Do You Know God? — Rolfe Barnard

Old brother came to me on the side one day, and he said to the preacher, he said, could I say something to you? And I said, sure. He said, now I've been in, I've been serving the Lord a long time, but I'm an old man now, and you're young.

He said, I just want to drop you a hint. He said, you can catch more flies with molasses than you can with vinegar. And I said to him, but brother, I'm not trying to catch flies, I'm trying to kill sinners and bring them to the end of themselves and shut them up to Christ.

Death to Sin and Life in Christ

You see, you have to die in order to be saved. You have to die in order to be saved. Now, if that's true, then the greatest need of our churches today is for the news to get out that God's people are waiting upon God in prayer that will not take no for an answer.

And I did not in use try to advertise the preaching people who have heard about that before. There certainly would be something strange if people all over this community got afraid because they heard that God's people were on their knees.

Anybody saved, you have to preach a message that makes religious people mad, makes wise people laugh, says it's crazy. For the preaching of the cross is a scandal to religious people, and it's foolish to whirl the wise people.

Our God is those who are saved, and the wisdom of God. We have to preach a message that kills people, and that's nice to hear. And if that message goes forth on the ground and hasn't been watered for the prayers of God's people, it burns instead of blessing.

Prayer as the Church's Great Need

If I knew how, I would say another word to encourage every child of God. We've had meetings and meetings, programs and programs. We get worse in the ditch all the time. You know I'm telling the truth.

Your own loved ones don't pay much attention to you when you talk to them about the truth. Your own neighbors don't want you to talk to them much. We're in a desperate shape. And there's just one remedy, and that's prayer, an answer to prayer.

And the victory will be decided in the battle won or lost, in the place of prayer. Amen? That's right. I wish I could encourage all of you to see that. Now tonight, if you have your Bible, 17th chapter of the Gospel of John is our first scripture.

Knowing the True God

And I'm asking you tonight this question. Do you know God? Do you know the God in this blessed book? Have a God. A man has to have a God. Have a God. You boys and girls have a God. Some sort of a God.

You've got a God. You serve it, or Him. The business of getting men to the true God is a terrible business, because you've got to kill a man's God before he'll find the true God. If you start killing a man's God, he'll fight you.

Some of us have made a God out of doctrine. Some of us have made a God out of tradition. Some of us have made a God out of our own denomination. Some of us have made a God out of money. Some a God out of pleasure.

Some of us have taken our own little pocket knives and whittled us out of God. That'll enable us to be religious, live in sin. You neither know the true God out of your own imagination. This generation is like the people who were God's covenant people, God's elect nation, a few of whom were saved.

The Jewish nation was elected as a nation, but only a few of them knew the Lord and were saved. There was a remnant even out of God's chosen nation. And it's said in the Old Testament of Zion that they feared God and served their own idol.

That's the true picture of many today. They fear God and serve their own idol. Do you know the God? I'll read it over again tonight. Of course, read the text, you'll find the full text. In the 17th chapter of John, beginning with verse 1, follow me now.

These words faced Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, thy hour has come. Glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

Eternal Life Is Knowing God

Life eternal. Now watch. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee. No man knows the Father but me. And if any man gets acquainted with God, I'll have to introduce him. That he's the one that gives eternal life to men and women.

He's the only one that has the power to do it. He's the giver of eternal life to men and women. And then the Lord Jesus tells us what eternal life is. This may shock you, but hold on till you see it. Eternal life doesn't have anything to say about how long the life lasts.

Eternal life is talking about what the life is. A man who has eternal life is a man that knows God. That's what eternal life is. A man that doesn't know God is in a state of eternal death. A man who knows God has eternal life.

We Baptist's should better watch this now. Eternal life in the scriptures is not talking about how long something will last. It's talking about the quality of it. And eternal life is simply to know God.

Not know about him, but know him. This is life eternal, to know God. That's what Jesus said it. That says it that they are known. No, I hear about this. People say, well, Brother Barnard, I don't agree with you on such and such thing.

That's your privilege. I'm not very smart. I'm pretty dumb. You may be smarter than I am. And you may be right and I may be wrong, but Jesus is not wrong. And he says eternal life is to know God. To know God.

A man then with a living God. That's eternal life. We Baptist's should better back it from one jaw to the other and argue about once saved, always saved. That's not what the scripture emphasizes. It's the quality of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's enough to make our hair stand on our head and this day you worship, you serve, you just bow and turn to him. When men didn't like the knowledge they had of the true God, they said, put it on him.

Life, that's what it is. I did something floating around up in the sky to theorize about eternal life, to know God. Do you know God? Now, Winston Salem, on Wednesday night, the first meeting, I announced that tomorrow night, the Lord willing, I'd preach on the subject, why men, the head back to the service is over great big fella.

I remember him cause his stomach advertised and it came along way ahead of it. It was like your past. He gave up to me very pompously, told me what his name was, didn't mean anything to me, hadn't met him before.

I'll be back tomorrow night. Well, I said, I'm sorry that you cannot come. Oh, he said I could come, but said I don't want to. He would marry somebody, find out later. Well, I said, I'm sorry you don't want to come.

Now, it's your subject's body to hail. I said, I guess you're right, my friend. Send anybody to hell, follow the Bible with, follow the Bible, send people to hell. Made him mad. Now, later he's died monkey to monkey.

Name, piston rod. He got mad, didn't come back. God of the Bible, or did you go to one out and folks, are you acquainted with God for him? By experience at God, whom you cannot find by fetching as he made himself known to you.

Two Greek words used in the New Testament for no one. No, by experience. Oh, my brother, man, do you buy experience? No, the true God. Tennessee's from years ago to stir. And I remember last took me out one day into the country to have dinner with one of his deacons who was in the country.

I'm telling you the truth. I ain't preaching. I'm telling the truth. There are four different kinds of meat. I don't have any kinds of vegetables, two big kinds of cake, three, four kinds of pie, buttermilk came from a cow, not from a bottle.

And there's a lot of beef and chicken and pie and cake and beans that are demented that day. Well, I sat at this end of the table and the dear deacon sat down there. And I could tell during the service that he had married somebody.

I didn't know who it was. And he had a great big Adam's apple. It was a big one. It looked like a turkey gobbler's Adam's apple, you'd think. And he'd take a bite of the chicken and that old Adam's apple would bob up and down, it was red in the face.

And he said, preacher! He said, the God of the world! I began to smell him out. He was mad at somebody. More chicken than at a minister before I got thrown out. I kept on eating. He said, preacher! I said, yes sir.

I just kept on eating. I was his guest. I didn't want to start a fight because he was bigger than I was. And there I was. He said, why don't you preach? And I thought I couldn't get out of it. I said, I'm sure you're telling the truth.

The God you worship is like the God of the Bible. Not do. These are facts. By creating a God that does like you want God to do. Creating your own God. The eternal life for sinful men is to know the true God.

And I think that nowhere is the issue joined, the God that men and women know, whether he's the true God or the God that men have created out of their own imagination. I think the issue is joined more on the matter of what your God, what his attitude towards sin is.

God's Holiness and His Judgment on Sin

What is your God's attitude towards sin? I was in Texas the other day and a deacon told me, he said, preacher, as far as I know, there's just one sin in my life. But he said, I'm saved. I can't be lost.

And he said, I get a lot of pleasure out of that sin. And I said, brother, I hope you have a good time because you are sure to burn in hell as I'm preaching to you. Because any man who worships a God that lets you rest when you know there's sin in your life, you've got the wrong God.

Amen. You know a God that you sunk of and yet that's the common conception today. I know this is wrong, but I'm going to heaven anyhow. No, you ain't. Not with that attitude. Not with that attitude. Beloved, do you know the true God?

God is so pure that he cannot look on sin. A savior from all iniquity will send you to heaven. Do you know that God? A fellowship when there's anything in your life that you know to be wrong. You do, you've built your own God.

The God you should join more. That when we say God, you worship him. You worship towards sin. I've never seen much of the breath of revival. Once in a while, God has been good. He opened the windows of heaven, brought the spirit of prayer and confession.

Making things right on the part of his people. The spirit of God was outpoured and then it's wonderful to be around. Makes you hungry to see the revival. One time some years ago, the whole meeting under these circumstances.

I've been in the town in a church meeting. God was pleased to bless and no small stir in the city. We started a petition down at the big meal where everybody worked. They had several hundred people signed it by Tuesday, by Wednesday.

And the petition was to run the out town. They said I was radical. Why they said that fellow believed in holy religion. That fellow preaches that unless you try and act with perfection, you're not saved.

That fellow preaches that you can't be, that you can't have any sin. That if you can be content to indulge in any sin, you're lost. That any sin come to your knowledge, if it doesn't break your heart, cause you to turn forsaken, you're lost.

You do not know God. Why they said that fellow is a holy man. Isn't that awful that Baptists who in all their creeds say they believe in Bible salvation and yet they're making fun of holiness. And they're going to run the out town.

And God came to the rescue. And the victory. I've never seen anything that tasted like revival until God's people got out on the land where they'd be disgraced or God had come to the rescue. I've never seen revival yet until people got to praying death in it so they'd know whether God listened to them or not.

Asking God for something deathless. The whole city was stirred. And when the meetings were over, the pastors of the town asked me to meet with them. Imagine this. Never happened but once in my little ministry.

And they said, we'd like to talk to you about coming back to our city in a citywide meeting. Most citywide meetings are jokes. And so I said, well what about it? And they said, well we'd rent the city auditorium and we'd buy you an hour's time on the radio and we'd promise to pack the thing out and we'd get our people behind it and we'd be on our pieces before God if you'd come for a month.

But they said, now we want to make two requests of you before we agree on this meeting. And they said, the chairman said, one of the spokesmen said, we're not trying to tell you how to run your business but this is out of deep conviction.

They said, would you come to our city and agree before you got here that you'd preach three weeks on one subject and not give any kind of an invitation. Now that's so unusual. And I said, what is the subject?

They said, would you come and for the time on the radio every day and every night in the auditorium would you preach on one subject. What is it? The subject, Bible, don't anybody believe you will without a little God that won't punish sin.

They're screaming for mercy now because they don't believe God hates sin. They said, no use for us trying to get men to be saved. They ain't got nothing to be saved from. They don't think that God will punish sin.

If God won't punish sin I see no use of men having a Savior. For the Savior came to save men F-R-O-M's from sins and if God won't punish sin I don't see where we need to be saved from. These preachers said, we're preaching our hearts out here and nobody wants to be saved.

Nobody wants to be done with sin. Nobody wants to be turned to righteousness. Nobody much believes that God will punish sin. Instead of trying to get people to accept Jesus as Savior when they don't feel like they need Him if you come and preach three weeks on the radio and in the auditorium on the subject, will God punish sin we pray for it and day on our faces that God Almighty take the truth over the radio and in the auditorium men and women will go to their place of business and back to their homes and get to where they couldn't sleep for good facing the awful fact that the God who revealed Himself in the pages of this book that our mothers stained with our tears and some of our forefathers gave their life blood to defend.

They said, those preachers said we believe somebody would feel the need of being saved and I went and one time in my life I saw holy ghost conviction. I saw men who could not go to their place of business.

I saw people have to go to the hospital so stricken with the fear of God they said the people went crazy. One young woman was sent to their town and got through custom. They entered but conviction seized that town businessmen were saved.

Church members were saved. Young people were saved. People everywhere were saved. We never did give an invitation in that revival. We never did get a chance. We never did get a chance. As long as you have to invite where God wants us to be amen you have have towards sin God you know the God of the Bible will punish this generation the field of God the God-fearing people next to the little church where the people worshiped.

Revival, Radio Preaching, and Holy Spirit Conviction

And this man was an unbeliever and he'd fly around his land right close to the church so that the noise of the tractor would interfere with the worship took place. And this man made a bunker crop. Bunker crop.

And he wrote a letter to the editor of the little weekly newspaper and he said I violated your Sabbath date. And I plowed my fields on Sunday while y 'all was in church. And he said I've made more per acre than anybody in this country.

He said I've proved to you. You don't have to pay any attention to this godless editor to publish the letter without comment except down at the bottom of the letter he said my friend God don't settle in the month of October in the month of October.

But it is a point once to judge after that. To judge may not be in October but it'll come about the sin question. The God of the Bible is against sin. The God of the Bible said to punish sin. And the God of the Bible proposes to send them to hell for their sin.

Not for their father's sin but their not for society's sin. The God of the Bible ain't sin. I wouldn't be critical but I heard a young preacher who had been listening to some older preacher try to apologize for God.

And this young preacher had copied a statement. I've heard many times that God does not send people to hell. They send themselves. Why. It's just as silly as to say I break the law punish myself put myself in jail form a jury and sentence myself and then I execute myself.

Let's not try to apologize. The God of the Bible sent people to hell. You joined. I repeat more on the God. You know whether he's the true God or not. What attitude does your God take towards sin. You have a God that enables you to drink the Lord's day.

Salvation Requires Repentance and Faith

Listen to me. The God that America worships that lets them turn Sunday into a holiday. And the God of this Bible to different people. The God that America serves that lets them to have some sin and quit others.

For most church members all on earth has ever had to turn to quit some of their sins and go to hell defending others. The God of the Bible will send men to hell. Send to hell. Theologians approach this question from two different directions and said the same thing they said first of all that God will send nobody to hell whom he can wisely save.

Would you. Listen to me. There are some things that God cannot do and stay God ten million times to be God than for you to be sent to hell rather for you to spend eternity in hell than for God to be put out of business.

I got a lot involved in this God business. My first born child has been dead. I'd rather see you to go to hell than to put God out of business. To put God out of business. I've got no hope for my baby.

I'll never see her again. And I'd rather see you go to hell than to have to do away with God. You can put it that way that God's gonna save everybody he can. He's gonna save anybody at the expense of his character.

He's not gonna cease to be holy before he'll do that. He'll send the last one of us to hell. There are a lot of things worse than to see sinners sent to hell now. This may sound strange. To save everybody from hell.

He can using all the means at his disposal that he's got. He's gonna keep all of us in his terms. You be my judge for the good of mankind and on his own terms before God will change. Send men to hell.

That's an awful thought upon which God proposes to save men of repentance and faith. That has in it the quality of perseverance and victory. God saves men on the terms of repentance and faith and perseverance.

It's a little better now to say save men on terms of repentance hatred of and forsaking of all sacred and laying hold on Jesus Christ in such a way as never being wrong to turn him loose. Listen to me.

Start with understanding. Isn't like this that God's sitting over here and the sinner's sitting over here playing checkers and God makes his move and then talk to the sinner to make his move. And when the sinner's made his move then God sets in and saves.

No no. God doesn't save men if they have faith. God saves men through repentance and faith. That's the only way God can save anybody through that sinner turning from his faith to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's what salvation is. I am talking about. God does his part. Then the sinner's got to do his part. But the bible says that salvation's God's part. Now listen to Brother Barnum preach tonight. Listen to me now.

God doesn't save people if they're willing to be saved. God doesn't save people. Did you get that? God doesn't save people if they're not willing to be saved to the place they're willing to be saved. You're sure to go to hell down preaching to you as long as you think it's in your power to do something that'll fix it.

So God will save you. You'll never be saved. You're in the hands of God. You can change your ways but you can't change your heart. You can change some of your activities but you can't change this thing in your head that makes you wrong.

God looks at the heart. And a man has been brought to repentance just as long as he's quit some of his sinful ways. A man's been brought to repentance until he abhors himself and turns from himself and has a hatred not only of his act but of his self.

They give you a new heart. People say well I'm going to save you. Sometimes I know you ain't and we've got to come back. And everybody says it ain't. So with our hearts breaking and bleeding I don't think you have much kick at the judgment that God sent them to hell.

Don't say something else honey as long as you've got your sleeve holed up spitting on your hands doing your best to go to hell. I don't think you have much argument with God. If you land there I tell you men and women who want to go to heaven but are using all of their strength to go to hell.

That ain't the way to get saved. You want to be done with sin. You want to be done with sin. And that's what salvation is. To open the door on your face. I'm showing you where it is. And ain't you willing yet everything they know to go to hell.

I come back to tell you. Keep telling me we can't go on much longer. Like well that's right conversions like a lot we've had in the past. We need somebody make them willing to be saved on God's terms.

You never know the fashion. Christians who are trying to find out how much sin they can have and still go to heaven places of prayer and water the floor with the stain and tears of your agony friends of God make them willing to be saved on God's terms.

Doing the best he can using all the means at his disposal walk down this country and have a hundred professions. Well I have one now and that's your evangelism of the day. Ain't about the sin Christians they just say how many of you want to be saved from hell.

Everybody wants to be saved from hell. But if you walk down this aisle and repeat this prayer God be merciful to me a sinner I guarantee you're saved and you'll never be lost. Who wouldn't take up a proposition like that.

And then they go right on out after the same hot pen. They've been in all the time finally die and go to hell. Salvation's not from hell. That's incidental. Salvation's from me. My friend you wanted to be saved from sin.

Your experience was you decided you didn't want to go to hell. You don't know my Lord save people from the sin to send you to hell. If he saves God God sends people to hell first. Any more damage my friend.

Final Warning About Divine Judgment

I don't believe Hitler took the bodies of 6 million Jews and burned them to make soup to wash the bodies of German people. I don't believe he's in heaven. It might be a strange place if that butcher's there.

I think it very much that this fellow Hall and whoever that woman was took that little green leased boy out and killed him and got $600 ,000 ransom money and went on to be drunk. I don't think they're fixin' to go to heaven.

And in his books a place where he's preparing a king Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his angels of might he not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall depart from destruction to make our right to believe the Bible as we would if we did.

The city of Mobile, Alabama preach on judgment on the radio. He needs a guard on the street. If you don't put him off there we're gonna write the federal commission. I said we're buying the time. And I certainly don't want to cause you any embarrassment.

First time I ever saw anybody in this town interested. I've been listening to you preach and I want to differ with you not believe for God. I didn't call him by name. I met the jaw together. I said his position is that he does not believe the sender to hell.

And I said that man is exactly right. He won't do a sinner. Any good for God to send him to hell. But God don't send people to hell. God sends people to hell to punish them for their sins. That's why God sends men to hell to punish them.