How to Witness by Rolfe Barnard — E.A. Johnston

The Danger of Counting Superficial Decisions as Conversions

I was sitting at my seminary graduation dinner, and it was testimony time. Students were getting up on the platform and giving their testimonies. One young evangelist took the platform and made the final one comment, I thought you'd all like to know that last week I held a crusade and 1 ,100 souls were saved and the audience burst into applause, that is, everybody there was clapping their hands except me.

His comment upset me. How in the world did that young evangelist know with any certainty that 1 ,100 people were really born again under his evangelistic appeals? No. What that young man had was over 1 ,000 people make a physical response to his easy-to-believe gospel altar call.

I'm afraid, friends, that many today are more soul butchers than soul winners. We spoon-feed folks a simple gospel outline and ask them for a casual response, and then we call them Christians. I know of which I speak, friends.

I have made my share of false converts in my time. Years ago, I'd go knocking on doors with evangelism explosion teams. We'd talk our way into their living room, and then go through a simple evangelistic outline and try and get them to receive Jesus.

The more persuasive team members got more converts than the others. Listen, friend, if you can talk someone into becoming a Christian, another person could come along after you and talk them out of it.

But we would do our level best to persuade them to become Christians. Some actually took us up on it. But the trouble was, when we returned to their home a week later for follow-up work, they wouldn't answer the door.

I could see a light on in the house. I could hear the television on in the living room, but they would not answer the door and acted like nobody was home. It was because the previous week, the only reason they said yes to Jesus was to get us out of their house.

I used to be a soul butcher, and I butchered my victims with my easy-believe gospel. I was like most of you. I just did not know how to present the true gospel with clarity and let God do the rest. I made my own converts, just like most evangelists do today.

They'll get you to walk an aisle and repeat a prayer and agree with a verse like John 3 .16, and then pat you on the back and say, Welcome to the family of God, friend. You are now a Christian. But a soul butcher only makes false converts, who are gospel-hardened, to hear in the gospel next time around.

If somebody were to hand them a tract, they will say, I already did that, and then go on to hell. Basically, with our modern evangelism tactics, all we're trying to do is get someone to agree with a few simple statements like, Do you believe you are a sinner?

Do you believe Christ died for your sins? Will you receive Jesus as your Savior? Congratulations, you are now a Christian. We hand folks Jesus like we're handing out a stick of chewing gum, and people take it.

They take our Jesus like they would a stick of gum, and chew on him for a little while until the taste goes out of their religion. We just don't know how to witness today biblically. Our main problem with modern evangelism today, friends, is the fact that we offer folks a remedy for sin without first showing them why they are in need of that remedy.

The Biblical Order of Law and Gospel

The gospel is made up of two halves that fit together like a glove. The first half of the gospel is, God must punish sin. And when you get people to believe that, then you can come along with the second half of the gospel, which is a Savior from sin.

A person who is in good health does not need a pill or a medicine to make them feel better. But if that same person is sick unto death, and you have a remedy which will cure him, he will give you all the money he has to regain his health and live.

In the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 9, verses 12 and 13, Jesus made the following statement, They that behold need not a physician, but they that are sick, but go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Rolf Barnard's Evangelistic Ministry and Theology

When I was conducting research on my biography of the evangelist, Rolf Barnard, I was shocked when I learned how God greatly used him as an evangelist. It was said of Barnard that he was the human means of bringing 100 ,000 souls to Christ through his 40-year itinerant preaching ministry.

He knew how to witness with the pure gospel and leave the rest to God. He knew full well that salvation was in the hands of God and not in the hands of men. Barnard knew how to present the gospel in its purity and in its proper order.

He was a master at it. And I learned so much from studying his sermons that it made me realize just how weak we are today in our own evangelistic labors. Very few evangelists today, friends, even know how to preach the gospel in a way to awaken a person to their lost condition and get them lost, because a person must first get lost before they can get saved.

Jesus said, For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost. I want us to sit at the feet of Rolf Barnard this evening, friends, and learn of him in regard as to how to witness to folks. He was a master craftsman when it came to evangelism.

He knew his Bible, and he knew his God. He knew the wicked windings of the sinner's heart and all the excuses of the atheists because he was an atheist before he was saved. In fact, when he was a student in a Baptist college in Texas, he was the president of an infidels club on campus.

He'd host lectures, and he got 300 students to join that infidel club at that Baptist college. When God finally saved him, the biggest regret he had all his life was the fact he had led so many of his fellow classmates to hell.

Plowing the Heart Before Sowing the Gospel

I want to read us a portion of a chapter from my biography on Rolf Barnard entitled, God's Hitchhiker Evangelist, because in this chapter, friends, we will learn how to effectively share the gospel with folks.

I will read you Rolf Barnard as he relates an incident in his own life. Here now are his words, and let us learn from them. We are butchers of souls if we ignore the plain teaching of the Old Testament that the human heart must be plowed, the ground must be harrowed, Jeremiah 4 .3 declares.

For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Listen to Hosea 10 .12, sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and reign righteousness upon you.

And it is downright disobedience to the principle upon which God works to attempt to sow among thorns and expect a harvest. It is true in the New Testament and in the Old Testament that the spiritual laws of harvest are exactly like the farmer.

The farmer goes out and first plows deeply, then he harrows it, and at a certain time he sows the seed. The rain comes and the sun shines, and after a while he goes and looks for a harvest, but he doesn't look for the harvest before the plowing has been done, and he doesn't sow the seed before the harrowing has been done, and neither does God.

This is the law of God that cannot be ignored, unless you wish to become a butcher of your own soul and a butcher of every soul you touch. For it is eternally true that they only get God's best who sincerely want it and long for it and who are capable of appreciating it.

If God were going around offering it and leaving it up to man as to whether he would accept it or reject it, that would be one thing, but that isn't what God does. Salvation is a gift from God. Now God doesn't simply pass his blessings out indiscriminately.

He gives them only to those who are prepared to receive them. If you try to stuff spiritual truths down the throats of unprepared people, you are doing them harm, beloved. We must be patient, as the farmer is, in trying to raise a crop.

Revealed truth must be revealed. You don't learn revealed truth. You experience revealed truth. Blessed things from God are received only by people who are prepared. When trying to witness to a blind, devil-blinded sinner, we can see this necessity.

It is not that they are any worse than we are. It's just that they are still blind. That is, when we were once blinded by the God of the sage, they are smart as whips in a lot of respects, but they are just blind in one thing.

The average lost person will agree with us on most truths in the Bible, but the difference is they see no beauty in Christ. There is nothing about him that attracts them. For nearly 38 years, I have been trying to preach a gospel that can be believed, but not understood, shutting men up to abandonment of all hope in themselves and casting them entirely utterly on God.

Barnard's Mississippi Evangelism Encounter

Years ago, I went down to Mississippi, Wednesday night through Sunday night, at the request of a friend. He said, I will pay the bill and help you if you will go. So we set it up, and I went down. The young preacher, a student of a Baptist college there, met me.

He was pastoring a small country church on weekends, so I preached on Wednesday night and Thursday. The young preacher, who was a go-getter, came and got me early, and we went out to knock on doors. I preached Thursday night and Friday, and we spent all day knocking on doors around in the community, talking with people.

A Saturday night, after the service was over, I was already gone to bed, and a knock came on the door of the room where I was being entertained. I said, come in, and that young pastor came in. He said, Brother Barnard, I don't know what to do.

You are older than I am, and you are here as my guest. I am just a young fellow, but I'm going to ask you not to preach tomorrow. I don't want you to preach for us anymore. He said, I just can't stand the way you are doing.

I asked, well what on earth am I doing that is hurting you so? He said, well, Brother Barnard, in all our visiting, you just talked about the gospel to one person. I said, well, I haven't found but one sinner.

You see, I am forbidden to sow among thorns. I take that pretty seriously. I am forbidden to give holy things unto dogs. Matthew 7, 6 says, give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Convicting the Self-Satisfied Through God's Law

Remember, we had gone into lots of homes, and they were all right. Some of them would try to come to the meeting one night before it closed if it didn't rain. Some were aiming to come last night, and just as they got ready, friends came in.

I heard all the excuses, and everybody was just fine and dandy. So all I would do in such homes, I asked if it was all right for us to have prayer. They would say it was. So I would pray to them, and I would preach them a sermon in my prayer on the holy demands of a thrice holy God.

I wouldn't invite any of them to come to the meeting or anything else. I would just leave. But we came to one place, and we talked a while. Then the pastor said we had to go. Would it be all right if we had a word of prayer?

So we led in prayer, and I prayed. And while I was praying, I noticed a woman was crying, and I quit praying. I thought the Lord would forgive me, and I said, what's the matter with you? And she said, I wish I could be saved, but I can't.

I asked, why can't you be saved? She said, I'm such a big sinner. I've sinned so long, there is no hope for me. Now that's the kind of folks I like to find. And I told her about the Pearl of Great Price, the son of the living God, who came to justify the ungodly, for Romans 5 .6 declares, for when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

And Romans 5 .8 says, but God commanded his love toward us, and that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Let me show you something. I was forbidden to tell those self-satisfied, infer-held church people about the Lord.

I'm not going to sow among thorns. I preach to them the holy claims of God's law. And as I explained that to the young preacher, he said, I understand. I said, young man, if you will let me help you, instead of going into homes and trying to get them to take Jesus, do what the scriptures say, break up some fallow ground, and use the holy demands of a holy God.

No man will ever receive Christ as Lord and Savior, until he is stripped and slain and conquered by the claims of God's holy law. And we are butchers of souls if we ignore the fundamental truth that God gives his best, and that is Christ, to prepared hearts.

You know what that boy did? He took me literally, and his visiting from then on was scriptural, where he found nice little secure people. He just shot them with God's holy law. If God's holy law won't route you out of feeling how good you are, you will just have to go on to hell.

That is his weapon. And in six weeks after the meeting, he had 37 grown people in that little country community come to him, asking him, is there any hope that we might get saved? I'm telling you, God gives his best, and that is Christ, for Christ is everything to people whose hearts have been prepared.

Dependence on the Holy Spirit in Personal Witness

It is so wonderful. Now God says, before you go out to talk to people, spend some time saying, Lord, you go ahead of me. And there are not, are there not many examples of this in the Bible? Don't you get a little track that's got the same pill for everybody?

I take no thought of what you shall say. Luke 12, 12 states, for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what you ought to say. You will never find two persons in the same shape. Depend on the Holy Ghost to lead you to that portion of truth that would be meet and due season to that person.

If he needs his heart plowed by the Holy Spirit, with the claims of the holy law of God, then pray that the Holy Ghost would do that work for the glory of Christ. Well, friends, that ends our lesson on how to witness by evangelist Rolf Barnard.

I hope it has been of some help to you as we go and share our faith with those who are perishing. Let us pray.