Rolfe Barnard emphasizes the profound impact of heart faith in divine election, illustrating how true understanding of God's grace leads to a transformative experience rather than mere doctrinal knowledge. He critiques the complacency of modern churchgoers who mistake privilege for responsibility, urging believers to recognize the necessity of a personal encounter with Christ for genuine salvation. Barnard draws on the Apostle Paul's conversion as a model of how divine election should inspire boldness, amazement, and a passion for evangelism, rather than harshness or self-righteousness. He warns against the dangers of intellectualism in faith, advocating for a heartfelt relationship with God that compels believers to share the gospel with others. Ultimately, Barnard calls for a return to the awe and wonder of God's grace that should characterize every Christian's life.

One of the brethren took us over to the restaurant adjacent to the campus of Antioch College. We didn't get in. There were many other fools over there ahead of us. We never got off the campus. Those beatniks and hippies thought the pastor had come home. They rushed up to him and said, Where have you been? We've been missing you lately. But we rescued him and brought him back. Now tonight, I want to... Well, you turn to the book of Galatians, if you will. Chapter 1. And I'm going to do something I hope it's what I ought to do. So I'm going to speak on the same subject tonight and tomorrow night and Tuesday night. I know some of you are not like preachers. You have to make an honest living. You can't be here, but for some reason I'm led in this direction. Tonight, I want to speak on four results of hard faith in divine election. And tomorrow night, I want to speak on the call of God in divine election. And Tuesday night, God willing, speak on what is authentic faith. The response that God demands of men to his election of grace. I do not often get to just expound the Bible. I've spent my life calling mourners. Pastor suggested I could find the mind of the Lord. So I'm going to play like I'm a teacher a little while for a few nights. If I strike fire, I'll keep on. If I don't, I'll change courses. Now, he used to go after my father's cousin out in Alabama. I'm not mad at you. I don't criticize you. If you weren't born in Alabama, you probably couldn't help it. But I was. I've been greatly blessed. And I heard of a man that said he was born in Arkansas. But as soon as he got old enough and his daddy told him he was born in Arkansas, he ran away from home and moved to Alabama. Any of you fugitives from Arkansas, you can take that. We used to go after a cousin who lived out in the country and engage in a very delightful, lazy man's sport. All day before we'd get out that night in preparation for it, our cousin would have a colored boy ride around, all around the hills and nooks and crannies, dragging a fox hide. And then that night we'd set the hounds fox hunting. We'd sit on the porch, and the cousin would tell us exactly what was going on at any given time for about three hours while those dogs chased what they thought was a fox. But it's just the smell of it. The old ring's got the trail now. Now they've lost it. He could tell by the bark. There's not much use of shooting down a hole if they're not in a rabbit's nest or in a fox's. I'd like to have you keep in mind in the three messages tonight and tomorrow night and Tuesday night that the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on the human side because a nation of people, through their leaders, had a perverted conception of God's elected race. Now let me repeat it. The New Testament is crystal clear that the reason on the human side that the Lord Jesus, instead of being received with open arms, was crucified on a tree was because some people read their Bibles wrongly on the doctrine of election. I can remember when mine was the only voice, what we called the old southern states, that dared to mention this subject. I can still remember some of the furor among Baptists, pastors, and people about the very mention of God's elected race. But now the times have changed and everybody in America is a brave believer in God's election. We are God's chosen people, America is, the greatest Christian criminal nation this side of hell or heaven. And the reason you can't get a word in edgewise with that neighbor of yours to whom you seek to give a verbal witness is because he considers himself to be one of God's own. That's right. And the tragedy of the hour fresh is that church life and church people in America have fallen into the same ditch as did the Jews that crucified Christ. And Christ now is being crucified in the church buildings of America. The greatest enemies of the gospel of Christ are church people today. And it all can be traced to the fact that they have a perverted view of God's elected race. Everybody's all right now. And we succeeded in spawning in America a brand of Christianity so called that rejoices in privilege but shuns responsibility. And I walk from that standpoint to speak for three nights in this passage of scripture in the first chapter of the book of Galatians. And beginning at verse 6 of this first chapter, the man about whom we spoke this morning, the greatest miracle since Pentecost, since the resurrection of Christ rather, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, the one conversion that meant more to the progress of the gospel and the establishment of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ and holy bonds through one man. We spoke about the fact that this morning that he got his doctrine of the resurrection from his experience with the living Lord. He got his doctrine of the atonement from his experience on the road to Damascus. He got his doctrine of who Christ is. He's Lord from his experience. Tonight, he got his doctrine of election not from studying books on theology, which we've had to do, but by tracing the elements of his experience with the living God right back to God himself. Now, you and I have to wrestle here. I have seen more young preachers literally ruined over the doctrine of election than any other thing in the Bible. I've seen young men buy them some books on theology. They're good, but none of them are complete and something wrong with all of them. And it has made them harsh and almost cruel. And it has made them, somebody said, people who are more interested in being sound in doctrine than Christian in life. I have had the privilege of going up and down America, screaming with every bit of the passion there is in my wicked soul against the deadness and the smugness of the average church that claims to believe in divine election, in their self-satisfaction at being right, and their ability to sleep well while the world rocks on its road to hell without ever being blocked by the same kind of passion that we'd have if we understood God's elective grace as it is in the Bible. So let's read the account that Saul gives of his election and salvation and try to profit by being challenged afresh tonight by some things that took place in his life as a result of this experience being called by God's grace. He says in verse 6, I marvel that ye shall soon remove from him that calls you into the grace of Christ. That'll be my text tomorrow night. Unto another gospel, which of course is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be damned, let him be accursed. As we said before, and say it again, if any preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the bond-slave of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. I didn't learn it out of a book. I didn't learn it in school. That kind of learning will ruin you. It just don't come that way. It comes by an experience with the living Lord and no other way. I wasn't taught it, can't be taught. Did you realize that churches are full today if people have been taught the plan of salvation? Sounds pretty good, two and two makes four. Bang, I'm a saved person. But it doesn't come that way. It doesn't come that way. An unsaved man cannot be taught. His only hope is that Christ will make himself real, confront the sinner with himself. You can preach till you're blue in the face and witness till you're blue in the face and nobody will ever see himself a vile sinner in desperate need except as he's brought into the presence of the Son of the Living God. That's revelation. We call ourselves fundamentalists. You better listen to old man Barnard. We're filling hell with our converts because we neglect the fact that the gospel comes by revelation, not by education, or not as a matter of fact, that unless an individual in the gospel that the living Lord leaps up from the pages of the Bible in the power of the Holy Spirit and makes Christ real to that person, there is no saving faith, none whatsoever. Now, I'm not particularly interested in your theory of the atonement or your theory of the five points of Calvinism. I won't fuss with you, but I'm greatly interested in what I'm talking about now for this is the heart of the matter. Hell is going to be full of folks that believe in the five points of Calvinism. That's no good in itself. But the issue of this house, and it has been and it must continue to be, that men and women are changed in the new creation by faith, not in a doctrine or a creed or a series of doctrines or two and two makes four, but by faith in a person. They've met. He's touched them. By God's grace, they've touched him. Now, that's all the Calvinism I'm interested in. I wouldn't give you a dime for the name. It's just a copy and paste of man. We don't believe in that. But this is the issue. I preach, said Paul, a person whom I declare. That's the reason he said, My God, what Mama thought, what this church says it stands for, none of them are worth a dime, but your gospel. According to my gospel. Where'd you get it, Paul? I got it by meeting the one who is the gospel. That's right, folks. The difference in believing some things and having life can get you some nice belief by study, but you can't get life except by experience with the giver of life. He said, You know, you folks have heard of my manner of living, verse 13, in time past when I had religion, the Jews' religion, not Judaism, but the Jews' religion. Paul, that's because of my convictions and my beliefs. I persecuted beyond measure the church of God and wasted it. I was as serious and sincere as all get out. And I profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals and my own nation being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers, but when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me or to me, either one is all right, that I might preach Him among the nations. Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood and I didn't go up to Jerusalem to them which were apostle before me, but I went out into Arabia and returned again to Damascus and after three years, you and my cook, basking in the glory of having been visited by the God of the ages in Christ, being brought face to face with the Son of God. It took me three years to digest it and four things came out of it. I don't know whether I'm making it clear as much or not, but see, I'm trying to say this. The fact that you live in a nation where everybody is a Christian makes the question, is anybody a Christian, not a silly question. The fact that most of you have heard what you call the gospel since you're knee-high to a duck makes it not silly to warn you that the chances are you learn that two in two or four, bang, I'm saved and you're going to wind up in hell because it has been the exception, not the rule of every denomination Baptist included in America for the last hundred years to utterly ignore the truth that men are saved by God's revelation, not by man's reasoning or man's decision. Here's a man that experienced the hand of God upon him, power of God within him, and from his experience he was the Lord Jesus Christ or the two who fill up the pages of the New Testament with truths about God's divine election. There was warmth in it because he'd experienced. And when he'll be pleased to write, blessed hath there been the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. Anything he does will be all right, Paul said. Who has blessed? He wasn't working out a theory. He is trying to explain what he himself has experienced. And he'll tell us about how he's blessed us in the heavenlies with all blessings of the Spirit according that he has chosen us in him. And if we could get that in him, it would have raised the heartaches and the cruelty and the harshness that has been put up with this truth. It is in him, it is in Christ Jesus that God laid his hand on Saul of Tarsus. Not apart from him. I remember Brother Hill. He was a sensual man, a crazy man called Will. And you know who I'm talking about. He and I used to go over to the Piedmont section down in our country and hold little conferences, get preachers together. We'd try to expound some of the great truths of the Bible. Brother Hill had come from the state of Virginia One night we had a conference, fasted a week on God's elective grace, teaching the preachers. Brother Hill never missed a night. He drove a hundred miles and back every night for five nights. And we sold him on the doctrine. And so he went back to his church and he sat on his hands and rolled up his sleeves and he tried to pound that doctrine into his people. Well, there's Baptists. And they never had hearing till of that stuff except that it messed their heart shells, you know. And it is blasphemy. It is heresy. And they recognized it. And they should have because he didn't have sense enough coming out of the rain. You can't pound doctrine into people without making them worse off than they were before you started. Because the fellow that's got a hold of the truth now and that's all he's got, he's mean as the devil. I don't like to be around him because if you don't agree with him he'll bop your wand. I know I've been bopped. That's right. Well, the blessed fellow, you know, he'd come into this precious truth and I don't know whether you've ever come to see something that's been true a long time. You never had seen. You just went crazy over it. You couldn't talk about anything but that, you know. Amen? Well, his folks buffed him. And then the Lord began to deal with him. And while he was preaching, God put his hand on him and opened up his heart and showed him what I wish the Holy Spirit would be kind enough to do, the multiplied millions of honest and sincere church people in America that all they had was a little answer to a mathematical proposition that a man would be a fool to turn and call it salvation. The Spirit of God opened up the correctness of his heart and showed him he's a lost sinner while he's preaching the doctrines. And he got the way he'd preach on Sunday night and go home and close himself off in his study. Walked the floor and cried to God and asked God to have mercy upon him and save him but not to have to tell the church. And he said, Lord, if I get up there and confess that I'm a lost sinner, it will tear this church all to pieces. Oh, yeah. And he said the Lord kept him in hell for three solid weeks until he got up on Sunday morning and said instead of preaching this morning, I'm going to ask you to pray for me. Your pastor's a lost sinner. Well, that did make them mad. They said if he's lost, what about us? And the average fellow would rather go to hell than change his conviction. But you ought to hear that man preach now. He can take any of these harsh doctrines as we call them. He can preach on the doctrine of election, break your heart. I never will forget after the Lord saved me, got in his car, drove to where I was holding a meeting just to say one thing. Brother Barnard, I learned the doctrine. But then I experienced Christ. And I learned that anything short of hell is mercy. Anything short of hell is mercy. I'd love for you to try to shake that man now because he experienced the same thing that Saul of Tarsus experienced and as God knows so many of us need Through tracing his experience with the living God, he learned that God had done the saving, that he'd done it on purpose and it gave him confidence. I'm not a novice. I've been in many circumstances. In the average Baptist church in America, I have seen it hundreds of times when the Lord put his hand of power on me a little bit. And in three nights of preaching, 90% of the church members would be coming to me wondering if they're safe. It doesn't take a blast hardly loud enough to wake up a flea to shake the confidence of most of us. But bless God you couldn't shake old Paul's confidence for a hard belief in God's elective grace will not fill you with doubt. It will not fill you with misgivings for the last resort of an eternity bound soul is not in your choice of him as important as that is. But glory hallelujah in His choice of you. No one the soul of Tarsus after he became Paul could write the words God never goes back on His call. Brother, if that's not so, you've ruined me. Now when I was 40 years younger than I am now, I had a lot of confidence in my ability. You told me 40 years ago that I wasn't going to clean up this old world and get it converted just about all by myself. I thought you were silly. If you told me that I wasn't going to make progress to where people could see their wings on my shoulders, I thought you were wrong. But God helped me the longer I lived the worse this old religious flesh of mine gets. You talk about making progress. With Ralph Barnes I'm losing the battle all the time. My only hope and my only plea is that God Almighty call me by His grace and reveal to me that He'll never go back on His call. Confidence. Confidence not in myself but in Him. To Him be the glory. What on God's earth He wanted was such a vile creature as myself. He did. And the Scripture says He's mighty proud of me. It says I'm the apple of His eye. It says I'm His magnificent obsession. I'm the object of His eternal affection. Oh, praise God. When the heavens have been brass and I've quit the ministry and I usually do it the morning after back beyond my confidence is in Him. He never goes back on His call. Bishop Sheen, the most evangelistic voice in Roman Catholicism and Catholics are doing about all that's being done these days between us girls. There's some little spiritual movement in their ranks. Protestants, most Baptists, they don't believe anything now. Bishop Sheen says the biggest stroke, most successful stroke that Antichrist has made is to convince us that He doesn't exist. And I'm looking you in the face to tell you now that His breath is hot upon us now. And I'm looking you in the face and telling you now that you're going to see the day when my religion is not going to get the job done. It's just going to be some people whose confidence is in the Lord. There's a second thing that will result from a hard faith that God set His love upon you, that God marked you out, that God set out to save you, that God made the first move, that God loved you before you loved Him, that God sought you before you sought Him, that God called you before you called Him. He'll give you both. The first martyr in Scotland, when Scotland was the paradise of Christians in the world, it's now a spiritual graveyard. In 1431 they burned the first martyr at the stake in Scotland. His name was Paul Cross, the R-A-W. And when they tied him to the stake, they had to put a brass ball in his mouth to stop him from praising the Lord while his body was burned. And they burned him because he had such a holy bones. You just couldn't keep him from praising the Lord. A holy boldness came to Paul. A holy boldness is what we've lost. We ought to apologize for claiming to believe in Jesus Christ. I wonder what on earth God could do to restore the note of boldness to His people. Somebody said that the most awesome spectacle that anybody could ever see during the days of the old Calvinistic Puritans was to see an old Puritan walking down the road on his way to do the will of God. Said all hell couldn't stop him yet a holy boldness. And the apostle Paul by experience could write, I am an envoy of Jesus Christ. I've got business, brother. Get away, make way. He sent me forth. I didn't run before I set. I'll tell you every voice that's clamoring for the downfall of everything that reminds people of God today as a boldness beyond all compare today. God raise up church who can sit down beside Paul as he says, as I have received this ministry by the mercy of God. Not a load or a burden to bear but a ministry out of His mercy. He said I never lose heart. Come hell or high water I'll say to the heathen the Lord God raise. Boom. Our moods change and our feelings come and go and difficulties pile upon the backs of difficulties. You told me when I started out that the world had been in the mess and churches were in the mess that we're in now. Boy, I'd have quit to start with. I could stand there till midnight and add and add and add the unprecedented difficulties. Make me glad that I got gray in my hair. I'd hate to be as young as most of you living in this godless anti-Christian religious mess. All those moods come and go and feelings change and difficulties melt. Here's a man not by believing a set of theological doctrines but by an experience of God putting His hand on him in Christ. He had a holy boldness that hell couldn't stop. He had something else. He had a holy amazement. I think he wrote that song that we used to sing so much, I'm amazed that he should ever love me. I'm amazed that God should speak to anybody arresting, apprehending, cross His path, lay hold on Him. Anybody was a cause for wonder but the tall of Tarsus that God Almighty met him on the road to Damascus and blocked his way and laid hands on him and took possession of him was a source of amazement that he never got over as long as he lived. I was preaching down to a bunch of preachers in the state of Tennessee as I remember and after I got through pouring out my heart some square-jawed Calvinistic pastor from around there came up to me and he said, you made one statement I don't believe was square with the doctrine of election. I wanted to get a club and bop him one. There was no amazement in his heart that God dealt with him. That God loved him. That God set out to save him. Oh, when did we lose the wonder? Paul would say, I was a blasphemer. Ah, he said I was injurious but I obtained mercy. That made the difference. I obtained mercy. Oh, what a wonder that Jesus found me out in the darkness no longer could I see. Oh, what a wonder he put his arm under and wonder of wonders he saved even me. Amazement. And out of his experience Saul of Tarsus who became Paul found a passion that gripped him to lead every human being in the world to the same source of blessing to which he'd been drawn. The whole missionary impulse of the New Testament seems to be wrapped up in the heart of a man who going down the road to Damascus to kill off some Christians had an experience with the living Lord. Paul said I want everybody to drink of this fountain. The adopting of elective grace makes you satisfied to have the truth you've missed. It makes you have a heart that beats that everybody could drink of that fountain where you've drunk. That's it. That's it. Let them shave my head Paul said. Take a Jewish vow it will go against my principles but I'm going to do all things to all men if I can win some. The great missionary passion that's kept the church of Jesus Christ going up until now grew out of the heart of a man that experienced what it means to be laid hold of by Almighty God made to drink of fountains of living water. God bless you.