Four Results of Heart Faith in Divine Election — Rolfe Barnard

One of the brethren took us over to the restaurant adjacent to the campus of Antioch College. We didn't get in, so many other fools were over there ahead of us. We never got off the campus. Those beatniks and hippies thought the pastor had come home.

The Call to Examine Faith in Divine Election

They rushed up to him and said, Where have you been? We've been missing you lately. But we rescued him and brought him back. Now tonight, we turn to the book of Galatians, if you will. I'm going to do something I hoped on the same subject tonight, and tomorrow night, and Tuesday night.

I know some of you are not like preachers. You have to make an honest living. You can't be here, but for some reason I'm led in this direction. Speak on the results. Speak on the call of God in election.

Tonight, God willing, speak on what is authentic faith that God demands of men. I found the Bible. I spent my life calling mourners. I suggested I could find the mind of the Lord. So I'm going to play a few nights.

If I strike fire, I'll keep on. If I don't, I'll change courses. My father's cousin out in Alabama. Don't criticize if you weren't born in Alabama. You probably couldn't help it. I've been greatly blessed.

There's a man that said he was born in Arkansas, but as soon as he got old enough and his daddy told him he was born in Arkansas, he ran away from home and moved to Alabama. Many of you are fugitives from Arkansas.

We used to go out to a cousin who lived out in the country and engage in a very delightful, lazy man's fort. All day before we'd get out that night in preparation for it, our cousin would have a colored boy ride around all around the hills and nooks and crannies dragging a foxhound.

And then that night, we'd set the hounds foxhunting. We'd sit on the porch, and the cousin would tell us exactly what was going on at any given time for about three hours while those dogs chased what they thought was a fox.

But it's just the smell of it. The old ring's got to trail now. Now they've lost it. He could tell by the bark. There's not much use of shooting down a hole if they're not in a rabbit's nest. Keep in mind in the three messages, on the human side, the perverted cousin was crystal clear that the reason on the human side was open arms.

People read their Bible, the doctrine of election. I can remember mine was the only voice, what we call the dared to mention this subject. I can still remember some of the furor among Baptists, pastors, and people about the very mention of God's elective grace.

But now the times have changed, and everybody in America is a brave believer in God's election. The reason this side of you can't speak to give a verbal is because he considers himself to be one of God's own.

Election as Privilege and Responsibility

And the tragedy of the hour of fresh air. People in America have fallen into the same ditch as did the Jews that crucified Christ, and Christ now is being crucified in the church buildings of America.

The greatest enemies of the gospel of Christ are people today, and it all can be traced to the fact that they have a perverted view of God's elective grace. In America, a brand of Christianity so-called, this is in privilege, responsibility.

From that standpoint, to speak for three nights in this passage of the scripture in the first chapter of the book of Galatians. Beginning at verse 6 of this first chapter, the man about whom we spoke this morning, the greatest miracle since Pentecost, the resurrection of Christ, rather, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

The one conversion that meant more to the progress of the gospel and the establishment of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and holy bonds through one man. This morning, that he got his doctrine of the resurrection from his experience.

He got his doctrine of election from studying books on theology. We've had to do, but by tracing the living God to God himself. To wrestle here, young preachers literally roared over the doctrine of election and any other thing in the Bible.

I've seen young men buy them some books on theology. They're good, but none of them are complete. There's something wrong with all of them. And it has made them, and almost made them, somebody said, people who are more interested in being sound in doctrine than Christian in life.

The privilege of going up and down America, screaming with every bit of the passion there is in my wicked soul against the deadness and the smugness of the average church that claims to believe in divine election, in their self-satisfaction at being right, and their ability to sleep well while a world rocks on its road to speed ham if we understood God's elective grace as it is in the Bible.

Paul's Conversion and the Revelation of the Gospel

Read the account that Saul gives of his election and salvation by being challenged afresh tonight by some things that took place in his life as a result of this experience. He says in verse 6, I marvel that ye so soon remove from him that calls you into the grace of Christ.

That'll be my text tomorrow night. Unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven unto you, which we have preached unto you, let him be damned, let him be accursed.

If any preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. I do not persuade men or God to please men, for if I yet please men, I should not be the bond-slave of Christ.

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not asked of man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it. I didn't learn it, and I'm not going to learn it. It don't come that way.

For the living Lord be taught. It is a full today of people who have been taught the plan of salvation. And two makes four. Bang, I'm a saved person. But it doesn't come that way. An unsaved man cannot be taught, because that Christ will make himself a sinner with himself.

Peace and witness till you've blown the face and nose into the prayer. That's revelation fundamentally. You better listen to old man Barnard. We're filling hell with our convulsions, because we neglect that the gospel comes by revelation, not by education or not as a matter of fact.

Unless an individual in the gospel that the living Lord leaps up from the pages of the Bible and says there's none whatsoever. I'm not particularly interested in your theory of the atonement or your theory of the five points of Calvinism.

I won't fuss with you, but I'm gravely interested in what I'm talking about now, for this is the heart of the matter. It's going to be full of folks that believe in the five points of Calvinism. That's no good in itself.

But the issue of this house, and it has been. Now that's all the Calvinism I'm interested in. I wouldn't give you a dime for the name. After a man, we don't believe in that. But there's still worth a dime.

Paul's Former Religion and Personal Encounter with Christ

What's your gospel? Where'd you get it from? I got it by meeting the one who is the gospel. The difference in believing some things and having life. Get you some nice beliefs by studying it. But you know you folks have heard of my manner of living, verse 13, in time past, when I had religion, the Jews' religion, not Judaism, but the Jews' religion.

Because of my convictions and my beliefs, I persecuted beyond measure the church of God and wasted it as serious and sincere as all get out. Profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals and my own nation, and being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers, and it pleased me that my mothers will be the ones among the nations.

Repeatedly I conferred, not with flesh and blood, and I didn't go up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went out into Arabia and returned again to Damascus, and after three years, doing my cooking in the glory having been visited by the gods, took me three years to digest.

The Jews came out of it. Is anybody a Christian? Not a silly question. Since you're knee-high to a duck, you learn that two and two are saved and you're going to wind up in hell. It has been the exception, not the rule, of every denomination, Baptist included, in America, that we ignore, reasoning are, there's a man who's about God.

He does have a prophetic spirit. Tell us about how he's the harlot I used to go over the Piedmont section down our country and hold little conferences and get preachers together. We'd try to expound some of the great truths of the Bible.

I come from the state of Virginia. We had a conference, fasted a week, on God's elective grace, teaching the preachers. He left tonight. He drove a hundred miles and back every night for five nights. And we sold him on the doctrine.

He went back to his church and he sat on his hands and rolled up his sleeves and he tried to pound that doctrine. He was Baptist and they never had yearn to tell of that stuff except that it meant there's hardshell, you know.

It was heresy that they recognized. And they should have because he didn't have sense enough coming out of the rain. You can't pound doctrine into people without making them worse off than they were for you.

Because the fellow that's got a hold of it, he's mean as the devil. If you don't agree with him, he'll bop your wand. I know, I've been bopped. I said, fellow, you know, he'd come into this precious truth and I don't know whether you've ever come to see something that's been true a long time.

You never had seen. You just went crazy over it. You couldn't talk about anything but that, you know. Amen. And then the Lord began to deal with him. He opened up his hands enough to do the multiplied millions of honest and sincere church people in America that all they had was a little action that a man would be a fool to turn down.

And he got the way to preach on Sunday night and go home and close himself off in his church not to have to tell the Lord if I get up there and confess that I'm a lost sinner to tear this church all to pieces.

Election Producing Evangelistic Compassion

I left him in hell on Sunday morning and said, instead of preaching this morning I'm going to ask you to preach that the Lord did make a mess. What about us? Two harsh doctrines, as we call them. He can preach on the doctrine of election.

Break your heart. I never will forget after the Lord saved him. He got in his car waiting just to say one thing. So many of us need circumstances to preach the Baptist church in America. Sometimes when the Lord put his hand of power on me a little bit and in three nights of preaching 90 of the church members would be coming to me wondering if they're safe.

Take a blast. Wake up or flee. Confidence. Bless God's confidence. Eternity abounds in your choice of him as important as that is. Fondness. Satiety became Paul on his car and me. Confidence in my life.

Shut this old world. I want to make progress to where people could see the wings on my shoulders. I thought you were all religious flesh of my guest. I'm going to go back on this car and despicably do it the morning after.

The most evangelistic voice doing about all this. Some little... They don't believe anything now. Gene says, the biggest has made. He doesn't exist. The feast tells you now that his breath is in the face and telling you now that you're going to see the day I'm going to get the job done.

There's going to be some peace in the Lord. Set his love upon that God that God that God is in the world. It's now a spiritual graveyard. 1431, they burned the first martyr at the stake. When the tidings...

While in... And they burned him because they had such a holy bull. See, during the days of the old Calvinistic pictures when the mess that we're in now to midnight and add the untruth as young as most things so much I'm amazed that he should ever live.

Amazement at Sovereign Grace

I'm amazed that the Lord might have met him on the road to Damascus and blocked his way and laid hands on him in possession of him. He's... that he never... preaching down to a bunch of preachers in the state of Tennessee as I remember and after I got through pouring out my heart on something some square-jawed Cal... Calvinistic pastor from around there came up to him and he said, you made one statement I don't believe was square with the doctrine of election.

...buffing one. There was no amazement in his heart. ...Paul... ...that... ...been drawn... ...of the New Testament seems to be wrapped up in the heart of a... ...to Damascus to kill off some Christians with the living Lord...

...of this town. ...to have the truth you've missed... ...have a heart... ...everybody... ...could drink of that fountain where you've drunk... ...up till now... ...of living water...