 Ever since the arrest of Josh Duggar from the very popular reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting, we've been doing a bit of a deep dive into different aspects of the Duggar's life. Now most people know that the Duggar's are obviously very conservative and practice a movement called quiverful, which basically means they don't practice any birth control whatsoever, and have as many babies as they believe God has ordained them to have. Now last week we looked at Bill Gothard and the IVLP, which was a huge part of Josh Duggar's upbringing, but did you know that there is a person out there and a movement out there that considers the Duggar's to be liberal? But before we go any further, you know what to do, please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our patrons. Without you, this channel would not be possible, so I greatly, greatly appreciate you. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta, and today on a very special bonus episode, we're going to have a look at Stephen Anderson and the new independent fundamentalist Baptist movement. Definition of a fundamentalist is a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in strict, literal interpretation of scripture. It is also a strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline. Now, obviously it is accurate that fundamentalism can be found in almost every single religion. Here in the United States, we've kind of dubbed super conservative Christians to be fundamentalist or fundies, but Christian fundamentalism hasn't always been here. Again, the basic principle for a fundamentalist belief is a legalistic, literal interpretation of the Bible. Now, this movement started in the United States in the late 19th century. Between 1876 and 1897, there was an annual conference held that became known as the Niagara Bible Conference. However, originally these annual meetings were called the Believers' Meeting for Bible Study. Around this time, the five fundamental principles in a fundamentalist faith were defined. These are that the Bible is the Word of God, that there was a virgin birth, that Jesus' death was the atonement of sin, that Jesus resurrected in both spirit and body, and that Jesus' miracles were historical reality. Now, I know a lot of these principles do seem to be pretty common throughout most of the Christian churches. However, some people in Christian faith don't necessarily believe all of these principles. For example, there are Christians that believe that Jesus only resurrected in spirit and not body. There are also many Christians that don't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but that the Bible was mostly just allegory. And of course, me myself, I don't actually believe in the virgin birth. We see that in the book of the Holy Twelve that Joseph was literally the father of Jesus. We also know that virgin births were very common in pagan faiths, and that at the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century, many of the peasant Christians were very upset that Constantine had changed that story. I am also very well aware that it is fact that in the Council of Nicaea, as well as other places in our history, the Bible was changed. Again, this is not a penion. This is documented fact. For me, I feel much better and much more confident in my understanding of God by reading the banned books of the Bible than I do sometimes reading the actual canonized Bible. Because the canonized Bible that we have today has been through the shredder multiple times throughout the last 2000 years. But regardless of what you believe or anybody believes, the crux of the Christian faith is Jesus. And so for me, I'm not bothered by people who have different opinions on different topics spoken about in the Bible, because at the end of the day, it's all just everyone's opinion anyway. In 1910, the testimony publishing company of Chicago started to release what is called the Fundamentals. This was a 12 volume set of essays of Protestant Orthodoxy. Between 1910 and 1915, 90 essays were released. This is considered to be the foundation of modern fundamentalism. By 1917, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles released a four volume set of these essays called the Fundamentals. The Ford of this volume states that this is a new statement of the Fundamentals of Christianity. Over 3 million volumes were sent out all over the United States to different ministers and churches and even to organizations like the YMCA. These essays hosted writings from about 64 different people within the Protestant Christian movement. By the 1920s, this reformation of the Protestant faith was in full bloom. We started seeing tent revivals, all sorts of stuff happening, and this was countering what we see with the roaring 20s, where women's skirts had gotten a little bit shorter, hair a little bit shorter, and we were entering into a more modern expression of life. We also see this same revival happen again in the 1960s, when the hippie movement started, which we did speak about in Bill Gothard's episode on the IVLP. Again, the fundamental principles that were forming at this time were a counterculture to the counterculture that was countering the traditional normal family. Within fundamentalism, it does appear that most people involved in this movement take more of a legalistic view of the faith. They seem to place more importance on following the rules than the actual personal independent spiritual connection to God. In most fundamentalist circles, they only adhere to the King James Bible. Now, people may tell you they only adhere to the King James Bible because that was the first Bible translated into English. However, I find this very questionable. Now, yes, I am a descendant of King James, the king that was responsible for translating this Bible. However, we know that a lot of royalty is technically Canaanite, and so their intention behind translating a biblical source might not be pure and holy. And once again, we know for a fact that there were many changes made to the Bible over the years. So I find this adhering only to the King James Bible to be very dubious. I want to see a bunch of different references and a bunch of different translations so that I myself can have a better idea of what was being stated. Now, the independent fundamentalist Baptist movement is in a lot of ways like the organization of the denomination of the Baptist Church, except they don't want to be involved in the politics of that organization hits why they're independent. Now, with that being said, I grew up with friends who were Southern Baptist and their lives were very, very different than that of, say, the Duggers. Most of them did not come from big families. They maybe had one or two siblings, they wore shorts, they wore tank tops, they did sports, they went to a regular school, went to college, they listened to secular music just like myself. So the varying degrees of conservativeness in this group are vast. Now, the IFB, just like the regular Baptist Church, both follow the origins of the Anabaptist movement, which do go back to John the Baptist. If you would like for me to do a history of the Anabaptist movement, just let me know in the comment section below and I will do a deep dive into that for you as well. But again, many people in the IFB live very, very different lives than those who grew up in just a regular Baptist Church. Stephen Lee Anderson was born in Sacramento, California on the 24th of July, 1981. Allegedly, he was born into a very conservative and fundamentalist family, but at 18 years old, he decided to join the independent fundamentalist Baptist Church. He then went off to Europe to missionary the tenants of the independent fundamentalist Baptist organization. This is where he met his wife, Susanna. Now, on his website, you will see this story about how Susanna was raised a Catholic and then became agnostic. She was also very much a feminist when she met Stephen Anderson and then magically through his proselytizing to her, she totally changed her views, became his wife, and now is in one of the strictest fundamentalist groups in the world. Now, with Bill Gothard, we spoke a lot about this idea of spiritual manipulation and I do believe that this whole story is a load of crap and is part of Anderson's overall spiritual manipulation and kind of points to the development of what I believe now is another CULT. Stephen Anderson founded the faithful word Baptist Church on Christmas Day of 2005. This Baptist Church is in a strip mall in Tempe, Arizona. Now, his church is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and is not actually a part of any Christian denomination. This means that Stephen Anderson has no one that he has to be accountable to. There's no authority over Steve Anderson to make sure he's not running a CULT, which in my opinion again is exactly what he's running. In 2017, Steve Anderson and some other pastors decided to create the new independent fundamentalist Baptist movement because, ironically, they felt like the independent fundamentalist Baptist movement was way too liberal. I mean, honest to God, I think these are the only people who would ever call the Duggars liberal and Steve Anderson and his cronies literally wanted to counter the IFB because according to Stephen Anderson, those fundamentalists are not fundamentalists enough. Now, just like a lot of fundamentalist groups, they do believe in the King James Bible only and by 2019, there were 30 other affiliate churches listed on his website. Now, according to the website, they do allude to the fact that even though these affiliate churches have to follow this new fundamentalist doctrine, they are allowed to have varying opinions. However, insiders say that this is not true. Allegedly, Anderson will remove any pastor that doesn't 100% agree with Anderson's doctrine. Once more, in my opinion, this is a huge red flag for a CULT. The basic doctrine for Anderson's movement is salvation by faith alone, once saved, always saved. Again, the King James Bible only, belief in the Trinity, belief in something called soul winning and wordliness hard preaching. So basically like screaming at people that they're going to go to hell because they're too worldly. They also believe in what is called the pre-wrath and the post-tribulation rapture. Now, most of us who are in this great awakening now realize that the book of Revelation has been taught completely wrong because most of us believe that what we're seeing right now is the book of Revelation. Now, growing up, I was taught that the book of Revelation was scary. Like this was going to be something very scary to live through. However, now that we're going through it and we see it more from an astrological point of view as it was intended to be understood, I see the book of Revelation as good news that we're moving on to a new timeline, the 1,000 years of peace. Now, a lot of fundamentalists believe that the rapture is the bodies of these Christians literally lifting off the ground and going up into the heavens. Now we understand the rapture as meaning your consciousness evolves. Your consciousness moves up. You go from a 3D, living within the matrix, believing the media, seeing things as we've seen them for most of history's sake, to now being 5D, being outside of the matrix and seeing everything for the movie that it really is. So, for example, if my hypothesis of the rapture, not just mine but many other people's, hypothesis of this rapture is correct, then for most of us the rapture has already happened. We're already more aware. We're already well into this great awakening, which that's what apocalypse means, right? It means to lift the veil, to awaken. Revelation means to reveal. And if you've watched a lot of the astronomers that are involved in this great awakening and in the military back channel of 17, we're pretty much through with the tribulation as well. And of course the tribulation we are now knowing had nothing to do with us and everything to do with these Canaanites being judged for their horrific sins against humanity. So with that being said, Steve Anderson and I do not agree on a lot and we especially don't agree on the in times. Now Steve Anderson and his wife, Suzanne, have eight children. They do participate in what is called quiverful, although there was recently a huge scandal about one of his sons being a little bit inappropriate on a text message, which is quite ironic because Steve Anderson's solution for all these perverted sins and I'm not going to go into all these perverted sins because if I did go into all these perverted sins according to Steve Anderson, my channel would probably get shut down. But his solution to people that don't live life according to the way Steve Anderson believes life should be led, well they should be put forth to the death penalty. So it was a little bit ironic and hypocritical when his own children were involved in a scandal involving some of the issues that Steve Anderson allegedly believes are worthy of capital punishment. Now it seems like Steve Anderson is against more than he's actually for. It seems like the only things that Steve Anderson is for is Steve Anderson. One of the things that Steve Anderson is against is Calvinism, which is shocking because most of the Protestant faiths have a history in Calvinism. My own Church of Origin is the Presbyterian Church and they are Calvinist. So this was a doctrine that was established by John Calvin who was a Frenchman back in the 1520s. During this time the Calvinists believed broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. And when I say broke away, we've talked a lot about the Protestant Reformation on this channel with other stories we've covered and all of you watching are very smart people and know your history and know that this wasn't just an easy step away from the church. There was a lot of war, a lot of battling, and a lot of death in order for these different denominations to be established. Hell, I would guess over half of the colonists who came to the New World to America was because they were Protestant and they were trying to escape all the battles in Europe with the Catholics. Now the basic belief of the Calvinist, and this is a very, very basic belief, it does go into more detail than this, but just a basic overview, is that the knowledge of God is revealed through the word, but that people can only know God through self-revelation through Jesus. So right away it gives the individual more power and more autonomy in their relationship with God through a personal relationship with Jesus. Calvinists always believed that finite people cannot understand an infinite being. I believe that wholeheartedly, there's no way in hell that little or me, a mortal on this planet, could ever actually fully conceptualize who God is because God is so much bigger than just a mere mortal. Calvinist also believed in this idea of pre-destiny in the East, this would be called Dharma, that you all have a specific purpose on this earth. And even though we do have free will, the specific or divine purpose of our life is already handed down to us by the divine. All in all, the Calvinistic view is more of a personal relationship with God, which obviously was not something that the Catholic Church ever wanted to acknowledge because they make their money and garner their control through the organization of the Catholic Church, the corporation, and of course the Pope. And like the Catholic Church, even though Stephen Anderson is also against the Catholic Church, Stephen Anderson wants to be in full control of your relationship with God, because Stephen Anderson, I believe, is a raging narcissist psychopath who wants full control over you and also, in my opinion, wants to be worshipped like Jesus. Stephen Anderson is also against dispensationalism and dispensationalism was actually a part of the original foundation of fundamentalism. So it's interesting that he's against this. This is the belief that the Bible is divided by God into different periods of time, and that different laws of man and laws of creation are needed with different periods of time. I can absolutely agree on this. We're not going to live our lives in 2021 just as they did during Moses' time. We're in a completely different world now, and so we have to have different laws and different accountability to our modern experience of life. But since Stephen Anderson wants to be a controller, again, in my opinion, I can understand how he would want to use some of the harsher laws of the Old Testament in order to control his people, especially perhaps his wife and children. They're also against liberalism, which, I mean, duh, of course they are, and they're against the Zionist, which is very different from most Christian church. The Zionists support a Jewish state. They believe that the Jewish people are God's chosen people, which was how I was raised. I was raised to believe that 100%. But see, Anderson does not believe that the Jewish people are God's chosen people. He believes that the Christians are God's chosen people. And on top of that, Anderson is what is called a Holocaust denier. He doesn't believe the Holocaust actually happened. Now, again, there's been many incidents with Stephen Anderson. He's been banned from a lot of different countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, and some parts of Europe for his extreme beliefs. And people do say that actions speak louder than words. It's one thing to go around spewing out this hate. It's another thing to act on it. And the scary thing with Anderson is that we have seen him act on some of his beliefs. In 2009, there was an incident at the Border Patrol in Arizona. Anderson was going up Interstate 8 when he had to stop through Border Control between Mexico and the United States, and he refused to pull his car over or roll his window down. Now, Steve Anderson is very much anti-government, and that actually is one thing we probably agree on. I'm pretty anti-government as well. I think there should be as little government involved in our lives as possible. But I still follow the rules, and I take my beliefs to the voting booth, hence why I tend to vote more Republican. I believe more in states' rights and being able to manage a smaller group of people where you have more say as to your daily life versus a federal ordinance when the people in Washington DC have no idea what every individual county in the state in the country needs. So the difference between Steve Anderson and myself is that I obey the laws. If I'm going through Border Control, I'm going to pull my car over, I'm going to give them my paperwork, and I'm going to pass through no problem. Whereas Steve Anderson believes that he's above the law, where he can outright display aggression towards the people working in government, and this is what we saw in 2009. There was a 90-minute standoff between the Arizona Border Patrol and Steve Anderson. They ended up having to break a window in his car, and they tased him. Now you can find this video online, and many people who have a lot of disgust for Steve Anderson really enjoy watching this video, because in the video he screams like a little girl. Now Steve Anderson is also notorious for having sermons where he actively prays for the death of certain politicians, and whenever there's a tragic event, such as what happened in Orlando a few years back, Steve Anderson gets excited and celebrates. This guy is a total, in my opinion, psychopath. And if Suzanne Anderson, his wife, is listening, girl, if you need help, let us know, we'll come get you. Now people have noted that when Josh Duggar was arrested, most of the people involved in the IVLP really put out statements saying that they wanted to pray for the family and pray for the judge and pray for the court proceedings. However, the Anderson's reacted a little bit differently. They allegedly believe that because of Josh Duggar's allegations in his indictment, he deserves corporal punishment, and a quote given by Suzanne Anderson goes as follows. We have for years held and publicly stated that the Duggars are liberal and worldly. Even as they are known for being fundamentalists, maybe their beliefs are, but what they are publicly willing to take a stand for is weak and anemic. Now whether or not Steve Anderson is the only person in this fundamentalist movement that thinks the Duggars are too liberal is really not what's super important. Well, what's super important is that we can pay close attention to these, in my opinion, extremely dangerous people. In my opinion, Steve Anderson is not promoting the faith of Christianity. He's promoting tenants and laws of a CULT, an organization where Steve Anderson is the authority, not God. And I do pray that if anybody listening to this that is part of a fundamentalist movement like Steve Anderson's, that you one day realize that God is love. And regardless of what you think is a sin and what isn't a sin doesn't really matter at the end of the day because justice will be served on our human plane, whereas God is always loving, forgiving, and merciful in the spiritual plane. Please understand that the acts of Jesus look nothing like the acts of someone like Steve Anderson or Bill Gotherd. And I pray that you understand that every single human being on this planet is deserving of love regardless of what your pastor says. All right, guys, thank you so much for sitting through another special edition with Steve Anderson. Please leave your comments down in the comments section below. I will be out of town the week after next. We will have videos already pre scheduled to be uploaded for you guys while we're away. However, I won't be doing another deep dive into some of these kooky Christian fundamentalist leaders until I get back from being out of town. I do have a couple of people I'm going to be looking into once we're back into town. But again, it might be a couple of weeks before another special edition video is released to you regarding this topic. Next video released will be Monday for our Mystery Monday. Once again, I will be back with David Zuplick on Tuesday. And if you were able to join us at one o'clock on David's platform, one o'clock Eastern Standard Time, you will be able to call in live to the show if you choose to. And once again, I know that religion is also a very touchy subject as people do tend to get defensive over how they were raised or whatever organization they were raised in. So please speak to each other respectfully in the comment section below. If you have a different opinion from somebody on an interpretation of scripture or of faith, that's okay. We're allowed to have different opinions. You can talk about it respectfully to each other. You might learn something from each other. But please again, remember to make sure to be respectful. At the end of the day, the only entity that is able to judge us for our rights and our wrong is God. So please don't call people sinners or any other bad names because you happen to disagree with their theology. But with that being said, if you do think there is a pastor out there that is behaving in a harmful manner towards other people, as in Bill Godford or Steve Anderson and a couple more people we're going to talk about, please feel free to bring them to my attention because we want to live in a place of unity and harmony and love. And these people are very dangerous. They've exhibited dangerous behaviors and we do want to get the word out that that is not safe. And that's not healthy. And in my opinion, that's not God. Once again, thank you to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the full opening song, there's a link in the description box below. And thank you again to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all. I will talk to you soon. Bye.