stafford, Bailey Smith. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:01] Speaker B: How were those? You seem to have good rapport. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Good. Oh, look, number one, I think I can say this after a half century of basically of doing this, I think Southern Baptists understand that I love them all. And I think, you know, that's true. [00:33:19] Speaker B: I certainly do. [00:33:20] Speaker A: I mean, I would have more fun today talking with Bailey Smith and someone who's just in absolute agreement with me. I do believe that I sought to honor those Men. Oh, you have. And I got to know them and I love them. I mean, I've preached Bible conferences with Bill Stafford and boy did I love him. Right. [00:33:39] Speaker B: Did you ever feel like that? It was the elephant in the room. [00:33:44] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. But you know, here's one of the interesting things, and Paige Patterson said this at one time. You know, if you look at the leadership in the evangelical world, if you look at the leadership in the Council for Biblical Inerrancy, if you look at Complementarianism and the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, if you look at what became the Danvers statement in human sexuality, all that view is back up. Most of that's coming from Reformed evangelicals. They're doing the hard work intellectually. It's not to say there weren't any non Reformed scholars. There were. But that world is dominated by the Carl Henrys and the others of that world and I think some of those SBC leaders. So I think I told you that the first church I preached in as president of Southern Seminary was Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis with Adrian Rogers. And Adrian was. And by the way, I never ever called him Adrian to his face. He was always Dr. Rogers to me. But he was so kind to me. We worked so closely together. I was the first church his church or the first church I preached in as president of Southern Seminary. I was back regularly. He was not only not a Calvinist, I think he thought he was an anti Calvinist. But you know, let me put it this way, and I want to be very careful with how I put this. I think the non Calvinists were always glad they could call on the Calvinist Calvary when they needed some hard work done. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I think they were glad. Look, I think they had personal respect for me. I believe they had massive personal respect for me. I think it's because they knew I love the spc, I loved Christ, I love the gospel, I love evangelism and I love them well. [00:35:37] Speaker B: And you fought some difficult battles in your first days at Southern. And so as far as we can. [00:35:42] Speaker A: Longer than the first days. Yes, for a long period. [00:35:45] Speaker B: I'd love to hear you speak to that. What was it like coming into an institution? You were the tapped conservative for this position and in an institution that was not known for its conservatism. [00:35:58] Speaker A: That's kindly said. No, it was actually known for its anti conservatism. But look, my love for Southern Seminary and like I say personally, I loved many of my teachers, even though they had to leave because you have a Personal relationship. You can see again, there's a natural love of student for the teacher. And that was genuine. That doesn't mean that the teacher should be teaching here. It doesn't mean that that's what should be taught to preachers, young preachers who are going to teach and preach the word. I had a love for Southern seminaries, history and heritage. It was started exactly right. Look, you know, the documents that faculty signed were exactly right. Every professor must teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is contained therein without hesitation or mental reservation or private arrangement with the one who invests them in office. I've only said that about a thousand times a year. I mean, that's powerful. In other words, they signed their name to teach the conservative doctrine of the confession of faith. They just weren't doing it. So I was filled with passion to see Southern Seminary recovered. It was just much harder than even I had understood. So we went through horrible battles. I mean, I think modern day Southern Baptists can't imagine a theological battle in which you've got network news helicopters over the campus, you've got PBS doing a one hour documentary, you've got protests on the lawn. I think part of God's grace is that I was so young. And I think when you're young, you can see taking risk in a different way. You might when you're older. And look, God gave me such a great gift in Mary, my wife, and she was even younger than I am, and she's mother of these two little children, babies. And we're confronted with people who hate us and are even mean to our children. Not all were, but I mean, there's these things that just. Horrible. I mean, we're at despair at points. There are points at which we think this whole thing's going to fall apart. But the Lord saw us through. But it was several years. I think Mary will say it was seven years after the 95 trustee meeting, before every graduate shook my hand. Wow. And now look, we're 20 years past that. The glory of being someplace 33 years now. The children of some of those people are now showing up and their grandchildren. And there's the sweetest spirit on the campus of both the college and the seminary. God's glory is just so evident. But we see that against the background of very difficult days. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Without touching that wound too much. Can you give us any advice on just dealing with enemies? People that you may not even consider an enemy, but they've made themselves an enemy to you. How did you spiritually, emotionally navigate those Difficult seasons. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I want to be real careful here. First of all, I'm not sure how well a man knows his own heart. I'm not sure how well I know my own heart. In retrospect, I'm afraid I may have been harder than I want to remember myself as being. But there was a part of me that just had to be very stoic. This has to be done. It's the right thing to do, and I'm just going to have to plow through this. But that stoicism, which was driven, I think, by the right convictions and, frankly, the right decisions, it took a toll. Mary and I, In April of 1995, when everything broke loose at once and I had had to act unilaterally as president in handling an entire series of issues. And the trustees were going to have to come in and either affirm what I did or undo what I did. And then we had a moral failure, and our church and its pastor, that fell to me to deal with. You talk about things piling on. And so Mary and I one night just thought it was all over, and we just sat down on the floor in a bedroom and just cried and prayed and gave it to the Lord. Days later, the board of trustees met and unanimously backed me on every point. And the board was not even at that point, entirely conservative. There were still some liberals on the board, but the situation was so clear, even they voted to sustain my decisions. So it's one of those moments when you think everything's going to be taken away, but, you know, it's another situation in which you find out who your friends are. And I have to tell you, that's a great time to count on Southern Baptists, because Southern Baptists will do the right thing. Southern Baptists will stand up for the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Southern Baptists will stand up for the gospel. If they know the issues defined, they're going to do the right thing. And, you know, it's not to say there's not a whole lot of grief in the process. I hope I'm answering your question. You are. [00:41:10] Speaker B: I'm curious if there's a time that in the middle of fighting the battles that you felt as if the battle is won and we could start building. Was there a particular moment or season that you can identify? [00:41:25] Speaker A: I go back to 1995, April of 1995. That was the do or die trustee Matt meeting. I'd been elected in 93 and started an action to remove faculty who were teaching in violation of the confession of faith. And so, I mean, push came to shove. I also had to close a social work school because it was just incompatible with the mission. It's all kinds of things. It was all at once. The trustees came in and miraculously voted to support every single one of those decisions unanimously. The one problem was that they then went home and I left. But I remember in the aftermath of that meeting, trustees had gone home. It's really clear where things are going. And now is the long, hard work of building this thing and making it work. And so I will tell you, at that point, I realized, in other words, the liberals now can't win. That does not mean we succeed in building this institution. So now it's like the old foreign policy adage. I think Colin Powell said this. It's like in the China shop, you break it, you bought it. And that's the way it felt in 1995. Okay, we broke it, now we bought it. So that was when we started rebuilding. [00:42:46] Speaker B: I think from that point, it's when a lot of the things that I would refer to as an urban legend began to develop about you personally in the good ways. You were riding a lot. [00:42:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:56] Speaker B: You stepped into media at some point. I'm curious, when did the briefing begin? [00:43:01] Speaker A: Well, the briefing was not the start. The start of it was I did a lot of work in the media, partly because they're looking for the national media. New York Times, you know, cbs, cnn, Bill Donahue, you know, cnn, Larry King, in particular, they're looking for people who can represent the conservative evangelical position and, frankly, not fall on their face on television. And so I started being invited into that world in a very big way, and still very much in that world in a very big way. [00:43:30] Speaker B: I'm curious before you unpack that further. At that point, as an academic, you're leading a seminary. Had you been around enough media to know the lay of the land, to know representation, to know legalities, all those sort of things, or did you? [00:43:47] Speaker A: I'm having to figure it out as I go. I knew some of it. I've been a newspaper editor. You know, I kind of been thrown into these worlds. I knew some of it. But look, these things are developing around us, so you'll get to the Internet later. Even cable television was a real game changer and the emergence of rival networks. So it was one thing when you had cns, another thing when Rupert Murdoch came along with Fox News. Okay, so that's a fast changing media environment. You also had Rush Limbaugh developing AM radio in a whole new way. Did you know, Rush, I did not as well as I would like to, but I did get to meet him and to know him somewhat and frankly, other members of his family who I appreciate greatly. But the radio was the big thing. So I was invited to be on the radio and to do basically as a guest. And then I was invited to host some things. And then I was invited on the editorial board of Salem Communications. And I've been on that board, I guess now for about 30 years. Salem came to me. You know, it's the biggest Christian radio network. Salem came to me and said, why don't you host a program? So I did a national drive time, five o' clock live program for Salem. So that is how the briefing happened. It was really. Because I did that one hour program for Salem. And in the beginning of the program, the program would be on an issue like we talk about some, let's say, something that happened on the abortion front. That'd be the topic. But I'd begin the radio program with the first, say, 17 minutes, a review, Christian worldview review of some of the most pressing issues in the news. It turned out at the development of stories and how these things go and what's embedded in these newspapers. And so the CIA really came up with this content analysis. So I even fold papers the way the CIA did. I rip it. So you got a page of newsprint folded into a fourth. And I use a red pen and I mark it all up. What you do is you're looking for all the key points and turning points, key quotes, et cetera. And so that's what, if you're in the intelligence business, you'd use as the basis for an intelligence brief. John Nesbitt, I don't know if you remember that name. He came along and kind of transformed that into how to do information for business Strategy. So Fortune 500 companies, they're trying to figure out, how in the world is this product going to work, how do we sell it? And content analysis turned out to work for them. Okay, I'm doing worldview analysis. Content analysis is just perfect as a way to get started. So when I look at that newspaper, number one, that newspaper in the print is going to give you information you can't get online. And a lot of people don't recognize this. But if you look at a print newspaper, if I had it before me, I pick up the front page of the New York Times or the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Editors decide what is leading. Editors decide what's above the fold. Editors decide what's most important. So that you got on the left hand column or to the right hand column. They're deciding, is this worth four columns? Five columns, One column. There's enormous editorial insight into that. Okay, Online, everything's driven by an algorithm. So someone in a bikini bitten by a shark is the lead story. Meanwhile, you've got Russia invades Ukraine. In other words, content analysis isolates what's most important. And you understand, okay, here's what's going on. I'm doing the worldview analysis in that I'm looking at the kind of statement that I cited on the briefing the other day. You know, you can say, well, okay, this is going to help Christians to understand exactly what's at stake. So I mark that up. I do use the Internet because I don't have any choice, because I want to be able to cite the Telegraph of London, the Times of London, at Times, more the Telegraph. I want to be able to cite the Washington Post, which I can't get in print. But if you're covering worldview issues in the United States, you've got to look at the nation's most influential newspaper. [00:47:33] Speaker B: So you're recording that on the road as you travel everywhere? [00:47:36] Speaker A: I am. [00:47:36] Speaker B: And how big is your team back home that's producing? [00:47:39] Speaker A: You know, most immediately the team is two people. Okay. And so one's a producer. I have an outstanding producer in Graham Faulkner. The other is an engineer, young man named Luke. And when I'm in the studio, I also have other people there, including interns, young interns who are working with me. And by the way, you want lots of ears when possible, hearing you talk, because I don't care how careful you are and how long you've done this, you will slip up, you will say, like the word accord. Okay, so Russia and the United States reach an accord. All right, well, then you have, according to this, all this. In other words, you got to have somebody listening to you so that they can understand when you're talking about something of this importance. You know exactly what you're saying. Last night in the hotel room, my staff was my producer, who is on FaceTime with me as I'm recording, and my sweet, long suffering, brilliant wife who's listening in and just will interrupt me to say, you didn't say the New Orleans the way you meant to. Okay, all right, so that's just really important. I mean, that's love right there. Someone who just, you know, just catch that and say, I know you want to get that. So I hope that makes sense. But behind all that I've got an entire infrastructure that makes life possible. But really it comes down recording to a producer and an engineer most days and then others who are listening in. [00:49:14] Speaker B: I know you've taken breaks along the way for health reasons or for what do you. When do you take off from the briefing? [00:49:21] Speaker A: Well, basically only four weeks in July, which is trustee ordered. So that wasn't my idea. That goes back to radio. When I had the national daily radio program, my board said you have got to have a break. You can't do that during either July or August. You pick. It was clearly July. And I just continued that their orders continue with the briefing and then two weeks off at Christmas. [00:49:44] Speaker B: Do you enjoy it? [00:49:46] Speaker A: Do I enjoy doing the briefing? I think it's so much a part of my life. I'm thinking about it all the time. Yes, I enjoy doing it. But you know what, I'm going to quote Mark Twain who said there is no writer happier than one who's just finished writing. And there's no one happier than someone who's just finished the briefing in the sense that it's this enormous weight. But look, I love doing it. As you know, I've talked about this. The addition of the briefing this morning came after a very, very long day and I have to record it by 3:00 o'clock a.m. and I mean it was a rough night but at the end of it I thought, you know, I think we accomplished something important in this edition. It was worth it. [00:50:32] Speaker B: Well, people build their schedule around the briefing. I mean so many of our people, that's part of their daily routine, that they have their time with the Lord and they have their time with Dr. [00:50:42] Speaker A: Mohler and it helps them to develop a worldview. Well, that's what I'm trying to do. I just want to help Christians think about how to think. And look, we are newly in a far more hostile information environment. And I think at least a part of what I'm able to do as a privilege is to provide kind of a safe place where Christians can listen to and I think they know exactly what I'm trying to do. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Well, being a high output individual, there's rumors about your sleep schedule. How much do you sleep, Dr. Moore? [00:51:19] Speaker A: Well, I mean the bottom line is it's kind of like a military situation. I sleep when I can. I am older than I was. That's pretty obvious. Look at me, I need more sleep now than I did when I was in my 30s. But I can only sleep when I can and I'm not a good sleeper. I'M an incompetent sleeper. But I'll admit I'm a night person, not a morning person. So I sleep when I can. I'm getting more sleep than I did when I was younger because I have to. [00:51:50] Speaker B: What was at the younger days? How many hours a night would you have? [00:51:53] Speaker A: Sometimes four nights. Four hours a night, and you could. [00:51:55] Speaker B: Operate pretty well with that? [00:51:56] Speaker A: Well, I could. I could. I'm not suggesting that. I think one of the things we have to watch in leadership, and I think maybe particularly in moral terms in Christian leadership, is I don't want a young man to hear me say that and say, well, okay, in order to do something significant, I've got to stay up all night. I'm not saying that was a particularly smart thing. Part of it was forced on me. Like I say, it's kind of the worst situation. It was forced on me by circumstances. I'm not sure Martin Luther, the reformer, such a hero in my life. Part of what he said, why did you do what he did? He said, because I had no choice at the time. That's just the way it worked. And of course, he said, famously, I preached the word and then I slept. And while I slept, God did this thing. [00:52:42] Speaker B: Jonathan Edwards had a habit of analyzing how different foods affected him. That sort of thing probably took it a little too far at times, but. [00:52:51] Speaker A: I lack brother Edwards powers of observation. I mean, the guy could look at a spider and get hundreds of pages. [00:53:00] Speaker B: Did you ever stumble across any secrets that amplified your product productivity? [00:53:08] Speaker A: Yes, and I think one of the most profound came from an entirely secular source. At least he was secular at the time. Peter Drucker, the great management theorist, in his book the Effective Executive, he says, by the time a man's 30, he needs to know two things about himself, and that is, are you an eye person or an ear person? Are you a morning person or a night person? And he made the point. He said, you don't get to choose necessarily how this works, but you need to know which is native to you and which is harder work. So I'm an eye person more than an ear person. I'm a night person more than a morning person. So that's just very helpful. I have a textual memory, so I can go back to a book I read 30, 40 years ago and find exactly what I'm looking for. And part of it is cause I'm marking things up. The other part is cause I can't even remember kind of the way it looks on a page. I'm horrible with other things. And I wish I was better at other things. I hope I'm making some sense here. It does. It does. And part of this is just leadership has been worked out as a science and as an art in unusual context, including military, corporate life, government life, and, of course, also the ministry. [00:54:22] Speaker B: When you step into your library, if we said, hey, go find me this volume of a Churchill biography, do you know exactly where it's at or do you have a card catalog system? How do you organize it? [00:54:31] Speaker A: I know where it's supposed to be. The Lord's allowed me to have a very, very large library. We're talking about tens of thousands of volumes. There's a core which I want to be able to get to just about any time. It's all now in a digital catalog, kind of like a small college library, automated catalog, Dewey Decimal System. The problem is my library is not set up like a library in which you can just have all uniform shelves. And, you know, so if it's a tall book, it might have to be somewhere else. And look, I'm the enemy of this entire process because I think of things grouped together. So, as you know, I'm working on books all the time. I'm working on lectures all the time. I'm working on issues all the time. So when I group a book together, it may really foul up the Dewey Decimal System. So I'm kind of my own worst enemy. But I have the privilege of having more books than I can keep track of. So fortunately, I have some wonderful assistants in that. But, I mean, it's still the problem. I need a book and I can't find it. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Let's land with this as we look into what's coming next for you personally, what do you believe is going to be? Do you feel like you've accomplished your greatest work, or is it still in front of you? [00:55:44] Speaker A: Oh, that's a very perceptive question, Zach. I appreciate it. You set me to thinking here for a moment. I guess by definition, at this point in my life, I would have to say, I think what the Lord allowed us to do to see and to see through at Southern Seminary and Boyce College and to a large extent in the Southern Baptist Convention, was a life's work. I don't believe my work is done, nor do I know what lies before us. But I think in terms of greater and lesser, I'm not sure. I think one of the greatest challenges that falls to me now, and I say this, and it's on the record, and you can remind me of this, you may need to Sometimes I think that the remainder of my life, what I want to do is to encourage transition in the Southern Baptist Convention to newer and younger leaders. The Lord's raising up in such a way that they will continue as the patriarchs in the Old Testament passed it on, as the apostles in the New Testament passed it on. There aren't a lot of glorious pictures of people passing from the scene, and I hope I don't pass from the scene real quickly, But I want to be remembered as someone who encouraged and contributed. I think the Lord is working in my heart so that I look forward to being able to do some other things and investing in people and influence and writing and speaking. I hope that makes sense. I don't know which is the greater challenge, because I haven't lived it yet. [00:57:34] Speaker B: Well, writing your story down, have you begun that? Have you begun your memoir? [00:57:38] Speaker A: I've begun in terms of trying to collect material, and the next stage is I'm going to start recording conversations. [00:57:45] Speaker B: Well, that's quite a story to tell. At what point can we expect volume one? [00:57:50] Speaker A: I don't know, because I have other things to do. That's the problem. That has not been. It's gonna be very hard to do that while doing this job. I just finished a massive manuscript on a new book that will be coming out later this year, and I'm already involved in three others. And. Plus five little biographies. Mary and I are doing something exciting. We're each writing five little biographies for middle schoolers on Christian figures. And so that's one of the things we're doing. The SBC and the evangelical world right now require a lot of attention, and so it's very hard. It's very hard not to see that as the priority. But I promise you, that's something I want to do. I pray the Lord gives me length of days to get that done. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Well, we do as well. You know, we've seen at our own church, little kids, you know, seven, eight years old, running up with a question. We watch Ask Anything episodes, and some of my favorite episodes are when a little kid come up and ask you a question. And so it's such an awesome thing to see the way that the Lord has used you to lay a firm foundation for the school, for the denomination, but also reaching into the future and touching the hearts of those young people. [00:59:06] Speaker A: There's something very biblical about that, right? It really is. So that's one of the things we say to young men on our campus. Get married and then start having babies. And God's glory is all over it. You look at all these strollers, you look at all these babies. I passed a seminary student the other day, and I wish I'd taken a picture. He had a baby and a papoose on the front. He had one on the back and another pushing in a stroller. And I just got out of my car, walked up to him, and I said, I just want you to know you have made my day. His wife was in the seminary Wives Institute class. He was having all these three kids again, two of them literally hanging on him and the other. And you see, God's glory is in that I am a grandfather now. Four precious grandchildren. And the Lord's really used that in my heart. I've always loved children. But the fact is, man, I tell you what, these precious little ones, let me tell you, you go to a liberal church, heretical church, they don't need nurseries, you go to your church, you go to a Bible church, a Baptist church, preaching the gospel, you go to a gospel driven, scripture preaching church, you're going to need a nursery and you're going to need to expand that nursery. There's something in that that is just absolutely to the glory of God. It's as Old Testament as Abraham and as New Testament as the early church. [01:00:29] Speaker B: Well, you know, for those people who are watching, I want to say serve in vacation Bible school. You never know when those little kids that you're ministering to. [01:00:38] Speaker A: Amen. [01:00:38] Speaker B: Might be the next Dr. Al Mohler. So thank you for joining me today, Zach. [01:00:43] Speaker A: I'm so thankful for you and for your ministry and your influence. And you're one of the signs of hope to me looking at the future of the sbc. Thank you very much. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Very encouraging.