It pains me to have to even write this as David Platt was one of the first Bible teachers that helped me understand good, biblical doctrine. I was a fan of the early Secret Church services before Platt left Brook Hills Church in Alabama to become the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) International Missions Board (IMB). There is something about taking a leadership role in Big Eva (Big Evangelicalism’s rotating leadership circuit), that destroys the good morals of good leadership.

Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” –1 Corinthians 15:33

The Southern Baptist Convention’s leadership is filled with bad company; if you’re unconvinced, just take a look at the current SBC president, Ed Litton, and his years-long plagiarism scandal that has been swept under the rug so that the social justice ideologues that command the denomination from the top down can continue to advance their agenda. Or look at the salary and money-laundering scandal brewing in the SBC’s North American Missions Board (NAMB)–which has made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States. It seems every time you turn around, the same few names at the top of the pyramid scheme known as the Evangelical Industrial Complex are caught in some kind of controversy.

When David Platt left Brook Hills for the leadership role in the SBC, he immediately began to change. He continued his Secret Church events, but they immediately began taking on a more social/cultural tone rather than a theological and biblical tone. And even though he has since left the SBC’s role, he has continued to slide more and more away from biblical fidelity and seemingly has devoted himself to fighting against “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.”

Inevitably, when you embrace the social justice and Critical Race Theory movement, one ends up with the whole Intersectionality package. Intersectionality, as defined by Google, is “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” Intersectionality, in fact, includes countless categories in addition to these, including sexuality and transgenderism.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you may be aware by now that USA Today released a highly controversial article this past week downplaying the egregiousness of pedophilia and attempted to separate the “attraction” to children from the “abuse” of children. Here are some snippets that USA posted on Twitter:

As you can see, the language here used to separate the attraction from the abuse is nearly identical to the language used by Evangelicals in recent years attempting to separate same-sex attraction from the “sin” of “acting on” the same-sex attraction. This new theological movement stems from “gay Christianity” groups like Revoice and Living Out, both of which have been heavily promoted in Southern Baptist and Presbyterian (PCA) circles.

Tom Ascol, a conservative Southern Baptist pastor and leader of Founders Ministries, responded:

Keep in mind that twenty years ago, the culture would have used the same line of reasoning that Evangelicals are today. Twenty years ago, mainstream media would have released an article stating that same-sex attraction and homosexuality were two different things. Today, they are both celebrated in the culture and the Church is where the culture was back then. If we follow the same trajectory, it’s safe to say that the Church could very likely end up exactly where the culture is today on pedophilia–that the “attraction” to children is normal so long as one doesn’t act on it.

This opens the door to a ticking time bomb–a scandal of biblical proportions. Despite what USA Today claims, studies actually show that those with abnormal sexual desires–of any kind–typically spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to satisfy those desires. If churches begin to normalize attraction to children, there will be nothing that would stop them from placing them in children’s ministries, nurseries, youth pastor roles, etc. In fact, many churches are already doing this with open homosexuals because churches have already accepted that same-sex attraction is normal and unchangeable; according to this movement, one can live a “celibate” life daily fighting the urge to satisfy their abnormal sexual desires and still serve as youth pastors. “Conservative” PCA Presbyterian and Southern Baptist churches are doing this.

Back to David Platt. Platt, in his multi-year trajectory toward apostasy, has seemingly come in full alignment with the Revoice and Living Out “gay Christianity” movement. Reformation Charlotte has written several stories in recent weeks regarding Platt’s alignment with these folks. In fact, Platt will be joining one of the leaders of Revoice in March for a conference.

But worse, David Platt’s church has an entire web page set up devoted to advancing the ideologies of the Revoice movement. On this website, you can find multiple resources from Revoice leader, Preston Sprinkle, who teaches that same-sex attraction is not sinful so long as you don’t “act on it.”

As I wrote in a previous article,

Revoice is a conference that promotes “gay Christianity” and has actually advocated for homosexual Christian relationships and for, of course, calls for an end to the “victimization” of homosexuals, to which they coined the term “sexual minorities.” Preston Sprinkle, one of the original advisory board members of Revoice, refers to sexually confused men who dress, think, and act like women, as “theologically conservative.” And his ministry co-founder, Nate Collins, advocates for gay couples — or even triples — living together in “celibate” marriage-like arrangements that include man-to-man intimacy so long as it stops short of bodily penetration.

And, the website includes one of David Platt’s co-pastors, Eric Saunders, teaching that God can identify with the struggles of “transgender” people because Jesus suffered from “body dysphoria” himself by taking on our sin at the cross. The notion that Jesus suffered from “body dysphoria” is absolutely absurd on its face and cannot be substantiated by Scripture. Yet, this is one of the teachings that come out of Revoice and Living Out as a way to downplay the rebellion against God that “transgenderism” is and treat it, instead, as an ailment rather than sin.

So, understand this carefully before you write this opinion piece off as speculation. I would tend to believe that David Platt, his co-pastors and staff, and most likely, most people within the Revoice Movement would reject the idea that pedophilia is acceptable. But here’s the real question: why is same-sex attraction given a pass but attraction to children stigmatized? Biblically speaking, one cannot rationalize the difference. The Scriptures do not differentiate between the two as one being sinful and the other not. So, from a biblical perspective, ultimately, if we embrace the “same-sex attraction is not sinful so long as you don’t act on it” rationale, one would have to also embrace the “attraction to children is not sinful so long as it is not acted upon” rationale–the same rationale proposed by the USA Today article.

David Platt’s church–along with many Evangelical and Southern Baptist churches–has already embraced the former. What is to stop them from embracing the latter? One can deduce that it is the whims of culture that move them to embrace these ideas. As soon as it became culturally acceptable and normal to embrace same-sex attraction, these compromised Evangelicals began to embrace it. You can rest assured that as soon as the culture embraces pedophilia, these churches engrossed in this movement will too. It is the culture that drives David Platt’s church, not Scripture–and it’s not a matter of if, but when, and it’s already beginning.