Now, one of the things that I've been attacked for by our independent fundamental Baptist
brethren who are a little nervous about people like us and our friends.
They said this, and I've heard this many times, he's trying to change what it means to be
a fundamental Baptist.
A lot of people have said, you know, Pastor Steven Anderson is very dangerous.
He's trying to change what it means to be a fundamental Baptist.
And let me tell you something, that is exactly what I'm trying to do.
You see, my goal is that someday when people hear the term fundamental Baptist, they're
going to think of us.
They're going to think of churches like Faithful Word, Steadfast, Verity, Old Path.
They're going to think of churches like us, and we are going to change what it means to
be a fundamental Baptist.
And a lot of times we're called the new IFB and we call other IFB churches, IFB stands
for independent fundamental Baptist.
We call them the old IFB, but you know what, eventually we're going to stop calling ourselves
the new IFB.
Because eventually the newness is going to wear off, amen?
So we can't call ourselves the new IFB forever.
Eventually you know what we're going to be called?
Because a lot of people are like, what are you going to call yourself?
You know what we're just going to call ourselves?
Independent fundamental Baptist.
Because we're going to change what it means, yup.
Your fears.
Oh, be very afraid.
Be very afraid because we are changing what it means to be an independent fundamental
Baptist because while the rest of the independent fundamental Baptists are afraid to put their
sermons out on YouTube, they're afraid to preach from the house tops, they're afraid
to get arrested, they're afraid to preach hard and get in the news and get in the face
of this world and point our finger and say, thus saith the Lord.
Look, they're afraid of that.
They're going to become irrelevant.
That which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
And pretty soon we're just going to be the IFB.
There are going to be hundreds of us.
That's what I believe is going to happen.
There's just going to be hundreds of churches like ours and their churches will be forgotten.
And let me tell you something.
There are so many big Baptist movements that have existed in the past that have just died.
You don't even think about them anymore.
Like for example, think about the BBF, Baptist Bible Fellowship.
When I was a kid, who's ever heard of the Baptist Bible Fellowship?
Three people have even heard of it out of 175 people.
Three people have heard of it.
When I was a kid, I mean, BBF, Baptist Bible Fellowship, that was a big thing.
But it's dying.
Nobody knows anymore.
American Baptist Association, the ABA, General Association of Regular Baptists, GARB.
There are all these Baptist denominations that have sprung up, Baptist movements of
the past that at one time were a fired up growing movement.
Churches were growing.
Churches are being planted.
Churches are being sent.
But nowadays, if you went to these churches, it'll just be a few gray hairs left.
They're running eight people that are 80, right?
And there's no growth.
There's no youth.
And it's just dying.
Oh, they're still out there.
Look it up.
There are thousands of these churches across America, super tiny Baptist churches.
Everybody's elderly.
And they're just, they're done.
They had their heyday though.
They had their glory days in the past.
But that is exactly what would happen to the independent fundamental Baptist if we
don't reinvent and restore the old paths.
Are you still there in Isaiah 58?
Look down at Isaiah 58 verse 12.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places.
Thou shall raise up the foundations of many generations.
Thou shall be called, watch this, the repairer of the breach.
What is a breach?
A breach is a hole in something.
See things get old, they decay, they get holes in them.
And so a great man of God comes along and starts some fired up soul winning movement,
missions movement, church planting movement, Baptist movement.
And look, there have been men like that all throughout the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s.
There have always been these leaders that were visionary and they're preaching the word
of God and they're filled with the spirit and they're doing great things.
They start these great movements.
They evangelize areas, they evangelize whole nations, okay?
But then what happens?
They get old, they die, and then the next generation just ends up just fading away and
just letting it die.
How many times that happened in the book of Judges?
Over and over again.
I mean, you have these, you know, Joshua and then it just, you know, Othniel and then it
just dies.
And then somebody else has to come along, right?
And rekindle the flames.
Ehud has to come along, Barak has to come along, Gideon has to come along, Jephthah
has to come along, Samson has to come along.
You have to have these great leaders constantly rising up and reigniting the flame, relaying
the foundation of many generations.
But it's not enough to just relay that foundation of many generations.
We also need to repair the breach.
What does that mean?
That means we need to fix the holes and fix the problems.
That means that we need to, yes, reignite the fire of the independent fundamental Baptist
movement, but we also need to tighten it up a little bit.
You know, we don't want to just say, hey, we're not going to let the independent fundamental
Baptist movement die.
This is the movement that we grew up in.
This is the movement that reached us with the gospel.
This is the movement that got us saved.
We don't want to let it die.
So we're just going to be exactly like they are.
No, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to keep the movement alive, but we're going to actually, but you know, we
found a little hole in it.
We're going to plug that hole.
Yeah, we're going to, we're going to relay the foundation for our generation, rekindle
the fire in the house of God, but we're also going to repair the breach.
We're going to restore the paths to dwell in.
So we're not going to say, let's be identical to the previous generation.
We're going to take all the good things that the previous generation gave us.
We're going to take the wonderful things they gave us, like the King James Bible, the
hard preaching, the clothing standards, the conservative music, the door-to-door sewing.
We want to keep all that intact, but you know, we're also going to fix some of these things,
like the fact that some of the preaching in the last generation was a little too shallow.
So we want to dig deep, right?
Because if we're going to be a fundamentalist, fundamentalism has been equated with being
uneducated and shallow, but what about what the Bible said?
When we were going through the Bible, looking up what it meant to be a fundamentalist, do
you remember when Jesus said he dug deep and build a foundation?
Hey, we're fundamentalists, but we're not the shallow kind of fundamentalist.
We're not a fundamentalist that puts down just a little shallow concrete foundation.
Oh no, we're going to dig deep down to the bedrock and build a deeper foundation.
We want to be more intelligent, more educated.
We want to study to show ourselves approved unto God, and you know what, we're going to
teach our people doctrine.
We're going to teach them doctrine.
We're not going to say, well, you know, let me just give you a little shallow sermon,
and if you want to go deep, well, here's the phone number of the Bible college.
They'll take you deeper.
No, I'll take you deeper on Sunday morning.
We'll take you deeper on Sunday night.
We're going to take you deeper on Wednesday night.
We're going to preach doctrine.
Geek on the family.
Hey, we'll fix that.
We're going to throw the birth control pills down the toilet.
Actually, no, we're not going to do that because then they're going to contaminate the water
supply.
We're going to take the birth control pills and take them to one of those dispensaries
where you dispose of unused drugs because we don't want to sterilize the whole stinking
community by flushing it down the toilet and getting it in the water.
Hey, we're going to encourage homeschooling.
We're going to encourage people to raise their children, to keep them in the service, to
have it family integrated.
We're going to fix that breach of being negative toward big families and us for no more.
And we're going to tighten that thing up.
Amen.