Well, it's a great honor and privilege to be here with you this evening and to preach
to this church and to be at this conference, what an amazing conference that we have here.
I really enjoyed the sermon this morning and as Pastor Thompson was talking about going
to that reservation, I was saying, there's something familiar about this.
And then I was like, oh yeah, I was on that trip because we did win in football by a lot.
I did remember that portion of the trip very well.
Also, it's incredible to see all these decorations here, especially having been here yesterday
because it was completely different decorations.
I was getting a little nervous though, there's so many birds up here, I kind of thought it
was like the marriage supper with a lamb or something.
Just pray for me while I'm up here.
No, I'm just kidding.
The decorations look amazing.
What a great privilege to have a church that throws together a conference like this.
I know many of you have been very sacrificial and donating your time and effort and energy
for this conference to go forward.
We greatly appreciate it.
Thank you so much for Pastor Anderson for not just hosting this conference, but really
living up to its name.
We don't just have a missions conference and talk about how wonderful missions would be.
We actually do a lot of missions trips, especially this church.
This church is really trying to go across the entire world to preach the gospel.
I believe that they are going to do it, and the question is whether or not you're going
to help them, because if you don't do it, they're going to do it.
This is the time to get into the game and to get a part of the giant soul winning movement
that is happening.
I think there's a lot of misconceptions about soul winning and about missions, but really
soul winning can be very easy.
The title of my sermon this evening is Soul Winning Made Easy.
Of course I'm focusing on the Bahamas as kind of a location where we went on a soul winning
trip this beginning of the year, but you kind of see in the Bible God making soul winning
very easy at times.
We look at a story here in Luke chapter 5.
Look at verse 1 again.
It says,
When they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and their net break.
And they beckoned to their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come
and help them.
And they came and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a
sinful man, O Lord, for he was astonished, and all that were with them, at the draft
of the fishes which they had taken.
And so was also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon.
And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men.
And so Jesus in his ministry would often use earthly examples or as I say carnal truths
to illustrate spiritual truths.
And here they had a great carnal example given to them, that when you follow Jesus Christ's
advice, you can have great success.
They tried fishing all night and caught literally nothing.
And then in just a few moments, just following Jesus Christ's example, they catch more than
they could even handle.
And he's using these fish as an example of what he wants to do for soul winning.
Because he says, Hey, I showed you this illustration so that you'd believe me, you'd trust in me.
But you know, it's not about just catching fishes.
It's not about just having a great business and making lots of money.
But rather what's important is collecting souls for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when you follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to catch more than you can even
handle.
You can get more than you can handle.
And it can be very easy.
I mean, can you imagine how hard it would be if they said, Hey, all you have to do in
fishing is just drive out there, just let down your net and pick it up and you got more
fish than you can handle?
Everybody would fish for a minute at that point, right?
But any of us that have ever gone fishing, you realize it's really hard.
I remember the first time I ever went fishing, my grandpa, he took me out.
And we'd always go to Jack in the Box for breakfast.
And it was good back then.
Okay, so maybe because I was young, but we had Jack in the Box and he likes to go out
fishing very early, you know, get out there on the water, maybe 5am or something like
that.
So we get out on the water, I cast out my line, and in about 60 seconds, it's just,
it's just tugging.
And I mean, this thing is tugging hard.
And I start reeling in, and I catch like a seven and a half, eight pound fish, just in
like 60 seconds.
And I mean, you know, six pounds doesn't seem like a lot, but we're talking about fish,
for some reason, they're just a lot bigger.
So I mean, this is a pretty big fish that I caught in like six days, like, this is easy.
You know, and they're thinking like, this isn't how it normally works.
Okay.
And then we probably were out on the boat fishing for, I don't know, six, seven hours,
and we never caught anything ever again.
And I didn't know what to expect having gone into fishing.
But in reality is many times you go out there and you just cast your line, nothing happens.
Sometimes your hook gets snagged.
It's just kind of boring.
A lot of people think of fishing as being very boring, because it takes a lot of time,
a lot of effort, a lot of energy just to even catch anything.
And unfortunately, it seems like in the world that we live today, a lot of people are fishing
for souls the way that Peter did at first, where they're laboring really hard, but they're
accomplishing nothing.
And it seems like there is just a giant movement of missions and evangelism today in this world
that's toiling hard, but they're not really catching a lot.
And you say, what's the difference between Peter catching a lot and catching nothing?
Well, in one clear example, he's doing what Christ told him to do.
And when you do what Christ tells you to do, you're going to catch more than you can even
handle.
And so when it can be very easy, getting people saved can be very easy.
So when it can be made very easy, missions can be made very easy.
But it seems like there's so many people in the world today that are trying to make missions
hard.
And we need to make them easy again.
And let me tell you something.
There is nothing easier than soul winning in the Bahamas, okay?
If we're talking about missions trips, I mean, this is missions trip as easy as you're ever
going to get it.
It's so easy.
I'm wearing flip flops tonight, all right?
Just to illustrate, I mean, you can go out there and flip flops and get a multitude saved.
You know what I mean?
And it's so relaxed.
It's so easy.
It's so safe.
It's so fun.
I mean, really, it's like a glorified vacation, folks.
And it's almost as easy as if Christ said, hey, I know where all the fish are.
Just go right over there, just drop your net, and you'll have more than you can even bring
into the boat.
And you'll ask other people to bring their boat, and it's more than their boat can handle.
And you know what?
There are places in this world where you want to catch souls.
Well, as long as you go where Jesus tells you to go, hey, you can have so many, and
you can't even get them all in the boat.
You know, a lot of people, they're taking a big boat, and they're toiling really hard
in the nation of Israel.
I mean, think about how many missionaries are being sent to Israel today, and they're
toiling hard, they're laboring hard, and they're not really accomplishing much.
They're not catching very many.
And think about how much harder it would be to travel all the way to the Middle East,
much more conflict, much more danger.
Whereas the Caribbean, it's kind of like the destination spot for vacation.
And then on top of that, talk about soul-winding being made easy.
And I think some people, they're just not trying to get the low-hanging fruit in this
world.
But you know what?
We need to try and get the low-hanging fruit, because who knows how long it's going to stay
there on the ground without rotting.
You know, fruit that's on the ground, it's great, but if you don't ever pick it up, a
bug could come get it, animals could come get it, it could rot, it could perish.
Everyone needs to go and gather that easy fruit.
And you know what?
God bless people who go to hard places.
I'm not down on you, but let's go to the easy places, too, okay?
And there's so many missionaries going out and kind of just doing nothing, going trying
to learn a language for six, seven years.
It's like, how much souls could you have won if you had spent six or seven years in the
Bahamas?
If you were going to a place that was actually receptive, a place that you already speak
the language.
And I don't know why people just don't want to use this method, but we need to really
challenge, you know, a lot of people's minds and hearts on the right type of soul-winning,
the right type of missions today, and trying to seek out the people that are the easiest,
because there is a lot of fish that can be gathered right now that are not being gathered.
Go to John chapter number four, go to John chapter four.
And I believe this, I believe that God consistently wants to make soul-winning easy, and He has
made it easy, and it can be easy.
That does not mean every time.
There's going to be hard cases, there's going to be places that are not very receptive,
there's going to be difficulties in soul-winning, but many stories in the Bible, it's very easy.
And so many people, they're intimidated, like, well, but I've never been soul-winning.
I've never even gone out and shared the gospel.
And what I find so inspiring is how when you go on trips like this, you'll have people
that come out with you, and they say, this is my first time to give the gospel to someone.
You know, and that's, to me, a lot of faith, to go to a foreign country, having never successfully
gotten someone saved by yourself, but just to show up and just say, here am I, Lord,
you can use me, and then they end up getting a lot of people saved.
And when we were in the Bahamas, we had, you know, some younger people, too, some young
teenagers and young children that had gone out soul-winning plenty, but they hadn't really
had the confidence to preach to a lot of people, and being in the Bahamas, they ended up preaching
to a lot of people, and actually got a lot of people saved, even the young people.
And I think that God wants to use stories like John chapter 4 to inspire us.
Look what it says in verse 39, and many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Him
for the saying of the woman which testified, He told me all that ever I did.
So in John chapter 4, we have a story of a woman at the well who ends up encountering
Jesus, not really knowing who He is, being confronted with Him.
They have a pretty interesting exchange, but through the exchange, Jesus Christ convinces
her that He is that Messiah, that He is the One that is the Christ.
She believes in Him, leaves her water pot immediately, runs back into the city, and
according to the Bible, notice what it says in verse 39, and many of the Samaritans of
that city believed on Him for the saying of the woman.
This is a woman that's very sinful according to the Bible.
She had five husbands according to the Bible.
She was constantly getting married and divorced, married and divorced, and in fact, the last
guy that she was with, not even married, not even in a good lifestyle.
She's a Samaritan, so she's not really trying to live a godly life.
She's not even in the right religion, yet the same day that she gets saved, what happens?
She gets many other people saved.
You know what that tells me?
You have no excuse.
If you're saved, you have no excuse to not be able to get someone else saved.
I mean, if this woman can get someone saved, you say, well, I'm sinful.
So is she.
Well, I'm sinful.
So is Peter.
What did Peter do?
Depart from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man.
What did Jesus say?
Oh, you're right.
Get away.
You stink, too.
No, no, no.
He said, hey, come and follow me, right?
And he said, hey, you're going to catch a lot of men.
You, the sinful Peter, you're going to be really influential in the kingdom of God.
And let me tell you something.
There's never a bad time to start soul winning.
And if this woman, after just having a short, brief encounter with Jesus Christ, can get
many saved, it sounds like it's easy.
You know why?
Because soul winning is easy.
Soul winning can be very easy.
And you say, well, I don't know what to say.
Well, here's the question.
Are you saved?
Yeah.
Then you know how to get someone saved.
If you're if you don't know how to get someone saved, you're not saved.
Okay.
Because you should be able to tell someone what you did.
Hey, I believe in Jesus.
That's what the Bible says, right?
Yeah.
Maybe you might not be the most eloquent.
Maybe you might not know every verse.
But I'm sure you've heard of John 3.16 before.
I'm sure you could probably point to some verses.
I'm sure you got the basics of you're a sinner, you were on your way to hell, but you believed
in Christ as death, burial, and resurrection, and you're only trusting in Him.
I believe every saved person's got that down.
I think that people are so intimidated, they think, well, there's more to it.
In many cases, there's not.
Of course, I'm not trying to say don't become an expert soul winner.
I'm not trying to say don't study the Bible.
I'm not saying don't memorize all the verses.
I'm not saying don't improve your soul winning.
What I'm saying is even the most basic beginning soul winner can get many saved.
And you say how?
Did they just try?
They just go to the right group?
They just go to the right people?
They just try something easy?
And let me tell you something.
If you're intimidated on missions, you know, you hear about these places in India where
they're eating rat, okay?
And you hear about the weird things going on in Africa, okay?
I mean, Africa is kind of scary-sounding, I'm just being honest with you, okay?
Middle East, that's kind of terrifying.
China, it's like illegal.
You're like, I don't want to go to this place, Bahamas, okay?
It's soul winning made easy.
This is like you just walk into the town and you can just get people saved.
And you say, well, what kind of skill level do I have to have that you're saved?
That's it.
If you're saved, you're already qualified.
You're ready to go.
It's soul winning made easy in the Bahamas.
And look, it's not just the Bahamas, there's other places like this.
I'm just telling you that this place is one of those places.
And it's an incredible opportunity for a lot of people to do a lot of soul winning, learn
soul winning, maybe get some confidence, and then go into some harder areas or some more
difficult situations in the future.
And of course, not all soul winning is going to be easy.
There's going to be obstacles, difficulties, there's going to be challenges.
But this one for us, if you speak English, if you're saved, I mean, this is one of the
easiest opportunities you'll ever get.
And think about how many people are going on a long deputation, accomplishing what?
About nothing.
This woman, her deputation was about five seconds.
She just went straight into the town.
And you know what?
She didn't ask for anybody's money.
She didn't need any money.
You say like, how much money do I need to raise to preach the gospel?
Zero.
Now, obviously, to get to the Bahamas, you might have to get like 1000 bucks to get a
ticket or something, right.
But you know, it wouldn't take that long.
You don't need hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn some foreign language
to then hope that some guy might show up at church one day and walk the aisle.
You can literally just open your mouth boldly and make known the mystery of gospel and get
people saved the second after getting saved.
You know, this is near and dear to my heart from the way that I got saved, because I believe
that you should start sharing the gospel right away and that we should even encourage people
that get saved to start sharing the gospel right away.
Go to Mark, chapter number six.
I was about five years old and I was going to a church.
It was just an evangelical church, it wasn't Baptist.
But every week they would give the kids in the Sunday school class the gospel and offer
them to come down and get saved.
I remember hearing it several weeks in a row and kind of every week kind of getting closer
and closer to wanting to get saved.
And I remember just one week I just finally, you know, I said like, look, if I don't go
down that aisle and get saved, if I don't trust Christ today, and for some reason I
die on my way home from church, I'm going to hell.
I'm like, I don't want to go to hell.
And I believed on Jesus Christ.
That same day, I lived where we didn't have an alley.
Our next door neighbors behind us, we shared the same fence line, right?
And across the way was two kids that lived there and it was my same age.
They were Casey and Stacy, all right?
And they were twins and we were friends.
So I went over there same day and I just started trying to give them the gospel to get them saved.
Now you say, what verses did you quote?
None, because I probably didn't know any verses yet.
You know, at least I was just trying.
And I remember one was interested, one wasn't.
So I ended up praying with one of them to get saved.
And he said, do you know he got saved?
I have no idea, but I know that I tried.
Now after he prayed, the other one didn't.
So we just made fun of him that he was going to hell.
And then I remember after that, you know what?
He ended up wanting to pray.
So you know what?
Others say with fear, pulling them out of the fire.
Okay.
So, you know, some are really easy and then others, you got to mock into getting saved.
This is not necessarily the right way to go about it, right?
Just telling you what happened.
You know, we should encourage our children.
We should encourage the youth.
We should encourage new believers to go sowing right away, to not wait.
I mean, if they're headed to hell, you can't send them there again.
You know, and if you are in here and you say, I go sowing, but I don't want to do talking,
you know what?
Just start talking.
Just, just start doing it.
You say, well, it's intimidating here.
Okay.
Well go to the Bahamas.
It's way less intimidating.
I'm telling you, you can wear flip-flops folks.
Okay.
Sandals.
And Hey, you know what?
The children of Israel were wearing sandals when they were walking through the wilderness.
Okay.
And that was called church.
All right.
Church of the wilderness.
So don't get mad at me now.
I'll just be honest with you.
When, when I was pastoring at steadfast, someone came to me and they approached me and they
said, Hey, pastor Shelly, you got to take a missions trip with us to the Bahamas.
And I was like, yeah, the Bahamas.
I'm sure everybody will love that pastor Shelly is taking a mission trip to the Bahamas.
Yeah.
You know, it's a lot of mission work.
Right.
And I was just thinking like, I just, this is what I told him.
I said, I'm probably never going to take a mission straight to the Bahamas because I
said, there's just, there's like a stigma.
That's like a vacation spot.
And he's like, Oh, we got to understand the people there are really receptive.
And I said, well, the only way I'd believe is if I went there, I did a scouting trip
just because frankly speaking, you know, I, I would be embarrassed if I take like 40 people
from my church to this really expensive place and no one wants to get saved.
You know, that would, that would be kind of embarrassing or just be like wasting money
or something like that.
And that was kind of what I was afraid of.
So I didn't really believe it.
I was kind of skeptical, but he said, why don't we just go you and me just do a scouting
trip.
So when I was 18, I decided to just take a quick little, like two or three day trip
down there just to kind of test the waters and to see what it was like.
Plus I did a little bit of research into the continent, or I'm sorry, not the country,
just to see what it was like.
And the Bahamas is actually a group of 700 islands, which is crazy, but only about 30
or 40 of those 700 are inhabited.
So there's just a lot of just little tiny islands and no one lives on, but there's about
30 or 40 that are inhabited.
It's mostly just a couple that have the vast majority of the population.
And the main island there is called Nassau.
Nassau is kind of the capital city and it's the largest island is where the vast majority
of the people live.
It's very small.
It's only 80 square miles.
And just to give you an idea of how big that is, I looked at the city of Phoenix and we're
not talking about the Phoenix Metro.
We're talking about only the city of Phoenix is 518 square miles.
So just the city of Phoenix is over six times larger than the entire island of Nassau, which
is like this main population of the Bahamas.
Surprise, surprise city here at Arizona.
Some of y'all know where that's at.
That is 110.5 square miles.
So the city of surprise is larger than the island of Nassau.
So just to give you an idea of what kind of size dimensions we're talking about.
So it's actually a very small island.
On this island, it's about 250,000 people.
That's quite a few people to be concentrated into this area.
And that's just like the locals that live there.
At any given time, there's probably anywhere from 300 to 400,000 people on the island just
because there's a ton of tourism.
There's tons and tons of people on the island visiting at all times.
And so there's a lot of people that are on this little tiny space.
So it can be kind of difficult to travel from one side to the other considering it's only
two miles.
That's like 35 minutes.
It's like New York City packed at times or whatever.
So it can be a little bit densely populated in certain areas.
If you look at the ethnic aspect of the demographics, it's 90% black.
So of course, most of the people there that you're going to run into are black.
There's about 4% white, 2% mixed, and then just like 1% other.
So it's very predominantly black.
And it's funny to me that in America, it seems like there's just so much hatred increasing
for black people.
It's like there's this idea out there that just black people are just bad or something
or like black people are cursed or like there's something wrong with black people.
But you know what's wrong with black people?
America.
Because when you visit black people that are not from America, they're way different.
Like completely different people.
And you know what?
You can really appreciate the culture difference when you go to some of these Caribbean islands
and you run into these individuals.
They're much different.
And let me tell you something.
Racism is the dumbest thing on the planet.
It's not real.
Okay?
Red, yellow, black, and white, they're all precious and in sight.
And the reason why black people in America often are bad is because no one loves them.
It's because they don't have a father there to love them.
It's because they don't have a church with a pastor that loves them that's teaching them
the Bible.
It's because they're living in a system where no one's feeding into these people and loving
these people.
And let me tell you something.
If you love black people, you know what you'd do?
You'd give them the gospel.
You wouldn't give them handouts.
You wouldn't just give them money.
You wouldn't just give them privilege.
You wouldn't just tell them how enslaved they are.
No, you know what you'd do is you'd give them the gospel and you'd love on them and teach
them the Bible.
And let me tell you something.
The black people in the Bahamas are some of the greatest people I've ever been around.
You know, they put to shame normal Americans.
Oh, I just like to be around people like me.
Well, you know what?
People like you sometimes aren't that great.
But you know, the people in the Bahamas are great.
I love them.
And in fact, their nation is considered 93% Christian.
You know, visiting the Bahamas is kind of like if you could get into a time traveling
device and go back to like the 1950s of America and just like get to experience what culture
would have been like in the 1950s, albeit everyone's black, but, you know, so there's
a little difference there.
Right.
The water fountains don't have a label on them or anything.
Okay.
But like, you know, it's, it's, it's like normal and nice and people always are worried
about like traveling to foreign countries, how dangerous it is.
But I'll tell you what, downtown Houston is way scarier than Bahamas, downtown Detroit,
downtown Fort worth.
Hey, there's a lot of scary places in America.
Okay.
And there I felt way safer, way more at home.
I enjoyed it.
I love being there.
It's great.
Now of those 93%, 75% are classified as quote Protestant.
They kind of break that down even further.
And brother Ryder had rightly said that it's about 35% Baptist.
So that's kind of the predominant denominational distinction.
And here's the thing that's crazy is, you know, having visited there, I like, I personally
never ran in anybody that was already saved.
Like it's 93% Christian, but virtually no one saved.
And I'm not saying that no one is, but you know, when you run into people, it's almost
no chance that they're going to be saved, which is just kind of sad considering how
much they, they love the Bible.
They're very Christian.
Their schools are very Christian.
They're reading the Bible daily, in schools, Christianity's talked about, everybody talking
about Christianity, thinks they're Christian, wants to be a Christian, likes Christianity,
and they're just not saved.
They're very familiar with the Bible.
They know a lot of Bible.
But unfortunately they just, they don't have that connection of what it means to be saved.
Nothing that's interesting is the original origin of the Bahamas is that it was originally
discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
So you know that old saying where he crossed the ocean blue.
Well, he actually found the island of Bahamas and it was the Lucanian people that were originally
there.
It ended up becoming kind of a prison colony at one point later become a, it became a prison
colony for American loyalists during the American revolution.
And so it kind of has an interesting history.
It was a British colony for a long time, eventually got its own independence.
But again, it's predominantly Christian.
It's 35% Baptist, 15% Anglican, 8% Pentecostal, 5% church of God, 5% Seventh day Adventists,
4% Methodist, um, 14% Catholic.
And I think it said they had 300 Jews, so I don't know how that works.
Okay.
Have fun with that.
All right.
Um, so, so brother Nick convinces me we go on this trip and, you know, give a lot of
credit for the Nick cause I would have never gone here, you know, it wasn't for him or
someone else just saying like how great this is.
So him taking us out there and he was right.
Super receptive.
It was just us there for like maybe two, two and a half days.
And we didn't go sewing the whole time, just like maybe a few hours a day because a lot
of it I was just scouting.
I was just going and I wanted to go to different areas because I didn't want to just go to
one area and it was good.
And then like have kind of a poor idea about the island.
So we went to all kinds of different areas, talking to lots of different people, went
to schools, tried to talk to them, see what that would be like.
And in just like a few days we got like 33 people saved.
So that's pretty good receptivity for just a couple of people.
During that time we had some really cool experiences.
I talked to a guy whose name was Deacon John, okay, and Deacon John was the deacon of his
Baptist church.
He was just sitting outside and I tried to ask him about the gospel and it was clear
he didn't believe in salvation by faith alone.
He believed in repent of your sins, he believed that you could lose your salvation.
And so I kind of gave him the gospel and it was, you know, it was probably one of the
harder people I had talked to because almost everybody else has got it like this.
I mean just super easy, super fast.
This guy wasn't really getting it, but my so many partner was like talking to somebody
else and I was like, I'll just give him another chance or just keep explaining things.
And it was just like not going anywhere and just, it was just over and over, I just kept
explaining it, explaining eternal security, not getting it.
And then I was about to just give up and just kind of move on.
And then he just, he just kind of like looks at me and he's just like, wait a minute, I
felt you came from America today because God sent you here to tell me that salvation
is actually free and you can't lose it because I'm not even saved and you need to get me
saved.
And I was just like, right, that's what I was trying to tell you this whole time.
And he's like, well, thank you so, yeah, you're right.
And then he ended up getting saved and it was, and it was just like so incredible because
I wasn't that blunt, but then finally he just kind of was like, wait a minute, you're
telling me I'm not even saved and you're here to get me saved.
And I was just like, yeah.
And he ended up getting saved and it was just a really cool story to see someone that's
been plugged into church and kind of have to throw away the fact that look, he's been
in church his whole life, he's a deacon, he's in a respected position, but then he has to
admit humbly, like I'm not even saved, like I haven't even gotten it yet.
And God must, you know, wanted you to come here.
Now, not every store was this, this great.
I was talking to another lady at a door and my soul-winding partner, brother Nick, he
got really zealous.
So he just goes to the next door.
So I'm just still talking to her and kind of, I'm not even finished, but he like comes
back and he looks like he just saw a ghost or something and he's just got, he's just
kind of like, oh man, that lady over there is whack or something.
And I'm like, he's interrupting me while I'm preaching the gospel, just thinking like calm
down, bro.
Okay.
So I finished with her and then I like, I kind of look at it and he's like, dude, that
lady is like deemed possessed or something.
And I'm like, I don't know.
So but, but before we can even like really move very forward, a kid's walking down the
street and he's like, hey, let me grab him.
So he just kind of starts talking to this kid.
Well then I noticed there's this woman and she just kind of like, there's her fence.
She just like, she just kind of like pops up over this giant fence and she's just like
mad dogging us.
And then she's like, she's coming out.
And so like, I try to just like meet her halfway so that he can like keep giving the gospel
to this kid.
And I walk up to her and I'm like, hey, we're just talking to people.
What's your name?
She's like Pandora.
I was like, oh man, like Pandora's box or like what?
Now there's a story about Pandora's box and Pandora's box is basically this Greek myth
where a woman opens and it's like a jar, a box, depending on how, how you read it.
But she basically had a husband's jar.
She wasn't supposed to open it.
She opened it.
And when she opened it, she unleashed curses on all mankind.
And so it's basically like a bastardized version of Eve, but it's not good.
Okay.
And she lived up to the name.
So I started talking to this lady and you know, I'm just, I just like, just I'm agreeable
to anything.
And she says, I'm just saying yes.
Cause I'm just like, just trying to like keep the conversation.
I'm just like showing her verses and she's just like, doesn't even blink.
She's just like staring me down, just saying nonsensical things, getting really mad at
us.
You could, you could lose your salvation.
Yes, you can.
You don't tell me anything different.
And I'm just trying to be calm.
But she kind of figured out what I was doing at some point and I'm just like, yeah, sure.
Yeah, whatever.
But she then just runs over there and she interrupts brother Nick.
She starts screaming at the kid like, get away, go away.
They're false prophets.
Run away from them.
And unfortunately the kid got nervous and so he walked away and he didn't get saved.
And then brother Nick just looks at her and he's just like, you wicked, she curses her
in the name of the Lord.
And I was just like, Whoa, okay.
Then she just walks back in.
So we just kind of finished the street and then we're walking back and this was the weirdest
part.
And she's still kind of just mad dog.
Yes.
But then as right as we kind of like walk by, she goes, these two guys are the servants
of the most high God.
I was just like, let's get out of here.
Like, I don't know what's happening.
This is a little weirdest story.
Okay.
So, okay.
There is some weirdos there.
All right.
But that was the only lady that we ran into that was kind of weird.
Also brother kitten Knowles.
He's from there.
And I think he was in the Philippines at the time or somewhere abroad, but he had messaged
us to go and talk to his brother.
And so I ended up meeting up with his brother at one point on the island and we were able
to give him the gospel.
And you know, it seemed like he got saved.
So praise the Lord that we were able to talk to somebody that we really cared about and
give him the gospel.
And, you know, you would think it's kind of weird, like, Oh, someone that's a really good
soul winner.
Why would one of their family members need someone to give him the gospel?
But think about this.
Jesus said this for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.
And look at what it says in Mark chapter six, verse four.
But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country and
among his own kin and in his own house, you know, the Bible says that even Jesus own brethren
didn't believe in him.
And you know, sometimes I think the hardest person to ever hear the gospel is a family
member.
Second friends, third coworkers, you know, and then everybody who don't know, it's easy,
right?
I mean, it's a lot easier, foreign people, really easy.
So it's, it's definitely true.
Now because of the success, we actually scheduled a trip to go right back.
This was at the end of 2019.
So I was like, all right, May, 2020, we're going, but then of course COVID came and just
kind of put our plans on hold.
And I just, because I felt like it was going to be such a successful trip, I canceled it.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
I just wanted to make sure that the max people could come when we went there.
So we decided to postpone it.
I didn't know how long it would take.
Obviously that was kind of unprecedented, but it took us a few years, but we decided
to go back in 2023.
So at the beginning of this year, we went and praise God when we waited, you know, we
ended up having 60 people come out soul winning with us, which is a large group.
Try organizing 60 people, it's fun.
But we ended up having 653 salvations, like one-on-one.
And then with the schools, we ended up counting close to almost a thousand is about 980 total
salvations for the trip.
But what was cool, and I'd never heard of this before, but brother Kenton told me, he
said, Hey, there's this really cool thing you need to do at the school.
When you go there, after you preach the gospel, tell every student to get out a piece of paper.
And then on the piece of paper, you're going to have them write out what they believe now.
And so, you know, basically questions asked, hey, what do you have to do to be saved?
Can you lose your salvation?
Did you change your mind?
And then some people would even ask a few other questions like that.
And so we would go and we got an opportunity to preach in some of the schools.
And we actually had like thousands and thousands and thousands of students that we got to preach
on this trip.
And, you know, credit to brother Kenton Knowles, he went and talked to all these schools and
got it all set up.
And he said, the reason why they were so willing is because he told them, we have 60 evangelists
coming from America.
So the fact that people came made a big deal.
They said, Hey, there's two or three.
They may not want to give us the time.
But when they said they had 60, they were thinking like, yeah.
And you know, say, well, how does 60 people preach to kids?
Well, they would put us all in their different classrooms.
So we'd show up early in the morning, and they would just shuffle us out.
And in fact, many times they wanted 40 or 50.
So we didn't even do just the two.
We didn't even pair them out.
Some would just, you're just going with this class, you're going with this class.
Some people we paired up to, but like, we had opportunities where if we had even more
soul winners, we could have talked to more classrooms.
We like ran out of people, even some of the days, but think about, can you imagine today
going to like the junior high school here in Tempe or in Phoenix and just preaching
to a bunch of students?
But you know what?
What the Bible says, that a prophet doesn't have the same honor in his own country as
he does when you go to a foreign country.
You go to a foreign country, now all of a sudden you can talk to a bunch of students.
And I mean, what an incredible opportunity.
I think we went to about five or six different schools while we were there.
We preached to probably close to a thousand students every time.
So in total, probably like five, six thousand kids heard the gospel very clearly.
And I even have, in fact with me, a lot of those papers today.
And I'm going to read some of them here in a minute, but really cool stuff.
So of the salvations that we just confirmed one-on-one, like normal traditional soul winning,
we had like over 600.
And then the ones where the papers were really clear, you know, it gave us another 300 or
so.
So we had like almost a thousand salvations total for the trip.
Plus a lot of times what we did is we would preach in the morning, come back at lunch,
and then talk to the students one-on-one.
But it was hard to get anybody saved because everybody was saved after that.
Like you would show up at lunch and a lot of them were already saved.
You could tell.
A lot of them already had all the right answers, were talking to their friends, and in fact
encouraging their friends.
Or they'd bring you somebody like, here's a kid that didn't get it, you know, like we
preached it to him.
He's kind of slow, you know what I mean?
He needs it again, right?
But the, I mean the smart ones, the quick ones, they got it.
Who got, there's a lot of people here, who preached in those schools that are here today?
Oh yeah, we have several people here that got to preach in the schools.
You know, you need to ask these people about it.
One of the coolest experiences, all of them were nervous, and most every one of them was
kind of like the woman of the well, like I don't even know what I'm doing.
Like what do I say?
It's like, you say, God loves you, okay?
You're a sinner.
Say it with me.
You're a sinner.
You just give them the gospel.
They're not even, they're not even prepared, in a sense, but in the same way, because they're
saved and you have the Holy Ghost, it's easy.
It's so unmade easy.
And these people just love this opportunity.
I mean, many of the teachers were very thankful, many of the students were thankful, not all.
Many of them, okay.
It was also cool that when we were there, we had a lot of people from Faithful Word
come out, we had people from First Works come out, we had people from Verity Baptist Church
come out.
And, you know, to bring this verse to light a little bit in Mark 6, it's always funny
to me when I go to an admission strips like this and it's mixed.
It's like my people and then a bunch of people from other churches, because I've noticed
that all the people from other churches, they treat me so much better.
They're always like, thank you so much, Pastor Shelley.
This is so awesome, Pastor Shelley.
My people are like, where's the soda?
You know, like, why do I have to bunk with him?
You know, it's like, it's like, yeah, okay, cool.
The people from the other churches are like, this is so amazing, you know, thank you so
much.
They're just like all excited, right?
That's what you get, okay, so.
So you know what?
If you go to this church, thank Pastor Anderson, don't be one of these people that's ungrateful
for this church.
I mean, you have an incredible church and an incredible opportunity.
I mean, they're taking you and spoiling you every week on all these mission strips that
sometimes you would think like a person from Faith Ward coming to yours is like, where's
all the mission strip?
You know, brothers and gurgles, someone in every day, you know, where are you at?
You know, it's like, okay, calm down, right?
We're just, we're just trying to do, you know, some work here, right?
But you know, thank Pastor Anderson, thank Faith Ward Baptist Church.
If you're visiting from another church, thank your pastor, encourage your pastor, you know,
just because this verse exists doesn't give you an excuse.
It's just saying, hey, it's a reminder, like, you know, don't get your hopes up when your
people don't like you that much, you know, but at the same time, you don't be that person,
you'd be the exception that still is very thankful, very appreciative.
So we got a great opportunity to go to all these schools.
Not only that, we went soloing at the university, the neighborhoods, the mall, the stores, and
honestly, all of it's good.
Really the only problem is just if you don't run into people.
So sometimes when you go to neighborhoods and stuff, maybe there's not a lot of people
home or answering.
That'd be only a really obstacle because virtually almost everybody wants to hear the gospel
and then a high percentage of those that hear end up even getting saved.
So really it's just, you're just trying to find people, but like when you find people,
it's just like so easy.
Also the university during the timing, if it's when school's in session, boy, this is
like so when he made easy times a thousand.
We went there and it wasn't even like in session and we still had a lot of people saved.
But I remember the first time we went, there's like six, 700 students just walking, just
out in the middle of nowhere.
And I mean, you could just walk up to groups of three, four, five, and just give the gospel
until you couldn't talk anymore.
I mean, talk about a net that you can't even drag in.
My goal is the next time we get an opportunity to go to the Bahamas or take a mission trip,
I want to go at the peak college time and try to go at that time.
And that would be my recommendation to anybody.
If you can go there, that would be one of the greatest opportunities that you could
possibly have.
Schools are amazing.
S.C. McPherson junior high school loved us and it was awesome.
The teachers were giving us water.
They're wanting to take pictures with us.
The students were getting saved in droves.
It was awesome.
We got to eat at some places and, you know, we didn't have to have rat or any bugs or
anything like that.
I saw dogs out in the neighborhoods and no one was like trying to tackle it or anything
like that.
But you know, the thing is, because the Bahamas is like a tourist place, then they have like
American food.
You know what I mean?
Like if you want McDonald's, it's in the Bahamas.
You want Wendy's?
They got Wendy's.
But then they also have great food.
Okay.
They have good food, especially because they have two giant resorts.
They have like Baja Mar and they have Atlantis and Atlantis is like its own island of a denture.
It's just, it's just amazing.
And you basically, you go from like all black people to only white people again.
Okay.
So then you like, you kind of cross this bridge and you have to pay it across the bridge,
that's, that's where I said the 1950s, you kind of go back because they kind of have
the white side or whatnot.
But some people just got that.
But you know, we went to one restaurant, Poseidon's Table, it was like a buffet, amazing, amazing
food.
Then we even went on the beach and we got to ride on sea dews.
This was awesome.
Go over to Acts chapter 16 in the Bible, go to Acts chapter 16.
This is some of the greatest beaches you'll ever see.
Some of the greatest water you'll ever see.
So clear.
We got to go to one of the beaches that was near the Baja Mar resort and we rented some
sea dews and we were having fun.
And honestly, we, I like, I enjoyed it a ton, but I got to the point where I didn't need
to ride anymore.
I mean, we could have had, you know, we were there for hours, but it was like, we could
have had more people riding it.
People were just riding two, three, four times and whatever.
And it was a lot of fun.
And we were just, we were just having fun.
Like you were like, how many people were preaching the gospel?
Zero while I was on the sea dew.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was just trying to hang on for dear life, but it was fast and it was fun, right?
And you could fly out there.
The water is so clean and so pristine and the beaches are the most amazing beaches you've
ever seen.
Cool site, a lot of fun.
You could go fast, go everywhere.
Well, I kind of got done, so I'm just kind of standing there.
And one of the gentlemen that was just kind of manning the station, he just like walks
up to me and he's just like, so tell me about baptism.
I'm like, what do you mean?
He's like, I want to know about baptism.
Tell me about baptism.
And I'm like, okay.
So I just kind of like told him, I just quoted a verse or two and just kind of told him.
And then I'm like, do you want to hear more?
And he was like, yeah.
So I just like grabbed my Bible and I just started like preaching him the gospel and
you know, he got saved and it just, it was like, I wasn't trying at all.
Honestly I didn't even want to give the gospel like I had been given the gospel all day.
I'm like, I'm trying to just have some fun and this guy's coming out of nowhere.
And I'm like, give me, tell me about the Bible.
Okay.
You know, you're not done preaching.
Okay.
He said, how long are you going to preach tonight?
Well, you know, I have like 10 hours of content probably.
I'll try to just preach half of it.
Just kidding.
No, look at Acts chapter 16 verse 25.
The Bible says that at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and saying praise unto God and
the prisoners heard them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were
shaken and immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bands were loosed.
And the keeper of the prison waking out of his sleep and seeing the prison doors open,
he drew out a sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had
been fled.
Now think about this.
You're a, you're a preacher of the gospel.
You've done nothing wrong.
You get wrongfully imprisoned and then God, by a miracle, just flood opened the doors.
And then this liberal wants to kill himself.
You know, a lot of people would be like, right.
I mean, don't you think a lot of people would just be like, well, I'm out of here.
Have fun with that.
But what does, what does the Bible say?
But Paul cried a loud voice saying, do thyself no harm for we are all here.
Like, you blew it, you know, what are you doing?
Then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and
Silas and brought them out and said, sirs, what must they do to be saved?
Don't you think they were kind of nervous?
They're like, oh no, what's going to happen?
I mean, the guy could kill him.
He has a sword.
Couldn't you have walked in and just killed Paul and Silas for fear that they would escape
to preserve his own life?
I mean, Paul was literally risking his life by calling for this man to come in because
any prisoner that escapes his life for life at this point in time, that's why he was going
to kill himself because he felt like, well, the inevitable is going to happen.
But if he went in there and he slew the prisoners, perhaps he may have gotten out of the predicament.
But he falls down and you ask them, hey, what must they do to be saved?
What did they say?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house.
You say, this is really easy.
If soul winning was like this where people just walked up to me and just said, hey, what
do you have to do to be saved?
I give a lot of people saved.
That's soul winning made easy when you're not even trying.
But let me tell you something.
When you take a step of faith out and you have a heart for souls, God will take people
that want to be saved and bring them right to you.
You don't even have to try.
But, you know, when you're not taking any steps of faith, when you don't even have an
interest of souls, when you're not even going to be able to be giving the gospel to someone.
Well, here's a track.
Maybe next time you come to my church, you can walk the aisle.
What do you have to do to be saved?
I don't know.
Does anybody know?
He asked the right guy, didn't he?
And God brought him the right person.
And, you know what, sometimes God just wants to make soul winning so easy.
And let me tell you something.
You in America may not find a lot of people that are going to walk up to you and be like,
tell me about baptism.
You know, you go to foreign countries and you will have experiences like this.
You will have people just walk up to you.
You have, hey, I saw you talking to those people.
Tell me what you're telling them about.
You know, you'll have way more people that are just wanting to get saved than anywhere else.
Why?
Because a prophet is not without honor saving his own country.
And, you know, they recognize, look, if you're white, you're going to stick out.
OK, FYI, you got a great opportunity to get a lot of people saved.
Now, you won't entirely stick out just because the island still has hundreds of thousands
of white people.
They're just usually in the tourist area.
But you being out kind of where they are, you stick out a little bit.
And most of them are still very nice, very kind, because they realize that you're kind
of paying their bills in a sense.
But, you know, the thing I do like about it, too, is they're not necessarily money hungry.
Nobody asks me for money a single time.
So, you know, if they gave you attention, it wasn't to get something from you.
They genuinely wanted to hear what you had to say.
And so there wasn't a lot of obstacles when you would when you would talk to people.
And, you know, after I gave this guy the gospel and he got saved, I said, it's a lot of
water right here.
He asked me about baptism.
Well, you know, you just fulfilled the one requirement for a baptism.
You got saved. Let's get in that water and get baptized.
No, I'll do it another time.
I'm like, oh, so close.
I was like, this is your I said, how many times has someone come here and tried to give
you the gospel and try to get you baptized?
He's like, never. He's like, it's never going to happen again.
This is your time. He's like, let's do it.
So we walked right into that water and he got baptized right there in front of all of us
having fun with the sea dews.
I went to have fun and I got a baptism.
But then Marcel, he's like, hey, I got that kid saved yesterday.
He saw another kid just randomly there and he's like, do you want to get back?
You're getting baptized.
And he's like, I'm getting baptized.
So then he brought him over.
We had another baptism.
You know, it was great just right there and the cleanest water you've ever seen.
And it was great to have a couple of guys baptized there and we ended up having a church
service. We only had a few locals show up.
We didn't have very many of our locals that we had preached to show up that time.
But we were since brother Kinton's there, he has a church that he's friends with.
And we even went to a church service there and we had a great time.
We went on their Wednesday night service to Liberty Baptist Church, Pastor Lee's, and it
was a great service.
Kenny goes, there's a very small church.
I don't I don't know the guy necessarily probably likes the new IV necessarily.
I don't really care. He's a Baptist saved.
And, you know, we had a good time.
We enjoyed the service.
I'm sure that he's got all his bills paid by a bunch of pre-tribbers, so he probably
wants to be careful being our buddy.
But at the same time, you know, he's there and he was very pro-soul winning.
You know, we told him about the fact that we went to all these schools and we're talking
to the kids and he was very encouraged, very excited about that, very pleased.
And going to Acts chapter number 17, good Acts chapter number 17.
And, you know, I think that sometimes we we get a little bit jaded from some bad church
experiences we've had where we feel like only the new IV loves God or something like
that. You know, that's not true.
There's still other Christians out there and there's other churches out there.
And, you know, maybe they're not doing a lot, but by you having a good attitude, you
might encourage them. If you have a bad attitude, that's usually not going to
encompass that much. And let's be honest, most of us probably are never going to start
a church in the Bahamas any time soon.
So it'd probably be better to use some people there that can actually do something
about it than us doing nothing and pretending like we're so much better.
Well, you know, I don't want to start a church over there unless it's perfect, you
know, unless it's basically Pastor Anderson cloned.
OK, well, you're probably not going to figure out a clone them yet.
All right. And, you know, there's still great men of God out there, there's still
churches out there, there's still say people and we can come alongside of them.
And, you know, what I love about this church is they have a like minded spirit.
And I think that, you know, God likes to bless people that take some good stands, even
if they're not perfect. And this guy has taken some pretty cool stands.
He was telling us that in 2004, there is some celebrities that wanted to come to the
Bahamas. And there was a lot of pressure because, you know, there's all these
sodomites that want to have weddings in these cool destinations.
Let me tell you something that's nice about the Bahamas.
They don't like faggots.
OK, you say, why do you use that word?
Because they don't like faggots.
It's not, you know, queer, you know, no, no, they don't like fags.
OK, and neither do I.
And I just already feel like they're my brother.
You know, just talk about normal people.
You know, you go back in the 1950s, men didn't like faggots and you weren't like afraid
to call someone a faggot in the 1950s or 60s or 70s or 80s or 90s or not even that
long ago. It's just like recently somehow people cringe at that and it just blows my
mind, you know, how our culture has changed so fast.
But there's still a lot of people out there that aren't brainwashed and they still
recognize that it's disgusting and gross.
The vast majority of the people here think it's gross, including this pastor.
OK, now, I don't know that he necessarily agrees with the rep rate doctrine, but at
least just finding fags repulsive.
I like you. OK, I like you even if you don't like me.
OK, but Rosie O'Donnell and her lesbian partner wanted to come to the Bahamas in
2004, and there was over 100 protesters at the like easily docking area or at the shore
trying to get them to not be able to land or to like scream in their face and tell them
how disgusting they were, at least.
And he was one of them.
This pastor was there.
He's telling us about it.
You know, we're like, hey, here's a movie you can watch.
He's like, let me tell you something, you know, we're not as deceived as you guys in
America. You know, I can't imagine these people that hate fags and thinking like
America's like soft.
They're like a bunch of fags or something, you know, but I printed out there's actually
an article about this.
You can look it up online, says gay and lesbian cruise ships.
Passengers were met by more than 100 protesters as they stepped off their chartered
ship Friday in the Bahamas.
The protesters, led by Christian pastors, gathered in a square in front of the cruise
terminal and chanted gay ways or not God ways as a trickle of passengers stepped out.
Protesters held signs reading, if you're openly gay, stay away and we will not bow to
the gay agenda.
Cruise organizers said former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, who promoted the voyage,
was aboard the ship, but she wasn't seen among those who disembarked.
So she was she was hiding.
She was too nervous to come out.
But, you know, this is great.
Can you imagine pastors like a whole group of American pastors doing this these days?
They're so afraid they wouldn't even dare say something.
They can't even say something in their sermon, let alone go out in public at the shore
protesting openly.
But you know what? These pastors were talk about some real boldness, talk about some
real men standing up and fighting this disgusting thing.
And you say, why is it that homosexuality creeps into a nation?
Because the pastor stopped standing at the shore screaming for them to get away.
Go away, faggot, disgusting freak.
That's how do you get fags away?
That will help, OK?
But it made me think of a story in the Bible, you know, Acts chapter 17, the Bible says
in verse five, but the Jews, which believed not that just Jews moved with envy, took
under them certain lewd fellows of the base resort and gathered a company and set all
the city on an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to
the people. Now, this sounds like steadfast Baptist church, OK, where basically you go
to church and you have all these fags causing an uproar in the city and trying to just
attack God's people.
This sounds like Verity Baptist Church.
This sounds like Sure Foundation Baptist Church.
This sounds like Faith Word Baptist Church.
This sounds like any church that actually stands up for the truth these days, where
there's a bunch of lewd fellows of the base resort.
You say, what does that mean?
Faggots going around harassing people.
And I think that God, you know, because he's given me a little bit of a ruckus in Texas,
was like, I'm going to give you the easiest mission trip ever, OK, where you can go and
they don't like them either.
They're going to say that you're going to have protesters on your side standing on the
shore telling them to get away from you when you're on the island.
OK, it was not it was refreshing.
And you kind of read this story, they end up fleeing and debris.
I look at her standing in the Brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night
and Brea, who coming to their win in the synagogue of the Jews.
These are more noble than those in Thessalonica.
And then they receive the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures
daily, whether those things are so.
Therefore, many of them believe also of honorable women, which were Greeks and of men,
not a few.
You know, I think just because these people stand for righteousness and contend with the
wicked and say, stay away gays.
God's like, well, let's send some evangelists there then, because, you know, these people
are more noble than a lot of people in America who embrace the fags and embrace
sodomites and embrace the lute fellows of the baser sort.
Whereas a country that says, hey, get away, then you can actually bring in the good
people.
You can bring in people that actually love the word of God and love the Bible and give
them the gospel.
And you know what?
In my opinion, the people of Bahamas are much more noble than many other people, and they
actually care about the Bible and actually like the Bible.
And you know what?
I believe that's why God has given them an opportunity to get saved different than other
areas.
Now, again, it's not that the Bahamas is the only Caribbean I like this.
I mean, I think that most of them probably are very receptive.
I went to Jamaica in twenty eighteen with faithful word Baptist Church.
This was several years ago.
Who who went on that Jamaica trip in twenty eighteen?
Yeah.
There's people that went, Brother Raymond, that was one of your first times to go on a
mission trip, wasn't it?
And look where he is now.
I mean, this guy showed up and I was kind of like, OK, you know, first time, you know,
he's got like a satchel and like water bottle.
I mean, you know, but you know what I liked about Brother Raymond?
He was determined to get someone saved.
And just to be honest, I don't think he was that experienced or very skilled yet.
He was kind of like that woman at the well.
But you know what God saw?
He saw a heart that wanted to get people saved and he was able to get people saved.
And then look at him now.
I mean, this guy is championing all kinds of soul winning trips, doing great works for
the Lord.
You know, praise God for people like Brother Raymond Cooper.
Praise God for people that said, you know what?
I've never been on a mission trip.
I don't even know a soul.
I don't even know any of these people.
I'm going to go.
I'm like one of the whitest people ever.
I'm going to go to one of the blackest nations ever.
Hey, Mon, what are you doing, Mon?
Well, well, I'm just going to tell you the gospel.
You know, it's like, it's like, what does that even make sense?
Do you know what?
It was a heart of gold that God saw and he just blessed Brother Raymond Cooper to give the
gospel.
And you know what?
I'm telling you, if Brother Raymond is getting multiple saved, you can get multiple saved too.
If I can get lots of people saved, you can get lots of people saved.
You know what?
God is not looking for some great person to give the gospel.
He's looking for someone that wants to give the gospel.
It's not always the great men.
Sometimes you take simple men and he turns them into the wisest men who are going out and
preaching the gospel and getting a lot of people saved.
Now, again, this this trip was just success in every checkmark you could think of, just
everything.
It's like fun.
Yes.
Greatest beaches.
Yes.
Amazing food.
Yes.
Great fellowship.
Yes.
I didn't even there was like almost nothing I could say negative.
I can't even think of anything.
And I'm not trying to hold back.
I'm just saying like it was amazing.
And if I compare it to Jamaica, Jamaica was super receptive.
But sometimes, you know, we're going on.
What we're going on.
I don't know what's going on, man.
And I'm like, why didn't you just say that?
You know, so, you know, you go to some of these other places and it's a little bit like, I
don't even know what that guy just said.
You know, in the Bahamas, they speak great English.
I never had anybody say anything like that.
OK, it was also, you know, in the Jamaica, we had to drive around the guy that just got
shot a few minutes in the middle of the street.
OK, in in Jamaica, you know, when I rented a car, I said, hey, I'll use our insurance,
you know, it's on the card.
And they're like, oh, that doesn't work.
And I was like, what do you mean?
So I called and they said, yeah, there's only two countries in the world that we don't
offer car insurance.
It's like somewhere in Africa and Jamaica.
I was like, oh, OK.
So, you know, I love Jamaica.
I'll go back, but I'll tell you this.
It's a little dangerous, all right, especially the driving like there's zero street signs,
zero street lights and the big, big buses, they don't stop.
All right. So pretty much the only sign you'll see is wear a helmet.
Don't die. But, you know, it's way different because in Jamaica you have a huge tourist
area called Montego Bay, which is kind of like one end of the island.
And then on the opposite end is Kingston.
And that's where, like all the people live.
Well, Kingston's is kind of poor and more dangerous because, you know, it doesn't have
that influx of tons of money from tourists and all that's over in Montego.
But the cool thing about the Bahamas and Nassau is it's just the one island.
So all the tourism and all the people, they all just are in the same spot.
So you kind of get the benefit from all the wealth and the safety and just the prosperity
of tourism that's been coming in there, white people.
It's not like you're sticking out like a sore thumb
because there's white people everywhere in certain areas.
And they're not like, what's this guy doing, you know, in the jungles or whatever.
And so I'm telling you what, I mean, if you are going to go,
if you say I want to leave America and I want to preach the gospel somewhere,
it's not going to get easier than the Bahamas, folks.
And ask anybody that went on that trip, please talk to them, please ask them how it went.
Most of the people, they told me that this was the greatest trip that they've ever been on.
And again, it may not be the best in every category.
I've had some people tell me, like, this spot might have been a little more receptive
or maybe it felt like this area we got more people saved
or maybe they liked eating the rat.
I don't know.
I mean, but just like an overall experience, it was pretty hard to beat, you know.
And honestly, there's still a lot of work to be done, 250,000 people is a lot.
Now, one person is still there, Brother Kenton Knowles, he lives there and he's still there.
And I asked him for some updates about it, about one or two people from the trip
that we got saved ended up coming to his church.
And so he got to, you know, have them come to his church at least one time.
And then he said, since then, he's had about 30 people come to the church.
And I think that through a lot of just his personal soul winning.
But, you know, and this church was very small.
I mean, I don't know how big the church normally is, but when we were there,
there's probably like 10, 15 people that are local for the church,
most of that being the pastoral staff.
And so, you know, to have 30 visitors is big for a church like this.
Not only that, he told me, he said that he was preaching the gospel a few weeks ago
at the university, and he ran into someone who said that they had gotten saved talking to me.
So apparently, he ran into somebody that I had preached to previously that had gotten saved.
And the young man said that he's been really searching the truth since then
and reading his Bible, and the young man told him, he said, the week before I prayed to God
that he would have, he would send someone to teach him the Bible
and that he would also find a church and that he could get baptized.
So this young man, Bryant, was like praying, like someone, I want someone to come to me
to teach me the Bible and get a church and get saved.
He ran into Kinton, and literally, Kinton was able to help get him into church,
and he got baptized, and he's in the church, he's joined the church.
And he said he's been discipling him.
Brother Kinton also said that he's been trying to take a lot of these converts
out soul-winding with him, but it's hard because he has so many silent partners.
He's taken like three, four silent partners with him at the same time, and he's like,
please pray that another new IFB person would be willing to come out here
and start discipling a lot of these people, because he's like, I have more people
that I can even handle, you know, as far as like trying to reach people.
And I encouraged him, I said, hey, if you have three or four silent partners,
take them all to the door with you.
You know, sometimes you feel like, oh, let's leave them behind or something,
or hey, just bring them all the way.
I remember when we went to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a soul-winding trip in January.
This is Pastor Anderson's idea, you know.
He's like, what's the worst time?
And then we swam in this pool that was like 40 degrees.
No, I'm just kidding.
That's an inside joke.
But when we were out soul-winding, we had this trip, but there were so many silent partners,
and I remember we were kind of organizing, and we were kind of new at it.
I ended up getting like six silent partners.
And I was like, I don't know what to do with this, you know.
But, you know, hey, you show up at a door with seven people, and it sounds weird, okay, to us,
but it's not honestly any more weird to that person than two people,
because they haven't experienced anything.
They were like, well, there's only two people here, you know.
I mean, think about when we go Christmas caroling, it's like 20 people, right.
It's even weirder, okay.
Then they all start singing at you, okay.
Some even just run away for sheer terror.
But, you know, if someone was going to listen to two people, they're going to listen to six
or seven, you know, it doesn't really change anything.
Obviously, you want them to still be silent.
You want them to have good etiquette and good manners
and not be distracting and everything like that.
But at the same time, you know, if that's what you have, more the merrier, right.
You know, lots of times, I mean, if I go soul-winding with my family, we're seven.
All right, I've already broken the six-person rule, you know what I mean.
Like, we're already seven, and people don't seem to be shying away.
In fact, I honestly think people often will listen to me more when I have my whole family
than when I just have a random ugly dude with me.
You know, Jacob scares way more people away than my kids, okay.
So, you know, it's not like you can't take your family
or take lots of people out there with you.
In fact, I feel like people are nicer when you have your kids.
They think, like, this person must be more sincere, you know.
And if you have a lot of people coming, they're just like, wow,
there's a lot of people that care about me, you know.
All of you want to come here to give me the gospel?
That's a big deal.
So, you know what, I would encourage him and encourage anybody
if you find yourself in this situation.
Take them out soul-winding.
Take all those people out there with you.
And he also asked that if we would pray that, you know,
more people would, you know, help out in his church.
I think their church is trying to get a bus because he says he's already filling
up his car every week bringing people, but he can't,
he doesn't have a big enough car to get all the people he could.
So, you know, if they could even have more church transportation,
they would love it.
And he said that their numbers are growing fast.
Church is going well.
And you know what, praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord that this church is doing good.
You say, like, what if this church doesn't know IFB?
I don't care.
You know, when we get into heaven, there's not going to be a new IFB section.
Now, there might be a street where there's a lot of mansions
where a lot of new IFB people live, okay.
And we might call it the new IFB neighborhood,
but there could be other people there, all right.
And you know what, it's not like other people
that aren't new IFB can't do great works for God and can't get people saved
and can't, you know, complete the rest of the great commission
that we've been given.
And, you know, we need to win some more people over.
I am as new IFB as you're going to get.
But you know what?
I would love to encourage other churches to get excited about soul winning.
And if I heard a non-denominational church was going to send a bunch of people
to the Bahamas and preach them the gospel with the King James Bible,
I would say, praise the Lord.
You know what, wouldn't God, all the Lord's people are prophets.
Envious thou for my sake?
I mean, who cares?
I hope that the Bahamas church runs 10,000 people, right?
I mean, we should stop getting, you know, this competition spirit of like,
we're better than other people
and then just trying to get as many people on the team as possible.
Because you know what, soul winning is easy.
So there's nothing to brag about.
OK, like it wasn't like I've been training my whole life.
You know, in many cases, you know, we just we just step out there.
We just say, Lord, do a work and the Lord does the work.
The Lord should get the credit here, folks.
You know, we're entering into other men's labors.
The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labors be few.
And, you know, it's really easy, but we're supposed to do so.
We're supposed to pray.
Go to Matthew nine. I hope you turn there.
Matthew nine is the last verse I want to look at.
I hope that I encourage you to to do some soul winning,
because, you know, frankly, one of the most heart touching things
that I remember from this experience was going to these schools,
talking to these students.
And then getting to read their papers afterwards.
And so I just wanted to kind of read some of the responses.
This is not all of them, it's just a handful,
because we literally got thousands of these.
But one of the students, Shane Johnson,
and the question of how do I get to heaven, he answered, believe.
Question, can I lose my salvation? No.
Did you change your mind today? Yes.
What did you learn today?
I learned that we're all sinners.
That was a great response.
Another one, this was a 15 year old young lady.
How do you go to heaven?
Believe in God and Jesus.
Can you lose your salvation?
No, because it's an eternal gift that Jesus gave us.
Number three, what you used to believe, did that change today?
She says, as a pastor's daughter, I've always believed in God.
But what changed was today is that God
can't take away my salvation if I didn't do what was right.
I mean, here's a young lady that was a pastor's daughter, not safe.
And just just to make it clear,
when we went into this classrooms and we asked the students,
they're all saying repent of your sins, be a good person.
You can lose your salvation.
I'm a weird ass. Hey, what do you have to do to be safe?
Follow the commandments.
Be a good person. Do right.
Go to church. Stop sinning.
That's what all of them were saying.
So for them to say this and just 15, 20 minutes later,
you can tell they had a real heart change.
And I have plenty of papers that still say that.
They still say, like, you can lose your salvation.
You know, you have to stop sinning to be saved.
So not everybody got saved, but many of them did.
Here's another one from Gary says, I don't know. Sorry.
From Gary, it says you have my sermon too long. Sorry.
This is the second sermon, OK?
You have a question of what you have to do to be saved.
I don't know what. Sorry.
This is the devil.
I'm just kidding. All right.
Maybe he doesn't like my phone or something.
That's what it is. OK, thank you.
Sorry, I'll keep the I'll keep the phone as far away as I can.
Can you hear me now? No, it's.
Does it work? Well, I'll just try to bear it through.
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It just really hates this phone now.
Yeah, that's weird. Maybe.
I know. Yeah, I killed the battery.
All right. Got a fresh battery should be good.
OK. No, no one's falling out of the window yet, have they? OK.
All right. Gary said about what you have to be saved,
you have to believe in Jesus Christ and that he died for us.
Can you lose your salvation? No, you can't lose your salvation.
Number three, what did you learn today?
Today, I learned that salvation is the only way to go to heaven
and to believe in Jesus Christ.
Your good doings doesn't take you to heaven. Jesus does.
Thank you for telling me that prayer and saving me from hell.
Now I have my spot in heaven.
I want to share that prayer to everybody to be saved.
God said there is a few people that are going to go to heaven.
Please tell me that prayer again so that we can save souls.
It's another student.
He said, how do you go to heaven?
Believe in God. Can you lose your salvation? No.
What did you used to believe? Did it change today?
Yes, I've learned that Jesus went to hell.
Also, another one said, how do you go to heaven?
Believe in Jesus.
Can you lose salvation?
No, because it's an eternal gift that Jesus gave us.
What you used to believe that changed today?
Yes, that they learned how to be saved.
Another one. What do you have to do to be saved?
Believe and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Can you lose salvation?
No, we cannot lose our salvation. And we are saved forever.
Did you change what you believe?
Yes, I believe what I heard today.
We do not have to repent to be saved.
That was a big that was a big step.
Another student.
What do you believe you have to do to be heaven or believe
that you have to do to go to heaven? Believe and trust in the Lord.
How long are you saved forever?
Did you change your mind? Yes, I did.
Do you have to repent of your sins to be saved?
No, because I believe and trust it in the Lord.
And I have a lot of ones that are just pretty much the same thing, just
lots of just believe.
No, yes, believe.
No, yes, because we're just asking kind of the same questions
just over and over and over.
And, you know, not every school is the same.
Some schools, there are a lot more receptive than others.
There was one school where we kind of
caused that uproar that the Bible says in Acts
where they turn the world upside down.
Kenton ended up messaging me while he was at a different school
because we split up, went to different schools.
And I get this message.
Kenton shared with me because one of the principals
messaged him and said, Good afternoon, Mr.
Knowles, just a little feedback from the students and teachers.
Your visitation caused an uproar on our school campus today.
Some of the students indicated.
Sorry. Some of the students indicated
that the speakers were spreading false doctrine.
Crab gets you, man.
Some of the students indicated
the speakers were spreading false doctrine, for example.
They said they were told they didn't have to repent to be saved
and that they can go to heaven without repenting.
Well, at least they understood the message.
Another indicated that if they commit suicide, they'll go to heaven.
I'm pretty sure that wasn't like, hey, kill yourself.
You're going to have it, OK?
Some got lost in that translation, OK?
Then she's like, another was talking about and then something perverted.
I was just like, of course, they throw in false accusations, too, right?
A number of our students were very upset and they were left feeling
angry and confused as to why the school officials allowed this to happen.
It was really just the teachers that got bad, OK?
Our S.E.M. advisor was also perplexed by some of the teachings
your guests brought to us.
So, I mean, they literally some of these teachers are like hardcore
repent of your sins, work, salvationists, and they would just start
rebuking our soul winners, like right in the middle of their presentation,
you know, because they started figuring out like what's going on.
So sometimes it was hostile territory.
OK, you know what?
Praise God that we had brave people going in there into the snare of the devil
and preaching the gospel because there was tons of students
that did get it and they did get saved.
And think about it.
They've been learning false doctrine for 14 years of their life.
And in 15 minutes, many of them get saved.
You know why?
Not because how great we are, but because how powerful the gospel of Jesus Christ is.
Why? Soul winning is easy.
You know what made someone easy?
The gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yes. Oh, I got to give my testimony of how I changed my life
and I turn from sin and I'm going to.
No, no, no. That's your story.
We're to tell his story.
Amen. And you know what?
Think about how easy I mean, we can give someone saved in 15 minutes
when they've learned false doctrine their whole life.
Why? Because the gospel is so good.
It's so powerful.
If you would just share the gospel, you get many saved.
And, you know, you go to the right place.
It'll just be I mean, a net that you can't even drag in.
Look at verse 38.
The Bible says this.
Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send for the laborers
and his harvest.
You know, we need to do we need to get on our knees tonight
and we need to pray that there is going to be more people to go on these mission trips
and not just the Bahamas everywhere.
But, you know, for those that are saying I'm nervous about soul winning Bahamas.
You say I want it to be easy.
Bahamas. I want it to be fun.
Bahamas. I don't want to eat rat Bahamas.
I want to understand their language.
Bahamas. You know, I mean, it's really.
It's awesome. I can't I can't say enough good things.
And don't just take my word.
Ask the dozens of people that are here this this evening that went with me
and they know and they can testify to the exact same things I'm saying.
This was the greatest soul winning trip I've ever been on my life.
I don't know that I could it could ever get topped, honestly.
But, you know, that doesn't mean there can't be really cool experiences other places.
But you know what?
I want to sell you on this because I want a lot of people to go.
I want to give everyone in the Bahamas the gospel.
It doesn't have to be me.
I just want everyone to get it.
Because so many of them want to get saved and will get saved.
And maybe eventually they'll have to come here and get us saved again.
OK. And I also have been thinking, like, you know, if this tribulation thing kicks up, I need a place to go.
So. Just saying, you know, why not build ourselves a nest egg somewhere?
You know what I mean? OK.
But thank you so much for all of you that prayed for us while we were there and so many of you that came with us.
And, you know, if you plan on coming again in the future, when we go back, we would love to have you.
Please, please do this, though.
Just pray that God would send more laborers there.
Pray that someone could come alongside Brother Kenton and help them in their church.
Pray that that church would continue to grow and get more people saved.
Pray for some of these converts. Pray for Bryant.
Pray for some of these kids because, you know, they've been going to school teaching and repent of their sins for 14 years and they got saved.
But you know what? They're going to have to go to that school again.
And they're going to have to deal with a lot of people that don't want them to do something for God.
And there's a lot of people out there that need someone to love them and give them the gospel and come alongside them and pray for them.
And I pray that we'd raise a generation of people that care about real missions work.
And they'd realize how easy it truly is.
Let's close in prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for this church and thank you so much for giving us opportunities to go out and preach the gospel.
I think you're making the gospel so easy.
Thank you for doing all the hard part.
Thank you for making it so that we can just go out and have no real skill or power of our own, but rather through just faith in the gospel, we could see multitudes saved and we could gather in more than we can even catch.
I pray that you would raise up an army of soul winners and missionaries that want to go and spread the gospel the whole world, not just to build a well, not just to build a hut, but rather build a church of people that love God to fulfill the Great Commission.
And I pray that we would never lose sight of the reason why we're here.
It's to save souls and to catch men.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.