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 gonna think of us.
They're gonna think of churches like Faithful Words,
Steadfast, Verity, Old Path.
They're gonna think of churches like us.
And we are gonna change what it means
to be a fundamental Baptist.
And you know, 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 gonna stop
calling ourselves the new IFB.
Because eventually the newness is gonna wear off, amen?
So we can't call ourselves the new IFB forever.
Eventually, you know what we're gonna be called?
'Cause a lot of people are like,
what are you gonna call yourself, you know?
You know what we're just gonna call ourselves?
Independent Fundamental Baptist.
Because we're gonna change what it means, yep.
Your fear is, 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 housetops,
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.
They're going, you know,
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, right?
Like, for example,
think about the BBF, Baptist Bible Fellowship.
You know, when I was a kid,
who's ever heard of the Baptist Bible Fellowship?
Okay, three people have even heard of it
out of 175 people, right?
Three people have heard of it, okay.
Well, 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.
You know, 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,
missionaries 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.
Look, that is exactly what would happen
to the independent fundamental Baptists
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 ways places,
thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations,
thou shalt 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 planning movement,
Baptist movement.
And look, there have been men like that
all throughout the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s.
There've 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 did that happen 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.
Sampson 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 gonna 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.
So we're just gonna be exactly like they are.
No, this is what we're gonna do.
We're gonna keep the movement alive,
but we're gonna actually,
but you know what, we found a little hole in it.
We're gonna plug that hole.
Yeah, we're gonna relay the foundation for our generation,
rekindle the fire in the house of God,
but we're also gonna repair the breach.
We're gonna restore the paths to dwell in.
So we're not gonna say let's be identical
to the previous generation.
We're gonna take all the good things
that the previous generation gave us.
We're gonna 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 wanna keep all that intact.
But you know, we're also gonna fix some of these things
like the fact that some of the preaching
in the last generation was a little too shallow.
So we wanna dig deep, right?
Because if we're gonna 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 fundamentalists.
We're not a fundamentalist that puts down
just a little shallow concrete foundation.
Oh no, we're gonna dig deep down to the bedrock
and build a deeper foundation.
We want to be more intelligent, more educated.
We wanna study to show ourselves approved unto God.
And you know what?
We're gonna teach our people doctrine.
- Amen.
- We're gonna teach them doctrine.
We're not gonna 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 gonna take you deeper on Wednesday night.
We're gonna preach doctrine.
Weak on the family, hey, we'll fix that.
We're gonna throw the birth control pills down the toilet.
Actually, no, we're not gonna do that
'cause then they're gonna contaminate the water supply.
We're gonna take the birth control pills
and take 'em to one of those dispensaries
where you dispose of unused drugs
'cause we don't wanna sterilize the whole stinking community
by flushing it down the toilet and getting it in the water.
Hey, we're gonna encourage homeschooling.
We're gonna encourage people to raise their children,
to keep them in the service, to have it family integrated.
We're gonna fix that breach
of being negative toward big families and us four no more,
and we're gonna tighten that thing up, amen?