NIFB Island: 24 Hours Inside The New IFB Theocracy
The Red Hot Preaching Conference was the pinnacle of the New IFB circle for the better part of the last decade. Pastor Roger Jimenez hosted this conference from his home church in Sacramento, California at Verity Baptist Church.
Because of what was usually preached at this conference, it drew the international attention of droves and droves of fundamental Baptists, including preachers looking to establish an affiliation with Pastor Roger Jimenez and ultimately Pastor Steven Anderson.
On the internet, the Red Hot Preaching Conference also served as a golden opportunity to recruit even more people through live-streaming.
Originally, the conference focused on a roundtable of Bible-based preaching that would make even your stereotypical evangelical uncomfortable — but it quickly became a race to the bottom of a degenerate, deadbeat temple of doom.
Loud preaching isn’t hard preaching — this is a simple distinction the NIFB doesn’t seem to understand.
Beating the pulpit, raising your voice, or projectile-vomiting inflammatory language isn’t hard preaching either.
Preaching biblical truths regardless of getting a reaction is what hard preaching actually looks like. Standing on biblical principles when it is unpopular is one thing, but talking about how not-gay you are while saying faggot nearly fifty times might raise other questions.
These are the kinds of sermons you could expect to hear at the Red Hot Preaching Conference.
Around the time that the conference was born, Verity Baptist Church had its own trouble with protestors after Pastor Roger Jimenez says he wished for a mass shooter to “finish the job” for not killing enough sodomites at a night club in Orlando.
Incredible is a good way to describe the amount of media attention that Pastor Jimenez got from that sermon.
In support, and as a true friend, NIFB co-founder Pastor Steven Anderson would “bring the heat”, so to speak, in his fire-breathing preaching at this conference shortly thereafter.
Other preachers have come and gone from the Red Hot Preaching Conference, but if they didn’t rile up the fan base enough they weren’t invited back.
Pastor Steven Anderson used to be the peak of the conference, viewed as the most controversial guy in the room. When the conference began to fade in popularity, so too did the power of the preaching.
The reason for this is because the preaching began to be about what was convenient, not what was a true conviction.
Due to a little more than just verbal controversy, Pastor Steven Anderson and Pastor Roger Jimenez separated in 2025 on the issue of domestic violence — with Anderson and those that he had ordained continuing to defend the practice.
The fruit of that movement comes from the core people around those preachers.
Pastor Bruce Mejia, Pastor Jonathan Shelley, Pastor Dillon Awes — and podcaster Ben Naim.
At the Red Hot Preaching Conference, the idea was postured many times about what the NIFB would do at the direction of scripture if they were in political power and hypotheticals about if their version of a theocracy came to pass.
Let’s test that theory and hypothetically play out their theology by walking through 24 hours on NIFB island.
Nothing quite says NIFB island like starting out with a mega midnight soul-winning marathon led by Ben Naim.
Outside of Pastor Steven Anderson, nobody is probably more obsessed with setting personal records for how many times “faggot” can come out of their mouth than rogue podcaster Ben Naim. Recently, Naim took to X to share that out of any label he wanted to be remember by it wasn’t a Christian, or a Baptist — it was a soul-winner.
Naim then upped the ante by flat out defending the idea that domestic violence is the appropriate way to run your home — he’s going to tell you that’s not what he meant, but let’s the read the tweet together.
Ben attends Stedfast Baptist Church in Cedar Hill, Texas and is gently led by Pastor Jonathan Shelley.
Shelley was installed in 2019 by Pastor Steven Anderson following the scandal surrounding the sins of the previous pastor of Stedfast Baptist Church, which included gambling, hookers, and drugs on the church’s dime.
Within the last year or so in his time spent circulating around the NIFB circuit, Pastor Shelley has preached in favor of domestic violence, including beating your wife in public, and against not only your wife (if you’re married) but against women in general.
Specifically, he has summarized his beliefs by saying “if you don’t have consequences for your wife, you might be a feminist” with the surrounding context being physical violence.
He uses the pulpit to defend this criminal behavior because of the abuse that the children of Pastor Steven Anderson have highlighted as happening in their home since the beginning of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.
When the news of this abuse first came out, Pastor Shelley actually told his congregation that Anderson stepping down would be the right thing to do.
Then that meeting audio leaked and Shelley flip-flopped within hours of his private position being revealed because of the fact that it would be seen as opposing Anderson.
And that never ends well for the unprepared.
Ben carries a similar cowardly spirit, but they get this because they don’t know how to think for themselves.
Anderson included, those at the top of the NIFB have perfected the art of publicly reprobating saved brothers and sisters in Christ who have separated from their mental jiu-jitsu. In like manner, Naim and Shelley also rely on the fact that they are “soul-winners” to excuse any wickedness from around or behind the pulpit or in their personal lives.
From their view, everything rises and falls with soul-winning. It doesn’t matter if your children are accused of unruly, if you’re a brawler, or if you violate some other tenant that scripture lays out as a non-negotiable for the walk of a preacher.
In their worldview, if you soul-win, God looks the other way at everything else — including beating your wife.
Soul-winning in itself is not a bad thing, this is not an attack on sharing the gospel with those around you by any means.
It’s one of the easiest ways to establish delineation between a “fundamental church” and a church that has “fallen away” from the great commission to all believers from Jesus in Matthew 28.
But you have to ask this question at some point — is my church fundamental because of the fundamentals of the faith or is it fundamental because the fundamentals are abused to protect a feral freak show?
The funny thing about being fundamental as a Christian is that you’re fundamental automatically if you’re saved, not whether or not you’re a part of the New IFB, Old IFB, or somewhere in-between.
If you believe you’re saved by grace through faith — that’s a fundamental.
If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He paid for your sins with his death, burial, and resurrection — that’s a fundamental.
If you believe that God has preserved his Word through scripture — that’s a fundamental.
You don’t have to be a chicken-eating, super-duper separated fundamental Baptist to go to heaven — but you do need to be a Christian.
You need to be a believer. And if you’re a believer, you’re a brother or sister in Christ — whether Ben Naim likes it or not.
On the fringes of the witching hour, all of the bars have closed or are about to close on the island, and now Pastor Jimenez has the free will to do what he says he’d do from the pulpit in a perfect world.
Pastor Anderson has preached before that if there was a button he could push that would “kill every sodomite” he would press it until his finger is broken. Pastor Jimenez puts it this way, saying that he would appreciate if someone would “finish the job” when referring to putting sodomites to death.
So now we’re on NIFB island playing out their theocracy in real-time, and the mega midnight soul-winning escapade is over.
Within the NIFB, another hypocritical element that you’ll notice is a misapplication of the law of God where certain sins that require the death penalty are cherry-picked to fit the preacher’s ulterior motives.
If you listen closely to what they’ve been saying, you’ll notice that they will leave out preaching on the sins that they’re guilty of where God requires their life.
They’ll do this while at the same time cherry-picking on sodomy, or being a sodomite, as the one thing God would or should actively kill people for today.
However, that doesn’t hold water when you realize how many other things also require the death penalty according to the law of God that was given to Moses.
It’s not wrong to highlight that Leviticus makes it clear that God has the death penalty for sodomite behavior, scripture is clear on that, but the movement requires death for fuel instead of operating on the hope that we have through Christ for eternal life.
Scripture also speaks to the distinction between Moses and Jesus in this way:
“17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
Anderson and Jimenez built an entire movement by taking the truth of a concerning sexually perverted and worldly agenda that does exist and exaggerating it by surrounding it with fear and creating an unnecessary boogeyman.
2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. When you contrast that with NIFB preaching, you don’t hear about overcoming evil — you hear fear.
And what you’re fearful of, you’re relentlessly focused on.
That was probably a lot to digest, so take this as a stopping point if you need — we’re only about 1/3 of the way through.
Now that the sun is up on NIFB island, it’s time for a class from Pastor Steven Anderson on imprecatory prayers.
If sodomites didn’t come up enough for you in the first two intervals, Pastor Anderson is about to drill that word into your psyche permanently.
His obsession with homosexuality isn’t rooted in peace — and neither is his dedication to domestic violence.
All that to say, here’s what I think a three-hour class of this caliber would look like.
In the first hour, he’ll introduce you to what imprecatory prayers are, in case you’re new to the island or maybe you showed up as a result of the midnight mega-soul-winning marathon. Then, after giving some background scripture on the topic, he’ll go into why his enemies and God’s enemies are always in sync and on the same list.
He has done this before from the pulpit when identifying people that have left the NIFB, and he’s done so in a dishonest way to circle the wagons against preachers or laymen who don’t equate loyalty to him as loyalty to the Lord.
That distinction regarding where loyalties lie should never be blurred, and if it is blurred by someone, don’t ignore it.
As Christians, the Lord Jesus Christ is our final authority — not a particular preacher.
After he’s labeled his personal enemies as the unequivocal enemies of God, he’ll spend the second hour naming names.
His list would include his four eldest children, certain members who left Faithful Word Baptist Church, and ultimately everyone he deems a “faggot”, “retard”, or “bastard” — even if he’s just making up that accusation.
(We call that railing, by the way)
What he’s teaching you subtly here is that you aren’t supposed to trust your senses or what you see happening in real time for yourself. If you see something evil, confirm it from scripture, and separate because of it, you are warned that he will add you to the list and pray that God kills you.
And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been loyal to a fault since before being on the island — you are no exception, and calls for your death has become your new reality.
The final hour of the imprecatory prayer class led by Steven Anderson would probably include a gritty 60-minutes of your “voluntary” (since he doesn’t seem to believe in that) participation.
If he’s invested that kind of time into teaching you then he’s going to make sure that you can parrot the practice — whether you passed because of conviction or convenience, however, will come to light in due time.
Sorry for the delay, one of the guys from the class went over by 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, Pastor Bruce Mejia and estranged podcaster Ben Naim have powered up their podcast equipment from Anderson’s basement and are ready to go live with an emergency podcast just shy of two hours.
You’ve had at least six hours of material on why the sodomites are evil, but it is not enough and these guys are about to tell you why — but maybe with a little more charisma.
Ben is the picture-perfect person for who you’d think of to play the role of an agitator in a movement. He’s not great at public speaking, but he’s great at being filled with hate, which is the ultimate spiritual gift you receive as part of the NIFB.
Lap dog is a title reserved for Pastor Jonathan Shelley, so think of Ben as more of the London equivalent to a lap dog.
The NIFB movement nicknamed Naim as “Ben The Baptist” — but I have two alternatives that fit more with his content.
Naim the Nobody or Haman Naim, based on the freak from the book of Esther — you decide what’s more fitting.
Pastor Bruce “The Bomb” Mejia and Nobody Naim would likely have their show centered around how to pray for the deaths of their haters and, of course, why sodomites are bad.
Pastor Mejia has a knack for being controversial while being a coward at the same time, so that meshes well with Ben because of the fact that he’s the ultimate yes-man.
Mejia’s antics only work if he’s surrounded by enablers. Outside of the echo chamber he’s created, Mejia is not able to have hard conversations or deliver hard truths face to face because he doesn’t actually stand on those convictions in real life.
However, being a perpetual spiritual cuck is not beneath Ben — and it’s the only reason he even has his platform.
Time for another break in the action, but the good news is we’re halfway done.
Oklahoma is sometimes referred to as a “flyover” state because of the fact that there’s not a whole lot to stop and see unless you live there — the same “flyover” phrase can be applied to how the NIFB treats common sense.
Pastor Dillon Awes was put into the ministry by Pastor Jonathan Shelley and was sent out of the DFW area to take over what is now called Anchor Baptist Church near OKC.
While training to be ordained, Awes preached a sermon on sodomites that went viral where he called for them to be “lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head” followed by a wave of amens before finishing the thought with “that’s what God teaches - that’s what the Bible says.”
In that message, he demonstrated the ability to regurgitate NIFB hate from a place that misuses the Mosaic law to justify more grievous sin. The Pharisees and Jewish leaders also had this blind spot, highlighted for us in John 8, when they bring a woman to Jesus that was caught in the act of adultery.
Instead of putting her to death, as the law called for, Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of the leaders by challenging them to throw the first stone only if they are without sin. As a result, they that called for her death are forced to walk away and not condemn her because they know they’ve also committed sin and could not justifiably throw the first stone.
Someone will read up to this point and try to say that I’m condoning adultery — to be clear, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Scripture is still accurate to call that sin worthy of death, but we have to reconcile that with what we read earlier in John 1:17.
If we can recognize that the wages of sin is death, then we ought to be able to recognize the second half of Romans 6:23 that tells us that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Should we choose to cherry pick who gets put to death instead of realizing that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, we’ve all sinned, and we all deserve death and hell because if we broke the law at one point we are guilty of all of it — we miss the point of Jesus entirely.
And yes, you can absolutely shed light on the wicked ideologies tied to groups that hate God, but you don’t have to obsess over it or act like God’s law and death penalty only applies to sodomites. This is the point where we should have enough self-awareness to get it right if we’ve been caught up in that line of thinking.
Preaching inflammatory sermons is great for growing the online following, but that doesn’t matter if the preacher refuses to rightly divide the Word of God. Continuing down that dark path, you’ll end up in a place like where Dillon Awes currently is — having to preach the death penalty, but somehow with exceptions.
If you were to rightly divide scripture here, you’d be able to acknowledge that we are all already under the death penalty of the law and that Jesus not only took the curse of the law and nailed it to His cross on our behalf but he also fulfilled the law through his life and earthly ministry.
By the time you can put two and two together, it’s time for the next sermon — this time directed to those already under the blood of Jesus.
Twelve hours after leading the initial surge against the sodomites, Pastor Roger Jimenez returns to the stage with a message warning of impending doom, death, and potential destruction to the life of the believer if you don’t tithe.
New Testament scripture warns that giving to God isn’t to be made from compulsion or under pressure is subtly substituted for accusations of stealing from God taken from the last book in the Old Testament.
While Malachi is great to read and teach, we’re running into another instance of misapplying the Word of God and a failure to rightly divided scripture. You can write it off if you want to, but the undertones of what Jimenez has applied in real life are not the qualities called for in an under shepherd.
At Verity Baptist Church, giving large amounts also automatically earns you more of an audience with the man of God, leading to concerning behavior and the respect of persons.
Again, this is not me condoning the idea of not giving — the Bible calls us to be cheerful givers and to actively participate in the work of Lord through the local church.
But it’s a should, not a must — otherwise the law isn’t fulfilled.
If you MUST give to stay right with God, that’s straight out of Mormonism.
If you MUST satisfy God through a money offering, that sounds more like a Catholic superstition.
But it does play into what Jimenez taught on the concept of progressive sanctification, where he applies 2 Corinthians 7:1 to sanctification before God through obedience instead of separation from evil, as the context of 2 Corinthians 6 provides for us.
So where’s the Christianity? It’s missing.
It doesn’t matter how eloquent the speaker sounds, how well-dressed and well-behaved the congregation is, or how powerful elements of the church like the choir are — does what is being said from the pulpit line up with the Bible or not?
That tells you everything you need to know about what your final authority actually is.
Alright, they took a two-hour break from talking about sodomites so now Pastor Bruce Mejia has arrived to right the ship — what better way then to talk about his church being bombed.
While the FBI and El Monte Police Department have not produced a confirmed motive or successfully identified suspects, that has not stopped Pastor Bruce Mejia from alleging that it was “LGBT terrorists” that bombed his church around the time protests were planned from a local LBGT-friendly group in El Monte against First Works Baptist Church.
“The FBI doesn’t stand for the Fundamental Baptist Institute”, Mejia preached in the aftermath of the bombing, so it’s no surprise that he’s willing to challenge officials with regard to what actually happened that night.
By incentivizing sensationalism, Mejia reinforces the paranoia of the congregation instead of acknowledging the reality of the spiritual war and that there is spiritual wickedness in high places — whether they are a sodomite or not.
But if he tells you that, he loses the physical boogeyman that gave him his audience and his victim complex shatters.
Pastor Bruce Mejia | When Sodomites Attack
You can still warn the flock of God about evil, wicked enemies of God without being a manufactured martyr.
This is not endorsing what happened to his church in any way — attacks on churches are a very real thing — but the inflammation of the situation to perpetuate that he’s a victim 24/7 is a little more than milking the situation.
I’ll speak more on the bombing at length in a future article, so without further ado, let’s move to our next event.
The paranoia continues — 19 hours into our 24 hours on NIFB island and after this event, 15 of those hours have been spent dealing with the sodomite and/or the reprobate.
Two were spent for meal breaks and the other two on potential curses for children of God if you don’t give your church financial resources.
A warning about wickedness is one thing, but so is overkill.
For example, a balanced perspective would aim not just on the fact that there are those that are worthy of death according to God’s law (all of us, by the way), but that the believer should hold on to the hope of salvation we have through faith and always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have.
Notice the Bible says to always have an answer for our hope, not our hate.
Zooming out to the Sodom and Gomorrah story for a moment, we can understand from the text that Lot’s soul was vexed from day to day with what was going on in the cities around him.
From Romans 1, we can also gather from the text that there are unseemly sexual things that people are capable of if they reject God — nothing in the process of knowing or retaining that requires that we become paranoid.
In fact, paranoia as the people of God gives us the opposite of peace.
Sometimes God will make an example of evil people and give them over to strong delusions. Tying it in with the paranoia about one crumb of the law of Moses, Pastor Jonathan Shelley is a like-minded weasel who wants you to not trust anything or anyone around you.
They even find it necessary to give you paranoia about the animals after writing off just about everyone else on the island — even each other.
Be careful, Pastor Shelley might reprobate you here depending on if you put beans in your chili or not.
Before the midnight surprise, Pastor Steven Anderson gets slated for the post-chili-cook-off-anti-reprobate rally.
Given everything that you’ve learned so far in your almost 24 hours on NIFB island, it’s no surprise that there’s yet another charismatic call to action into the wee hours of the night. But this time, Anderson pumps the brakes on calling the guy who didn't put beans in his chili a faggot and focuses instead on persuading you to continue answering the call to soul-win the rest of the island.
A plan, an island map, and a full stomach — no excuses.
Something about the fellowship starts to feel off to you, but you can’t put your finger on the cause. It makes you uneasy, but you follow through because you’re not a quitter and you wouldn’t dare question the motives of the man of God, lest you be thrown on the imprecatory prayer sheet.
For the first time all day, you tune out the second half of the two-hour message. Instead of falling asleep, you learn to survive by disassociating — you can do this because you already know the message from practically every angle.
Anderson claps twice while standing on his pulpit, ending his message with another call to prayer as the midnight hour nears.
You’re told to meet back in one hour for the next midnight mega marathon, and you haven’t slept so you return to your room on the island with an eternal view of crystal blue. You fall asleep quickly, thinking you’ll need the energy for later to get through Ben’s next midnight mega marathon, but you don’t wake up in the same place.
A sharp breeze cuts to your face and wakes you up in a cave — same island, very different place.
The truth is that you escaped the group years ago, but they won’t stop until the entire island has either been reached with the gospel or gone to meet their maker.
They don’t seem to sleep, but you found the courage to do so after sneaking justt before the midnight hour — and you’ve been replaying the day you escaped ever since, with no end in sight.
Unfortunately, the only way to leave NIFB island is the difficult, uncomfortable way — accepting the truth and confronting the evil head on.
