Utter Committal to Jesus the Christ — Rolfe Barnard

Now, if you will turn tonight to the book of the Revelation, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, chapter 14, I believe that truth is vital. I would not smear a hard study to come to truth. I believe the old Puritan, whoever it was, said the only way to study the Bible is on your knees.

He didn't mean that, I suppose, physically, it wouldn't hurt, but it means the only way to study the Bible is to study it prostrate as a little child, knowing that the only part of the Bible you are able to believe is what you practice, and that Christ is known only in discipleship, and that Christ can be laid hold of only in the truth of him.

The Person and Work of Christ as the Gospel’s Central Truth

I believe truth is important. But I do not know all truth, I know in part. I believe that truth in season, we may ask God to confirm it. I do not smear truth. But there is just one great facet of the word of God that I'll fight you about, and that is the person and work of Christ, and still learning.

I believe I have come to a position that I'll hold for eternity about who Jesus Christ is and what he actually did and what he's doing now. It was Martin Luther who said that no man was a friend of Christ who didn't stand up and be counted in that aspect of truth that was under most attack in his generation.

I have given my life in the controversy of the gospel. I don't seek tonight this prefacing word that I believe there is one gospel, but that it has a different thrust in times of great crisis, chaos. And whether my theology is straight tonight, I do not know.

A Gospel That Confronts the Antichrist Spirit

But I want you to listen to me. I believe that these are the days when the religious world, Christendom, is being prepared by good men, by sincere men. I believe they, with their perversion of the gospel, are preparing the so-called Christian world to welcome with open arms him of whom my Lord spoke when he said in John 5, I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not.

If another shall come in his own name, him you shall receive. I believe that the day you are seeking to claim to be a child of God, seeking to shoulder the tremendous responsibility of toting your end of the blanket for a fight for the recovery of the gospel for this hour, I believe with all of my heart that our gospel today must challenge easygoing religion and must come with God-anointed authority and the man absolutely committal to the Christ of God.

I will try to preach to you tonight, wisely, hoping most of you, many of you, are children of God, and encourage, if I may, and instruct you, if need be, on what to say when you get a chance at somebody living in this anti-Christ spiritual age.

I think that gospel is found in the book of Revelation, in the 14th chapter, and I begin reading with the 6th verse. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel, to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

The Threefold Message of the Everlasting Gospel

And here's what the message is. What is this everlasting gospel, set in the midst of an earth, at that time under the sway of anti-Christ? Revelation 13's been talking about him. Here's the movement and the message of God.

For an hour men are to hear from heaven what God calls good news. This gospel has three things to say. Fear God, that's number one, and give glory to him, that's number two. The hour of his judgment has come, and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water.

Fear God, give glory to him, worship him. Not the one who shall set himself up as God, but the one who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, the creator, and the fountains of water. There follows another angel saying, Babylon is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drunk, drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

And the third angel followed, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, that same man shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, that man shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angel, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of that torment ascendeth forth forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and who receiveth the mark of his name.

Here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Bishop Sheen, who is without doubt the most evangelistic voice of the Roman Church, if that can be said at all, his own record is saying that the biggest achievement of Antichrist in our day is to convince us he's not here, convince us he's not here.

Satan’s Counterfeit Gospel and the Bypassing of the Cross

You're prepared to believe it or not, just bet you nearly a nickel it's so, that we've come to the day when the greatest enemies of the gospel, under God's sun, are preachers and church people. Antichrist is here.

A brand of gospel with some truth in it, mixed with a lot of error, has been Satan's way of opposing God and his Christ since the day when the mystery of iniquity began to roll. The fact of everything that's wrong in our homes, our church, our nation, our state, our city, our lives, is faith in a gospel that is not God's gospel.

And I wish we didn't have so many convictions. Most of us fundamentalists, that's a good word, I don't like it, have got a pocket full of convictions, and the devil's tickled to death with her, because as long as he can get a spray in our gospel gun to where it shoots everywhere and hits nobody and makes no demands and changes no lives and transforms no spirit, he's tickled to death.

For it is written in the word of God that Satan himself is transformed into an angel and messenger of life. And it is tremendously significant that perhaps 90 percent of our preaching and witness and everything else is trying to help Satan make the Garden of Eden here on this world and bypass the cross of Christ.

For it says that Satan has some people to whom he's delegated the task of doing the job that he wants done as a messenger of life. It says his ministers have been transformed into ministers of righteousness.

They're trying to get everybody to be good and bypass the cross of Christ. He's succeeding, you know, my folks. I wish I knew how for my own self, and everybody listen to me, to say to it that the Church was never called to shoot at every jackrabbit in the cotton patch and to waste our ammunition.

And that you and I are living in the days when we're going to have to put shooting at everything and come to the defense of the gospel for this hour. For there's but one thing between the eternities that God Almighty says has power in it to save, and that's the gospel.

The gospel is the gospel for this awful hour. When the Apostle John was writing here, he could already in the Bible, he could already say, little children, you've heard that Antichrist shall come, and there are already many little Antichrists.

My Lord said that Antichrist, little Antichrist, and people come and say, here I am, I'm Christ, and so forth, and they'd have such power they'd deceive the elect if possible. I don't know whether the Bible teaches there is to be a man called the Antichrist.

I think it does. Good godly men say, Brother Barnabas, this is a system. I don't know enough to argue. Whichever it is, whether it's an actual man, Satan's man, as he seems to be described in the 13th of Revelation, look at the man.

I'm inclined to believe that is so. But doesn't make any difference whether he's a man, or this is a gigantic system. It's on its way. It's on its way. Gene Dixon, I'm not capable of deciding anything about her, but he says that in a dream he has seen that little baby who is to be the one who will be received by the so-called Christian world, who under his influence shall gladly and willingly worship Satan through him.

I don't know. I don't know. I know this. I know this, that for nearly 1900 years, what we call Christianity has been building up and building up and marching toward the time when this world, under the influence of a man or a system, religious as all get out with deceptive powers that we little dream of, will cause the peoples of this earth to bow down at the throne of faith.

The Antichrist’s War Against the Saints

He tried to get my Lord to bed when he is here, and he failed, but he never has taken a vacation till this good hour. He's still got in mind what the scriptures speak about him in Isaiah, I will ascend to the throne, and he's not spraying his shots, that's the only thing he's still trying to do.

He hasn't given up, and here's the battle that we're in tonight. He's in the chair together to go out to represent Christ, that he's sat down and bled in enemy territory. I don't believe that the devil minds ought to improve, we just get them to bypass the utter necessity of that bloody tree upon which the Son of God hung his son.

In the 13th chapter of the book of Revelation we're told that when this man or this system, whichever it is, you have your own belief about it, it'll get the same job done. In the verse 7 of the 13th chapter we're told that he's going to make war with the saints.

He's going to make war with the saints. What did that say? He's going to make war with the saints. What? I go to church preaching, I believe he's going to make war with the saints. We'd better get in this battle, maybe.

Quit criticizing that person that went wrong morally the other day. Chances are you will too, because Satan is making war on the saints today, and we're still defending ourselves with a little glass water.

He knows we're in a war, he knows. You'd better quit criticizing that fella that's a shipwreck to the faith. Chances are you'll be put over in the ditch tomorrow, because we don't face up to the fact that I don't know how bad it's going to be tomorrow, but up to now there's a war going on, and since Satan can't get his hands on Christ, he's going to put every saint of God out of business if he can.

He really is in power. It's given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations, and has such power over the people that all have their leaders that ain't living in a tent, please God. With the stakes driven down pretty loosely, knowing that he's a stranger and a fool, and he's not forever in this world, and don't sell his soul for a mass of pie, as did Esau, to pay for their gadgets of luxuries of eternity, some of them for ten cent sins.

For the gratification of the lust of the flesh. The last one of them are going to wind up in the camp of people who fall down on their knees and worship the saint. We're told he's going to go around marking people, and he's going to fix it.

It's just about that way now. Well, God knows how this creature will put his arms around any human being now that has to make a living and bring in bread for his family in the ungodly labor and business world.

The Cost of Faithfulness in an Ungodly Age

God is the almighty dollar, and God only knows, only knows that has to wrestle back in this awful hour, out of this ungodly atmosphere, how you need to fight for your soul. I tell you something, you men, if you haven't done it, you're going to find out, and you're not going to have to be long about it, when God put a curse on man, on the woman, pain, and childbearing, and on the man, you have to learn to live in the spirit of it, pal.

You're going to have to do something now, if you want to live in the nest and wind up in heaven, because the whole spirit of this outfit is under the very breath of hell itself. Mark him, so he can't get a job, nothing to eat, it won't be long.

Don't you know that spirit's already here? Don't you know that? Where's any gospel for such an hour as this? Then you something about, of us Christ, holy God. Has there ever been a good news in that? When it's in the atmosphere of this old spirit, it has power over all people as well on the earth.

Popular God of Christianity today, but the creator and sustainer of mankind. Holy God there is. Up here in the globe. In a time of chaos or crisis, in the ends of the earth, they're converging as they are today.

As the gospel in such a day, as gospel. You'll be safe in the atmosphere of this hour. The gospel with its barbed wire today is not good news to people. Now your views of the last things may keep you from this.

I hope not. I welcome this hour. I hope it's going to be 10 times worse tomorrow than it is today. Because I believe the only hope for this generation is for God to open the windows of heaven and pour out judgment as we've never dreamed of.

I'll tell you something else about my theology, and I think I'm right here. I think Antichrist is going to be used of God to separate the men from the boys. And I know the Bible teaches that God is a separating God.

And I'm glad to see the tide rolling from every direction. I'm praying to what little prayer life I know anything about. My eyes will rise higher, quit making a jump out of the high and holy things of the gospel.

Till we shall have them to feed, till all hell can't snuff out. And we'll set the joy bells ringing in the hearts of God's people. As they come under the lash of the very forces of hell. It'd be good.

I even go as far, don't throw me out. I'm kind of hoping that God will be merciful enough to America to let communism take us over. I think we'd find out before any of us know the Lord. I read a book, it's called the Bible.

Where it talks about a God who makes the wickedness of men to praise him. And I read about a God who used a wicked king by the name of Cyrus to bring the awful lash of destruction and judgment. But it's in the mercy of God.

I think under God, that this soft generation of people that have been taught to believe that it's the purpose of God. They're going to let his people go through any hill on this earth. I don't believe a word of it.

Somebody said to me the other day, you believe the church going through the tribulation. First hundred years of the church they went through something brother. They poured them in oil and poured out their tongues and everything else.

This outfit around here, the Christian love. I'm telling you right now, honey, you got to get your spurs on. It ain't going to be that way much longer. You talk about God not going to let with his people.

Tell me what it was when they burned him at the stake in England. His forefathers were in death when they ground them and sliced their meat off of their bodies and each at a time and pull their tongues out and pull their fingernails out and dehumanize them.

And they bled with the blood of men and women. And the only crime they was guilty of was the crime of being followers of the Lamb. It better to have some hell on this earth. To keep the wrath of God at the judgment and to have it as easy as we want it down here and feel the torments.

It's our smoke rising up forever. What will the gospel demand of people in an hour like this? Just three things. It'll demand that men and women come up early under the authority of King Jesus. We talk about the good old days.

Total Commitment to the Authority of Jesus Christ

I don't know whether it's good or not. So they get bad all of a sudden. When they said it was easy to get saved and easy to be a Christian and all of that. Tell me right here, man. It ain't easy now. It'll affect your business.

It'll affect your job. It'll affect your home life. It'll affect your physical condition. It'll affect your mind. It'll affect your emotions. Oh, you talk about snatching people out of the fire. Whether the fire of the anti-Christian atmosphere of this day is red hot.

There'll be some ties severed and some households torn all to pieces and some philosophers go down the gutter. If men in this awful atmosphere are unable with the Holy Ghost to make wholesale or to commit all of themselves to the authority of Jesus Christ.

Well, you can't tell me that my Lord will be satisfied with less authority over his subjects than Satan's going to have through his man over everybody who's got their roots growing in this earth. Satan's man's going to have authority.

It's going to be given him all the people who brought Jesus Christ gospel now come to the glorious truth of a dying, risen, ascended, all-powerful Lord. And then you'll settle for nothing less than total commitment to his sovereign rule.

That's the message of the gospel. What demands this God in the gospel make today. For I remind you that the gospel is not simply the announcement of some facts. It's that, that the gospel brings its own demand and gospel brings its own command and the gospel brings its own call.

While the gospel not only demand that oh, I'll find the gospel for such an hour as this. Because well, it's all out of nothing now. Not this Sunday morning stuff now that's not going to be worth a dime.

It's all out of nothing to go. Gospel coming with a demand that men and women lovingly, willingly worship him on the throne. Since I came to know you boys, you better listen to me. I love you. Listen to me.

You mother and father, listen to me. All this religious perfection and crying a little bit, do that. Listen to me. Listen to me. A man ain't saved till he's awfully glad that Christ is in utter authority on the throne.

He ain't saved until he can love and worship him in the seat of absolute authority. Over your life. My Lord is not going to be content with lip service. The gospel demands today that God shall mark you.

Satan is going to mark his people that dwell on the earth. They laugh at me in Winston-Salem, my phone number, the last three numbers of it, 666. They call me the mark of the beast, whatever that means.

The Mark of Christ and Zeal for Good Works

I expect they knew scarce the death was being marked by it now, the spirit of hostility to the holy gospel. I just found one mark in the New Testament that my Lord marks his people with. And I read where he loved us and gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people.

And the thing that makes them peculiar, so they stand out, would that they would be red hot after good works, zealous of good works. A pretty good ball game, but show me somebody's running after good works, the mark of the man.

Men have, it's the same they've always had. It's getting a whole lot hotter now. There's not been a time since my Lord went back to glory. When the earth wasn't filled with little Christ preparing, little antichrist preparing for him who shall come.

There's never been a day that hadn't had the impact of this awful antichrist spirit. But it's getting hotter and hotter all the time. And there's never been a time when men could have two gods at the same time, and worship Satan and God at the same time.

But that crisis is getting closer all the time to where men are going to make their decisions. Look at the decision a man will have to make when the spirit, the system of antichrist is fully developed.

If it isn't now, you see, he's got one too close. He can come under the authority of antichrist, he can worship him, he can surrender, take his mark upon him. But if he does that, he'll drink of the wrath of God.

And fear God, and give him glory, and worship him, antichrist. There's never been any difference. A man can't have the spirit of this age and Christ at the same time. He can't with his lips praise the Lord and with his life put his roots down in the spirit of this hour at the same time.

There's never been a time when men didn't have to choose. There's never been a time, and it's going to be worse tomorrow, when a man could have God in Christ and the blessings of his work in person without being utterly divorced from the spirit of this age.

There's never been a time when it will be worse than you feel it will cost you. Said mister, I'll tell you how much it'll cost you. To be under the blood, to be secure in heaven. Just get out your little piece of paper there young man, and a pencil, and sign your life to get to Jesus.

Just sign that this is the gospel for this hour today. I believe that is passed for religious faith, worship and faith. I believe only men who sign their lives away. You can't kill them, they're already dead.

You can't rob them of their property, they ain't got none. They've signed their lives. I believe the scripture teaches who's a Christian is a martyr to be. God said if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, sign your life away, take up your cross, that's death.

And I believe those people are going to be under the blood, peace and secure. The state of Kansas is in need of a long time. One of them said, honey, I'm going to be a day late. I'm going by Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we lived for 14 years, before we moved to North Carolina.

A Costly Conversion and the Jewish Woman’s Surrender to Jesus

I said, I'm tired, I'm about halfway under the juniper tree, I need somebody to cheer me up, encourage me. Get me old bones, set the spiritual blood flowing through my veins. And I went by Tulsa, Oklahoma, and looked up a little Jewish woman, about 12 years before I made this visit on her.

I got acquainted with her. She's a missionary, church visitor, right now in a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She's the mother of two children, but she hadn't seen them in many years now. She had a husband, but she hadn't seen him in many years.

She had a mother and a father, but she hadn't seen them in many years. I remember the night I got my raincoat, my hat cover and my big old boots, managed to wade to my car. It had come a downpour in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was preaching in the church.

I struggled through that awful downpour, water running through the streets to get to the church. I thought maybe I'd be the only one there, but we had a little breath of revival, and the church was packed in it.

I went in to the vestibule to disengage myself from my clothes. Two blessed women were standing there waiting. They had a message for me. When I got my wet clothes off and started to go on the old poem, the two women said, Brother Barnard, tonight's the night, tonight's the night.

I said, She's here, Brother Barnard, she's here. And she was. Through some miracle of God's providence, these precious women had won the friendship of the wife of the leading banker in that city, a young Jew, very wealthy.

And they had so been used of God that they'd been bringing that Jewish woman to the meetings night after night after night, and they'd been telling me every day how the battle was going. And that night they said, This is the night, Brother Barnard.

Said, Today it came to a crisis. Her mother and father told her that if she in Jewish language, they use language like this, her mother and father said, Daughter, if you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no longer be our daughter.

Her husband had told her that day, If you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no longer be my wife. I'll not let you see the children again. And they meant it. They meant it. And in spite of that, that little Jewish woman waited through the rain.

She was there. And I preached that night. We stood and began to sing. I saw the Jewish woman take her glasses off and wipe her eyes. Directly she took her glasses off and with a handkerchief wiped her eyes and directly with a great sob.

She came running. She wasn't indiscreet. She came running and she put her arms around me, put her head on my shoulder. And sobbed. When the sobs had gone away, she said, Preacher, I surrender to Jesus.

To that Jesus she'd been taught from childhood, was the bastard son of a fallen woman. I surrender to Jesus. She stood to welcome the folks who'd come. I put my hand on her shoulder and called attention to the congregation.

To an old Isaiah, what is it, 3 -9? Tell she's a Jewish. I said, This little woman comes tonight to surrender to Jesus Christ. She knows it's going to cost her mother and father. It's going to cost her her children.

It's going to cost her her husband. It's going to cost her her home. But she comes to Jesus to surrender. Two days later, I drove by. I didn't go in. They had a tremendous funeral in that city. They brought an expensive casket out of a hearse to the Jewish synagogue and had the funeral of that woman.

They took that empty casket out and buried it in their graveyard. Only time she ever got to see her husband was when they met as he got a divorce from her. To see her. She'd not seen her precious children, her mother and father, or her husband for years.

To see her because I needed her. She's the happiest person I've ever known. She's the happiest person I've ever known. And that God, just to be in her presence, would lift you up. Never a murmur, just joy.

Found him. It was everything. But bless God, he's worth it. He's worth it. He's worth it.