Do you really think Steve Pettit is so new and different? Really?
The student body is saying that Steve Pettit stood up Monday and “was telling dirty jokes again.” You can hear his sermon from Monday here.
Think he’s any different than Bob III? Here’s a sermon from a Five-Year Anniversary event at New England Shores Baptist from October 2015. New England Shores is a GFA church plant, and so Bob III checks on his investment frequently over the years as his family has since the program began in the mid 1930s.
But just ten months after the GRACE Report censured Bob Jones III himself for his abysmal mishandling of sexual assault in situations like Ben Adams … on a Sunday morning, Bob III preached “The Sensually Saturated Soul” – a lovely Sunday morning sermon topic.
Here’s the transcript of the sermon starting at approximately 33 minutes in:
There may be men here today who love God with your lips and love sensuality with your hearts. Men who love God with their lips — they make nice professions but they love sensuality with their heart.
Let me just give you an illustration of where that can lead. There was a girl named Kim years ago at BJU, and she graduated. She married her husband [David Jonathan Silcox] who was also a student [Class of 1987]. He was a ministerial student [in Missionary Aviation]. They were preparing to go to the mission field. They met in their sophomore year. It was a common interest in foreign missions for their life that brought them together. She said, “We … we talked about missions. Every date it was about missions. And our life was just so focused.”
They got married in December. She graduated … they graduated in May [1987]. She called me in July crying and saying, “My husband has been arrested on four counts of rape, and he’s headed — if he’s … if he’s found guilty — to a 25 year prison sentence.” She was weeping.
I said, “Kim, how did this happen? What … did you have any inclination?” She said, “Absolutely none.” She said, “Two of those counts of rape happened while he was a student — happened in the summertime — and two of them have happened since we graduated in May. Just two months before he was found guilty!”
She came to a meeting in Pennsylvania where I was preaching — she and her parents. I said, “Kim, tell me about your life. How’s it going?”
She said, “Well, I’ll never get to the mission field. “He’s in prison for 25 years. I’m waiting for him to come out. I’m his wife, and I will be faithful to him. If we’re both alive when he is released, we’ll live together in our marriage. But we’ll never get to the mission field. But,” she said, “you know what I’ll do? I want to try to help prisoners’ wives because I can understand their experience.” She said, “That is my mission in life now: to be a witness for Christ to prisoners’ wives.”
I said, “Kim, do you know when this happened? When did it start?” She said, “Well, he’s told me how it started. When he was 14, he got into pornography.” The fire started to rage, and it got out of control. Sensuality dominated him from that point onward just a little tiny match was struck that grew into a raging flame in his life and played itself out in rape and a twenty-five-year prison sentence.
Gentlemen, just a word of caution from Scripture and from illustrations. Sensuality will dominate us or the control of the Spirit will dominate us. They can’t both be at work in our life at the same time. Peter said we all used to walk this way, but now you’re saying we don’t let the senses rule our lives.
Here is the most complete news article on the story from August 12, 1987 from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Dr. Bob has never been one for subtlety. He gives enough specific information that it’s obvious he’s talking about David Jonathan Silcox, a Missionary Aviation graduate from the Class of 1987.
Silcox was a serial rapist – first attacking a vulnerable stranger {albeit an adult} asleep on the beach to a 15yo child to another adult woman he did not know.
David Jonathan Silcox was released from his prison sentence on January 27, 2015 – 9 months before Dr. Bob used him and his ex-wife as a sermon illustration. And 10 months after his public censure from GRACE.
But did you see what Bob III is arguing there? That a serial rapist like David Jonathan Silcox is not after power, as experts have concluded, but just “sensuality.” A “sensuality” that began with pornography. From porn to a 25-year sentence for serial rape.
Poof! It can happen to you, too, just like that!
In other words, Bob III is telling his male listeners not to judge Silcox or any other criminal rapist. It all starts with simply enough with porn. It’s all sensuality. And everyone is guilty.
By democratizing forcible rape, by making it no different than any other sin of indulgence – whether cheesecake or naps – Bob III is excusing criminal behavior.
This is how it goes at Bob Jones University. And it’s no different that what Pettit preached this week in Chapel.