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Order of the Concerned
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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In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the desperate state of society, where people are becoming more distant and disinterested in God. He highlights the importance of prayer as the remedy for this situation and states that victory or defeat will be determined in the place of prayer. The preacher then poses the question of whether the audience truly knows God and emphasizes the need for repentance and belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He shares a personal experience of witnessing the power of Holy Ghost conviction in a town, leading to salvation and transformation. The sermon concludes with the preacher affirming that God is preparing people to be happy and that the path to salvation is not easy, but it is necessary to keep the eternal city free from sin.
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Our old brother came to me on the side one day, and he said to the preacher, he said, could I say something to you? And I said, sure. He said, now I've been in, I've been serving the Lord a long time. He said, I'm an old man now, and you're young. He said, I just want to drop you a hint. He said, you can catch more flies with molasses than you can with vinegar. You have to die. We just need, in prayer, that we should, people have heard about that before. The people all over this community, is to kill people that need it. The only, is the giver. Why, they said, that fellow believed in a citywide meeting. We agree on this meeting, to be saved from men and women that go to, being saved. I saw a man, and this man was bumped across, then forgot, and I read a few, and I lay hold on Jesus, saying, you ought to turn him loose. Then the sinners, want to go to heaven, but he uses, Lord, let it take over. I didn't want to be saved, but I didn't want to be done with sin. I didn't want to be done with sin, and that's what salvation is, to be done with sin, that he'd do for others what he did for you. He'd make them willing, to be saved on God's terms. Doing the best he can, is a labor. God will send them for your husband, and then they go right on out to the same hog pen, the bin and all, because salvation, that's incidental. You don't know my Lord. He came to save people from their sins, and he's not wrong. Says I, he'd rather send men to hell. I, I don't think they're fixing you. He'll send to hell, with everlasting destruction, from heaviest life. He's under the very prison.
Order of the Concerned
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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.