In this sermon, the preacher recounts a conversation with Brother Mullins about his own salvation. The preacher had woken Brother Mullins up and excitedly shared that he had been saved, but also mentioned that he wouldn't be preaching the following Sunday. Brother Mullins expressed his disappointment and said that they had been waiting for this moment. The preacher then reflects on rebellion and how it is inherent in human nature, leading people to reject God's rule in their lives. He also mentions the loss of a whole generation of young people who have turned away from God and the difficulty in reaching them. The sermon concludes with the preacher emphasizing that rebellion will ultimately be crushed and every tongue will confess that God is Lord.

You do not know how blessed it is to have the privilege of speaking to a congregation who's under shepherd, seeks to undergird the word, and the people listen. Most of my ministry has been in hostile territory, and it's certainly good now and then to be in this atmosphere. Thank you so much. Now, let's all do all the moving now that we're going to do, because every person in this house tonight is going to make a decision. I hope it'll be of God. The message of the Lord will give me any option at all. There's no way on earth out of it. We've got you in here now, and you're going to make a decision. The fool hath said in his heart, Psalms 14 and 1, The fool hath said in his heart. Even a fool's got too much sense to say what he's going to say in his head. But the fool hath said in his heart, Know God for me. In the authorized version, you'll notice the words there is are in italics. Youngsters know that means that they were put in there by translators trying to help get the meaning out, but here they miss the meaning. We are dead certain that if you're a human being, there's one thing you know. You know there is a God. God has been pleased to put that knowledge in everybody's heart. There is no such thing as an atheist. We speak of atheistic Russia, and back in the days when you couldn't be an evangelist unless you'd been some sort of a crook, we had several ex-atheists fleecing the people out of the money, lying to the folks about how they used to be an atheist. But they weren't. If you're a human being, you know there's a God. You can't brag about it. God just created you that way, and you know that. So we have to get the real meaning of this text, and here's what it is. The fool has said in his heart that part of him that makes him tick, that part of him out of which come all of those terrible, abominable snakes. The fool has said in his heart, no God for me. I know there's a God. I know I live in his world. I know I live under his government. I know I live under his holy law. I know my breath is in his hands. But no God for me. For all practical purposes, I'll breathe the air he gives me. Never say thank you. I live in God's world and make out like I'm God. No God for me. The Holy Spirit says fools talk that way. Fools, not wise people, but fools. No God for me. God's not going to be my despot, my dictator. No God for me. By my first birth as my father and mother, another rebel saw the light of day. I was a rebel, of course, long before I was born. For in the teaching of the word of God, in language that I bow to but cannot either understand or explain to anybody else, my own belief is that scripture's crystal clear, that I was present in the Garden of Eden, and that I, thumb my nose at God, and that I actually sought to push him off the throne and sit there myself. I know this generation has not been faced with that too much. But that's the plain teaching of Paul in chapter 5 of Romans, as by one man sin entered in the world, and so death came, of course. For all, and the authorized version makes the terrible slips, is for all have sin. It's awfully hard to find anybody who won't agree to that. Yes, I stole a watermelon one time, but that isn't what the actual word of God is. It's all sin. You say, Brother Barnard, am I going to go to hell for stealing watermelons and getting drunk? Oh, no, you're going to go to hell because you tried to push God off the throne before you were born. That's anarchy, and that's treason. And the scripture just won't let us say, well, I don't think that God ought to send me to hell for what Adam did. He won't. You were there, and I was there, says the scripture. Well, now explain that, Brother Barnard. No, no, I can't explain that. That's just so. And so when Ralph Barnard was born, my mother and father, another rebel, joined the crowd of God-haters, holiness-despisers, rebels against the holy rule of Almighty God. I demonstrated my rebellion against God for as soon as I was able. And that wasn't gone long. I struck out against every command and every prohibition. Those little angels over at the parsonage, they sometimes strike out against rule. And since they can't get at God to take it out on God's appointing, on the authority to know about, every rebellion against any kind of rule, parental, church, government, anything, is just a manifestation and evidence that men hate the holy rule of God. Now, of course, that crosses the grain of modern-day education, psychology, and preaching and everything else, but that's so. The old-time preachers at least made an effort to deal with the baby question. They wanted to know about what God was going to do with the baby. Of course, we're so nice that we have to skip over that, and I don't know how to handle it and admit it, but just be an honest, clean-ass girl. All those little babies of yours ought to be sent to hell. God, if he did justly, would already have done it. They hate God. Why, before they're six months old, they'll double up their fist at mama. That's really doubling up their fist at God. And if you don't think they hate the rule, best way on earth to be dead set, your little angel does something that's all on earth you've got to do. Just send them to fall off a log backwards. Just tell them not to. Brother, they'll bust hell wide open to do it. Why? Because they're rebels against all law and all rule. Now, don't somebody go out of here and say the preacher said God sent little babies to hell, didn't do it. I said if he did justly, would they are rebels? And the older they grow, the more steel they get, and the more determined they get that there's one thing God said, God is not going to have the rule of their lives. So they strike out at everything that says do or don't. It's in their nature. And if salvation is just a little improvement, it's one thing. But if salvation is the crossing of that nature and the implantation of a brand new one, then it takes a miracle to change a rebel into a panther after holiness and into a person who finds sweet peace in the blessed rule of God's dear son. This rebellion grows. We're finding now all over America that we've already lost one generation between about 13, 14, 15, and 20. They've gone. They've gone. There isn't a church in America that's got any young people now hardly at that age unless they feed them beer and dances or something else to count numbers. There's a whole generation of people who when they got up old enough, they told Daddy and Mama and Church and the gospel and the Holy Spirit and God, come back to life. It is just that rebellion that they're born with coming to a head. Until now there's a generation we've lost and nobody knows how to get close enough to them to reach them today. Rebellion, rebellion, rebellion. This rebellion, I looked in the back of the book and I found out it's going to be crushed. This rebellion's going to be crushed. All rebellion's going to be crushed. There won't be a sinner in hell in rebellion. They'll say amen to God's judgment at the great white throne. Every knee's going to bow. Every tongue's going to confess. God's Lord. No wonder the Holy Spirit says a man's a fool to say no God for me. Plain English, that means he is not going to dictate my steps. Plain English is he is not going to order me about. Plain English is I am not going to be unsubjection to him. That is what a fool says. No God for me. That's what an infidel is. The way to spell infidel is I-N, F-O-R-H-E-L-L, N for hell. No God for me. No God for me. But that rebellion's going to be crushed. God crushes it in some people's hearts by his persuasion and his goodness for it's still true that the goodness of God leadeth men to repentance and if that don't lead you to repentance you'll never be led to repentance and God almighty will make you repent later on but it'll not be for being good to you. He'll put his heel on your neck and force you to bow. Since a man's going to bow, only a fool will keep on saying no God for me. I've been screaming over America for these years best I knew how in my blinding rage that the rebellion that broke out in the Garden of Eden that a man's a fool to call himself a Christian to say he's in the Lord to say he's saved unless he's been born under willing subjection to the rule of God in his life. I know I'm right. This little stuff they call salvation now wouldn't save a flea or it's filled America with people in deep rebellion against everything that God has to say and still claiming to be Christian. Can't be. God crushes rebellion in human hearts now by his grace, his mercy, his goodness. When it's judgment time, that's too late for anybody to get ready to be saved that just means, brother, time to get your paddling. Yeah, God brings judgment when that's the only thing there is to bring. My friends, there are two truths that I want to emphasize tonight if God will help me. The first one is your rebellion and mine if we be in that state we'll be broken or you'll go to hell. There's no way on earth you can say that any kindlier. It's just so. Either God Almighty by his marvelous goodness and mercy and long-suffering and patience and wooing will stay with you until it crushes your rebellion and brings you to where you can pray. Thy will be done and of course you can't pray apart from that. Not mine, but thine. Any salvation that doesn't make a man central concern to be the will of God is not the salvation that Christ purchased on the cross. Oh, that rebellion. There's something that God is not allowed to touch. That's what rebellion is. It's the one part of the line that's allowed. Not even God. That's rebellion. And that must be crushed or God's under the awful, awful, awful pain of having shut you up in his concentration camp forever and ever so you can't get out to start another rebellion like we started in the Garden of Eden. I wish I knew how to say that with power and authority from on high. It seems to me like there's nothing else worth talking about in these desperate days that just keep parroting that unless God, by his mercy and grace, is able to do him the best that an all-powerful God can do and still be God. Unless that God is able to bring you to the place you throw down every weapon of rebellion at his feet, you're as sure for hell as I'm preaching to you tonight. The second truth tonight is very simple. A man's rebellion always heads up this one place. I'm speaking to people tonight that you don't want to go to hell if there is one. You wouldn't mind spending eternity in heaven for adventure if there is such a place. And you wouldn't mind to be delivered from every sin except one. I used to puzzle over that strange statement in the scriptures that if a man defends the law in one point, he's guilty of all. That's exactly what I'm talking about tonight. For like a boiler rising, it always comes to a head. And ladies and gentlemen, the only way on earth God ever saves any human being is for God Almighty to cross your will at the very point where your rebellion is entrenched and crush it by his goodness and mercy and grace, make you willing. And if he doesn't do that, you'll just have to wait till he puts his foot on your neck and stamps it out, brings you to confession. When it's too late for salvation. You know, if I'm half right, the grace of God is ten million times more wonderful than any of us have ever dreamed of. All you got to do is drive through this mad rat race down here in Houston. Of course, everybody's a Christian in North Carolina, but everywhere else. Oh, no fear of God before people's eyes. And the lawlessness is so thick you can cut it with a knife in the air. And all sense of decency and all panting after holiness seems to have disappeared. And it's almost beyond belief that in such an atmosphere anybody could be saved. And every time I look at somebody who gives the slightest evidence they know what it means to experience Christ in them, the hope of glory. I say, brother, there's a miracle. I'll tell you, brother, it's snatching out of this godless cauldron of lawlessness and rebellion and bringing you to where the one thing that worth living for is some consciousness that you're doing. The will of God. What a miracle. And all of this fool talk about God will not invade a man's will, and I repeat it again, the only way he can save a man is to cross you. Right there where your rebellion heads up. And if he wins the battle, that's salvation. If you win it, it's hell. What's your point of rebellion tonight, young man? What is it you're going to go to hell defending and saying to God, keep hands off? What is it? What is it? There's one thing dead certain this old preacher knows. If out of this congregation a single person splits hell wide open, I know exactly why you're doing it. There's a rotten spot in your life. You are telling God, you keep your hands off. I will not come under. I will not. I'm just not going to do it. You've been telling God that a long time, some of you. You see, if a man or a woman or a boy or a girl signs a treaty of peace with sin, he knows it to be sin, and you sign a treaty of peace, with that you are sure for hell as I'm preaching to you. You care how big it is? Or how little it is? What do you mean by signing a treaty of peace? Well, we'll just not talk about this. The war is over now. This is settled, Brother Jackson. God, you just keep your big mouth shut. This is settled. The war is over. The controversy is over. The discussion is over. We'll not talk about this anymore. Just sign your name on the dotted line to a treaty of peace. God, this thing, this part of my life, you just keep your hands off. Just settle now. You're gone. Well, you see, Brother Barnes, it's proved something in my life that I don't think it's wrong. Well, that's not so bad, maybe. But suppose a thing comes to a head, God says, and then you say, well, now, listen here, God, you old air-minded folk of you, you just keep your hands off. That's signing a treaty of peace. That's sealing your damnation. Oh, my friend, rebellion always heads up in one place. Old David, every time he saw two men standing on the telephone post talking, he knew good and well they was talking about him. His sin is one, in that particular instance, was ever before him. Every time the Holy Spirit, if he hadn't already quit you, pleads the cause and throne rights of King Jesus, that one sin comes up. Brother Barnes, it very seldom means a sin, because I ain't smart, but the Holy Spirit means them to you. It's always just one. Men are willing to be delivered from everything like old Herod. Herod feared God, and he did many things, and they heard him gladly, and he quit this, and he did this, and he did that. But finally, John put his hand all on, and Herod took out. Herod took out. God going to crush rebellion, for sin is rebellion. Sin is an effort to push God off his throne. If sin wins a battle, God's going to lose. That's right. This is war. And God doesn't succeed in crushing you. How does he do it? He crosses a man's path, and bars it, and cuts there, and demands, and rules. Drop that weapon. Drop that shotgun. You've had it pointed at the face of a holy God long enough. You're not going to get rid of God. You're going to succeed in your own soul's damnation. It's very simple. It heads up in just one thing. And wherever it heads up, that's where the battle rages. That's where the battle rages. That's where the battle rages. Mr. Finney tells the story of the old squire. Got on a pretty good conviction. Mr. Finney put on a place of prayer in an old grove. Said, if you're interested in your soul, go to the place of prayer. Seek the Lord. The old squire said, I don't believe. I've got to go over there to get saved. I'm going to get saved at home. And he made it an issue. His rebellion headed up. Oh, he wanted to get saved. He didn't get saved as Mr. Finney spoiled. You see, because Mr. Finney said he had to go over there, you know. Well, of course, he didn't have to go over there until he said he wouldn't. Said he wouldn't. And so he'd go home and he'd have Mr. Finney praying. He'd get out of his bedroom. He'd just pray and pray and pray and God wouldn't do a thing. He got desperate. He'd go hear Mr. Finney preach and get more desperate. One day he got so desperate, came a big ray. Got a great big old mud puddle right in front of the old squire's home. The old boy got awful humble. And he went and got right down on his knees right in the middle of that old mud hole and just prayed up a storm. He thought he'd show God how humble he was. Apparently God did. Finally got up out of the mud hole and went where he said he wouldn't. God saved him. I was down in West Virginia and one day I had lunch, dinner, in a wealthy coal operator's home. After he'd fed me out on the front porch, he told me a story. He said, Preacher, I've walked the aisle, made five confessions, been dunked, baptized, whatever you call it, five times. God hasn't saved me. Said I told God I'd never walk another aisle as long as I live. I got up out of my seat and I said goodbye, sir. He said, why'd you leave him for, Preacher? I said, I'm scared to hang around. I'm afraid God will open up the earth and send you to hell right quick. You telling God what you will not do? I'm scared to do that. His old wicked heart, he's going to blame God for his damnation. He wasn't going to submit to being a public spectacle anymore. But he did. He had to. A woman in that same meeting hooked me up. Came, got the pastor and got to my, where I stay, at three o'clock in the morning. She's a-boohooing around about she couldn't sleep and she couldn't eat. And she said she wanted to be saved. And I said, look like anybody really want to be saved. Talked God in the notion of saving them. She said, I know, but said, Brother Barnard, my brother's pastor of another church. If I got immersed, he said he'd break his heart. I said, I just can't. I don't want to break his heart. I said, goodbye, sister. Get out of this room, please. I'm scared to have you here. She said, what do you mean? I said, you reprobate. You think more of your brother than you do almighty God. Telling God, trying to make God to blame for the mess you're in. She got baptized. She had to. You can't tell God, keep your hands off of this. I won't do this. That's rebellion heading up. And he'll cross you right there, or he'll damn your soul to hell. My point of rebellion was the matter of preaching. How miserable I was. Preaching doesn't seem to be such a bad thing. But the fact that I knew that submission to the will of God for me meant I'd be a public preacher. I wrestled with that thing for four years in hell. I know what it is to pray every night and beg God to save me. I know what it is to be a walking dead man. You mean tell me that something as good as that could be a point of controversy? Oh, yes. It was with me. It was with me. You see, salvation is being brought into the will of God, the rule of God. That's what it means to be snatched out of a lawless age, brought into kingdom, the rule of God. And for me, the point of rebellion was this preaching business. You see, like every preacher, I was called to preach before I was born. My mother and father actually gave me to God to be a public preacher while I was in my mother's womb. They did. They never told me. They just told God. It was settled, you see. There wasn't a way on God's earth. The will of God could be central in my life. Apart from me being a preacher. There wasn't a way on that. And they never told me. But when I was 11 years old and the little small town church missionary came to town, I was a church member. Nice little boy, raised in church. Godly father and mother. And he gave a call. Anybody go wherever the Lord wanted them to go and so forth. And before I knew it, yeah, I ran down to the front and made a vow. You see, the trouble is, when you make a vow, God will never release you from it. You say, Lord, I won't swap back, but he won't trade. Brother, he keeps everything he's given to him. He don't never go back on a trade. Well, I was innocent and earnest and sincere. And then as I grew to be a young man, I knew that the will of God for me was to be a preacher. Oh, I fought and rebelled. I was offered a scholarship in the greatest law school in the world. All my bills paid. Upon being graduated from that law school, I was offered a junior partnership in the greatest law firm in Texas. You mean to stand there and tell me I'm going to be a preacher. Not on your bottom dollar. And so I sobbed and I prayed and I rededicated myself and I did everything that I knew to do. Oh, salvation. I tell you, a man's got to have something so he can sleep at night. When he's booking God. When there's a place, he says, God, keep your hand off as long as a man living in God's world. Tell him, God, no God for me. If you're a human being, that'll drive you crazy. Are you a hunt for a hiding place? Get you an alibi, get you something that'll enable you to sleep. And so I became an infidel. Boy, by day, I was a smart cookie. I organized an infidels club in college and we'd meet every Friday night and curse God. Dare him, if he didn't like what we was doing, do something about it. All that junk. But ladies and gentlemen, I'd go to bed at night there in college. Even go back from that and that weekly Friday night meeting. We'd have at least 300 young smart alecks like me and we was all giving God a fright. I say to you, this is the truth. Before I could sleep at night, I'd get out on my knees and say to God, if you'll not kill me tonight, I'll surrender to you tomorrow. But you can't curse God by day and pray to him by night. It don't get the job done very well. How miserable I was. I wouldn't dart in the door of anybody's church. Horror. Bitter. No God for me. No God. Not going to have the central dictation of my life. Now, I thank God that Baptist hadn't gotten the mess they're in now. The preachers didn't preach this stuff about you didn't get saved. And to hell with the will of God then. The preachers then believed the man was saved. Then, he surrendered to the new master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And not until then. And I couldn't find any peace. Not so today. If you follow that kind of preaching, you'll land with them in hell, I'll tell you that. And I graduated from college and went to Panhandle, Texas. Way up in the Panhandle to teach school. And the first Sunday, I joined the church. You had to be a church member to teach school in Texas in those days. I didn't want to lose my job, so I came in on a promise of a letter. All the while I was an infidel. They had no discipline or nothing. I was a member of a church. Four years. I wouldn't dart in the door of anybody's church, but they kept me on the road. Four years. Blasphemed, everything, I know that. But they kept me in the church. And I just moved my letter. That's all I had, a letter. And I joined up. Of course, I didn't go that night. And Wednesday night, of course, I didn't go. And they had a business meeting Wednesday night and elected me to teach the men's Bible class. Of course, I had to do it. Sure, I didn't want to lose my job. I don't know where you can teach now if you're a Christian, but you couldn't teach in Texas schools then unless you professed to be one. Well, if I didn't have me a time. I knew more Bible than the men's Bible. There ain't nothing about it, you know. And we had a time. I'd go home from teaching that class, and if I wouldn't have me a time, I'd choose up the old hypocrite, you devil, you. Oh, it got to work, and it was getting tough. And one day, the pastor resigned. And I didn't have any preaching. They dismissed at the Sunday school and I went home. I couldn't stand it any longer. I never will know why I locked myself in, but I went in the bathroom of the boarding house and turned the key. I could have got out, but I didn't want to be disturbed. And the battle was fought out. I got up from that bathroom, and I went across town a few blocks to the superintendent of the Sunday school. He's waiting for dinner, and he's sound asleep in a rocking chair. Phonograph was playing, but he's asleep. I woke him up, made him about half mad, and I said, Brother Mullins, I've come to tell you, the Lord saved me, and I want to preach next Sunday. He said, Well, it's about time. Sure did let me down. I warned him, said, Oh, isn't that wonderful? He said, It's about time. I said, What do you mean? He said, Well, we've been waiting to see when it's going to take place. And then to be translated out of a world of stinking will into a world of his will. That's what it is. A point of rebellion tonight. You say it's not preaching. What is it? It's something. It's something. Oh, I hope you don't win. If you do, you lose your soul. I thank God for a praying father and mother. I thank God for a mother and father. Give me to be God's preacher before I was born. I thank God for that old Sunday school superintendent and that pastor and those people that built a fire under me. I thank God for that old professor down in the school that wouldn't let me alone. How foolish people are. Crazy, rough, born as blind as a bat. Cussing God by day, praying for my night. Trying to keep out of hell and go to heaven. And all the time saying, God, keep your hands off of me. You can't rule my life. It just won't work. A man's a fool to do that. But you're looking at a fool. That in wondrous mercy, in unbelievable long-suffering, God would not leave alone. I hope he hadn't left anybody here tonight alone. He said, all right, Ralph. That's the way you want it, so be it. So be it. How many people tonight, if it could be arranged, you'd like to stand up and say, I don't want anybody from now on praying for me. I won't be left alone. I don't want anybody ringing the doorbell of my home, invading my home, talking about the things of God. I won't be left alone. I settled this thing. I signed the treaty of peace. I got peace about it. I ain't scared. I'm worried. I'm all right. Just leave me alone. Oh, the most terrible thing on earth is to be alone. Living in God's world, if he says, okay, he from his jaw into his idols, he signed a treaty of peace, the discussion's over. God says, let him alone. How many of you say, I don't want God to ever bother me at all anymore about that place I got in my life that's marked off and says, no God allowed. Suppose he takes you at your word and lets you sleep on, guarding that rotten spot. Oh, my friend, instead of crying, God, leave me alone. I hope you'll cry, oh God, crush me, break me, break me, save me by thy grace. You're a rebellion. Right now, as we get ready to put you on the spot, and you're on it, you're going to hold on to that part of rebellion when it says, oh, walk on out, or you're going to drop it. In the way on earth, you're going to have to face this, and you know it. I beg you for Christ's sake, in Christ's stead, for your soul's sake, drop it. Drop it. That shotgun you've been pointing at God, drop it. That thing you've been saying, God, leave me alone, drop it. Come under to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Father, Father, our word's been spoken, and now it's time for committal. It's time for idols to be broken, for weapons to be surrendered, for lies to be committed. And we tremble for thou art a God who's snatching people out of this godless day, and we stand now to watch and to plead as men make their commitments. May it please thee, one more time, even now, to trouble somebody, to disturb somebody, to woo somebody, to deal with somebody, and we'll thank you for it. In his blessed name we pray. Amen.