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Why Glory 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 rather than relying on entertainment or other distractions. He believes that the new birth is a result of preaching and not something that can be achieved through other means. The preacher encourages the congregation to focus on the message of the cross and the glory found in it. He references the Book of Galatians and highlights the apostle Paul's emphasis on the cross and the need for true devotion to Jesus Christ.
Sermon Transcription
That means the glory has departed. Those of you who are gray-haired, don't know what I'm talking about. That's not something to laugh about. That's an ache in your heart. I... 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'll 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 a 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. You never know. The latest 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 and people didn't have anywhere else to go. 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 church. That means the glory is departed. Those of you who agree have heard what I'm talking about. That's not something to laugh about. That's innate. 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 we'll pour out upon them a spirit of grace and bring revival. I don't know it'll 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. You never know. The latest meeting I ever saw, one single meeting, one service, I preached to an average of 6,000 people every night right back during the Depression and people didn't have nowhere else to go. I had a citywide meeting out on the plains of west Texas and there was a poor that couldn't go to the picture show so they came to hear me preach. And the walk couldn't buy gasoline. It was bad fashion 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 eye lag status. And I remember that 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 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 2x12s out on some blocks just sat that way in the school out yard. And they had a good song service and I got up and read my text 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, didn't count the women and children they just counted men who had come forward crying out for mercy. You see men are blind and they're dead and the natural man receives it 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 12th chapter of Zechariah describes it God's going to pour out a spirit of grace and suffocation on his people and men are going to look on him whom they pierce and they're going to see Jesus as he really is. You ever did see him with eyes of faith as he really is with a bloody offering on a cross and a supreme dictator on the throne? Do you ever see him that way? It'll set you to seeking him. And the 12th 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 all the mournful things I don't object to it too much but I'd rather see people have a private mournful thing in their own hearts. David had one. Paul had one. He's going around, who shall deliver me from this body of death? And Jeremiah had one. All the people that really get paid and got a private mournful thing they're the happiest, most miserable people on earth and mighty miserable over their poor return and showing them how much they love it. They'll never be satisfied till they're awake in his light, Mr. Scriptures. 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 Morgan, he'll be up in that room seeking the Lord. The wife will be in the back room and the kids with Brother Dane won't have as much time for this and then talk about the corn crops. You go down the street and father will tell you hold your coat there for just a minute. You got a minute, please? Yes. You know the Lord just as we do. Would you pray for me? Wouldn't you love to see that? I think we'll love it. Sometimes I get mad and I try to make folks do it. I go to meetings and people they visit each other and talk till the song starts. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we read the Bible to get seeking the Lord? You men that 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 me. 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. Well, what have they done up and down the country? We explain it and argue about it but we do not proclaim it much. An inaccessory prayer. I look fine with that distress. He's made a little pretext sometimes for 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. And I try to hoot 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, if 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 speaking. 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 teaching things as they are. We used to try to work up the flesh and get all this to go. And it didn't last. Partly, because we got it worked up. Now, I'm just facing people, the best I know how, with the truth of God's word moaning in my heart that one more time, he'll pour out a spirit of graveness and suffocation. I wonder if it's ever going to happen again. I'll be gone 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 yet so preached to. Well, pray for us. Amen? So, I encourage God's people to meet. Tonight, if you'll turn to the book of Galatians, 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 12th verse of the 6th chapter of the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul says, As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, or let's put it straight, talk about it hidden. 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 willing and only in one thing, not in any of the things you've done, not in any act of the flesh, but only in the cross of Christ. Paul said the folks can go through the motions, try to get you to do this and that, and they'll have 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 to have this testimony meeting in a Baptist church in any way of their sight or hair. It's a wonder to me God Almighty don't kill this gang of church members wagging on them there. The whole place, prayers and company, except that he gets up on Sunday morning and combs the dead 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. It's rough to be in a meeting sometimes, and they call us all a flippant testimony time about the only thing he'd say about himself. I was a persecutor, and I was injurious, and I was a blasphemer, but just. Oh, learn by experience this wondrous doctrine with him. He'd come to the position when he said, God forbid, cherish the thought, don't even think about me. Let him go away and where else except one place, yonder outside 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 throw in anything except that. That's the one thing that counts. That's the one thing to do the right delivery with. That's the one place to find joy. That's the one place to get your joy. If it's in everything you've ever done, in this generation of bastards, they're going to go to hell after you with a sob in their heart depending on something they've done. The Apostle Paul said, I'll glory on what I've done. But in him, God forbid that I should glory saving the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If something happened there, he said two things happened there. Jesus Christ hung on the cross I hung there with, and that's the teaching of the Scripture. And he said, the world was crucified under me. It's an enemy of mine. And I hung on there. I looked you in the face. Don't want anything you've got, but I've got the nutrients of death. What I say is, because I say it's not true, that I live on cornbreads and meal where I could make lots of money. I can grace anybody's pocket. 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 class. I can bring the stars down. I can kill policemen. I'm clear for the coast. I've been off of pulpits, the biggest in America. I know what you're talking about. You cannot smother me. I have a preaching. If you leave the cross out of it, you can get on the radio and try to save America from communism. You boys keep on sending your dollars. The devil's tickled to death with every God-caused situation he's trying to fight in communism. They call the streets the cross. You can get mad if you want to. Get mad now! 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. But God bless your heart, this little life don't last very long. That didn't last a long time. And I'm betting my life on eternity and the judgment to come. I look in the face now and tell you this, that this generation of Christians, that we... I grew up down in the country and God's preachers tell me that most of our members don't even have it. And ever since I've been a professing preacher they've been telling me that what baptists need is to be taught. Are they what you need? You need to be saved. A man that's a cook with his money is going to hell. Don't care who you are. Whether you're a deacon, a son of a school superintendent, you're a preacher, whoever you are, you put your feet in hands on God's money, that he says, it's yours. And you show your rebellion and your all-rightness and you show that you know the way. As the old song goes, you are the cross, and I am the fire. Say that a thousand times 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 loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranatha, including from the 16th to 1st Corinthians. Anathema means a curse. Maranatha means when Jesus comes. God bless your hearts, this labor day and night crowd. I am desperately interested in whether or not I have the kind of love toward the Lord Jesus Christ. That verse told me. 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 came unsaved. But if God's my judge in this day, where anything goes for salvation, when I meet you to 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 haven't disturbed you, you're in a bad shape. You may go. That's the God's rule. 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, glorious, blessed offering on a cruel tree, unless you see God's glory there and rejoice, 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, it's got to be one day too late, and you're going to do it. It's today, brother. If I could sit down by you and I as God and I could look inside of you, where'd you find your big satisfaction today? What made you tick, kept the doorbell ringing in your soul today? If there's anything on God's earth except this thing I'm talking about, you miss Christ, folks. You miss Him. Why, you going to hell with this gang of Sunday morning church members with a trust scheme, something they said happened 15 years ago. Jesus Christ is forever in the heart of God on the cross. And that's how I feel when I wake up in the morning and I get the same person who says, ask me to go over there. Hey! What keeps me going when all hell's popping? Jesus Christ on the cross. Hey! You found great joy not only in him, as he works for this job, for he still works through that cross. So well a poppin' and you were able today to rejoice in the fact that he's forever on the throne. He's running this over 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 full 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 here on the cross. But in the heart of God, that's where he is. And that's the real question it takes. People say, I want princes, but I don't want him on the throne. He's found a room in my life. And the marks of the Lordship of Christ are conspicuous by their absence today. You have a generation of professing Christians every man does that with his wife, 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, or the kind of love the Bible requires so when he comes he won't curse me. And I love him on the cross. I love him. I love to sing those old songs in the cross of Christ I go with. Why? In that bloody thing? Yes. In the cross of Christ I go with. Howling o'er the wrecks of time, all the light of sacred spirit gathers round his head supply. When the woes of life will take me, and they will, force the sea and fear the north, nor shall the cross forsake me. Glory that glows with peace and joy when the sun of bliss is gaining life and love upon my way. From the cross the radiance streaming at more lustrous days. Pain and blessing, pain and pleasure by the cross of 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 can my heart push a blood of fire. Glory to Him. Oh, dear one. Somebody started to 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 would walk down this land talk to people like I do by that demand. I'm asking you for my Lord. Somebody said for once, one time, at the pace, keep a fellow so he won't go to hell. That pace that doesn't continue day by day bringing you to the cross every day. Bringing you to kneel again at the throne of Him. It matters. Every day, brother. That's the pace that saves. That's that God's truth. Not one time in the New Testament is everlasting life without faith to anybody except in connection with the days of piety and obedience faith. You better believe me. And with that, disascending people to hell at the fast, they're going to pick up dust in the devil's face by compounding, making a profession of coming into vital union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Hold the cross when you're dormant. That's bloody. I like to sing when I have to. Hold the cross. You know if you love the Lord, you'd love His love. I remember this story where the providential were hindered that saved would be heaven and earth because a saved person loves the Lord. That's that God's truth. Baptists don't love the gospel. They send them off on people. They send them off. You can't love the Lord and not love the truth about Him. You love Him, you love His truth. Isn't that right? Let us celebrate the wondrous cross. God bless your heart. You went all day today and didn't. You've missed Him, I'll tell you that. This thing's vital. Let us celebrate the wondrous cross. Oh, so rich a crown. The whole realm of nature, mine were a present. Far too small, oh, so amazing. So rich a crown. Jesus. God bless your heart, it'll get it. Jesus. My soul. My life. Now, this little occasion of this service to Jesus Christ is going to land this generation of professing Christians right flat tab 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 go around in the cross, preach this? Negatively, he didn't preach this cause for men to find by grace to entertain anybody, to educate anybody. I don't know what happened to us a few years ago when in the entertainment business. Now, there's a church all charged with mission. People come up to me and get a little mad about this and say, Preacher, I enjoy this service. I think I know what you mean, but sometimes when I'm feeling a little bad I stick out my hand to entertain it. They're charged with mission to depict themselves. This world's going to hell. We brought in a preacher for entertainment. Churches have been built all over this Piedmont section on a certain type of music that you can dance by but not worship by. Just cave into the flesh, Paul said. Build up the flesh, make a show of the flesh and 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 artist. He lived in Memphis, Tennessee. He learned to pick the terms until they were very accurate. Perfection, perfectness, oratory, 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 like he didn't preach. He came to his deathbed suddenly and called for the preacher and he rebuked the preacher and told him, he said, I spent many a Saturday night riding on a poor man so I could hear you preach and I liked to hear you, but you never told me about the Lord and 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, if that's right. He shut himself up and wouldn't preach for six weeks. Life had gone crazy. He changed his message and turned twelve blocks of Memphis into a mourner's place. But he didn't do it by entertaining. He did it by the old story of the bloody cross, offensive to religious people who had them grind their teeth at them and want to kill them 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. It's not for entertainment. It's not for education. This world's got to be blown up by educated infidels. They've got everything in their head and nothing in their heart. The radio and the television and the newspaper keep us on edge in our morals every day. Well, tomorrow will be the day when this old world is going to be blown up by educated fools that do not know God. No man knows what a day will bring forth. The apostle Paul wasn't about to break the cross to educate the head instead of convert the hearts of men and women. I knew a woman in the southern city of Colchester, and they asked her to sing in the choir in her church and they defended her because some of the people in the choir had untrained voices and she was mortified that they would ask her to sing. She went away from the church building in our dungeon and inadvertently she heard her servant girl locked in her room and she stopped hearing the noise and inadvertently, not meaning to interrupt, she heard the little servant girl cry that the Holy Spirit would come and connect her mistress and bring her to Christ and it broke the woman's heart and she got caved and she went and begged and they let her sing in the choir and the 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, they talked to Paul and preached to educate people up here and he was looking at this thing and looking at this thing. Why did you go away on the cross and preach? He said, you couldn't get preachers in here. He said, I determined not to not to know my faith because I'm not going to turn your mom against you. You ain't going to get me in your quartet to get a crowd or a string band or a picture show or something else. I ain't going to turn my mom against you. I know you make religious people mad and all I make is laugh but it'll get somebody saved. I'm going to stay with this and I don't know where I'm going except Christ and him having been crucified. What did you do with Paul? He had five reasons. First, he wanted somebody to give him more and he knew where it was. He pressed through the crowd and he suffered at the hands of many physicians. He was nothing better. He said, if I could just touch the hem of this garment and press through the crowd and immediately he felt power throughout us. Listen to Brother Barney. And he turned and said, You touched it! And the disciple said, You've gone crazy. All this pressure, crowd, the crowd. You don't know who touched it. You said, I touched it, don't touch it. He said, I felt dynamite, power, worship throughout us. You've got to 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 is born of the Spirit, God did something for him. That's not who I am! What he used to hate and hate! What he used to love and that ain't good for you, but it's a God's creation. It's stuff we've got now that I got converted to. But it didn't get changed, just it's not so. It's just not so. Power! He knew that there wasn't any power in heaven or earth or hell or anywhere to transform a man like what Barnabas used and put something inside of him that would make him love righteousness and strength naturally and run from sin. And I say, unless you touch Jesus, you bear in your lives the evidence to this touch. You are twice 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 fruit and the just two fruits of a new birth. Repentance towards 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. Don't tell me you've been touched by the living Christ. And rest daily. You live a life of repentance. And daily you live a life of faith in Jesus Christ. Since you grew the hill telling me about what happened some time ago, it's the day we're talking about. Paul go in the cross and preached it so men would be made holy. God demands holiness 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 the 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 eleven years before I saved. And the way I ordered it, everybody told me I was a Christian. I found out I wasn't. Do you want me to tell you how? Same way you can. There was no supernatural power in me. I could not come back S-I-N-C. 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, is 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, I'm bragging on the power of the Lord Jesus Christ! A Christian's somebody that God Almighty has power into. He lives a life this world cannot understand. For he's in touch with the power of this world and air. Paul wanted people to be made whole again. Paul wanted people to be redeemed. And the price of redemption is this great leading life laid down of the eternal Son of God. The Lord didn't enter heaven, the book of Hebrews tells us, with broads and goats or rather 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 got for the word hell was to use it as a cuss word. 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 own. 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 gazed. He wanted people to spend the 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 a throne because of what he did there. He just kept preaching that Christ, who'd been crucified and is now alive, that's where every man's hope must be. Shut 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 his 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 as a boy. She'd be dusting the furniture or cooking biscuits on a wood stove and having a vacuum cleaner or a dishwasher or something else in those days. And she wouldn't know what she's singing but she had a favorite song. And she used to sing I'm going home. I'm going home. She taught you what? I'm going home to sin no more. Sin no more. To sin no more. I'm going home to sin no more. She taught you what? I'll say it again. Anyone in the lockstep in God's death row they're not going to be placed under condemnation they already are. They're there in the death row waiting the execution of a just sentence for having broken God's holy law. And they're in that cell and the door is locked and they don't have a key and they can't get out. Jesus comes along he's got the key. You haven't sinned Christ has. Oh I know an old sinner in that locked cell can be to sin no more. Why you liberating sinners stop at my cell Lord, Lord. I'm locked up. I have that key it can get out. Don't you think I'm a fool that you're in for a battle whether God will ever be able to do anything with us. I don't know for sixty years I've been teaching the gospel put the key in the sinner's hand. Never has been that in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ he's the only one that 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 and you will. 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 untrain anybody if I tell you to go home and seek the Lord. Begging not to pass the time. 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 Holy Saint we pray that the Holy Ghost will be merciful. He alone who knows the hearts of these people. He alone who can penetrate their spirit. 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 and hear it made.
Why Glory 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.