Before cell phones, social media, and the internet itself, There was simply a young boy in the 1980s who loved listening to sermons. And when it came to preaching, there was only one way to hear it again. Cassette tapes. It was cassette tapes where people listened to sermon audio, a primitive physical medium. But for the young boy, they became a lifeline. The voice of a preacher was the last thing he heard before falling asleep. It was not only about hearing the truth, he enjoyed the passion and the personality with which it was delivered. And in those quiet nights, he was learning firsthand the truth of Scripture. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. And even through that simple tool, the Lord was planting His Word deep in his heart. Growing up as a computer gamer, and soon after a programmer, and fascinated by the world of technology, he would spend his college years in a small church, which was pastored, according to him, by the world's greatest preacher. Week after week, he would sit under sound and faithful exposition of the scriptures. But one thing began to bother him more and more. Could more people hear and be blessed by what he was hearing? That longing only became stronger when he saw the tapes sitting in that back room, collecting dust, unheard. He thought to himself, sermons are timeless if faithfully preached. They are not bound to a single Sunday or a single audience. They can and should be enjoyed for generations to come. But how? It was at this point that a wave began to rise. The 80s were an incredibly important decade for media, music, and movies. Everywhere the young man turned, there were new technologies, new sounds, and new stories shaping culture. But this was nothing compared to what was about to come. Computers entered homes. Dial-up and bulletin board systems began to connect the world. But then, came the internet. A worldwide web of endless possibilities. Compact discs came and went. Digital audio appeared with the question of which format would prevail. Real audio, Windows Media, or this new thing called the MP3 format. Audio streaming was rough, but it hinted to what was possible. The young man, a child of the 80s, was captivated with the new media that was coming out, even as he continued to love preaching. One day, that love for preaching led him to ask his pastor whether he could enter the ministry. But after careful consideration, with kindness and honesty, he denied his request, saying he detected stronger gifts in him elsewhere. As humiliating and disappointing as it seemed then, it turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of his life. Because one day, his love for preaching, his desire for it to reach thousands, and his fascination with technology would soon converge into something entirely new. This convergence was the birth of an idea. What if the preached word could travel through the internet? What if technology could become the servant of theology? With that thought, he threw himself into work. Night after night, line by line, pixel by pixel, he began creating an entirely new media platform, like a man on a mission. The work was grueling, the hours were long, and the tools were primitive. Yet he felt as though a hand greater than his own was guiding him. Until at long last, after a full year of coding from a tiny bedroom on Holmes Drive, the vision finally became reality. On May 1st of 2000, SermonAudio was born. From day one, its mission was clear. The preservation and propagation of preaching. It was simple, but it worked. And yet, the real explosion of technology had only just begun. The iPod put a thousand songs in your pocket. With the iPhone, communication was redefined. Streaming became the new normal. Entire industries that seemed unmovable collapsed overnight. Blockbuster, gone. Music stores, gone. Film cameras, encyclopedias, phone booths, gone. Typewriters and fax machines were replaced by email and the cloud. Everywhere, the way we listened, the way we watched, the way we learned, changed forever. Yet even as the noise of innovation grew louder, the young man found his strength the same way he always had, through the steady sound of preaching, just as he had always enjoyed as a young boy, night after night. As technology became more available to users, more and more people began to discover the website. By 2002, SermonAudio reached 1 million sermon downloads. For SermonAudio, each change in the world of technology opened a new path. When it became mainstream to livestream, SermonAudio's webcasting system was rebuilt with multicasting support. When the world went mobile, SermonAudio became mobile-friendly. As social media came to the forefront, it introduced cross-publishing to multiple platforms. And so, it happened. SermonAudio grew into a platform known and trusted worldwide. where the Word preached was reaching hundreds of thousands, and where countless sermons were being listened to over and over again. By the time the young man reached adult life in 2012, SermonAudio had more than 500,000 sermons in its library, 100 million sermon downloads, and thousands of churches and ministries broadcasting. It was the Lord's doing, and far greater than he would have ever imagined. Technologies rise and fall, but these are only roads, and roads exist for one reason, to carry precious payload. For SermonAudio, that precious payload has always been the preaching of the gospel, which remains the same no matter how much the world changes. And it is still true to this day, because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. After the launch of SermonAudio in 2000, the world began to shake. Cancel culture and censorship began to rise. Hostility against preaching was growing in the world, and it was turning physical. At the Foundations Conference in New York City, protesters lined the streets to come against it. You cannot hide what you find. So don't lie about what's happening. Who's with your bigoted Crisco fashion? But there was more. The digital realm where SermonAudio once was born was turning dark. In 2021, a preacher wrote with grief that a popular video platform had erased his entire library of 3,000 sermons in an instant. Without warning, without question, This raised the alarm. What if this were to happen to SermonAudio? Another day, SermonAudio became the target of a crippling cyber attack. Systems failed, data was lost, and for a brief moment it seemed as if the whole platform would fall. Yet not a single Sermon was lost. Then, out of nowhere, a message from Facebook appeared, and overnight, every link to SermonAudio was blocked. The wake-up call was becoming increasingly clear. Biblical preaching could never be fully secure on third-party platforms. The founder realized that the technology that was once an ally was becoming a sword. That realization would soon give birth to the greatest undertaking SermonAudio has ever embarked upon, the building of The Vault. In the same way persecuted Christians of the past would have to hide manuscripts in caves to protect the Word from fire and destruction, the time to do the same in the present digital world had come. The Vault was not a metaphor. It was an actual infrastructure made of stone and steel, servers and switches, cables and circuits, built to protect preaching. But could it really be accomplished? Was it too ambitious? Was it too costly? For the founder, the answer was clear. The question was not, can we afford to do this? But rather, can we afford not to? If the word of God was truly precious, if sermons were truly timeless, then no effort to preserve them was too great. Your sermons, they exist on some computer somewhere. I think it's naive for us to just sit back and just assume that It'll always be there for us. In 2019, an idea was brought to the leadership of Bob Jones University. A proposal to build something never seen before. A partnership to establish The Vault on its campus. A secure, physical home for preaching. A safeguard against the rising tide of cancel culture. The vision was bold, to anchor digital sermons in a real place, standing as a witness that the Word of God would not be erased. There was only one problem. There were no funds. There was nothing. And yet, even before the first stone could be laid, or the first server installed, there came what may have been the greatest miracle of all, the provision itself. Funds began arriving from places and people scattered across the world. Unexpected gifts from saints who shared the same burden. What seemed impossible soon became reality, for the Lord himself provided. The Vault was officially opened December 9th, 2022. It would be our own declaration of independence, for from this day forward, the preservation of sermons would not be left to Silicon Valley, nor entrusted to the whims of politics or culture. The Vault had materialized from burden to blueprint to living testimony. Storing the sermon safely in The Vault was only half the story. The founder's heart beat for something more, that these messages would not simply sit, but travel. For centuries, one great barrier had hindered their spread, language. But then, in an unexpected providence, a remarkable gift was placed into SermonAudio's hands, one of the most powerful tools on earth, an H100 GPU. a single piece of hardware, but with it, SermonAudio gained the power to utilize artificial intelligence privately on its own servers. Artificial intelligence is regarded as perhaps the most significant technological advancement since the advent of the Internet itself. AI is all the rage. AI-generated video, text, audio, images, robotics, self-driving cars, And on and on it goes. But the real power of AI was in its ability to translate into multiple languages. And so began global sermons, and with it, a reminder of Isaiah's vision. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. When SermonAudio first appeared in 2000, no one could have imagined that such a humble beginning would grow into the world's largest library of sermons, with almost 500 million downloads to date. After that, The Vault. A place to guard these sermons from the shifting powers of big tech. Then, across the sea, in the halls of UK's Parliament, This house recognizes 2025 as the 25th anniversary of sermonaudio.com, a facility for Christian churches to use to ensure the gospel message of salvation by faith alone. And still, the story rose higher. One day, a message came. Sermons and live streams from The Vault had reached the International Space Station. It was a reminder of the truth that God delights to take the small to confound the mighty, the weak to confound the strong. And so, the boy with the box of tapes became the man with The Vault. The cassette that once played in the solitude of a bedroom became the sermon that now soared through the expanse of space. The neglected shelf of tapes became the global library of voices heard by millions. and the dream once thought impossible, every sermon in every language now glimmered on the horizon with the brightness of promise. This is not the end of the story, but the beginning of its final chapter. When all is said and done, it is not the boy's story. It's not even Sermonatio's story. It is the story of the God who preserves His Word, who multiplies it, who carries it farther and higher than any man could dream. With every step, the challenge grows greater. With every ascent, the air grows thinner. The mountain of difficulty seems just as impossible as it did the first day. But the promise remains. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. And then shall the end come.