What I feel telling tonight is the book
of the revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ,
chapter 14.
Chapter 14.
I believe the truth is vital.
I would not sneer at hard study to
come to truth.
I believe the old Puritan, whoever it was,
said the only way to study the Bible
is on your knees.
He didn't mean that, I suppose, physically, it
wouldn't hurt.
But it means the only way to study
the Bible is to study it prostrate as
a little child, knowing that the only part
of the Bible you're able to believe is
what you practice, and that Christ is known
only in discipleship, and that Christ can be
laid hold of only in the truth of
him.
I believe truth is important.
But I do not know all truth, I
know in part.
I believe that truth in season, we may
ask God to confirm it.
I do not sneer at truth.
But there is just one great facet of
the word of God that I'll fight you
about, and that is the person and work
of Christ.
All else I'm still learning.
I believe I have come to a position
that I'll hold for eternity about who Jesus
Christ is and what he actually did and
what he's doing now.
With Martin Luther, who said that no man
was a friend of Christ, who didn't stand
up and be counted in that aspect of
truth that was under most attack in his
generation.
I have given my life in the controversy
over the gospel, and I won't seek tonight
this prefacing word, that I believe there is
one gospel, but that it has a different
thrust in times of great crisis, chaos.
And whether my theology is straight tonight, I
do not know.
But I want you to listen to me.
I believe that these are the days when
the religious world, Christendom, is being prepared by
good men, by sincere men.
I believe they, with their perversion of the
gospel, are preparing the so-called Christian world
to welcome with open arms him of whom
my Lord spoke when he said in John
5, I am come in my Father's name,
and you receive me not.
If another shall come in his own name,
him you shall receive.
I believe that the day you are seeking
to claim to be a child of God,
seeking to shoulder the tremendous responsibility of coating
your end of the blanket for a fight
for the recovery of the gospel for this
hour, I believe with all of my heart
that our gospel today must challenge easygoing
religion, and must come with God-anointed authority
and the man absolutely committal to the Christ
of God.
I won't try to preach to you tonight
priceless, hoping most of you, many of you,
are children of God.
I encourage, if I may, and instruct you
if need be, on what to say when
you get a chance at somebody living in
this anti-Christ spiritual age.
I think that gospel is found in the
book of Revelation, in the 14th chapter, and
I begin reading with the 6th verse.
And I saw another angel fly in the
midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel, to
preach unto them that dwell on the earth,
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue,
and people.
And here's what the message is.
What is this everlasting gospel set in the
midst of an earth, at that time under
the sway of anti-Christ?
Revelation 13 has been talking about him.
Here is the movement and the message of
God.
For an hour men are to hear from
heaven what God calls good news.
This gospel has three things to say.
Fear God, that's number one, and give glory
to him, number two, for the hour of
his judgment has come, and worship him that
made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and
the fountains of water.
Fear God, give glory to him, worship him,
not the one who shall set himself up
as God, but the one who made heaven,
and earth, and the sea, the creator, and
the fountains of water.
There follows another angel saying, Babylon is fallen,
that great city, because she made all nations
drunk, drink of the wine of the wrath
of her fornication.
The third angel followed, saying with a loud
voice, If any man worship the beast and
his image, and receive his mark in his
forehead or in his hand, that same man
shall drink of the wine of the wrath
of God, which is poured out without mixture
into the cup of his indignation, that man
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in
the presence of the holy angel, and in
the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke
of that torment ascendeth up forever and ever,
and they have no rest day nor night,
who worship the beast and his image, and
who receiveth the mark of his name.
Here is the patience of the saints, here
are they that keep the commandments of God,
and the faith of Jesus.
Bishop Sheen, who is without doubt the most
evangelistic voice of the Roman Church, if that
can be said at all, his own record
is saying that the biggest achievement of Antichrist
in our day is to convince us he's
not here, to convince us he's not here.
Whether you're prepared to believe it or not,
just bet you nearly a nickel it's so,
that we've come to the days when the
greatest enemies of the gospel, under God's son,
are preachers and church people.
Antichrist is here.
A brand of gospel with some truth in
it, mixed with a lot of error, has
been Satan's way of opposing God and his
Christ since the day when the mystery of
iniquity began to roll.
The fact of everything that's wrong in our
homes, our church, our nation, our state, our
city, our lives, is faith in a gospel
that is not God's gospel.
And I wish we didn't have so many
convictions.
Most of us fundamentalists, that's a good word,
I don't like it, have got a pocket
full of convictions, and the devil's tickled to
death with her.
Because as long as he can get a
spray in our gospel gun to where it
shoots everywhere and hits nobody and makes no
demands and changes no lives and transforms no
spirit, he's tickled to death.
For it is written in the word of
God that Satan himself is transformed into an
angel, a messenger of life.
And it is tremendously significant that perhaps 90
percent of our preaching and witness and everything
else is trying to help Satan make the
Garden of Eden here on this world and
bypass the cross of Christ.
For it says that Satan has some people
that when he's delegated the task of doing
the job that he wants done as a
messenger of life, says his ministers, ministers have
been transformed into ministers of righteousness, they're trying
to get everybody to be good, bypass the
cross of Christ.
He's succeeding, you know, my folks.
But I wish I knew how for my
own self and say that just, and everybody
listen to me, to say to it that
the Church was never called to shoot at
every jackrabbit in the cotton patch and to
waste our ammunition.
And that you and I are living in
a day when we're going to have to
quit shooting at everything and come to the
defense of the gospel for this hour.
For there's but one thing between the eternities
that God Almighty says has power in it
to save, and that's the gospel.
The gospel.
What is the gospel for this awful hour?
When the Apostle John was writing here, he
could already, in the Bible, he could already
say, little children, you've heard that antichrist shall
come.
And there are already many little antichrists.
My Lord said that antichrist, little antichrist, and
people come and say, here I am, I'm
Christ, and so forth.
They'd have such power they'd deceive the elect
if possible.
I don't know whether the Bible teaches there
is to be a man called the antichrist.
I think it does.
Good God, the men say, Brother Barnabas, this
is the system.
I don't know enough to argue.
Whichever it is, whether it's an actual man,
Satan's man, as he seems to be described
in the 13th Revelation, look at it, I'm
inclined to believe that is so.
But it doesn't make any difference whether he's
a man or this is a gigantic system.
It's on its way.
Jean Dixon, I'm not capable of deciding anything
about her, but she says that in a
dream she has seen that little baby who
is to be the one who will be
received by the so-called Christian world, who
under his influence shall gladly and willingly worship
Satan through him.
I don't know.
But I know this.
I know this, that for nearly 1900 years,
what we call Christianity has been building up
and building up and marching towards the time
when this world, under the influence of a
man or a system, religious as all get
out with deceptive powers that we little dream
of, will cause the peoples of this earth
to bow down at the throne of Satan.
He tried to get my Lord to bed
when he is here, and he failed.
But he never has taken a vacation till
this good hour.
He's still got in mind what the scriptures
speak about him in Isaiah, I will ascend
to the throne.
And he's not spraying his shots.
That's the only thing he's still trying to
do.
He hasn't given up.
And here's the battle that we're in tonight.
The very spirit of the age is anti
-Christian, anti-Christ.
And there is a spot of ground on
this earth today that isn't hostile territory.
And there isn't a church building where the
saints meet together to go out to represent
Christ that isn't set down in a pagan
plan.
It ain't in the territory.
I don't believe that the devil minds all
of our efforts to improve man.
If we just get them to bypass the
utter necessity of that bloody tree upon which
the Son of God hung his son.
In the 13th chapter of the book of
Revelation we're told that when this man or
this system, whichever it is, you have your
own belief about it, it'll get the same
job done.
In the verse 7 of the 13th chapter
we're told that he's going to make war
with the saints.
He's going to make war with the saints.
What did that say?
He's going to make war with the saints.
When I go to church preaching, I believe
he's going to make war with the saints.
We'd better get in this battle next.
You better quit criticizing that person that went
wrong morally the other day.
Chances are you will too because Satan is
making war on the saints today and we're
still defending ourselves with a little glass water.
He knows we're in a war.
He knows.
You better quit criticizing that fella that's a
shipwreck to the faith.
Chances are you'll be put over in the
ditch tomorrow because we don't face up to
the fact that I don't know how bad
it's going to be tomorrow, but up to
now there's a war going on and since
Jesus, Satan can't get his hands on Christ,
he's going to put every saint of God
out of business if he can.
He really is.
Power was given him over all kindreds and
tongues and nations.
He's going to have such power over the
people that all that dwell have their roots
upon the earth.
Everybody that ain't living in a tent, please
God, with the stakes driven down pretty loosely,
knowing that he's a stranger and a fool
and he's not forever in this earth.
And don't sell his soul for a mass
of pottage.
Sell out his birthright as did Esau.
All those who let their roots down in
today's earth and to go to hell to
pay for their gadgets of luxury.
Hear me, every last one of them who
are selling their hopes of eternity, some of
them for ten cents a ounce, for the
gratification of the lust of the flesh.
Every last one of them are going to
wind up in the camp of people who
fall down on their knees and worship, worship
Satan.
And we're told that he's going to go
around marking people and he's going to fix
it just about that way now to where
only God knows how this creature will put
his arms around any human being now that
has to make a living and bring in
bread for his family in the ungodly labor
and business world in which we live, whose
only God is the almighty dollar.
And God only knows, God only knows how
hard any human being that has to wrestle
bread in this awful hour out of this
ungodly atmosphere, how you need to fight for
your soul.
I tell you something, you men, if you
haven't done it, you're going to find out.
And you're not going to have to be
long about it when God put a curse
on man, on the woman, pain and childbearing,
and on the man that he has to
earn his living to the spread of his
power.
Brother, I tell you, you're going to have
to do some sitting now if you want
to live in this day and wind up
in heaven because the whole spirit of this
outfit is under the very breath of hell
itself.
He's going to mark you so he can't
get a job, nothing to eat.
It won't be long.
Don't you know that spirit's already here?
Don't you know that?
Where's any gospel for such an hour as
this?
Yes, fear God, not
anti-Christ.
Reverence God, not the spirit of this hour.
Have a holy fear.
Your granddaddy knew something about of a Christ.
Holy God.
Now, is there going to be any good
news in that when it's in the atmosphere
of this old spirit that has power over
all people as well on the earth?
Fear him, and give glory to him, and
worship him.
Not the popular God of Christendom today, but
the creator and sustainer of mankind.
Fear the only God there is.
Worship him.
Give him glory.
In any time, or in any time of
chaos or crisis, when the ends of the
earth are converging as they are today, the
first time a man hears the gospel in
such a day as gospel, he'll be saved.
But in the atmosphere of this hour, the
gospel with its barbed wire today is not
good news to people.
Now, your views of the last things may
keep you from this.
I hope not.
But I welcome this hour.
I hope it's going to be ten times
worse tomorrow than it is today, because I
believe the only hope for this generation is
for God to open the windows of heaven
and pour out such judgment as we've never
dreamed of.
I'll tell you something else about my theology,
and I think I'm right here.
I think Antichrist is going to be used
of God to separate the men from the
boys.
And I know the Bible teaches that God
is a separating God.
And I'm glad to see the tide rolling
from every direction.
I'm praying to what little prayer life I
know anything about, that the tide will rise
higher!
Until men and women will quit making a
joke out of the high and holy things
of the gospel.
Until we shall have once more a band
of faith that all hell can't snuff out,
and will set the joy bells ringing in
the hearts of God's people as they come
under the lash of the very forces of
hell.
It'd be good.
I even go as far as don't throw
me out.
I'm kind of hoping that God will be
merciful enough to America to let communism take
us over.
I think we'd find out before any of
us know the Lord.
I read a book, it's called the Bible,
where it talks about a God who makes
the wickedness of men to praise him.
And I read about a God who used
a wicked king by the name of Cyrus
to bring the awful lash of destruction and
judgment.
But it's in the mercy of God.
I think under God, that this soft generation
of people that have been taught to believe
that it's the purpose of God, then the
malicious people go through any hill on this
earth.
I don't believe a word of it.
Somebody said to me the other day, you
believe in the church going through the first
hundred years of the church, they went through
something, brother.
I'll tell you what.
They poured them in oil and poured out
their tongues and everything else.
And we put this outfit around here.
The Christian is the same.
You're pulling the petals out of the rose
bush and saying you have to go up
there.
I'm telling you right now, honey, you got
to get your spurs on.
It ain't going to be that much longer.
You talk about God not going to let
all hell catch up with his people.
Tell me what it was when they burned
him at the stake in England.
Tell me what our Baptist forefathers were again
when they ground them and sliced their meat
off of their bodies and each at a
time and pull their tongues out and pull
their fingernails out and dehumanize them and burn
them with the blood of men and women.
And the only crime they were guilty of
was the crime of being followers of the
Lamb.
I kind of believe it did better to
have some hell on this earth than to
scoop the wrath of God at the judgment.
And to have it as easy as we
want it down here and feel the torments,
experience our smoke rising up forever.
What will the gospel demand of people in
an hour like this?
Just three things.
It will demand that men and women come
utterly under the authority of King Jesus.
We talk about the good old days.
I don't know whether it's a good or
not, so they get bad all of a
sudden.
When they said it was easy to get
saved and easy to be a Christian and
all of that, tell me right now, it
ain't easy now.
It will affect your business, it will affect
your job, it will affect your home life,
it will affect your physical condition, it will
affect your mind, it will affect your emotions.
Oh my soul, you talk about snatching people
out of the fire, out of the fire
of the anti-Christian atmosphere of this day
is red hot.
And there'll be some ties severed and some
households torn all to pieces and some philosophers
go down the gutter.
If men in this awful atmosphere are unable
to get out of the fire of the
Holy Ghost, to make wholesale or to commit
all of themselves to the authority of Jesus
Christ, well you can't tell me that my
Lord will be satisfied with less authority over
his subjects than Satan's going to have through
his man over everybody that's got their roots
growing in this earth.
Satan's man's going to have authority.
It's going to be given him all the
people who dwell in this earth.
And my Lord Jesus Christ's gospel now comes
with the glorious truth of a dying risen
ascended all-powerful Lord who comes and demands
and will settle for nothing less than total
commitment to his sovereign rule.
That's the message of the gospel.
What demands does God in the gospel make
today?
For I remind you that the gospel is
not simply the announcement of some facts, it's
that, that the gospel brings its own demand,
and the gospel brings its own command, and
the gospel brings its own call.
For the gospel not only demand that oh
I'll find the gospel for such an hour
as this, for brother it's all out of
nothing now.
Not this Sunday morning stuff now that's not
going to be worth a dime.
It's all out of nothing!
The lions are gone!
And the gospel coming with a demand that
men and women lovingly, willingly worship him on
the throne.
Long since I came to know you boys
and girls, listen to me, I love you.
Listen to me.
You mothers and fathers, listen to me.
All this religious perfection and crying a little
bit, but listen to me, listen to me.
A man ain't saved till he's awfully glad
that Christ is in utter authority on the
throne.
A man isn't saved until he can love
and worship him in the seat of absolute
authority over your life.
My Lord's not going to be content with
lip service.
The gospel demands today that God shall mark
you.
Satan is going to mark his people that
dwell on the earth.
They laugh at me in Winston-Salem, my
phone number, the last three numbers of it,
666.
They call me the mark of the beast,
whatever that means.
It means something.
I expect they knew, scarce to death, was
being marked by it now, the spirit of
hostility to the holy gospel.
I just found one mark in the New
Testament that my Lord marks his people with.
And I read where he loved us and
gave himself promise that he might redeem us
from all iniquity and purify unto himself a
peculiar people.
And the thing that makes them peculiar is
that they stand out with the red heart
after good works, zealous of good works.
We talk a pretty good ballgame, but show
me somebody who is running after good works.
That's the mark my Lord demands.
And the choice men have is the same
they've always had, only it's getting a whole
lot hotter now.
There has not been a time since my
Lord went back to glory when the earth
wasn't filled with little Christ preparing, little antichrist
preparing for him who shall come.
There has never been a day that hadn't
had the impact of this awful antichrist spirit.
But it's getting hotter and hotter all the
time.
And there has never been a time when
men could have two gods at the same
time and worship Satan and God at the
same time.
But that crisis is getting closer all the
time to where men are going to make
their decisions.
Look at the decision a man will have
to make when the spirit or system of
antichrist is fully developed, if it isn't now,
to sin.
He can have one or two choices.
He can come under the authority of antichrist,
he can worship him, he can surrender, take
his mark upon him.
But if he does that, he will drink
of the wrath of God.
Why?
He can fear God and give him glory
and worship him and come under the wrath
of antichrist.
It's never been any different.
A man can't have the spirit of this
age and Christ at the same time.
He can't with his lips praise the Lord
and with his life put his roots down
in the spirit of this hour at the
same time.
There's never been a time when a man
didn't have to choose which spirit you follow,
which gods you worship.
There's never been a time, and it's going
to be worse tomorrow, when a man could
have God in Christ and the blessings of
his work in person, without being utterly divorced
from the spirit of this age.
There's never been a time, and it will
be worse and feel it more, when a
man or a woman could make this decision
without facing how much it will cost you.
My Lord told people what it costs, and
in language that's as plain as it can
be.
My Lord said, Mister, I'll tell you how
much it'll cost you to be under the
blood, to be secured.
Just get out your little piece of paper
there, young man, and a pencil, and sign
your life away.
That's all it costs to get to Jesus.
Just sign your life away.
That's all.
I believe that this is the gospel for
this hour today.
I believe that his path for religious faith
is going to wind up worshiping Satan.
I believe only men and women who sign
their lives away.
You can't kill them, they're already dead.
You can't rob them of the property, they
ain't got none.
They sign their lives away.
I believe the scripture teaches that a man
who's a Christian is a martyr to be.
When my Lord said, if any man will
come after me, let him be myself, sign
your life away, take up your cross, that's
death!
And I believe those people are going to
be under the blood, safe and secure.
Some years ago, I was in the state
of Kansas in meetings, and I'd been waiting
home a long time.
But I phoned my wife in Winston-Salem,
said, Honey, I'm going to be a day
late.
I'm going by Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we lived
for 14 years before we moved to North
Carolina.
I said, I'm tired.
I'm about halfway under the juniper tree.
I need somebody to cheer me up and
encourage me.
Get me old bones, rather than a set
of spiritual blood flowing through my veins.
I went by Tulsa, Oklahoma, and looked up
a little Jewish woman.
About 12 years before I made this visit
on her, I got acquainted with her.
She's a missionary and a church minister right
now in a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
She's the mother of two children, but she
hadn't seen them in many years now.
She had a husband, but she hadn't seen
him in many years now.
She had a mother and a father, but
she hadn't seen them in many years.
I remember the night.
I got my raincoat, my hat cover, and
my big old boots, and managed to wade
to my car.
There had come a downpour in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
and I was preaching in the church.
I struggled through that awful downpour, water running
through the streets to get to the church.
I thought maybe I'd be the only one
there, but we had a little breath of
revival, and the church was packed in it.
I went in to the vestibule to disengage
myself from my clothes.
Two blessed women were standing there waiting.
They had a message for me.
When I got my wet clothes off and
started going off to them, the two women
said, Brother Barnard, tonight's the night, tonight's the
night.
I said, She's here, Brother Barnard, she's here.
And she was.
Through some miracle of God's providence, these precious
women had won the friendship of the wife
of the leading banker in that city, a
young Jew, very wealthy.
And they had so been used of God
that they'd been bringing that Jewish woman to
the meetings night after night after night.
And they'd been telling me every day how
the battle was going.
And that night they said, This is the
night, Brother Barnard.
They said today it came to a crisis.
Her mother and father told her that if
she in Jewish language, they use language like
this, her mother and father said, Daughter, if
you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no
longer be our daughter.
Her husband had told her that day, If
you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no
longer be my wife, and I'll not let
you see the children again.
And they meant it.
They meant it.
And in spite of that, that little Jewish
woman waited through the rain.
She was there.
And I preached that night, and we stood
and began to sing.
I saw the Jewish woman take her glasses
off and wipe her eyes.
And directly she took her glasses off, and
with a handkerchief wiped her eyes.
And directly with a great sob, she came
running.
She wasn't indiscreet.
She came running, and she put her arms
around me, put her head on my shoulder,
and sobbed.
And then when the sobs had gone away,
she said, Preacher, I surrender to Jesus.
To that Jesus she'd been taught from childhood
was the bastard son of a fallen woman.
I surrender to Jesus.
When we stood to welcome the folks who'd
come, I put my hand on her shoulder
and called attention to the congregation, to an
old Isaiah, what is it, 3-9?
Tells she's a Jewish.
And I said, this little woman comes tonight
to surrender to Jesus Christ.
She knows it's going to cost her mother
and father, going to cost her her children,
going to cost her her husband, going to
cost her her home.
But she comes to Jesus to surrender.
Two days later, I drove by.
I didn't go in.
They had a tremendous funeral in that city.
They brought an expensive casket out of a
hearse to the Jewish synagogue and had the
funeral of that woman.
They
took
that her husband was when they met as
he got a divorce from her.
And at the time I went to see
her, she'd not seen her precious children, her
mother and father, or her husband for years.
And I went to see her because I
needed her.
She's the happiest person I've ever known.
Unless God, just to be in her presence,
would lift you up.
Never a murmur, just joy.
She found him precious.
All it cost her was everything.
But bless God, he's worth it.
He's worth it.