to everything that we believe.
And Father, I thank you so much for dying on the cross for us,
saving us, dear God,
giving us a home in heaven,
washing all of our sins away.
Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift, the Bible says.
And God, I thank you so much that there are still people in 2007 who want to come to church on Sunday night,
even though many churches have their doors closed, but they're here on Sunday night.
They want to learn the Bible. Nobody's making them be here. There's no rule saying to be here, but
they love God. They want to know the Bible. They want to be with God's people and fellowship with one another.
And so, Father, I just pray to you, bless the remainder of the service, bless the preaching,
and in Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Now, Psalm 11, 3, this is one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 11.
And verse number 3 reads,
If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
If the foundations be destroyed.
I love the short verses in the Bible where God just makes such a profound statement.
If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
And then, of course, in verse number 1 of chapter 12, he says,
Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men.
Now, I want to talk to you about a specific word tonight.
And in fact, it's a word that's not even in the Bible that I'm going to talk to you about.
You say, boy, are we a faithful or Baptist church? Yes, you're still a faithful or Baptist church.
But, you know, there's a word, and if you open up, you've probably seen this before,
this invitation that we hand out.
You might have seen several thousand of these if you go soul-winning, okay?
And there's a list of different things that describe our church in this.
And there's a word in here that we have here, you know, we have separated, soul-winning.
That means we go out and get people saved.
Independent, that means we're not being controlled by a denomination,
by some kind of a bishop or archbishop somewhere telling us what to do.
Non-charismatic, that means we don't roll in the aisles and slob on ourselves and speak in tongues and all that kind of stuff.
King James Bible only, enough said on that one.
And then there's another word that I want to preach on tonight, fundamental.
Fundamental, it says.
Now, I'll be honest with you, I've thought about removing the word fundamental.
You say, what?
Pastor Anderson's changing, becoming a liberal.
Now, this is why, let me give you some reasons why I thought about removing the word fundamental.
And then I'm going to preach a sermon.
The title of the sermon is what I mean by fundamental, okay?
And it's obviously going to be based on the Bible.
What do I mean by fundamental?
Why does it say fundamental in there?
Why do I call myself an independent Baptist?
Yes, but I call myself a fundamental Baptist.
Well, the reason that I've taken out or thought about taking out the word fundamental
and not using that word anymore is because, number one,
independent fundamental Baptists are becoming kind of a denomination in and of itself.
And there are a lot of things that most independent fundamental Baptists believe that I do not believe.
And so I don't want to be automatically lumped in.
You know, people think that this is another franchise of Burger King,
that when they come to this church, oh, here's another independent fundamental Baptist church.
There are so many things that the independent fundamental Baptist, quote unquote,
movement has become so liberal on.
I want to distance myself from that and just say, look, I am an independent Baptist.
You will not find it.
Some people come to this church and they hear the preaching
and they're a little surprised by some of the things that we believe
because it's not the typical parroted, you know, independent fundamental Baptist mantra, okay?
We are King James Bible only to the extreme at this church, okay?
We have the most fundamental music.
We have the most conservative music imaginable here, okay?
We have door-to-door soul winning.
We live or die by door-to-door soul winning.
Okay, we're all about soul winning, on and on.
But there are some things that separate us, and I've preached old sermons on that.
Anyone who listens to a few sermons, anyone who goes to the website will see right away
that this church is a little bit different than the average independent fundamental Baptist church,
which is becoming very worldly, contemporary, and so forth.
And so that's one reason why I've thought about taking out the word fundamental.
But number two, the other reason I thought about getting rid of it is because there are a lot of people
that teach that the word fundamentalist means that you believe that the only thing that matters
are just the most crucial fundamentals of the faith.
That's all that matters, and we won't separate from anybody
as long as they believe these five fundamental things, I've heard people say.
There's a list of five that some guy back in 1918 came up with,
and some Presbyterian said, he was a Presbyterian, and he said,
these are the five fundamentals of it, you know, the Bible's perfect, you know, this and that.
Hey, it's five things, and we should never disagree with anybody who agrees with us on these five things,
and let's just not worry about any of the specifics.
Let's not worry about doctrinal differences.
Let's not worry if they believe a little different than us on this or that or the other.
Hey, it doesn't matter if you're a Baptist or Presbyterian or Methodist,
as long as we agree on the basic fundamentals.
That is not what I mean by fundamental.
And so let me just explain to you what I mean by fundamental.
Look at you would at Hebrews chapter 6 at the end of the New Testament.
The reason I preach this kind of sermon is because I want you to understand
why we believe the way we believe, why we do things the way we do.
Why would we use the word fundamental? Why?
Well, let me tell you three things that fundamentalism means to me,
three things that it means to be fundamental to me from the Bible.
Now, let me explain to you the word fundamental, the fundament of something.
We're talking about the foundation. That would be the modern word.
So, although the word fundamental is not in the Bible,
the word foundation and foundational is in the Bible many times,
and that's where we derive the word fundamental.
It comes from the word foundation.
You have to picture a foundation like a concrete slab that something is built upon.
Look, if you would, at Hebrews chapter 6.
The Bible reads in verse number 1,
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ,
he means the first five chapters,
he's been talking about the principles of the doctrine of Christ.
Now, he's in chapter 6, he's saying,
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ,
let us go on into perfection, not laying again the foundation
of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
of the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of hands
and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment.
And this is what we do if God permit.
Now, what he's saying here is that there are some certain foundational doctrines
about what we believe.
He says, before you go on to perfection,
before you go on to understand the deep truths of the Bible,
hey, before you go on to learn all the complicated ideas,
the Bible is as deep a book.
I mean, it's God's word.
It's going to be as profound and deep as God is, inexhaustible.
But he says, before you go on to those things,
you must learn some basic foundational truths.
So number one, what fundamentalism means to me
is that we believe and emphasize the foundational truths of the Bible.
I'm talking about the basics.
I mean, the most basic core truths of the Bible
is what we emphasize and what we believe.
Now, look at these things that are listed here.
Repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
the doctrine of baptisms, laying on of hands,
resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment.
Six things here that are listed that God says,
these are some of the most basic foundational truths.
Hey, this is what we need to be preaching in 2007.
This is what we need to believe in 2007.
Like, for example, repentance from dead works.
People, I was just talking to Brother Dave before the service.
He was visiting a church that he goes to a lot in Chicago.
And he went to that church this morning.
And a guest speaker was filling in for the pastor.
And he gets up and starts blowing off his mouth about this repentance.
Well, there's not enough emphasis on repentance.
And you believe in repentance.
They're hand in hand.
If you didn't repent of your sins, you must not really believe type of thing.
And he's getting up and preaching this heresy, this garbage.
Now is the time for us to reaffirm,
to say we believe in the foundational truth found in Hebrews chapter 6,
that repentance is a repentance from dead works.
And it results in faith toward God, not a repentance from sin.
Dead works is not sin.
You must understand the book of Hebrews, the whole book of Hebrews,
is talking about the sacrifices that are offered every day
and every year, in many cases, depending on which sacrifice you're talking about.
He says they cannot make the comers they're on too perfect.
He said it cannot take away sins.
He said the blood of bulls and of goats has never taken away sins.
Now in the Old Testament, it didn't take away sins.
Killing an animal on an altar never took away anybody's sins.
He says the works that they do,
it's works that they're trusting in to get them to heaven,
they're trusting in these daily offerings,
this daily visit to the temple,
or their daily walk with God,
their daily church attendance, in many cases.
You know, the Roman Catholics would go to church every day in many cases in America.
I've talked to them.
He says, no, you must repent of your dead works
and you must believe on Jesus Christ as your only way to heaven.
See, it's a repentance from believing in works salvation
and a faith in God to get you to heaven, not yourself,
but what Jesus Christ has already done on the cross.
He says, that's the most foundational truth, the gospel,
salvation, repentance from dead works, faith toward God.
I've talked to people before, missionaries have called me
and they want me to give them money.
And so they call me up
and you know, they're going to be putting their foot forward.
They've looked at the website
or they might have heard about me or whatever.
And so they kind of know what I'm about.
So they're going to kind of put that foot forward
because they want money, right?
And so they'll say things that are very ambiguous
because they want as many people
to be able to agree with them as possible.
They want as many people to give them money as possible.
And so this is the most popular thing now
in people's statement of faith about what they believe.
You'll see this.
I mean, if you look at church website,
you see this everywhere.
It'll say, we believe that salvation is,
and then they do a quotation mark,
repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, the reason that they do that,
they don't want to say what they actually believe
that that means.
Because then they're dividing people
between the people who believe in work salvation,
repentance, repent of your sins,
and people who believe it's all by grace or faith,
easy believism, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
So what they do is they take a quote from the Bible
because who's going to disagree with a quote from the Bible?
I'm not.
But they put that out there just,
and I remember I talked to a guy the other day,
he called me up and he wanted money.
And I said, well, what do you believe about salvation?
You know, what do you believe about repentance?
And he said, oh, I strongly believe it,
repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
But he wouldn't go any further than that.
He wouldn't explain what he meant by that
because he's trying to be on the fence
and he's trying to have it both ways,
trying to butter both sides of his bread, so to speak.
Well, repentance toward God and faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ,
why don't you put that in the context of Hebrew chapter six,
where he tells you the exact same statement,
but he specifically says what you're repenting from,
dead works.
Well, why don't you go where we were this morning
in Acts chapter 19, verse four,
where he said, John preached the baptism of repentance,
saying that they should believe on him
which afterwards should come, that is Christ sees us.
Hey, repentance there, when John the Baptist was preaching,
was repent and believe the gospel,
repent and believe on the one
that's gonna come after me, Jesus Christ.
And so that's where repentance is, according to the Bible.
These are the foundational truths.
I was thinking about on Tuesday
when I was up in New Mexico preaching, you know,
and I preached the sermon
about the doctrine of exclusivism.
And to me, it's such a simple subject,
such a basic truth.
So many people are looking for some kind of acute sermon,
some novel idea.
My sermons are so simple.
You know, I think about the list of the titles of my sermons
and they're just very simple ideas.
I mean, hey, good night.
How complicated is it to come up with these sermons?
It's pretty easy.
That's how I can do it three times a week.
It's so simple.
The doctrine of exclusivism.
You wanna hear my, well, Pastor Anderson,
what fancy idea did you wow them with?
What great sermon did you find somewhere in a book
or come up with some, hey, it's so simple.
It's the doctrine that Jesus Christ
is the only way to heaven
and that without Jesus Christ, there's no salvation.
Okay, well, isn't that complicated?
But at the same time, talk to young people,
talk to teenagers, talk to adults
who've grown up in church their whole life
and they'll say, well, I don't really know.
I believe Jesus knew I would have him,
but what about this situation?
I'm not really sure what God would do.
And then it's that, and you're like, what?
Have you ever read the Bible?
I mean, have you known the most foundational doctrines
from the Bible?
I mean, do you know the most basic teachings of the Bible?
That's what I mean by fundamentalism
is a preaching that lays the foundations strongly
in our churches.
See, God said in Psalm 11 three,
if the foundations be destroyed,
what can the righteous do?
I mean, it's great, all the other things we believe,
but he says, if you don't nail down
the foundational teachings of the Bible,
salvation by grace through faith,
the doctrine of baptism,
that's why I preached on this morning, baptism.
You say, good night, everybody knows about baptism.
You know what?
Even if there's this one thing
that you picked up this morning
and started on baptism night,
and you probably picked up more than that,
but baptism is an important foundational doctrine
according to the Bible.
It has to be emphasized
because we don't wanna let these foundations
slip out from under us.
Our whole building's gonna come crashing down.
Who cares what we believe about dust and snow?
Who cares what we believe about soul winning
if we don't even know what the gospel is?
Who cares what we believe about the methods
of preaching the gospel
if we don't even know that salvation
is faith in Jesus Christ?
Then what's the point of what we believe about soul winning?
Who cares what we believe about reading the Bible daily
if we don't even know where the Bible is?
I remember I was listening to a tape
from Dr. Roland Rasmussen,
who was my parents' pastor when they were growing up
back in the 1960s.
They got saved in his church in Canoga Park, California.
And I was listening to a tape from him,
and the sermon was called 1 John 5.7.
There's a whole sermon about how 1 John 5.7
belongs in the Bible.
He's defending the King James and going through all this.
Really, a fascinating sermon.
And I remember he said that he'd been pastoring
for years and years at this point.
Pastoring for years.
He'd gone to Bible college.
I think he had about six degrees from Bible college.
I mean, he had like two doctorates,
a couple of master's degrees,
a couple of master's degrees.
He'd been a college professor for 10 years.
And a lady walked up to him,
and it was a missionary's wife
that was there visiting in town.
He told the story.
She walked up to him and held in one hand,
this is back in the early 70s.
She held up in one hand a copy of the King James Bible.
And she held up in the other hand
a copy of the New American Standard Version.
And she said, Pastor Rasmussen,
which of these do you think is better?
And he sat there and he said,
you know, I have this,
and he started listing his degrees in the sermon.
He's like, I have this degree, this degree, this degree.
I've done this and this and this.
Yet he didn't even know the most basic, right?
He didn't even know the most basic truth.
And he was basically saying that it,
it kind of struck him as weird at the time, you know,
that somebody can ask him such a basic fundamental question,
like, which Bible should I be reading?
Like, which one's the right Bible?
Like, what's the basis for everything we believe?
And he said, I've had all this training.
I've had all this education.
But he said, I didn't even know
which Bible is the right Bible.
And he told her, he said, I don't know.
And he said, just give me a little bit of time
and I'm gonna answer that question for you.
And he went back to his office and he,
and I said, God, what, will you show me
what the answer is here?
I mean, I can't believe I don't know
which Bible is the right Bible.
And he'd been taught in college
that the New American Standard was right.
His whole, you know, all the college and everything I got.
And he got them out and he just started looking through them
and it took him 30 minutes of just praying
and just looking at both of them.
And he said, you know, the King James Bible
is the right Bible.
And then he said, it took him several years after that
to say the King James Bible is without error.
Because he said, I was so brainwashed
at that college that I went to, Bob Jones University.
He said, I was so brainwashed.
Took me years to be able to realize
that the King James Bible is without error.
And that's what he stood on that
for years and years and years.
And he was somebody who really took a hard stand on that
and spoke out about that years and years
before many people were taking that hard stand.
But that's what I'm talking about, being a fundamentalist.
I mean, going back to the basics of what we believe.
Look at 1 Corinthians 3, if you would.
1 Corinthians 3.
You see, we can have all the adorning of what we believe.
We can have all the applications and everything.
But if we don't have the foundation right,
if we don't have the fundamental right.
I mean, think about mathematics.
There are fundamentals of mathematics.
If you don't have the basics,
if you don't learn the two plus two is four,
if you don't learn the multiplication tables,
you're not gonna, you're gonna fail at geometry.
You're gonna fail at calculus.
It must be line upon line.
The Bible reads Isaiah, I forget which chapter,
precept upon precept, line upon line.
The truths of the Bible build upon one another.
Remember in 2 Peter chapter one,
where he says, give me all diligence,
add to your faith virtue, add to virtue knowledge.
Hey, add to knowledge temperance and on and on.
He says, there's a developmental pattern
that you have to follow in this order
where you're gonna first be baptized after you get saved.
You know, then you're gonna add to your faith virtue.
You know, you're gonna add to your virtue knowledge
and you have to go in that order.
People talk about charity.
Don't talk about charity until you get the knowledge.
You gotta get the order right there.
And so if you don't know the fundamentals,
and I was thinking about,
back to what I was saying on Tuesday,
you know, just preaching the most basic truth.
But people were thinking, wow, that's an interesting,
wow, good night.
And I'm thinking to myself, it's pretty basic, you know,
pretty basic idea for a sermon.
And then I remember I started preaching in the summer.
I started preaching against this false repentance.
And I made it clear.
I told the story about the two Mormon ladies that were here.
You remember them?
And I told the story about how I gave her the gospel.
I went through the whole thing with her.
I went through, it's all by faith.
It's believe, and I showed her,
I showed her, I was saying right here,
you probably remember,
I showed her probably, you know,
25 scriptures about that.
And she said to me, what about repentance?
And I used that as an illustration on Tuesday.
And showed how this is what the Mormons are teaching.
You know, this is what the false religions are teaching.
They have to give up your sins, it's work salvage.
And I went through and proved it from the Bible
and explained it in my sermon.
And you know, people were just,
you could just tell that people were surprised
that I would preach on such a controversial subject.
But listen to me, that's not a controversial subject.
That is the number one basic truth
that God listed in Hebrews chapter six,
when he said, leaving the principles of the doctrine
of Christ, let us go on to perfection,
not laying again the foundation of repentance
from dead works and the faith toward God.
That's the first thing that he mentioned.
He said, if there's one thing you learn,
learn this one thing.
Learn what repentance really is.
It's repenting of work salvation
and believing on Jesus Christ as your only way to heaven.
Hey, that's the foundational truth.
I mean, they should have been looking at me saying,
why is he saying that?
Good night, we know this.
And they did know that, I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying that the people that were there
did not know it.
But I think they were just a little bit surprised
that somebody would hit on such a volatile subject
because usually a visiting preacher just comes through
and just preaches something cute is what it is.
There's nothing cute about exclusivism.
Hey, there's nothing cute about saying
that there's only one way to heaven,
but it's the most foundational truth of the Bible.
And so it must be preached.
But look at 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse 18.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3, 18,
let no man deceive himself.
That any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world,
let him become a fool that he may be wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
For it is written,
he had taken the wise in their own craftiness.
And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise
that they're vain.
Therefore, let no man glory in men, it says.
No glory in a person.
For all things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world
or life or death or things present or things to come,
all are yours and your Christ and Christ is God's.
What's he saying here?
He's saying the wisdom of this world
is foolishness with God.
And look at that statement.
I like this statement.
It says, if any man among you
seemeth to be wise in this world,
let him become a fool that he may be wise.
See, he's talking about a person
who thinks that they know everything that's very wise.
He says, what that person needs to do is become a fool.
What, they need to be stupid?
No, he's saying they need to go back all the way
to spiritual preschool.
Now, can you imagine a grown man
going back to kindergarten and sitting in a classroom
with a bunch of little kids and just an adult sitting there
and learning A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
He says, look, it's kind of foolish.
But he says, if you want to be wise
with God's kind of wisdom, you must humble yourself.
Hey, there are many times when I've had to humble myself
and say, you know, all the wisdom,
all the things that I've learned,
when I put it next to the Bible, it might be wrong.
And so I have to humble myself
and maybe strip myself of some things that I assume
or things that I've been taught
and come to the Bible as a fool
and get on my knees and say,
God, would you teach me what real wisdom is?
I mean, not the wisdom that I have in my own mind,
not the wisdom I have in my own conceits
where I'm prideful and I think I know everything
and I have the education.
And like Dr. Roxman said,
you know, I've had the six, seven, eight degrees.
Hey, he had to come to the point
where he had to become a fool.
I don't think his degree was helping him that day.
I think he just got on his knees with the Bible
and said, God, will you show me God what the truth is?
Will you show me what I need to know?
And that's why he's saying here,
hey, if you think you're wise,
according to this world's wisdom
and you've got their worldly wisdom together,
he said the wisdom in this world is foolishness with God.
You need to become a fool with God
so that God can make you very wise
and teach you the truth.
See, what does it mean?
It means getting back to the fundamentals.
It means stopping and going back
and examining the most basic truth of the Bible
and learning what the Bible teaches
on the most basic things
so that you have a solid foundation
on which to build everything else you believe,
which leads me into my second point,
which is this.
Well, before I get into that, I'm sorry.
Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11.
Let me show you one other thing.
My second point is that fundamentalism to me,
number one, it means,
number one, that fundamentalism means
that we're kind of back to the basics
and what we believe.
Back to the foundational things,
that's what we emphasize.
We want to make sure the foundation is solid
because if the foundations are destroyed,
we can't accomplish anything,
according to Psalm 11 three.
My second point is that fundamental means to me
that everything we believe is built
on the foundation of the Bible.
And we're going to get to that in a moment.
But before we get there,
look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse number one.
The Bible reads,
would to God you could bear with me a little in my folly
and indeed bear with me.
For I am jealous over you with the godly jealousy.
For I have espoused you to one husband
that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety,
so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ.
See, the word simplicity in the Bible,
sometimes it's used negatively
and sometimes it's used positively.
Sometimes it's used negatively in a sense of
people who are simple, like they don't study,
they don't learn, they don't educate themselves.
They're just kind of a simpleton,
you know, just kind of a dumb person.
Not because they're just, you know,
somebody who just says, I don't want to learn.
You know, the Bible talks about people
who will not hear instruction in the book of Proverbs.
They won't increase learning.
They won't seek wise counsels from the Bible and so forth.
He's saying that type of person is a simple one.
They're not smart.
They need to become wise.
And we're not talking about the world's kind of wisdom.
We're not talking about a 4.0 GPA or an IQ score.
We're talking about the wisdom that comes from God,
God's kind of wisdom.
But simplicity in the Bible is also used
in a very positive way.
Because the Bible says right here,
don't let anybody corrupt you or beguile you or deceive you
and get you away from the simplicity that's in Christ.
You see, the reason why is because Bible doctrine,
whether you agree with it or not,
Bible doctrine is very simple.
Bible doctrine is very black and white.
It's not complicated at all.
Most false doctrine, very complicated.
For example, salvation by works, that's complicated.
How much good works do you have to do?
How bad do you have to sin to not be saved?
How good is good?
You know, they say, well, I think I'm going to heaven
because I'm a good person.
You got to live right.
You got to at least try.
How do you measure that?
How good do you have to be?
How bad do you have to be?
How hard do you have to try?
You have to try a little bit, a lot.
See how complicated that is?
I couldn't even begin to try to decide
how good a person has to be to go to heaven.
I'll go with what the Bible says.
You have to be perfect to go to heaven.
Nobody's perfect.
We're all sinners.
It's got to be through faith in Jesus.
And so it's complicated.
Losing your salvation, complicated.
Oh, what do you have to do to lose it?
How bad do you have to sin to lose it?
Doesn't make any sense.
You can't lose it.
It's eternal.
It's everlasting.
People say, if you commit suicide, you'll go to hell.
Not true.
If you're saved, you'll go to heaven.
It doesn't matter.
If I kill myself right now, I go to heaven.
According to the Bible.
But that's a complicated doctrine because what's suicide?
What if somebody's about to die anyway
and they kill themselves?
What about some guy who lives a very destructive lifestyle
like these rock stars where they take all these drugs
and then they OD and they might have survived,
they might die.
I mean, there's so many gray areas about that.
What it means to kill oneself.
Did Samson kill himself?
Some people would say yes, some people would say no.
He said, let me die with the Philistines
and he smashed in a building on himself.
He knew what he was doing,
but he was also doing it to defeat God's enemies.
Hey, is that suicide?
See what a gray area that is?
Whenever you step out of the realm of God's clear doctrine,
if you believe you're saved eternally,
you get into just complicated gray areas.
Actually, what I believe after the service about anything,
I could probably answer you in 10 or 15 seconds
because I give you a clear answer.
Because I'm not a politician.
I'm not George W. Bush tonight.
Okay, trying to beat around the Bush,
trying to get some complicated,
well, you know, this and that and blah, blah, blah.
Hey, I'm not a politician.
You're not voting for me.
You can vote by not coming back, okay?
And so you don't vote for me.
I'm not a politician.
And so I'll give you a clear answer because it's basic.
You believe that a person could lose a salvation?
Never and no why Jesus said,
I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee.
Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
No way, no wise, no how.
I can't lose it.
But whenever you step out of that realm,
you get into just complicated doctrine.
And of course there are people in the Bible like King Saul,
who just totally killed himself.
Again, he's about to die.
So what?
Okay, it doesn't matter.
It has nothing to do with anything.
It's complicated doctrine when you step out
of the simplicity that's in Christ.
100% faith, 0% works.
All Jesus, nothing about works.
That's simple.
And see, that's the way the Bible is.
Think about this doctrine of Hades and Sheol,
paradise and all this stuff.
Hey, it's complicated.
I don't even think the people who are teaching it
understand that it's so complicated.
Is this simple enough?
You die when you're saved, you go to heaven,
you die and you're not saved, you go to hell.
That's what the Bible says.
Very simple.
No limbo, no purgatory, no paradiso, no Hades and Sheol.
No, it's just not there.
Think about going back to the Greek.
Gets so complicated.
And yet the same people will go back to the Greek
and analyze one word,
yet they've not read the Bible through 100 times.
They've not memorized the Bible.
I would say to any of these people,
why don't you memorize the entire Bible
before you're gonna dissect one word
and worry about one word.
You're missing the simplicity.
People go down deep and try to find
all these hidden meanings, the Bible code.
If you look at the 25th chapter of every book
and you divide it by threes,
it's like, hey, do you know the basics?
Can you follow the basics of the Bible
before you get into all this beef?
That's what fundamentalism means to me.
Think about situational ethics.
I'm just talking about all false doctrines
that are complicated.
Situational ethics, it's complicated.
Well, what's right in this situation
is not necessarily right in this situation.
And we believe in absolute truth.
What's right is always right.
What's wrong is always wrong.
It never changes.
It doesn't matter the situation.
It's just right is right and wrong is wrong.
I was thinking about my little sister.
She went to Bible college
at Golden State Baptist College
in Santa Clara, California.
She went to this Bible college
and they had a big, thick rule book,
60-page long rule book to go to this college.
And man, they're telling you, do this, don't do this,
get up at this time, wear this, act this,
say this, do this.
I mean, it's just so complicated.
There are four different kinds of clothing that you're like,
casual, semi-casual, formal, athletic.
It's just so complicated.
They just have to legislate to them
every little thing that they do.
Well, they had a rule in the rule book in this college.
Not allowed to go to the movies.
And if you went to the movies,
you'd be expelled from the college.
That's a pretty big punishment, right?
I mean, go watch a movie, hit the theater, expelled.
Now, I don't go to the movies.
And I don't think it's right to go to the movies
because of the content of what's being played there.
I mean, it's worldly, sinful, sub.
But this is what they did while she's there.
They would have everybody get together
and they would project on the wall a movie.
And it was the same movies.
And they'd turn off all the lights, they'd all sit around,
and they would create in the college
a virtual movie theater, and they'd play it on the wall.
And this is the movie that they're watching, Ice Age.
It's like a Disney movie that's totally about evolution.
It's totally against God.
I mean, it's got an agenda behind it of promoting evolution
and not promoting creation at all.
It's Ice Age.
And I remember my sister refused to go to this movie.
And she said, no.
Our friends are like, oh, we're going to watch this.
The college is playing this for us.
She said, no, I'm not gonna watch some movie
that's promoting evolution.
I'm not gonna watch a movie
that's against what the Bible teaches.
I don't care if the college is condoning it.
Hey, I don't care if they were to be inconsistent.
And I have a rule that if you get kicked out,
if you go to a movie, and I guarantee that there are movies
that are probably not as bad as Ice Age.
There are probably movies that are not promoting
as wrong of a concept.
But if you go there, you get kicked out.
But if you sit down and watch With Us,
as long as you're watching it with us, it's okay.
You can watch Ice Age and Monsters, Inc.
and all these kind of wrong movies.
Hey, that's not consistent.
That's hypocrisy.
But see, when you start deciding
that you're the judge of what's right and wrong,
instead of God's the judge of what's right and wrong,
you get into complicated inconsistencies.
Well, you know, it's wrong to go to a theater,
but I can watch the same movie in my house, and that's okay.
What?
What is wrong with a movie theater?
Now, don't get me wrong, I never go to a movie.
I haven't been to the movie theater,
and I don't know how long.
It's been years and years and years
since I've been to a movie theater.
But the movie theater's not wrong,
it's not the popcorn,
it's not the building,
it's not the soda fountain,
it's not the jujubes that cost like three times
as much as they should,
it's not the $4 box of milk that's wrong
about the movie theater,
although that is just criminal, what they're charging.
Hey, that's not what's wrong with it.
Hey, the movie that's being played
is what's wrong with it.
And what happens is people drift away from fundamentalism.
It means they have no basis for what they believe.
It means that they make the rules.
It means that they make complicated rules.
Well, this is right sometimes, this is wrong sometimes.
We decide what's right.
Hey, we control the horizontal and the vertical.
Hey, we'll tell you if it's right to watch a movie,
not based on the movie,
but whether you're sitting in this room
or sitting in this room.
No basis in the Bible, it's madness.
And so that's what I mean when I say I'm a fundamentalist.
Hey, I mean, I'm back to the basic truth
that what I believe comes from the Bible,
it's simple.
What do you believe about music, Pastor Anderson?
Hey, it's simple.
I believe in songs, hymns, and spiritual songs.
Isn't that simple?
You know how easy it would be for you to come up to me
after the service and say, Pastor Anderson,
in your opinion, is this song right or is this song wrong?
How long would it take me to figure out?
And it would be a very clear answer
because, well, is it of the Father or is it of the world?
But see, people, when they deviate from fundamentalism,
and I think a lot of people who call themselves fundamental
are not very fundamental.
Golden State Baptist College is not fundamental
because they have their own rules,
their own ideas about what's right and wrong,
independent of what the Bible says.
They have their own 60-page rule book
where they're controlling people
and telling them this is right and this is wrong.
They shouldn't even need the rule book.
They should just have the Bible.
And that's a whole nother sermon of itself.
And I'm gonna tell you something.
These people who have all the rules,
it's because they're not fundamental
because fundamentalism means we have a basis
for what we believe that's in the Bible.
It's simple, clear truth of the Father, of the world.
But see, the people who are not fundamental say,
well, it's so complicated.
It's the drums, it's the syncopation,
it's the harmony and the melody and the blah, blah, blah.
No, it's simple.
God has rules and they're always simple, always clear.
The Bible's meant to be understood clearly.
And so fundamentalism to me means it's black and white,
on and off, hot, cold, in or out, right, wrong,
safe, unsaved, good, bad, that's fundamentalism.
Think about the simplicity.
Think about how simple our church program is here.
What do you have to offer?
What are your ministries, Pastor Anderson?
What do you have for the singles?
What do you have?
Hey, we got some singles here.
What do you have?
We're trying to encourage them not to be single anymore.
No, just kidding.
Just kidding.
Sorry, I had to do that to you.
What do you have for the singles?
What do you have for this group?
What do you have for the kids ages 11 and 12?
What do you have for this demographic?
I'll tell you what we have.
We have church three times a week,
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
What's the great secret to the Christian life, Pastor Anderson?
What groundbreaking idea is your church based on?
What's your great secret to child rearing?
What's your great secret to these things?
I'll tell you what it is, it's going to church.
Get this, you got your pen and paper?
Reading the Bible.
That's what we emphasize here, reading the Bible.
What devotional book?
The Bible.
What's your Sunday school material?
The Bible.
What do you recommend to give to a new believer to read?
The Bible.
What is it that you're promoting right now on your website?
The Bible.
No books, no DVD, no Our Daily Bread devotional,
no Have a Little Talk with Jesus devotional book.
No, we're promoting church attendance.
We're promoting the Bible.
What's your great evangelization method?
What new method?
Have you got the purpose-driven church
and the purpose-driven life?
No, it's solid.
Wow, that's boring, we're tired of that.
I'm not tired of that.
You say, hey, that was back in the 60s.
No, that was back in the first century AD.
That was back with Jesus.
And it was before that.
You say, well, what's the great method
for getting people saved?
What's your new method?
Preaching the Bible, prayer, fasting, that's the method.
Using the Bible.
I do have a really groundbreaking soul-winning method
to a lot of people.
It's called using the Bible when soul-winning.
And a lot of people would revolutionize their soul-winning.
Using the Bible, praying, fasting.
You say, what curriculum are you using for your son?
Well, your son can read.
What's the curriculum?
Hey, this is the curriculum.
It's called memorizing the book of Ecclesiastes.
How much does that cost?
Is it $130 a month like these HCE DVDs or what?
I don't know what.
It's way more than that.
It's like 400 bucks a month,
these homeschooled DVD course.
So you can homeschool your kid,
put him in front of a television,
and just pop in this video.
And that's their schoolwork.
That's unbelievable.
No, that's not it.
It's the Bible.
Nothing new, nothing groundbreaking,
just very fundamental things.
Just very basic foundational things
is what we emphasize here at this church.
Our program is so simple.
It's just the basics.
It's just the most simple thing.
Now, what about your service?
Do you have a drama team?
Do you have actors getting up and acting?
Do you have skits and people dressed up in costumes?
And I've seen churches who,
they did the announcements like a TV commercial.
So they, you know,
because everybody's bored during announcements.
Good night.
When I was growing up in church,
I was bored during announcement time.
And of course our announcement time is like 60 seconds.
But some churches you'll be in announcements
and you're just,
you know, you're just so tired and bored,
listening to like 20 minutes of announcements.
So they said, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna turn it into a TV commercial.
Okay.
No, what we did is we just cut out all that stuff.
We just trimmed it down to where,
before the preaching even begins in this church, okay.
And by the way,
the preaching always starts 15 minutes into the service.
Did you ever notice that?
And if it hadn't started about 15 minutes into the service,
I'll skip the last song.
I'll cut something out.
The preaching starts at 15 minutes after.
That's unheard of.
Why?
So much complicated.
Hey, we keep it simple around here.
We have a congregational singing.
We sing four songs before the preaching and one song after.
And the four songs and announcements
and several times of praying takes less than 15 minutes.
It's very simple program we have out here.
It's fundamental.
It's basic.
That's what you need.
Number two though, let's move on to the second point.
Matthew chapter seven.
Matthew chapter number seven,
first book in the new Testament.
Matthew chapter seven,
one of my favorite parables of Jesus,
Matthew 7, 24.
I love what Jesus says here in Matthew chapter seven,
verse number 24.
The Bible reads,
therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine.
So we're talking about the word of God.
Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine
and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man
which built his house upon a rock.
And the rain descended and the floods came
and the winds blew and beat upon that house
and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock.
And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine
and doeth them not,
shall be likened unto a foolish man
which built his house upon the sand.
And the rain descended and the floods came
and the winds blew and beat upon that house
and it fell and great was the fall of it.
And it says,
and it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings,
the people were astonished at his doctrine
for he taught them as one have an authority
and not as the scribes.
Now, we've all heard this story
and you've heard the song,
you know, when you're a little kid growing up in church,
the wise man built his house upon the rock.
You know, you got all the motions and everything
and you go through that song
and the rains came tumbling down.
But if you ever really looked at what this is talking about,
what is that rock that you're building upon?
You say, well, the rock is Jesus Christ,
but what about in this parable?
What does he say the rock is?
These sayings,
the words that came out of the mouth of Jesus Christ,
the word of God, he said,
if you're wise, you'll build your house upon the rock.
If you're wise,
then the house of God will be built upon the rock.
Jesus said upon this rock, I'll build by church.
Hey, the wise man who built this house upon the rock
was building it upon God's word,
was building it upon these sayings, these words.
And the foolish man built this house upon the sand.
What does the sand represent?
Anything else, anything else is the sand.
Anything that a preacher says,
anything that a church teaches, any book,
anything that somebody teaches is the sand.
Why is it called sand?
Because it moves, it changes.
The problem with building on the sand,
sand is a very hard substance.
It's not soft at all, if you think about it.
I mean, it's pieces of rock and glass and so forth.
I mean, it's very, glass is made from sand.
Okay, it's a very strong substance.
But the problem with sand is that it's always moving.
Okay, that's what makes sand
something that you don't want to build upon.
Because if you build your house on sand,
it might be great at first.
You know, we were putting up this playground
and we were kind of struggling,
do we want things to be level?
But at the same time, we wanted it to be square with itself.
And the ground is not exactly level
on the surface that we were building upon.
And so we kind of had to,
we decided just a few steps into it,
we will not use the level at all.
Because the level, we can't really trust it
because the ground is not exactly level.
And so we squared things and measured things
to make it square and measure with itself.
Now, what we could have done is we could have
just used the level on everything.
And we're building on an uneven surface
and made everything exactly level today.
But the problem with that is that
things are gonna shift and settle down
and it wouldn't have ended up good down the road, okay?
And if you build a house upon a sand,
it's fine at first, is what he says here.
I mean, he built the house, he's living in the house,
he likes his house.
But what happens, as soon as it starts raining,
as soon as there's any kind of a storm,
as soon as there's any kind of pressure from the outside,
as soon as there's some kind of a posing force
on this house, what's gonna happen?
That sand's gonna shift and move and it's gonna change
and the whole house is gonna come crashing down
because once the foundation's destroyed,
the house will come tumbling down.
Now, if you build your church on what a man says,
if you build your church on what a book says
that's not the Bible, what happens is when things change,
when it becomes unpopular,
when there's a little bit of a rainstorm,
where there's a little bit of opposition
to what's going on,
hey, those sands are gonna shift a little bit.
Churches change through the years.
They go like this and they see what's popular
and they change.
So if your whole Christianity,
if everything you believe is based on
fateful word about this church,
you wanna know what I believe?
Ask Pastor Anderson, he'll tell you everything I believe.
Hey, if that's what you're based on,
maybe someday, God forbid, this church could change,
you're gonna come crashing down.
You must build on the rock of the Bible
and this book never changes.
It's a rock.
The difference between a rock and sand is sand moves.
A rock does not move.
And so everything we believe, what does fundamentalism mean?
It means that we have the fundamental foundation
of the Bible,
not with some rule book
that says that you can watch an anti-God film
on a screen in our college,
but if you go to the movie theater, we'll kick you out.
No, we have a foundation of the Bible.
Acts 17, 11, you don't have to turn there,
but the Bible talks about the Bereans,
the believers in Berea.
It says these were more noble than those in Thessalonica
and that they received the word with all readiness of mind.
They heard the Bible preached.
And it says, and searched the scriptures daily,
whether those things were so.
See, it's your job not to come to Faithful Word Baptist Church
and just listen to everything I say
and just believe blindly everything I say.
No, God says you ought to be searching the scriptures daily,
whether these things are so.
Hey, I preached this morning on baptism.
Hey, go home and open your Bible
and make sure that that's right.
Hey, what I preached last Sunday,
why don't you study the Bible
and make sure it's right for yourself.
Don't trust me.
Don't trust a man.
Don't trust the church.
Hey, God is saying here
that the most noble way to listen to preaching,
He says, receive the word with all readiness of mind,
but you better be ready to go home
and get out the Bible for yourself
and make sure that what's being preached
really matches up with the Bible.
And if it doesn't match up with the Bible,
then I'm wrong and the Bible's right.
You ought to have the brains to know that.
Now, there's no reason to disagree with the pastor
just for the sake of disagreeing.
I'm gonna prove how noble I am
by disagreeing with half of what Pastor Anderson says
just so that I can show
that I'm reading the Bible on my own.
No, but you ought to be searching
and seeing whether it's true or not
and deciding whether it's true or not
based on the Bible.
If it's true, it's true.
If it's not true, then it's not true.
If you don't agree with what I preach, that's fine.
But I hope that you don't agree with what I preach.
You can at least have a reason
why you don't agree with something from the Bible,
not just why I just don't agree with that.
No, is there something in the Bible
that you don't agree with?
You ought to be able to go home and say,
I agree with Pastor Anderson because the Bible says blank.
Or, I do not agree with Pastor Anderson.
I think he's wrong on this point
because the Bible says blank.
Hey, if either of those comes to pass,
then this church has accomplished its goal
in teaching you to be a self-sufficient,
standalone Christian that has no need
that any man teach you,
but that you can stand on your own two feet
on the rock of ages on these sayings on the Bible.
So number one, fundamentalism, what does it mean to me?
It means we go back to the basics.
We make sure that the foundation is right.
We get up and not preach the cutest little sermon
that came down the pike,
but we preach on the priesthood of the believer.
We preach on the doctrine of baptism.
Hey, we preach on the doctrine of salvation.
We preach on the doctrines of the Trinity.
Hey, we preach on doctrinal sermons
about this is right, this is wrong,
thus saith the Lord, not just some feel-good sermon
about how, oh, if you fall down, you can get back up
and on and on.
Hey, this kind of motivational speaking,
no, I'm talking about Bible doctrine
where a preacher gets up and preaches and says,
thus saith the Lord.
Now, an inspirational type sermon
may get you through the week,
but a doctrinal sermon will get you through a lifetime.
It'll get you through the storm.
A sermon about weathering the storm,
how to deal with the storms in your life,
that won't get you through the storm, ironically.
The sermon about how to get through the storm
will not get you through the storm.
The sermon about let me put your feet on the rock,
what you believe, that will get you through the storm
according to the Bible when you build up on the rock
of what you believe based on the Bible.
So number one, we're back to the basics.
That's what I mean by fundamental.
If that's your answer, are you fundamental?
By my definition, yes, okay.
I stand upon the rock of the Bible.
That's fundamentalism.
Okay, that's number two.
So number one, back to the basics.
We need to get back to the basics of our church methods.
We need to get back to the basics of what we believe.
But number three, what else does fundamentalism mean?
Look at one last scripture, Isaiah 58, 12.
Book of Isaiah, Old Testament.
Toward the end of the Old Testament,
those three great big books, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and the small book of Lamentations, and Ezekiel,
and Isaiah, chapter number 58, verse number 12.
You see, don't ever get confused with me,
and a lot of people misunderstand me,
and they, look, I'll be honest with you,
I don't know of any other, good night,
I don't know of other churches that preach
more stricter guidelines than I preach.
And if I did, you know, I need to sit down
and listen to that guy for a while, okay?
So that, you know, I try to live
the most holy, righteous life I can.
Hey, trust me, my friend, the stuff that I,
you know, that I preach against everything
under the sun that I can think of, okay,
and I go down the line, and I try to be
just straight right down the line.
And you know what, though, the difference is?
I'll tell you what the difference is
between that and so-called fundamentalism.
The difference is that when I believe something
that's strict, it's because I have a verse in the Bible.
You know, if I have a certain link
that my wife's skirt is gonna be,
it's because of a verse in the Bible.
It's called Isaiah 47, three.
It's called Exodus 28, 42, okay?
There's a reason why I have these rules.
Hey, there's a reason why I don't have a television.
Hey, there's a reason why I don't practice birth control.
Hey, there's a reason why I preach against the movies
and preach against television.
Hey, there's a reason why I preach against alcohol.
There's a reason why I preach against all these things.
There's a reason why,
and it's a verse in the Bible every time.
Listen to my sermon on any of those subjects,
it's a verse from the Bible, okay?
So don't get confused and think that
I'm coming up with a bunch of man-made rules or something,
and I don't wanna be lumped in
with the independent fundamental Baptist
who do have a big rule book.
This is right, this is wrong, this is right, this is wrong.
No rules here.
Come in this church address however you want.
Stand outside, smoke a cigarette on my front porch.
Come in with a beer in your hand
and throw it in my recycle bin, okay?
But I'm gonna tell you something.
The truth will be preached here,
not because we're trying to control anybody,
but because we're preaching the Bible,
and the Bible talks about all those things.
I've got to have preached about television.
Why don't you just preach the Bible?
Okay, I'll set no wicked thing before my eyes.
That's in the Bible.
They're having eyes full of adultery
and they cannot cease from sin.
Yeah, I'll preach the Bible.
And so that is the Bible.
What do you think the Bible is?
What do you think the 10 Commandments is?
It's a list of rules of what you're not supposed to be doing.
What do you think the first five books of the Bible are?
It's called the Mosaic law.
And so preaching the Bible, you're gonna preach on sin.
The third thing in Isaiah 58, 12, look down quickly.
Isaiah 58, 12, the Bible reads,
and they that shall be of thee
shall build the old waste places.
Thou shall raise up the foundations of many generations.
Look at that phrase.
The foundations of many generations.
And thou shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of paths to dwell.
And the third thing that I think fundamentalism means to me
is that we're building on the foundation
of many generations.
That's what I mean by fundamental.
I mean, we're old school, old fashioned,
building on the foundations of many generations.
We don't believe that the truth is new.
We just don't think that the gospel is something new.
We just don't believe the Bible's a new book.
I remember when I used to teach a little kid's
Sunday school class.
And I would try to teach them the basics.
Not just a cute little story,
not a little picture, final graph,
and bouncing finger puppets.
I tried to teach them the most basic truths.
And what kind of stuff would I teach them?
Salvation.
You know what I would teach them?
The fundamentals.
And I remember I teach about baptism.
I teach about simple things.
But they're so vital.
And I remember I used to ask the kids,
I'd say, now kids,
is the Bible a new book or an old book?
They'd say, old.
You know, I'd say, way old.
It's from before the world was even created.
It's the Bible.
And I remember I'd say, now this Bible right here,
and I'd hold this stuff up, you know,
because I'm trying to teach these kids,
get them to think.
I'd hold up one Bible and say,
this Bible says the new King James Version.
Is this Bible good or bad?
Is this, is this?
And then I have right here, the King James Version.
Which one do you think is right?
Just being logical.
Did the Bible just get written?
Or is it something that we've had for a long time?
Okay.
And I'd say, what about the new international version?
Does that sound like the Bible?
What about the new American Standard Version?
What about the new living translation?
What about the new this, the new that?
And I said, the Bible's not new, it's old.
If it's something different
from what people have had for hundreds of years,
if for 300 and some years in America and in England,
if people were using the King James Bible,
if people were using the Reyna Valera Bible
in the Hispanic and the Spanish speaking world
for hundreds and hundreds of years,
if all these Bibles agreed on the basic truths
that yes, 1 John 5, 7 is in the Bible.
Yes, Acts 8, 37 is in the Bible.
And on and on.
Yes, it's hell and inferno and on and on.
If the Bible that people have been using
for hundreds and hundreds of years is right,
then the one that just came out this century,
that takes out those verses,
that changes things cannot be right
because the Bible is not something
that's new to the 21st century.
It's not new to the 20th century.
We are building on the foundation of many generations.
Reads that we're using the same Bible
that was used by my grandparents.
It was the same Bible that was used by my parents.
It's the same Bible that I'm using right now.
It's the same Bible that was used
hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Because if God's promise is true,
that it would preserve his word to every generation,
heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my word shall not pass away,
then the Bible cannot be something
that's been newly discovered,
or newly found or newly written.
And a modern Bible version,
the reign of Lara 1960 version.
Good night.
The name says it all.
1960, that was a real godly time in our history.
The New King James Version.
The New International Version.
And in these other foreign languages,
these new Bibles that come out.
They can't be right because they're different
than what many generations have had.
And if God preserved his word,
look, he didn't believe the, I mean,
if you don't believe the Bible, then don't believe the Bible.
Okay, that's fine, that's your choice.
But good night, if you're gonna believe the Bible,
can you have enough sense to believe
that it can't be a book that God just gave us this year,
but that it'll probably be something
that people have had since the time of Christ?
I mean, all the modern Bibles, the new Bibles,
the New King James, the New International,
they're based on the new findings
where they dig up an old manuscript,
and well, this is a really old Greek manuscript,
and it doesn't have 1 John 5.7.
You know, the three old manuscripts,
the oldest ones from 300 to 400 AD,
the Sinai Atticats, the Vaticanus,
the Alexandria Manuscripts, these are old,
and they don't have these verses.
We're gonna take them out of the Bible.
Good night, those books were not preserved.
They've been underground.
Nobody's been using them for 1,500 years.
Why start using them now?
Leave it, bury it, I'll get a shovel.
I'll bury it for you.
Throw that piece of junk in the ground
where it came from, it's raw.
And they don't tell you, by the way, of course,
that there are hundreds of older manuscripts
that have 1 John 5.7, they're just not in Greek,
and they discount everything that's not Greek.
They throw out the Latin, the old italic from 175 AD
that has 1 John 5.7, 175 AD,
one of the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence
is in Latin, and it contains
all the King James Bible readings,
not the modern Bible readings, okay?
And Syriac versions and all the different manuscripts
that do have 1 John 5.7 and all these other verses,
no, they're going with something new.
No, it's old.
Bible's old, it's always been.
If the Bible wasn't around 200 years ago,
then God promised it was not true
to preserve it to every generation.
You walk into this church,
you're not gonna find modernism.
That's what fundamentalism means to me.
It's not modernism, it's not we're changing our music,
we're changing the format of our service,
we're changing Bibles, we're changing the style
of preaching, you say, well, this kind of preaching,
Pastor Anderson, where you get up and yell
and stomp and scream, hey, it's just not popular anymore.
It'd be better if you get a bar stool
and sit up here and just kinda rap with us,
just kinda share with us.
Look, I don't care what the new trend is.
I don't care if people tell me this is the new method,
you gotta use this.
I don't want any new methods.
I want the old methods.
I want the old paths where it is the right way, God says.
I'm talking about the wisdom of the ages.
I'm talking about the wisdom of the previous generation.
I'm talking about the wisdom of thousands of years
of Bible-believing preachers.
Hey, I'm talking about the old paths,
old-fashioned, not new, not contemporary,
not modern, old-fashioned, straight down the line,
fundamental, that's what I mean by fundamental.
And so I think I'm gonna keep the word fundamental,
at least for now, unless it becomes further prostituted
and abused to the point where anyone who's called
an independent fundamental Baptist belongs to a,
you know, and let me make a prediction right now.
I'll tell you right now,
being an independent fundamental Baptist someday,
and I just had a word of knowledge, okay,
10 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now,
20 years from now, I'll be willing to bet you right now
that the words independent fundamental Baptist
will come out of the mouth of someone
kind of like somebody would talk about
a Southern Baptist now and say like,
and I'm not talking about people from the South
when I say that, but, you know, today you'd say,
well, the Southern Baptists, it just,
it brings an image of your mind
of just everything that's liberal, you know,
everything that's wrong,
everything that's away from what the Bible teaches.
A Southern Baptist church.
You say, well, they're Baptists,
but they're Southern Baptists.
I think eventually they're gonna say,
well, that's an independent fundamental Baptist church.
And people will one day say, this is my prediction.
People will one day say,
did you know that the independent fundamental Baptist
used to be fundamental?
They used to actually be conservative.
And people would say, really?
Yeah, did you know that they used to be King James only
and they actually used to have baptized so many?
What?
You know, like people tell me,
cause I'm a young man, obviously.
And people tell me,
did you know the Southern Baptist used to be fundamental?
Did you know the Southern Baptist used to be conservative?
And I'm looking up like, really?
You know, I believe them, I guess.
Yeah, I guess so, whatever.
I wasn't there, I wasn't alive.
But people told me, yeah, they used to be fundamental, man.
They used to be just like you are.
And I think to myself, what?
I bet you someday they're gonna say,
IFB, independent fundamental Baptist,
did you know that they used to be conservative?
And people will say, oh, really?
And that's why maybe we will lose that F after a while.
But right now we're gonna keep it
because I'm telling you what fundamentalism means to me.
Foundational, the Bible is what it means to me.
Conservatism, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you so much for the foundation that we have.
Thank you for a foundation of the Bible.
I don't have to sit around
and philosophize my own philosophies
from my young mind that just hasn't been around
on this earth long enough to understand God
and to understand the whole scheme of things.
But Father, I can open the Bible
and you explain it all to me so perfectly
and I can have the wisdom that comes from God.
Father, I just pray that you would help us all
to realize the great treasure that we have in the Bible,
to become a fool when we sit down and open our Bible
and let God educate us, let God teach us.
And Father, help us get back to the basics in our life
and not look for some fancy new thing.
But why don't we just get back to the basics
of real in-depth hours of Bible reading,
hours of Bible memory, hours on our knees praying.
These are the things that will bring about blessing.
These are the things that will bring about salvation
of our loved ones.
These are the things that will give us the success
that we wanna have in life, Father, not the newest trend.
God, I don't know what a lot of people mean by fundamental,
but I'm keeping the word fundamental
because I believe that it's a good word
because it denotes these three things.
But Father, please just help us to stay
with these foundations as a church.
And please help every single person that's here
in their own life to make the Bible their foundation,
not this church, not this preacher,
and not any other person.