In this sermon, the preacher reflects on the challenges faced in the past and the present regarding the preaching of the word of God. He emphasizes the importance of being God's witnesses in this generation and the need to hold onto the Bible as a source of guidance and truth. The preacher acknowledges the skepticism and doubts that exist in society today, but encourages believers to continue to rely on the Holy Spirit for interpretation and guidance. He shares a personal anecdote about a young man who was disappointed by the lack of response to their efforts to spread the message, highlighting the importance of addressing people's needs and concerns.

For two reasons. First, I just had to talk to Brother Mahan about some matters that couldn't be handled over the phone or by correspondence. And second, cause in the 16 years that we've been in and out of this town, and you people, we have never visited you just to be in the service and say howdy. I had never heard Brother Mahan preach from his pulpit as fast. I've heard him in conferences and other places, and I wanted to hear him, and wanted to say howdy, and wanted his counsel. So we are here. And if it don't snow and the creek don't rise, we're going back home sometime tomorrow. I told Brother Mahan, he asked me what I thought about the pastor's sermon this morning, and I said I thought it made a good talk. And that made him feel real good. And I also told him what they used to tell me that made me so all-fired mad when I preached the great, big, high-powered sermon. Somebody come up and say they thought that was real good for a young man, and I just couldn't take it. So I told him that also, and so he's about half mad at me, but for joy to be here. Now, I spent several hours this afternoon talking to Brother Mahan, and then I went back and I couldn't find a single message that I had that I could get on my heart. I'm just not cut out to dip in. I didn't come down to preach, I came down to talk. And I don't have a sermon tonight. This afternoon I jotted down some things that I've been chewing my spiritual cud on for some six or eight months. I've never talked on them, and I'm going to practice on you a little tonight. If it turns out all right, I'm going to study it hard and get me up a crackerjack sermon. But you're good people to practice on, and you'll pardon me. There is no battle that a public preacher has to face that's quite as hard as to get an old truth and make it burn in his bones. Overwarmed-up sermons are no good. And I just strike out with the bases loaded every time I decide to preach a sermon, cause I'm too lazy, to get some old truth, for it's bound to be old, and let it run through my system. Sometimes the Lord blesses the fact that we've just come up against it and we can't find a single one of our big sermons that'll work. And he sometimes blesses my heart. Some years ago, 1954, I jotted down some issues that we faced at that time and forgot all about it. And then I got a hold of the tapes the last time I was here, and a preacher up north has had them played to the student body and faculty of three seminaries and one college. And one preacher got them and he's preached them all over Canada, and I know he improved on it. The message, six things, was faced. And now it's being played to the faculty of an Episcopalian seminary, and I've been invited to come and preach a week to those Episcopalians because of that tape. So I'm going to try something else on you tonight, and if it works well, maybe the Lord will bless it. Will you turn to the book of 1 Corinthians at chapter 14 and verse 8? 1 Corinthians 14, verse 8. Now, please let nobody tell Brother E.W. Johnson of Prime Bluff, Arkansas, my good friend and yours, don't you tell him what I do tonight because he'll write me a letter and burn me up because he says what I do tonight is bad. And I know it's bad, but I'm going to do it anyhow. I want to just take a verse of scripture from out of the context because I don't know how to explain the verses immediately ahead or the ones below. But I just want to use the scripture tonight to get something off place for just a single thought. The Apostle Paul, we believe, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, makes a tremendous statement in verse 8. It's in connection with the matter of speaking with tongues and so forth that I'm not clear about, but the truth of the verse, I think, is worth looking at. The Apostle Paul lays down as a statement of fact these words, "'For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?' That's good common sense. It's a fellow standing on the wall and he sees the enemy approaching and he blows his horn in an uncertain fashion to leave people not knowing exactly what he's blowing it about. He doesn't ring it out in a ringing fashion. He doesn't ride down the highway like Paul Revere and say, the British are coming. He says there's a possibility that in the near future, unless the creek rises or four or five other things happen, it might be that the British might consider coming. No, he said, the British are coming, the British are coming. Paul said, for a man to stand on the wall and see the enemy coming and danger ahead and the trumpet sound makes a lot of noise but nobody knows exactly what he's blowing the trumpet about, then nobody is going to rush and get his shotgun and get up in his peephole and get ready to shoot at the enemy approaching. "'For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?' The public preacher, and I believe that the public preacher and the congregation may not be separated. The only kind of preaching I believe from the standpoint of a local congregation that's worth a time is the kind that the Apostle Peter did on the day of Pentecost when the eleven, Peter stood up and the eleven stood with him. And the church preached the first gospel sermon on this day of grace through their spokesman. I think if the preacher says one thing and the people say another, that's no good to you. I believe the eleven must stand up and say, sick'em, amen, so be it. But this is the reason we maintain a church organization or a fellowship. And in this day, if the public preacher fasting the message believed and obeyed and practiced by the people, by their so be it and their oh amen, the biggest task the public preacher faces now is the fact that he's answering questions that nobody is asking. We are preaching in a vacuum on the day of Pentecost. People are asking questions and making statements. And thus Peter would stand up to bring the best faith of the Lord by way of answering questions and making statements that were being made by the people. A young man walked up to me the other night and he said, Brother Barnard, it's just broken my heart. He said, we've just got out all of these 1500 circulars and we've got time on the radio, spot time. And we've visited from house to house and now the meetings have almost come to a close. And I've been watching. Not a single person to whom we gave a circular, not a single person on whose door we knocked has showed up in these meetings. And I said, son, you were trying to sell people something that they feel no need for now. He said, is that it? I said, yes. In all of the confines of America now, wouldn't it be hard to find anybody that's particularly interested in the question, what must I do to be free? The preacher trying to answer questions that he proposes that nobody's interested in. We're living in a time of belief and acceptance and no faith. I picked up a statement some time ago that I want to read you. I don't know whether it's true or not. Let me read it. Do you want to be saved? How silly to ask people a question like that now. Surely men wish forgiveness of sin instead of condemnation. Surely men wish for life instead of death. Rather, says this Christian thinker, we need to ask the potential converts this question. Do you believe so strongly that God's way in Christ is the only way that you have now been made willing to give your life to making God's way a reality in this world and in the life of men and women if it kills you to do it? I have been thinking the man was striking pretty close to what the scriptures in their combined teachings have to tell us about what saving faith is. I don't know anybody who if they believed there were a judgment to come would be anxious to faith. I do not know anybody who if they really believed that there is a hell to shun that would be anxious to go there. I do not know anybody who if they really believed that God has invaded this world on salvation's bend out of dire necessity not to give us some advice but to say, I think they'd be interested. But men accept these tremendous things but do not F-A-I-T-A-E change them. Their belief does not result in action and that is not the faith of the New Testament. This is a day when we have our beliefs and believe them and they do not bother us. This is a day when we have our doubts and we doubt them but they do not trouble the most. We are living in a day where there is a vacuum of men and women who believe something all over and that's our trouble, every last one of us. We are accepting what our fathers came to believe at the cost of their souls' agony and we just switch our drum from one jaw to the other and quietly accept it and go on down the road. I want tonight just to bring three issues about which the Christian church, you claim to be a Christian church, from the pulpit and the pew, the voice must be united. I want to bring three things that are being decided while you and I live. These are not issues that the Puritans had to face. These are not issues of the Reformation. These are not the issues your mothers and fathers had to face. But what a little brain power I've got. I think there are three battles being fought today and every one of them is being lost by what is called Christian churches. And I just want to meditate with you a little bit. I hope that it will be worthwhile. I want to call your attention to the fact that while you and I are living out our time on this earth and it will not do us good to try to go back to the other days, that day won't come back. We can't live in the days of the glory of the Puritans. And we do not have promise of tomorrow, but we do have today, and this is the day when the Christian church is God's representative here on this earth. The prolongation of the agony of Jesus Christ, his representative. If we're going to make our lives count in our day, God help us, we'd better, as we've never got in before, as God-professioned people, line up and begin to do away with the spirit of submissive and defeatism and face the issues that are being fought and lost on every side today and see to it that while we can't carry the load of the world on our shoulders, so help us, God, as far as in us is. If nobody else will, we're going to speak out and speak out of more than heads, out of hearts, and out of some anger and out of some passion on these tremendous issues. Our message, whether it be heard or whether it be despised, our message must be brought to bear on three things. First, I mentioned the moral breakdown that's going on all about us in our churches and house. This is one of the issues of this house. I would not be surprised if the most significant thing that's happening in America tonight is what's happening in the University of California. That is the most reputable, that's the highest classified university in the world. And you've been reading about it from Reagan, the movie star who's now Governor-Elect of California, made a good statement. Did you read about it? He said, nobody has put a guard at the temples of those students from 3,000 out of the 30-odd thousand that are causing the world to change in the very presence of the terrible, terrible, despicable, vulgarity and lawlessness of those 3,000 students who are led by leaders who are not even enrolled in the school. And Mr. Reagan said that he thought it was fine that the school authorities took charge and didn't allow the students to run the school, that nobody forced them to go there. I wouldn't be surprised. You've read about it. You know what started it all? They demanded the right to pressure the whole of the city and the campus with these terrible, unmentionable, four-letter sex words. You know what I'm talking about. And when they were forbidden to do it, they staged these sit-down strikes. Now, that is symptomatic of the awful spirit of rebellion against anything that feels like law. He's a gutter man. And that is one of the awful issues of this terrible day. Whether we know it or not, this world is literally being torn to pieces in this country and the world around by this awful, terrible, it must be coming out of the very pit of hell, this absolute rebellion that is tearing us to pieces in our churches, in our homes, in our nation. It's making it unsafe to walk the streets on our own property or to be a schoolteacher or to be a preacher. It's terrible what's going on. And this isn't going on 200 years ago. This is going on today. Now, they tell us, they tell us from pulpit and university chair, from high school and grade school and Sunday school teachers and literature and the press, the liberal press, and the radio and the television, thank God they tell us that mankind is now at last grown up and that we can do away. We've already done away with God's holy law. And now they tell us that even where peace may be all right under certain circumstances, now they tell us that with no standard, with no word of authority, with no such thing as finding out whether things right or wrong. And brother, this is threatening to wipe American morality off the face of the earth where we'll not be moral or immoral, we'll simply be un-moral. Now these issues, this is an issue that every Christian must be old-fashioned enough to lift up a trumpet voice and whether it be heard or not, we must give no uncertain sound that back off those ten commandments. And people say, well, if we've just got a bunch of rules, fine, no good. But brother, we've not just got a bunch of rules to go by. We've got a bunch of rules that express the will and the character and the holiness and the majesty of the living God. Granted that if all we've got in this book is some rules, okay, but that isn't what this book talks about. This book doesn't talk about some rules apart from the living God who laid them down. And the rebellion that's going on all about us now is not a bunch against some rules. It's against the very idea of a living God who demands the right and exercises it to be God and lay down his prohibitions and subject men to his will by telling them to do things and not to do things. One of the most dangerous things that is happening to our country, and you cannot separate our churches from our country, brother, unless the spiritual climate and the moral climate of America takes a decided change for the better. Brother, we ain't going to have no churches much longer. That may interfere with your doctrine, but this is an issue that's eating us at our very vitals, and this is one we must give no uncertain time. It's the most, one of the most nerve-racking, one of the most silly decisions that's ever been made in anybody's generation is the recent decision of people who rule over us to make it so that a policeman has to smile while a cutthroat cuts his insides out, and while he must apologize and let the criminal have everything his way. These are issues that we have to face. These are issues our youngsters, you didn't have to face them. The Puritans didn't have to face them, but under God we've got to face them. And the church of Jesus Christ that doesn't have a clear-cut conviction can it be careful to put it out of business, and that can be counted and call a halt to this awful wave of rebellion against everything that's high and holy. It is all combined in the words of God's holy law. That church has no message for this hour. They offer breakdowns of morality. Let there be no uncertain sound from God's people in these days. You know, it breaks my heart. I think this thing lingers with me more than anything else. I want to reach people, and I know you do. I tell you, I want to reach people and warn them and hold up God's hand and get in the way and lift the red flag about what people are having to face today. And brother, the moral breakdown is one of the issues of this hour. And I believe that it's fair meeting time for the people of God to get on their faces as churches and look up into the face of a thrice holy God and quote that verse from the psalm. It is time for thee to work, O Lord, for they have made void thy law. There is a second issue, and this is up to date. We are losing ground. It's a trite issue, but it's being pressed. The Bible is being pressed. It looks like the guns from north and south and east and west have all shooed in the same direction. And the shooting at this one troop is the Bible. Is the Bible God's holy word? Never were the guns trained on this like they are now. I have been utterly amazed at the vigor and the sleep and the intensity of the growth in my day and especially in the last five years, fed from pulpits and press and every avenue of communication coming from higher places, infiltrating and permeating our educational system. Ladies and gentlemen, you and I are called to be God's witnesses in this particular generation when the fires of hunger try to do clear away with this precious book. Never since Christ went back to glory have as many guns been all shooting in the same direction to do about what has been done in America. Make this book a book of obsolete ideas or a book that our fathers may be blessed in a little bit. But since we have got so smart in our day, we're told on every hand that we can no longer come to this book and weep over it and ask the Holy Spirit to interpret it for us and find for it words to live by and please God say bye-bye. Oh, how the battle is raging today. Listen, I think I know how the liberal movement started against the Bible. And it started because there was a need. It started because people of our generation and our fathers, a little bit of that gender, they began to take the Bible for granted and listen to Brother Barney to believe some truths without ever agonizing over them. You know, we have a job, don't you get mad at me. We have a job and it's the biggest job we've got to come to face. Our big task is to plow through our inherited beliefs and to get to where we believe something out there. You know, the liberal movement set the Bible to become a paper Pope and it just about had. Fundamentalists would pound you over the head with the Bible or pound you over the head with the truth of the Bible. And they were looking for some life because they went too far now to just throw the whole Bible out. But if there ever was a day when men and women who stale in their heads will take the position that God has invented this world and the record of that invention is this holy book and it's a fact, it's history, it's not a story. When we who say we believe it get in our head. If we could get some of these precious truths in our hearts until we live by them and praise God if we had to and be willing to die for them, then the vigor and the romance and the glow and the glory and the power that our grandfathers had maybe would come back to us. Our big task is to get to where we really believe what we've been told everybody's supposed to believe. The apostle Paul, bless God, he had to come to us for one of the great truths that he had founded through the agony of experience. And we haven't had to do that. They tell it about the first man who works hard and gets rich. The second boy does first, fifth son does pretty good and the grandson goes broke. And somebody comes up in the agony of experience, the white heath of experience. The reformers did that. The old Puritans did that to their day. We've got to do it in our day. Somebody said someday somebody's going to pick up the Bible and read it and believe it and make the rest of us ashamed. Oh, how Rothbard has to pray and cry and agonize as mean as I am to get to where he can stand up and press through what I've been taught and what I've been told. Everybody that's a Christian believes. To get to where I can stand up and say, I believe that, too. That's my experience, too. I've passed through the white heath of that agony of soul until I can reject the heaven fall and the fire fall. I can stand and will loosen and say, I can do no other. I'll have to stand on this. Whether we like it or not, whether we like it or not, you're living in a day when modern Christianity, and that's been the majority of the day, and if they are not true, they call for people who claim to believe the book fell to get up on their hind legs and spit out their juice in the spirit of this generation and begin to strike some telling blows and try to get whipped and defeated. Whether we like it or not, then, we're living in a day when great people are first! It's time to sit in judgment on this book instead of being judged by him who speaks through this book. I'm telling you the truth. Your kids are facing living in an unlawful nation, and your kids are facing trying to have a chance in a generation just ahead if the Lord doesn't intervene. There isn't going to be anybody who doesn't feel himself capable of deciding as he pleases what part of this book he'll accept and vouch for. And what he'll say is just the strings of men to talk about their reaching out for God and not the revelation or the record of what God has revealed of himself in Christ. That's the battle that's being fought. Every one of our big criminals, every last one of them, I've investigated to know what I'm telling the truth now. Every one of them now is denying original sin. Every one of them. They have taken the first eleven chapters of the Bible and said it's a nice story. There was never a man by the name of Adam. The word Adam just means man. There was never a flood. There was never an actual fall in the garden. And that is being taught to this next generation of preachers in every denomination in America. Absolutely. Now ten years ago they were beginning to teach it but they lie about it. Now they're out and open. I went through the Southern Seminary the other day in Louisville and I made some investigations and I talked to students. I know what I'm talking about! The one in North Carolina the one that I graduated from now they've disowned everything they taught me. Oh my soul I'm not talking about some issues a thousand years old you and I! While this world born in Earth are witnessing the destruction of faith that in this book we have a true record of a true revelation of a Christ Holy God revealing himself in Christ on salvation bench. No, the Bible is not a bunch of myths it's a bunch of facts. We are told now that the idea of original sin cannot be stumbled by modern man but we weren't told that until this generation had been convinced that man can decide that any part of this Bible that doesn't suit him he's perfectly free to tear it out and just take what he does. I said many years ago and I say it again if ever the time comes when I doubt that this is God's record I'll never preach again I may be mean as the devil but I'm not that much of a hypocrite brother, I believe the whole basket is in the truth of whether this is the truth or not if this isn't God's truth I haven't got anything to say and you've got nothing to listen to. Oh, it's just down to this this starts being taught in Protestantism the whole church of Luther and Calvin and all of those brother, they joined in the chorus the whole sin that now has told us that we cannot come to this blessed book and learn truths eternal because they came from the heart of God that we are to live by them and die by them and if that's not so well, there's nothing to talk about this is an issue and it's being fought now and the answer from God's people in the head belief in this book it's got to get into our hearts until we believe it with all of our souls and that's contagious they tell us now since men have got to where they can sit and judge it on the book they tell us now that the resurrection never happened this is believed by more professing Christians in America and don't believe it this is an issue of ours we're told that the idea of the resurrection is wonderful but that it's not a fact it's not a fact oh, my soul when I read how that sweeping so-called Christianity today I don't breathe so much when we remember our firstborn child oh, my soul the only light I've got the only hope I've got is gone if Christ be not risen from the grave I want to get that into my heart where somewhere or another I'm getting so tired, dear folks of answering questions nobody's answered yet oh, I hope I live long enough to see the day again in America when somebody'd be glad to know that Christ is risen from the dead and that therefore our hope and our faith is not vain it's not vain the last issue that I see today these three, I think they're all the same thing but while we're playing church and us preachers are making some noise and nobody's paying much attention to us the battle between cheap and costly grace is being lost surely you'd be interested in me making a few feeble remarks about the grace of God but the battle is going in the way of cheap grace today I've been greatly intrigued reading everything in the last year that the young preacher Dietrich Fraunhofer who was killed by Hitler in a concentration camp he's not perfect but there in that concentration camp he had to separate what he'd been told he believed to try to find out if he believed something there's a lot of difference, isn't there? and he tried to come up with something real and it cost him his life and I've read his book on cheap grace and he made the statement that they Christianized Germany by preaching a cheap grace and that Germany became a Christian nation at the expense of the laws of Christianity and I just moved over from Germany the most Christianized nation on top side of God's earth that formed two world wars and an Adolf Hitler and the gas chambers in the concentration camps and six million Jews burned out of a nation then Christianized by cheap grace I don't know, he's just a man but I want to read you what this man said and just let you chew on it Mr. Bonhoeffer who gave his life rather than recant says the only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man whose faith has led him to leave all and follow Christ and don't let anybody get worried nobody's fallen perfectly but there's no such thing as a way of salvation that doesn't set a man to follow in Christ it's just got to be so the only man who has a right to say he's been justified by grace alone is the man whose faith has led him to leave all to follow Christ such a man, this man says knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace and that the call is inseparable from the grace now that's right I know that the grace of God in the New Testament doesn't save a man without enlisting that man in a life of following after Christ such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace and that that call is inseparable from the grace but those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves I think the man is right I think he's given us something to think about listen, listen we say that salvation by grace through faith but faith, what is it? then it calls the saying the grace of God that brings salvation through the channel of faith that faith that faith by which men and women are vitally united not to a belief but to a person three things must characterize that saving faith first it must be the response of the whole man ladies and gentlemen we've talked about God saving our souls until we've missed the Bible a million miles I've read all the books about how a man is soul, spirit and body until we've actually got a salvation now where a man's soul is saved but he ain't but you better listen to me the Bible don't know nothing about breaking up a man all three or four ways Jesus Christ came down here to give himself for us and the response must be the giving of ourselves to him why that even written books now prove it that a man can have a saved soul and an unsaved life but it won't work you can't separate Rock Barnard that way either Rock Barnard saved the whole outfit out there or he's lost the whole outfit Jesus didn't come down here to save a part of me he came down here to save me and any saving faith that's not the product of cheap grace will demand me the response of me in the second place that faith that the channel which God graced comes to me and that grace that cost God the gift of his son and that Luther said cost him himself that faith must, must mean surrender to the sovereign rule of the Lord Jesus Christ I picked up a statement from a thinker today and I just want to read it I had it with me and I took it here in my Bible during, now listen to me about 1850 what we call the beginning of the great growth of Christianity in all the denominations in America I'm telling you the truth until this good hour the great growth in professing Christianity in America has been occasioned by the leaving out of the gospel call of a demand that men and women not only accept Christ but surrender to him we have asked men to receive peace but haven't demanded that they lay down their swords and America's been Christianized at the loss of the heart of the gospel I do know this I know it if I know nothing else in this world that complete surrender as far as a man's able he'll have to do it again tomorrow and then he'll have to do it again the next day and then he'll have to do it again the next day for this is a cycle that never runs out and there'll never be a day in your life where decisions will not have to come out of your heart as to who will boss you or the Lord those things come up day after day and day after day and time after time and that's what salvation's all about complete surrender to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ is what God Almighty demands Mr. Farmer one of our thinkers today here's a statement I just want to quote it he says those who seek to eliminate this frickin' element of absolute praise would thus eliminate that which more than anything else throws into the sharpest relief the distinctive essence of the living touch of God upon the human spirit to live every day of our lives not with the luxury of making our choices or enjoying our desires but to live every day of our lives under the sweet cord of the fact that we're not our own we're bought with a price and to have the one thing thing that makes us take the doing of the will of God in exhalation that doesn't include that doesn't come through the face that the New Testament talks about but I say one more word that face that is the channel through which the grace of God that cost him his son it'll cost us ourselves not only demand the response of us not part of us not only demand our surrender to the sovereign rule of Christ but it demands that we give ourselves to the instruments of God's redemptive purpose ladies and gentlemen you can't have my Christ unless you'll have his passion you can't be a Christian and not be in the battle to rescue the perish oh, God help us self-satisfied church people today who think no nothing matters except in faith know nothing of the sense of having been enlisted in the same mission that brought Christ Jesus down to this earth I say to you that unless the spirit intervenes and makes Christ real and unless the tide is turned in this battle only God knows whether in ten years there'll be anybody in America who'll have the slightest information to tell their world story of Jesus and his love where has your mission gone? my Lord Jesus Christ was a man with a mission and his people are commissioned people are people with a mission people who share his passion to rescue men and women oh, there's nothing so terrible as to have nobody to be interested in but yourself there's nothing so challenging and so wonderful as to learn a little bit about what it means to be interested in somebody else instead of yourself there's a man in glory we heard it again this morning that man still has the passion that made him humble himself become obedient to the Father up to the point of death even the death of the cross years ago a man wrote a book I read it and I lost it guess it's out of print he tried to pinpoint the time when Christians got to where they weren't interested in the one thing that gave pleasure to their master saving faith gives us a mission Mr. Tenney was just a man who may not have told the truth I think he did he said that anybody who isn't living to save others isn't saving himself he is right my God it better be salvation by grace none of us deserve it I close this delightful visit just a kind for just this verse of scripture when my Lord came with a little bunch of disciples huddled in the upper room after the crucifixion no wonder they'd be scared they were locked up in there for fear of the Jews because just one time in the history of a leader being killed nobody else that's Jesus they didn't kill any of the disciples but the disciples expecting somebody to come knock on the door and say you're next and into that locked door came the risen Lord and he knew they'd scare them he set aside don't be afraid and he breathed on them and then he gave them his commission I told it to you many times I'll tell it again as my father has sent me even so send I you save and save save and save includes being enlisted in the same mission that brought Christ to this earth until it is actually true it's theologically sound you better listen to me I've had people come to me and say brother Barney you saved me in one sense brother Mahan that's so as my father has sent me even so send I you have the Lord bless you brother Henry