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Brother Bob I am 43, looking forward to being a Papaw in January, my 2nd oldest daughter and her husband are expecting a little boy both of them are members at Blessed Hope Old Regular Baptist in Adair County Ky near Liberty(largest town) this church has a lot of young people attending services there, our other churches have young also, Mt.Zion has the fewest, it was an older church which was originally in the New Salem, it was called Little Maudie until Bro.Newt Vanderpool had a dream to change their name to Mt.Zion, I was the moderator there when the split with NNS came about over grape juice and wine, I was raised up in Pleasant View, Little Edna,Little Rebecca, Pilgrim Home churches mainly, though we visted different churches mostly in the NNS, The Lord spoke to me when I was 16 years old but I had many impressions prior to that, I went through a travail and had felt the burdens lifted when I was seventeen, I gave my hand to the Pleasant View Church and was baptised that evening in Oct 1980 started preaching several months later, I have been Blessed to have been able to have preached in churches, In the NNS,Indian Bottom,Old Indian Bottom,New Salem(I was a member in this association at one time)Old Friendship,Sardis,Philadelphia,Union,Mud River,ThortonUnion,Mountain,Mountain Liberty,Bethel,Sovereign Grace,Mountain Valley,Sandlick,Northwestern,Primitive Baptist and United Baptist churches I have never preached in The Friendship or the othersides of Mud River or Mountain, Little Dove and Cumberland no longer exist, there are other Regular Baptist associations I would like to vist, I also would like to note that what ever association I was in ,I kept their order concerning these matters, and I have seperated my service when required by them so as to keep down confusion, and not break the order of the association I was a member of. I have over all been well recieved through out these groups, that does not mean that we all agreed on everything, if we did , we would not be Baptist so I am going on 27 years, I have been an Old Regular Baptist but a christian first, but I love the old school baptist and I don't believe one church is as good as anthor, if there were no Old Regulars, I would be an old time United or Primitive, I could not see me belonging to a modern church even if it was called Baptist after I have felt and seen the things that I have, I know of no other churches any closer to the New Testament pattern than these, and most of our disagreements are over scriptures that are open to different views by the way they are worded, I myself have changed my views on some of these verses after being better enlightened on them, but at one time would have debated with the best of them that what I saw in them was right, but now I am more concerned with preaching them the way that God intended them to be preached ,rather than to try to hold on to some pet doctrine out of pride, if I preach a doctrine or system that is wrong I would rather be corrected, then to continue in some error ,just not to hurt some brothers feeling, I believe the Sovereign Grace Association's Churches preach a God honoring doctrine that comes from his record, we are not fatalist nor arminian nor are we perfect, we try to keep good order, showing mercy when we can, but passing judgements when needed. I have seen the many errors in the Old Baptist and with some of their associations and have tried to correct some of those errors, there has been many things said about me, some true, some lies, I am not as hard as some on that side say(mainly my enemies) and I still have many friends even in your correspondence , who if asked would tell you the truth about Mike Slone and some of those brothers even hold different views from me, but they will not lie on me, and for that I am thankful, I was hurt tremendously by some in the NNS and it was not over doctrine as they would like people to believe, nor was it really over communion practices, it had to do with association politics ,votes for moderator and jealously, the wine in communion was an excuse, they sent a commitee on me one time because a Sister had passed away that had been given a letter in an arm to form a new church her name was read because she was on the letter, it was also noted she had died, before the church was organized. It was not my fault she had passed away, the letter was read as it had been written prior to her death, our churches were stripped of their rights to even debate in their own association, they were told to keep the Bible out of it they knew what they believed, I gave a speech one time and everyone was allowed to give cat calls, interupt etc.... with Brother Roy not saying a word to reprove them or ask them to keep the rules of decorum, at which time my mother got up and spoke her peace, and told them about their secret plots being made outside the building and even young children hearing them plotting against thier brothers ,out of order also but no worse than they. The speech was asking them to reprint their own order on Arminian Doctrine and that of their sister associations, afterwards Bro.Walter Akers told me that this side of Old Regular Baptist [NNS]had already departed so far from the original, it would be nothing but trouble to ask them to return to the old doctrine and old ways, and what I needed was a good history book with the old letters in it to study and read, he sent me the New Salem records, and said wait till you are older, they resent a young brother telling them they are wrong even if it is true, but even through it all, I have always loved them and still believe the Old Baptist Family to be the Church of God, nor do I blame everyone for the politics of one association, that since Brother Baxter ,seemed to loose most of its ability to reason, and begin to try to govern the churches, which makes it an illegal body, assuming power not granted to an association, I recieved a call just this week from a brother ,who said that he feels the Old Regular's would do much better without associations, which leave agreements and try to lord over God's heritage. Bro.Slone
