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Glorying in the Cross
Rolfe Barnard

Rolfe P. Barnard (1904 - 1969). American Southern Baptist evangelist and Calvinist preacher born in Guntersville, Alabama. Raised in a Christian home, he rebelled, embracing atheism at 15 while at the University of Texas, leading an atheists’ club mocking the Bible. Converted in 1928 after teaching in Borger, Texas, where a church pressured him to preach, he surrendered to ministry. From the 1930s to 1960s, he traveled across the U.S. and Canada, preaching sovereign grace and repentance, often sparking revivals or controversy. Barnard delivered thousands of sermons, many at Thirteenth Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, emphasizing God’s holiness and human depravity. He authored no major books but recorded hundreds of messages, preserved by Chapel Library. Married with at least one daughter, he lived modestly, focusing on itinerant evangelism. His bold style, rejecting “easy-believism,” influenced figures like Bruce Gerencser and shaped 20th-century Reformed Baptist thought.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of preaching the word of God to the community. He warns that if the message is not shared, the blood of the people will be on the preacher's hands at the judgment. The sermon focuses on the book of Galatians, specifically chapter six, where the apostle Paul discusses the desire to make a fair show in the flesh and the persecution for the cross of Christ. The preacher also expresses his longing for a revival and the pouring out of the spirit of grace and supplication upon God's true people.
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It's tonight to introduce to you our speaker for this week, Evangelist Ralph Barnard, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Brother Barnard, you come preach and close your service. There are many people who tell us today, they're honest people, they're very devout and devoted people, that the Lord has already written the name Ichabod over the door of our organized churches. That means the glory has departed. Those of you who are gray-haired know what I'm talking about. That's not something to laugh about. That's an ache in your heart. They say we must get out and start all over again, but it does not seem the Lord is moving in that direction. I keep preaching as long as I have an opportunity in our churches in the hope that in my day, God will show his true people, they'll be revealed, and will pour out upon them a spirit of grace and supplication and bring revival. I don't know it will take place in my day. I know it's going to take place. The Bible is very clear that the day of the glory of the church is yet future. I don't know whether there's anybody here tonight old enough to have heard the old-time Baptist preachers talk about that scripture in the Bible, where the Lord is going to get glory in the church, world without end. But when everything's as dark as the midnight hour about us, that's the time when people who really believe in God wake up every morning, expecting maybe this is the day. The greatest meeting that I ever saw, one single meeting, one service, I preached to an average of 6,000 people every night. Way back during the Depression, people didn't have nowhere else to go. I had a citywide meeting out on the plains of West Texas. There's some poor that couldn't go to the picture show, so they came to hear me preach. And the wolf couldn't buy gasoline. It was bad back in those days. And I preached to an average, they said, of 6,000 people a night for three solid weeks, and until Thursday night of the fourth week, and hadn't had any sort of an eyelash battery. And I remember that was in my young days, and I got mad, and I wrestled all day Thursday, and I said, I'm going up there tonight, and I'm going to cut that crowd out. I felt like I'd feel better myself if I'd cut out the poor people, you know. You know what I mean. And I went up there just as always in a terrible shape, and they had the song service that just put some two-by-twelves out on some block, didn't even mail them folks, just sat that way in a school out yard. And they had a good song service, and I got up and read my text, and the Holy Ghost came. And before I could get my text read, at 496 men, they counted them later, before I could get my scripture read, at 496 men. They didn't count the women and children, they just counted the men who had come forward. You see men are blind and they're dead, and the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit. And I would give my right arm if I could live two weeks during the time on this earth, and I'm expecting to, when the Lord's going to turn on godliness from his Jewish people, and when it's going to spread all over the world, and the twelfth chapter of Zechariah describes it, God's going to pour out a spirit of grace and supplication on his people, and men are going to look on him whom they've pierced, and they're going to see Jesus as he really is. If you ever did see him with eyes of faith as he really is, a bloody offering on the cross and the supreme dictator on the throne, if you ever see him that way, it'll set you to seeking him. And the twelfth chapter of Zechariah tells us that the whole land will be a land of mourning, and that people will mourn apart. People ask me if I believe in what they call the mourner's bench. I don't object to it too much, but I'd rather see people have a private mourner's bench in their own heart. David had one. Paul had one. He's going around, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Jeremiah had one. All the people that really get saved got a private mourner's bench. They're the happiest, most miserable people on earth. They're happy in the Lord. They're mighty miserable over their poor return. It's showing them how much they love it. They'll never be satisfied till they're weak in his likeness, the scripture says, but one day they will. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live a little while when people were seeking the Lord? Zechariah says they shall mourn apart, and they shall mourn apart, each family. Brother Maldon, he'll be up in that room seeking the Lord. The wife will be in the back room. The kids will be in the front room. Brother Bain won't have much time for this, and then talk about the corn crop. People will be mourning for the Lord. You go down the street, some party will catch you holding your coattail and say, just a minute. You got a minute, please? Yeah. You know the Lord? Yes, I believe I do. Would you pray for me? Wouldn't you love to see that? I've seen a little of it. Sometimes I get mad, and I try to make folks do it. I go to meetings and people, they visit each other, talk till the song service starts. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we leave the Bible with this seeking the Lord? You men would seek the Lord, huh? You say, I've already found it. Well, a Christian seeks the Lord a whole lot more now than he did when he first found it. He spends his life seeking the Lord. I don't know whether God's going to ever come again and walk the aisles of our organized churches. It's been a long time since he's been around. Nothing but the presence of Christ made manifest great conviction to men. I keep hoping. And I know that we've been given only two weapons. We don't use either one of them. Preaching of the word, very little of that done up and down the country. I'm not a crank, but that's the God's truth. We explain it and argue about it, but we do not proclaim it much. An intercessory prayer. I look fine to that discharge. Even made a little pretext sometimes of being a place of prayer. I sometimes try to trick people. But I know that the mark of an unsaved person is prayerlessness. And I know I sin when I try to hoop people up to get them to pray. I know that if there are just two people in this church that are on their faces before God in prayer, as you go about your business, that means there are two Christians here and the rest of you are going to hell. You don't have to talk people who know God into prayer. The very breath of Christianity is prayer. It's a seeking, it's a leaning upon, it's a reaching out, it's a calling out unto the Lord. As you engage in conversation, you're in prayer. Isn't that right? So I'm just facing things as they are. Now we used to, we'd try to work up the flesh and get all this to going, and it didn't last. Hardly until we got it worked up. Now I'm just facing people, the best I know how, with the truths of God's Word, longing in my heart. He'll pour out a spirit of grace and supplication. I wonder if it's ever going to happen here. I'll be gone in a few days, and this is your community, this is your garden patch. This is the community whose blood will be on your hands at the judgment if it's not wept over, preached to, loved, prayed for. Amen? So I encourage God's people who need it. Tonight, if you'll turn to the book of Galatians, at chapter 6, I wish to continue the message that began last evening. Last evening we talked about the message of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And tonight I wish to speak on glory and only in that cross. In the twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul says, As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh. Boy, that's pretty straight talk about us, isn't it? As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh. They constrain you to be circumcised. And to do that lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. It's one thing to be religious and go through the motions. That's very popular. And you'll never know how to spell much less experience persecution for the cross. It's another thing to go through this life. Glory and only in one thing. Not in anything you've done. Any act of the flesh. Only in the cross. Paul said the folks can go through the motions and try to get you to do this and that and the other as long as they want to. But it's for me. God forbid that I should, glory, say in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think there's more lying and more absolute insulting of the word of God than the average testimony meeting in a Baptist church anywhere this side of hell. It's a wonder to me God Almighty don't kill this gang of church members bragging on themselves. The poor preacher, President Compton accepted. He gets up on Sunday morning and combs their people's hair and puts a little perfume on them and rushes to the door while somebody benedicts to shake hands with them and let them go on to hell. We're making a fair show of the flesh but all of our talk is about what we've done. What nice people we are. I'd love to be in a meeting sometime when the Apostle Paul would slip in, testimony time, about the only thing he'd say about himself. I was a persecutor. And I was injurious. And I was a blasphemer of God. Oh, learn by experience. This wasn't just doctrine with him. He'd come to the position when he said, God forbid, perish the thought. Don't even think about me getting glory anywhere else except one place. On the outside of the city of Jerusalem, taking place in time on this earth, when God in Christ hung on a cursed tree, a bloody, gory offering in the stead of sinners. God forbid that I should glory in anything except that. That's the one thing that counts. That's the one thing that'll do the ride the river with. That's the one place to find glory. That's the one place to get your joy. If it's in anything you've ever done, this generation of Baptists are going to go to hell, I tell you, with a shove in their heart, depending on something they've done. The Apostle Paul said, Our glory. But in him, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Something happened there. He said two things happened there. Jesus Christ hung on the cross. I hung there with him. That's the teaching of the Scripture. And he said, The world was crucified under me. It's an enemy of mine. And I, under the world, I looked you in the face. Don't want anything you've got, but I've got to meet you at the gate. What I say, just because I say it's not so. But I live on cornbreads and meals where I could make lots of money. I can grace anybody's pulpit. I'm a highly educated fool. I know the Greek and the Hebrew. I'm not a novice. I'm an orator. I can tickle the clouds. I can bring the stars down. I can quote poetry. I'm telling you the truth. I've been offered pulpits, the biggest in America. I know what I am talking about. You can make money. Out of preaching. If you leave the cross, you can get on the radio and try to save America from communism. You boys keep on sending your dollar. The devil's tickled to death that every God-called preacher wastes his time fighting communism. We're called to preach the cross. You can get mad if you want to. You can make money. If you'll engage in trying to put the bootleggers out of business, people will send you a dollar to help you fight the bootleggers. I know a man that's become a millionaire preaching against the picture shows, against one of those old Mexican stations. I know. But if you just preach the cross, this generation of church members is not interested, and they won't pay you for that. But God bless your heart. This little life don't last very long. It doesn't last a long time. I'm betting my life on eternity and the judgment to come. I look you in the face now and tell you this, that this generation of Christians that we... I go up and down the country, and God's preachers tell me that most of their members don't even tithe. And ever since I've been a professing preacher, they've been telling me that what Baptists need is to be taught. It ain't what you need. You need to be saved. A man that's a crook with his money is going to hell. Don't care who you are, whether you're a deacon or son of a school superintendent or a preacher or whoever you are. You put your stinking hands on God's money that he says is his, and you show your rebellion and your lawlessness, and you show that you never did it. As the old song goes, kneel at the cross and die there. Stay there till self was crucified, and no longer are you your own. You're bought with a price, and you glorify God. That's what salvation is. That's what salvation is. God forbid that I should glory, saving the cross. Ladies and gentlemen, the scriptures say, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha, quoting from the 16th of 1 Corinthians. Anathema means accursed. Maranatha means when Jesus comes. God bless your heart, this labor day and night crowd. I'm desperately interested in whether or not I have the kind of love toward the Lord Jesus Christ, that verse talking about. But I don't care how much profession I make, unless I have the right kind of love for the Lord Jesus Christ. When he comes back, he's going to curse me. Now listen to me. And the kind of love that's required of anybody, if he shall escape the damnation of the Lord God, is to be head over heels in love with him, and find your great satisfaction in just looking at him as he works at his job. And I speak to you tonight, listen to me now. Nobody on God's earth knows your condition with God except you. I don't. I can't unsave you. But if God's my judge in this day, where anything goes for salvation, when I meet you at the judgment, you're not going to say, I was nice, brother. I'm going to rob you of your faith if I can. I'm going to knock your assurance into a cocktail if I can. If I can disturb you, you're in a bad shape. You need God. That's the God's truth. Listen to me. Unless the thing that gives you the deepest joy and the deepest satisfaction of your life, day by day, is beholding Jesus Christ as a bloody, gory, messy offering on a cruel tree, and unless you see God's glory there, in that, you are not saved. And I'm going to warn you tonight that I ain't talking about what you did yesterday. If you've got to go back to yesterday for evidence you were a child of God, you're one day too late, and you're going to hell. It's today, brother. If I could sit down by you and ask God, and I could look inside of you, where'd you find your big satisfaction today? What made you tick, kept the joy bells ringing in your soul today? If there's anything on God's earth except this thing I'm talking about, you've missed Christ, folks. You've missed Him. While you're going to hell with this gang of Sunday morning church members that are trusting something they said happened 15 years ago, Jesus Christ is forever in the heart of God on the cross. And that sounds terrible, and the world says, we don't want to hear about it, but the same person says, that's my glory. That's what keeps me going when all hell's popping. Jesus Christ on the cross. And unless today you found great joy not only in Him, as He works at His job, for He still works through that cross. This old world is popping, and you were able today to rejoice in the fact that He's forever on the throne. He's running this old world, and you're glad He is. Thank God. God bless your heart. I'm talking about folks that love Him. You like Him. Somebody says, I like John F. Kennedy. He's a nice, cultured, well-educated person. He is. People who've been intimate with him say he's a soul of courtesy. But they say, I like him, but I don't like him as president. But he is president. Somebody says, I like Jesus Christ, but I don't like Him hanging on a cross. But in the heart of God, that's where He is. And this generation of church people say, I want Jesus, but if I want Him on this throne, He shall not reign in my life. And the marks of the lordship of Christ are conspicuous by their absence today. We have a generation of professing Christians. Every man does that which is right in his own sight, and they're on the road to hell, you included. A man who does not know the rule of Jesus Christ in his everyday life has missed Christ. He knows nothing about the Christ of Revelation. What you talking about, preacher? I don't know whether I love Him, but the kind of love the Bible requires, so when He comes He won't curse me. And I love Him on a cross. I love Him. I love to sing those old songs in the cross of Christ, our glory. What? In that bloody thing? Yes, sir. In the cross of Christ, our glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time, all the light of sacred story gathers round His head supply. When the woes of life o'ertake me, and they will, hopes deceive and fears annoy. Never shall the cross forsake me, for it glows with peace and joy. When the sun of bliss is beaming, light and love upon my way. From the cross the radiance streaming adds more luster to the day. Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, by the cross are sanctified. Peace is there that knows no measure. Joy is that through all time abides. I love to sing down at the cross where my Savior died. Down where for cleansing from sin I cried. There to my heart was the blood applied. Glory to His name. Oh, dear ones, somebody shot us a curve. Don't go to hell depending on something back yonder. Don't call yourself a Christian if today your glory wasn't in Him on that bloody cross. Don't do it. I wouldn't go up and down this land and talk to people like I do if I was after money. I'm after you for my Lord. Somebody said once, one fine act of faith, keep a fellow so he won't go to hell. No, sir. That faith that doesn't continue day by day, bringing you to the cross every day, bringing you to kneel again at the throne of Him sitting there every day, brother. That's the faith that saves. That's that God's truth. Not one time in the New Testament is everlasting life vouchsafed to anybody except in connection with today's abiding, obedient faith. You better believe me. And we Baptists are sending people to hell so fast they're going to kick up dust in the devil's face by confounding making a profession with coming into vital union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, does the cross bring you joy now? Do you glory in the cross? That bloody thing. I like to sing when I survey the wondrous cross. You know, if you loved the Lord, you'd love His gospel. Every member of this church wasn't providentially hindered that saved would be here tonight because a saved person loves the gospel. That's that God's truth. Baptists don't love the gospel. They're Sunday morning people, this generation. You can't love the Lord and not love the truth about Him. You love Him, you love His truth. Isn't that right? When I survey the wondrous cross. God bless your heart if you went all day today and didn't. You missed Him, I'll tell you that. This thing's vital. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. It does something to a man. My richest gain I count but loss. And pour contempt upon my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast. Saved in the death of Christ my God. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. See from His head, do you? His hands, by faith, do you? His feet, by faith, do you? Sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet? Are thorns composed so rich a crown? Were the whole realm of nature mine? That were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demand it! God bless your heart, it'll get it. Demand it! My soul, my life, this little occasional lip service to Jesus Christ is going to land this generation of professing Christians right slap dab in hell. It'll be Jesus all in all and not at all. God bless your heart, He won't accept anything less. Why did Paul glory only on the cross? Preaching? Negatively, he didn't preach this cross for men to find their glory. To entertain anybody, to educate anybody. I don't know what happened to us a few years ago. We went into the entertainment business. Now, the average church overcharged admission. People come up to me and you'll get a little mad about this and say, Preacher, I enjoyed your sermon. I think I know what you mean, but sometimes when I'm feeling a little bad, I stick out my hand and say, pay me. They charge admission to the picture show, this world going to hell. They brought in a preacher to entertain us. Churches have been built all over this Piedmont section on a certain type of music that you can dance by but not worship by, you know. It's just catering to the flesh. Paul said, build up the flesh, make a show of the flesh! Get away from the persecution of the cross. We're not talking about the cross of Christ to entertain people. I knew a preacher who was an orator. He lived in Memphis, Tennessee. He learned to fix his sermons so they were the very acme of perfectness and oratory. He preached everything except the cross. He was called to the hospital to the deathbed of an attorney. This attorney had to be out of town a lot, but he'd travel all night, Saturday night, to get back to listen to the preacher on Sunday morning. He liked to hear him preach. He came to his deathbed suddenly. He called for the preacher and he rebuked the preacher and told him, he said, I spent many a Saturday night riding on a Pullman so I could hear you preach. I'd like to hear you, but you never told me about the Lord. Now I'm dying. He broke the preacher's heart too late. He talked to him about the Lord, but it was too late and the man died. That man walked the streets of Memphis and caught him washing his hands in the Mississippi River, the Sacrament. He shut himself up and wouldn't preach for six weeks. He liked to have gone crazy. He changed his message and turned 12 blocks of Memphis into a mourner's bench, but he didn't do it by entertaining. He did it by the old story of the bloody cross. That's offensive to religious people. I've had them drying their teeth at me and want to kill me since they couldn't get to God, they'd get to me. It's foolishness to the wise acre, but unto those who are saved it's the power of God, that bloody cross. Not for entertainment. It's not for education. This world's about to be blown up by educated infidels. Got everything in their head, nothing in their hearts. The radio and the television and the newspaper keep us on the edge of our nerves every day. Well, tomorrow will be the day when this old world's going to be blown up by educated fools that do not know God. No man knows what a day he'll bring forth. The apostle Paul wasn't about to preach the cross, to educate the heads, instead of convert the hearts of men and women. I knew a woman in the southern city, cultured, wealthy, and they asked her to sing in the choir in her church and it offended her because some of the people in the choir had untrained voices. She was mortified that they would ask her to sing with those untrained voices. She went away from the church building in a high dungeon and inadvertently she heard her servant girl locked in her room and she stopped hearing a noise and inadvertently, not meaning to eavesdrop, she heard the little servant girl praying that the Holy Spirit would come and convict her mistress and bring her to Christ and it broke the woman's heart and she got saved and she went and begged them to let her sing in the choir and a poor, fallen, prostitute girl fell in a state of half-death on the steps of her mansion and she picked her up and became the first woman in that city to establish a home for broken-hearted girls. Ah, the apostle Paul didn't preach to educate people up here. He was looking at this thing, looking at this thing. Why did he glory on in the cross and preach this? You couldn't get him to preach anything else. He said, I determined not to know anything. Not to know anything among you. Ain't going to get me a quartet to get a crowd or a string band or a picture show or something else. I'm just going to stay with the old message. I know it will make religious people mad and the wise acres laugh but it will get somebody saved. I'm going to stay with it and I won't know anything except Christ and Him having been crucified. That's all I'm going to preach. What did he do it for? He had five reasons. First, he wants somebody to get born again. The new birth, my friends, is something God wants you to do. You better listen to me preach a minute. The new birth is something you're as helpless about as an unborn baby unless God quickens you. Unless God Almighty touches you. They say this is fatalism. Down in my country they say that's what the old primitive Baptists believe. I don't care what they do, they're right. But I don't know about that. It's what the Bible teaches. Brother, unless you are born from above you're gone. And the only power to quicken man is in the hands of that man who because he was on the cross is now on the throne. That woman, listen to me, who pressed through the crowd, she'd suffered at the hands of many physicians. She was nothing better. She said if I could just touch the hem of his garment I'd be made whole. And she pressed through the crowd and she touched his garment. And immediately he felt power go out of him. Listen to Brother Barton. And he turned and said, Who touched me? And the disciple said, You've gone crazy. All this press of crowd, this crowd. You want to know who touched you? He said, This Redempressor. He said, I felt unified power, virtue go out of me. You better listen to me. The old time Baptist preachers didn't know nearly as much as we do but what they knew was so, and they knew this, that something's got to happen to you my sister that will literally change you from top to bottom. They used to preach that when a man was born of the Spirit God did something for him that made him love what he used to hate and hate what he used to love and that ain't good theology but it's a God's truth. This stuff we've got now that I got converted but I didn't get changed just is not so. It's just not so. Paul knew that there wasn't any power in heaven or earth or hell anyway to transform a man like Rothbard or you. And put something inside of him that would make him love righteousness and strain after it and run from sin. Except the touch of the Lord Jesus Christ. I say unless he's touched you you bear in your life the evidence of his touch. You are thrice a fool to call yourself a Christian. The new birth is the work of God. Listen to me carefully. It can be known only by its fruits and the just two fruits of a new birth. Repentance toward God daily and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ daily. The little baby comes from the mother's womb and the doctor spanks it. He spanks it and they listen. They're hoping to hear a howl because the howl is evidence. There's life. Don't tell me you've been touched by the living Christ unless daily you live a life of repentance and daily you live a life of faith in Jesus Christ. Don't you go to hell telling me about what happened some time ago. It's today we're talking about. It's today. All glory in the cross and preached it so men would be made holy. God demands holiness and it's apart from holiness no man shall see God. You tell me you're a Christian you do not live a holy life and I tell you you're wrong. It is impossible for a Christian to live anything else except a holy life. And if you're living an unholy life you've missed Christ. I'm not bragging on people I'm bragging on the power of God. Anybody who's been touched by the living Christ if you come into vital contact by faith he'll touch you and into you will come power from on high. I was a church member 11 years before I saved. No way I ought to have told them I was a Christian. I found out I wasn't going to tell you how the same way you can. There was no supernatural power in me. I could not combat S.I. in sin. Instead of overcoming it it could overcome me. But all on God's earth a Christian's got to do even when the devil comes around says resist the devil and he'll flee from you. And to every Christian the solemn promise of Almighty God is that sin shall not lord it over you anymore. I ain't bragging on people that's bragging on the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian's somebody that God Almighty has poured his power into. He lives a life this world cannot understand because he's in touch with a power this world doesn't have. Paul wanted people to be made holy. Paul wanted people to be redeemed. And the price of redemption is this gory bleeding life laid down of the eternal Son of God. The Lord didn't enter heaven the book of Hebrews tells us with bulls and goats of the blood of bulls and goats but he entered into heaven with his own blood and said this is the price of redemption. Thanks be unto God you're redeemed not from the vain tradition of your fathers and not with silver and precious gold but you're redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wanted people to keep out of hell. Thank God Paul didn't live in this generation when the only use we've got for the word hell is to use it to curse with. He believed that men were in danger of hell. And he believed that the only escape from the torments of hell was to be vitally joined to the only one who ever dealt with God's holy law and came out victorious. If I get keep out of hell it'll be simply because I've been joined by faith and thus can have it as my home. Have an interest in what my Lord did If I get out of hell, keep out of it it'll be because I got a substitute who dealt with God's holy law in my stead. Paul wanted people to go to heaven. He wasn't as practical as we are. He thought hell was a place to be shunned. Heaven was a place to be gained. He wanted people to spend eternity with the Lord. He just kept on preaching about the only one who purchased the right to set men free. He just kept preaching about that cross on which Christ died. God took him off of it and put him on the throne because of what he did there. He just kept preaching that Christ who'd been crucified is now alive. No place, every day is dark except that. That's where every man's hope must be. He set men up to that. For the only hand that can lead a man to his desired haven and take him home to glory is the hand of Him who by way of a cross is sitting on the throne now. And bless God, He can lead you home. He can lead you home. My old mother raised seven children. I can hear her when I was a kid of a boy. It'd be dust in the furniture or cooking biscuits on a wood stove and having a vacuum cleaner or dishwasher or nothing else you know in those days. And she wouldn't know she's singing, but she had a favorite song. She used to sing, I'm going home. I'm going home. I'm going home to sin no more. Sin no more. Sin no more. I'm going home to sin. She thought she was. Let us stand. Let's sing our song before we go home. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Men and women are locked up in God's death row. They're not going to be placed under condemnation. They already are. They're there in the death row awaiting the execution of a just sentence for having broken God's holy law. And they're in that cell and the door's locked and they don't have the key and they can't get out. Jesus comes along. He got the key. You haven't, sinner. Christ has. All I know an old sinner in that locked cell can do. Pass me not, while you liberating sinner stop at my cell door, Lord. I'm locked up. I've got the key. I can't get out. Don't you think I'm a crank? But we're in for a battle. Whether God will ever be able to do anything with us, I don't know. For 60 years I've been preaching the gospel. Put the key in the sinner's hand. Never has been that. It's in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only one who can get you out of your cell. God bless your heart. That's the reason I say go home and seek Him. Seek Him tomorrow while you work! Don't tell me you're a Christian unless your life is characterized by seeking after the Lord. And you won't get hurt. You'll just get a sweeter taste of the Lord. I ain't going to unsave anybody but I tell you to go home and seek the Lord. Beg Him not to pass you by. You can't dictate to Him. You can plead with Him, Lord. You don't have to and I can't make you. And I don't deserve it. But if you will, you can make me whole. And in that instant the Lord turned and said, I will. I bet He would with you. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. Our Father who art in heaven, pray that the Holy Ghost will be merciful. He alone who knows the hearts of these people, He alone who can penetrate their spirits, will take truth and disturb people who need to be disturbed. Rob people of peace if they got false peace. Rob them of assurance if they got false assurance. Strip them. O Spirit of God, don't let them go to hell without one more time disturbing them and alarming them and waking them up to their condition. We beg you to do it if it pleases you. In His name, let's sing it. Pass me not, O gentle Savior.
Glorying in the Cross
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Rolfe P. Barnard (1904 - 1969). American Southern Baptist evangelist and Calvinist preacher born in Guntersville, Alabama. Raised in a Christian home, he rebelled, embracing atheism at 15 while at the University of Texas, leading an atheists’ club mocking the Bible. Converted in 1928 after teaching in Borger, Texas, where a church pressured him to preach, he surrendered to ministry. From the 1930s to 1960s, he traveled across the U.S. and Canada, preaching sovereign grace and repentance, often sparking revivals or controversy. Barnard delivered thousands of sermons, many at Thirteenth Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, emphasizing God’s holiness and human depravity. He authored no major books but recorded hundreds of messages, preserved by Chapel Library. Married with at least one daughter, he lived modestly, focusing on itinerant evangelism. His bold style, rejecting “easy-believism,” influenced figures like Bruce Gerencser and shaped 20th-century Reformed Baptist thought.