In the 1980s, before cell phones, social media, and the internet, there was a young boy who loved listening to sermons on cassette tape—the only medium available at the time. Night after night, the voice of a preacher was the last thing he heard before falling asleep. In those quiet moments, the Lord was planting His Word deep in his heart.

“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

Like many of his generation, the boy grew into a gamer and computer programmer, fascinated by the rapidly advancing world of technology. During his college years, he attended a small church pastored—according to him—by “the world’s greatest preacher.” Week after week, he was fed by faithful exposition of Scripture and soon began asking himself a question: How could more people hear these messages?

One day, he discovered a rack of dusty cassette tapes in a back room of the church. The sermons they contained were powerful—but largely forgotten. That didn’t seem right. Faithfully preached sermons shouldn’t be confined to one Sunday or one audience.

As technology advanced—CDs, MP3s, personal computers, and eventually the World Wide Web—the boy’s love for preaching and passion for innovation began to converge. When he asked his pastor about entering the ministry, the counsel he received was unexpected: his gifts lay not in preaching, but elsewhere. Though disappointed, that advice became a great blessing.

His name was Steven Lee.

Inspired by the neglected tapes, Steven began asking a bold question: What if preaching could travel through the internet? With that thought, he began building a new media platform—night after night, line by line. After a full year of work, the vision became reality.

On May 1, 2000, SermonAudio was born.

From the beginning, its mission was clear: to preserve and propagate sound Bible preaching. As technology evolved—streaming, mobile devices, social media—SermonAudio evolved with it. By 2002, the site had reached one million downloads. By 2012, it housed over 500,000 sermons and surpassed 100 million downloads, serving thousands of churches worldwide.

This was the Lord’s doing.

But darker days came. In 2021, a preacher lost 3,000 sermons overnight when a digital platform erased them without warning. Soon after, SermonAudio itself was hit by a major cyberattack and blocked across social media. Steven realized that the same technology that once helped could quickly destroy.

Out of this came SermonAudio’s greatest undertaking: The Vault.

Like believers of old who hid manuscripts in caves, SermonAudio built a secure physical infrastructure—made of stone, steel, servers, and circuits—to protect preaching for future generations. With the support of Bob Jones University, The Vault officially opened on December 9, 2022.

But preserving sermons wasn’t enough. Steven wanted them to reach the world—in every language. That vision became possible through private AI technology, enabling Global Sermons to translate preaching across languages.

Today, SermonAudio is the world’s largest sermon library, reaching hundreds of millions globally. And one day, a sermon streamed from The Vault reached the International Space Station—declaring the glory of God even beyond earth.

The boy with cassette tapes became the man who built The Vault. What once played quietly in a bedroom now resounds around the world—and beyond.

This is not Steven Lee’s story. It is the story of a God who preserves His Word and carries it farther than any one man could imagine.

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.

And then Christ shall return.”

And who was “the world’s greatest preacher”?

For that answer, come visit Steven and the SermonAudio team on the campus of Bob Jones University.