In this sermon, the preacher reflects on the current state of violence and riots happening in various places, including America. He mentions being present during the riots between white and colored people in Detroit, Michigan. The preacher emphasizes the importance of complete submission to the rule of King Jesus as the only way to endure the judgment on the earth. He also references the story of Noah and the ark, highlighting the moment when God shut the door and locked it from the inside. The sermon concludes with a plea for the audience to seek refuge in the house of God and to hold onto the eternal word of God.

Matthew chapter 24. Begin reading at verse 32 of the 24th chapter of Matthew. Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. As I understand the word of God, and I say this as I understand the word of God, the fig tree in the Old Testament and the New, surely refers to the elect nation, the Jewish people. And it is without question significant that the Jews, at least for a while, now occupy all of the city of Jerusalem. There was tremendous attention given to the Middle East. If the scriptures are to be interpreted, Jerusalem shall be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. This is a significant hour, and it may be that God has moved in a tremendous way in your day and mine, to call men's attention to the holy book, the Bible. I have a dear friend, who is now in glory, greatly used man of God, who two Christmases ago was returning from a preaching engagement on Christmas Eve, and a drunken bum, coming the other way in a car, smashed into his and killed him. He told me one time that he believed, and he was a man who had seen much of the miraculous, he said, I believe that God has done his due in bringing signs and miracles to America, and he's going to leave us to our fate. I don't know. But the Lord is referring to a reactivity in the Jewish nation, when his branch is yet tender and puts forth leaves, then you shall know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the door, the summer. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. For of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven. The only one who knows about that is my Father only. But this is so, as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the earth, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. I have to be honest, in an attempt to preach from the passage of scripture like this, not wishing at all to get anybody to change his belief. But this is a passage of scripture that's a little deep for me. If I knew what the expression, the coming of the Son of Man be, if I knew for sure what the interpretation of that is, I'd know more than I do now. But I am prepared to say that means one of two things, which I am not certain. It means that you people, most all of you, and oh you dear pastor, and oh crazy time of year, believes that this refers to what is called in theological circles, but what is not biblical, the second coming of Christ. For the Bible knows many comings of Christ. We've already had numbers of them. He came many, many, many times and appeared to the people in Old Testament days, didn't he? And he certainly came on the day of Pentecost. And he certainly came when Titus came and destroyed Jerusalem. That is not a good term. The word coming means presence. Christian people are divided, I hope friendly, because none of us know enough to get mad at anybody if we differ some on the interpretation of the word of God on anything except the personal work of Christ. I'll be your friend if we differ, but we'll have to agree on that. But the word coming means presence. And the Lord was certainly present in the power of the Holy Spirit, for no sinner is ever convicted of sin or saved except he's brought into the very presence of the Lord. You can preach till you're blue in the face and pound him on the head, but nobody ever yet has believed that he were a wicked, corrupt sinner except as he got a glimpse of the holiness of the risen Son of God. So this coming may mean the bodily return of the Lord. I believe the Lord is going to come back in his risen body, the Lord in glory. I am not certain that that's what they're talking about here, but either way, if he comes bodily or comes in the great power of his presence, suit me just fine. If he'd come and manifest himself to a world like he did that gang on the dead Pentecost, suit me all right. But I'm dead certain that means one of these two. And that leads me to see that whatever has happened over in Jerusalem these last few months makes everybody who believes the Bible have some assurance that the coming of the Lord, in whatever aspect it is here, is nearer than we think. I want to speak to you briefly tonight about the gospel for days like the days of Noah. In the word of God, three things are said about Noah's day. In the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis, our attention is called to the fact that the wickedness of men was great, and the imaginations of the hearts of men were evil continually. This generation could thus be characterized, this one in which you and I live, could be characterized as the day like it was in the day of Noah on the count of wickedness. Wickedness in high places, wickedness flourishing like the ark. In the second place in the sixth chapter of Genesis, we are told that violence filled the earth. Have you ever been in a riot? I was in the first of the riots in America. When the whites and the colored people in Detroit, Michigan killed each other by the multiplied hundreds on the streets. The papers never published much about it way back then. When you could feel, just cut the tenseness and the hellishness and the lawlessness in the air with a pocket knife. I was in Detroit, Michigan when they had the first sit-down strike, and they had the machine guns trained there to shoot the striking Union men. Then the governor called it off. You have a television set, turn on the news, the students in Shanghai are rioting. The students in Birmingham are rioting. The students in Mississippi are rioting. The whites are rioting. The colored are rioting. The beat is rioting. The hippies are rioting. Everybody is rioting now. Violence, not just in America, was in the land. This day in which we live, if you talk about violence erupting on every hand, gives us pause. And then in the book of Genesis, another thing, more terrible than these two is mentioned. They were corrupt. About time to that and read it. And God looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. That sodomy, sexual perversion that craves for the flesh of the opposite sex. I write for you young men training to read the old Puritan, but I wish you'd read something about what's going on now. You ought to get the book The Sixth Man, written by a newspaper reporter. It took him ten years to get documents, to document what he had seen. He visited every center in America. He lived with the sodomites. I don't know if he's telling the truth or not, but he tells us that one out of every six adults in America is a sodomite. That's not a preacher with an axe to grind, it's a reporter documenting everything he says. 700,000 sodomites in New York City alone. 70,000 male sodomite prostitutes walk the streets of New York City alone. In the word of God, sodomy is at the bottom of the ladder. If you think about the corruption of the natural way of the flesh, male and female, created he them. What did God do in Noah's day? What was God's answer in Noah's day? In the book of Peter, 1 Peter it is, and the third chapter, we read beginning in verse 18, 1 Peter 3.18, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, that just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened to the Spirit, by which Spirit he also went and preached unto the spirits in prison. Now Christ didn't do it, Noah did it. Christ preached through Noah. Men had to hear from heaven through a man in Noah's day. This scripture doesn't mean that Christ went to hell and preached. That's nice little preaching, but it's not what he's talking about here. But through Noah and the Spirit of Christ, for he is the only preacher and men are just voices, Christ brings the message from heaven through these lips of claim. Now it's pretty rough in Noah's day, but God didn't change his ways. If men will not hear from heaven by the lips of men, they just won't hear. Maybe God should have done something else, but he didn't. That's pretty solemn. I don't know about you, brother. Mean as I am, it bothers me the way this world is jumping on each other's backs to seem like trying to get to hell the quickest. If you think about every generation, read your church history, and if this Bible's got a lick of truth in it, the vast multitudes in every generation have refused to be moved by the message from heaven brought through the lips of men. That's the only way God speaks. I always kind of get depressed when I go to a big city like this. You stand on a street corner, watch the multitudes. Pass that corner an hour, watch the cars buzzing, airplanes whizzing. Life lives. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. Everywhere. And sometimes believing that this book is God's truth, although I can't understand much of it. I say in my heart, Lord, why don't you do more than you've done so far to get men to hear the truth from thee? But he just don't do it. I don't believe God takes pleasure in the death of the wicked. The Bible says he don't. I believe God's not willing that any should perish. The Bible says he's not. I believe that God would have all men to be saved. I believe that. I believe the heart of the gospel is that God would have all men saved. It looks to me like God, it looked like in a day like Noah, he'd done more than empower a man to speak for him. That's all he did. By which he also went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God wicked in the days of Noah. While the ark was at the paring, God held his judgment on, no freedom, oh no attacking away on that ark, preaching righteousness. God holding back judgment, the longsuffering of God, waiting for her, for the completion of the ark. We have escaped, waiting until the ark stood there with its open door, before judgment struck. That's all that God did. While the ark was at the paring, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. What did God do in Noah's day about the wickedness of men? What does he do today about a world filled with violence, corruption of the flesh, men's thoughts and imaginations, evil only continually? He got a man to preach and build an ark, and warn men of judgment to come and point them to the open door. That's all. That's all. The liberals, I read them a lot, let them challenge me. They are right on lots of things, a whole lot righter than we are. But they want us to abandon the preaching of the word, and they want us to build nice houses for the people, and I'm for that. They want us to desegregate society, and that's all right. And they want us to burn down the slums, and they want us to build better schools and better hospitals, and I'm for that. But tomorrow we go on preaching righteousness and pointing men to the ark, Jesus Christ for salvation. And if we improve this whole world, and you're just wrong, you're just silly to claim to be a Christian. A Christian loves his neighbor as his self, is that right? You've got it in for anybody because they're not your race or creed, there's something wrong with you. Wouldn't you like for the poor black people in Africa to have an icebox and a refrigerator and a car? Wouldn't that be all right, wouldn't it, if it's good for you? But when we come back to the Bible, being for all those things, the business of the people of God's power is this. I want to call your attention to five things about the ark in Noah's day and the Lord Jesus, who is the antitype of it in our day. In the first place, this ark just had one window, and it opened at the top. There wasn't any hope in Noah's day except to look up. And there isn't any hope today except to look up. Looking around you, you go crazy. Just one window and it opened at the top. You got in that ark, you couldn't see a thing unless you looked upward. Unless you looked upward. That's still God's program. If he could just get a poor old blind sinner to look the right place, bless God. As long as he looks around him, he'll never make it. As long as he looks in himself, what he's going to do, he'll never make it. But if the Lord can shut him up the way, just got one place to see him, well, he'll die right at the top. And that's up, brother. From where cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord. That's right. That's right. This ark just had one door. Just had one door. All along God's earth that God did to me the awful conditions of Noah's day was to have a man build an ark for just one door. Everybody that got in had to come in that door. There weren't two doors, there weren't three, there weren't four, just one. Jesus says today, I am the door. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. In the revival of religion that has characterized your generation and mine, this is the most religious generation God ever looked down upon. In the revival of religion, the one thing that's sweeping the world today is that Jesus Christ is one of the ways. That Christianity is one direction to heaven. But in the word of God, and we must be as narrow as the word of God, for if we get rid of it, your opinion's as good as mine, and none of it's any good. Jesus is not one way to heaven, he is the only way to heaven. And we take men away from their resolutions and their decisions and their professions and their good deeds and their beliefs and their doubts and their experiences and say, there is just one door. Only one door. The rich man will have to come in that door or stay out. The poor man will have to come by way of Jesus Christ to not get in. The dumb man will have to bow to get in that door, he'll not get in. Jesus is the only door. He is the only God-appointed, God-anointed Savior. He has no rivals, there's just one door. Just one door. How narrow that is! But that's all that God did in the days of Noah, to meet the awful wickedness of the hour. He just had it built with one door. And when judgment came, it came on everybody that hadn't got inside the ark by that one door. We better not get so narrow. We don't love souls if we get so broad that we lose the utterness of the fact that Jesus Christ is the only Savior. The only Savior. There's a second thing about this ark. In Noah's day, everybody and everything that got in it and was saved from the fire was changed in nature. The scriptures tell us that the animals, two by two, of every breed in there, male and female of the human species, wouldn't they have had a dog fight if their natures had not been changed? Put some lions, and some bears, and some tigers, and some rhinoceros, and some polecats, and some Baptists, and some Methodists, and some Presbyterians, and some hardshelled, and some pre-millenarians like old Tyner, and that didn't change them, my goodness, wouldn't they have had a fight? Forty days and nights in there. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody that got in the ark experienced a change. This is the heart of it. My Lord wasn't trying to keep people out of the kingdom. He's showing them the way. You must be born from above. This isn't because the Lord's mad at folks and don't want them saved. He ain't trying to damn people. He's showing them an utter necessity. Men and women must experience a change to be comfortable, even one with another. To be at peace, even one with another. Wouldn't heaven be some place with a bunch of fighting fundamentalists up there? Whoo! They gotta be changed. That's right. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. A young fellow down in Mississippi wrote me and asked me if I'd come home and meet him. I'll never forget what the precious young man said in the letter. He said, Brother Barnard, we're just having lots of people saved down here, but none of them being changed. Can't be. No, that can't be. Oh, Brother Barnard, God's got to drop a chunk of glory in his soul. Give him a disposition to punger and thirst after holiness. Or Brother Barnard would wreck heaven five minutes if I got there. About the first thing I'd do, I'd tear up those streets of gold, put them in my own bank. Men and women, that old tiger in the tank, gotta be changed, Brother. Gotta be changed. It was not good when we began to make a distinction from being a Christian and having experienced a change that keeps right on changing us more and more into the image of the Lord. Ladies and gentlemen, to get to Christ means to be changed. Our old Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and long-bearded preachers used to use the expression, doesn't got to happen where you love what you used to hate, you'll hate what you used to love. That's right. That mean that Christian becomes perfect? No. But it means that something's put in his side oven that makes him to where he can quote one scripture and tell the truth. He said this so about me, I shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness. Shall we be made perfect? Not down here in this life. But something will happen to us to where a Christian will be the happiest, most miserable person on earth. He's happy, but he's miserable. He's miserable about the slow progress. Looks like Lord sure is having a hard time making me like Christ. But if he don't make me like Christ, I ain't gonna make it, Brother. I'm happy that one has even a feeble assurance in his breast that the dear Lord is working at the job of conforming us to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation means a change that keeps on changing and gets better all the time. And everyone that got in this ark passed through the water. What does that mean? Baptism is not putting away the flesh, the sinful, filthy flesh, but an answer of a good conscience before God by the resurrection of the Lord. Who has gone to hell, everything being subject unto him. Every one of the people who got in the ark passed through the water. The flood came and that old ark just sailed along. Ladies and gentlemen, listen, Brother Barnes, just a minute. Baptism in the New Testament means that a man or a woman has signed his life away and his baptism is a lie unless it means that that individual has come under the ruling Lordship of Jesus Christ with no hold barred. I hear a lot these days about the awful day in which we live, and I'll tell you one thing, if we are as close to the bodily return of Jesus Christ as you people think, you won't think that certain, my religion ain't gonna work. The only thing that's gonna hold up in days like the days of Noah are men and women who pass through the waters, and that means they've come under 100% to the Lordship of Christ in your daily life. Nothing sure that that'll do in days like this. It might be, I don't know, I'm not God, I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet. Maybe back down there when they didn't know anything about the Lordship of Christ and you never heard that expression, I don't know, God's merciful. Maybe what we call salvation all these days, that Jesus is a fire escaped from hell and we spend all of our lives in control of our thoughts and everything we are. But brother, that ain't gonna work now. Men and women who have not had experience, something inside of them that's expressed in public baptism, listen to me, are playing out all around us and they're gonna keep on playing. Because the only thing that'll endure the judgment that's already on this whole earth, separating professors from possessors more than any day since you've been alive, is complete totalitarian submission to the blessed rule of King Jesus in your daily life. Everybody got in that ark, passed through the water. And then there's another thing said about this ark. The time came when the door was shut. God in long suffering, 120 years. Old Noah packing away on that ark, preaching righteousness. Finally, God said, you're gonna tell them just seven more days now. And he went, seven more days! Finally, he said, come on in the ark! They went in. And the door got shut, God help us. And it was shut and locked from the inside. And the scriptures say God shut the door. This is Saturday night. You're not out in this atmosphere of this generation. Could I plead with you? You're in the little house of God. This old white headed preacher. Listen to me. I'm scared. I wonder if God had just about shut the door in America. I'm telling you right now. I talked to a missionary this summer who was just back from Indonesia and told about how the rivers of blessing are flowing in that country. Multiple thousands of people getting to the Lord. He told me how you go to a little church and the Holy Spirit will come almost like the day of Pentecost. Hundreds of people in their little churches get to God like that. Without even preaching anything else. Village after village being swept into the kingdom of God. And I rejoice for the people of Indonesia. But I don't know how to handle prophecy very well. Don't criticize me. But I do know one thing. That up until now, every nation that has had the gospel and then began to take it for granted have lost it. And God moved on somewhere else. I don't know whether the scripture we have before us tonight means the coming of Christ is nearer than we think or not. Be alright with me. But I do know one thing brother. Germany had the gospel. Look at it now. The only place you can find any Christianity in Germany now is in communistic East Germany. You can't find none in West Germany. They are almost as immoral in West Germany as we are in America. Over in East Germany, I've talked to some preachers who have been over there. The Gestapo attends all the services and takes down by shorthand every word that is said. But the preachers over there preach the gospel. And there are some Christians in East Germany. There are some Christians in Russia. Not many. But England had the gospel. Look at England now. It's common knowledge that the English girls would always cohabit with the Negro before they were a white American soldier. They preferred them. I'm not preaching against racism now. But that's not good. Are you here tonight living in a nation that was planted on the gospel? And now look at America. God may close that door. I'm not going to stand here and talk to you about the past. I've seen a few little victories in my life. All over America now. It looks like everybody's got saved and got there. There's one thing I know. I don't care how hard you try to get in a door. If it's locked, you can't beat it down. And if God has shut it, you can't get in it. My Lord said agonized to enter in the straight gate while it's open, which men would. For some of these days, God's going to shut the door. He'll shut the door. If you think it's still open, there's a chance on earth of you getting to the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you'd start crawling. I'm not singing the blues. I think I'm telling the truth. People aren't getting saved in America now. Where I used to see thousands, I see one or two now. That's right. And I'm not by myself. Is there somebody here now still outside that door? It's time to seek the Lord. Amen. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, have mercy upon this saturnite congregation. By the sweet, still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, enable me and invite me and feed with me and you can get inside of people. You know everybody here and the dead preachers, young preachers don't know anybody. Oh God, be merciful to us tonight. Be so terrible. Anybody, go from the little house of God on saturnite in godless America now, wind up in destruction. Please with people right now. Deal with people right now. And they seek the Lord until they find him.