Five Marks of a False Prophet — Rolfe Barnard

The Broad Road, the Narrow Way, and False Prophets

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. Follow me now as we read the whole passage one more time.

The Lord says in verse 13, Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to the straight way, and many there be which go in thereafter. Because straight is the gate, narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

False prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. He shall know them by their fruit. Then he argues, Do men gather grapes of thorns? No, nor figs of thistles?

Of course not. Even so, here is something that makes good sense. Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. It is an impossibility, he said. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and a corrupt tree cannot bring forth that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

Wherefore, by their fruits 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 plain admonition, the 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, there are malicious, there are satanically inspired. 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 want to see people, 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.

I don't care how nice a man is if his message doesn't produce good fruit. He's a false prophet, tells the people to beware of false prophets, and he tells them how they can tell a false prophet by the fruit that results from the ministry of that Sunday school teacher, or that fellow that preaches on the street, or that fellow that preaches over the radio, or from the pulpit standing here, or wherever or however it may be, if his converts are not good, if his converts do not spend the rest of their life as callers and seekers on the Lord, if his converts go to hell because they're depending on some physical act they perform, or some prayer that they said, or something like that.

The Sinner's Prayer and the Power of the Gospel

Beware of false prophets. I heard a preacher today over the radio telling a sinner to pray the sinner's prayer, and he guaranteed 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, and it has not been very good. And we have to look 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 if we are a child of God, and the sap and the juice and the power and the life comes from the vine. And we look at ourselves in these days when we can 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 to us from the vine 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 the road of religious profession.

Call Jesus Lord, and do some tremendous mighty works, cast out demons, and so we are living in a time where so many people are discovering that they have a strong faith, but they have their faith from a thousand erection of glowing and the confidences and assurances of multitudes of people that they were built on rock as long since gone by the board as they found their whole spiritual structure blown away.

Here we are, it's not to be just near that, that right after our Lord had joined us and admonished us to strive to get in the straight gate and thus walk the narrow road, that there is a wide gate and that it leads to a broad way and that this broad way leads and that the narrow gate, the straight gate leads to a very narrow way and that that narrow way alone, 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, for if you believe the devil's lies, you can't be saved, and if you do not prick 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.

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 a mighty low wealth, 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 is gone from us. 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, you can not even bring your Bible when you come to preach.

Testing Preaching by the Word of God

What on earth has happened to people in Berea who are wise to see what they've beheard, was in the scripture, and 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'd be dead certain I'd come home into a Baptist church if I preached the Bible to 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.

They believe in him, brother. They stick out, brother. They're in the minority, but they stick out. And brother, they're Bible readers and Bibles. My Lord said, my sheep, my voice. I can't hear it except out of here.

That's how you hear it. Then I tell you, our church is a marred, terribly bad. You mad at me? I wish you had more interest. I wish I could get under your hat and jar you out of this state of, and it's the holiest thing you hear now is what the word of God says.

The truth, I wish we believed it. Beware of false prophets. Beware of false prophets. We cannot escape the inference here, and I think it's more than an inference. The way people get on this broad road is because they listen to false prophets.

Not bad men, but men who did not preach the truth. Or they preached it in half truths, and a half truth worse than a whole error, because people will swallow a hook, line, and sinker, and that's terribly dangerous.

I want tonight to mention from the word of God, five marks of false preaching that are procured by which men and women who really have an interest in eternity, and labor under the suspicion that it's entirely possible we'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, and that's the last of us.

But that has men and women who have some belief at least that out yonder there's another life, and that these days down here, what happens here, what will happen out yonder. I think it is conspicuous that these five things are worth attention.

I do not dare to take time enough to mention many, many of the marks of a false prophet 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 goddess in this awful world, 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, thirty, forty, fifty 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 may be the picture of the world for many years 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 in awakening of the Holy Ghost, they're thought to be true.

Speaking Peace Where God Has Not Spoken

The rest 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. The Old Testament talks about men who speak peace, peace.

One of the pastors in a, I don't know if it's in this county or not, Brother Wallace Starr slipped up to me 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 run across this? Yes, 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 him, and they'll say, now, my brother, let's read this verse of scripture.

All right, and we'll read it. Now, you believe that? Yes, I believe that. Well, what does that say? Well, 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 of scripture says, 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. Why, of course you are saved. And so we decide that old boy is saved for him. We decide that he's saved for him.

I was down in Texas a week before this last speaking of young pastors, and one day after the noon-day message, the eleven o 'clock message, a few of us were seated having a bite to eat, and some of the young pastors were gravely disturbed over something I said.

And you better listen to Brother Barnett right now. Some of you 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 and knocked on 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.

That's right. I'm telling you that God's truth we feel held full of church members and our churches, for how many of you have accepted a proposition instead of submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ? And 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 me.

We have lectured 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 gospel. Let me illustrate you what I'm talking about.

I know this is a Monday night crowd. 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 with good crowds and do my best with small.

That's God's business. I've been telling you we're dying, 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 he sent old Peter down to a fellow by the name of Cornelius who was down there and praying and worshiping God best he knew how, and he was just hoping somebody would come and speak to him the words of salvation.

After God nearly had to kill old Peter to get him to go down there, hear me now, the Apostle Peter went down there and knocked on the door. Come in! I'm Apostle Peter. Are you this man Cornelius? Yes.

Well, I want to know, Brother Cornelius, if you won't accept Jesus as your personal Savior. No, he didn't do no such thing. There ain't no power in your little old individual, 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 forty and sixty 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 hand and said, Brother, won't you accept Jesus? And the old boy did, and 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! Give him the truth of God in Jesus Christ. And the scripture tells us there in the tenth chapter of Acts, you read it, I'm not making this up, while yet, Peter, yet, faith unto them, the holy people, and them that heard the word, and they got saved.

Of course, people get saved, not by your little old two-bit argument, not by your little old invitation. That isn't worth a dime. They just accept the proposition and go on to hell believing they're all right.

It's the gospel, it's the power of God and 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 the sinner, do what they did in Bible time, give him the word.

If the Holy Ghost falls on him, he'll be saved. While he's listening. But he won't be saved just because you ask him, he won't accept Jesus. You folks are going to split hell wide open because all on God's earth you've got, you accepted a proposition somebody made.

But there's no salvation in my proposition. The gospel is the power. We've spoken peace, and these young people were disturbed. They said, you mean tell me, when we go out and do personal work, we ought to just give them the word of God?

That's exactly right. And pray that the Holy Ghost will fall on them while they're listening. 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 little invitation. And they've already accepted it. All they did was accept our invitation. And we told them, oh please, dear Brother Barnard, one more time, between eternity, between heaven and hell, there is only one voice that's been given the authority and the power and the ability to speak peace to us.

And that's the voice a sinner has to have you convince him he's saved. You're butchering him. Mr. Finney used to say, many went away saying they'd been comforted. He gives you comfort, fills your heart with peace.

But if you got your hope for going to heaven because you accepted my proposition, or somebody else is pleased 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 to destruction.

Healing the Wounds of Sinners Lightly

Another mark of a false prophet that's closely akin to this one. The Old Testament speaks of men healing the wounds of people slightly. 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 can't do it myself.

And so we just keep on, keep on, keep on. But I refuse. I've done it for 30 odd years. I've seen multiplied, multiplied, multiplied thousands of people make profession of faith. I don't know whether any 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. I've walked in the aisle and switching your junk from one jar to the other and going right back out. I've actually seen men get converted. They're clean. They're dead in the service of the womb on his base.

Go right back out and light a cigarette. There ain't no more salvation than that than a monkey, and you know it. You see, their salvation didn't even clean them up. That's no good. That's no good, and you know it.

Clean the wound. The exception of John the Baptist hurting his mother's womb, and Jeremiah like I'm on for this order to save a human being. That's the wound, and the preacher that'll heal the wounds that blood-stained Jesus gives the sinner in order to bring him to himself is a fault.

We have a generation of people now never knew and they scare me. God bless you in order to crush him to his flesh. My Lord is kind. Get him down off that cockiness, humble, brain-dunking gibberish, and when I've seen a little of what we call revival, just a little.

I thought sometime my heart would break as I've seen men and women suffer. Sinners are loved. Rather than see them to go to hell, they'll never call. We do not believe it, but it's so. A sinner will never call on the Lord.

Don't do it. I'll tell you that. Let him that inflicts you. Keep your hand off. I had people come to, oh look at that, isn't she suffering? Look how she weeps. In July, a little junior girl, about 10, 11, 12, maybe 13 years old, and she'd come, got to coming to the front, and she'd kneel there, and you could all know her body.

And the mother came to me one day, and she said, Brother Barnett, look how she's suffering. My blessed Lord, go mighty deep. It has to wound you, brother. Heal the wound. Speak peace. Let God speak peace.

Tell a man God's done. Let the man tell you what God's done. 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 easy to get in.

The Easy Gospel and the Cost of Discipleship

Hard to get in this. Said you had to agonize. You had to agonize. It's May 9th. Love you. As a student, I taught seminars in Texas many, many years ago. My widowed mother, up in the plains of Texas, went to a doctor, and the diagnosis, scared.

She got on a train, came down to Fort Worth, Texas, where I was going to school. 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.

And I went to the president of the school, and he got me an appointment to see that great surgeon. And I took my mother to see him. And he examined her, over a period of a few days, and told her she had cancer.

And he told her that he believed there was a 50 -50 chance that they'd remove the wound, that she'd have many years of life. And I didn't have any money to go to school. That great, he was a gentleman, 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, doing that awful long operation. My mother had asked me that if she came out of it alive, 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, of course, is it out? And I said, yes, mother. I'm glad she lived 37 years. Isn't it wonderful that that doctor told her the truth? That doctor said, now, there's a little something wrong in there.

I'm going to give you this little knife, a little bunch of pills, and I think you take them twice a day, everything will be on the door. No, he told her she had cancer. He told her she had cancer, that only it would kill her eventually unless it was taken out.

And, of course, being human couldn't guarantee that. My mother said, I'm so glad. My friends, Jesus told the truth. Just suppose he said, this game is difficult. A little skin disease, there's a cancer in 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 bloodstained 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, and the real vision for your knee, vision of easy going sin, and of the children of God, all that fare when we stop having ignorance of the Lord to get in the straight game, because you can't have this world, and nothing'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. You know what it may be? He told her. I'm betting that he did. And I say to him that a false priest says a little easy gospel.

You can keep your sins and do as you please, and that was why you'd get up to 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's pretty serious. This day's difficult. The prophets tell you things. It was the marks of a false prophet in this day. They make this rose, and Jesus seems to flow more than others.

That this generation's been shot occurred when I keep hearing people telling me, I know I'm saved, but I'm not living for the Lord. Hadn't got room on it for men and women and rebellion against Jesus Christ.

Bring your habits and your thoughts and your work and your home and your body and everything there is that puts them under his discipline. We've had a generation of church people that decide what they will do and what they will not do.

I tell you, it's not given to except under the discipline of the Lord of God for daily repentance. That'll call for daily exercise of faith, for daily surrender and commitment, for daily getting your orders from the commander-in-chief.

It's your will, devil. But I'm telling you, we know nothing much about what I'm talking about now. Lest we miss Christ all together. This discipline rose, discipline not by what we claim, but what we do.

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who else? He that doeth which is in heaven. Not Phil who talks about, I'm saved, but I'm not living right, but he that doeth my fault.

That's what the Lord said. That's what the Lord said. Oh, I'm saved, brother Barney, but I'm not doing the will of God. Well, if that's so, the Lord Jesus said, because he said the fellow that's going to make it.

I can't do anything perfectly, but there's some things I can do. I'm not worried about perfection yet, but my Lord said, not everyone that saith, they're on that broad road. Oh, just look at that. They're not the one, but he that doeth, present, tense, partnership, 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 child of God. That's the Lord identifies as the fellow that's not on this broad road. He's on the narrow road.

It's narrow because he earned the right to demand of us that we bring our very thoughts into captivity unto him. Whatever we do, do everything we do to the glory of the Lord. He is converged. Oh, I'm saved, but it makes you tick, and there's no salvation there, devil, if Jesus truly speak peace, where there is no peace.

Repentance, Faith, and Persevering Obedience

This is peculiar to our day, and heal the wounds of men lightly. Not only does it make the gate pretty easy, instead of difficult, and the road very broad, instead of narrow. There's no salvation on cheaper terms than God does.

The terms have never been changed. Any human being on earth, dependence isn't a want for as long as you live. Anybody on earth that's able to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but that's not a once for all act.

It goes on as long as anybody on earth that can meet the terms of salvation, repentance, and faith. Thank God he'll be safe, but they will not be low. They cannot be cheapened, and repentance is nothing more or less than being here.

Faith is nothing more or less than utter confidence in and absolute obedience to the days I've been a preacher. You just go through some motions one time, it used to be one way, time after time after time.

He just keeps on moving. It's he that he is. All of these, you school children know the meaning of them. It's continuous faith and commitment, hardship of Christ in your life. It's saving the blood, penalty.

It's cheaper than that. It's the mark of a false where you meet it's a judgment. Anybody on earth will bring you the repentance every day of your life. The Father, best saint that ever lived, when he faced the inclusiveness of God's commands for his son, continually commanded to bring our thoughts into captivity to many of the thousands.

It's the man's repentance and crying to God for forgiveness and confession of sin. It's because you know nothing of Christ. You're to the son of God being said to be to keep you out of hell. You're not knowing anything about disturbance or forgiveness of your heart, about your sins, and you don't think you're a big sinner because Christ has a scripture in that day.

The Final Judgment of False Professors

Many shall say unto me, Lord, lost preacher in that day, Lord, you must have made a mistake. Have we not in thy name? Just look what we've done. They did it. He never had done anything to them. 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, that's the price people will pay. The gate of either believism.

Christ disciplined every blessed day of year. Just as writing notes while a preacher preaches will pay. That's the judgment. I never knew.