Now, if you want to, if you have
your Bible, I'm going to ask you to
turn to the Gospel of Luke.
That's the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of
Luke.
And if you sit by someone, you do
not have a Bible, maybe they'll let you
share it with them.
If you do not have the Word before
you, you listen and get as much as
you're able.
May I say thank you for this opportunity.
I hope that our meetings will be blessed
of the Lord.
There are two thoughts that we have to
face today relative to organized churches.
One of them is, are we going to
be able to keep on having services much
longer?
And the other is, ought we to continue
to call ourselves churches?
Now, that's not just the whining of somebody
that's married to everybody.
That's a pretty good question that we need
to face today.
Are we doing any good?
Are we making an impact?
Are we witnessing a good confession?
We can't talk about the days in the
past, about how glorious they were.
Evidently they weren't as glorious as we thought.
Things wouldn't have got as bad a shape
as they're in now, all at once.
But we got to witness a good confession
of the Lord in our day.
If hells are popping, we've still got to
witness a good confession.
That's the purpose of a congregation.
That's a local assembly, a representative.
The body of Christ meet together, prosecute the
Lord's business, go out and witness a good
confession, whatever the circumstances are.
So I come to you hopeful that I
shall be able to be of help and
not of hurt, and I hope you'll be
able to hear me.
Now, chances are it'll take you about time
out of here before you begin to hear
me.
It's difficult to hear the Word of God
now, especially from a new voice.
But you do your level best to receive
the Word in so much as you believe
it to be the Word, and that is
blessed of the Lord.
You can only do two things when you
are called upon to hear.
You can hear or reject.
If you reject and it's truth, well, that's
better.
If you receive, sometimes miracles happen and men
hear the voice of God who alone can
raise dead men and give them life.
Thank you for the privilege of being your
guest here.
I want to face you, first of all,
in this first message.
It's always difficult for the man who goes
from place to place, as I do, to
know what would be a word in season
as he faces a new congregation.
But I hope that I'll find the mind
of the Lord.
If after this morning and tonight I find
out I'm chasing a rabbit didn't know, I'll
switch and chase some other one.
But I'll be hopeful that I could say
one thing in this brief visit, and that
would be the one thing that the Lord
would say that's the word for that hour.
And if we could say one thing in
your hearing for your prophet, your acceptance or
rejection while I'm here, that'd be good.
We'd get over one thing.
And I'm going to start out this morning
and preach for this morning at least, and
tonight I'm pretty certain and I do not
know just exactly what will happen according to
the feeling when they continue.
But I'm going to start out this morning
with just one thought, and try to face
you with it, get you somewhat concerned about
it, with your responsibility.
And that one thought is that unless a
man is desperate, he cannot even hear, much
less receive the gospel of God concerning his
son.
A man has to be desperate before he'll
cry for help.
And you can offer him help till you're
blue in the face, and he'll not be
the slightest bit interested until he's desperate.
Now that seems to me the fundamental truth
that we need to camp on as congregations
of supposedly people who've been conquered by the
Lord Jesus Christ, who are not their own,
who do not live for themselves.
They've lost their own lives that they may
gain.
Of course, that isn't true.
They are, of course, not Christians.
But you and I, by God's providence, happen
to be God's professing people, a little group
of them in a given community, who up
against and must face and come out the
best you know how, must face this signal
of truth, this signal of truth, that we
are attempting to preach the gospel today in
a generation that has been utterly, utterly sinned
against, in that we've forgotten that the gospel
must be preached in its purity.
But it has to be preached in its
proper order.
And there isn't a person here that's old
enough to remember when the pulpits as such
paid any attention to the fact that a
man cannot even hear the gospel until he's
been utterly slain and left desperate with no
hope in himself.
Not until that time comes will he give
a hook whether Jesus is the Son of
God or not.
He won't care whether Jesus died for sinners
or not, because he's not interested.
Do you understand me yet?
Our task as God's people is to about
face and turn around and begin to be
true to our generation and take the only
weapon that God the Holy Spirit has or
ever has had to prepare men to listen
and receive the gospel.
That's God's holy law, God's holy requirement.
We have a Jesus today in America.
Everybody thinks mighty well of Jesus, the hill
of God.
Is that too rough for you?
And so we've got a generation now of
professing Christians and great believers in Jesus, but
they don't know God.
But Jesus sent down here to bring men
to God.
And what we have to face now is
that in our churches we've been getting people
converted to some kind of a Jesus, but
it hasn't brought them to obedience and worship
and devotion to Almighty God.
Witness the Sabbath day is a holiday now.
Everybody believes in Jesus, let's go raise hell
on Sunday.
Don't know God, see?
Witness the generation now.
It has no morals.
Everybody's accepted Jesus, but they don't know the
lawgiver.
Our gospel has been wronged.
Would you be interested in a week trying
to get geared in the hope that somebody
would like to hear the gospel and has
ever heard that, oh, isn't that wonderful?
That's for me.
That's the only hope for me.
You see, it's definitely true, dear one, that
the first time any human being ever hears
the gospel as gospel, he'll be saved right
there on the spot.
Let me repeat it.
I've gone across an expression, I'm an Alabamian
by birth, I was born and raised in
Alabama, so I can talk about my kinfolks.
We said that the Southern states, you know,
are gospel-hardened.
They've heard the gospel.
So much that it just goes in one
ear and out the other.
That's a good statement, just not a word
of truth in it.
First time you ever heard the gospel.
If you ever heard it well, it says
gospel.
That settled it, brother.
You got converted right then and there.
You never did hear it as gospel.
The gospel means good news.
And if what God says is good news,
if you ever hear it as good news,
you'll clothe with it right there.
And that's a word to whet your appetites.
The big need of every community now is
churches handling the word of truth like it
ought to be handled, so that some will
definitely reject and some will definitely be conquered
by the Christ and the gospel.
Anything except everybody straddling the fence, putting one
foot down on one side one day and
on the next, the next.
Let's speak to you this morning on the
subject running scared.
Running scared.
How can Ralph Barnett, who's speaking to you,
as a brother member of the body of
Christ that is set in this generation to
represent God, to be God's voice, as God's
witness, as God's testimony, how can I join
with my brothers and sisters, join to Jesus
Christ and conduct myself in the best possible
manner, having been commissioned as I have, to
represent Jesus Christ?
I think the only way we can do
it in just common sore bones and lashes
language is we'll have to run scared.
And I take my scripture from the 12th
chapter of the Gospel of Luke, beginning in
the first verse.
In the meantime, when they were gathered together,
an innumerable company, a multitude of people, insomuch
that they trod one upon another, the Lord
began to say unto his disciples, first of
all, Beware ye the leaven of the Pharisees,
which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed, neither is there
anything hid that shall not be known.
Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall
be heard in the light, and that which
is spoken in the air and closet shall
be proclaimed upon the housetops.
And I say unto you, my friends, be
not afraid of them that kill the body.
We're told what we're not to be afraid
of.
After they've killed the body, they can't do
any more.
But he said, I'll tell you what I
want you to be desperately and deadly afraid
of.
I forewarn you whom ye shall fear.
Fear him, this talking to disciples, this talking
to people he calls friends.
He says, fear him, which after he hath
killed hath power to cast into hell.
Yea, I say unto you, fear him.
God knows if that isn't a word for
this silly, giddy stuff that passes for salvation
today.
This familiarity with God, this levity.
When the Welsh Revival was in great progress,
somebody asked a couple of the leaders, men
that God had seen fit to honor by
letting them sort of have a leading part
in the movement of the Holy Ghost.
They asked them if they didn't look forward
to their simmering in little houses around little
worship places.
These dear men of God who'd learned something
of what it meant when God was in
the midst and his presence was felt.
They said, no, they dreaded the time when
they assembled together.
They wanted to go off somewhere and hide.
For when God makes himself manifest in the
midst of his people, his presence is thrice
holy, and about all people can do is
sit around and groan and sob in the
presence of God.
We know nothing about that, do we?
Oh, fear God.
Who's to fear him?
His friends, his disciples.
He said, are not thy sparrow's soul for
too far thence?
And not one of them is forgotten before
God?
But even the very hairs of your head
are all numbered.
Fear not, therefore, ye of more value than
many sparrows.
Also I say unto you, whosoever shall confess
me, my confession is always to God, testimony
is to man.
I can stand here and say I love
the Lord.
That's testimony.
I may be lying, I may be mistaken,
I may be deceived, but there's no deceit
in confession.
We're not called on to save.
We're Christians, we're called upon to be.
Whosoever shall confess me before man.
You don't do that by what you save,
you do that by what you are.
And ladies and gentlemen, we've about done out
now.
And the only thing that's going to ride
the storm that's ahead of us is not
some people busy as bumblebees, but some people
who are, are children of God.
Your testimony is not worth a dime, your
confession is what counts.
And we're called upon to confess Christ before
man.
And there's no room for any slip-ups
there.
That has to do with character and what
we are, not our activities.
Whosoever shall confess me before men.
Him shall the Son of Man also confess
before the angels of God.
But he that denies me, you deny him
by what you aren't, or what you are.
Before men shall be denied before the angels
of God.
How can you make a good confession in
the day in which you live?
Not mouth around about what you're doing, what
you're going to do, but occupy some territory,
crown the Lord Jesus, give him his rightful
place, spit on the abuse in the devil's
face and say, Yeah!
Yeah!
Jesus Christ reigns as Lord.
You know, we've had a brand of Christianity
now that ain't worth a dime.
Every one of you mothers now have been
brought up on a perverted gospel where parents
advocated what God Almighty gave them to do.
You're too lazy and so busy raising some
kind of king somewhere and spouting off about
how what a wonderful Christian you were.
While you spouting off, you turned over the
education of your children to the state.
Instead of keeping your hand on it and
understanding that all education must be Christian, not
pagan.
And so they said, Jesus is Lord!
But we'll turn our kids over to that
devil to educate them.
Huh?
You ain't got a Chinaman's chance to get
your children to Christ now, because when they
go to the public school six, eight hours
a day, they've got no capacity to listen
to the gospel.
So you and I are facing the fact
that we're going to have to let our
kids all go to hell for one more
generation in the public schools of America where
you can't even have a prayer now, much
less teach Christianity.
You talk about going to have some churches?
You ain't neither.
You'll be out of business!
For this nation is going to be pagan
to the core!
And it's hurrying up!
And the only hope for anybody to come
out of it outside the grip of Antichrist
is to once more recover a gospel that
demands that everything, your financial, the way you
make a living, your home life, your body,
your mind, your social life, your church life,
every piece of your life must be under
the Lordship of Christ.
For brother and sister, if we don't claim
everything and bring everything unto Him now, we're
going to be on the other side and
the whole outfit of us going to hell.
That's all.
Whether you know it or not, this ain't
no time for little peanut butter and sandwich
stuff called the gospel and salvation.
This is the time to realize the fact
that it's all under Christ or it's all
under Satan.
No way on earth we can keep on
like we've been doing, trying to please both
sides.
That's right.
I was going to make a good confession.
Well, you and I are really humping it
here.
We're going to have to claim everything for
Christ Jesus.
We're going to have to demand that He
is the Lord of education.
He's the Lord of society.
He's the Lord of government.
He's the Lord of money.
He owns it all.
He's the Lord of conduct.
He's the Lord of our salt fires.
He's Lord.
He's not a nice little fellow we meet
on Sunday morning.
He's the Lord of all.
And I'm not going to waste my time
fooling with a bunch of people that are
not willing to get the wax out of
their ears and to lay down their feet
and begin to rise up and confess Christ
in this awful hour.
Confess Him in your business life.
Confess Him in your social life.
Confess Him in your church life.
Confess Him in your home life.
It's better nothing.
For if the Scripture teaches anything, it dead
sure teaches that on that bloody cross, Jesus
Christ bought the right and He exercises it
in everybody that falls on the wayside of
it.
He bought the right to be the absolute
dictator and ruler and master and Lord of
everything that rise and reign.
It's no small thing then there was to
face this question.
How can I confess Christ so He won't
deny me, but we keep on with what
we call salvation in Christian that denies Him
His Lordship in our finances.
We're denying Him now.
You talk about the death of God movement.
Every one of us mothers and fathers that
have been asleep and turned our children over
to a godless state.
We're saying God's dead.
He doesn't have the right to control the
education of our children.
You read the other day, did you?
They're raising the salaries of the congressman, the
president, everybody.
You know why they're doing that?
Because the outgoing administration knows we're headed for
the awfulest inflation where your dollar ain't going
to be worth a penny.
Huh?
What's all that about?
Because we haven't preached Christ as Lord.
He's been the nicest little fellow by the
past.
This little Jesus we've been acquainted with couldn't
save a flea.
Save a flea!
For Christ demands all.
Demands all.
My Lord says you'd better be afraid of
God.
You'd better reverence God.
You'd better not be afraid of the folks
that can kill you.
I've been preaching a good bit, I expect,
while I'm here on the rule of Antichrist.
I believe it's already there.
Just raise your hand.
And I think this little, my religion's on
the way out, folks.
This little Sunday morning religion that doesn't make
Christ Lord of our home life and our
bodies and our social life and our finances
and our children and our government and everything.
Yeah!
How can I confess Christ?
It'll not do to talk a good Bible.
It's not a Bible, any sign that's living
to be.
But there is one thing the Bible tells
about that's dead sure so.
This world was destroyed by flood.
And they say there's at least 3 billion,
3 billion people.
Every one of them except 8 people were
destroyed.
And there was just one man alive on
the face of the earth that was straight
before God in his sex life.
That was Noah.
Bible says Noah found grace in the sight
of the Lord.
And what it means is the next verse
says he was perfect in his generations.
The rest of mankind were going to be
sent to hell.
God was telling them, I'm going to get
rid of them, wipe them off the face
of the earth and start all over again.
Because of the same sin that is behind
the moral degradation and the spiritual collapse of
America today.
And that's sex perversion.
Now Noah lived in a day like that.
Young man, this is something solid.
God came to Noah and said, Noah, judgment's
coming.
The scriptures say by faith.
Noah being warned of God of things not
seen as yet.
God said, judgment's coming.
We know now the flood.
In other words, God said, I'm going to
deliver this out to you.
No sign of it.
Couldn't see it.
All over the earth.
Noah had to go by with God's word.
And the most solemn thing I faced this
morning I've been trying to be a preacher
43 years.
The last 37 I've been going from one
little congregation to another.
I'm 64 years old.
I'm not exactly a novice.
But I speak to you now and tell
you the most crushing burden any human being
can ever bear is the burden of living
in a generation that doesn't believe a word
of this word.
You are clean to believe.
God knows what a burden it is to
live every day of your life amongst your
neighbors and your church members and the folks
you work for and you believe that every
step men take is one step nearer the
awful consuming judgment of God.
And if I talk to them, they don't
believe a word.
I, in the name of God, cannot confess
Christ in a generation that don't give a
hoot whether he died or not.
In a generation that don't believe in God.
In a generation that if you talk to
them about the judgment of God, they don't
know what on God's earth you're talking about.
And you believe it!
And the fire burns within that old bill.
He's headed straight for the judgment.
There's no sign he's headed straight for the
judgment but he don't believe it.
And I do.
My brother, that's the burden.
And here's old Noah.
He lived in exactly that generation.
And you believe what got ya.
He believed in an act that he moved
by faith Noah being warned of God of
things not yet seen.
He scared it.
He began to run scared.
You know what he did?
He went and bought him a hammer and
some lumber and some nails and he started
tacking away.
What did he do?
Bailed in the place.
What's the purpose of the place?
To provide safety for everybody inside and condemn
everybody outside.
That's the gospel.
That's purpose.
In here, deliverance from the wrath to come.
Outside of here, no hope.
No hope.
And old Noah bleeds the death that is
coming.
He believed that people needed to escape it.
He believed that there ought to be a
way of escape.
And so he spent his life doing two
things.
Preaching righteousness and preparing an ark.
That's how you'd witness a confession in any
day.
Running scared.
His life was limited I know it's foolish
to claim to be a Christian unless you
devote your life to just two things.
The proclamation of the holy character of God
and his righteous demands and commands.
And then pointing and running to listen to
the only place of escape.
That's what Noah did.
He ran scared.
He's all excited.
He believed something.
He believed that God was going to bring
death on men and women.
He couldn't see it.
But he believed it.
I recognize two, three, four of them in
your faces.
Last June I was over in the Milldale
Conference, the blessed place.
And I had the honor of Brother Jimmy
asking me who he thought he ought to
bring this next year.
It would be a blessing to the people
who come to that conference.
I think now it's all settled.
And I asked him, I said, why don't
you get Leonard Ravenhill?
He's a holiness preacher from the other side
of the water.
I know that I believe he's coming.
Leonard Ravenhill said some of these days some
little humble believer listen to this now.
Go and pick up the Bible and read
it and believe it.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could believe
it?
Not argue about it, just believe it.
Huh?
And he said that little simple believer going
to make the rest of us folks ashamed
of ourselves.
I'm familiar with these people.
Oh, I'm fond of men that I believe
the Bible from cover to cover but they
ain't never looked inside.
See what I mean?
And I'm also familiar with the fact that
this man believes only what he obeys.
I just believe what I put into practice.
Old Noah.
God said judgment's coming.
He believes.
Whew!
Old Pharaoh didn't have a converse but tell
you what he did.
He minded God.
I tell you what he did.
He prepared a place of safety and he
warned men of judgment to come.
That's about as far as you can do,
but I don't know how we, all this
tomfool business about how many people we want
to crush.
I know that has some meaning and we
can weep and mourn and pray and everything
else but not a one of us can
win in the body of Christ.
All we can do is witness to him
and pray for him and preach to him
and weep over them but we can't act
for him.
And old Noah for 120 years as he
hammered away on that ark while the long
suffering of God waited.
And he preached.
And nobody believed him.
And this thing was there.
Anybody that's preaching righteousness today in the church
that's standing for him.
And saying that the only hope is to
get in the ark.
Nobody must listen to you either if you
do it.
But it's not our business whether we're Christian
or not.
You just got one business and that's to
confess Christ.
You hear me?
That's right.
But that means they don't burn you at
the stake.
You just got one job.
Not to get burned at the stake but
to confess Christ.
You know him.
He'll deny you.
You deny him.
God knows this is serious.
All Noah is called upon to do in
his day is the same thing we are
called upon to do.
Confess Christ.
When you're going to ask for her it's
the only hope.
That's the coming judgment.
The only place of faith to be in
here.
That's confession.
He said all my hope and faith is
here.
This will be the only place of faith.
And there will still be judgment.
That's confessing Christ.
That's not saying that Christ is a nice
fella.
That's not saying that he's maybe a little
better than Buddha.
That's not saying that he's one of the
ways.
That's saying he's there.
He has no rivals.
It's Christ that's judgment.
Confessing Christ.
Move with faith.
In your own spirit.
Second way.
This step everywhere else.
Now so, how deep this language sounds to
me.
I know it's true for me.
This is a battle.
Listen to me.
It's to have the conviction of the coming
of the judgment of God.
After you believe that it's in Christ or
the awful wrath of judgment of God for
the best man that ever lived.
You'll be so overwhelmed with that conviction that
we move out to a new God.
Whatever it costs.
To warn men that's the night of this
hour.
Under God, folks, it's time to quit time
to get somebody to take Jesus.
They don't want him.
They don't have any need of him.
Under God, it's time to proclaim him and
all of the glory of his passion and
the perfection of his voice and warn this
generation with tears.
It's Christ or the judgment of God.
Suffer me.
Repeat these three minutes.
Maybe I'm getting what I'm trying to say
this way.
Adolf Eichmann, that man who worked under Adolf
Hitler and had charge of the burning of
six million Jews and using the ashes of
their bodies bodies to make soap to wash
the bodies of the German army.
Six million Jews.
And when they finally caught him, you know,
and brought him into Israel and tried him,
you read about him.
Some Christian worker on the hour he did
it that he got in Eichmann's desk fell.
Asked him to come down to the house
to witness the story.
And he didn't go anywhere.
Adolf Eichmann to do was a typical Jew.
He said he wasn't afraid to meet God.
That he didn't need Jesus.
This personal worker put Christ to him as
a mediator.
He quoted the Scripture where he was one
mediator between God and man.
The man Christ to him.
That man knew the Danishman some day to
storm the kingdom and to stroke and rash
and rash of God's holy law.
Mr. Eichmann said, I don't need the Jesus.
I don't need a mediator.
I'm all right.
And he died that way.
Ladies and gentlemen, if I had just
one sermon to preach and I could get
out some public preach the people of the
world would pass by and I was the
only preacher on God's earth.
And the only assignment the people would ever
have would be to pass me by.
I'll tell you what I'd do.
I'd get out there and I'd lift up
my hands and I'd lift up my voice
and I'd say, Stop people!
You are headed for a meeting with the
holy law of God.
There is one thing that no human being
will escape.
Every human being has got to deal with
God's holy law.
I've got to be able to come up
to face God whose will and His will
His demands His commands His requirements are expressed
in His law.
No man is going to be judged by
what he did about Jesus.
He's not going to be judged.
He's done about God's holy law.
Here I come to the judgment.
According to this book everybody's going to come.
Some of the men of sin have been
judged before and others least till the time
of judgment.
But there's one thing God's judgment.
God's Father.
He's going to just lie before the judgment.
He's going to have to deal with God's
holy law.
God's holy law will take the best human
being in the world and tear it to
pieces like sanctioned to fly and pull him
apart.
Oh!
I say, women, women.
Don't go.
Don't keep on taking another step.
You're headed right back into the Holy Lord.
Anybody that tries to deal with it in
your own strength it will tear you to
pieces.
It will tear you to pieces.
Spend your life never looking at yourself in
God's mirror.
God's been good.
He's fixed it so any human being can
get a look at himself.
See yourself as God's Savior.
See what God requires of you.
See what God will not.
You just won't ignore it.
The law is going to be satisfied.
It's going to be vindicated in you no
matter what you do.
You take a look in that mirror and
you do one thing and you'll kiss God
and go into hell.
Or you'll fall and say, oh my God
is there any hope for me?
And somebody comes along and tells you about
the one mediator that'll be good news.
Yes?
There's always a law God can be dealt
with in Jesus Christ.
All of this wrath falls
on Jesus.
I need him as my mediator.
I need him as my substitute.
If it won't hurt him to deal with
the law in my stead I'm going to
have to deal with it in my strength.
And that'll be eternal hell for every human
being.
Everybody.
You need a mediator.
And I am Christ Jesus.
That's the gospel.
My only hope.
My only plea.
Christ Jesus, darling.
And he died for me.
That's my faith.