Ben, this morning I'm going to preach the sermon that I had planned to preach in Vancouver, Canada
before I was banned from entering the country of Canada, and the title of my sermon this morning is
What's wrong with churches these days? What is wrong with churches these days?
I mean, we can all look around and see that churches are failing to do the job that Christ
has given them, and what is it that's wrong with them, and we need to identify that so that we
don't go down that same road. Now, when we talk about what's wrong with churches these days,
we need to realize that there's nothing new under the sun, and in fact, if we look at Christ's
messages to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, we will find that the exact same thing
that's wrong with churches today is exactly what Christ said was wrong with them
2,000 years ago. Isn't that amazing? How 2,000 years later, chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation
are just painting a perfect picture of the problems that we see today amongst our churches,
and when I say what's wrong with churches these days, I'm not talking about the Roman Catholic
Church, the great whore. I'm not talking about the Orthodox Church. I'm not talking about the
Charismatics and Holy Rollers. You know, I'm talking about the churches where people are
actually saved. I don't even think Jesus Christ would have even addressed a church that's not
even saved. They don't even have the candlestick burning in the first place. These seven churches
that he addresses are churches of people that are actual, saved, Bible-believing Christians,
and that's all I'm going to acknowledge this morning, because that's all that matters in
the eyes of God. So when I say what's wrong with churches these days, I'm talking about
churches where the people are actually even saved. What's wrong with them? Why are they not getting
the job done? Now before I get into the seven things that are wrong with churches these days
from the seven churches here in Revelation, let me just give you some context here.
The book of Revelation is written to the seven churches. It's addressed to them.
Look at chapter 1, verse 11, saying, I'm Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,
and what thou seest, write in a book, and send it, send what? The book that you're writing
unto the seven churches which are in Asia, unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos,
and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. So the entire
book of Revelation is being written and sent out to seven churches in Asia. Chapters 2 and 3
give a personalized message to each of the seven churches which are in Asia. But the entire book
is written to the seven churches. That's why all the way in chapter 22 it says, I, Jesus,
have sent my angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. Now the reason I bring
that up, and this isn't what the sermon's about, but one of the dumbest pre-tribulation rapture
arguments that you hear is how, well, the church is never mentioned from Revelation chapter 4 to
Revelation 19. You know, it's mentioned so many times in chapters 1, 2, and 3, and then it's just
never mentioned. What they derive from that is that it's all for the Jews. You know, don't let
it bother you that the word Jew is never found between Revelation 4 through 19 either. But,
you know, there's the 12,000 from each tribe, which are not Jews. That's a whole other sermon.
But anyway, the point that I'm making, though, how dumb this is, is that the whole book is written
to seven churches. The book is being mailed out to seven churches in Asia, not to Judea,
not even to Samaria. The whole book is being sent to seven churches in Asia, and then they have the
gall to tell us, well, only chapters 2 and 3 are for the church. Everything else is for someone
else. That doesn't make any sense. So I was thinking about this, and this is the illustration
I came up with. It would be like if I wrote a letter to my children, and I said, this letter
is to the Anderson children, right? I want this letter to be delivered unto the Anderson children.
And then at the beginning of the letter, I said, I have a special message for each one of you.
Solomon, here's some things I want to say to you. Isaac, here's some things I want to say to you.
And then I went through all the children, gave them their personal message, right?
And I've already addressed the letter in page 1 to the Anderson children.
And then I start getting into the contents of what I want to say to them as a whole.
And I go through many, many pages of that. And then at the end, I say, all right, Anderson
children, I come quickly. I've been banned from another country, so I'll be home early.
And they get this letter. Imagine how foolish it would be to say, well, there's no mention of the
Anderson children after page 3. I mean, pages 1, 2, and 3 mention the Anderson children many times.
And then they're mentioned again at the very end. But I think that there's some other recipient in
mind for pages 4 through 19 of this letter. It would be ridiculous. It would be nonsense,
because he said the whole book is for the seven churches. So anyway, I just had to get that off
my chest. But anyway, let's get into the meat of the sermon. What's wrong with our churches today?
Number one, what's wrong with them? No soul winning is what's wrong with them.
Look, if you would, at chapter 2. And we're going to look at the church of Ephesus. He says in verse
4, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember,
therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will
come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
So what was wrong with the church at Ephesus? They'd lost the first love, and they were not
doing the first works. He said, you need to repent and do those first works. Why? Because that'll
give you the first love back. What are the first works? I don't see how anybody could read this
passage and come to any other conclusion than that the first works are winning souls to the Lord
Jesus Christ, preaching the gospel to every creature. You say, where do you get that passage?
Okay, first let's take a chronological look at it. What are the first works that Jesus
told the disciples that they were going to be doing? When he called them as they were fishing
by the Sea of Galilee, he said, follow me, and I will make you fishers of man. That's the first
work that he brought up. In the New Testament, you start reading in Matthew chapter 1, the first work
that he tells anybody to do as far as his disciples going out and doing work. He said,
you're going to be fishers of men. It's the first thing, right? What's the first thing that Andrew
did when he found out about Jesus? He first find it his own brother Simon and tells him about
Jesus. What's the first work that the woman at the well did after she believed on Christ? She went
and told everybody about it. What's the first work that the guy did who was demon possessed and had
the legion taken from him? He went and told all his friends what great things Jesus had done for
him. So the first thing chronologically we see as a work is preaching the gospel. In the Book of Acts,
what's the first work that we see happening? Preaching the gospel. Okay, then we could look
at it instead of from a chronological perspective of first being a timeline, we could look at first
as being important. The first works could be the most important works, right? Okay, well, what is
the most important thing that we do? Well, what's the last thing Jesus said before he went up to
heaven? He gave that great commission. What's the first thing he tells us in Acts chapter 1 verse 8?
You shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and all Judea and in Samaria and of the uttermost
part of the earth. What's emphasized? Winning people to Christ, preaching the gospel, getting
the gospel to all nations, to all kindreds, to all tongues. So whether you look at it chronologically,
whether you look at it from priority, it's obvious that the first works are not the choir.
The first works are not the children's Sunday school flannelgraph program. The first works are
not Pat's a pirate and his program. The first works are what? Is it cleaning the building? No.
What are the first works? What is it? I don't know. It's soul winning. It's getting people saved.
It's preaching the gospel to every creature. And so the Bible is telling the church at Ephesus
that they've lost their first love and they need to get back to the first works. Now,
what do those two have to do with each other? Well, if you love people, you don't want them
to go to hell when they die. You want to get them saved. You want to pull them out of the fire,
hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. And today our churches have become very weak
on soul winning, very weak on soul winning. They have lost their first love and they claim that
we're hateful and we're a hate group. But you know what? The proof that we have the first love is
that we do the first works. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue,
but in deed and in truth. How do you get the first love back? Did he say do the first love?
He said do the first works. And today we need to love in deed. We need to love in truth. How can
the Baptist Church down the street claim to be a loving place? How can they send out a flyer that
says you've never been so loved when they won't even come to your door and give you the gospel?
They'll let the whole city go to hell. They'll let the whole neighborhood go to hell. They'll let
the whole state go to hell. Why? Because they lack love, that's why. They don't love the lost.
And if they loved Christ, they'd keep his commandment and his last words would be their
first priority, to go out and get the gospel to every creature. That's what's wrong with our
churches today. You want to know what's wrong with the IFB movement, the Independent Fundamental
Baptist, is that they have gone soft on soul winning. They have watered it down. It's become
a flyer or a door hanger or visitation. It's being scaled back. It's not being ramped up as we see
the day approaching. I looked around at all the websites of Fundamental Baptist churches in our
state here in Arizona and I was blown away by how many of them had scaled back soul winning from
once a week to once a month. Twice a month. Literally. I mean twice a month every other week
on a Tuesday night for one hour. And then they say, and then it's visitation. Look, no church
that has a soul winning time for one hour every two weeks is as serious about soul winning church.
Give me a break. You know what they're doing? They're going through the motions at that point.
And I've talked to some of our young guys here who visited some of the local churches because
they were just trying to meet young ladies, which there's nothing in the world wrong with that for
a young Christian man to, you know, visit some other churches just trying to meet some young
ladies that they could date or get involved with and eventually get married to. And they told me
they would go out soul winning and they said it's a joke at these churches. They said they go out
there. The people that they go with don't even know how to present the gospel. All they can do
is pretty much invite somebody to church. He was with a guy. He told me that was a guy who'd been
there for a decade. And he asked him even, do you know for sure if you died today, you go to heaven?
The guy said no. And he said, well, come to church and find out. Come to church. Come to church.
It's nonsense. That's not soul winning. We need to go and preach the gospel to every creature.
They don't shouldn't have to come to church to hear the gospel. We need to bring them the gospel.
And so churches today are weak on soul winning and that's what's wrong with them. And that's why
it's the first thing he brings up is the church at Ephesus and how they were doing a lot of work
because look at verse two. He said, I know thy works and thy labor. It's not that they're not
staying busy with all their programs and all their plays and their singing and their choirs and
their activities and, and their Bible studies, but they're not, they're doing work. It's just
not the first works. So that's what's wrong with them. Number two, what's wrong with our
churches these days. I'll tell you what's wrong is that they're scared to death of persecution,
scared to death of their own shadow. See the Bible says of the second church here,
he said in verse nine of Smyrna, I know thy works and tribulation and poverty,
but thou art rich. And I know the blasphemy of them, which say they're Jews and are not,
but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things, which thou shall suffer. Behold,
the devil shall cast some of you into prison that you may be tried and you shall have tribulation
10 days. Be thou faithful unto death and I'll give thee a crown of life. What's wrong with
our church today. They're scared to death of the things that they could possibly suffer.
Scared to death of prison, scared to death of persecution, scared to death of tribulation.
And that's what's wrong with them today. They're nothing like the church at Smyrna.
Smyrna was a church who was doing it right. And Jesus is encouraging them. But today's churches
are just afraid to preach the whole Bible. It's not that they don't believe in hard preaching.
It's not that they don't believe in the doctrine that we preach here at faithful word many times.
It's just that they're just scared to preach it or they'll preach it. And then, but they'll
refuse to put it online. But it's funny how they'll put other sermons online.
So it's not like they just have a thing against putting sermons online. They'll put stuff online.
All the sweetness and light they'll put online. Right. But then they'll conceal the hard
preaching because they don't want to suffer any persecution. So number two, what's wrong with
them is that they're scared. There's a spirit of fear and it's not of God because God has not
given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sand mind. What's wrong with
churches these days? Well, number one, they're weak on soul winning. They're doing little or
no soul winning. Number two, what's wrong with them? They're scared to death of persecution.
Number three, what's wrong with our churches today? Let's look at the next church, Pergamos.
It says in verse 14, but I have a few things against thee because thou hast there them that
hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of
Israel to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. I'll tell you what's wrong
with our churches today. They have let fornication and other grievous sins enter the church.
They are turning a blind eye to fornication. And let me tell you something. As a Baptist pastor,
you have to be on this all the time or it will creep in. I can't even count how many people
have been thrown out of our church for fornication. I can't even count. I've lost count.
It's been so many. And how many other people I've come to and said, look,
you're a Bible believing Christian. You're living in sin. You have seven days to either get married,
get out of that relationship or get out of our church. And all God's people said,
Amen. You get out or you get rid of the fornication in your life by either getting
married or getting out of that relationship. That's what the Bible says. You preach that today
and Christians look at you like you have two heads when there's a whole chapter about it.
First Corinthians, chapter five. So if you have a problem with what I just said,
you have the problem, not me. You got to go home and read first Corinthians five. He said,
if any that among you is called a brother in fornication, it says with such a one,
no, not even to eat and to put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
And so today, church discipline is a relic of the past. We have people today that are teaching
Sunday school classes as they live with someone that they're not even married to.
We have people today hosting youth activities at their house and they're living with someone
that they're not married to, living in sin, living in fornication. They need to be cast
out of the church. But here there were some people in this church that held the doctrine of Balaam
who taught the children of Israel to eat things, sacrifice unto idols and to commit fornication.
Balaam was a guy who's torn between the people of God and the wickedness of this world,
right? Because he's just motivated by money. And so he's on the outside, a preacher of the
word of God, but on the inside, he really just wanted money. His heart was really with Balak,
the wicked King. And so what he ends up being is sort of a crossover guy,
you know, between the, the wicked people and God's people. And he taught them
that it was okay to, to live like the heathen. It's okay to, to drink and party and fornicate
and stuff like that. And so he ended up causing them to do those things and he ended up being
killed as a result. And so today we have a lot of churches that don't preach hard on sin and
they just allow things like fornication and drunkenness in their congregation that the Bible
explicitly prohibits and says that any brother who does these things must be cast out of the
congregation. And he can only come back once he's repented. And look, these people that
we throw out for fornication, I tell them, Hey, come back once you're married,
come back once you're out of that relationship, come back once you're out of that situation,
but don't come back until then. That's what we need today. What's wrong with our churches
these days? I'll tell you what's wrong. Weak on soul winning. No love. Number two,
what's wrong with our churches? Scared to death of persecution from this world. Scared of our
government. Scared of the sodomites instead of fearing God and his men. Number three,
what's wrong with our churches? I'll tell you what, they're filled with sin. They're filled
with fornication. They're filled with drunkenness. Why? Because the preaching is soft and because
church discipline is not practice. I mean, a friend of mine who went to an independent
fundamental Baptist church, King James soul winning church, he knew of a guy in the church
that had been going there for years that was living in fornication, living in open fornication.
He took the guy aside. The guy had been going there for years. Everybody knew about it. It's
a common report. He took the guy aside, showed him first Corinthians five, showed him what the Bible
said. You know what the guy did? The guy got out of fornication. Amen. Most people when they're
confronted with this usually end up getting it right. Some people are going to leave,
but many people get it right. They either get married or they move out or they get it fixed.
This guy got it fixed. He was then reprimanded by the leadership of the church for doing that.
They said, it's not your place to tell that guy that he needs to get out of fornication.
And he said, well, the guy's been coming here for years and you guys didn't do it.
And they said, well, but you did it too harshly. And he's like, but it worked.
And the guy wasn't mad at him at all. The guy's like, oh wow, thanks for showing me that.
But you're just too blunt. Why? They would have never fixed it. And all their little children
grow up thinking that fornication is normal. That's what's wrong with our churches today.
What's wrong with our churches these days? I'll tell you what's wrong with them.
Look at verse 20. Let's look at the fourth church, Thyatira. What was wrong with it?
Now withstanding, I have a few things against thee because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel,
which calleth herself a prophetess to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication
and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. Now keep your finger here in Revelation two, go back to
uh, first Timothy chapter two. Keep your finger there in Revelation two. Let's go to first
Timothy two. The Bible says over in first Timothy chapter two, it says in verse 11 of first Timothy
two, let the woman learn in silence with all subjection, but I suffered not a woman to teach
nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Look at verse 12 again,
but I suffered not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Let's read it a third time, but I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the
man, but to be in silence. And in case you weren't sure about what that means, it says in first
Corinthians 14, let your women keep silence in the churches. It's not permitted unto them to speak.
They have a question. Let them ask their husband at home for it's a shame for a woman to speak in
the church. So when we're in church, it's a man that needs to be up behind the pulpit preaching.
It's a man that needs to be teaching doctrine and teaching God's word. Now, if you go back to
Revelation 20, I think it would be strange indeed for you to not see the exact wording
from first Timothy two in this passage, because I read it three times, right? I suffer not a woman
to teach. What was Thyatira doing? Look at verse 20. Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel,
which callest herself a prophetess, to teach. Okay. So let's say we were to take that
dependent clause there, which callest herself a prophetess, right? Let's just kind of put that
in parentheses for a second, and then let's read the statement without that parenthetical
dependent clause. Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel to teach.
Right? That's the sentence structure there, if we were diagramming the sentence.
You're suffering, right? That's the verb. The woman Jezebel. There's your direct object,
right? To teach. Prepositional phrase, modifying the direct object. What are we saying here?
Don't suffer a woman to teach. You're suffering that woman to teach.
Now, you say, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson. The problem isn't that they were suffering a woman to
teach. It's just that they were suffering that woman to teach. You know, that woman Jezebel to
teach. You know, suffering other women to teach would have been fine, but just don't suffer that
woman to teach. Why? Because she's seducing the servants. I submit to you that every woman
preacher is wicked as hell, because what would motivate a godly woman to defy God's command
and preach in church? Think about it. You say, well, if it's a good teacher, it's fine. This is
a bad. Any woman preachers a bad preacher because she's ignoring the word of God. And if she's
ignoring the word of God that says, I suffered not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority
over the man, but to be in silence, if she's defying the scripture in 1 Corinthians 14,
that says, let your women keep silence in the churches, what other scripture is she defying?
A lot, because she's a wicked person. If she were godly, she would follow God's plan for her life.
So how can you have a godly female pastor? How can you have a godly female preacher?
Not going to happen, because of the fact that they're in defiance of God's will right there.
Well, Joyce Meyer, she's wicked. And she needs to grow out her hair like a woman and quit having
a man's haircut. And quit looking like the Joker while she's at it. But that Joyce Meyer
preaches lies. She wrote a whole book called God's Not Mad at You. No matter who you are,
no matter what you've done, God's not mad at you. God's angry with the wicked every day,
Joyce Meyer. And he's angry with you every day, Joyce Meyer. You need to write a follow-up book
called God's Mad at Me. Chapter one, woe unto me. I'm wicked. Call me Jezebel. It'll be like,
you know, Moby Dick starts with the famous words, call me Ishmael. Maybe she could write her own
classic literature that starts with call me Jezebel in the first three words. I'll tell you
what's wrong with our churches today. Women have been put in authority in our churches today.
Now look, I love the fact that our church is filled with women who are involved in the work
of God. I mean, we have a lot of ladies in our church that are deeply involved in the work of
God. And I'm not just talking about the cleaning that they do, although that's appreciated. I'm
not just talking about the meals that they prepare, although that's much appreciated.
I'm talking about they go out there and do soul winning. They go out there in the highways and
hedges and preach the gospel to every creature. That's the female preacher we need as a soul
winner. And I thank God that we have ladies in our church who are involved with the work of the
church and they're involved with soul winning and they're involved in the program and they serve,
whether it's playing the piano or playing the trumpet or, or whatever service they perform
out there, soul winning and the service that they perform to their own family and
raising godly children and, and doing everything that they can to serve the Lord. But women are not
in leadership in our church. They're not an authority in our church and they never will be.
They never will. It's never going to happen. Women are not to usurp authority over men in
the house of God and they're not to teach the Bible. That's a man's job to get up and you say,
well, certain women's issues need to be preached by women. Hogwash, I'll preach the whole Bible
myself as a man. I'll preach Proverbs 31 all by myself. I'll preach all the women's passages.
Why? Because as a man of God, I can preach the whole Bible. I don't need to bring in a specialist
to talk to the women. Well, they'll take it better from a woman. Well then, you know what, then
maybe they just won't take it well then. Maybe it's just going to hurt then, but it's going to
come from a man behind the pulpit. Look, we need men to teach and preach and this is not disparaging
of women. It's just that men have a role and women have a role. Look, there are qualifications
for the pastor. There are great men, godly men, righteous men who don't meet that qualification
because of something in their past. It doesn't make them any less of a Christian. It just means
that they can't take that particular role of pastoring. And today, the independent fundamental
Baptists have put way too many women in charge of way too many things and they have way too many
women teaching the Bible. They'll have women teaching Sunday school classes to teenagers.
Well, it's a teenager. Well, it's just the children or whatever. Well, you know what,
you're raising those children to grow up and listen to women preachers. Why do you think
Joyce Meyer is so popular? You think that came out of a vacuum? I guarantee you it's because the
adults who are listening to Joyce Meyer right now, they grew up in churches with a man for a pastor,
but they were down in the children's department for a decade listening to female preaching.
So then that's what they grow up and crave. I'm telling you, the stuff that you do when you're two,
three, four, five, six years old, the foods that you eat, the music that you listen to,
all that stuff is going to be what you are set for life. You're always going to like that stuff.
You're going to be programmed like that. And so when you grow up in the Sunday school department
where the preachers are women, you grow up in the teenage youth department, you got a female
preacher preaching at you. Well, it's just going to make sense for you to just, you know, I like
Joyce Meyer. You queer little sissy, listen to a man preach to you for a while. Any man who loves
Joyce Meyer is a queer little sissy. There I said it. Put that in your Pope and smack it.
So number one, what's wrong with our churches today? Number one, not enough soul winning.
Let's ramp up soul winning. Let's do more. Let's not scale it back to two times a month.
Let's do more soul winning. Let's provide more opportunities. Let's get people out more.
Number one, little or no soul winning. Number two, scared to death of their own shadow. Scared
of being persecuted, scared to stand for the Lord. Number three, what are they doing? They're
allowing fornication and grievous sin in their church. And that also has to do with fear of
confronting people and fear of preaching hard. Number four, what's wrong with them? They're
suffering women to teach. They're putting women in authority and they're putting women to preach
and to teach the word of God. They're having women lead and it's a flop. It's a failure.
And it's not that women, look, I'm sure my wife could get up and preach a real face ripping of
a sermon, but that doesn't make it right. Right's right and wrong's wrong. And no woman should ever
be allowed to get up and teach and preach in the house of God. Leave that to men. And you say,
well, they have to do it because the men aren't stepping up, you know, so then the women have to.
How many preachers do you need in a church? You only need one. Put everybody in the same room and
preach to them. But they got to divide it up into 50 different classes. Where'd God tell you to do
that? And they're like, we don't have enough teachers. Well, why don't you not divide up
into 12 groups then if you don't have enough teachers? Why don't you just all get in one
big room, knock out some walls and make one big room, put everybody in there and preach to them.
And if you don't even have one man that can get up and preach the word of God in your church,
why don't you just close the doors and go join a real church?
And you know what? More men would, look, we don't have a shortage around here of preachers.
I mean, I could think of 10 guys in this church that I could put behind this pulpit in a pinch
that would get up and preach a good sermon. There's no shortage around here of men that
could get up and preach the word of God and teach. And I'm saying they'd preach a good sermon.
They'd preach an edifying sermon. People would walk out and they would have got something
and they would have enjoyed it. Maybe there's no qualified teachers and preachers in these churches
because maybe it's just a weak pastor and a weak church that they're not raising up pastors.
They're not raising up young preachers. They're not raising up the next generation of men.
So they have to turn to the women to take over and lead and step up to the plate because the
men are too lazy or too bored with the whole thing or too into the things of this world.
Well, it's a shame and it's what's wrong with our churches today.
What else is wrong with the churches? I'll tell you what's wrong with them.
Let's look at Sardis in chapter three. Here's what's wrong with them. It says in verse one,
and under the angel of the church in Sardis, right, these things saith he that hath the seven
spirits of God and the seven stars, I know thy works that thou hast a name that thou liveth and
are dead. I'll tell you what's wrong with our churches today is that they have a name that they
live, but they're dead. They're riding on past glories. They're riding on their past reputation.
They want to tell you, I mean, look, when you confront the Calvinists about their phony doctrine
and how they don't even care about reaching people at the gospel, they want to tell you,
oh yeah, well, 200 years ago, here's a Calvinist missionary.
They literally have to go back 200 years to show you
their great hero. What do you mean Calvinists are weak on evangelism?
What about, and then they named somebody from 200 years ago,
William Carey. Remember from the late 1700s? Yeah. What about him? He was a Calvinist.
They'll throw out these guys from hundreds of years ago at you. Oh, shut my stupid mouth.
First of all, and you know, look, I appreciate whatever William Carey did for the Lord. I don't
know because I didn't know him. I wasn't around back then. I read his biographies when I was a
kid and was inspired by the biography. But here's the thing about William Carey. You know,
he did a lot of great work translating the Bible into the native languages over there in India.
But you know, William Carey ended up having a team of like 20 other missionaries working with them.
So he had a whole evangelism machine there with like 20 other full-time missionaries by the time
it was all said and done. And in his whole lifetime over there in decades of preaching,
they had a total of 700 people converted to Christ. Well, you know what? That's not a lot
for a whole lifetime of work. And the Bible doesn't teach that that's a lot.
The Bible says, I think the Bible sets a standard on a yearly basis. If you're a really zealous,
fruitful Christian that you're winning some 30, some 60, some 100. Okay. So when you got 20
full-time workers over there for decades and you're producing 700 salvation, you know,
sorry, William Carey. I'm just saying that's not my role model. That's not my role model. Sorry.
And if he's preaching Calvinist doctrine, he's even less of a role model to me.
You know what I mean? Look, 700 people in 30 years isn't going to cut it when the whole world's
going to hell in a hand basket, people. We need to get out there and we need to knock some doors.
We need to preach the gospel. We need to win people to Christ. And you know what? Putting
a Bible in their hand doesn't get them saved. Putting a John and Romans in their hand doesn't
get them saved. Translating the Bible into their language doesn't get them saved. You got to preach
the gospel to them through personal evangelism and soul winning, which apparently was a weakness for
William Carey. That's why he even turned to doing so much translating. And I appreciate the
translating he did, but that's not my soul winning role model. My soul winning role model is somebody
who's winning people to Christ every month. My soul winning role model would be somebody who wins
like 30 people to Christ in a year. My soul winning example would be somebody who wins like
60 people to Christ in a year. My soul winning role model would be someone who wins like a hundred
people to Christ in a year. And you know what? We have ladies and teenagers and men and women
that do that every year in this church every year. And that's why our church through personal
soul winning has won about 10,000 people to the Lord just this year alone. Okay. Why?
Because our church is alive. Because our church is filled with people. And it's not any one person.
It's a congregation of 350 some people that are fired up, that are zealous, that are putting in
the hours, that are working hard, that are out there filled with the Holy Ghost, not full of
Calvinism and full of beans, but filled with the Word of God, filled with the Spirit of God, out
there working hard, preaching, and getting people saved. Hey, we just had a great event in Canada.
We went to a spiritually dead part of Canada. Well, I didn't, but you know, I kind of, I was
there. I was praying from the airport. I was praying that the event would go well, right,
as I was in detention. But you know, we just had a group from our church go up to Canada,
unreceptive area in Canada. 52 soul winners went out. They spent the day out soul winning,
and they had 13 people saved. But see, I don't have to go back five years to tell you about
the glory days. I don't have to go back 10 years to tell you about the glory days. I don't have to
go back 20 years or 30 years. I just go back a few months. How many did you guys see saved
over in Winnipeg? In Winnipeg? 40, 50 people saved, right? Or hey, why don't we just go back
to when we just went to the Grand Canyon, the real Grand Canyon, and we went soul winning
all up there around the Navajo tribes in Tuba City. How many people did we get saved on that
trip? Does anybody remember? 120. I think it was 120 salvations, right? About 120 salvations.
Or let's see, let's not even go back that far. Why don't we just go back one week to the prophecy
conference? How many people attended the prophecy conference? Did you ever get a final number?
Okay, so there were about 366 people that came to the prophecy conference,
right? We had hundreds of soul winners out. In addition to sitting through eight hours of
preaching a day, we had people out soul winning for two, three hours a day on Thursday and
Saturday, and they had a total of 204 people saved, right? 300 some soul winners, getting
204 people saved. That was a week ago! But I remember sitting in Bible college and listening
to the president of the Bible college and the vice president of the Bible college talk about
how, when I was a young man, I went down to Mexico and we did soul winning. And they just want to
tell you about stuff from 40 years ago. I'll promise you one thing. This prophecy conference
that we just had and the soul winning that was done, I'm not going to be talking about that two
years from now. I'm not even going to bring it up three years from now. I'm not even going to
remember it four years from now. Why? Because I'm going to move on to the next works, the next
challenges. I'm not going to be like, hey, let's keep talking about Botswana. Now the Canadian
government wants to keep talking about Botswana, but I'm not going to keep talking about Botswana.
Even though we had thousands of people saved over the course of like eight months over there,
I'm not going to keep talking about, oh, Guyana, this guy, forget Guyana. We're going to Jamaica
now. Well, you know, not what are you talking about? Don't live in the past. Don't live in the
past. What are we doing today? What are we doing next week? What are we doing next month? And you
know what? This year has been the greatest year of our church's existence by far. I mean, we've
doubled our salvation as we've tripled the baptisms. I mean, we have more people out soul
winning, more people involved, more people are tuned in on YouTube, twice as many DVDs and CDs
and flash drives of God's word are going out to people. There's twice as much solely. I mean,
look, our church is thriving, but you know what? When this year's over, it's over, right?
It's over. I don't even want to talk about it because all I want to talk about is 2018.
Tell me about, oh yeah, you know, we had such a great year in 2017. Let's just back off. I mean,
look, we've, we've had enough souls saved just this year. We can just talk about that for the
rest of our lives, right? Even if we just stopped, if we just totally stopped, we could just cancel
all soul winning, just stop everything, right? And then we could just say like, well, you know,
as soon as another church in our area catches up, we'll start again.
What kind of nonsense? Hey, let's not have a name that we live in our dead.
We don't have this big reputation, soul winning and heart preaching. And then somebody flies from
Japan to come visit us. And then they get here. The sermon's watered down. Soul winning has been
canceled. Oh, sorry. Oh, you're only here for a week. Well, we only do soul winning every other
week. And it's not this week. Sorry. Sorry. We missed you there, buddy. Konichiwa sayonara,
you know? No, Hey, we don't want to have a name that we live in. Look, the independent
fundamental Baptist movement. All they can talk about is Jack Hiles, Curtis Hudson,
Lester Roloff, Oliver B. Green. All they can do is dredge up these old names from the past.
Who's your guy now? Who's your guy now? Who is it? Oh, it's Bob Gray. That fag loving idiot.
You need to watch burn that way after all. Should have been there when the Canadian border patrol
watch it. Can learn something. Who's your guy now? It's all the power. Well, you know,
are you mean to say that all these great man? Shut up and talk about 2017 buddy.
You have a name that you live and you're dead. Down at Sardis Baptist. They're living in the
past. They're riding on past scores. It's time to take down all those pictures that they have
all over the auditorium of all the great pastors of the past. And the, the, the, I call it the
fundamental Baptist Pantheon where they have the picture. You know, why don't you take that down
and why don't you do something with your life today? We're tired of hearing all the stories.
We want to live it. We want to see it now. Where be all his miracles. We want to see God's word
in action today. Don't be a Sardis Baptist. I pray to God that we never be a Sardis Baptist.
We need to be alive. We need to be, uh, pushing it. Look, 2018 must exceed 2017. Amen. Amen.
We're going further. We're doing more. We don't want to become like Sardis.
That's what's wrong with our churches today. They have a name that they live, but they're dead.
They're living in the past. You ever meet people like this in their personal life,
guys that are in their fifties and they want to tell you about all the trophies
when they're in their twenties. And look, if you were a great athlete in your twenties,
that's great. But now that you're in your fifties, you need to find something else to do with your
life. You need to find something else to talk about over dinner. You need to find some other
new achievements, right? You don't have to peak when you're in your twenties. Look at the great
men of God. They did great exploits when they were old, old men. Moses didn't even confront Pharaoh
and do his greatest work until he was 80 years old. Caleb did his mighty works when he was 85
years old. He said, as my strength was then, so is my strength now, both to go out and to come in.
You know, that might not have been true, but he believed it. That was his attitude. He didn't say
like, Oh man, I'm the oldest guy here. He was the oldest guy there. Everybody younger than him was
dead. Right? Because Caleb and Joshua were the only ones who were allowed to survive from that
generation. So here, these guys are in their eighties. They could have just said, we're retired,
man. We're done. We're going to go play golf. We're going to go play shuffleboard.
We're going to go enjoy the twilight of our life. No, no, no. They're just like, come on,
let me go. I want to go to the big, you know, let me fight those iron chariots. Give me the
hardest assignment. And they're like, Whoa, buddy. You know, calm down. You're 85. It doesn't matter.
They were ready to attack. And you know what? 85 year olds weren't just like way different
than they are now. Isn't that the attitude that some people get like,
well back then, you know, people were living to be 900. No, they weren't. That's before the flood.
In Moses's day, people weren't that different than they are right now. He said, that's impossible.
An 85 year old man came and did that. Look, there is an ultra marathon held here in Arizona. And I
was looking at the race results of an ultra marathon where you run uphill for 31 miles,
climb 7,000 feet or the empire state building five times. I saw two men finishers in their 80s.
Right? You'll see. And you'll see a bunch of 77, 78, 82 running uphill for 31 miles. So don't tell
me Caleb couldn't go into battle at 85 and say, yeah, I'll lead the troops. I'll go fight. Why?
Why? Because he wasn't living on past glory. He wasn't living. Look, if you're an older person
today, and I know we don't have a lot of older people in our church, our church is a pretty
young church, but if you're one of the gray heads in our church, let me say to you, your battle's
not over. Your fight's not over. Your, your, your peak and your prime is not over. You know,
I'll bet you that right now being in faithful word Baptist church, you're probably entering your
spiritual prime. I'll bet you that there are guys in this church that are older men that are
probably doing more soul winning or more for the Lord than they've ever done in their lives.
That's a great testimony. You know, we, we had a guy visit our church from about 45 minutes away
recently and he was literally over 80 years old and he was fired up. He's like, you guys got to
start a church down where I live at Casa Grande and he was fired up. He wants to keep serving
the Lord. He wants to get any in. You know what? He's still learning because he said,
I'm just learning about the post-trib pre-wrath rapture. I'm fired up about it.
Pre-trib is a fraud. He's just like, he's 80. It's not too late to learn new things.
It's not too late to go out and win somebody to Christ. It's not too late to serve the Lord.
Quit living in the past. Live now. Don't be Sardis. I got to hurry up. I'm out of time here.
What's wrong with our churches today? Number one, they're, they've scaled back soul winning.
Number two, they're scared to death of being persecuted. Number three, they're allowing
grievous sin like fornication and drunkenness to go on in their church. Number four, they're
suffering women to lead and to teach and to preach or sissified dudes that might as well be women,
the way they act and preach and lead. Let me throw that in. Number five, they're living off
past glory. They want to tell you about the glory days in the golden age. Hey, we're living in the
golden age around here. Number six, what's wrong with our churches today? They failed to see the
open door. He told the sixth church, Philadelphia, Bill, I've set before you an open door. No man
can shut it. They failed to see the open door right in front of them. Now look, does God close
some doors? Yeah, but there's always an open door. Think about what an open door we have in the U.S.
Yeah, maybe we get thrown out of this country or that country, but what about the open door that
we have right here in the U.S.? Who's going to stop us from going out today and knocking a door
and winning a soul? I mean, nobody's going to stop us. We've got technology. We've got airplanes,
cars. We've got Google Earth and Google Maps. We can plan it all out. We can hit the ground
running. I mean, we should be seeing more people saved right now than we've ever seen with the
tools that we have. I mean, we could put a video out on YouTube and just assemble a hundred soul
winners in some city that we've never even set foot in. A hundred people will show up, and then
we can hand them our printed maps, telling them, hey, here's where you're going to go soul winning.
It's fast. It's streamlined. It's efficient. It's a well-oiled machine. I mean, we don't have to fire
up the movable type printing press, move around all the letters, and then punch out that soul
winning assignment. I mean, we go on Google Earth, and we just take a screenshot. We hit print. We
print it 10 times. We hand them out. We're all, okay, everybody get my cell phone number.
Look, it takes one hour. We get to a Panera Bread, people we've never met before. We don't know who
they are. They came from hearing the preaching on YouTube. They show up, and within one hour,
we have them all paired up with experienced soul winners. We have them all broken into teams
of 15 each with a team leader that's responsible for 15 people with a stack of maps, cell phone
numbers. It's efficient. We go out. We get a hundred people saved in four or five hours of
soul winning with a hundred soul winners, and it's easy. It's smooth. We fill our bellies
with food from Panera where we're eating like kings. I mean, we're eating like kings used to
eat. We're eating these croissant pastries and fancy fine meats, and we eat like a king. We hop
in our car. We turn on the air conditioning. We go soul winning for a couple hours. We come back.
We eat like kings again. We regroup. We get out. It's so easy. It's so easy,
and the accomplishments are real. Talk about an open door, and sometimes I get a little bit
burned out of going to these events because I kind of like to just stay home these days because
I used to travel a lot for my job, so I'm kind of burned out on traveling, but I have to find
a balance because I don't want to burn out, and I don't want to neglect things here or neglect my
family or neglect the church or just neglect my own sanity, so I have to make sure that I don't
go overboard on taking these trips and be reasonable about it, but on the other hand,
it's just like there's just all these open doors, and you want to just walk through them all.
You know, you want to be in Birmingham, Alabama, and Kansas City, and you want to go to Illinois,
and you want to go to Canada. You know, you want to go to all these different places.
There's just so many open doors. It's just like right, but what's wrong with churches these days?
They fail to see the open door. Where there is no vision, the people perish. They don't see the
door. I mean, God sets before them an open door, and they're like a calf looking at a new gate.
They don't even know what to do with it. They fail to see the open door, and lastly, number seven,
Laodicea. They're lukewarm today. This is the big one. They're lukewarm. What do you mean by being
lukewarm? It's sort of like, I call it Goldilocks Baptist. You know, she eats one bowl of porridge,
and it's too cold. The other bowl of porridge is too hot, and then the lukewarm is just right.
One bed's too soft. One bed's too hard. The other one's just right. I can't even count how many
times people in the early days of our church, when our church was small, people walked in,
and said, oh man, I love hard preaching. I've been looking for a church that would preach hard,
and you know, they're so soft, and I said, hey, you came to the right place. This is going to be
some hard preaching, and then I get up, and you know, preach hard, and then it's like, that's too
hard. Right? They want to be lukewarm. Look at every, virtually every issue. They want to take
a lukewarm stance on it. They want to take kind of a half in, half out stance. They don't want
to get all the way into hard preaching. It's, you know, everything's size medium.
Everything's lukewarm. Everything's moderate. They need to get a little more extreme. They need to
get on fire. They need to light that thing up. I mean, so much lukewarm, and they think of me,
he's too radical. He's too harsh. He's too mean, and then they look at, you know, the preachers,
like the Joel Osteens. They're too soft. Right? But what they want to be is just settled into
that little Fox News Christianity. That little Republican Party Christianity. Sean Hannity Baptist
Church is where they want to be. Right? Where it's basically what the world considers, right?
But you know, the conservative part of the world. But let me tell you something. People that aren't
saved, people that aren't Christians, right? That's the world. Did you know that even if
they're a conservative Republican, it's still the world. Look, if they're Jewish, if they're
Catholic, if they're Mormon, that's not our guy. But we have people today literally listening to
as much as 15 hours a week from a Catholic. Right? Because those radio shows, those talk radio shows
are three hours a day, five days a week. They go on there and they'll listen to a Jew for 15 hours
a week. They'll listen to a Catholic 15 hours a week. They'll listen to the Mormon Glenn Beck
for 15 hours a week. Right? And then they go to their church and you know what they want to hear
when they walk into their church on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night? You know
what they want to hear? The same thing. And most of the time they are hearing the same thing.
You know, they pump their head full of Sean Hannity and then they come to church like,
oh yeah, this is good. Yeah. America. Yeah. America.
Yeah. Gay marriage. It's wicked. Yeah.
Whatever Sean Hannity says is right. Their heroes today are not soul winning Bible believing
Christians. They're perverts like judge Roy Moore.
Right? Because he put up a giant statue of the 10 commandments or something
because Sean Hannity told them so. I'm telling you something. These bunch of Republican politicians
are as much perverts as the liberals. They're always raping somebody. They're always molesting
somebody. They're always being a fag in a bathroom somewhere. Look, politics is for the scum of the
earth. Christ's kingdom is not of this world. And I'm going to tell you something. You spend
your life pumping your mind full of conservative talk radio or the libtard media and then you
wonder why you go to church and it doesn't make any sense to you and it seems like Pastor Anderson's
out to lunch. No, you're out to lunch and you need to get a reality check with the word of God.
You need to shut off the Jews and shut off the Catholics and shut off the Mormons and you need
to listen to some Bible believing Baptists today. You need to listen to the word of God today. You
need to get off of the KFBK 1530 AM and get on the KJV 1611 with Alexander Skirby as your host.
That's what you need today. And I'll tell you what's wrong with our churches today.
Well, what was wrong with Ephesus? They'd lost the first love. They quit doing the first works.
What was wrong with Smyrna? Hey, nothing. Nothing was wrong with Smyrna.
They faced the persecution, but I'll tell you what's wrong with our churches. They're nothing
like Smyrna. They don't want to be persecuted. What was wrong with Pergamos allowing fornication
and worldliness in the church? What was wrong with Thyatira suffering that woman to teach?
What was wrong with Sardis living on past glories? Name that they live, but they're dead.
What was wrong with Philadelphia? Nothing. They had the wide open door and they went through it.
Problem is a lot of churches today don't see the open door.
And number seven, what was wrong with Laodicea? Lukewarm, watered down, half in half out,
Republican Christianity. Let me tell you something. If half the people in America are Republicans,
that must not be a hardcore Christianity because half the people in our country are not hardcore
Christians. What percentage of people are zealous? Christians. Not enough to fill up the roster of
the GOP. So what the GOP is, is a watered down fake Christianity that gives lip service to God
in the Bible. But you're looking at that as your spiritual leader? Ted Cruz? Serial adulterer Ted
Cruz? You're looking to these bunch of scumbag politicians, scum of the earth politicians,
or a bunch of apostate false religious teachers preaching you their morality for three hours a day
on talk radio. I'm not going to do it. I don't want to be lukewarm. I want to be red hot.
I want to be zealous. I want to be fired up. What's wrong with these churches today? I'll
tell you what's wrong. Exactly what it said in Revelation 2 and 3 to a T. I don't even think
we missed anything. It's all there. Every major problem today in our fundamental Baptist churches
is addressed in Revelation 2 and 3 as relevant as today's newspaper. Let's bow our heads and have
a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Help us, Lord, to stay fired up,
Lord. To see the open door. Not to be lukewarm, Lord. Help us to be fearless and to get out there
with love burning in our hearts that would propel us to do the first works, Lord. Help us to be
effective for you in these last days. Help our candlestick to burn bright. Help us to put it
on a candlestick, Lord, and not hide it under a bushel. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.