In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of following God's program and doing what He has instructed us to do. He mentions the authority and divine power that comes with following God's program. The preacher also shares his frustration with the lack of experience and authority in preaching the word of God. He references the book of Acts and highlights the need to go with God's presence, authority, and program. The sermon concludes with a call to mourn and seek God's presence and to demonstrate the truth of the gospel through our actions.

It is a great privilege to be at the 13th Street Baptist Church, and such an honor to be at this 12th or 13th or 9th or 15th or some kind of conference. How many have we had? 13. I apologize for not being in the services this morning. We didn't get into this afternoon. It's not nice to skip out on some of it, but we couldn't help it. Somebody told me the two young brothers made good talks for young men. Used to make me awfully mad when I'd preach a great big sermon and somebody said that's a good talk. Tonight would you read with me or follow me as I read the last chapter of the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 28. I want to speak tonight on a report to the commander-in-chief of how we've been minding him, a great commission. This is the 13th conference, as far as I know, I think maybe I know, the first such conference of its kind started here, this congregation, this pastor. I don't know of any other that started before that. Tonight I'm not going to preach. I've preached so much to these folks that they tough up their hairs. A good deal of what I'm going to say tonight is above my own thinking. I have found in many years of preaching that I preach something about 13 years later, I find out what I was talking about. I didn't know when I was preaching it. That's good preaching. That's preaching above the understanding. That's preaching in the spirit, we very seldom ever do it. But I'd like for this congregation, preachers from here and there, and people of this dear flock, I'd love for us to be our own severest critics tonight on how we've been measuring up to the great commission. It's never been repealed, never been revised, it's just been ignored. I want us to read it afresh tonight in its context. You follow me, if you will, as we read the whole chapter. In the end of the Sabbath, as it began, the dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance, this angel of the Lord, was like lightning and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the keepers did shake and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay, and go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead. And, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee, there shall you see him. This is the angel talking now, lo, I have told you. And so they departed quickly from the sepulcher with fear and great joy and did run to bring his disciples word. As they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid, go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Here is what you tell. You say that his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's heirs, we will persuade him and secure you. So they took the money and did as they were taught. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day, what these paid soldiers said. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All authority. The King James Version is power, the word is exercia. And every time I read this passage of scripture, I hear dear brother Mews saying, All authority. All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always unto the end of the age, so be it. The older I get, and I'm not old yet, but I'm older than I was a while ago, the older I get, the more serious my biggest problem becomes. I wish I could believe the great truths of the gospel. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could believe them? Leonard Ravenhill said some day, some humble believer is going to pick up the Bible and read it and believe it, and make the rest of us ashamed. I'm not being a grouse tonight. Don't you wish you could believe the great truths that make up God's gospel? Wouldn't it be wonderful? I'm haunted and have been ever since I've professed to be a Christian by the difficulty in my own experience of believing the book. I'm dead certain if I could believe the testimony of this angel, he's not here, he's risen, as he said. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Brother, if that's so, nothing else mounts the hill of beans. That answers every question, solves every problem. If that's not so, nothing to anything. Your opinion is as good as mine. I'm familiar with the fact that we all, at least who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, as E.W. Johnson would say, would like to believe. I think we're desperately trying to. But I'm also harassed and haunted, as I go up and down the land, that I have to proclaim a doctrine in a vacuum. The disciples didn't have any doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, but they had the touch of the resurrected Christ on their daily lives. I am more aware tonight than I have been any other time as I grow older of the difficulty of going from doctrine to experience, not so about the Bible from which we try to preach. They didn't read a doctrine and then decide to believe that Christ was alive. They were touched by the living Lord, and then the doctrine came. We have to do the best we can, but that's a problem that I face. He's not here. He's risen, as he said. He said he drives from the dead, and he has. So said the angel. If he is not here, but he is risen, as he said, then I'm prepared to listen to him when he tells me that all authority has been given him in heaven and in earth. And I'm further prepared to listen to him standing on that as a foundation. That's the therefore from the living Christ to whom has been given all authority in heaven and earth. We're prepared to listen to his command. Not option, but command. Go ye, well, bless God, if he is risen. Enough said. Go ye therefore, all authority has been given unto me. Go ye therefore. I don't know about you, but I think that every generation, and about every six months of the time for every generation of preachers and people, we ought to go to the bulletin board and check up on how we mind in the Lord. Go ye therefore. When I was in the army, you went to the bulletin board and got orders for the day. Every day brought its own orders. You could be transferred or moved to anything, but you better find out what the orders for the day were. Were the orders of King Jesus for the day what they were yesterday? They've never been changed. I want us to look at this order again tonight. All of you would agree that no power in earth or heaven, no power either human or satanic, can thwart the purpose of a holy God in Christ as this commission is obeyed. I want to come and ask a question first of my own heart tonight, and I'll dig into a little detail in this point that I don't know how to handle. But do we know anything experimentally about going in the authority of the living Lord? The first point in the great commission, we're commanded to go with his authority in his name, in the power of him in whom is invested all authority. What kind of authority is he talking about? I think threefold first. We're to go with authority to direct divine power to anybody in any place. Have you studied afresh the third chapter of Acts? I say this so I can say something else. But I think before I say it, I want to say something else. Folks, you're looking at a preacher. It's September of the preaching 40 years. This business of knowing so little by experience of speaking with the authority of Jesus Christ is running me crazy. It's getting serious with me. When I was a young fellow, of course, I could talk about what I was going to do when I got older, but I've changed my tune now. Now, this Bible is such an embarrassing book, and we face getting us another Bible. For all the years of my ministry, we've been hurting to explain that although it's in the book, it's not for the day. Peter and John go up to the temple to pray, and there's a man lame, and they say to him, what I've been told we must never say, look under us. We don't have any silver and gold, but we do have something. Such as we have. We give unto thee. What they had was the power to direct the power of God to somebody else. I got the advantage over many of you. I've been preaching 25 years trying to preach the grace of God before I ever heard it to them. I wish I never had heard it. I didn't know nothing about the doctrines of grace, you call them, just preached them. I wish we'd get all out of all of this foolishness. Our job is not to defend somebody that started something 400 years ago. Our need tonight is someone in the God's heaven become candidates for the ability to speak in the name of Jesus Christ and have something happen when we speak, and we haven't got it. I don't know how to get it. I ain't fussed at nobody, but I'm so sick and tired of trying to prove some truth that nobody's interested in. Such as we have, give unto thee. We've got one thing. We've got the power to get a hold of the power of God and shoot it into you. God, that's what they said, and it happened. It happened. It happened all through the book of Acts. That's the most embarrassing book in the Bible, and yet I'm just hungry and heart sick and heavy, but believing that the prelude to blessing is in that scripture, I'll pour water on thirsty ground. If I had my way about it, I'd turn every sovereign grace preacher and believer in America into a time of mourning until we get on that rotten step outside of burning Jerusalem, and yet let the smoke burn our eyes and our hearts blank, and learn how to weep because we speak and answer questions that nobody's asking, and we're speaking about truth apart from its demonstration. Some years since, I spent three days with Dr. MacMillan, the author of The Authority of the Believer. Some twenty-odd years ago, a little old booklet fell into my hands, and I ain't got over it since. There's a bit of a hoover over in me. It kind of makes me mad. It wasn't against the law to get me a shotgun and do something about it. You hear old hard-hearted, what's called Calvinist, you know, making fun of the old rulers. I admire them. What's that big Greek word for what's going on now, the revival of tongues and so forth? I was hoping it was the Lord, I don't know. God knows. I'd take my hat off to anybody that rolled up his sleeve and spits on his hands, and says in the book of Acts, they said, in the name of Jesus Christ we speak. Somebody says, well, nothing happens now. I think you're about right. Ain't nothing happening now, and that's the heartbreak of the hour. But you needn't kid me, honey. You can't sit at the feet of old man MacMillan who spent his life in China, and if you haven't read that book, you won't be happy when you get to heaven. He talks about the fact that all authority that Ralph Barnes has got has to be delegated to him by him and from him in whom all authority has been placed. If there's one thing under God's shining sun, that anybody that names the name of Jesus Christ in this awful day ought to be crying to God for, it's for the Lord Jesus Christ to work a miracle and spill a little of his authority on us, so he could speak. So he could speak. Such as we have, give unto thee. We've got one thing. Peter and John could speak of the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and things happen. I never forget when I heard one of my classmates in Southwestern Seminary, he'd spent seven years in China and came back for a sabbatical before Association of Preachers and People, he told about speaking and seeing demons come out of the bodies of people. I walked up to him, we had lunch together, and I said, you tell him the truth. He said, you can't see them, but you can. They're not visible, but you can see them. I know, I've seen them. I've seen demons come out of people. But the tragedy of Ralph Barnes' ministry is so few, so few. I've been in prison, and I have attempted, and it wasn't blasphemy, to speak in the name, in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. God knows if we can't, we ought to shut up. Nothing much happened. Oh, it might happen if it become the cry of our hearts all over the land. I'm haunted by the fact that a man by the name of the apostle Paul, almost as good a preacher as I am, poor little fellow, he is handicapped. I want to read you something that's haunted me for thirty-some odd years. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, but by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. Haven't you looked at just a minute? And you Bible scholars, deaf women, keep quiet till I get through. I preached in Tulsa, Oklahoma, many years ago, and a nice fellow came around and said, I love to hear the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. I said, brother, if it isn't preached in the power and authority of the Holy Spirit, it is not the gospel. It's just a cult. It's just a bare doctrine. God ship us. Paul could not preach the full gospel without the confirming work of God. You can't either, and I can't either. That's the reason of Calvin Estes. In as bad a shape as the Armenians, you just change your doctrine. Ain't a bit of difference on God's earth. No power in either one. Just change from one cult to another, because this whole business is not worth a hill of beans. It can't be God's good news, except in the fullness of the Spirit and the confirming work of the God of the ages. Paul couldn't preach the full gospel without God confirming his work. That must be our cry. We need to face the fact that we are to go in the authority of Jesus Christ to discipline human power. Note quickly the desperate need of discipline. Don't tell me how it's been abused. I know. Don't tell me how John Calvin sought to exercise. He's dead. Don't tell me about the Puritans. They're dead too. Tell me how this generation of church people in the pulpit and the pew can speak to this lawless, infer-hill generation, when there can't be any more lawless than we are as church members. The one statement that characterizes Calvinistic Baptist churches is that everybody is a law unto himself. Every man does that which is right in his own sight. No preacher or no church ignores the fact that one of the very central, hard things that make a church is the exercise of New Testament discipline. It's silly to talk about being a church of Jesus Christ without it. While we are cussing out everybody else, we need to face the fact that that congregation that bears as a body in its body the marks of willing, glad subjection to the authority of Jesus Christ, as is expressed in that local church, has got anything to say to anybody else. How can we demand of this lawless generation total surrender unless we've come to love the chastening rod of the Savior's discipline in our own lives? We can't go back and read how the other folks did it. The old-time Baptists used to turn everybody out of the church on Saturday night and take them back on Sunday morning. They never touched side, top, or bottom, of course, of New Testament discipline. But we need to in this hour. The matter of claiming what is not so is taken care of by a Baptist preacher by the name of Peter when Ananias and Sapphira are killed. Discipline. The matter of looseness of morality and immorality. Paul said, If you don't do it before I get down, come with a rod and I'll beat the life out of you. In the name of Jesus Christ, when you're met together, take care of that situation. In the matter of looseness and perversion of doctrine, you talk about the words of Hymenaeus that eat as a canker, how people have met shipwreck of their faith. These matters of morality and doctrine and hypocrisy are eating us up all over the country. I'm fond of saying, and I say it again, that we're trying to preach the truth in a barrel that has no bottom. I think the greatest need, I just think the need of grace preachers is to remember that Paul had a double ministry. He was a minister of the grace of God. He was a minister of the church of God. One won't work without the other. We desperately need some disciplined men and women under the strict discipline of the living Lord. For the only way on earth I can exercise authority is to be under authority. And I have just as much authority as I am under his authority. And that's the reason I don't have much. He's talking about going in the authority to direct divine power to somebody else. He's talking about going in the authority of Christ to discipline human power. They've wrecked our churches. God knows my brethren, I'm not talking down to you, but we must begin. If we don't bat a hundred the first time, let's begin learning something about what it means to be under the discipline of Christ as a congregation of brethren, as well as individuals. And then we're to go in the authority of Jesus Christ to discipline satanic power. All hell's broke loose in our world. Things are happening every day that cannot be described any other way than, say, this generation's becoming more and more possessed of demons. Your doctor and your policeman deal with demons. And the reason we don't think so is we haven't got enough of the power of Christ to flush them out. I've had demons curse me and call me by name who never saw me. The people they spoke to never had seen me before, but have had so little of it. And the reason I've had so little of it, the book of Acts, tremendous Holy Spirit power and tremendous satanic power, they'll always go together. They'll always go together. Demonic forces are abroad tonight. They're everywhere. And the churches of Jesus Christ are still going through the motions. And if anybody takes a hand to deal with the forces of hell, it's not the church people. The demon rum had to be handled by Alcoholic Anonymous. The demons of communism, and just name them, they're being handled by everybody except the church of Jesus Christ. Frank Norris, Dr. Frank Norris used to tell me as a young preacher, Ralph, go after every enemy that crosses the path of the gospel. Demonic forces are abroad in this world. No use for me to go into it. This world's changed more in the last 20 years than it had in all the rest of time put together. And we still proven the five points of Calvinism. Nobody's interested. Nobody cares. They're not the issues of this hour. The issue of this hour is that this world is being torn apart by the very demons of hell. To carry out the great commission is to get involved in every issue that's seeking to wipe the gospel off the face of the earth. I'm going to read you what a Moravian preacher said the other day in Winston-Salem as he delivered the commencement sermon for their school there. The goal of the Christian life is not to live in peaceful coexistence with the problems of our age. The Christian ought to be profoundly disquieted by the problems of life. He should be maladjusted to the status quo. Ours is not to adjust to the world. We're commissioned to change it. For it's out of joint. It's not out of joint. It's upside down and it needs to be turned right side up. Demonic forces are ranting and raving. We wrestle not in purity and mind with flesh and blood, with spiritual powers in spiritual places. We desperately need to face afresh the fact that our weapons are not carnal, but we need to get out and roll up our sleeves as congregations. I'm so sick and tired of counting how many we had in Sunday school, how much money we raised, and how many additions we had. I wish we could get into this generation and tackle the devil's forces where they're attacking us and they're not disturbing our peaceful, comfortable Sunday morning services. Demonic forces are abroad. My Lord said, all authority is given unto me. Go out there and face them. I heard David Wilkerson, the young Pentecostal preacher, who gave up his church and went to the sidewalks of Harlem. It's amazing how God uses people that don't agree with me on everything. I heard him on tape, and he talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He said to graduate the young Pentecostals from their schools and to come there now to the Harlem. They're going to help Brother David deal with the sodomites and the narcotics and the this, that, and the other. They've got them. They do like us. They go down, you know, and they've got the power, like Brother Barnard Hayden. They command the demons to come out, and the demons laugh at them. I'm paying attention to that. David Wilkerson, from his theological background, said, I believe the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to love people like Jesus loved them. He said the only people that can do anything with the sodomites and narcotics in Harlem are the folks that somehow or another those folks think they love them. God knows. In our comfortable stuff we call Christianity today, God give us a fresh baptism of the Spirit of God, that we could get our little theological street jackets dirty, putting our arms around this demoniacal generation and loving it a little like Jesus did. Our Lord said all authority is given unto me in heaven and earth. Go ye with my program, mine. Teach all nations, baptize them, and teach them to observe my program. I want to ask a few questions tonight, just for your thinking. I was getting along promoting his program, his program, doing what he told us to do. There are some questions that I've just written down here, and I'm not going to try to answer them. We need to face them tonight. Who is a Christian? Who is a Christian? Now, we've got nice people in our churches. Some of them quit chewing tobacco, and others quit getting drunk. But who is a Christian? Some of them ain't quite as bad as they used to be, and some of them have changed their doctrine. But who is a Christian? There's so much difference between being a Christian and being a good moral man. Who is a Christian? That's something we need to face now. God bless your heart, the indictment of the whole shooting match office is that we're doing everything except produce Christians, men sold out to Jesus Christ. I like to hear the fundamentalists make fun of fellows that don't agree with them, but I like to quote from this young Bonhoeffer that was executed by Hitler. I want to read you one thing, Mr. Bonhoeffer said, the only man who has the right to say that he's justified by grace alone is the man who's left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves. How do you become a Christian? Believe in some things? No, no. We need to face this. How do men become Christians? Do they do it apart from actually hearing from a living God? Do they do it by an act of themselves or as a result of a gift from above? Do men become Christians apart from utter submission to that terribly prickly thing of the sovereignty of Christ in their daily lives? It can't be done. Do men become Christians apart, listen to me, do men become Christians apart from receiving the mission of Christ for their lives? I want to ask you this question, the thing that's haunted this preacher for 40 years, and I'm about ready to make up my mind. A man ain't saved as long as he just comes to church and believes some things. A man ain't saved unless he's living to save others. Then in the word between hell and heaven, it's as empty as the word saved. Now, it's a good Bible word, but it's as smooth as it can be. God help us, the time has come for us to start being honest with dear eternity bound people and insist that no man has been vitally joined to a living Lord. While it's an option as to whether or not he'll accept his commission to get in, toot his end of the blanket, to make the purpose of God real in this life. What is the Christian life? We need to begin asking this question again. I think I told it up in Yankee land the other day, two or three of the preachers were in a Baptist Sunday school. In our day, a boy asked the teacher, the teacher was Hitler Christian, and the teacher said, we do not know. He certainly didn't act like it. We can only hope he trusted Jesus when he was a little boy. That's about what Christianity is now. That's about it. That's about it. What is the nature of the Christian life? Well, I wasn't going to preach on all these. I'm just thinking about these things. How are we getting along with his program, making Christians? How are we getting along making the grace of God a cheap thing instead of a costly thing? Bonhoeffer said that Germany, out of which two world wars and six million Jews were killed, was a great Christian nation. Bonhoeffer said Germany was made Christian by de-hearting Christianity. That's America. Every victory won in the last hundred years, we won it by cutting more out of the heart of truth, every last one of them. Somebody said if the 16th century was known for the Reformation, the 18th century for the great revival of missions, the 18th century for the evangelical awakening, the 19th century for the spread of missions, then they said something about this century. But God bless your heart, we spread the missionary program, had the great revival we've all read about, and we did it by making the grace of God so cheap it wouldn't offend to flee or save one either. My pastor called me not long ago and said, Ralph, I wish you had some sense. He said, you just preach the simple gospel. Oh, what you could do. I said, Doctor, I wish my name was Ralph Barnett. I wish I did have some sense. I've tried a thousand times to do what you say, but then I forget. I can't think about it. I can't sleep at night. This whole outfit has become Christian by taking salvation out of God's hands and putting it in man. I just have to lift my voice against it come hell or high water. Listen to me. The grace of God is not cheap. Martin Luther who was used of God by bringing back out of the dust can the doctrine of justification by faith. He didn't believe in God's cheap grace. Someone writes out that he discovered that the grace of God had cost him his very life and must continue to cost the same price every day. God's grace isn't cheap, but we've made it cheap. I want to read you just one thing here before I come to a close and say a word about the last point. We need earnestly to find out what baptism means. God knows what we could do with at least investigating the tremendous place of the Lord's supper in the congregation of the saints. I am so ashamed of the fact that we're bold enough to stand alone and be individualist and breast the tide and contend for the foundational doctrines of truth and I would fight you for them. I wish to God we'd get a survival that had some mouse in it and find out there's more to it than that. Oh how we're dying on the leaf by ignoring the great things that God has in even those two ordinances that we've accepted and they're as smooth as they can be now. We need to investigate how much a man ought to know about what's involved in salvation and the Christian life before he makes us what we call a decision. How much? What is the least, we don't want to settle for that, what's the least that a man must understand before a decision given the evidence of being of the Holy Spirit? We need desperately to face the fact of a time wait not laying hands on people so suddenly. I want to read you a comical thing, take just a second. At the age of 18 D.L. Moody desired to join the church and presented himself for membership. It is no easy matter to join a church in those days because a real examination was given to all applicants. The record of the board concerning the meeting reads, much like a modern social worker's case history, here's how it reads. Case number 1079 named D.L. Moody, board number 43 Court Street. D.L. Moody has been baptized. He was first awakened on the 16th of May, became anxious about himself, saw himself a sinner, and sin now seems hateful and holiness desirable. Thinks he has repented, has purpose to give up sin, feels dependent upon Christ for forgiveness, desires to be useful, religiously educated, been in the city a year, comes from Northfield estate, is not ashamed to be known as a Christian, is 18 years old. He was refused. He was refused. I remember those questions, how are we getting along on his program? Making Christians, making Christians, teaching them to observe all things. His program. Go with my program. My time is already gone. I talked about two hours here. The last word is this, and I just mentioned it. Go with my presence. Go with my authority. God help us. Go with my program. My program. Go with my presence. Go with my presence. Lord, I'm with you always, even on the end of the age. God help us. Nobody knows, except me, how I love you young preachers. I've seen some of you act a fool. The reason I know is because I did the same thing. If you don't need anybody to slap you, we need help. You know, I'd almost lay down my life for a young preacher, who in the last few years, in our bumbling way, tried to say that salvation is a relationship. Manner is did by all of you bears, and that's a relationship between persons. That relationship entails a walk and a wave. We don't need to cuss each other out. I like a fellow that will stand for something and won't whine when it has to pay off. Oh, my brethren, we have this promise of his presence as we go in his authority, and as we go with his program. I've never been satisfied with pointing out what's wrong with what the other fellows are doing. God help us. What do we more than others? I've had the privilege of going up and down American and seeing if there's anybody on God's earth, or to go grade intercessory churches. It's people who claim they believe that salvation is of the Lord. I'm so ashamed of us there. I don't believe you can pound truth into anybody's ears. You know we can't. Oh, the presence of Christ means his confirmation, and his type of presence would not only mean additions, but mean subtraction. When my Lord was here, it wasn't gray as black or white, but they believed him, took up stones to stone, and God help us. Oh, thou risen living Lord, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could believe I'm with you. You mean with me at many mistakes you made? I believe so. With you, dumb as you are, praise God, I'm with you. Over in Puerto Rico, Brother MacDonald and I stayed all night. One night with a dear brother. Father and mother were missionaries all their life, and he had been on the mission field 50 years and didn't know anything else. He got to kidding about his big salary, and he said he wasn't working for that salary, he was working for the one he was going to get. It seemed like he meant it, too, with me. Go with my presence. Lord, I'm with you. Lord, I'm with you.