Issues Involved in Preaching Grace — Rolfe Barnard

I had the privilege the other day in the state of New York of having a conference with Reverend Leonard Ravenhill, whose articles I have read for the past two or three years with great joy. Ravenhill, of course, is an Englishman, and he is the founder of some sort of a—connected movement in England.

He is a thorough preacher of the gospel of God's grace. Dr. Gamble used to say that he thought the Lord wanted to evangelize the world through Baptists, but he didn't have to. Some of us are finding that in other ranks there are people who, when they hear it, say, I never understood it up here, but it registers in here.

And the Baptists who were raised on it have repudiated it in their hearts. A wonderful time was with Ravenhill, who had just come over two or three days before for his annual now sojourn of about six months in America.

And he told me of having an all-day conference with Duncan Campbell the other day, and sitting at his feet and asking him questions after questions. Mr. Campbell is now in England, going all over England, Scotland, and Wales, telling what the Lord did in the revival in the New Hebrides Islands.

Now, if you haven't read about those, you just have done no use for me to talk to you. But five years ago, in those islands, God was pleased to start the work of the Spirit. And it lasted five years, and every person in the several islands came to a profession of faith in the Lord.

There is not a person in those islands who does not claim to be a Christian. In the five years, only four people have, as some people call it, backslidden or gone back, or given evidence up till now that the work of grace was not real.

Isn't that marvelous, ain't it? And I had read with interest about that, although until I talked to Mr. Ravenhill, I didn't know it had been so widespread. And it encouraged me to believe that what isn't true, he may be through with America, but he isn't through.

He's still working on schedule. But two things I asked Mr. Ravenhill that set my heart ablazing again. What was the message? And he said, Sovereign Grace. Patience of the Spirit, every gift of the Spirit in evidence except speaking with tongues.

Sovereign Grace and the Demonstration of the Holy Spirit

Patience of what this young Spurgeon told us again this morning, the Spirit. A camel will get on your bicycle. In twenty miles, you'll come to a little town. When you get to that town, keep riding till you find five men on their knees.

When you come into their presence, get off your bicycle, open the Bible and preach to them from the page. They're the five leaders of communism. They'll all of us. He got on his bicycle and went the direction the woman told him to go.

In the city square, the town square, in the middle of the crowd, five men on their knees, shooting darts. He opened his Bible and preached. Communism's back was broken. Knowing in my heart, we have to know ourselves because we can't see it demonstrated in religious but lost America.

But the grace of God is the only message that'll ever be accompanied by the demonstration of the Holy Ghost. You can laugh at that if you want to, but the Holy Spirit's the only power that can penetrate the human spirit.

He might not be as bound as we think he is if God ever turned him loose. Wouldn't you love to be in something like that? I thought as I lost and listened to this boy, he didn't speak anymore. My soul, he just run and dance.

I thank God and took courage, didn't you? Amen. Yes, I did. I deserve it, I know. The Lord showed me. I also talked to Brother Ravenhill about the meetings in London, in France. It's high time we had as much sense as boys got.

They're not getting people to God. Amen. They're not getting people to God. That's our great no-sir. We got to quit claiming to believe in salvation by grace, or we got to quit being friends to the enemies of men's souls today.

My folks, Martins Hall, the only folks here, got lots of money. You boys, Martins Hall, give us some money, will you? I'd love to, I'd love for that message last night by Dr. Drew to be put in print. He's hard to follow, because he's smarter than you birds are.

Now, I had no trouble following him. The rest of you guys have trouble of that. We got ours before him last night. We got them birthdays done. I read Dr. Carroll's presentation, The Glory of the Ministry, and Dr. Truitt's message on it, but we heard something last night.

Amen. And I want to chew on that a while, don't you? You preach, as I do. That was blessed as well. I wish we'd get that in print. We're so poor. But I thank God this morning that there is an awareness of sovereign grace in America.

That was a whole lot bigger than it was. I do not know all the time what the Lord's doing, but I know that the message is causing more of this trouble than it used to. Men who used to yammer at preaching, so dumb they didn't know what was preaching, stayed in the frame.

Now they hate me, you see. Start doing something. These little grace conferences we had all over the country last year, and we're going to have, God willing, from now on, everywhere. They get college presidents lambasting us, and fundamentalists, our biggest enemies are the fundamentalists.

God's doing something. But this boy, 19 years old, he's getting old. We're conviction, too. And the Lord will give him mellowness of heart when he has some trouble. Publicly, every child of God is called free.

We've got too far away from that. All of us are prophets. To enter into the ministry of prophets, that God's message will go out to people through us. Gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and some teachers.

And everybody in the Lord's Church is engaged in one of those. They are not gifts to the Church. That is the Church. That the Lord reached up in the trees and found some men and gave them to the Church.

That isn't what Paul said. That is the Church. Out of his people he gave me some of this, and some of this, and some of that. And they all together make the Church. Now, sweet by and by, but now we need some mature Christians, and we need some mature Bibles of Christians, Churches.

We dead sure do. We dead sure do. And that's what's in there. This thing's not easy to wade through and to seek cover, fallen, and to finish the job of tearing out the rotten and the foundation, then building anew.

I'm convinced, gentlemen, that the devil will energize every one of us preachers to preach real, sure enough, willing to preach real, sure enough truth. ...foundation, doctrinal foundation, which is the foundation of the Church.

The Church is built on the apostles, on the prophets and the apostles, their doctrine. These are the two planets. Is that right? Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. I told many of my friends that the Lord is not in us continually despising this truth, that our doctrinal foundations, while they're not destroyed, are in a mighty, mighty bad way.

And you can't, you can't have the blessing of God by continually trying to patch up the building and house, not the courage to go back and dig again and lay the right doctrinal foundation. Making myself clear, you can go with your message on the hooligan, build it from a creaking foundation, and the next preacher that'll come to town will blow his breath in what you did, God.

The foundation got to be related, and that's doctrinal. That's doctrinal, teaching, teaching. And that's what we're having to do. MacGruder said a good word tonight, or not to be, but that's God it is.

Back to any creed or any confession of faith or any doctrinal statement of historic practice, and we'll write on our writings and mention sovereign grace, and you got to fight on that. Yesterday, she said, I do hope that the preacher you're going with to start next Lord day won't fight your message.

Little bitty two-bit preachers. I dream of having these conferences. They're not big. We don't have any way to advertise them. Papers won't say nothing about these. The Baptist papers, they're not interested.

We don't have many folks here, but bless God, everyone we've had. Somebody like this, this boy here, went away from here last year, and he raised an oil hill up in Cincinnati over that radio. And they're going to have a hard time with him, because he's clear.

He knows more about the gospel than most of us put together already, just 20 years old. Isn't that wonderful? He don't have to unlearn, but there is an awareness, and we're beginning to make an impact, or God is.

Every time I hear a young fellow like this fellow, I'm going to keep on keeping on. And we're going to keep on in our plundering ways, because all of us at best are very unprofitable servants, in seeking and relaying the doctrinal foundations of our churches, that we could go into that church foundation, which is Christ.

You can't separate Christ from his teaching, or his teaching from Christ. My brother gone, I believe that preach the gospel, stay off of these things, can't be done. Jesus is your Savior, and ignore him as your teacher, you are all.

You can't split up Jesus and say, I don't like his minister as a prophet, I don't like his minister as a king, I'll take him as a Savior. I won't take him as a teacher. You can't cut Jesus up, the Jesus of the Bible, who saves his teacher, priest, and king.

The old theologians, wasn't such a herd, they could get all three of those out, and presented a whole crowd. Don't be ashamed of the doctrine, he wasn't, and you can't preach Christ without preaching his doctrine.

Can't separate Christ from his teaching. This can't be done. Can't be done. There's an awareness about it. New Testament evangelist, when you talk like you did this morning, bud, don't call those fellows evangelists.

New Testament Evangelism and the Work of the Church

The New Testament evangelist, and what a need there is for them now, is engaged in two things, and in correcting churches already plenty. The apostle Paul was a New Testament evangelist, leader of a Johnston church in Pine Grove, and he didn't have to wait for an intercession, over there taking the authority that only the Holy Spirit ought to have.

And he'd say, EW, there's some things over there in that little body of Christ that ain't right, and if you don't straighten them out. New Testament evangelist, like the tears that are going around whipping the gospel down, and getting the mayor to pat them on the back, and calling that New Testament evangelism.

Let's quit honoring it by calling them evangelists. New Testament folks, we need is what you call missionaries on New Testament. They go over and carry them on, most of them, now if you believe the Bible, if you believe the Bible, we're supposed to get saved, and hang around until they teach them the truth, and then let them learn it themselves.

That's New Testament mission, and that's evangelism. I talked to Baker James Colton, I went to school with him. He's the head of our farm missionary program, and he's a good man. I hadn't seen him in 20-odd years, saw him in Atlanta the other day.

We had lunch together, and we were on the same plane a while, and I said, what about what's going on over there? Getting saved over there, since they ran all the missionaries out. Well, why was that? Well, before the devil closed the doors, or whatever your theology is on that anyhow, they're closed.

There were some churches planted over there, planted and indoctrinated, and left alone, just them and God. As soon as they're back to New Testament evangelism, missions. Is that right? The idea of a farm missionary is unscriptural and blasphemous.

The idea of a home missionary is unscriptural, we know that. It's supposed, wherever they are, it's the program of evangelism. That's right. Now that's somebody, the church people that are dead, they're paying somebody to serve God for them over in Africa, and now they're paying somebody to enter the old farm in America.

That's what it is. You better listen to me. If God has given you an insight on the sovereign grace of God, for you to sit around and argue about it, he don't aim for you to sit around one place, he aims for you to get in this thing and start losing a few dollars and sacrifice a little bit, and quit giving you money to support men, either on this side or on the other side, that are over there preaching what they preach.

They're saying by what they preach, that what your church preaches that furnishes the money ain't so. It's just as much a crime to support a farm missionary who goes over and preaches the gospel of sinners.

Save thyself as it is to support a pastor in this country who preaches the gospel, save thyself. There's just two gospels, the salvations of the Lord versus the sinner, it can't be both. That's right.

You say, brother, that gets in trouble, and that's what this boy said you would do if you started admiring them, the Lord, you know, and you're just going to have to, while here we are, most of the money we're giving is going to support people who are preaching, either here or somewhere else, what we do not believe.

I would pay somebody to go somewhere and get up and preach that what we believe ain't so. I don't believe a fella can get saved anywhere without experiencing his heart, the salvation given to him by a sovereign God, on the farm, field, anywhere, or a pastor.

Abandoning the Southern Baptist program, show me you're a missionary. It's not what he wants to or what sounds nice, but the gospel of God's grace. If we don't get some of this conviction, if we don't start hanging together, we're all going to hang separately.

Sure, you put in a half hour, and we're off to do it. That this thing, preachers that ain't got the guts to stand for what you say you believe, because it'll cost you. I don't think I'd like to look this way.

Here I am, given this preacher, to keep this family going for 20-some odd years, has been given it by people who don't believe a word I preach. You pastors, that they that preach the gospel should live of the gospel, that calls itself a church of the Lord.

If it's got a pastor, it ought to have an evangelist. Evangelist. But it preaches. And to say to the evangelist, you pull your punches now, brother, that people who don't believe the grace of God will give you money enough to live on.

We're getting hemmed up, ain't we? What God's done over in China, he let the communists drive out the missionaries to drive the churches over there to depend on God instead of America. You see it? And those folks over there sitting around letting the missionaries do it, John Brown Vane doing it now.

And people getting saved. Amen. This thing's coming. It's of the Lord. It's of the Lord. And out of this conference, we'll go another preacher. We use out of these little conferences. It's not big. Some preacher will get on fire.

And this boy ain't got a bit of sense on earth now. So he just believes something. I like to see somebody believe something, don't you? Whether it's right or wrong, just believe it. Like a little dog.

My little dog, his name was Rupert. And when he died, he died all over. I like the fellow who believes something he believes. Now that's the introduction. I'll point out to you six things that you who try to witness the gospel and try to publicly preach it need to do some real study about.

They're very difficult things to deal with. You've got quite a job, and none of us have a right to preach. The more we ought to be preaching, as did our Lord. Public ministry is recorded in the twelfth chapter of John.

Christ's Authority as Prophet and Teacher

He's able to close his ministry as God's prophet to teach. Before he shuts himself up in verse, in chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, with his little group. And then before coming out from his little group, he's occupied with the cross.

The ministry of the prophet closes now. And my Lord is able to close that phase of his ministry by saying in verse 48, He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

I have spoken of myself. He sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. What we are preaching, so humanly possible, came from ourselves. This is from God. As he says, Yes, I've got it from the Lord.

Now my teaching man's over. They're not very clear to me, but they're very vital to the message we're trying to preach. I wish a few of you would take them down, and if you can write at them and tell me how to handle them, I'll send it to your people.

I've been looking at them for a long time, and it's not as simple now as it may seem. In the first place, in trying to preach the doctrines of God's sovereign grace, shutting men up to the fact that God is on the throne, even in salvation.

Human Ruin and the Necessity of Total Grace

We have to make up our minds. We must utterly ruin or partially disable. I have a story with the Lord, a conference some years ago, the last one I've ever been in. I used to speak with Brother John Rice, over on his paper a lot, on his conference.

He never did agree doctrinally, but he never did propose my messages as much as he finally came to do, dawned on him where I was headed. In refuting my messages, Brother Rice, who's a good man, said man was partially disabled.

That's the core of our mission. Partially disabled. And that partial disablement was repaired in the death of Christ. And Arminianism says that in the Christ, every man had restored to him the ability to repent and believe.

Isn't that right? And our brethren, dogmatically, they tell me, Barnett, you've got to prove what you say. And I pass that on to you. That's a tremendous issue. Make a decision. You have to come to a point of departure here.

That man was totally free. It's possible if we believe that man's utterly ruined. A theistic practice who are law-abiding, accept the security of the believer. If we believe that man was terribly bad, that's so.

Then you can preach salvation by decision. You can stay bad, but if you believe that man's utterly ruined, go back to roots before you could use that kind of method. But now you've got to make up your mind.

Going to go through hell now. Spend hours at night and wonder and get to the place that you can pray for a door to be open so we could tell somebody about the Lord. Make up your mind here. Put this root down.

Was man utterly ruined? I'm still trying. Hold out better than I can. I'll sit at your feet. The position that the scriptures teach that the sinner is a plumb sinner. He ain't a partial sinner. He's plumb.

Therefore I have to preach a gospel that'll get the sinner where he is. Instead of the sinner, instead of preach that if you'll get up from where you are and go two miles up the road, there's a can of salvation standing on the fifth corner up there waiting for you to come take it, in the second place.

And this has got to be settled. These are all the same thing. But I take them and I study them and I try to find the scripture because I run into them everywhere I go. See, my ministry's been going in for many years now in the churches.

And they say, why don't you get in the place? And I watch the people. They're looking to preach. They don't know whether I'm preaching the truth or not. They're looking to find out. And brother, that's an embarrassing condition.

You'll stay with me. Don't expect the people to stay. They've been butchered, had everything other than preach to them. And the poor pope happens to have a man that he don't understand the word of truth.

Understand it in here. I've never been where most of them ain't got time for an operation. You can't operate on churches day and a week, most of them. If you do, you just leave it by the sick cat. But if the pastor will stay in there, he'll get up in the pulpit and say, folks, this is true.

I've been many and many a place. The pastor didn't do that. Directly the phones go to ringing and the pastor goes to sympathizing. Church members and poor brother Barnabas. Necessity laid upon you. Preaching to a bunch of critics sitting out there trying to pounce on you.

Ain't no telling what you'll say. I can preach. Atmosphere of the Holy Ghost. It's awful. The atmosphere of Pharisees laid upon you. Never even had the slightest suspicion of the depravity of their own wicked hearts.

On a Sunday morning, the man stands in a place where he ought not claims to be God's man. Gets up and says, beloved brethren and sisters in the Lord. Most of them will know the Lord's amendment. Pastor of the day says, one thing you broke me from sucking the eggs.

I ain't gonna have another Sunday morning worship service no more. How can that guy worship God? You can't worship God. That's in spirit and truth. On Sunday morning, all church members come to God and worship.

On Sunday night, we have an evangelistic service and they stay home and look at the television. Isn't that right? I said, suppose that the Lord wants you to switch it and have the evangelist. I never heard an evangelist say, what is that, an evangelistic service?

You know what that is? I don't know how they got that, you know. Pastor says, when you're going to go to preaching, evangelistic service. I said, I ain't got none. Just the word. My first point. Man's utterly ruined by the fall, but once that's said, that's said it all.

Now nearly everybody, nearly everybody you're going to witness to, he is utterly ruined. A little pickle going to come to you, brother pastor, brother pastor. Won't you pray for my husband? He's such a good man.

He just got one bad habit. Some one or two of their sins of the flesh and call that salvation. They don't think they got a wicked heart. They think they do a few things that they ought not to do. And they think the issue between them and God is that they got drunk last Saturday night.

I made those pictures. Roy Rogers is here because he's Christian. Right, brother? Nearly everybody we preach to don't believe they're utterly ruined. And their kinfolks don't believe it. Now your boy ain't utterly ruined.

Sister Jones has got a bad boy, but your boy's a good boy. Make up your mind. In the second place, we've got to come to the parting of the ways on this statement. Salvation is utterly of the Lord, or it's partially of the Lord.

Salvation Is Utterly of the Lord

But the day is God's done his part. That's it. That's the gospel of today. Isn't that right, Matt? Now God's done his part now. And when you do your part, he'll see. That's what the preacher in Cincinnati, isn't it?

What the preacher where I go, he'll do the business with you. As a sinner, shut up to his acceptance or his decision. In the third place now, whatever you believe about that will determine your treatment of election and predestination calling.

If the purpose and his purpose is to have a people like his son, he can't stop there. He's got to pick out the ones, and then he's got to call them. Partially of the Lord, I could preach his purpose, and I could preach his predestination, and then I could preach what the brethren preach, is election based on what they call foreknowledge.

Now election is based on Bible foreknowledge, but they think that word. And then they could joke out of election and say, God looked down, he saw the ones that are going to use their free will more wisely than others, and is going to receive the gospel.

And so on the basis of the fact they had more sense than the other fellow, and use their free will more wisely than the others, he elected them salvation seeing he saw they're going to be saved in half.

Now that's the common conception of election. Nobody denies election. You know anybody denies election? Why, sure enough. Utterly of the Lord. Many came to see me and said, Ralph, you bring your big tent over to our town, and said, we'll all not preach election in a revival campaign.

But they find out, I believe. I try to preach what they call the gospel, but my conception of the fact that salvation is of the Lord, is just that old. In the third place, we must come to decision as to whether or not salvation is a gift.

Salvation as God's Gift, Not Human Decision

Where Christ offered himself as the divinely anointed Messiah. I don't see where he offers himself for the acceptance or rejection of sin. I see everywhere in the New Testament, I give unto them, it's a gift.

Now salvation is an offer. I can see where you'd offer me five dollars, and if I had a million dollars, I'd say, thank you. But if it's a gift, I see the necessity of the one who's going to give it. Preparing the heart and the will of the one that's glad to receive it.

So I just can't go up and down the land and say, yes, the Lord Jesus. What will you do with him? Or will you accept him? I can't do it. I'm free to know that in his unawakened state, not having the slightest idea who Jesus is, he can reject what his mama said about him.

But I see no rejection. The gift and the gift is Christ. He's a holy spirit taken true for the gift. I believe the gospels are preached to all men. I know they've been preached to them first. For grace.

Twenty-three, twenty-three, these things ought you to have done, not neglected the weightier matters of the law. Three things. It's mercy. I think we need to go back, some of us grace preachers that are becoming disgraceful preachers, and take the holy law of God to the holy requirements of a holy God.

The law should be preached to all men, but not first. Used to walk streets, had to preach eight or ten weeks in a place. Now I'm preaching the gospel. You try to preach the gospel, you swear on a stack of Bibles that it can't be understood, it must be revealed, and it has to be revealed to an open heart.

Christ never revealed himself to an unopened heart. The salvation, the gift of Christ preached everywhere is an offer. Am I wrong? I don't think I am. Yes, Christ, he offered himself as Messiah. He gives eternal life.

Revelation, Faith, and the Call to Repentance

Fourth place, we'll let you out in about two more minutes. Just a minute. You got to make up your mind whether salvation therefore comes by revelation or by decision. How many of you trust Andrew Mellon?

I went through one of his big banks the other day in Pittsburgh. How many of you trust him? You haven't seen him, have you? Committal to an unknown person is silly. We've invented some terms and we've made faith the silliest thing this side of hell, to leap in the dark.

That's what faith is now. You don't know whether he's son of God or not, but trust him anyhow and hope that someday you'll find out. Now, that's silly. Own person but a revealed person. That comes by revelation or by decision what you're going to preach.

And the fifth place is made effective by God producing repentance and faith are saving men if they repent. And I have the advantage on so many of you. I have not been able to advance in theology over what I was taught in Southwestern Seminary 20-odd years ago.

I sat at the seat of W .T. Conner. No greater theologian has lived in the last hundred years. I still read his books and get preachers to read it. I don't understand the Baptist preachers all over this country.

What we're trying to preach, it would drown a half of breakfast, supper, and dinner. When I was a student in seminary, Brother Fletcher did. These great basic truths. And all of these are going to hypnotize you.

A turning and a running from it, a hating of sin, and a continual coming to lay hold on Christ. That's what it means to sin. I'll send this up to you, God's waiting here. If you repent. Thou hast shut the sinner up to the fact that God Almighty for those who sin is that which he commands.

He commands all men to repent and everybody universally proves that they're wicked, ill-bound, ill-deserving, failing every time they're tested. God Almighty, if all there is, it's in there, but that's all there is in the Bible.

God commands all men to repent. He does. That's all there is. Everybody's going to hell. If God Almighty doesn't for those he saves do more for them than those he damns, ain't nobody going to be saved.

You've got to give them that which you demand of them. That's what grace does. In that last night, you've got to come to where you see the only good thing in this world is the will of God. And you won't be so afraid of the law of God.

The law of God is the will of God written down so you can get it in your teeth. You all can do that by revealing that you 10 ,000 times worse than you, that you don't know. If I didn't say it, what is it?

It is made effective by God bringing the sinner through repentance and faith to Christ. He doesn't trust his repentance. He doesn't trust his faith. He trusts Christ. But God brings in things that I have things that I carry along with me and I keep studying them.

They're not all of them, but they're some of the issues we face. You face them in your church. A body of Christ called and set the church down on the thing of battle. They hadn't got a little handful of folks to plead the doctrines of grace and rest stop them or even wonder what in the name of God the preacher's talking about.

The battle ain't won in even your little congregation, is it? These things continue to crop up.