My Experience as a Chaplain - Part 2 — Rolfe Barnard

The Need for Strong Gospel Churches

Now, I want to take a minute to lay my heart out before you. I'd like you to take the pastor's words seriously. I believe the greatest need of this hour is the building of some strong gospel churches.

I believe that's the only thing that's holding America together and is about to break loose. I believe when you invite a man like me, that you ask me not to come to preach to you, but to preach for you.

You hold up the hand. And those who get out and get people in, especially during the weeknights, it's very embarrassing. I ask them to consider joining the church where the host isn't there. They've been invited, but the host wasn't there.

He was there for the tally, and his wife, they heard I was going to preach, and they took off. They said they wished they'd known that they'd have prolonged it so they wouldn't have to endure it. I got it in for him.

But this is no time to be a spectator and an occasional looker-in-arm. We're in a desperate battle for souls. And if you've got the bellyache, come to church and get well. I've preached many, many years, and unutterable, unbearable pain, it can be done.

You be sure that the host is here, if anybody else comes. And you're the host. Now, all of you are not like Brother Charles, some of you have to make an honest living. If you like, all you've got to do is get up there and holler a little twice a Sunday, and then you rest until next Sunday.

But it can't all be that fortunate. You have to fight this rat race to make a living. But I didn't create the conditions, I'm simply saying, that if you go at it like Mom and Papa did, they hadn't got a thousand things to contend with, you've got, and you're going to be drowned if you don't watch out.

While you drown, the Church is drowned. Now, tonight I want to speak not to just some Church members, I want to speak to people you got out here and taken a mallet and beat them over the head or something and get them in here.

Delilah, Samson, and the Unpardonable Sin

I want to preach tonight on seductive Delilahs and willing Samsons. Delilah represents this attractive age, ten thousand filling stations on the roads you live on. You can tank up, heftier, be sure you get to hell.

And a generation that's willing, willing to risk. Then I've tried to pray, I don't know whether I've reached the mind of God, but right now I want to invite you to invite friends to hear me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings as I speak on the same subject, the unpardonable sin.

I usually bring eight messages sometimes on that, but I'm going to bring four, the Lord willing. Now, be a friend of Christ. The occasional listener to the word of God hadn't got a Chinaman's chance to get to heaven.

The essence of saving faith is a constant listening to the word of God in the hopes that God will speak to you. Sunday morning attenders, just, well, half of the time in this life you ain't going to make it to heaven.

You haven't got a Chinaman's chance. And so if you call yourself Christian, this Sunday morning Christianity that's damned this country, and made religion a thing of convenience instead of utter submission to the lovely yoke of the loveless Son of God, I want you to do your best, your kids, now you've got to keep them home from school, you just keep on, and let them watch the television, listen to the radio and mumble things instead of bringing them out to the house of God.

And they'll pay for it and you will, too, with your soul. Some mothers are not only determined to go to hell, but determined to take the kids, too. They are very much interested in their health, and they're going to be mighty healthy people in hell.

I'm telling you, people need to be under the constant proclamation of the truth of God. Not occasional. Not occasional. And I trust this church, and I love your Honorable Shepherd, and I'm honored to be here.

Why don't you get people here if you have to knock them in the head? Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, on the end, that's the sin of this age. And I want you to preach. Now do it.

You're a lovely people. I've bragged on you all over America since I got acquainted with you, don't let me down. Don't let me down. Now Sanders, you didn't backslide this morning, so I'm going to try to sing you a song.

That's still not to you. I had burdenship, the blessed sins that made me whole. To the book of Hebrews, at chapter 9. Verse 22 of Hebrews, chapter 9. Just one verse. All things by the Lord, not all but almost all, purified with blood from the shedding of blood.

There's no remission. You are greatly influenced by my experiences. Years ago, I went to New York City to preach for the first time. When I was a little boy, five and six and seven years old, I devoured Horatio Alger's books about the little boot-rack that had lots of trouble, but he wound up being president of the bank.

The Brooklyn Protracted Meeting and the Power of Evangelistic Preaching

In those days, the youngsters read stories of deprivation that was blessed by success the day they read about Hopalong Cassidy and I don't know what else. I had never been to New York City, and I didn't know they were just full of people.

I remember there was a pastor of a Baptist church that was actually in Brooklyn. In desperation, he called the deacons of the church together. They hadn't had what we call evangelistic series of services in 25 years, and they were in a desperate condition.

The pastor was saying, what on earth we can do? One of the deacons said, let's try to have what our fathers and mothers used to call a protracted meeting. There used to be the glory of America. The pastor said, well, but who on earth could we get to come and lead us?

They sent me an invitation, and I went. Some feel intimidated. I was amazed to find out that after the first service, the pastor got up and said, now you people who are present this morning, you may be allowed to come back on Thursday night.

There won't be room for you. You give room for somebody else. And then that night he told those people they could be back on Friday night, and each night exaggerated. He left room for three services during the two-week meeting for young people up from 16 to 20.

Nobody could attend. Well, I shall never forget the impression that was made on me by that meeting. It was a small church, about 10 million people in New York City. And one evening after the service, some of the young people asked me to go down to the drugstore for a drink.

And I questioned. I said, I don't understand this business. Youngsters just flocking. I wish you'd been here overnight. They said, we wish we could, but there's no room for us. And a young man said to me, Brother Preacher, in New York City, there are two places to go, to God's house or to him.

It's just about so. People who think they can walk with one foot in the spirit of this godless age, and the other in the house of God, going, headed for trouble. I didn't make the world, but it just about settled down to what that young man said.

Sin’s Destruction in the Missions and the City

I had another impression in New York City later. I went and ministered a week in the Bowery Mission. I've had the privilege of ministering most of the awful missions. I mean, the missions dealing with the down and outs in many of the cities.

Everybody that's a church member ought to go and live in those missions some, and witness some. Stay down on the skid row and see what sin, if not checked in this life, will do. It's not a pretty picture of men and women who are already in the empty room of hell, lived in misery.

Every last person I've ever preached to in my life in a mission desperately wanted to be saved. They'd do anything on earth you ask them to do, any of the motions we got. But something's happened down the line.

Their will is completely gone. Their understanding is void. That makes an impression. And then my first pastorate, when I was the only preacher in a city of 5 ,000 people in this state, 26 months, 16 months the only preacher in town, living with death, walking the street, the main street of that city, when a man would have to walk on the outer edge of the sidewalk, is on the main street, the poor fallen women were in their cubbyholes, and they'd reach out and catch hold of the garments of a man as he passed by, if he was a little too close.

Not a nice picture. Sin. It doesn't wait to ruin men in hell. It ruins them down here. My experiences as a chaplain in the Second World War were the most shocking experiences I've ever had. And this morning I want to speak from the text without, or apart from the shedding of blood.

There is no remission. Are you familiar with the fact that in the Army in the Second World War, soldiers, at least in the Air Force where I was, and I'm told it was everywhere, were assembled together to hear some chaplain or some vicar preach to them that every man who shed his blood to defend his country in America would be saved.

I heard that many, many times. It was drilled in our boys that if a man shed his own blood in defense of his country, that God would take him to heaven from that bloody battlefield. I preach on my experiences as a chaplain because of the shocking things I discovered.

Everybody else I guess knew about them, but it took me a long time for God to show me anything. I entered the chaplain's center because I desperately wanted to preach to men who, many of them, were going to shed their blood for the country.

Friends raised money before we got into war, and I got a big tent, and I went to near towns adjacent to Army camps, and the influx of undisciplined and unregenerated church boys whom we said goodbye to and let them go into the Army as we were preparing.

Their undisciplined lusts were already making hell holes out of every city and reach of the Army camp, and the pastors didn't know what on God's earth to do. The Army sent the trucks into every city every Saturday night and loaded them up with your daughters to go out for the soldiers to hug on Saturday night in the dancing floor.

And that is all patriotism. And of course, human nature being not as nice as we've been told, all hell was breaking everywhere, morally speaking. So the pastors would always help me in the meeting. I found out that if you could confront young men who had in a sense knew they were being trained to go beyond and be killed or killed, that if you could confront them with the gospel of Christ and the Christ of the gospel, some of them would listen to you.

But I had to go out of that business because evangelism was not considered essential to the war effort, and every Baptist preacher that got gasoline enough to visit the hospitals owed it to the Catholic regime that has power in America because they're united.

And they put so much pressure on the government that they had to give them gasoline, so Brother Jackson, he wasn't old enough, don't guess, but this fellow's got some sense, you'll remember the pastor's got a little gasoline.

And they wouldn't ship my equipment on the trains, and so I said, well, if I can't preach to the boys that are not yet, I'll get inside and I'll hold my nose and I'm going to try to preach to those boys, not that I'd be the only one, but I'm just responsible for my little ministry and I want to invest it in the ministry preaching to boys.

Chaplaincy, Religious Pluralism, and America’s Moral Condition

So I got in the Army, I got in the Army, and I found out, I found out the desperate moral religious condition America was in. I worked firsthand with Catholic priests and Jewish rabbis and Baptist preachers and Presbyterian and Methodist and just named them.

I lived in the atmosphere of training boys to kill. I lived in an atmosphere where every Army officer understood that when that boy got over there and the bullets got to flying, he'd be scared, and the only way on earth to make good soldiers out of them is to treat them so rough that he wouldn't care whether he lived or died.

The only way you could go over the top in the First World War, you needn't tell me, people are scared. By the time they make a soldier out of him, he'd just as soon be dead as alive, you know, and to hell with the consequences.

And I was brought face to face that I've lived in two World Wars and no less is smeared at Righteousness is an unknown word, and this gent is going to hell with a little religious protection while we rot in moral corruption.

In the Army, the part of Sunday morning easygoing of character and calling it salvation. In the atmosphere of an abandoned desecration of God's holy day. We didn't recognize Sunday in the Army, and there didn't anybody else in America.

And under God the reason I say to you that unless we can build some strong churches, not a whole lot of little old two-bit churches standing for some little old peckerwood gospel and going to tear in a passion day.

The peace is over one little aspect of truth. Most of the little churches are started like that. But sometimes standing in the gap, whether anybody listens or not, being the salt to keep America from being swallowed up by the forces of hell that are blowing all about us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we keep on like we're going to and do away with God's holy day. Rest for the body and worship of God. We'll be as rotten as Rome when God had to spew her out of the mouth. There are two things that are the absolute craft of the moral tone of a nation.

What it does on the Lord's day and what it does with its money. Amen. I saw the promotion of fornication and adultery in the army. An old Roman Catholic supervisor, a chaplain, had two hundred chaplains under him.

I was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama. Thirty thousand soldiers, all of them training to be either flyers or navigators or whatever you call it, bombardiers in the Air Force. Finest young people. You had to be nearly perfect physically to get in the Air Force.

And my old supervisor chaplain said, Brother Barnett, you work harder than any fifty chaplains I've got. Reach more men, raise more hell than all my two hundred chaplains put together. He said, I don't understand a fellow like you.

He said, are all Baptists like you? I said, no, don't guess the world could stand anybody else like me. He said, I don't understand your philosophy. And I explained to him, he said, unless a soldier, you can go to town on Saturday night and get him a quart of whiskey and a blonde woman, life ain't worth living.

He was a supervisor at the chaplain. Your boy was in there, some of your men were in there. Once a month I had to make a speech. The squadron commander and one of the physicians and the chaplain make a speech.

The squadron commander, the physician would get up and tell your boys how they might have sexual intercourse without contracting venereal disease. And then I was supposed to get up and tell what the Bible said about adultery and fornication.

And then always on the table were hundreds and thousands of contraceptives piled up. And when the physician would give his instructions and the chaplain would talk about what the Bible said, the squadron commander would get up and cuss a little bit and say, for so-and-so, so-and-so's sake, don't let us waste this money here.

Fill your pockets full. And did you know that in the army if a boy went to town and hurt himself physically and he could not prove that he had carried with him a contraceptive, he lost his pain all the time he was in the hospital.

What are you talking about, Brother Barnes? I'm talking about two world wars like that. When we threw the Bible away, when we forgot God's holy day, and when we claimed the manhood of America like thunder to God, bud, the chances are you're going to wallow your filthy way in the pit of moral corruption and go on to hell.

If you don't quit this little two-bit stuff and begin to agonize after the mercy of God, to apply the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the only thing on earth that's got power to clean up a filthy guy like you, Baker.

You don't get this little Sunday morning junk in this little attendant God's house if I haven't got your belly aching just sitting on the rail of the Spectaculatory just too sunk in this moral corruption.

It's going to drown you. I saw the degradation of the ministry. Godly preachers. Oh, my soul. Godly. I found out the public preachers of America Amen. Amen. It's in. It's laying a thousand now. Morally corrupt religion.

Easygoing politics on Sunday morning. To make us comfortable in our sin. That's American religion today. And I saw, as I had never seen before, this terrible truth that our churches do a nice little job of just failing at one point.

They're failing at making Christians out of people. Right. Amen. The army, of course, divided religiously in three classes. Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Everybody wasn't a Jew. It was either Catholic.

Everybody wasn't a Catholic. They put in the lump of a Protestant. Somebody asked me about whether you could be a secret disciple or not. I don't know how to handle it. But I won many Catholic boys to the Lord.

But I told all of them, not tell anybody, because they could have been court-martialed. And I could have been court-martialed for actually talking to a Roman Catholic boy about his soul. Did you know that?

After reading over your radio and your televisions and your big papers and your big denominational magazines and the very atmosphere, religiously speaking, now we're awful broad-minded now. Awful broad-minded.

We're all headed for the same thing. I ain't, brother. I don't want to go there. That's where everybody's religious now is headed. And I went to Harvard University to learn how to be a chaplain. And the head of the school, the chaplain of the morning, would say, men of God, that's Catholic, Jew, and Protestant, be seen drunk on the streets.

If you have to get drunk, do it in your own room. Little chaplains making the rounds. The chaplains making the rounds of the hospital every Monday morning in the V .D. department of venereal disease. And I heard many a chaplain cuss a boy out, not because he committed fornication Saturday night, but because he contracted a disease.

No, nothing wrong with the sin. The thing that broke that Catholic preacher's heart was that that boy couldn't be a good soldier for a while. Oh, boy. You mean to tell me this generation's nice, this generation?

You reckon you're going to escape it? When Jesus Christ came to deliver us out of this present age, and that means the spirit of this awful age. Salvation's no good unless it does that. Brother, there's an ungodly age to be delivered out of.

Sure as you put my hat on. Membership didn't do a bit of good, but two weeks after your boy got in the Army, unless Jesus Christ was enthroned in his heart, he was chasing women, getting drunk and gambling.

That's right. Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics, oh, that didn't matter to nothing. And the boys that knew the Lord took out like sore thumbs. They'd follow me around, and I'd feel like a little puppy dog.

Crowded out, smeared at, defeated. Holy Joes, they called them. The chaplain was supposed to be a good joe. Never will I forget the first time I went to the officer's dance. I got a letter from the hard-drinking, hard-cussing Episcopalian colonel.

He'd been in the Army 30-some-odd years. He was my dear friend. I tried to win him to the Lord. He said they put a little water on my head when I was a baby and confirmed me when I was 12, but said it didn't do no good, priest.

He'd get drunk as a boiled owl every Saturday night, but he had some sort of something. He'd get sober up, and he'd sit right on the front seat of chapel. And he gave me lots of favors, but I couldn't land him for the Lord.

And he sent me, of course, I got an invitation. You get an invitation from the colonel, that's a command. And I was supposed to show up at the officer's dance at 9 o 'clock. Well, I knew I'd have to do that, and I'd get in the Army and all that sort of junk.

And so I dressed up my best bib and took her, and I never had been one of those things. I got there at 9 o 'clock, nobody else there. About 11 .30, here they came in. And about 1 o 'clock, I preached five times the next day.

1 o 'clock, I did like poor Joseph. The colonel had him a young wife, and she tried to hug me, and I left. I didn't blame her, I'm so good-looking, but I thought I'd better get out of there. But the preacher, you see, Brother Jackson, was supposed to be there to sort of put a godly atmosphere on the situation.

And that's all the churches, most of them, are doing now. They're just sanctifying this unfathomable age. I'd love to see you folks with belly aching and bear with this godly pastor here. A church that folks would drive ten miles out of the way to get close to.

The Blood of Christ and the Meaning of Remission

Because they actually believe the word of God. For it accepts an application of the merits of the life laid down of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we'll recover a little of the vigor and the tremendous earnestness of people long ago.

And you'll find men like Holy McShane until the day he died. Everybody will get up and try to get a little assurance from the word of God that perhaps he's got a saving interest in the ship. Mother of God, amen.

You've made little to save, you've made little, I tell you, ever since, and you think you're going to go to heaven when you die. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. What it means, it means life laid down.

What it means, it means that rebellion is so terrible, that lawlessness is so widespread, that sin is so hateful and obnoxious to God, that God paid fine for sin, except for his son to pour out his life.

Ignore that! Take it for granted! And you'll pay for it with your soul. This is true. This is precious. The blood of Christ. Without shedding of blood, there's no remission. There's no remission. I had this unique experience.

Preaching Christ to Thousands of Soldiers

For nine months, I preached to a different crowd every Lord's Day. And I preached to them knowing that I would never preach to them again. They brought the young men in and kept them on the post for 13 weeks.

And then they went somewhere else. The first seven weeks, I believe I'm right, they were confined, 30 ,000 precious young men to the post. And the Jews were marched to chapel in formation. And the Protestants were marched to chapel in the chapel.

1 ,600 young men would fill the theater. At 9 o 'clock on Sunday mornings, the sergeant would march 1 ,600 young men to the theater, and we'd have a 30-minute service. As soon as that service was over, they'd march out.

And as soon as the pass was clear, there were 1 ,600 other young men waiting, and they'd have their service. They had five such services that. Then the next Lord's Day, I'd preach, let's say, 10 o 'clock, different crowd.

For nine months, I'd preach to 1 ,600 young men. I had other services, but I preached to 1 ,600 young men who were marched to chapel, they had to attend, and that's the only chance I ever got to preach to them.

I was not allowed to give any sort of an invitation. I was supposed to follow an order, have everybody quote the Lord's Prayer, and I wouldn't do that, and I got in trouble, but they couldn't make me.

I said, I'm not going to allow an unsaved man to see our Father, because God isn't his Father. And we had a lot of fun, and I'd book them. But of course, I could not give what you call an invitation, because the young men weren't there because they wanted to be, like I hope you are.

They were there because there's march there. But they couldn't keep me from doing this. I threw away all the service and preached the same sermon, I guess, every time, for nine months. Preached 1 ,600 boys a day, but never preached to two different boys at the same time, just one chap.

I was the only chaplain on that field that believed the gospel. We had some Baptist boys preach, because they told me not to get drunk in public, and you ought to be good. Well, they already knew that, you know.

That don't do no good to tell a fellow what he ought to do. He already knows that. Ah, he needs access to power that he hasn't got. And I would say, now, if any of you boys are interested in the relationship, the lack of it, to the Lord Jesus Christ, you write your name, squadron number, on the order of service and pass it to the ushers, and they'll take it up at the close of the service.

And I'd get hundreds of those names, every day. All I did as a chaplain, they were passing out cigarettes and drinks and sponsoring dances and all that junk. I just had a prayer meeting going on all the time in my study.

I'd get on the phone, call up the commander and say, I want you to send Stornto over to see me. And he'd have to do it, you know. And here comes this boy. And we'd get in and lock the door. And he wanted to know the Lord, and that's how it's going now.

The Judgment, Evangelism, and the Only Remedy for Sin

I read one time when 64 great bombers got shot down on one flight over Germany. Eight boys to a bomber. That's way up in the neighborhood of 500 boys. Later, shorty over Germany. That's the most, I think, bombers that were shot down in any one flight.

And I wondered how many of those, perhaps 500, young flyers and bombardiers and navigators, eight to a bomber. I wonder how many of them, when they get to the judgment, will find out I had one chance to preach to them.

And they think I'm an old sourpuss, but Brother Jackson will just about say amen. They didn't have many opportunities to hear a chaplain preach on Christ to hell. When I get to the judgment, I'm going to be looking.

Some of the sows, and I preached to quite a few, they'd move them out. Nine months every Lord's Day, preached to 1 ,600 boys just one time. When I get to the judgment, I'm going to be looking. Those precious boys, I'll have to see sent to hell.

Be a witness against them just that one time. I didn't fool around talking to them about they ought to be good. I just had a little simple message. There's just one remedy for the dark-eyed sin. That's to have the merits of the Lord's life laid down, applied to you.

Oh, there's been a thrice, holy God, lots of poor old Ralph Barney. And that's yours, that's yours. I can't avoid sending you to hell, is to hang your son on a cross. And for you to be a partaker of that cross.

A drunkard drinking colonel had his executive officer call me. And he said, Chaplain, the CO wants to see you as soon as you can get over to the office. I walked there. The old colonel had been my friend.

All the chaplains, the psych men, I never had any trouble with lying officers. They didn't give a hoot. It's these religious guys that want you to keep from being honest with souls. And he said, Chaplain, I'm going to break a little rule here.

But he said, The boy's out on a bivouac. And said, If you want to, why don't you get a car, I'll have one sent around. He said, You go out there and tell the captain, I said, You could hold a religious service.

I know this ain't nobody's supposed to know about this bivouac business. That's when they're out there on a seven-day alert. And he said, The alert doesn't come in. And they've just got two days now till they'll be shipping out.

And said, Why don't you go out there and tell the captain, They ain't got seven days no more, they've just got two. And said, Of course, this is Army secrets. You go out there. He said, If you get in trouble, I'll ask.

And he was there violating the rules. Low heart, drinking heart, cussing the piss, catharsis. I talked to him and tears rolled down his cheeks. I said, Preacher, I'm too far gone. No hope for me. And so I got in the car and went way out in the country.

And there were several hundred boys out there been on alert, getting ready. They knew most in time now they'd be packing their little grips, go to port of embarkation over where the bullets were firing.

I told the captain, he cussed a little bit, said, Well, if the colonel said so, it's all right. And he had a boy blow a horn, and everybody came around and said, Well, if the chaplain said, he's going to have a religious service, and you boys want to attend, it'll be all right.

It'll give you an hour. And everybody did. He told them, This is it. This is it. You boys are shipping out. They're scared. Anybody be scared of that. That's nothing coming out of the range. I never faced those bullets, but I just don't believe you.

You tell me you can go through that kind of war and not be scared. I don't believe you're a human being. And so they got out the little organ, and a fellow that was a beautiful white boy played the organ, and a boy with teeth like pearl and skin as black as soot led to singing.

And they sat on the grass under some trees, passed out a few songbooks and pumped that organ. And that old colored boy led them singing, What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Down at the cross where my Savior died. There was my bow for cleansing from sin I cried. There was my heart for my heart was the blood applied. Glory to His name. And then I preached to them.

I said, It's Christ or hell. It's Christ or hell. If the identified was that one who was taken outside of a holy city and killed between two malefactors, so that when God looks at you, He says, As an old boy, that is a David.