What Is the Issue? — Rolfe Barnard

I wish to speak tonight so that I can ask two questions. I don't have a subject. I wish to talk about the one issue, and having laid some groundwork for it, I hope to ask two very simple and yet solemn questions of all of us who are gathered here, hungry, hungry for fellowship, but in great need, in great need.

The Issue in Eden: Humanity’s Rebellion Against God

What is the issue? I have two passages of scripture. The first is found in the book of Genesis, at chapter 3, where the issue was stated, and from that hour to this, every other issue has grown out of this one.

And this issue, that was the issue in the Garden of Eden, remains the issue to date. I was up in Binghamton, New York, many years since, and God was giving us a great supply of harvest that particular time.

Somebody invited somebody to come to the meeting to hear me preach, and he said, He says the same thing every time he preaches. I met a young Methodist preacher who had gotten well acquainted with him, and swapped in teeth.

He is less than 40 years old. He taught at Dubuque University, and yet he is one of the powerful preachers of this hour. He started a church among the Methodists with nine families, and is making that city sit up and take notice as he is seeking to create a fellowship of men and women who live in the power of the resurrection life of the risen Lord.

And I asked him how on earth he had come to the clearness and the oneness of his message, while he said, Brother Barnard, there isn't but one message to be preached, and that's to preach God's eternal purpose in Jesus Christ, that on the basis of his life laid down, he proposes to set up his totalitarian rule in hearts, in institutions, and in this world before the wind-up time comes.

But that's quite a purpose, isn't it? That's quite a message. The issue is stated in chapter 2 of Genesis, at verse 15, and the Lord God put the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Christ’s Universal Kingdom in Isaiah’s Prophecy

In the 9th chapter of the gospel of the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, two verses, verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah 9. Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7. For under us a child is born, under us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder.

And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. For of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. And upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

A hundred years ago, the controversial voice of his age, a man who was not an ordained public preacher, a man who wasn't perfect like we are, but he was crying aloud against the Lord. That's exactly what we are facing today.

The Church’s Passive Faith and the Parable of the Geese

Where we live in America, most unanimously the people have agreed that we ought to go to church on Sunday morning and then go home. But we must not get involved in what's going on. This world is being torn to pieces by every bat out of hell, but we, like the people in New York City, are watching women ravish, husbands beaten up for trying to protect their wives, because this generation of people wants to go to church on Sunday morning, listen to the preacher preach a fire, and go home.

He cried out against the same thing that John Wesley cried out in his day and that our brother Driswell talked about this morning. This man wrote a parable a hundred years ago about the conventional faith characteristic of his fellow church members in Denmark.

I wanted to begin the message today so that some of you will be familiar. You bear with me. The subject of this parable is the pained geese. Mr. Kierkegaard writes on the pained geese, and here's what he says.

Suppose it was so that the geese could talk. Then they so arranged it that they also could have their religious worship, their divine service. Every Sunday they came together and one of the ganders preached.

The essential content of the sermon was, I think this was a conference on the grace of God, I'm not certain, what a lofty destiny the geese had, what a high goal the Creator, and every time this word was mentioned the geese heard it and the ganders bowed their heads.

What a high goal the Creator had set before the geese. By the aid of wings, they were told, they could fly away to distant regions, blessed climes, where properly they were at home. Here they were only strangers.

And so it was every Sunday. The assembly broke up, each waddled home to his own affairs. And then the next Sunday again to divine worship and then again home. And that was the end of that. They frolicked and were well-liked, became plump and delicate, and then were eaten on Martin Matthew, and that was the end of that.

That was the end of that. For though the discourse sounded so lofty on Sunday, the geese on Monday were ready to recount to one another what befell a certain goose that took seriously the preaching, and who wanted to make serious use of the wings the Creator had given him, the wings that were designed for the high goal that was proposed to him.

And the geese were wont to tell about what a terrible tragedy and what a terrible death this one encountered. Also among the geese there were some individuals that seemed suffering and grew weary. About them it was currently said among the geese, you'll see what it leads to when you take this flying seriously.

For because their hearts are occupied with the thought of wanting to fly, therefore they become thin, do not fly, do not have the grace of God as we who therefore become plump and delicate. Then Mr. Kierkegaard says, and then when someone reads this, he says, it's very pretty, and that's the end of that.

Then he waddles home to his affairs, becomes, or at least endeavors with all his might to become plump and delicate and fat, but on Sunday morning the parson preaches and he listens just like the geese.

This world is going to go to hell. We've refused that for which God hung his Son on the cross, the matter of attending worship on Sunday morning, waddling home and refusing to get involved, what's going on as this world is being butchered from every direction.

The geese listen to the parson preach a fire, and that's the end of that. There are two testimonies that speak to my heart, one of them by this same gentleman. I wish you'd listen to this testimony of all the nonsense uttered in these miserable times.

Perhaps the most nonsensical is the sentence written with a pretense of wisdom, which I've met up with in the course of my reading, and whose excellence I've heard some people praise. The nonsensical sentence is this.

Nowadays no man can be a martyr anymore, for ours is an age incapable of making a martyr of anyone. Then Mr. Kierkegaard says, what a misconception. We are not to think it is the age which has the power to put a man to death, or to make him a martyr.

But it is the martyr, the genuine martyr, which must give to the age the passion, the bitter passion to kill him. Superiority always works in two ways. It produces the force which brings about its own fall.

Thus, when a disturber of conscience says he is to be put to death, it is not the age which does it in its own strength and leads him to the gallows, but it is he himself who by dealing his salutary blows, gives to the age the passionate desire to kill him.

And if the age is sought in the worst kind of laxity, such a brave man has only to appear to disturb such an age to its core. I know I haven't got much time, but so help me God, I'm getting so sick and tired of being nice, I'm about to explode.

I wish on that God, God Almighty, would build a tower on earth until we took the one issue of this hour and made this generation forever to take their way with him, kill him, get rid of him. We're the nicest little bunch of in-orthodox grace and for-hailed great people this world ever had to put up with.

We couldn't disturb a convention of fleas, the whole shootin' that job. We couldn't. A great French preacher makes another statement that I preface my remarks with, Mr. E. Matthew M-A-T-H-I-O-T.

He says, after 25 years of preaching this for us preachers, he said, I'm still appalled by all the fine words I've uttered from the pulpit Sunday by Sunday for 25 years. Anyone of which lived up to this yield would have been enough to send me to prison.

If Christianity is not persecuted in the West, it owes its security to its unfaithfulness. God's blessing is withdrawn and cannot be experienced in the midst of our verbal sonorities. We the best snorers you ever saw.

God's blessing seeks a truly adventuring life. God gives to us only by hand. Of course, we trust him by hand. With that preface, I want to prepare to ask my heart one more time and yours two questions.

The Authority of Christ Over the Whole World

It is said, or it is true, that when a queen or a king, a sovereign, is crowned in Great Britain, that one part of the traditional service is as follows. They take a golden orb, surmount it on a cross, and this golden orb on a cross is presented to the sovereign.

Then the words are spoken, when you see the orb sit under the cross, remember that the whole world is subject to the power and to the empire of Jesus Christ. This will serve to focus our attention tonight on the one issue of this hour, of every hour, past, present and future, in whom his authority and his glory may be recognized.

In the Garden of Eden, there is just one issue. On Galatas Hill, there is just one issue. In the Garden of Eden, there is just one issue. Does God have a right to be God? And does he exercise that right?

I have just one issue at Calvary. We do not pray. Does God have a right to sit on the throne? The Bible says he does. Does God have a right to exercise that right? The Bible says he does. The issue was first joined with peace in Abraham's tent, as long as Ishmael was the only son.

There was war when Isaac came. He was all fighting in the Second World War, and he kept getting letters from his wife. He was in bed. She was the daughter of a husband. She was nagging him to death, worrying him to death about problems.

He finally sat down and wrote her a letter and said, "'For God's sake, quit worrying me. We'll get troubled. Leave me alone to enjoy this war in peace. We could have peace and all go to hell together if God Almighty had the keys.

If he'd step down off the throne and quit bringing his commands, quit pressing his clay, quit meddling, quit interfering. And God left Eden to fail. God's whole ship was threatened. If Adam had a war, God would have been out of this.

Manhood, his wholeness, was lost. It was so that now the scriptures speak of the natural man to describe the unnatural man, the fellow that craves it, who's beside himself and has to be brought to himself before he'll act like he's got sense enough to come in out of the rain.

The old thing's out of kilt. Now the issue of the throneship of God Almighty has got to be set. God Almighty works until the issue's set. I've had the privilege, used to look in the back of the book, cheat a little bit and find out the answer without going to all the trouble working it out.

Praise God. I've looked in the back of the book and I read in the 15th chapter, 1 Corinthians, this thing's going to be settled. Praise God. He must reign. He must. Until that thing settles, until this world, in the subjection of the Almighty God in Christ, man's wholeness was lost and was made to be governed.

There's never been any government placed on anybody's shoulders but Jesus Christ. The government will be on his shoulders. The whole outfit will be turned over to him. Nobody got any right to make any decision there except Christ.

The government shall be on his shoulders, not yours. I can't quote it, but John Calvin dedicated his Institute to the reigning monarch of his day. And in the climate of boldness in his heart, was pleased to remind that monarch that he'd sit where he was as long as it pleased.

The only one that's ever been given any rule or any government. Jesus Christ. Man was made to be governed. The ungoverned man is not a real man. Only so will he be a whole man. Otherwise he's just a fish out of water.

He is created to serve God. His human personality was designed for something more than self-centered animal existence. Made was man not to stand alone but to be lost in a great purpose. That strange expression is still true.

And whose service is perfect freedom. Then it's personal slavery instead of obedient freedom. To be free, man must be under him upon whose shoulders the government of everything that thrives and wriggles from time to eternity has been placed.

Salvation as the Restoration of God’s Throne

Salvation, then. We heard about somebody seeing God's salvation this morning. Salvation, then, if it's God's salvation, is the restoration of the throne-ship of God and making a man a man one more time.

He follows, therefore, the three things of truth. The gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation of him. In him, through him, and in him, for him. God purposes to sum up all things. And in and through him he gains.

It's in all of the works for a man the way of the whole man. If you don't buy any of the other books back there, get your wife to let you buy Mr. Warfield's The Plan of Salvation. Ah, when you get the blues, you'll read it.

This world's going to be redeemed. God bless your heart. This world's going to be brought richer. The gospel is the story of how God has put all of his eternal purposes, all of his eggs in one basket.

The gospel is as fresh and as sour as Christ's. Hope is where all expects in Christ. Note next to him that. The gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation of his purposes. For kingdoms or nations or systems or worlds or individuals.

We can understand Paul's fruitful description of the credentials of gospel preaching. I hope Brother Mayhan can stay on the radio, but I'll warn him right now. If the world finds out what they're preaching, he ain't going to stay on.

Imagine what would happen if the Jewish people in America ever got wise to what's happening on the radio. Why, it's an insult to a Jew. The stuff you preach. Preaching that illegitimate son of a fallen woman.

That man who, if they hadn't killed him, he'd have done irreparable damage to the Godhead of God and the religion of the fathers. My soul, we can understand that the reason we're pretty comfortable yet in America and go to church on Sunday morning and waddle home.

Is that we don't have the power of God on us. No wonder for what we preach, no wonder Paul said. Preaching of the cross, the word of the cross, is a scandal, it's a downright insult. To a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian or a Roman Catholic or a Jew or anybody else that's got religion.

But don't know Christ. The idea of telling me that we're preaching the gospel now that's so simple a little child can understand it and everybody go to hell believing it. But if it's the gospel, the word of the cross, it's scandalous.

And it's downright foolish to anybody that's got right good sense. It's foolishness to the Greek. I said many times only a fool or a Christian believes that Jesus born of God, is the son of God. There's not enough brain power in this world to figure that out.

If you're an idiot I don't understand how you can believe Jesus is the son of God. Otherwise you can't apart from the miracle of the new birth. No wonder the simple gospel. I heard the preachers the other day said just give them the simple plan of salvation.

Well if you do, they'll take it, they'll never know when they'll swallow it, never miss it when they'll lose it, never regret it in hell. It's not simple. It's not simple. We can understand why it's the power of God.

And the wisdom of God to them who are called. If the issue of the hour is the threat to the throne ship of God, man's rebellion, the restoration of the total manhood of believers, then the gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation of this one who is scandalous to religious people, downright silly, educated, wonderful to those who are here.

Conversion to the Kingdom and Rule of Christ

In the second place, to the saved, if what I said is so, to the saved means to be converted to the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is Christ. The New Testament identifies to the saved means to be converted to Jesus Christ.

To the saved means that one's heart's contentment is freedom sitting on the throne. We must keep preaching since we've never preached. Hands open, let your knee be bent. ...of Christ and thus be free.

...don't take care of that. It's not that which God hung his son on a cross to pay for. We must preach that we're most free when we're most free. That we'll never stand so straight as when we bow to him.

We must preach that under his authority and nowhere else is a man free. We must preach that the greatest need of a man is to find the right answer to the question, Where shall supreme loyalty be given?

How may I surrender to someone beyond myself? May I resign as the general manager of the universe? How may I render up my sword? Because that's the symbol of authority and God will have your sword or send you to hell.

How shall I come to be able to swear allegiance willingly to him? No wonder the New Testament speaks, and the Lord added, Under the church daily such is what beings say. O my soul, and understand these people that never have to pray and never have to confess and never have to repent and never have to apologize and never have to walk the floor at night and cry when they haven't seen to the grass.

They never have to face for one second the claims of Jesus Christ. O my soul, I confide myself to you and I get along fairly well but the claims of Christ, Lord, ship flame me, flame me. And I too, God, I look forward to that time when with undimmed eyes I shall get a undimmed look at Jesus Christ and how to like him.

As we heard this morning, and I can understand how a Christian is the most miserable, happy person beside a hill and he'll never be satisfied until he awakes in the likeness of Christ. Yes, he must know my single decision that kept Christ.

He swallowed only the ship as I am saying. My God, we'd have that C .W. Johnson says, All the morning, morning. ...beaches in our hearts and in our churches once again and the eye tickles back all apart and Mr. Wet Eyes and Mr. Amen might come back to me.

O my soul, conversion means a change of master, converted to the kingdom, the rule of God Almighty. And thus the saved man found freedom. He's just whistling by the graveyard, hoping the ghost won't get him.

He found freedom by becoming a slave to one greater than himself. The self-centered man that comes to church on Sunday morning and waddles home and that's the end of that, refuses to recognize the claims of God on his life.

The only kingdom he'll recognize is the one he's built. Thus he attempts to become the rule of his own life. And his will becomes his God! For his will is just exactly in the place God says he'll not share with another.

Thus he's not free, but he's a slave. This is sin, the setting up of our own little kingdom in opposition to God. This is sin, to build a tower of Babel, reach up to God and bring him down to do our bidding.

This is sin, it's attempting to be the creator, not willing to be the creature. This is sin, the subject trying to be the sovereign. This is sin, all from rebellion. And my God, if you'd light a match tonight, this building would explode.

Rebellion! It's a good thing Jesus ain't coming back in the flesh. We wouldn't let him get out inside the city limits. We'd bring them apart. This is sin, it's rebellion against the will and authority and the sovereignty of God and spiritual deafness to his voice.

And sin's a lot more than an action now, it's a condition. God sent us with verities. Salvation must come where man is. And he must be converted to a lifelong pursuit of the will of Almighty. I'm so hungry for my own heart and people.

I'm so tired of preaching to dry eyes, I'm about to shoot someone. I'm so tired of preaching to high sickles and orthodox people. My soul, one inch below, I'd put a $25 bounty on a lot of folks and make me some money.

I'm so tired, aren't you, of this nice little convenient stuff we call being saved. I long for somebody to make about 1 ,700 mistakes a day, but bless God, he's headed toward the will of God. That's us.

Yeah, boy. That's right. That's right. A fellow telling me about this fellow. This fellow, yes, sir, this side of him, my heel, said as he got converted, his face lit up like an all-abandoned cathedral when darkness came, when it lit up with candles.

His face just lit up with candles. I told him, great Lord, he had to sit down here and scratch for me. Oh, boy, and he gets happy. He's liable to ruin us around here. We could do with it. Oh, my soul.

To be converted, to be converted. To be hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Instead of telling about that fellow, he eats straight on the doctrines of grace. If I ever meet one of these grace fellows again, I'm going to kill him plumb dead, because I can't see any grace in him.

So I won't charge him anything extra for that. But it follows that if God's eggs are in one basket in Christ, and that salvation means to be converted to the kingdom, the rule of Christ. It follows, therefore, that revival, if you like the word, I don't, I use it, but glory.

Oh, that will be glory. It's coming somewhere down the road. Well, it simply be, it'll be when men see Christ sitting on the throne, and they say praise the Lord. Sure I'm glad he's there. Amen. Amen.

It sure ain't going to be when we get some more church members, we got them. It ain't going to be when we get more people, what's called saved, we've done saved America about three times, and we're fixing to go to hell, I assure you, foot and a half high.

I'll tell you what it would be. It would be when the world drops on the throne and men are saying, Amen, Amen, Amen. Now to this I wish to ask quite quickly two questions. I cannot answer the questions, but I live in the hope that be God's will that before he says it's enough for me, I'll experience something of him.

Whether the Church Can Rejoice Under Christ’s Authority

I want to ask you two questions first. Can a given local assembly, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and the given assembly, represented several ways here tonight, can it be brought to rejoice that Christ is in throne?

My, how much longer is God going to stand the rebellion inside of the churches of Jesus Christ? I say to you, not as a plea for pity, I've been preaching 37 years. Most of us are hitchhiker evangelists, getting smaller every year.

Most of the preachers have already thrown up the white flag there, through trying to win anybody to Christ. They say it ain't no use. We've gone about as far as we can go. Some of you pastors have gone about as far as you can go.

Do you know, I know, unless it begins to be heard in the church one more time, as God is my judge, we just about shut up there, the way Christ may manifest himself, if where his authority is recognized, on the day of Pentecost we've seen it, it must take place again.

We haven't got internecine. We've been hooting and hollering about, we're not paid for work, we're paid for grace, we're elected and all that, so we're doing the faith, they're precious, but they're not the issues of this hour.

The issue of this hour is who falls. Church members are dragging the gospel under that dirty feet. We protest loyalty to our Father, but we'll not be subject to him as he speaks through the church over which he's head.

I say to you, my pastor friend, we swept the dirt under the rug about as long as we can. We've got to honestly face up. Nobody has the answer. Will we see in our days where Jesus Christ on the throne of that church on the day of Pentecost pierces the hearts of 3 ,000 people, slip up on the blind side of this situation without a plea on all of them?

The only hope I see now is the revelation of Christ sitting right in the center of his churches, speaking through lips of clay, speaking the message of God. I want to ask another question. I haven't the answer.

Whether People Can Be Truly Conquered by Christ

I just have a hope. Don't rob me of my hope. Can we again see in our days men utterly conquered by and taken captive to the Lord Jesus Christ? I said, I guess it don't mean Roth Barnard. If somebody got converted in our churches, boy, wouldn't he make a change.

I mean converted. We've had them. We get them to confess faith. We're doing the best we know how. I'm a member of the church. They ask me about John every Sunday. There ain't no more people in family than the next night.

The budget ain't no bigger. Nothing bigger. I don't know what happens to them. They get converted and say, Goodbye, Jesus. Hope to see you in heaven if you make it. Oh, I'd love to see somebody converted.

Somebody that ain't perfect yet, but bless God, he's turned up a trail in that direction. He's changed. He's changed. He's changed. Did you know that the Reformation was born in the heart of Luther and Calvin?

Justification by Faith and the God-Centered Life

We mustn't camp on first base. We must speak for our day. But they accused the Church of Rome of having a man-centered faith. They said that the Church of that time was turning people out whose faith was centered in their own efforts to meet their own needs.

If we'd honestly answer two questions, we'd come to the heart of it. First, seek. What do you do for you? Seek by your own efforts. From God what you need. Now that those two things were formed, the doctrine of justification, we would know if we met it in the road.

It suffered at the hands of its friends and enemies. But it meant then that the gift, that salvation was the gift of God. It was the key to receiving and not doing. As you know, there are two types of faith within professional Christianity today.

There's the faith that centers on me, what I can do and what I can get. Then there's the faith that centers on God and his glory. Whatever faith is, it's basically a relationship between God and man. It's either God-centered or man-centered.

I'm going to ask you this question, and I'm going to ask us preachers. Dear one, do you seek God because you think a right relationship with him would benefit you? Then the real important person that I'll pick you with, do you believe your own efforts will bring you those benefits?

Man's need and man's efforts to have his need met. Luther's battle there. He rolled up his sleeve and spat on his hand and said, I'm going to get right with God. That's good. You put this and you did this.

Then finally he came to see that he was worshiping himself and his own efforts. He saw that true faith was not a matter of his needs or the desire to have peace, but the true faith was a bowing to God even if nothing resulted to him.

And thus he came to define salvation as, I quote him, the realization of God's will and purpose, whatever that might be, rather than the satisfaction of human needs. He even went so far as to say that those who truly love God freely offer themselves to all the will of God, even to hell and death eternally, should God so will, in order that his will may be fully done.

Calvin came and echoed. He said the Christian should be willing to the dam for the glory of God. He said we must affirm God without demanding that he affirm us. He said that true faith means having confidence in God regardless of profit or loss.

He said only those who go to heaven are willing not to go. I've gone down so deep I don't know how to handle it. But we're back to our subject. Come first, give God's only song, the will of God, or what we can get out of it.

A Final Plea for Holy Zeal and the Lordship of Christ

I pray for myself and for every public preacher and for every child of God in this hour for a baptism of the voice of authority that has of this state of this age that's got no use for God except as a milk cow to get something out of him.

A warm Sunday morning gives a little excursion to a far-off God who's a bit bedeviled and bedazzled and religiously cocained the generation of people in for hell. There's just one issue that's still to God's mighty dull business to defend the doctrine.

God bless your heart. I wish we could be set on fire to so press this issue, this generation, but pay us a compliment of thinking we're a little like him whom we profess to love. Oh, if we don't get rid of him, if we don't get rid of him, he's going to tear up our Sabbath worship and our offerings and our sacrifices.

Oh, God, give us a baptism of fire and passion and tears. Almighty God, oh man, until some shall gnash their teeth and others shall see it is impossible that he's anybody except the Son of God. Amen. Will you bow your head?