Marks of a False Prophet — Rolfe Barnard

The Broad Road, the Narrow Way, and False Prophets

Read out, Lord, if you have your Bible, the seven chapters, Matthew, beginning at verse 13. I want to speak tonight on this truth, that the people who get on the broad road and build their houses on sand, and something comes along and tears it up because the house wasn't built on the right foundation, these people who call him Lord but do not know him and do not do his will, they get on that broad road by listening to false prophets, by listening to false prophets.

Now, as we read the whole passage one more time, the Lord says in verse 13, enter ye in at the straight gate, wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction. Many there be which go in, but straight is the gate, narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.

Few there be, the prayerful prophets, which come to you and keep closing, but inwardly they are rattling wood. Ye shall know them by their fruit, as the men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles, even so there is something that makes good sense.

Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. It's an impossibility, he said, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and a corrupt tree cannot bring forth, even if not forth good fruit, that's hewn down and cast into the fire.

Therefore, by their fruit ye shall know them, these false prophets. It is my conviction, not mine alone, that our task these days is threefold in the public proclamation of the word. We must proclaim and enforce God's holy law.

We must proclaim in all of its purity God's holy gospel. And we must lift up our voices and call to the people's attention the Savior's admonition to beware of false prophets. Let me call your attention one more time, as I have somewhere along the line since I've been here, that a false prophet is not necessarily an evil prophet.

In the Old Testament especially and in the New, there are evil prophets, they're malicious, they're satanic, they're insolent. But a false prophet may be a fine fellow. He comes to you in cheap clothing, but the fact that he's such a nice fellow, and he's so earnest, and he's so sincere, and he seems to have such a passion for souls, and seems to want to see people saved so intensely, makes him all the more dangerous, because the people will hear him, and they'll hear him as he preaches a message that doesn't bear good fruit.

Don't care how nice a man he is if his message doesn't produce good fruit. He's a false prophet. And the Lord tells the people to beware of false prophets. And he tells them how they can tell a false prophet by the truth that results from the ministry of that Sunday school teacher, or that fellow's preachers on the street, or that fellow's preachers over the radio, or from the Pope that stands there, or wherever or however it may be, if it's converts or not good.

If his converts do not send the rest of their lives as callers and speakers on the Lord, if his converts go to hell because they are depending on some physical act they perform, or some prayer that they said, or something like that.

False Assurance and the Sinner’s Prayer

Beware of false prophets. I heard a preacher's day over the radio telling the sinner to pray the sinner's prayer, and he'd guarantee he'd be saved. Now, that's blasphemy. And it comes from the lips of a false prophet, maybe a nice fellow.

And he's very sincere, but he knows nothing about the way God brings sinners to himself. And it's time now, in the battle of words and in the conflict of doctrine, and especially since you and I have lived all the days of our lives, when the truth has not been very good.

And we have to dig ourselves considerably to find the slightest evidence that we have a saving interest in the blood of Christ, and that we are truly married to and united to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures tell us that we are a branch, that we are a child of God.

And the faith and the juice and the power and the life comes from divine. And we look at ourselves in these days and we almost hear the death rattle of real Christianity. And it's hard put we are to have the slightest evidence in ourselves that there's any power flowing through us from divine and then through us to lost mankind.

This is desperate language. And certainly this is the time for us to pick up our ears and beware of false prophets and to search our own experience and our own convictions and our own standing and conditions to see whether or not we are on this broad road that's a road of religious profession where everybody on it calls Jesus Lord, where even some on it do some tremendous, mighty work, cast out demons and so forth.

And where now we are living in a time when our houses are being built down and so many people are discovering that they have strong faith, but they have their faith in the wrong person or the wrong thing, where the winds from a thousand directions are blowing and the confidences and assurances of multitudes of people that they were built on rock have long since gone by the board as they found our whole spiritual structure blown away.

And here we are, here we are, here we are. So where are false prophets? It's not to be just near that, but right after our Lord has so seriously enjoined us and admonished us to strive to get in the straight deal and thus walk the narrow road and has told us that there is a wide deal and that it leads to a broad way and that this broad way leads to destruction, eternal destruction, and that the narrow gate, the straight gate, leads to a very narrow way, and that that narrow way and that narrow way alone leads to life.

It's not to be just passed over that in the next very breath, in the next very verse, the Lord brings up the subject of us being keenly on the alert to see through it, whether we believe a lie or whether we believe truth.

For if you believe the devil's lie, you can't get saved. And if you do not pick up your ears, you'll be like the folks who listen to the radio today. They believe everything they hear and thus they believe nothing, thus they believe nothing.

Spiritual Deadness and the Need for Self-Examination

Oh, beware of false prophets. We need to heed that warning, especially today, for I'm not an old crank when I tell you you're living in the day of the mighty low ebb of spiritual power. The deadness on our faces, the blank look on your faces is a mark of death.

We seem to be numb to cocaine until all expression's gone from us. Looks like we're in the gasping time of the death rattle of what we call spiritual life. I'm telling you the truth, folks, we're in a desperate state and the preacher knows it and feels it and will do you good.

I would ask you, you people who do not even bring your Bible when you come to preach, do you expect what on earth has happened to us? The people in Berea were wise. They served to see what was at the herd within the center.

When I come back down to my native Southland, I go north a lot, I can always tell if I come down below the Mason-Dixon line. And I can be dead certain I'll come home and enjoy that discourse if I preach for the five holy people, five holy people in the north that had to fight for the gospel.

And the people in the north that believe in the Lord, they believe in him, brother. They stick out, brother. They're in the minority, but they stick out. And brother, they are Bible readers and Bible students.

If the scripture is true, that my Lord said, my sheep and my voice. If you can't hear it, that's how you hear it. That's how you hear it. Then I tell you our Bible-ness is a marred of something that's terribly, terribly bad.

You mad at me? I wish you had more interest in your soul than you do. I wish I could get under your heart and jar you out of this state that we seem to all be in. And that the Holy Spirit would come and measure in everything you hear now, what Ralph Barnes says, but what the word of God says.

There is the truth, I wish you believed it. Beware of false prophets. Beware of false prophets. We cannot excuse the inference here, and I think it's more than an inference that the Lord is saying, beware of false prophets.

He wants us to wake up to the fact that the way people get on this broad road is because they listen to false prophets. Not bad men, but men who did not preach them. I had it so much worse than the whole era, because people were swallowed, put blind and sinker.

And that's terribly dangerous. I want tonight to mention from the word of God, five marks of false preaching that are peculiar. They have an interest in eternity, and labor under the suspicion that it's entirely possible they're not just a bunch of hogs or dogs.

And that when we die they'll take us out here and bury us so we won't corrupt the air with our rotting bodies, that's the last of us. But that as men and women who have some beliefs at least, that out yonder there's another life, and that these days down here, what happens here will determine what will happen out yonder.

I think it is conspicuously true today that these five things are worthy of our close attention. I do not dare to take time enough to mention many, many of the marks of the false prophets that dot the pages of the Old Testament and the New.

But I pick out five that seem to me, and I believe I'm about half right here, to be peculiar to the preaching of this age that has got us in this awful death-like state we're in, where it seems that we now have no hunger for the word of God, but we're just about half dead and dragging along and hoping for the best.

And I mention these five marks. The Lord said, you can tell these false prophets by their fruit, by their fruit. And as I look about the fruit of our ministries for these 30, 40, 50 years, and the fruit's getting worse all the time, and the standards are going down all the time, and the marks of death are growing all the while, and the marks of life seem to be almost disappearing.

I think these five things really make a picture the type of preaching that we've had for these many years that have got us on this broad road that's leading multitudes of people who are sincere. They're dead, but they're sincere.

They're lifeless, but they believe what they've been told. And they're on the broad road, and they think they're all right. And only an awakening of the ghost will ever awaken, and they'll go to hell and be greatly surprised because they thought they were all right.

Speaking Peace Without God’s Peace

The first of these marks that I think is peculiar to the hour in which we live is that a false preacher will speak peace to a sinner when God hasn't spoken peace. The old Testament talks about men who speak peace when there is no peace.

One of the pastors in a, I don't know if it's in this town here or not, but a Wallace Starr picked up some of the other night when he was in the services, and he said, I have a deep conviction that we've made decisions for multitudes of people these days.

We've made decisions for people. Have you ever run across this? Have you ever run across this? He has a personal worker, and they are very earnest and very sincere. And they've got an old unsaved man lined up, and they're trying their best to help them.

And they'll say, now, my brother, let's read this verse of scripture. All right, and we'll read it. You believe that? Yes, I believe that. So what does that say? It says, so and so, so and so. Well, you believe?

Oh, yes. Well, now, God wouldn't lie, would he? Oh, no, I don't believe God would lie. Well, then according to what that verse says, if you do so and so, God will save you. Yes, that's what it says. Well, now, God wouldn't lie, would he?

All right, well, then aren't you saved? Well, I don't know. Well, you wouldn't call God a liar, would you? No, no, by course you are saved. And so we decide that that old boy is saved. We decide that he is saved.

I was out in Texas the week before this last speaking to young pastors, and one day after the noon day message, the eleven o 'clock message, there were a few of us were seated, having a bite to eat. Some of the younger pastors were gravely disturbed over something I said, you better listen to Brother Barney right now.

Somebody don't even do as much as go around inviting people to accept Christ. But I called attention to the fact that in the New Testament, when you went knocking somebody's door, and you went to talk to a man who wasn't lost, who had just one weapon, and that was the proclamation of truth to him.

That's right. I'm telling you that God's truth, he's still held full of church members, and I take it for granted that you have accepted a proclamation instead of submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ. I call that attention to this fact, and I'm speaking to Sunday school teachers now, and I'm speaking to you precious young deacons who have a tremendous responsibility, and I bet you better hear this!

We have left the winsomeness of our personality and the power of our appeal for the one thing that's got any power in it. Romans 1 .16 says, I'm not ashamed of the cross, but you'll see what I'm talking about.

I know this is one of the nights out. This is indicative of how far we are from the blessing of God, but you are here, and I'd be helpful to you if I could. I rejoice. It was good trials, and do my best, but all that God's fierceness has been killing us with time, but you're here.

Let me give you an illustration. God had to come to a fellow by the name of the Apostle Peter and nearly kill him before he could get rid of his tradition and his Jewish prejudice, and finally they sent old Peter down to a fellow named Cornelius who was down there and praying and worshiping God best that you have, and he's just hoping somebody would come and speak to him some words of family.

God nearly had to kill old Peter to get him to go down there. The Apostle Peter went down there and knocked on the door. Come in! I'm the Apostle Peter. Are you this man Cornelius? Yes. Well, I want to know, Brother Cornelius, do you want to accept Jesus as your personal Savior?

No, he didn't do no such thing. There ain't no power in your little old invitation, and there's not a bit of power in that man's decision, but I'll tell you what there is power. There's power in the gospel.

You know what Peter did? He preached the gospel to him. He preached the gospel to him. He preached the gospel to him. I'm telling you, for the last 40 or 60 years, church members didn't know the gospel themselves, and when they went out and did personal work, they didn't give the sinner a bit of truth, they just took out their hands and said, Brother, won't you accept Jesus?

And the old boy went on there. But listen, there isn't any power except in the gospel. And if you get a chance to witness to a man, what are you going to tell him? Do what Peter did, given the truth of God and Jesus Christ.

And the Scripture tells us there in the 10th chapter of Acts, you read it, I'm not making this up, while yet Peter yet came unto them, the holy one, and them that had the Word, they got saved, of course they did.

That's how people get saved. It's not by your little old two-bit argument, it's not by your little old invitation. That isn't worth their time. They just accept the proposition and go on to hell, believing they're alive.

It's the gospel, it's the power of God and the salvation. I'm pleading that we quit all this foolishness and get us a Bible and go out here and represent Christ instead of disgracing him. And when we tackle a sinner, it's what they did in Bible time, get in the Word.

And if the Holy Ghost falls on him, he'll be saved, while he's listening. But he won't be saved just because you asked him, he won't accept you. Most of you folks are going to sit here wide open, going, Oh, God, what have you got?

You accepted a proposition somebody made. But there's no salvation in my proposition. The gospel is the power of God. We can't believe the gospel, and we've spoken faithfully. These young people were discouraged.

They said, You mean to tell me to go out and do personal work, or to just give them the Word of God? I said, That's all right. And the praise of the Holy Ghost will fall on them while they're listening.

You can't get them through. I know we've been trying to. But see, that's the one thing we don't do. When we go out and do a little personal work, we don't give them the gospel, we just give them our invitation.

And they've already accepted it. All they did was accept our invitation. And we told them, It's all right. We spoke peace when there wasn't any peace. Dear Brother Barnard, one more time. When it is between heaven and hell, there is only one voice that can give them their courage and their power and their ability.

Take these two troubles home, and that's the voice of God. If that old sinner has to have you convince him he's saved, you're butchering him. Mr. Fenney used to say, Many went away saved. They've been comforted by the Holy Ghost.

And if he gives you comfort, if he fills your heart with peace, that's fine. But if you've got your hope of going to heaven because you accepted my proposition, or somebody else's plea to receive Christ, I'm scared to death that you're going to find you've built your house on sand, and you've been walking on a broad road, and you've loosed the disciple.

Healing Sinners’ Wounds Lightly

Another mark of a false prophet that's closely akin to this one, Joseph Smith speaks of men healing the wounds of people's life. This is what I miss and what I keep preaching. I go from place to place, and one time I see glorious things, and another time I see glorious things.

But I can't do it myself, and so we just keep on, and keep on, and keep on. But I refuse. I've done it for thirty-odd years. I've seen multiplied, multiplied, multiplied, thousands of people make perfection of faith.

I don't know how many of them got saved until they get to the judgment. I hope many of them did. But I've never done one thing, and so help me God, I never will. I may rob a bank tomorrow, but I'll never stoop to these underhanded methods to get people to say they accept Jesus, if they do not want him, mighty bad.

I'm telling you what's the fact. He's dry. I've walked in the aisle, in the kitchen, and jumped from one door to the other, and going right back out. I've actually seen men get converted, get cleansed, and get in the service, and go right back out and light a cigarette.

I've seen it. Why, there ain't no more salvations out there than a monkey, and you know it. Because our salvation doesn't even clean them up. That's no good, and you know it's no good. In the room, John the Baptist, who was filled with the Spirit in his mother's womb, and Jeremiah likewise, I'm on pretty safe ground when I tell you that in order to save a human being, the lovely Lord Jesus has to wound, and the preacher that will heal the wound, the bloodstained Jesus gives the sinner, in order to burn him to himself, this is Paul.

We have a generation of people now, who say they have peace, but they never knew it's gonna crush him. He'll bow to his blessings, and the nerve, the wound, and all that cockiness, humbleness, freedom.

We call it our heart will break, as I've seen in the way they put it. Blessed Lord, almighty being, they hatched the wound, and they will heal the wound of sinners like prophets do that. Don't speak peace, let God speak peace.

Making the Narrow Gate Easy

Don't tell a man God's done something for him. Let the man tell you what God's done. You can't beat the Holy Spirit for doing what God almighty gave him to do. In the third place, all prophets in these days, good men, make the gate a whole lot easier to get in than the Lord did.

It is so hard to get in this straight gate, my Lord said you had to agonize to do. You had to agonize. Oh, easy it's made now, but nobody that loves you will tell you it's easy. When I was a student in one of our seminars in Texas many, many years ago, my wizard mother up in the plain of Texas went to a doctor, and the diagnosis scared her so that she got on a train and came down to Fort Worth, Texas, where I was going to school, and told me what to say.

There happened to be this thing as a doctor in the hospital in Fort Worth, one of the staff of the great Mayo Brothers in Rochester, Minnesota. I went to the presence of the school, and he got me an appointment to see that great surgeon.

I took my mother to see him, and he examined her for a period of a few days and told her she had cancer, cancer of the womb. He told her that he believed there was a 50 -50 chance that they removed the womb, that she's had many years of life.

And I didn't have any money. I was going to school, and that great, he was a gentleman. I told him about my condition. He says, all right, do the best you can. He took my mother. My mother asked me to go in the operating room, and I stood there for three hours and 37 minutes during that awful long operation.

My mother asked me that if she came out, I would lie that I'd be at her bedside when she woke up, and I was there. And when she woke up and got her wits about, the first question she asked, is it out?

And I said, yes, mother. She said, I'm so glad. Oh, I've been so glad to hear 37 years after that, no recurrence. Isn't it wonderful that that doctor told her the truth? What if that doctor said, now there's something wrong in there, I'm going to give you this little knife, a little bunch of pills, and I think you've taken twice a day everything that's been on the door.

No, he told her she had cancer, told her she had cancer. That only a donor, a killer eventually unless it was taken out, and of course being human couldn't guarantee that. My mother said, I'm so glad, so glad.

Suppose, my friend, that Jesus told the truth. Just, just suppose. Just suppose he said, this game is difficult. It's not a little skin disease, there's a cancer in there that's got to come out. That's that old wicked hostility in your heart.

It's got to be crushed, and you've got to be made a captive, and a willing captive of blood-stained Jesus. With his will central in your life, and nothing but an operation of the Holy Ghost, and the power of the blood of Christ the risen Lord is sufficient for your need.

Supposing this generation of these that go and sin for a living, men and women, claim into the children of God, how will they fare when the stand of the just, having ignored this admonition of the Lord, is to get in the straight game.

It's so difficult, you can't have this world in Christ too. One of them's got to go. You can't have the spirit of this age in Christ too. One of them's got to go. You can't have all this in heaven too.

One of them's got to go. You know what it may be? He told the truth. I'm betting that he did. And I say to you that a false prophet will preach this little easy gospel. You can keep your sins and do as you please, and that wasn't why you'd get up in church and say, now I'm saved, but I haven't been living right.

That'll make you feel better for a couple of weeks, and that's why you'll die and go on to hell. Ladies and gentlemen, this thing is pretty serious. This game is difficult, and a false prophet will tell you it's easy.

Because the march of a false prophet in this day will make this road a whole lot broader than Jesus makes it, a whole lot broader than you. You know, Joe, I know there are winter times in the soul, and there are times when life seems to flow more than others.

But I also know that this generation has been shot a curve, and I keep hearing people telling me, I know I'm saved, but I'm not living for the Lord. Something's wrong. This narrow way hasn't got room on it for men and women in rebellion against Jesus Christ.

This narrow way is a Christ-disciplined way. And I tell you now that I do you good and not evil at all, you'd better bring your habits and your thoughts and your work and your home and your body and everything there is about Jesus Christ, put them under his discipline.

Too long we've had a generation of church people that decide what they'll do and what they will not do. I tell you, it's not given to us to walk this narrow road except under the discipline of the Lord.

That'll call for daily repentance. That'll call for daily exercise of faith. That'll call for daily surrender and commitment. God bless your heart. That'll call for daily getting your orders from the Commander-in-Chief.

It's your will, devil. I'm telling you, we know nothing much about what I'm talking about now. My heart leaps within me, lest we miss Christ altogether. This disciplined road is disciplined not by what we claim, but by what we do.

Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who else? He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Not so that it talks about, I'm saved but I'm not living right, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

That's what the Lord says. That's what the Lord says. Oh, I'm saved, Brother Barney, but I'm not doing the will of God. Well, if that's true, the Lord Jesus is alive, because he said the fellow that's going to make it is the fellow that does the will.

Now, I can't do anything perfectly, but there's something I can do. You needn't worry about perfection yet, but my Lord said not everyone that sayeth, they're on that broad road. Oh, just look at us. They're not the ones, but he that doeth, present him, partisanship, that's the tenor of his life, that's the bent of his life, the will of God.

That's the biggest thing in his life. That's the man who's saved. That's the child of God. That's how the Lord identifies the fellow that's not on this broad road. He's on the narrow road. It's narrow because it's under the strict death pen who earned the right to demand of us that we bring our very thoughts into captivity unto him.

What things soever we do, do everything we do to the glory of the Lord. But the false prophet, his converts, oh, I'm saved, but the will of God is not the central thing that makes you take. And there's no salvation there, if Jesus told the truth.

Salvation Offered on Cheaper Terms

The last word about a false prophet is this, not only does he speak peace where there is no peace, this is to use it our day and heal the wounds of men lightly. Not only does he make the gate pretty easy instead of difficult and the road very broad instead of narrow, but he offers salvation on cheaper terms than God does.

The terms have never been changed. Any human being on earth is able to repent. But repentance isn't a once-for-all act. It goes on as long as you live. And anybody on earth is able to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but that's not a once-for-all act.

It goes on as long as you live. Anybody on earth that can meet the terms of salvation, repentance and faith, thank God he'll be saved. But they will not be lowered. They cannot be cheapened. And repentance is nothing more or less than the enthronement of you and the enthronement of God's Son in you.

And faith is nothing more or less than utter confidence in and absolute obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. But what we know in all the days I've been a Preacher, you just go through some motions one time and the Preacher will tell you you're saved and you go on to the next.

No, no. Every commitment between you and God needs to be made time after time after time after time after time. I know I'm from that. If he that believeth, he just keeps on believing. If he that endureth, he don't play out, he don't run for a little while and then stop.

No, no. If he that abideth, if he that drinketh, if he that obeyeth, if he that eateth, all of these, you schoolchildren know the meaning of them. It's continuous. The world, my friends, every day calls for new commitment to the utter Lordship of Christ in your life.

Utter dependence on his saving blood to wipe out the penalty of sin that God Almighty demands. And to make it cheaper than that is the mark of a false conscience, not of truth. Be from us or in from of Christ where you.

Christ giving the orders. Christ in command. Repentance. I'm going to look you in the face now. I'll meet you to judge anybody on earth. They'll take this book and face it and find out what's in it. They face with the totalitarian claims of God for his son in your life.

Anybody on earth that will do it will either curse God and hope to die, or it'll bring you the deep repentance every day of your life. For the best saints that ever lived, when he faced with the all-inclusiveness of God's command for his son, will have to discontinually face the fact that they're far, so far short, so far short.

We're commanded to bring our thoughts into captivity to him. Now, brother, that's kind of a job. How many of you have that in the thousands? His demands, his claims of his rule in your daily living, it doesn't cause you to have tremendous experiences of repentance and crying to God for forgiveness and confession of sin.

It's because you know nothing of Christ. You're a stranger to the Son of God. Holy Nate King said, Christ's war is to be preferred to the devil's. And if Christ is in there, he'll disturb you till the day you die, if he's in there.

If he's not in there, if he's just a profession to you, if he's just somebody you hope will keep you out of hell and leave you alone while you live, you'll never know what I'm talking about. You'll not know anything about disturbance.

But if Christ is in you, he's holy, and he'll disturb you. You know what it is to cry for forgiveness every day, brother. You know what it is to pour out your heart about your sins. The reason you don't think you're a big sinner is because Christ isn't in there.

The Judgment on Those Who Follow False Preachers

What's the awful price you pay for listening to false preachers and pure-minded judgment? In that day, my Lord said, I'm quoting from this passage of scripture, and I'm true. In that day, many shall say unto me, Lord, Lord, they're on this broad road, they got there listening to these false preachers.

Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, you must have made a mistake, have we not, in thy name? This is what we've done. Well, that's fine. There's one little thing wrong with it. They did it. He never had done things of them.

Look at us. Lord, Lord, just look at us. In thy name we've done many wonderful things. In thy name we've prophesied. In thy name we've cast out demons. And then the Lord shall look at them and say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

I never at any time knew you. That's the price people will pay for listening to false preachers, going through a wide gate of evil believism, walking a broad road that doesn't bring you unto Christ's discipline every blessed day of your life.

That's the price the youngsters writing notes while the preacher preaches will pay. So help me, God, at the judgment. That's why I never knew you, my Lord.