God's Bloodhound — Rolfe Barnard

I have a friend in Pennsylvania, a dear man that we call a layman, I do not like that term. The whole New Testament is a protest against the division between what we call clergy and laity. The fact that God gave five ministries, but I also believe that the day God saved you, he called you to be a preacher, a proclaimer, a herald, an announcer, a gossiper, a witness.

It is not optional whether a Christian will be a witness, he is a witness. It is not optional whether a Christian will be a light, he is a light. It is not optional whether you decide to be salt, you are salt.

It is not optional whether you represent Christ, you are his representative if you are a Christian. One of the tragedies of what is called salvation today is that we have so many people claiming that they are saints who do not share Christ's passion to get men to Christ.

That just can't be. Mr. Fainey said that if you do not live to save others, you will not save yourself. That's one time the man was talking with New Testament authority. That's the reason I say 95 percent of Baptists are going to hell.

They do not share my Lord's passion that sent him from heaven to die on the cross. You can't have Christ without having, and you'll be a potato to him. Mr. Fainey is financing 71-hour tapes, two sets of 70 tapes each, and we're going to have them in use throughout America.

Training Young Preachers Through Recorded Sermons

Send a set to a preacher if you promise to get some of his preacher friends in, and as they have occasion, 36 years, what the Lord has given me. For that man who is financing it is to get a hold of some young preachers in the wrong mold, appointing this generation.

I believe there is a tremendous swelling and a tremendous sound of the going in the mulberry bushes. It's the same thing to me. The preachers are not cocky like they used to be. The pastors are desperate.

They are utterly desperate. I received a letter the other day from a man in South Carolina in need. It is a fundamental that has to have Bible study on prayer meeting nights. It has to do it. Pray together five minutes.

Shout to Martin, it's all you want to. So we can have a prayer meeting in our churches. We've got 10 ,000 meetings. I think it was on the subject, the message of hell. This has been decreed by God. He's been made Lord.

That they are all for what is the message of hell. Christ will grant him any favors. I have a generation of people that don't even know how to speak. Let's have ever met him. Offered a $500 award for anybody that will tell me.

Ever offered as a personal savior of anybody. Nobody yet has got the money. Nobody will. He was offered to the Jewish nation as a Messiah. They rejected him. They nailed him to a cross. God made a final answer.

He put him on the throne and declared one thing true. Whether anybody believes it or not. Whether anybody bows to it or not. Jesus Christ is Lord. You are the Lord. You don't make him Lord. God beat you to it.

He is your God appointed Lord. And you don't accept the Lord. You bow to him. You'll bow at his throne. For he'll ever save you. I tell you that. I held a meeting in Roanoke last year. All the brethren who knew my message said, man, that pastor won't take you.

But we had a glorious in-gathering of souls. And the pastor came here as my senior and said, I'll never preach the little Jesus I've been preaching anymore. I'm going to preach the Christ of the Bible.

Christ’s Sovereignty and Lordship

And if you preach the Christ of the Bible, you'll have to preach him where he is. Bless God, he's sitting on a throne. This generation knows nothing of an enthroned Christ. They've heard about this little Jesus standing at your heart's door, hoping that you will let him in.

But he's not standing at your heart's door. He's sitting on a throne. And you'll bow to him, my friend. The question of his sovereignty is going to be settled in your mind before you find him a Savior.

And the message of hell has something to say about that, the character of God and the glory of God. And this preacher came to me one night and he said, I see it now. Christ was offered to the Jewish nation as their God-given Messiah, their King.

Had they received him as their King, they would have found salvation in hell as their King. And now he's been declared and decreed by God to be Lord over all. He's as much the Lord of Khrushchev as he is the most devoted Christian that ever lived.

The only difference is the Christians tickle to death that Jesus is Lord. Mr. Khrushchev don't like that. He says, now, if men surrender, submit to, in the capacity that God says he is as Lord, believing him, they'll find their salvation.

That's right. He's not offered as your personal Savior. He was offered as a King. He's now preached as Lord. We preach not ourselves. We preach Christ Jesus the Lord. And he's the only one that can save anybody.

God, he bought everybody on a cross. And he's got you on his hands. And he's going to judge you and send you to hell, or save you and take you to heaven. My sinner friend, you better quit sitting in judgment on God's appointment.

God done settled this thing. Jesus Christ is Lord. If you can, you better agree with God. And you better bow to him. The next night I preached on the subject, the character of hell. And tonight I wish to speak something on the bloodhound of hell.

The Rich Man and Lazarus in Hell

From the 16th chapter of the book of Luke, just this quaint expression, Abraham said unto him, Son, remember, remember, two men, one was rich and one was poor. Strangely enough, both of them died. Now we'd expect the poor beggar to die, but it's hardly to be expected that the rich man, but the Holy Spirit very quaintly says, the rich man also died.

He knew it'd be hard for us to believe that a man that had a lot of money would have to face this same enemy, this enemy of all mankind. And both of them, strangely enough, were buried. We get a picture of one man, right after he's buried, the Holy Spirit says, this man, the Old Testament, didn't even think enough of him to give him a name.

The word divi, by which we call him, of course, is simply the Greek word for the rich man. He doesn't even have a name, because God doesn't keep a record of the names of people he sends to hell, only the names that are written in the Lamb's book of life.

The other fellow had a name. His name was Lazarus. And both of them were buried. And one of them woke up in hell. And he was in torments, and he was suffering, and he made a request of Abraham that he send Lazarus, that he might dip the tip of his finger in water and bring that finger that had just dipped in cold water all the way from the glory land to the regions of hell, and take that finger that had been moistened by water and put it on his tongue.

That's how terribly he was suffering. And the answer to that request were these quaint words. And son, remember. Son, remember what? That thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things. And then the books were closed.

And likewise, Lazarus, in his lifetime down here on earth, he received all the evil things he'll ever receive. Now it's different. Now this is a little hard to take, but I thank God the scripture, we'll just have to throw the whole book away, or we'll just have to face it.

It's going to be different on the other side. All the evil things a child of God will ever receive, the heartache and the heartbreak and everything else will be in this short life. And all the good things that the man without God will ever receive, he'll receive in this short life.

And it ain't worth it, but it's a bad swap to make. And this man made this plea. And Abraham said, there's nothing for you to do now but spend each day contemplating how the situation has been changed.

Lazarus stood outside your gate and the dogs came and licked his sores. Now he's comforted. Thou art tormented. And there's nothing on God's earth can be done about it beside all this between us and you.

There's a great gulf, and it's F-I-X-C-D. It's immovable. And anybody that wants to go either way to or from across that gulf is unable to. The awful awfulness that as the tree falls so it lies throughout eternity that you and I, born not of our own will and will not decide when we'll leave this life for another but when we do, we go to our long home.

Nothing on God's earth will be done throughout the long reaches of eternity to change the condition of the saved nor of the lost. Son, remember, there are a lot of things about this I do not know and I pass them by with just mentioning them.

Is this a parable or a real incident? I wouldn't know. Is there literal fire in hell? I wouldn't know there's bound to be some kind of fire. It surely isn't what we would call fire because this man didn't have his body in hell at this time.

I don't understand these things. Won't argue about them. Sin causes physical suffering in this life so I suppose that it will cause physical suffering in the life to come. But if it does, physical suffering is not very hard to take.

They were telling me about some person I think perhaps holds membership in this church who's been wanting to be here each evening. The doctors say her back is crumbling and she's in pain. I know something about pain.

Many of you have been there. But physical suffering is the least suffering you can endure. Am I talking to some mother here? Your heart is literally broke about a boy. Your boy. That's ten thousand times worse than any suffering of the body.

I remember when my wife was at the point of death and the doctors came out of the hospital room and said there's no hope at all. My goodness, everything else in the world appeared as nothing besides that.

Is there some man here that your heart's bleeding within you? You've got a girl, the daughter of your own flesh and she's spitting in the face of everything that's high. Holy, if you have, you are suffering now, suffering ten million times worse than any physical suffering.

The Spiritual Anguish of Christ’s Abandonment

I guess there'll be physical suffering in hell. I know there'll be spiritual suffering. I'm unable to describe it. I can quote the one verse of scripture in all of the Bible that comes the closest to describing the awful anguish of the spirit that men and women will endure forever in hell.

And it comes, strangely enough, in that passage of scripture where we have the most perfect description of what hell really is. And that verse of scripture comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ as he hangs on a tree between two thieves outside the very holy city of Jerusalem where the religious people are going through the service of the Passover that pointed to him.

They got hanging on that tree now but their supply, they do not know it. And I yearn the agony of spirit, not physical, not physical. The physical sufferings of Christ didn't amount to too much on the cross, no misunderstanding.

You men could have endured it. But in the agony of spirit came the cry, the heart-breaking cry of the Son of Man. My God. My God. Why Satan me? That's hell. I don't have language to talk about it. I can't even quote that verse of scripture without wanting to take off my shoes and sob or pray.

But I know that's the cry of a soul utterly abandoned by Almighty God. And I know that'll be the cry that'll ring through eternity from the lips of every soul in hell. Utter God. My God. He hadn't forsaken one of you folks yet.

He gave you the job you work at today. He gives you the breath you breathe. He gave you the water you drink. He gives you everything, oh God, the earth you love. One day, this old monk said, I was in a meeting many years ago.

A Father’s Grief and Christ’s Suffering

I was a pastor, but I was away in a meeting under a tent. A boy came from the telephone, came up to the platform and handed me a telephone message. A virgin, a deacon in my home church said, if you want to see your baby alive, you must hurry home.

I finished the sermon, borrowed the pastor's car and drove all night. We had only one child. When I got there, the doctor had gone and the nurse was standing in the living room and my wife was in the bedroom with the three and a half year old baby and I went in.

The nurse said, she can't last very long, Brother Barney. I sat down on one side of the bed and the wife on the other. My little baby girl, she saw Daddy and she was in such pain she couldn't talk. Blood vessels were breaking.

She wiggled her lips. He was a daddy baby and she looked at me and I knew what she was saying, Daddy, help me. That's what she was saying. I sat there and watched the death rattle come in her throat and the view of death on her brow.

I held her in my arms and she gave one last convulsive jump and died. She died looking into the face of her Daddy. Daddy, help me. If I could have, I would, but I couldn't. One day, the only begotten son of Almighty God in utter submission to the sovereign will of God and yet a man.

He's as much man as you are, old, old God. He looked up into the face of the Father and didn't call him Father. He said, My God, why won't you help me? Everybody else has forsaken me, I know, but why hasn't he forsaken me?

An Almighty God could have, but he didn't. He could have helped this son, pulled him down from that cross, but he couldn't have done it and kept Ralph Barnett out of there. My God's sin. I wish I could close that door back there and keep you in death as you had since Nuff quit selling your soul for a two-bit sin.

Some of you have done it. You're going to spend each day separated from the Holy Sacred God just to feed the sinful lust of that old body of yours. You know that if God ever saved you, that means he'd clean you up inside and outside, and you don't want to be clean.

You want to follow most of the Baptist churches that disgrace the name of Christ by claiming to be products of the marvelous conquering, redeeming, and living dirty lives that just won't work. The same grace that saves a man teaches him.

Sanctifying Grace and Growth in Preaching

It teaches him that forswearing some things he'll live a holy life in this life. There'll be spiritual suffering in hell, but tonight I speak a little while now on the fact there'll be mental torture in hell.

Son, remember, doctors tell us, and I guess you know what they're talking about, that every three and a half years our bodies completely change. You young preachers will listen to old man Barnett tonight.

You ought to be a different preacher entirely every three and a half years. Keep studying and praying and preaching. If you preach the grace of God, it'll mellow you and glow you. If you preach legalism, you'll fall at the point of your preaching.

But we ought to be brand-new preachers and brand-new Christians about every three and a half years, more and more like unto the Lord. They tell us that every particle of my body that you see now wasn't one up here three and a half years ago.

In other words, I haven't got the same brain I had three and a half years ago. I've had several different brains, according to the doctors. I guess they know. You see, this body is dying and growing all at the same time, isn't that right?

And I guess they know what they're talking about to do, but there's one thing certain. This man, the rich man, died. Next place we hear of him, he's in hell! His brain is in the grave! It's beginning to rot!

And go back, and the whole vastness of the man will just be a little handful of dust from which it was born. His brain is in the grave, but his mind is in hell! So what happened? God, what an awful thing this bloodhound of memory be!

If a man could shut the memory of what might have been! Instead of being shut it out, about all a man will have to do in hell, get him a fishing pole and fish in the lake to burn it to fire and brimstone.

God, you'll never get away from what happened down here on this earth! But thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good thing. I want your leave to take a trip tonight. I'm going to ask Abraham to lead me in my imagination.

Hell’s Memory of Rejected Warnings

I'm going to let Abraham take me by the hand, take me down into the regions of the dam. And I want us to see and hear a little of what's going on down there now. Abraham in my imagination, lead me through the corridors of the eternal dam.

And I'm startled by a multitude of people who are saying, open the door! And I say, what on earth is going on, Abraham? Oh, he said, they're the people of Noah he said, they're trying to get Noah to open the door of the ark.

But I say, Abraham, I don't see any ark down here. Oh, he said, there's no Noah's ark down here in hell, but it's indelibly fixed in the memories of those people. And they can't get away from the preaching of righteousness for a hundred and twenty years.

And the warnings of judgment that come that fell from that preacher of righteousness lip, and they turned the church and raised hell. They didn't want anybody reminding them of God's righteousness and he preached as far as anybody could find.

Never got anybody to believe his message but he kept on tacking away at the old ark. Leaving his own household and condemning the world and saying this is unfaithful. But nobody believed and then he preached on and he preached on until the day that measure everything by visible results.

And they make out like the dead spirit. Revival break out. But I think old Noah was hurt but he did preach what God told him to preach. And God got glory out of it. And I stand back on the old doctrine.

God almighty has made this world of the most devoted. I didn't do it. God's a holy God. God's a holy God. Judgment's coming and they laughed and hooted at it and went on about their ways. Scripture in the Bible means not yet seen.

But God said it is bound to come to pass. Judgment's coming but God said it is. Believe that we move. And I see a man just running up and down. Take it away. Take it away. I said Abraham what on earth is that?

Herod, John the Baptist, and the Sin That Damns

He said that's Herod. The king of the Jews. I said what's he doing? I said he's trying to get somebody to take the head of John the Baptist away. I said I don't see the head of John the Baptist. Abraham said no.

The head of John the Baptist is not Herod. It's in the mirror. You can't forget. Try and get somebody to take the head of John the Baptist away. Somehow God sent a man to preach to him. Put his finger on his darling sin.

Herod quit doing this that and the other. But there's one thing. One sin usually damns a man. Your rebellion heads up somewhere. And he held on to that. And you know how he his wife got in to put on a feast and then he got drunk and he promised her and went out and laid old John the Baptist's head down on her stump like he would a turkey gobbler and chopped it off and put the head in the charge and brought it to the woman and she went inside and gloated over it as the daughter danced.

You better listen to me. The day you make a treaty of peace, that's the day you are damned to hell. Christians are not indulging. You killed your licentious wife. And he'd had another man killed so he couldn't feel guilty at all.

That's what that means. Man's rebellion heads up. I'm talking to you. You wouldn't want to go to hell but there's one thing in your life you're holding out and Jesus Christ is not going to be Lord over it as long as you say anything about it.

And that one thing is going to damn your soul. In a boat, brother, this man's screaming for somebody to take the head of John the Baptist away. He says, son, remember. Son, remember. We pass on and I'm startled by a man running around.

Pilate’s Memory of Rejecting Christ

Somebody has to get it off. I can't stand it. Who's that? He said, that pompous pilot. I said, what's he doing? He's trying to get the blood of Jesus off his hands. I said, I don't see any blood on his hands.

He said, no, there's not on his hands. It's in his memory. In his memory, he's in the water. And he said, I'm free from the blood of this innocent man. Moral cap. Stand for what he knew would right. Jesus off his hands and is still on the hill tonight.

And the Lord Jesus Christ over to be crucified. Passed by and said to the pilot, we're walking along and a little 16 year old there said, my God. I said, I know that girl. He said, I guess you do. Everybody in Hales heard about Rob Barnett.

The Uncertainty of Tomorrow and the Call to Salvation

That little girl just goes around all the time. Proverbs 27 and 1. Oh, snuff thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day will bring forth. She was pregnant in Arkansas one night when the Holy Spirit was pleased to take charge.

And all over the building, sinners were falling, prostrate on their faces all over the congregation, seeking, crying out to God. Christian people were rejoicing, sobbing, shouting, singing all at the same time.

There on the fourth floor seats on the end stood a 16 year old girl. And she made a regular pool of tears as it flowed out of her eyes and stood there with her hands on the seat in front of her until the veins stuck out.

People couldn't help it. They just got out of their hands. The Holy Spirit had taken charge. And, but no good. After the service was over, she's still standing there. Still holding on. And I made my way to her and started to say something to her.

I said, don't say anything to me! I said, I'm going to be saved tomorrow night! She'd been listening to the preachers, you know, be saved any time you decide to, you know. But not tonight! No use you talking to me.

She said, I'll be back tomorrow night and I'll be saved. And God or somebody gave me Proverbs 27 and 1. I said, okay. But the Bible says boast not thyself of tomorrow. For thou knowest not what a day will bring forth.

And I turned. Next morning, exactly 10 o 'clock, that 16-year-old girl was the star of high school basketball. Was the star of the team. And they were practicing, I think you call it, dribbling on the floor.

And fell across and she was stone dead when the coach and the other pupils got to her. Tomorrow, she didn't get saved. Tomorrow she will be saved tonight, quoting Proverbs 27 and 1. She'll never get away from it.

Boast not thyself of tomorrow. For thou knowest not what a day will bring forth. The awful thing about hell will be men and women that'll never get away from the memory of the love of God. In some sense pity and goodwill toward all men.

God so loved this whole world that God in good humor died before the love of God. Contracted the peculiar type of fever they have down there, and as soon as he got able to travel, he got the and to the high country in the plains of West Texas.

A Cowboy’s Story of Traumatic Memory

But he was still so weak he couldn't work. He just got on his saddle pony and started riding around, accustomed to the rain. He'd ride up about sundown, and they didn't see many people, and the owner would say, Light down, stranger, I'll take care of your horse, go and make yourself at home.

And he pulled up one afternoon about sunset at a dugout in West Texas he used to build, still housed and had money enough to build a hole in the ground and put something on it and call it a dugout and live in it.

The next morning the man of the house said, Stranger, I know you have noticed you're sort of poorly, got anything special to do? And the cowboy said, No, I'm just riding around trying to get the sun back in my old bones before I go back to work.

He said, I take it right kindly of you, stranger, if you'd stay here and mind the house and take care of my wife. He said, I've just got to be gone tomorrow, and tomorrow night we'll be back till nearly noon of the second day.

And he said, I just can't leave my wife here alone. Would you stay here? Why? The stranger said, Why, I don't mind, but do be glad to help you out. So the man of the house got on his pony and rode away that night about midnight.

The cowboy was awakened by the howl of a lobo wolf, and then it howled and howled and howled. And then he heard the woman of the house screaming. And before he could come to his wits, he could tell the woman had got up out of her bed and gone out of the dugout.

And then he heard her climbed into his boots and down and see a long ways in the moonlight. He saw a hobo wolf loping along back of it, this woman. And he could barely hear her saying, I'll kill you, I'll kill you.

So she was estranged. He ran to his pony and finally caught the woman. He had to slap her in the submission. She's just crazy. And like a little baby, he carried her in his arms, laid her in the bed until she cried herself to sleep the next day.

And the man of the house came back, the cowboy, before he left. He said, I guess I ought to tell you what happened last night. And he did. And the man of the house said, Oh, we apologize, I guess, stranger.

I hoped it wouldn't happen while you were here. But he said, I have to tell you about my wife. I had an awful hard time with her. He said, a year and a half ago, I was away. And my wife was outside of our little dugout bending over old rug board, washing the clothes.

And our little two and a half year old girl playing around mother's feet. And once my wife would look and see she's all right. And then all at once the wife heard the snarl of a hobo wolf and she turned quickly, just time to see.

The hobo wolf grabbed the little girl by one leg. And like a woman who acts first and thinks later, she did the only possible thing. She just flung her body as far as she could try to catch the wolf, but she missed him.

And when she got up on her feet, the hobo wolf was trotting down the prairie, dragging the little girl. He said, when I got home, my wife was gone, my baby was gone. We organized the neighbors. He said, two days later, we found my wife just wandering around, completely mad.

Oh, she would say, I'll kill him. We even found the scratch of the clothing of the flesh of our little two and a half year old girl. And then the man of the house said, preacher, I said, stranger, from that hour of this, every time my wife hears the howl of a hobo wolf, she remembers.

I looked you in the face, my friend. In hell, every remembrance. And hung yourself!