In this sermon, the preacher shares a tragic story of a little boy who got trapped in a tunnel and ultimately died despite efforts to rescue him. The preacher emphasizes that nobody seeks God unless God first creates a thirst for Him in their hearts. He warns that the current generation is in a state of spiritual decline and urges people to examine their own faith and the state of their churches. The preacher also highlights the increasing disbelief in the truth and the judgment of God on those who cannot believe the truth.

Last night, Brother Craig had reached tonight, and I did so with all good faith, but he backslid on it. He took out, you saw him leave, his wife came prepared to sing a solo, and I forget what his daughter was going to do, but he wouldn't do it. I was joking a little bit. I appreciate this singing. I want us to turn tonight afresh to our text for the whole week. 2 Corinthians, I'll get it right after a while, 13th chapter and the 5th verse. I'm so glad to see the senior, Mr. Fulton, tonight, with Wiley, and perhaps others, I'm not certain. But it's so good to have them come over from Gaffney. We are enjoined in our text of scripture, examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Prove yourselves. Prove yourselves. Know you not that Christ is in you, except you be reprobate. One of the great needs of the hour, in this day when the faith of men is being revealed as being either temporary or spurious to start with, is for men and women who hope to enjoy the bliss of God in eternity, and who believe that it's rebellion to live in God's world, not happily rejoicing in his rule. One of the great needs of the hour is to prove our own selves. The scriptures warn us over and over again that multitudes of people experience what we would call a temporary faith. Matthew chapter 13 tells about a man who receives the word joyfully and shouts all over heaven, and he plays out in about 3 or 4 weeks, was he saved or not. Only the person in whose heart the gospel is stuck, and stuck in such a way that it brings forth fruit unto perfection, says the scripture, only that person is saved. Did you get that? Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, that's thoroughly orthodox. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but who shall enter? He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Miracle has to happen to a person to fix himself from that time until the day dies. He's doing the will of God. That's the kind of fellow who's saved. We need to examine our own profession, our own state, and we desperately need to know the hour in which we live. Somebody wrote a little couplet. Algae went a walking. Algae met a bear. The bear was bulging. The bulge was algae. And the bears about swallowed up what's called Christianity in America. We're dying on our feet. Some historian wrote that King Louis XVI made this statement. He was a good man in ordinary times. He would have made a good king. But he inherited a revolution, and he didn't know how to face it. At the morning services, we're going into some of the vital points of disobedience of our local churches, outright, either from willful or some other kind of disobedience, that prevent the presence of the Lord in our midst. The cry of every congregation that's got any saved people at all in it today, Oh Lord, one more time attend our service. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he'd come and meet with us one time in our life? One time, when the saints gather together. So without apology, we're addressing you this week on reprobation. Last evening we talked to you about the three marks that a God in present judgment, as a prefigure of eternal judgment, places upon people who have so sinned that God has rejected them. And they enter hell while they're yet on the earth. And God has pulled out all the stops and left them alone. Tomorrow night I hope to be able to speak on a reprobate nation, and the hallelujah chorus of God's people in the midst of a reprobate nation. Tonight I propose to speak on this subject. Why I believe, this doesn't make it so, but I share my belief with you. I'm going to try to butcher, sit, and document it from the word. Why I believe that multitudes in our land, with their names on our church roll even, and they're the ones in the most danger. Because they're the ones who sin against the most life. When a man is baptized, even though it's not scripture, he has so positionalized himself that if he doesn't walk in the paths of holiness from then on out, he's an apostate. He has brought shame on the cause of Christ and has voted to kill God. That's a tremendous experience to be baptized. And church people who walk for a little while in paths of holiness and then took out. Church people, listen to Brother Barney, who willfully absent themselves when the people of God meet. If they're members of a church where the gospel is preached, every last one of them is going to split hell wide open. Any church member who absents himself from the meeting of the saints in a congregation where the gospel is preached, he hasn't just quit the church, he's quit Christ. He hasn't just got rid of God, he's got rid of the church, he's got rid of God. You cannot know the Lord without his gospel. And the Lord and his church are one, the scripture says so. And yet we live in a day, and I warn you tonight, I'm told there are a thousand people with their names on this church road. I've been here, this is my second week. And I haven't seen about 800 of those people. Well, they say we work shifts, but we have service at 930 for one of the shifts and they don't come. And I can't preach to them, but I can warn you who do come, that you are living in a day when the majority of the people with a membership in our local churches are voting by their lives to do away with the gospel, to do away with the church. And that means to do away with God. They are in deep rebellion against Almighty God, and they're not going to win. They're going to lose. You are living in that day. There are better spots here and there, but nationwide America is blocked by the membership itself. By and large, to close the churches, to abandon God, and to do away with the gospel. You are living in a day of revolution. Ordinary methods are failing to challenge the awful anti-spirit, anti-Christ spirit of this anti-Christian day. This is a time, beloved, to examine ourselves, whether we be in the field. This is to prove our own self. This is the time to turn the searchlight on and see if we're bringing forth that evidence of repentance. This is that hour. Because the preacher's conviction for whatever it's worth, ten cents or fifteen, if it's true, it's worth a lot. If it's Bible, it's worth everything. This generation will not get by in its anti-Christian attack on Almighty God. Judgment's coming. It's already here. I am asked, do men still commit the unpardonable sin, far of which awful sin? God rejects them, reprobates them, casts them aside, condemns them to hell while they yet on this earth. And I answer, yes, men are doing it every blessed day. As the days increase, the numbers are growing of men and women who are passing from a state where there's any hope they'll ever be saved to a state of God's terrible, eternal reprobation where their goose is cooked, their doom is sealed. They're gone. Every day men send away the common grace of God that extends to all men, except they be reprobated. Every day men send away the effectiveness of the knowledge of God that God equips every human being with when he's born. Every day men are sending away their moral sense of conscience, that gift that God gives to men. Every day men are sending away their natural affections, home, nation, loved ones, church, God, and so forth. Every day men are sending away the terror of human government that's to restrain men. In fact, you and I are living, as we hope to show from the Word of God tomorrow night, in a generation that has been given over to such strong delusion that it'll believe all that cannot believe the truth. That's America tonight. And, ladies and gentlemen, that is a picture of earthen-day Christianity, urban Baptist included. The next generation will look you in the face and tell you I can't believe. They're telling the God's truth, they can't. God's put his judgment on them, they can believe a lie, but not the truth. That's the awful judgment of God. Men cannot tamper with truth. Judgment comes on people who play mumble pig in the face of eternal truth. And it's on this nation. I believe with all of my heart, if this doesn't make it so, that the outside world, outside of those under redeeming grace, are passing into a state of being cast off of Almighty God, reprobate from the grace of God. Now, my message tonight is an attempt to explain or enforce my belief, and in seeking to enforce my conviction, that men every day are committing this awful sin and being brought under the present judgment which will be eternal of Almighty God. In doing so, I want to first ask one question, and then another. The first question is, how sinful is man? And the second, how do men commit this awful sin? First, in order to answer or to enforce my conviction that you are living in the midst of people, day by day, multitudes of them are being added to the group already gone, already sealed and doomed. If that's so, ladies and gentlemen, you need to examine yourself. If all about you men are making a holiday out of the Lord's day, you dead sure need to examine yourself of whether that day is for the Lord in your life. For the Lord and nothing else. Not for the Lord and pleasure. Not for the Lord and going to see Grandma. Not for the Lord and going fishing. Not for the Lord and anything. Just for the Lord. That's His day. Amen. That's a God's truth. You don't believe America's in a mess. You watch the church members making holiday out of God's holy day. That's a mark of the death of a people. Surely Rothbarn is preaching to you. You're living in a generation where the Sunday morning Christianity that's a stench in the nostrils of a holy God is making one wonder why God don't burn our church people up every Sunday morning as they get out of that back door in a hurry to go do something that will pamper their flesh the rest of the day. They sit by that television. They go fishing. They do this. They do that. And they call themselves Christians. They're going to split hell wide open. A Christian does not knowingly and willfully violate God's holy law. He delights in it. And he meditates in it day and night. And the commandments of the Lord God are not grievous to His children. They are precious. And they're delightful. That's a mark. In order to enforce my statement that men and women are passing through this awful experience and thus it's a desperate day for men and women. It's a day for men and women to get the wax out of their ears and examine themselves if everybody else is apostatizing and telling God to go to hell. Don't join the crowd. Don't join the crowd. First, in answering this question, enforcing this argument, I have to ask the question, how sinful is man? Just how sinful is man? I remember I was preaching just before we got in the Second World War. I got in a big tent and I'd go to the army camps full of the National Guard. They called them out first, as I recall, and then began the draft, even a little while before we actually got in the war. And I'd go and hold meetings in towns adjacent to the army camps. The pastors were overrun and they welcomed the meeting. And I remember one night after I'd preached, a dear old white-haired man, he meant well, he came up to me and he said, Young man, I'm an older man than you are and I'd like to give you a little bit of advice if it wouldn't offend you. I said, No, sir. It certainly wouldn't offend me. Maybe I need it and if it can, I'll take it. He said, You know, you can catch more flies with sugar than you can with vinegar. I said, I know that. I've heard that all my life. But I am not in the business of trying to catch flies. I'm in the business of taking the word of God and hoping the Holy Spirit will kill sinners and then give them life. We are not trying to entertain people or catch anybody. We are trying under God to represent God who said, I kill and I make alive. We are trying to be true to the God who blesses only by judging first. In order to bless you, he has to judge you. He has to conquer you and judge you until every bit of the wiggle is out of you before you'll stand still long enough for him to bless you. That's the kind of God we worship. How sinful is man? Is he a nice little fellow that just needs a little help? Is he a nice little fellow that has good intentions and good hearted, you know? You ever see an old drunk that wasn't good hearted when he's sober? No, he's not very good hearted when he's sober, but when he's drunk he owns the world and he'll give you half of it, they tell me. No, no. What kind of people are folks? Folks that just want to be right with God, that are just dying to find out how they can be right with God? No, no. We're dealing with men and women whom the scriptures say drink iniquity like water, who are wiggling maggots, God says, who are a refuge whose hearts are seats of hostility against the holy law of almighty God, who, unrestrained, would do exactly the same thing we did when we were in the loins of Adam. We'd march up and put our filthy hands on the holy God and try to judge Him at all. We're men and women who, if we'd been present in Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago, we would have joined the crowds who, with wicked hands, took the Lord Jesus Christ and nailed Him to a tree. That's the kind of folks folks are. That's the kind of people folks are. How sinful are men. Men unrestrained by God, men left alone, men apart from the grace of God. Men are kept from all wickedness by the power of God's grace alone. Did you get it? How sinful are men and women. You, you, you, you! How sinful are men. They are this sinful that if God's grace is removed from them, they'll seek to the lowness and depth of wild animals. That's exactly how sinful we are. In the book of Romans, the chapter one, I'll not take time to read it. You'll read the story of the generation of Paul's day. And three times there the scriptures say, Wherefore, God also gave them up. He didn't push them. Satan didn't drag them. God gave them up. God gave them up to unclean living, to the Savior's living, and finally to a reprobate mind. To people who not only got a kick out of sinning, but got a kick out of getting you to sin with them. Oh, God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up. You say, Brother Barnaby, it's worse than we are. No. Let God remove his restraining grasp. We'll go the same route, and we're nearly there now. America is. The first chapter of Romans reads almost like the front page of our damn newspapers. Crash, reprobate, loss, blood killing, stealing, murder. We got it. We got it in great measure today. How sinful for men and women. Yet they are so utterly sinful that apart from the blessed common grace of God Almighty, to restrain them, they'll sink not only to such terrible dirtiness of moral character, but their minds will be reprobate, where they get a kick out of nothing except rebellion against God. There are five things mentioned in the word of God. The five of them constitute the grace of God that theologians call common grace. It doesn't save a man, but it leaves him without excuse. And these five together make it possible that tonight you'll be able to get home from this service without somebody killing you. Make it possible for us to have some sort of society that's getting weaker all the time. But these five things are gifts of God's grace in the reach to all mankind to a barren degree. They are the grace of God. One of them is called wisdom. That's the 22nd verse, I believe it is, of Romans. You can read it as you leave. Sin is folly. Wisdom is a gift of God's grace. And men and women today are sinning against what their own wisdom is going to run. Their deliberate taking the course that they know is going to lead them to ruin. Their wisdom is being turned into folly. The scripture says professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. A second gift of God's grace is knowledge, the knowledge of God. That's in Romans chapter 1. What they knew of God, they didn't retain it, and they weren't thankful for it. And so they are losing it. They are being foolish. Men are sinning against their knowledge of God every day. And then the scriptures mention natural affections, the love of home, and so forth, love of country. That's in the book of Romans chapter 1. That's a gift of God. You got a good home. You got a good job. You have some love for this great nation, once was mighty great, it's in danger now. Do you love your family? Do you love your job? Do you love your neighbor? Do you love your community? Those are gifts of God's grace. And they make society possible and restrain man. Restrain the old tiger in the tank, if you please. That's a gift of God. And they restrain this natural man. But men are sinning against him, every day. And then the terror of human government. That policeman is as much a servant of God, no matter if he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. The law he represents, he's as much a servant of God as the pastor of this church. Amen? And yet men are sinning against him. Are sinning so fast and so rapidly and so terribly these days, against that for which God instituted human government. God gave us human government. We didn't take that up. That's the gift of God. That policeman right there, he's God's gift for Lancaster. Amen? The mayor of the town, whoever speaks for the law, that's God's gift. And it's a prayer gift. It's God's gift. Make it safe to walk your streets and have a home. And yet men are sinning against the very conception of human government. Don't you think that policeman out in Los Angeles, wasn't he, he's meddling. There was a poor woman out there, drunk as a boiled owl raising old Billy Hill, and that policeman tried to arrest her. And it cost so many lives and millions of dollars and weakened the world's conscience. That policeman didn't have any right to interfere that drunken woman. That's the spirit of this hour. That's the spirit of this hour. I drove the other day through from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, the famous march. I'm a lawless in spirit, but that's, if you don't like the law, fine, I'm the law. And by the time the other day, well, the policemen have caught me. Maybe they are. But the policeman represents a gift. And today, we obey the speed limit if there ain't no cops around. Amen? And you know what some of these low-down law officials are doing? They're eating, slipping up on us nice little people and having all kinds of hateful cars so we can't spot them and obey the law. Well, they ought to be shocked. They're taking advantage of us. We're going to have to pay a little attention to the law to watch out. And that would be bad. These are gifts of Almighty God. And he used them to restrain the death inside of me and farts. And the reason I believe that this generation is passing under a state of reprobation and that multitudes of people have committed the unpardonable sin and some more of them will do it tomorrow if the Holy Spirit keeps on leaving us alone is because the very things that God Almighty gives to men to restrain them ain't working no more. People say, for you on God, for you on government, for you on the home, for you on wisdom, for you on knowledge, for you on the conscience, that ain't working. These are God's gifts. And they're not getting the job done. When you hate to be a schoolteacher in Detroit or Chicago or New York, those kids will stab you. They'll shoot you. They've been done. I was present in Detroit when we had the black riots. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of whites and blacks were killed. The newspapers didn't publicize it then. It was such down and right. I was present in Detroit when they had the first sit-down strike. And they were ordered to shoot the men sitting down on the other man's property. And the weak-nosed governor, he said he just couldn't stand it. And we've had law and hell ever since, lawlessness and hell ever since. Listen to me. The gifts of Almighty God that he gives to restraining men, do you want to know? They are not working now. That's an awful sign. That's a damning sign. I asked a second question by way of answering my first question. How sinful is man? Man is this sinful that he is a fellow without marriage in the sight of God. There's none good. Now, there's relative goodness. My standards are not too high. According to my standards, this fellow is better than that. But according to God's standards, no man has goodness which God can see and God can accept. Every unsaved man's motive is wrong, according to the Bible. Two men are walking down the street, and they pass a beggar. Both of them give him a dime. One of them sins when he does it, and the other is blessed. The difference is both did the same thing. But why they did it is what counts. If he's a Christian, if he gave the man a dime, he gave it to help him. If he wasn't a Christian, he gave a dime so he could brag about it, until he wasn't so bad he gave a dime to a beggar one time. The motive, the self-love principle in all men must be broken, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, how sinful is man? He is so sinful that he must be crushed, or he'll have to go to hell. He is so sinful that he must be crushed, or he'll have to go to hell. He is so sinful that he must be made a new creation. He is so sinful that that which makes him tick, which is love of self, must be utterly destroyed, and the love of God must take its place. Listen to me. Man is so sinful that God's not in the improvement in business. Man is so sinful that God says, I'm not trying to make him a better man. I'll settle for nothing less than a new man. That's how God's given up on man. Unless he'd make you a new person, you'll just have to go to hell. That's how sinful men are. Well, Brother Barnett, if we improved people, wouldn't that help? Well, they might be a little more comfortable in this life, but they'd still go to hell. No, the teaching, Brother Beach, is this so, is that God Almighty is in the business of making new people. Behold, I create all things anew. Now, if a man is so utterly sinful that even God won't even make an effort to improve him, he's pretty sinful. If man is so sinful that nothing he does, the scriptures say the very plowing of the wicked is sin. If man's that sinful, and this book says he is, then he's pretty sinful. I say another thing by way of asking the question, how sinful is man? He's this sinful, this is a trite saying, but one this generation don't believe, do you? He's so sinful that he cannot save himself. He cannot save himself. Well, Brother Barnett, we all know that, do we? I hope you do. I hope you do. Man is so sinful that he cannot save himself. He can't lift himself by the bootstraps. Like a leopard, he cannot change his spots. He can quit this habit. He can quit that habit. He can take up this good thing. He can take up that good thing. There are just lots of things a man can do. But there's one thing a man can't do. He can't give himself a new heart. He can't make himself into a different person. He can't save himself. He can't pick himself up out from under the rule of the devil and put himself over under the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how sinful men are. Sinful men like that don't need to be converted. They need to be slain. They need to be slain in their own eyes and made to search for life. Oh, when a man realizes that the life he has is according to God, D-E-A-T-H, dead, that what he calls living, God calls dead, when he realizes that, and not until he realizes that will he search up in Pennsylvania and tell me this story about a man who was wealthy. And he made out in his will and his dying request that when he died he wanted to bury it in his favorite Cadillac. And so they dug the grave big enough for his Cadillac. And when the upseekers took place, the old colored brother who had charge of digging the grave and was to let the thing down in and then cover it up and so forth, asked the people there. They sat the man up, propped him up in his funeral clothes, fixed him all up nice and pretty, put his hands on the wheel, sat him up behind the steering wheel of his favorite Cadillac, and by pulleys they led the man in his Cadillac down the grave. And they went and closed it in a vault. And the old colored brother, as the man descended in his big Cadillac, he said, Man, that hand of God, that hand of God, that's what I am living, ain't it? That's what God calls death. Man says that's living. When a man realizes that what you call life, God calls death, you'll be interested and you'll get thirsty for life indeed. And the life indeed flows as a river of pure water, revelation one, two, and one, from the throne of God and from the Lamb. Now ladies and gentlemen, hear me as I come to a close. Listen to me. What I'm talking about now, right up everything I've said, there is one big outstanding mark of men and women in which you live. It is the most distressing, most alarming, most damning sign that you and I have to stare in the face. This one big alarming outstanding characteristic of the age of men and women of this hour is that they do not thirst for life indeed. They do not thirst for life indeed. They think the way they're doing now, that I am living. Let me be buried in my favorite Cadillac, that's living. Hear me? My first two messages down here, I just said one thing. If a man wants to know the Lord, he's going to become a seeker. He's going to seek Him with all his heart. If you want life instead of death, that's got to become an obsession with you, that you want it more than anything in this world. You're living in a generation of people who will settle for a public profession of faith. They'll say, I'm all right. I made a profession of faith. You're living in a generation of people who will settle for a decision. They say, I accepted Christ. But you're not living in a generation of men and women who thirst for the life of God. And that's the most alarming thing about this hour. I know Brother Barnard knows what he's saying now. Until Jesus Christ and life indeed becomes the object of your supreme search and you never settle for anything except Him, quenching that thirst, you'll never get to Christ. Profession is all right in its place. Decision is fine in its place. But a man doesn't get saved by making a profession. A man doesn't get judged by making a decision. A man is judged by the Holy Spirit. Working grace in your heart. And if you want to be joined to Christ, you're going to have to become a seeker. You're going to have to become a seeker. As sure as I'm preaching to you, I'm digging right down your well and out. Those who find the Lord are those who make Him the object of a search. And they won't settle for anything except Him. Only He can speak peace to a troubled soul. Only He can grant the consciousness and the knowledge of sin's forgiver. He is God. He is God. He is God. And He can make it as real to a man as He did when in the days of His flesh He said, God, thy sins be forgiven thee, and nothing short of Him, making you conscious that He hath broken the fetters that bound and set you free. Only that is salvation. Only when He, who when He was here in the days of His flesh said, my peace I give unto you, my peace I leave you. He's here now. And you must settle for nothing less than the rest of life, seeking peace in the Holy Ghost. To your own experience, anything short of that will land you in hell. I'm talking sense. The most alarming thing about death is the men who are settling for everything except reality, in the bonds of holy matrimony with the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm alarmed about it. I kind of hate to live in this town, this little old bubbling preacher. Today I heard him preaching to some men. I'll tell you what's the fact. I rejoiced at how he shuts men up and won't give them peace. Here, peace ain't worth a dime. And won't convince them of nothing, just shuts them up and hymns them up, won't give them a place to rise and wriggle. And how he just bubbled all over this town and witnesses to men and women. I rejoiced. But oh, it's hard to make a mule drink when he's not thirsty. And they'll raise this question, they'll run out that door and they'll climb up that window and they'll do anything on earth today. There's one thing this generation don't want. They don't want to know God. If you let them settle for something else, okay. But it seems that this generation is determined never to know God. Oh, the way men run and the way they excuse themselves. Isn't that terrible? Thirst. And I close with this solemn, solemn fact. Hear me? The reason I believe this generation is passing under God's reformation is this. Nobody ever thirsts until God creates the thirst in you. Every man ought to spend his life seeking the Lord. But it still remains true that nobody ever seeks him unless the Lord does the seeking first. Now you can back off from that if you will, but that's the God's truth and that brings us to the solemnity of the day in which we live in now. The thing that scares me is I go from place to place more than anything else. It's not the actions of the people. With all my heart I try to speak the truth as bold as much love as I know how. I hope I speak the truth. I want to. But that isn't the tragic thing. The tragic thing is that the only one that can make a man thirsty ain't making men thirsty now. There's just one power that can stop a little old flapper fan that ain't interested in dust up wiggling her hips and going down the street and getting a wolf whistle. Into an earnest seeker after the Lord. And that's the power of God. There's just one power that can change a man that sold his soul for his business. To change his attitude and run a business to pay expenses and serve God. And that's the power of God. And the alarming thing about it is I can stand here tonight and tell you of great victories I've seen. That ain't helping us now. You can recall some great services you've been in. That ain't going to help us now. The trouble is we have to go so far back. This is my second meeting with your beloved pastor. The first time I saw God split hell wide open. Now I can't get a groan. Same preacher. There's something happened in our day. God Almighty is not arresting men. I can remember thirty years ago when any two men sat under the preaching of this man today in a business house. Boy they'd have been screaming for mercy. All on God's earth they did was furnish one alibi after another. There's something happened young man. God Almighty seems to say okay honey. Just go on to hell. I won't bother you no more. I went from Southwestern Seminary years since to New Mexico for my last pastor. And while I was there this incident took place. I witnessed it. Out thirty miles from the county seat town where I was the pastor of a church. There lived a rancher in New Mexico sparsely settled. Catholic you know. Mexican. Spanish. Sparsely settled. And there lived a rancher with a wife and a little boy three and a half years old. And one day the rancher had to go away and be gone on business all day. After he got his ducks in a row he kissed his wife and hugged his little boy. And then as a parting reminder he remembered that there was an old abandoned well on the ranch. And he had noticed that the planks that he'd put over to cover it up had been used for many years. He'd noticed yesterday that the planks seemed to be getting a little weak and rotten. And so he told his little boy he said now Bobby don't you go about the old well while daddy's gone. Don't you go about it. The planks are getting rotten. And the mic burst. Don't you go about the well. Well he left and of course the best way to get a human being not to do something is to tell him not to. To get him to do something is to tell him not to. Isn't that right? And so the poor little boy he's just miserable. At well he couldn't think of anything else. His daddy said whatever you do sonny don't you go about that well. And while his mother was busy she didn't watch him maybe as closely as she should have. But anyhow he got out of the house and used to play. And the next thing you know he was right there at the old well. And he remembered what his daddy said about him. He was old enough to remember a little about it but that the planks might not hold him. So he thought he'd find out I suppose if his daddy told him the truth. And he got up on the planks and began to jump up and down. And sure enough his daddy was right and the planks broke. And the little boy happened to be jumping like this and his arms were like this. And he fell with his arms pinioned to his side down the old well. And he went down until the well was small enough that his little body was lodged with his arms pinioned to his side. After a while his mother missed the little boy and she began to search. Finally she came to the well. And there was the little boy. She could see the top of his head and hear him cry. But the little boy's arms were pinioned to his side. And the mother was just terribly alarmed. Thirty miles from the nearest neighbor. And there wasn't any way she could reach the little boy. He couldn't get out of the well himself. He was stuck. And ladies and gentlemen, hours there later, I know she told the truth. The force of the little boy's body had dislodged and that well, she could feel it closing on her little boy. She couldn't get to him. She went and got the rope off the ranch. She tried to put it down the well. He's about 20 feet down. But she couldn't get it over his head. And he couldn't catch it because his arms were pinioned to his side. And she went to the phone and called and got the sheriff. The sheriff phoned me and a bunch of us men went lickety-split out thirty miles to that scene. The sheriff called the sheriff and the sheriff acted as boss and he saw the situation. There was no way on earth to get to the little boy down this way. The well was closing in on him. And it was so small a man couldn't be let down. They couldn't put a rope. They couldn't put hooks. It would have killed the boy to put hooks around his head. They couldn't have done it anyway. They couldn't get to him. He couldn't get out and say, they wanted to get to him, but they couldn't. And so they went and started to dig a tunnel. And on the way on there, they dug down 20 feet. And then here it started. And we could feel that earth closing. And the little boy got so tight on him that he was hurting and he was scared. And a great big old bug settled on his head. And I think his pitiful cries as I ever heard came from that little boy. Mama, old bug on my head, get it off. We were working as hard as they could to get to the little boy, but the earth took the life out of him. And finally they got him. And they brought him out to his mama and laid the little three and a half year old boy in his mama's arms. And he was dead. It wasn't that an effort wasn't made to rescue him. It just wasn't in time. The only person between sinners and the pains of reprobation this life inhaled from then on out throughout is the Holy Spirit taking truth and penetrating inside of a man's heart and creating a thirst there that that man will become a seeker until he finds the Lord. And if the Holy Spirit can't reach inside of you, if he can't get to you, you'll just have to go to hell. He's the only person that can get the job done. And he seems to be abandoning all effort to pierce the insides of men today. If you get by him, you will be saved. And you'll succeed in spending eternity in hell. I go up and down the land, and we stand and give invitations. And I say, if the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, you do whatever he's telling you to do. It ain't a bit of use to make any other invitation if he doesn't answer. Break your heart. Conquer your will. Create a divine thirst for life with God. You just have to go to hell. You're living in a day when men's hearts are not being pierced by the truth in the hands of the Holy Ghost. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available free and for sale in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources as well as our complete mail-order catalog containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.co.uk. We can also be reached by email at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, Alberta, AB. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart, from his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men his every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The prophet's words then are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.