I'll see you in the next video.
Bring the home presents outside the pulpit. Take one. Mark.
Alright, so yeah just start whenever you're ready.
Alright, so Pastor Jimenez, you were born in Venezuela, right?
Yes sir. That's something that a lot of people don't know about me.
Wait, you're not Mexican?
Yeah, I'm not Mexican, exactly. Everybody thinks I'm Mexican.
I was born in Venezuela, which is a different country in South America.
And I lived there until I was four years old.
And then I lived here my whole life.
So I basically lived in the United States my whole life.
But people are always surprised to know that I was born in a different country.
And you know, my family, my entire family, my parents, my brother, my sister, all born in Venezuela.
And it's interesting because, you know, we came to the United States as already independent fundamental Baptist.
So my parents were actually reached by independent fundamental Baptist missionaries in Venezuela that were American missionaries.
And even, you know, something a lot of people don't know about me is that my grandfather was actually a Baptist preacher.
And so, you know, it's interesting hearing the stories about the missionaries coming.
And they were American missionaries.
They came to my mom's house, got my mom saved, got her siblings saved, got my grandmother saved.
But my grandfather actually didn't get saved at first.
And, you know, he's the one that ended up being the most sold out, zealous, a pastor of course.
He's the male.
But at first, you know, my mom tells me stories how the missionaries would be coming down the road.
He'd see them coming and he'd actually go out the back into the backyard and he'd jump the fence, you know, the brick fence to avoid them.
But they just kept coming.
You know, after the family got saved, they kept coming and talking to him.
And eventually they talked him into visiting church.
And he wasn't saved at this point.
They talked him into visiting church.
And he, you know, my grandmother was asking him to come to church.
And he finally agreed to it.
My mom tells me the story where they had to take the bus to get to church.
So he gets up on a Sunday morning, says, we're all going to go to church.
They all get dressed.
They get on the bus.
They drive to church.
And the way it worked is that the bus stopped.
The bus would basically drop you off.
You'd get off the bus and you'd basically walk straight into church to drop you off right in front of church.
And so the story goes that the whole family gets off the bus.
Everybody gets off the bus except my grandpa.
So the bus leaves and, you know, the whole family goes into church.
But he stays in the bus and just kept going.
So even when he promised he was going to go to church.
Oh, he didn't show up.
He didn't go.
Yeah.
He just wasn't interested, you know.
But eventually he went to church and ended up getting saved.
And, you know, just their whole lives basically changed after that.
You know, he brought them to church and began to try to follow the Bible and raise them and those things.
Eventually he himself ended up being a preacher.
And so that's the story from my mom's side.
My dad's side, you know, my dad actually met my mom because my mom was a secretary.
My dad did cabinet work remodeling kitchens.
And my mom was a secretary at the place where he worked.
And he was interested in her.
And she said, if you're interested in me, you've got to be interested in church.
So he came to church, you know, and then of course he ended up getting saved.
And my dad himself has served as a deacon.
He's served as a pastor for a while.
And now, you know, my parents are members at our church.
You're a third generation preacher.
Third generation preacher.
And you were only four years old, right?
I was four years old.
Yeah.
I was very young.
I don't remember a lot of Venezuela.
Obviously I've been back to visit and stuff as far as living there.
So I've been here basically my whole life.
So I've got a godly heritage, a goodly heritage.
And you were raised in the Bay Area, California.
Yes.
What was that like?
So when we came to the U.S., we actually came to the U.S.
because my sister was having some health problems.
And they referred her to the Children's Hospital in Oakland, California.
So we came here for that reason, ended up staying, you know, the whole time.
And her health concerns, you know, were resolved.
But we lived in the Bay Area from when I was four years old until I was about high school.
And in the Bay Area, I went to Spanish church.
That's maybe something that people don't know about me.
It was an independent, fundamental Baptist church, but it was Spanish.
So that's the world I grew up in, the Spanish IFB world.
It was Pastor Luis Ramos?
Pastor Luis Ramos, yeah, who recently passed away actually.
And then when I was a sophomore in high school, we moved to Sacramento,
and we started going to Regency Baptist Church.
That's, of course, where I met you.
And then I got introduced into the English IFB world.
So I've kind of seen a lot of old IFB, you know, growing up.
And then, of course, at Regency Baptist Church, we met.
That's where we became friends.
I wanted to tell the story of, you know, we became friends.
You told the story about how we met.
But really how we became kind of good friends was through soul winning.
Because of the fact that we both served at Regency Baptist Church.
You served in the nursing ministry.
And I was working on a bus route that they had.
And Pastor Nichols came out with this idea.
You know, he met with all of the workers every Sunday night before the Sunday night service.
And he had this clipboard that he passed around.
It had everybody's name, and you had to, you know, check off that you went to all the services,
just the things that he expected from people that were serving.
And then you have to check off that you went soul winning.
And for soul winning, there was four columns.
There was column number one went for one hour.
Column number two went for two hours.
Column number three went for three hours.
And then column number four was just more.
And they rolled that out because a lot of the staff had quit soul winning.
Right, yeah.
So they were saying like, look, you can't be on staff or you can't be a teacher of the Bible in a Sunday school class or anything.
If you're not soul winning, you can't do any teaching.
Right, right.
So then that became a requirement.
Exactly.
So and then, you know, we basically had decided, like, let's be in the fourth column every week.
But you know how it actually started, though?
I don't know if you remember this or not, but it was that my wife went to Germany.
Do you remember that?
Yeah, I was going to say that was the first soul winning marathon.
Yeah.
That was the first soul winning marathon.
My wife went to Germany and we wanted to see, like, how much soul winning can we do in one day.
Right.
So we wanted to just have just this all day soul winning.
And we ended up, it was like 11 hours.
But I would say, like, eight of that was actual soul winning because we had, like, lunch and two breaks.
But we spent, like, 11 hours that day on soul winning.
And then because she was gone for two weekends.
And the next Saturday, we were out for seven, eight hours or whatever.
Right.
And then after that, we kind of settled in to just shooting for four hours a week.
Right.
But yeah, that's how we became friends.
We were just always soul winning.
Yeah, we were just soul winning together.
That was, like, all we ever did together.
Right.
I don't think we ever got together and did anything else, like, socially, did we?
No, no, no.
And I was, like, 20.
You were, like, 16.
Right.
Yeah.
So it's funny because we have all these major soul winning events all around the country
and around the world now.
But at least for us, they were birthed, you know, back then when your wife went to Germany
and we just wanted to do something, you know.
Yeah, well, I had the whole day because I was used to just hanging out with her all
the time.
Just trying to do some soul winning.
Yeah, so that was cool, of course.
And then, you know, eventually you guys ended up moving to Indiana and then I met my wife,
you know, and I've talked a lot about that.
People know a lot about our story and met her at Subway, working at Subway, 17 years
old.
She was an atheist, of course.
I ended up getting her saved and, you know, that's a whole long story.
But eventually we got married, kind of following in your footsteps, and we got married real
young, two weeks after I graduated high school, 18.
You weren't quite 18.
Yeah, well, I had just turned 19 when I got married.
You took it a step further and got married like right when you were 18.
Yeah, yeah.
So I graduated, turned 18, and then we, you know, moved to Tennessee and went to Crown
College.
Now, the reason, if I recall, the reason that you went to Crown College was because House
Anderson wouldn't let you in because they had this rule that you couldn't be married
and under 21 or something because they didn't want their young people getting married for
some bizarre reason.
So they wanted them to get married like after college.
Yeah.
So you, because you wanted to go to House Anderson.
Yeah.
Because we remember we used to exchange a lot of preaching tapes.
Yeah, absolutely.
And back then we even visited House Anderson.
We visited.
That's right.
You came and visited.
We stayed with you guys and stuff.
But remember, preaching was like a precious commodity in those.
The word of the Lord was precious in those days.
Because like now you just go online, it's just YouTube, MP3 players, it's on your phone.
But back then we had to work hard.
Yeah.
Like we had to download sermons on dial-up internet, real audio format, and then we had
to like convert them to cassettes.
Right.
And you just had all these cassettes, boxes full of them.
Or we'd buy them from the church.
Right.
They were three bucks each.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
Whatever sermons you had that I hadn't heard yet, we would always exchange them.
Yeah.
And we were exchanging a lot of Brother Hyles and stuff.
Right.
And so we were both into Hyles Anderson.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
So that was probably the other.
We went soloing a lot and then we were exchanging preaching CDs.
Right.
Preaching tapes.
CDs.
These were cassettes, man.
Preaching cassettes back then.
So we wanted to go to House Anderson.
House Anderson wouldn't allow us to go because we were too young.
They didn't want married.
And so then the colleges that allowed you, you know, we chose Crown College because we,
you know, we ended up getting a preaching CD from there.
It was a tape.
A preaching tape.
Yeah.
I can have it in my head and see.
We got a preaching tape from there.
And it was pretty good.
It was a great tape.
I listened to that tape a few times.
Yeah.
We listened to the sermon.
Yeah.
I was like, wow, this is a real great sermon.
It turns out that they took like the one good sermon and they shipped that all around the
country because when we got there, it just wasn't our style.
You know, which, you know, so it was good.
I mean, we were at, we went to Crown College for one semester.
It took me one semester to figure out that Bible college wasn't for us.
Well, no, I remember you telling me that the moment that you walked through the door, you
knew you'd made a mistake.
Yeah.
But you said that you wanted to stay the whole semester just to prove to everybody that you
gave it a chance.
Right.
Like that you didn't just go home the first weekend.
Right.
And you know, honestly, I look back on that.
Although all I learned from that one, I can't think of anything I learned in Bible college
that meant anything or that was worth anything other than the fact that you don't need Bible
college.
But that's, that semester, those six months that we were there was actually a great, cause
we'd just got married.
We got married.
We were 18.
Both of us lived with our parents until we'd gotten married.
And that six months it was, it was kind of cool for us to be like 3000 miles away from
home.
So it was a good experience on a personal level.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And then it's like, we need an apartment.
We've had to figure out how do we get, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're 18
and you know, you haven't lived, you know, we, I remember we got the apartment and we
walked into the apartment and then it's like, we got to turn the lights on.
Like how do you do that?
You know, so we had to go figure out how to do whatever.
So that whole thing was just a growing experience for us, you know, so that was nice.
And of course we, we had a, an interesting story on the way to crown college, which,
you know, we were, we were driving.
So we're, we're, we're driving from California to Tennessee, somewhere near 3000 or 3000
miles or whatever.
And as we're driving, we're driving, you know, we, we were going to do it in like three days
or something.
And we're driving through Nebraska and I'm driving and you know, my wife is sleeping.
Keep, she, she took a nap, which she no longer takes naps now, by the way, since then while
I drive.
But you know, keep in mind, we'd only been married for like a month at this point.
And we're 18 and we, and we'd been married so little time that she hadn't even, we hadn't
changed her, her driver's license.
So her driver's license still had her maiden name on it.
And we're going on the road, I was, we're driving her vehicle or the vehicle she brought
into the marriage was this Toyota Celica, a red Toyota Celica that goes pretty fast.
Anyway, we're in Nebraska and you know, Nebraska's flat.
So and you're going just, well, the whole earth's flat.
Yeah, the whole earth's flat.
Just kidding.
We don't believe in that.
Nebraska is the part that actually is flat.
And and you know, you're just, all you see is corn, you know, for, for, for days.
So I ended up going, I didn't realize it, but I was going like a hundred miles an hour
or whatever.
And I think the speed limit, I don't remember what it was, 70, 75, but we ended up getting
pull over.
She got carried away because it's just so empty.
Yeah, it's just empty.
You don't really have anything to gauge yourself with.
My wife was taking a nap or whatever.
So we ended up getting pulled over in Nebraska and we got pulled over, you know, and again,
we were 18.
We're real young.
This really kind of my first experience outside of California.
So we're, we, we get pulled over and when we get pulled over, you know, the cop, he
comes around the side of, of my wife, which is fine.
You know, he doesn't come on my side cause that's where the, the, you know, the, the
cars might be driving, whatever safety.
What was interesting though is that when she rolled down the window, he only spoke to her
and he, he, he told her to ask me to give him, you know, the license and registration,
which I thought was kind of odd.
I'm like, okay, whatever.
So we gave it to him.
Then he, he goes back in his car, he comes back.
Then he asked me to step out of the vehicle, which I thought was a little odd, you know,
for speeding or whatever.
And I was speeding a lot, you know, it was like a hundred miles, but still he asked me
to get out of the vehicle.
When I get out of the vehicle, he tells me to put my hands on the top of the vehicle,
my hands on the vehicle.
He asked me, do you have any weapons on you?
And I said, no.
And he said, I'm going to search you.
And I said, okay, you know, which, which I probably wouldn't be saying, okay now, you
know, but again, this was, I was really young.
And so he starts patting me down and I had my wallet in my back pocket and he gets, he
puts his hand on my wallet and he starts like yelling in my ear, I thought you said you
had no weapons.
And I'm like, it's my wallet.
And he's like, pull it out slowly.
So I pull my hand out and I pull it out and he has me put it on top of the vehicle or
whatever.
Then he takes me into his car.
I've never been in the, that's the only time I've ever been in a cop car, in the back of
a cop car.
So he puts me in the, in the back of the cop car.
I've been a few times.
Yeah.
So, you know, and, and keep in mind that I was also at this point, I was wearing like
a baseball cap.
And I've been told that sometimes when I wear a baseball cap, I look like I'm black.
So I'm in the back of this guy's cop car and he has my license, her license, he has our
information.
He gets in the front, he's talking to his little walkie talkie or whatever.
And he's, he, he asked them to run the license plate of the vehicle to see if the, if it's
been reported as missing or stolen.
And I thought that was odd.
Then he pulls out her, her, her license, which has her maiden name, and he asked them to
run her name to see if there's any missing persons reports.
And then he's like, starts talking about me and he's like, I have this black male suspect.
And I wasn't really thinking, I just said, I said to the guy, I said, Hey, I'm not black.
And as soon as I said that, he turns around and he's like, I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.
And I'm like, well, there's nothing to be sorry, nothing wrong with being black.
I'm just telling you, I'm not black.
And then like, after that, the whole thing changed.
I know this guy just hated black people, he's like profiling you, and then as soon as he
finds out you're not black, he's like, Oh, I'm so sorry, sir.
He's being real nice or whatever.
And I mean, he was still, you know, afterwards, now you know, the struggle is real.
Well, you know, so anyway, that was, that was my first, my first experience outside
of California, I guess so, yeah, a little culture shock from the Bay Area.
It's really multicultural.
Yeah.
You get out towards like white man country.
Right, right.
Well, it's funny because then we got, then we get to Knoxville and I get a job at Walmart
and there's these old black guys, you know, and I'm working overnight cause I'm going
to school in the morning or whatever.
And then these old black guys are like, Hey, you're going to that Bible college, right?
And I'm like, yeah.
And I think, I don't know if they're just used to only seeing white kids go to that
college cause that college wasn't very diverse either.
But they took me aside and they're like, Hey, I just want to let you know, you know, Knoxville
is a real, real friendly place for people like us.
And he started telling me on Knoxville was the only city or the only town in Tennessee
that was for the North during the Civil War, and they were like, Hey guys, I'm actually
not black.
So he said, he said, he said, Knoxville is a real nice place, you know, but there's a
lot of backwoods.
And if you get lost in the backwoods and you see a big flaming cross, just go the other
way.
And I'm like, okay.
So anyway, that was, that's, that's all my racial stories, but so that was our experience
in Tennessee.
Yeah.
After six months, we came back to California after that semester, which was, it was fun
because you know, in the summer we, we took I-80 East, so it was kind of the North of
the country.
So we took like, so we went through all these States, you know, Wyoming and you know, whatever,
Utah and Nebraska, different places we hadn't seen.
And then on the way back, we took the Southern route back home because it was, it was winter,
so it was better to drive that way.
And then we drove through Arizona and Texas or whatever.
So in the first like year of our marriage, we took these two like major road trips.
It was just, you know, the college part was dumb, but it was a good experience for us,
you know, and spending time together.
Wasn't the church kind of like the type of church that all the kind of rich people or
politicians in the town kind of went to, wasn't it kind of like a high brow?
Yeah.
I mean, if you look, if you look at it, you, when you walk into the building, you feel
like you're walking into the grand old Opry or something, you know, it's like real fancy
or whatever.
So the pastor didn't really preach hard because he's kind of trying to keep everybody happy.
Was that the issue?
As far as independent Baptist are concerned, I mean, I think the guy takes good stands
or strong stands.
He's not a bad, not a bad place.
As far as I can tell, he's, he's, he's not a terrible guy, but it's definitely not the
style we were used to.
You know, I was used to Regency Baptist church.
I used to pastor Nichols just ripping face on Sunday nights, you know, and the, you know,
let's, let's stop and talk a little bit about that.
I mean, when we were at Regency, Regency was a great church.
Yeah.
I mean, didn't it kind of make us who we are in a lot of ways?
Yeah.
I think, I think the spirit of the new IFB movement comes from that old Regency church.
I mean, and obviously a lot of similarities, right?
And obviously I don't know a lot about what was going on in other churches where, but
I think Regency was probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest church at that time, you
know, that we happened to be, and I didn't realize that, you know, now fighting the battles
we're fighting, you know, fighting dispensationalism, fighting Zionism, fighting all these things,
you know, I didn't realize how blessed we were that Regency, we didn't have had to deal
with that.
I think I realized it a little more because you were coming from the Hispanic world, right?
I was coming from other independent fundamental Baptist churches.
So I, I, I realized that Regency was a cut above.
Right.
It was the preaching was great.
Yeah.
So see, I didn't.
Soul winning was great.
Yeah.
So when I showed up to crown college, to temple Baptist church, it was, that was a culture
shock.
Forget the, forget the society, just the church.
Cause I was, I thought all churches were like that, you know, and then you walk in and it,
you know, it's the kind of happy church where instead of the pastor saying like, turn to
John three 16, it's like turn to the 16th verse of the third chapter.
This is my Clarence, uh, sex and impression.
I'd like you to take your copy of the word of God tonight.
Turn to the fifth verse of the 17th chapter of the gospel according to St. John.
Right.
Exactly.
And everything was just slowed down.
Everything was general, you know?
And then I remember, I remember going to, um, go, you know, one of the classes I took
when I was there was personal evangelism, which taught you everything except personal
evangelism.
I remember having to take a friend that I'd made in the class who was a pastor's son
and I taught him how to go soul winning cause the class didn't and he really wanted to know,
you know, and I was just shocked that like, you're a pastor's son, you don't know how
to go soul winning.
So it's just, that opened my eyes to a lot of other fun, you know, so I was fundamentalism,
so I was happy to come back.
Just kind of a little bit of coldness or deadness in a lot of the old IFB.
And then, you know, I was used to soul winning.
They did the whole visitation thing where they were just visiting visitors and you know,
not really knocking doors and things like that.
So all of that was, was an interesting phase of our lives, you know, but then we ended
up, um, coming back home.
And uh, so, so before we got married, you know, I worked at Subway, that's where I met
my wife.
And then after that, my second job that I had gotten, um, which, you know, at that time
I thought it was my, my first real job.
Now I realize it wasn't really a probably, it wasn't a good, I know it wasn't a good
job, but I, I worked at this place called absolutely no ID required check cashing super
store.
And, um, so I worked there for a little while and then we went to Bible college and then
I decided to come back and when I come back, came back, I got my job back at this no ID
required check cashing super store.
Oh, so you worked there before and after.
I worked there before and after, yeah, cause you know, when I got back I was needing, I
wanted any work and they were like, you know, they liked me and they were willing to take
me back or whatever.
But anyway, so I worked at this check cashing store and I'm not proud of that.
Okay.
This is, I don't know.
This is before you'd seen marching design.
I don't, I don't condone working at a check cashing store or payday loan places.
Those places are bad.
They're not.
But you got some great stories.
Don't, don't try to, don't try to like censor the stories.
So you need to tell the whole story.
So keep in mind that this place is called the, the full name of this place is called
absolutely no ID required check cashing super store.
So check cashing places are already shady to begin with, but ours was you don't need
any ID.
It's like the shady of the shade.
Yeah.
It's like the worst, you know, you're, you're like asking for people to bring you stolen
checks or things like that.
So what we would have to do is people would basically be coming to us to cash a check
without ID.
Now there are some legitimate reasons why some people weren't able to go to a bank or
whatever, but those reasons were very few.
Most of the time it was just bad people, you know, or whatever.
And so, so we would have to interview these people.
We, there was like a, a bulletproof glass and there was phones, you know, almost like
a prison, but you know, they would come in and we would, you know, talk to them on the
phone and we had this form we had to fill out and we would tell these people, because
they were, keep in mind these people are cashing checks with no ID.
So we would tell them like, we have this computer, which was a lie.
There was no computer, but we have this computer system that will take all this information
and it'll verify who you are without ID, but we need all this info.
And really all we were getting was we were getting their information, like contact info
and then getting like people's names that would vouch for them.
Like not vouch for them, but like, and again, this is not proper business.
I'm not, but we'd get like grandma's name and phone number or, you know, uh, some love
one like that.
And then what we would do is we'd go in the back and while the computer was working on
all these things, we'd call grandma and say, Hey, your grandson's here trying to cash this
check without ID.
And then grandma would be telling us about, Oh, he's struggling in life or whatever.
And uh, and we'd say, Hey, we want to catch this form, but would you vouch like if this
check comes back, cause it's probably going to, would you, will you pay it plus the fees?
And a lot of times these grandmas, unfortunately grandmothers, mothers, you know, enablers
would say yes and, and, and they were good for the money.
So we cashed checks knowing they were going to come back and then call grandma and grandma
would send us a check plus the fees plus whatever.
And this is basically how this system worked, which is not a good, and then of course you
got the payday loans, which is a scam, which is stealing from you and all of that.
So um, but, but the guy, you're just a young person, you got the job, obviously looking
back it was bad, but it's still a funny story.
It was so, so the, our boss, the guy that owned the place, he was a real like flamboyant
type guy, not, not, he was just like a character, I mean he was, he was rich and shady and whatever.
And he, his whole thing was he always wanted to punish, he wanted to punish people that
would try to steal from us.
So one thing that we would do there, which again, I don't even know why we thought this
was okay, but when you, at the, at the check cashing store, you'd have this place cause
people would bring, you know, the, the armed guards would bring us money.
So there was this like safe room and basically it was, there was two doors and the doors
never opened at the same time.
So you had one door that led from the lobby to the safe room and then one door from the
safe room to where we were.
So you could open one door while keeping one door locked and whatever, and they would bring
the money in that way.
But every once in a while when we knew we had just a really bad, like this person's
really trying to rip us off, there's no one, they burned every bridge, there's no one that's
willing to vouch for them or whatever, and we, or maybe they had already stolen from
us before they'd cast a check that whatever we had history, but they'd forgotten cause
they're doing this everywhere and they came back to us.
He wanted us to punish them.
So what we would do is we would tell these people like, Hey, you know, our system is
like 90% they're like ready to vouch for you, but we just need one more thing.
And they're like, what?
And we'd have them step into the safe room and we'd say, you know, there's this brand
new technology and again, there's no technology, but there's this brand new technology that
will verify who you are and verify the truthfulness of your story based on the DNA, on the items
that you're wearing, which all of this is a lie.
So we're telling like, we need to get your items so we can put, and they'd be like, how
does this work?
And we're like, well, we've got this machine and we put them in there and there's like
light shines on it and it comes back with this report or whatever.
All of this is not true.
And but anyway, so we would be like, we just need, you know, anything you're wearing that
you're willing to let us put into this, into our machine and the more, the better.
So we would tell people like, that's a nice watch, like, and we, you know, and there's
like a little basket.
So they put their watch there, they'd put, I mean, hats, jerseys, shoes, chains.
I mean, anything we could get from these people, they put in this thing and then they'd walk
out.
So we'd wait like 20 minutes and we'd go back out there and we'd say, hey, you know, they'd
come up to the door to the phone and we'd say, you see that camera?
And they'd look at the camera and say, hey, the machine came back saying that the check
you have is stolen and the Sheriff's department would like to talk to you.
Of course, we never called the Sheriff's department.
We just told them the Sheriff's department would like to talk to you.
Can you have a seat?
They'll be here in a few minutes.
And sometimes people would just kind of like walk back, have a seat, look at the camera
and then like run out the door.
Or sometimes they'd just like start cussing at us and yelling at us.
But eventually they'd always leave and they'd leave with all their stuff still, you know,
back there.
So anyway, that was his way of like punishing these people because he felt like the government
would never do anything.
So he would just take their stuff.
He'd take their stuff because they'd stolen from him so he would take the stuff.
But didn't he like, I think you told me like he didn't even do anything with this stuff.
Like he didn't even celebrate that.
He just like collected it.
He just collected it.
It was like, it was like trophies.
It was like trophies that he had, but here, here's, here was his philosophy.
His philosophy was if we like punk them, they will, he said like, they will tell this story.
He said, they're criminals and all their friends are criminals and they will tell the story
to all their criminal friends and they'll stay away from our store.
So he just wanted them to have a really bad experience so like they would never come back
or their friends.
So they'll go do it somewhere else.
Somewhere else or whatever.
But anyway, I, you know, I'm looking back now, I think myself, man, you could have got
yourself killed, you know, doing something like that.
There was another story you told though.
Didn't they actually, and you're like 18, 19 years old or whatever, right?
Didn't they actually send you to court?
Yes.
You had to like represent the company in court.
So keep in mind, ask yourself how, how shady is this company when the most responsible
and presentable employee is the 18 year old, you know, Baptist, right?
So they made, they put me in charge of like collections and you know, and we would try
to collect on things or whatever.
But sometimes when the, when it was bad enough, we took people to a small claims court and,
and I was in charge of that.
So I was like every week going to small claims court, mostly people were not showing up,
but when they did show up, we obviously would always win because it was obvious that these
people stole from us or whatever.
But then my instructions were when they, when, when we win, do not leave.
You know, if you, if you allow them to leave, we will never see them again.
We'll get nothing from them.
We're never going to, we're not going to get it back.
Just because a judge rules in your favor, right?
People don't pay though.
Right.
Like one time, one time I got in a car accident, I was just sitting at a light, somebody just
slammed into me from behind.
And then, you know, some judge ruled that that person owed me $11,000.
Right.
But I never even saw one dime of that because the person just said, well, I don't have any
money.
And it's like, you just never get the money.
So we would always win.
Yeah.
But my instructions from my boss were take whatever they'll give you right then and there.
To try to get cash or something.
It wasn't even that.
He says just to punish them.
I mean, we took like spare tires.
We took like anything they would just give us because he's like, we're never going to
get anything from them anyway.
Just watches, hats, whatever.
Just to, just to punish them just so that they'd be punished or whatever, which again,
In this guy's eccentric mind.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't want my kids working there, but you know, it was, it was, it was fun while
it lasted.
Eventually I, you know, thought I might better, I should probably get a, like a more honest
job and I ended up working at Wells Fargo bank, which now I realize is just a different
kind of criminal banking, but anyway, at least, at least it was a little safer for me, but
that was my, that was my work experience.
So after you worked at Wells Fargo, is that when you went into the military?
Yeah.
I went from Wells Fargo into the military and I spent four years in the military and
you know, we were fortunate because we ended up getting stationed back in California being,
being stationed at Travis Air Force Base and we found a really good church to get plugged
into.
And at this point I was more aware of the fact that there was lots of different types
of churches, but the church we found, it wasn't as good as Regency was in the, in the
great days, but it was just right there.
I mean they, they had aggressive soul winning.
They were having like 70 soul winners a week, which for us now in this new movement is pretty
normal.
Right.
But back then to have a church have 70 soul winners, I was just amazed, you know, by that.
Now keep in mind, this was a church of like 400 with 70 soul winners, so it's not necessarily
the same.
Still great numbers though.
Yeah, but it's still great.
Yeah.
It's still good, all of that.
And that's actually where I was trained for the ministry.
They actually sent us out to start Verity Baptist Church.
And one thing I was very thankful for, you know, since then that church is closed, it's
no longer around, but one thing I was thankful for is that at the time the pastor, he knew,
you know, my position, that I was not pre-tripped, that I was family integrated, not Zionist,
not dispensationalist, and he didn't agree with all of that, but he was still willing
to send us out.
So that was a blessing.
And you know, he sent us out to start Verity Baptist Church, and of course, you know, when
we started Verity Baptist Church, this was a different, you know, there wasn't an organized
new IFB movement like there is now, you know, so very similar to your story, we were just
kind of on our own.
I mean, we had you guys to have fellowship, but...
So let's back up a little bit, because you and I lost touch for a few years, because
we were really good friends at Regency, we were going soul winning together every week,
and then when I went to Hiles Anderson is when we lost touch, right?
So for the couple years I was over there, we barely talked, you know, for a few years,
so I kind of missed that whole check cashing phase of your life.
So then we got back in touch when you were at the church in Fairfield, when you were
Travis Air Force Base, that's when we kind of became good friends again.
So even before you started Verity, you came and preached at Faithful Word Baptist, what,
like twice a year, I would bring you out.
You were only like 20 years old, because when I started the church, I was 24.
You were like 20, but when I brought you out, people thought you were a pastor, even though
you were only like 20, and you would come and preach a couple times a year.
So that kind of gave you some experience.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was very thankful for that, because that was probably the first several times that
I preached full length sermons, you know.
I think, if I remember right, I think the Sunday, the first time I preached, you'd already
been, obviously you'd already had the church going for a while, but you hadn't been recording.
I think that was...
Yeah, it was like the first Sunday we started recording.
The first Sunday you preached that morning and you had me preach that night, that was
like the first time you even recorded, you know, sermons and stuff, so.
Yeah, because it was like two months into the church's existence or something.
Right, right.
So we were just starting, yeah.
So it was, you know, I was, obviously I was happy to be able to preach anywhere, and then,
you know, and I got a lot of great experience preaching and coming out, soul winning, and
then just, I remember one reason I wanted to is because I knew I wanted to start a church.
I knew that the Bible college ship had sailed for me, and the...
So you only did that one semester, that's it.
One semester, and I knew that they weren't going to back us with starting a church, so
I knew if I was going to start a church, I was going to have to be like in a house, just
like you guys did it.
So I was really excited to come and see how you were doing it and learn.
I remember a lot of just questions and learning methods and whatever, and just seeing how
you guys were doing what you were doing.
And that's basically what we did.
We started basically the same way you guys did.
I mean, the first year, what was it, 10 or 15 people would come?
Right.
You started out small, right?
Yeah, small.
Absolutely.
The same way we did, where we averaged like 10 the first year, that's pretty much similar,
right?
Yeah.
And I, you know, I was thankful, I have a funny story or an interesting story, but I
was thankful that, because I remember you told me when you started that, and correct
me if I'm wrong, but there was maybe one or a few services where it was just you and your
family.
Two services.
Two services where it was you and your family.
So I was thankful at first, you know, things were, the church was smaller and things, but
I was thankful that we never had a service, there was just me and my family, but there
was one service where we came extremely close.
And you know, at this point, my family, my parents and my sister, they were coming to
our church in the evening services, but they were actually members at another church when
we started.
And they had like serving positions there.
So they didn't just leave that to come, which I was totally fine with.
So they weren't coming on Sunday mornings to our church because they had like positions
there, but they would come a lot to the evening service and things like that.
So but when we started, I remember the church that we, that sent us out, they gave us, they
would have these themes, you know, the old IFB churches, they always have these themes
every year, which we don't do stuff like that, but they'd have these themes and they would
have these posters they'd put out.
So they gave me their last year's posters, which I wanted anything, because we're starting
a church and a house, I wanted to make it look as much like a church or whatever.
So they gave us these posters to put up, so it was like a nice backdrop, like a backdrop,
you know, and the backdrop had a nice image in it and it said, we never saw it on this
fashion.
That was their theme for the year.
Right.
And you know, that comes from the story of where they bring the man out when they break
up the roof and they bring them down, Jesus preaching in a house, it's packed, they can't
bring him in.
So they bring him down through the roof.
So I got this idea because I got these posters, they gave it to us because they, they, the
new year started, they got new posters, so they gave us their old years.
So I got this idea that the first Sunday of the year, I was going to put these posters
up and I'm going to preach the sermon called, we never saw it on this fashion.
I thought, this is great.
We have a church in the house.
Yes.
Great verse, great theme.
The story about Jesus preaching in a house.
Perfect.
So I was going to preach about how like this house needs to be packed out, we need to be
bringing people, needs to be so full, they need to be breaking up the roof to bring them
in, whatever.
So, so Sunday, I think Sunday that year fell on the first.
Now your dad, brother Anderson and Ms. Denise were coming, brother Ray and Ms. Denise were
coming to church from day one, but because it was a holiday, they were out of town.
So they were, we could always count on them on Sunday morning, but they were out of town.
I got this idea.
I'm going to preach this sermon about, you know, filling up the house or whatever.
And church, you know, so church starts that Sunday and nobody shows up.
Just kind of worked out.
It's a holiday.
Everybody's gone.
Right.
Just one of those things.
And we didn't have that many people coming anyway.
So we showed up.
And how far, you were only like a year in or something?
I think we were a few months in.
Oh, to the church's existence?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
So, cause, cause, cause it was, cause we started in October and it was January.
Oh, so it was only like three months later.
Like three months in.
Yeah.
So one thing, you know, when we first started the church on day one, we had several people
show up on day one that stuck with us for a while.
One of them was brother Ray and Ms. Denise.
There's another lady, Ms. Jovita.
I knocked on her door the week before we started the church.
She lived a few houses down from me.
She was an independent from a Baptist living in Sacramento, driving to the Bay Area every
week for church and praying that she would find a good IFB church near her so that she
could stop driving to her church that she'd grown up in.
Oh wow.
It's like three doors down.
Yeah.
So when she, so she started coming to our church immediately.
Anyway, on that Sunday, it's 10 30, time to start church.
Nobody's there.
You know, I'm doing what I think a lot of pastors do with the first few weeks and we're
looking out the window, you know, seeing whatever nobody, you know, we wait about 10 minutes.
Nobody came.
So I told my wife, like, well, let's just start the service, you know?
So we started the service.
I led the music.
It was just, at that point it was me, my wife, and my two older boys.
That's all we had.
We had my son Joshua and then Joel was a baby.
And so led the music, sang with them, went through the announcements.
You'd already told me this.
Like, if you ever have a service where nobody shows up, just have church like, like normal,
you know, for your family.
It's worth, you know, to your family is the most important people there.
So I really knew like if there's no service when nobody shows up, we're going to go through
everything we normally do.
So I went through the singing, went through the announcements, went through everything.
Just my family.
At that point, we were in the house.
We had a downstairs bedroom.
We'd made the downstairs bedroom a mother baby room.
So we had like a little camera set up.
It wasn't even a camera.
It was like a mother, like a mother.
A baby monitor.
Yeah.
That you could see under there.
So anyway, I read the text and I pray and I bow my head and I'm praying.
And as I'm praying, I hear my son, Joel, my baby son starts crying.
And I hear my wife like grabbing her stuff and taking Joshua and going to the mother
baby room as I'm praying.
You know, my eyes are closed and I'm thinking to myself like, really?
So now it's just you.
There's nobody here.
Yeah.
Right.
What are you doing?
Where are you going?
Yeah.
So I'm like, so, so I said, amen.
And I opened my eyes and when I opened my eyes, sitting in front of me, it's Jovita.
So Jovita walked in while I was praying.
Just this one person.
Just one person.
I didn't realize it.
She walked in while I was praying.
Just you and her.
So then Joel, Joel started crying.
My wife didn't want to distract Jovita so she takes her, the kids into the mother baby
room.
So it's me and Jovita and I'm preaching this sermon about how we never saw it in this fashion.
This house has to be packed.
We're going to reach you.
And I decided, I decided I'm going to preach it.
It's still on our website.
You can look it up.
You're probably thinking like, man, I wish I had a different sermon right now.
Yeah, exactly.
It's the wrong sermon.
I told myself like never preach a sermon like this.
Always have a backup sermon.
But anyway, I didn't have a backup sermon.
So I'm like, I'm like being dynamic.
You know, I'm trying to at least.
I'm being dynamic.
So we can download it.
You can listen to it.
I mean, I haven't listened to it in years, but I was trying to be dynamic.
I was trying to be in church.
I'm preaching, whatever.
And it's just me and Jovita, you know, and then my wife, of course, in the mother baby
room.
Yeah.
And then, um, so I pray and I did then what I do to this day.
I prayed to end the service and then I walked out and I stood at the, at the, at the door
to greet people on the way out.
And Jovita walks up to me and she just says, she just says to me, that was a great sermon
pastor.
And then she walks out and I'm like, wow, so that was the closest we ever came to.
That was, that was kind of a low point.
That was a low point.
That was a humbling point.
Um, but that, that was the closest we came to a service without, you know, with just
my family.
Um, does she still come to this day or well, she, she would still come to say she visits
from time to time, but she, her husband and they ended up moving to the Philippines.
Okay.
But she came for a long time.
She came for a long time.
And she, she, she still goes to IFB church in the Philippines, but um, so she was a blessing,
but that was, that's a, that's a day that always stands out in my mind as a, when I
think of the beginning days, I think of that.
Yeah.
I love that story.
I tell that story to people all the time.
I'm just, I'm just glad that I was telling it right.
Oh, okay.
Cause you know, sometimes I, you know, you get a story and kind of run with it, but that's
the way I've been telling it.
So, you know, the low, the beginning days were out.
I was working full time and you know, just pastoring and we're just trying to make, make
it happen, you know, and, and, and survive.
Um, yeah.
So, you know, after we started the church, I mean those first several years were, they
were quiet years, but we were busy.
I mean, we were, the church was growing.
Of course I was working full time the first couple of years.
So I was working full time job, pastoring in church, doing that, which you know how
that is.
I mean, that was just your, you know, I just, I just felt those years, I remember those
years just having my head down and just working and not that we're not working now, but it
was just, we're busy.
I mean, everyone was, the whole family was just involved in working.
The church was growing a lot.
We grew up the house.
So you started in 2010?
Yes, September, 2000.
And then, you know, I know a big thing that people know you for, even all over the world
was that whole Orlando thing.
Right.
And that was that in 2016?
2016.
Yeah.
Okay.
You grew from just a handful of people in your house, 10, 15 typical attendance, maybe
the first year.
Right.
And then you'd grown to about what, 190 on Sunday morning or something?
We're running like 180, 190 before.
So six years of effort brought you up to where you were almost pushing like 200.
Right.
And you'd had big days over 200.
Yeah.
We'd had big days.
We were averaging a lot of soul winners.
You know, and in those years, I mean, there was some major milestones, a lot of things
that we partnered with you and Paul Whittenberger.
I say partnered, but we got to be a part of, you know, like things like After the Tribulation,
New World Order Bible Versions, Marching of Zion, you know, all of that was happened in
those years.
Really those years, in my opinion, is when this movement kind of took off and started
becoming a movement and people, you know, because of the documentaries, because of,
of course, all the effort you put into that, you know, YouTube videos and things like that,
you know.
And we were just kind of behind you guys, you know.
We were there, but we were growing and we were new, too, and all of that.
So what really, and the church was growing and successful.
I mean, like you said, we're averaging 180, 190, things were going great.
What really kind of put us more on the spotlight was, of course, the huge Orlando protest,
which you know, what's funny is that 2016 was a big year for us.
And people often think like, oh, because of the Orlando thing, but it wasn't just that.
2016 is when we planted our first church plant in Vancouver, Washington.
We had the big Orlando protest.
It's also when we started the Red Hot Preaching Conference.
And here's the thing, the Red Hot Preaching Conference was planned before the Orlando
event.
In fact, some of the reporters were acting like I'd staged the Orlando thing to promote
the conference.
Like it was a publicity stunt.
Yeah, like a publicity stunt, which obviously worked out great.
Yeah, it was awesome.
So what's your stunt this year?
Yeah, I'm working on it.
Are you going to come out with some radical sermon to get back in the news?
I don't think, I think the news, yeah, I think the news is done with us.
I think I can say anything I want and they'll probably never cover us again, but I don't
know.
We'll see what happens.
But you know, the Orlando thing was a big thing, of course.
You know, the protest, we had a major protest.
You know, the news was saying there was a thousand people out there.
I think the number was probably more like five or 600, but still.
It was at least 500 people.
It wasn't a thousand.
I think it was about five or 600.
Yeah, but when you think about five or 600 people, that's a lot of people.
That's a lot.
I mean, it was, it was.
We've never had that many a faithful word.
Most we ever had was like 130.
Yeah.
So it was a big, it was a big deal for us, for, for, for the, for the church.
Obviously we lost a lot of people just because they couldn't deal with the, they couldn't
take the heat.
So they got out of the kitchen.
Exactly.
Persecution or tribulation and by and by they were offended.
Right.
So I remember that day very well because you texted me that morning on that Sunday morning.
Yeah.
That the Orlando, you texted me and you're like, Hey, did you hear about this thing with
the nightclub and everything?
And I told you like, no, I haven't heard anything about it.
But I remember I had two sermons already prepared for Sunday morning and Sunday night that I
was really excited about preaching.
So I'm like, I'm not changing my sermon.
Like I'm not even going to talk about this Orlando thing.
I'm just going to hit on these two.
But I made like a little video, like a little four minute video where I just gave my thoughts
on the Orlando thing.
And that video went crazy.
It got like a hundred and some thousand views in the first 24 hours.
But then once your sermon came out, my video was just like in the shade because your sermon
went like worldwide mega viral.
Right.
It was a Sunday night sermon.
It was Sunday night sermon.
So it went like global news.
So I honestly believe that it was God orchestrating that thing because there was a lot of things
that happened on that day that weren't normal.
One thing is, now this is normal.
We were having people over that Sunday afternoon for lunch, you know, like a family that had
been, they weren't new, but we were just having them over for lunch that day.
And my wife was, I forget what she was making, but she was making some new dish or something
where she wanted to be able to leave church early.
We normally drive to church together, but she'd asked me that Sunday if we could drive
separately, which is not something we normally do.
But the funny thing is that because we drove separately, because I was driving and she
drove the van with the kids and I was driving in the Civic, I was driving to church and
I don't even know why I did this, but I thought to myself, I wonder what's going on in the
news.
And I turned the radio on and I hear about this Orlando thing because it happened earlier
that morning or whatever.
You normally might not have even heard about it.
I wouldn't have heard of it.
Neither of us really follows the news.
No.
So it's like.
So that's when I got to church.
I only heard about it from you.
Right.
Well when I got to church, I texted you about it.
Yeah.
And then I remember you responded.
I remember what you responded.
You said like, I haven't heard of it or whatever.
And I don't know.
It just kind of got in my head.
And I decided that I decided I want to preach a sermon about it that Sunday night.
So we had the couple over.
I already had my Sunday night sermon written too.
And we had that couple over.
We had lunch.
And then I remember when they left, I told my wife, I got to write a new sermon.
So I wrote the Orlando sermon.
The other interesting thing is that one of my daughters ended up getting sick that day.
So my wife stayed home, which is not a normal thing, but she stayed home that Sunday night.
So I blame her.
You know, it's like, this is what happens when you stay home.
So that night, I preached that sermon.
If she would have been there, you would have toned it down.
So here's what's funny though.
You could really cut loose when your wife's not there.
So here's what's funny.
I preached the Orlando thing, right?
And what was the sermon called?
The Christian Response to the Orlando Shoot.
And I'm sure it's online somewhere.
I'm sure YouTube takes it down and stuff, but it's alive somewhere.
I know.
People tell me that.
People want to hear it.
The MP3 is on our website.
Absolutely.
That's easy to find.
Right.
So it's called the Christian Response to the Orlando Shooting.
So here's what's funny.
I didn't say anything that I had not said before as far as what we believe.
You know, some of the statements I made may have been a little more extreme or whatever.
It was just the way that you worded it.
Right.
And you know what's funny?
Just from my perspective, okay, I'd even made the statement to somebody because people had
asked me before, like, why, how come the media never goes after Pastor Jimenez?
You know, like, why don't they demonize him?
Because he believes the same stuff.
He says all the same stuff.
And I always told people, I said, you know, he says all the same stuff as I say, and he
definitely doesn't hold back.
You know, he's definitely not watering down the truth.
I mean, it's unfiltered.
But I said, I don't think Pastor Jimenez is ever going to get attacked by the media because
he doesn't give them the little sound bites.
Right.
You know, and that's what they're looking for.
They're looking for little sound bites that play well in the media.
And he'll like explain the whole doctrine and make all the same points and all the same
statements.
But he explains it in a way that just doesn't really translate into a 10-second sound bite.
But I remember when I listened to your sermon, I was like, these are some sound bites.
So you finally gave them the sound bites.
So here's the funny thing.
So there was nothing new doctrinally, it was just you gave them the catchy sound bites.
So the funny thing is, I remember, because at that point, you had been having some issues
with your YouTube where they were giving you strikes, and you'd warned me about that.
Just saying to be careful.
We had created a backup channel just in case, even though we hadn't had any issues, just
in case.
I remember after the sermon, I had a quick meeting.
It was me and it was Brother Stuckey, who was our only staff person at the time, and
our sound guy.
And we had a quick meeting about whether or not this sermon should go on the backup channel.
And I remember the meeting lasted like 30 seconds, and we all kind of shrugged our shoulders
and said, I don't think we have anything to worry about.
Just put it on the main channel.
Nothing was said that was different than anything that's already been said or whatever.
We all just kind of left it at that.
And it was put on the main channel that night, and I mean, that night it went viral, crazy
viral, whatever.
Oh, man.
The media went crazy, and of course, the media lies.
How many people did they say were in your church?
I don't know.
They said only 50 people go to your church.
I feel like 50, yeah.
He only has 50 people in the church, and most of them are all his relatives.
They said on the day of the protest, the SACB said we closed the church that day.
We didn't have church, whatever, which is a lie.
We had like 300 people there.
Yeah, you had every service.
Your top attendance, you hit 300 when everybody was supporting you and backing you up.
So it was real interesting because we...
So that whole thing happened.
I mean, it went crazy.
I didn't even know that, obviously, I didn't know.
I woke up Monday morning.
I didn't know anything had happened.
And it's funny because my wife had an appointment on Monday because she was expecting, so she
had a midwife appointment or whatever.
So we'd already had planned where she was going to go to this appointment, and I was
going to stay home with the kids.
She could just go by herself or whatever.
So I was just hanging out.
It's Monday morning.
I was hanging out with the kids, getting them cereal, whatever.
Someone rings the doorbell, and I opened the door, and there's just these cameras and this
mic.
Oh, so that was how you found out?
That's how I found out.
Wow.
And they're trying to come in, almost trying to come into the house, and I was just like...
And then, of course, my kids.
Because you were caught off guard.
You weren't prepared.
I didn't know.
And they're just little kids.
And they're like, what's going on?
And I'm thinking to myself, whatever's going on, I don't want my kids all over the news.
So I'm trying to push them back and close the door, and I'm like, what in the world
is going on?
And then people started calling.
Church people started calling.
You're all over the news.
But the way I found out is that the doorbell rang.
I opened the door.
That's a funny way to find out.
Yeah.
So it was crazy.
So of course, it took me...
I've never had that happen.
I always knew what was going on.
Yeah, I didn't.
So it took me a little bit to kind of get my head wrapped around.
Yeah.
I mean, when you're caught off guard, I mean, you got to...
Yeah.
What was going on?
So it's funny.
So then we...
You know, everything went crazy.
I mean, my phone was just nonstop ringing.
It's funny.
You could tell when the news was covering it in different parts of the country because
every phone call was coming from like New Mexico.
A certain area could.
Yeah.
And then it'll switch to the East Coast.
And then it'll switch to...
And it's like, oh, it just broke.
I could tell.
Like, I could tell like, oh, it just broke in the UK because all these calls are coming
in and it says UK or whatever.
Right.
Yeah.
So, you know, that was going on.
We're getting death threats.
I wake up one day.
I look outside.
There's the Sacramento Sheriff's Department has a trailer in front of our house.
They have like a command center or something.
Yeah.
No, they literally have a trailer in front of the house.
And the trailer had like eight different cameras, all sorts of different sizes.
One went up like 20 feet in the air.
They were all facing in different directions.
And I think to myself, is that...
Mobile surveillance.
Right.
And every 12 hours, some cop would come out and put more gas in it because it was like,
you know, being run or whatever.
And I thought to myself, is that to keep track of us or is that to protect us, you know?
Right.
A little bit of both.
But so...
You're quite kind of glad it's there, though.
Yeah.
I was happy it was there.
With all the weird things that were going on.
Right.
And so we, you know, we decided...
I stayed for the...
We had the Wednesday night service.
The Wednesday night service was the first service that I got to talk to the church people
after it all broke.
After Wednesday night, my wife and I decided, you know, we need to just get out of town
for a little bit.
Obviously, we weren't going to miss church on Sunday, but we went home, packed our bags,
and went to Tahoe.
So we had our little Tahoe vacation that we know about.
Yeah, we've had a couple of persecution vacations, too.
Yeah, the getaway vacation.
That was nice.
But, you know, when I was in Tahoe, that's when I saw the video that you'd made supporting
us, you know.
And then when you made the video, then I started getting all sorts of text messages coming
in and people calling saying, I'm going to be there.
Because you had told people, like, be there on Sunday to support Brother Jimenez.
So people were saying, like, I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there.
We had literally...
I don't even know if you know this.
We had literally 75 or 80 of our church members from Phoenix travel to Sacramento that day.
Yeah, no, I knew that.
It was like 75 or 80.
Yeah, and I'm thankful for that.
And then, obviously, we rallied, like, listeners and stuff from all over Nevada, Bay Area,
Central California.
But from Phoenix, Arizona, because we rallied them and we were, like, trying to help people.
Like, what's it going to take?
What do you need?
A hotel room?
What do you need?
A ride?
You know, we got, like, 75 or 80.
Because the cool thing was, and again, this is God worked this out, we had a soul winning
marathon already planned in Los Angeles, the very weekend of the big protest at your church.
So a ton of our church members, we had well over 100 of our church members already in
Southern California.
So then we were trying to talk people into, like, hey, it's just another six hours and
you'll be there.
And I was supposed to be at that L.A. soul winning.
Oh, really?
But you backed out because you were too busy with everything you had to say.
Yeah, right, right.
So I got to tell you the story, though.
We get back home on Saturday, you know, or not Saturday, on Friday, because we were there
for soul winning on Saturday.
But we get back home on Friday from our little getaway trip from Tahtahoe, and there's no
food in the house.
So my wife's like, we need food.
And my wife said, I'll go to the store.
And I told her, no, no, no, I'll go to the store.
Because she would be less recognizable.
Yeah, she was saying less, yeah.
But you wanted to do the chivalrous thing.
Right, right.
I'm going to do it.
So I'm like, I'll go to the store.
And she's like, man, people are going to recognize, people are going to say something or whatever.
So I remember I got, you know, I tried to dress where I didn't maybe look like a pastor
or whatever, you know, not bad or anything, but just try to dress real casual.
And I went to the store and I remember I was at Bel Air, which is right by our house.
And I grabbed the cart and I'm grabbing the things that were on the list.
And I was in the organic vegetable aisle or whatever.
And I was reaching to grab something.
And I heard a lady, this is the first time I've been out in public since.
So in the first six years, this never happened.
You didn't get recognized out in public.
Never.
This has never happened to me.
Right.
This is the Saturday before or the Friday before the big protest.
And I'm grabbing this thing and I hear a lady behind me say, you're that pastor.
And I thought to myself, you know, everything goes in slow motion.
I thought to myself, like, this is it.
So I turn around and I'm like, yep, that's me.
And she says, she puts her finger in my face, she says, you're that pastor.
And I'm like, yep, I'm that pastor.
And she's like, you're that pastor that gave me the gospel two weeks ago.
So it wasn't even about the TV.
She's like, she's like, do you remember knocking on my door?
You got me saved.
And I looked at it.
I'm like, oh yeah, I remember you.
And she's like, yeah, I've been meaning to get to your church.
Like she obviously had no idea.
She hadn't even heard about it.
No.
She means to get to your church.
And I thought to myself, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if you should have come.
That was not a good time.
Come visit in about three weeks.
So obviously since then, I've been recognized a lot publicly, but that was the, I, to me,
that's like, it was totally unrelated, unrelated.
The lady had no clue.
And here's the thing.
I've never had anybody come up to me publicly and say like, hey, you got me saved.
But this lady did on the, I just think God has a sense of humor, you know, and he was
just having a little fun with me.
So that was our, that was my first out and about after the, the, the Orlando thing.
And then of course, since then I've had been recognized a lot, good and bad, but, um, but
a lot of good too.
I mean, a lot of people, when people recognize me in public, it's, it's like 99% good.
Because I think a lot of people recognize us that are negative, but they don't approach
you.
They never come up to me.
You know, it's, so when people say, Hey, I know you, usually it's almost always good
or else they just don't.
They would just maybe give you a dirty look and not say anything.
Right.
Yeah.
But you know, something I wanted to mention, you know, the world wants to make it seem
like we're the only ones who feel this way, right?
But you have people come up to you in public, strangers, Roman Catholics, just non-believers,
people who don't even go to church who just say, Hey, I saw you on the news and I agree
with you.
I support you.
I feel the same way.
Haven't you had people?
Yeah.
And yeah.
And more, more positive than, you know, people I've been at restaurants, people give us free
drinks or, you know, free Cokes or whatever, you know, things, soft drinks, free soft drinks.
But you know, something I wanted to say, cause you know, outside the pulpit, right.
Things, things, a lot of people know a lot about the struggles we went through and everything
that happened for the Orlando thing, but something that people might not know, which I feel like
this was a real trying time for, for our family.
The Orlando thing, you know, my wife often is asked by other ladies like, Oh, how did
you survive?
You know, the Orlando thing or how, you know, how were you able to go through that or whatever?
And she, she kind of chuckles within herself because really she was very distracted during
the whole, for her, for my wife, the Orlando thing, that, that season of our life, the,
the protest was not hard.
And something that people didn't know is that we were actually going through a health scare
with my oldest son, Joshua, at that time.
I didn't even know that until today.
Yeah.
And we, and I, I don't, I don't know that I've even mentioned, I think I may have mentioned
from the pulpit once or something, but it's not something we, we talked a lot about, but
you know, he's fine, you know, and there's nothing wrong with him, but he, he was having
some pains in his, in his hips.
And and I don't remember all the medical terms or whatever, but we had a doctor, we had this
doctor that we were going to and they'd run this test.
And I guess she had basically, she told my wife, like, she diagnosed him with this, this
medical issue.
And I don't remember the, I wish I remembered all the terms or whatever, but she basically
said like, she's 90% sure that she, he has this and that he's probably not going to be
able to walk.
So it was just some horrible, cause I've had people tell me that too, the doctor tells
me they have brain cancer and then a few days later it's like, oh psych, you're fine.
Right.
So this was like that.
This was like that.
This was a major disease that's going to be a crippling condition.
And this all happened before the Orlando thing.
We were going through tests, we're going to specialists to like, cause it was some obscure
thing that they didn't know and she wasn't sure, but she was like 90% sure, whatever.
When it rains, it pours.
Right.
So it was like all these things were happening at once.
Right.
And for your wife, the Orlando thing wasn't the big thing cause she's more worried about
her son.
Right.
Yeah.
Which, you know, at that point, at that point in my life, I was thinking to myself, like,
what is going on?
Like, we're just getting it from every front, you know?
Now though, I actually wonder if that's what kept us sane cause we were kind of focused
on him and everything else was just kind of whatever.
Well, you know, it's a great life lesson though, because if you think about it, there's so
many things that have happened bad in my life.
If I think about the hardest things I went through, but how they always end up being
okay.
Right.
And looking back, they weren't that bad.
Right.
But at the time they seem horrible.
So just like at the time, this medical thing seems horrible.
Turned out to be nothing.
Right.
The Orlando thing seemed horrible, but it blew over.
No big deal.
You know, the lady at the store you thought was going to be freaking out and turned out
she was congratulating.
Right.
But that's kind of the way life is, right?
Yeah, it is.
Exactly.
Like we worry about all these things that are like phantoms because everything ends
up being great.
So what's funny, so when we were going through this whole thing, right, the Orlando thing,
we had to go to the specialist.
And my wife took my son there.
And the lady, one of the first things she says to my wife is this doctor.
She says, you know, I'm a Christian.
And obviously she recognized the name or her or whatever, you know.
And I was like, oh, okay, whatever.
And she's the one that's supposed to be doing these tests, whatever.
And then she actually, you know, they went through the whole thing.
And then she asked for my son to step out of the office or out of the room or whatever.
And she just wanted to talk to my wife.
And my wife's just freaking out.
Like, what is she going to say?
Like, whatever.
And she ended up just talking about the Orlando thing.
She's like, I saw your husband on the news.
And she was like not approving of us, but she was like trying to support us.
She was like a Christian.
And she was like, I understand his stand.
You know, I don't know that he should have said it like that or whatever.
She ended up like even trying to pray with her or whatever.
You know, my wife was nicer.
And like I said, everything ended up getting resolved.
The tests were fine.
It was not what they thought.
But it was just that was something that was happening, you know, in the back, you know,
back background of our lives that maybe people didn't know.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
You know, probably most people didn't know.
Right.
So, well, that's another lesson, too, is that, you know, people don't realize sometimes what
the pastor is going through.
And so when they decide not to support the pastor during his time of need, right.
You know, who knows what's going on in his life because we're human beings, too.
Absolutely.
And I'm and I don't know if I've ever talked to you about this, but I'm sure that that
Orlando thing was hard for you.
Absolutely.
Because it seems like because we basically obviously we put up a front of just like,
we're not going to change and we're not going to compromise and we shall not be moved, which
is true.
Absolutely.
But at the same time, it's hard, right?
When you're getting all those thousands of phone calls and death threats and the media.
And I don't know about you, but I even had like old friends that I hadn't talked to,
you know, back in like 2009 when I went through it or 2014.
I had old friends that I had talked to in years calling me up just to tell me that I'm
an idiot.
Right.
Well, we and we had no and you start it starts to take its toll on you.
And, you know, I was thankful that we had a lot of family, like from Venezuela and things
that were supporting us.
But there were some that weren't, you know, and some of our family members came out against
us, you know, whatever.
And the negativity.
Right.
But that's why that's why people don't understand.
I don't understand why all these like athletes and actors and stuff when they actually like
speak some truth sometimes.
And then they get nailed.
And then within 24 hours, they're like, I'm so sorry.
I'm an idiot.
I was wrong.
Like they take it all back.
Right.
Or preachers who take it back.
Right.
But I can see why they take it back.
Right.
Because of the pressure, you know, without without the Holy Spirit and the word of God
and knowing that you're right and knowing that you're founded on the rock.
I mean, it's hard to weather that storm.
Right.
It's not easy.
Right.
I mean, there's just a it's definitely more than meets the eye.
And now you had about what, 40 people quit the church.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I mean, our attendance dropped to.
And you know what's you know, what's funny about that, too, is that I guarantee you that
out of those 40 some people that quit the church, a bunch of them like the sermon when
you preached it.
Absolutely.
But then it's only when it all hits the fan that all of a sudden they don't like it.
I had people tell me that my sermons against the homos or whatever were just all that was
an awesome sermon and had that exact same person say a week or two weeks later after
it all blows up, like you went too far.
That was over the top.
Right.
Yeah.
But they loved it at the time.
Right.
When they love it, as long as there's no persecution.
Yes.
They love it.
Yeah.
Because the funny thing is none of those.
It's not like it is.
It's not like those 40 people.
I mean, maybe some of them were newer that hadn't heard.
But most of those people had heard me preach.
You didn't roll out any new doctrine.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So we lost people.
You know, our church is fine.
And I bet you a lot of them were even literally saying amen at the sermon.
Right.
You know, and we're much stronger now.
But yeah, I would absolutely say, you know, you don't know what your pastor, your pastor's
wife is going through, you know, and I'm thankful.
I'm extremely thankful that we did have a lot of church families that stuck with it.
Yeah.
That, you know.
Because it was even people in our church that they would say, I don't even agree with you
on the reparate thing, but I'm just going to support you because you're my pastor.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, who are they?
Which side do they want to get on?
Right.
The Orlando.
Yeah.
Exactly.
You know, queers.
Is there a side with them?
Yeah.
Against the man of God.
Right.
Against Christians, the brother in Christ.
Right.
Because they don't agree exactly on it.
I mean, obviously they should be able to identify who is our ally and who's the enemy.
Right.
You know.
So we had the whole Orlando protest.
Right.
And we had protests.
People might not know this, but we had protesters at every service, Sunday morning, Sunday night,
Wednesday night, for like three months after that.
You know, just not as many obviously.
Yeah.
Because you had the big protest of 500 or 600 people, but then the residual protest,
it seemed like it was about six or seven people per service.
But some of them were aggressive.
They were very aggressive.
They were the leaders.
They were getting your church members' faces.
Right.
I know.
I talked to people who go to your church during that time who were nervous.
Right.
They were, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And they kept backing you up.
Right.
But they were apprehensive about these people getting in their face.
Right.
Yeah.
And, you know, they ended up, you know, having a lawsuit and all those things.
But you know, of course, like six weeks or seven weeks after the big Orlando thing was
the already scheduled red hot preaching conference.
And you know, I mean, I didn't do it on purpose, but it was the greatest thing to promote that
conference.
Yeah.
It was awesome.
That first year.
And we had media show up for the conference, you know.
Oh, yeah.
And that was great.
You preached a great sermon.
And, you know, so 2016 was a big year for us.
So it's been two years now.
So fast forward two years later and, you know, you kind of had to step back because you went
from about 190 to 150, you know.
But it was a purging because, you know, it was the 150 strongest that survived, you know.
And plus a lot of Sunday morning onlys.
I remember you telling me this too.
Your Sunday morning attendance dropped by 40, but that your evening attendance is like
stayed the same.
Because a lot of Sunday morning onlys, when the fight happened, they decided to get more
serious about their walk with God.
So they became a Sunday night person, a Wednesday night person.
They got more involved in soul winning because they wanted to support the church and the
work of God.
I will tell you.
I remember, because I have a list of all the names of our church people and I try to pray
through it to the best of my ability on a regular basis, but I remember during the Orlando
thing looking at that list.
And I remember thinking to myself, like, these people aren't coming back.
These people are so not going to stay.
These people are going to quit on us.
And I was wrong on almost every count.
The ones that quit were the ones I did not expect.
And the ones that didn't, that I expected to quit, like.
Yeah.
Some of the people that you think are your most steadfast people buckle.
And then other people who you thought, oh man, this guy's not going to back me up.
And he's like, I'm there.
I'm with you.
People are surprised.
It's not all negative.
Right.
You have some positive surprises where people rise to the occasion and it helps them grow
in the Lord.
I remember thinking specifically about, we had this older couple.
They were newer to the church.
They weren't new, but they were newer and they'd been coming and they'd moved from the
Bay.
They were retiring in Sacramento.
We were the first church that kind of knocked on their doors or contacted them or whatever.
They were Baptist.
So they came to our church and I always thought to myself, these people aren't Baptist like
we're Baptist.
Right.
But they liked the preaching.
Yeah.
They liked whatever they stayed.
They were coming from a different style.
Right.
From a different style.
And they were there for the Orlando thing.
I thought like, there's no way they're coming back.
Like this has got to be too much for them, you know, whatever.
And I mean, they've been with us to this day, you know, and they've been, and they've become
more like us.
Yeah.
And less like the liberal Baptist.
So two years later, your attendances have pretty much come back.
Yeah.
I mean, we're back to averaging 170, 170, 180.
Obviously we, you know, you have low days and high days.
But you're growing.
We're growing.
The Lord is blessing.
Obviously there was a time there, you know, so basically, so what happened after 2016,
you know, after the, after the protest, the, the, the, the Orlando thing and the red hot
preaching conference is that our landlord, the news reported that we got kicked out of
our building, which is not necessarily true.
Our landlord just announced that they would not be renewing our lease.
Right.
But they have to, they couldn't kick you out legally anyway.
They had to continue the lease.
So they said that they were going to not renew our lease and that they would allow us to
get out of our lease if we wanted to.
Right.
But, but the thing is our lease was up in like three months or four months or whatever.
Anyway.
So then, or I think it was six months, six months.
And then, so of course, you know, they said that they'll let us go whenever.
So I wanted to leave that as soon as possible just because I wanted to secure in the next
place.
And then that became a nightmare.
We, we literally spent, we, we hired our second staff member in that time, brother Oliver.
So we had brother Stuckey, brother Oliver and myself working for church full time.
And for like those six months, it was like a full time job for all three of us.
We, I think we probably looked at every possible building that you could put a church in in
Sacramento.
And nobody would rent to you.
Nobody would rent to us.
Your name was Mudd.
Everyone was just.
Yeah.
I remember that.
It was funny cause we had like, we had, even then, I mean we still had a church of like
150 people, even with all the people we lost, we still had a good sized church.
We had money in the bank, we had great history as far as whatever, but just nobody wanted
to rent to us.
No, we were having just issue after issue.
That was a stress too, you know?
And I remember just thinking to myself, like, I mean, I remember talking to you and thinking
like, what am I going to be like, you know, we're talking about like, could you meet in
a field?
You know what I mean?
Could you, could you, could you rent a park?
Cause I remember you telling me like, you can't ever not have a church service, which
I agreed with, you know, but like, can you rent a park?
Like we're thinking we're making all these like worst case scenarios.
Cause I was like, you can't skip a Sunday because you have to keep it going.
I remember thinking like, can we go back to the house?
Like 150 people have like three services.
So you know, and it ended up working out.
We ended up getting, you know, into a place, actually a place that rejected us initially.
I went back to them and basically, you know, just, well, you think eventually you're going
to find somebody who's going to rent to you cause your money's green, right?
Well, that's what happened is I ended up just saying like, what do we have to pay you?
And they're like, they, they gave us their price and we accepted it.
So, you know, we pay the most, here's the thing.
Some of it just needed to die down right.
Because six months later, right, right.
You know, people forget things pretty fast and the building where it just happened, it
was fresh and everybody's right in the building we're in now.
We love it.
It's great building.
We have a good relationship with our landlord.
They love, you know, they, they, they like us and everything.
So we're actually adding, we're in the process right now of adding some space to my dad just
told me about.
Yeah.
So, you know, so, so it's, it's great, you know, but, um, it was an interesting time
2016 and, and, you know, and, and we've just been trying to continue to do what we, since
then we just came out with our first documentary.
We'd part, we'd been part of other documentaries, whatever.
We came out with our first documentary that our church had put out, um, psychopath reprobates,
which has been a great success and, uh, just been busy just trying to, you know, I'm, I
don't, I didn't plan the first thing and I don't know if it'll ever happen again.
You know, I'd love for it to happen again.
I think it, I think going into it a second time would be a lot more fun, you know?
Well, because you're, you're prepared, you're used to it.
You know what to expect.
Right.
Well, this has been a really interesting conversation, so thanks for telling all the stories and
everything.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me on.