In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of the gospel in times of chaos and crisis. He believes that the only hope for this generation is for God to pour out judgment and open the windows of heaven. The preacher explains that the everlasting gospel, set in the midst of an earth under the sway of anti-Christ, has three main messages: fear God, give glory to Him, and worship Him as the Creator. He also warns against the temptation of selling out one's birthright and urges believers to be prepared to share the gospel in this anti-Christ spiritual age. The sermon references Revelation 13 and 14 as the source of this message.

What I feel telling tonight is the book of the revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, chapter 14. Chapter 14. I believe the truth is vital. I would not sneer at hard study to come to truth. I believe the old Puritan, whoever it was, said the only way to study the Bible is on your knees. He didn't mean that, I suppose, physically, it wouldn't hurt. But it means the only way to study the Bible is to study it prostrate as a little child, knowing that the only part of the Bible you're able to believe is what you practice, and that Christ is known only in discipleship, and that Christ can be laid hold of only in the truth of him. I believe truth is important. But I do not know all truth, I know in part. I believe that truth in season, we may ask God to confirm it. I do not sneer at truth. But there is just one great facet of the word of God that I'll fight you about, and that is the person and work of Christ. All else I'm still learning. I believe I have come to a position that I'll hold for eternity about who Jesus Christ is and what he actually did and what he's doing now. With Martin Luther, who said that no man was a friend of Christ, who didn't stand up and be counted in that aspect of truth that was under most attack in his generation. I have given my life in the controversy over the gospel, and I won't seek tonight this prefacing word, that I believe there is one gospel, but that it has a different thrust in times of great crisis, chaos. And whether my theology is straight tonight, I do not know. But I want you to listen to me. I believe that these are the days when the religious world, Christendom, is being prepared by good men, by sincere men. I believe they, with their perversion of the gospel, are preparing the so-called Christian world to welcome with open arms him of whom my Lord spoke when he said in John 5, I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you shall receive. I believe that the day you are seeking to claim to be a child of God, seeking to shoulder the tremendous responsibility of coating your end of the blanket for a fight for the recovery of the gospel for this hour, I believe with all of my heart that our gospel today must challenge easygoing religion, and must come with God-anointed authority and the man absolutely committal to the Christ of God. I won't try to preach to you tonight priceless, hoping most of you, many of you, are children of God. I encourage, if I may, and instruct you if need be, on what to say when you get a chance at somebody living in this anti-Christ spiritual age. I think that gospel is found in the book of Revelation, in the 14th chapter, and I begin reading with the 6th verse. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel, to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. And here's what the message is. What is this everlasting gospel set in the midst of an earth, at that time under the sway of anti-Christ? Revelation 13 has been talking about him. Here is the movement and the message of God. For an hour men are to hear from heaven what God calls good news. This gospel has three things to say. Fear God, that's number one, and give glory to him, number two, for the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water. Fear God, give glory to him, worship him, not the one who shall set himself up as God, but the one who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, the creator, and the fountains of water. There follows another angel saying, Babylon is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drunk, drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. The third angel followed, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, that same man shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, that man shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angel, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of that torment ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and who receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. Bishop Sheen, who is without doubt the most evangelistic voice of the Roman Church, if that can be said at all, his own record is saying that the biggest achievement of Antichrist in our day is to convince us he's not here, to convince us he's not here. Whether you're prepared to believe it or not, just bet you nearly a nickel it's so, that we've come to the days when the greatest enemies of the gospel, under God's son, are preachers and church people. Antichrist is here. A brand of gospel with some truth in it, mixed with a lot of error, has been Satan's way of opposing God and his Christ since the day when the mystery of iniquity began to roll. The fact of everything that's wrong in our homes, our church, our nation, our state, our city, our lives, is faith in a gospel that is not God's gospel. And I wish we didn't have so many convictions. Most of us fundamentalists, that's a good word, I don't like it, have got a pocket full of convictions, and the devil's tickled to death with her. Because as long as he can get a spray in our gospel gun to where it shoots everywhere and hits nobody and makes no demands and changes no lives and transforms no spirit, he's tickled to death. For it is written in the word of God that Satan himself is transformed into an angel, a messenger of life. And it is tremendously significant that perhaps 90 percent of our preaching and witness and everything else is trying to help Satan make the Garden of Eden here on this world and bypass the cross of Christ. For it says that Satan has some people that when he's delegated the task of doing the job that he wants done as a messenger of life, says his ministers, ministers have been transformed into ministers of righteousness, they're trying to get everybody to be good, bypass the cross of Christ. He's succeeding, you know, my folks. But I wish I knew how for my own self and say that just, and everybody listen to me, to say to it that the Church was never called to shoot at every jackrabbit in the cotton patch and to waste our ammunition. And that you and I are living in a day when we're going to have to quit shooting at everything and come to the defense of the gospel for this hour. For there's but one thing between the eternities that God Almighty says has power in it to save, and that's the gospel. The gospel. What is the gospel for this awful hour? When the Apostle John was writing here, he could already, in the Bible, he could already say, little children, you've heard that antichrist shall come. And there are already many little antichrists. My Lord said that antichrist, little antichrist, and people come and say, here I am, I'm Christ, and so forth. They'd have such power they'd deceive the elect if possible. I don't know whether the Bible teaches there is to be a man called the antichrist. I think it does. Good God, the men say, Brother Barnabas, this is the system. I don't know enough to argue. Whichever it is, whether it's an actual man, Satan's man, as he seems to be described in the 13th Revelation, look at it, I'm inclined to believe that is so. But it doesn't make any difference whether he's a man or this is a gigantic system. It's on its way. It's on its way. Jean Dixon, I'm not capable of deciding anything about her, but she says that in a dream she has seen that little baby who is to be the one who will be received by the so-called Christian world, who under his influence shall gladly and willingly worship Satan through him. I don't know. I don't know. But I know this. I know this, that for nearly 1900 years, what we call Christianity has been building up and building up and marching towards the time when this world, under the influence of a man or a system, religious as all get out with deceptive powers that we little dream of, will cause the peoples of this earth to bow down at the throne of Satan. He tried to get my Lord to bed when he is here, and he failed. But he never has taken a vacation till this good hour. He's still got in mind what the scriptures speak about him in Isaiah, I will ascend to the throne. And he's not spraying his shots. That's the only thing he's still trying to do. He hasn't given up. And here's the battle that we're in tonight. The very spirit of the age is anti-Christian, anti-Christ. And there is a spot of ground on this earth today that isn't hostile territory. And there isn't a church building where the saints meet together to go out to represent Christ that isn't set down in a pagan plan. It ain't in the territory. I don't believe that the devil minds all of our efforts to improve man. If we just get them to bypass the utter necessity of that bloody tree upon which the Son of God hung his son. In the 13th chapter of the book of Revelation we're told that when this man or this system, whichever it is, you have your own belief about it, it'll get the same job done. In the verse 7 of the 13th chapter we're told that he's going to make war with the saints. He's going to make war with the saints. What did that say? He's going to make war with the saints. When I go to church preaching, I believe he's going to make war with the saints. We'd better get in this battle next. You better quit criticizing that person that went wrong morally the other day. Chances are you will too because Satan is making war on the saints today and we're still defending ourselves with a little glass water. He knows we're in a war. He knows. You better quit criticizing that fella that's a shipwreck to the faith. Chances are you'll be put over in the ditch tomorrow because we don't face up to the fact that I don't know how bad it's going to be tomorrow, but up to now there's a war going on and since Jesus, Satan can't get his hands on Christ, he's going to put every saint of God out of business if he can. He really is. Power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. He's going to have such power over the people that all that dwell have their roots upon the earth. Everybody that ain't living in a tent, please God, with the stakes driven down pretty loosely, knowing that he's a stranger and a fool and he's not forever in this earth. And don't sell his soul for a mass of pottage. Sell out his birthright as did Esau. All those who let their roots down in today's earth and to go to hell to pay for their gadgets of luxury. Hear me, every last one of them who are selling their hopes of eternity, some of them for ten cents a ounce, for the gratification of the lust of the flesh. Every last one of them are going to wind up in the camp of people who fall down on their knees and worship, worship Satan. And we're told that he's going to go around marking people and he's going to fix it just about that way now to where only God knows how this creature will put his arms around any human being now that has to make a living and bring in bread for his family in the ungodly labor and business world in which we live, whose only God is the almighty dollar. And God only knows, God only knows how hard any human being that has to wrestle bread in this awful hour out of this ungodly atmosphere, how you need to fight for your soul. I tell you something, you men, if you haven't done it, you're going to find out. And you're not going to have to be long about it when God put a curse on man, on the woman, pain and childbearing, and on the man that he has to earn his living to the spread of his power. Brother, I tell you, you're going to have to do some sitting now if you want to live in this day and wind up in heaven because the whole spirit of this outfit is under the very breath of hell itself. He's going to mark you so he can't get a job, nothing to eat. It won't be long. Don't you know that spirit's already here? Don't you know that? Where's any gospel for such an hour as this? Yes, fear God, not anti-Christ. Reverence God, not the spirit of this hour. Have a holy fear. Your granddaddy knew something about of a Christ. Holy God. Now, is there going to be any good news in that when it's in the atmosphere of this old spirit that has power over all people as well on the earth? Fear him, and give glory to him, and worship him. Not the popular God of Christendom today, but the creator and sustainer of mankind. Fear the only God there is. Worship him. Give him glory. In any time, or in any time of chaos or crisis, when the ends of the earth are converging as they are today, the first time a man hears the gospel in such a day as gospel, he'll be saved. But in the atmosphere of this hour, the gospel with its barbed wire today is not good news to people. Now, your views of the last things may keep you from this. I hope not. But I welcome this hour. I hope it's going to be ten times worse tomorrow than it is today, because I believe the only hope for this generation is for God to open the windows of heaven and pour out such judgment as we've never dreamed of. I'll tell you something else about my theology, and I think I'm right here. I think Antichrist is going to be used of God to separate the men from the boys. And I know the Bible teaches that God is a separating God. And I'm glad to see the tide rolling from every direction. I'm praying to what little prayer life I know anything about, that the tide will rise higher! Until men and women will quit making a joke out of the high and holy things of the gospel. Until we shall have once more a band of faith that all hell can't snuff out, and will set the joy bells ringing in the hearts of God's people as they come under the lash of the very forces of hell. It'd be good. I even go as far as don't throw me out. I'm kind of hoping that God will be merciful enough to America to let communism take us over. I think we'd find out before any of us know the Lord. I read a book, it's called the Bible, where it talks about a God who makes the wickedness of men to praise him. And I read about a God who used a wicked king by the name of Cyrus to bring the awful lash of destruction and judgment. But it's in the mercy of God. I think under God, that this soft generation of people that have been taught to believe that it's the purpose of God, then the malicious people go through any hill on this earth. I don't believe a word of it. Somebody said to me the other day, you believe in the church going through the first hundred years of the church, they went through something, brother. I'll tell you what. They poured them in oil and poured out their tongues and everything else. And we put this outfit around here. The Christian is the same. You're pulling the petals out of the rose bush and saying you have to go up there. I'm telling you right now, honey, you got to get your spurs on. It ain't going to be that much longer. You talk about God not going to let all hell catch up with his people. Tell me what it was when they burned him at the stake in England. Tell me what our Baptist forefathers were again when they ground them and sliced their meat off of their bodies and each at a time and pull their tongues out and pull their fingernails out and dehumanize them and burn them with the blood of men and women. And the only crime they were guilty of was the crime of being followers of the Lamb. I kind of believe it did better to have some hell on this earth than to scoop the wrath of God at the judgment. And to have it as easy as we want it down here and feel the torments, experience our smoke rising up forever. What will the gospel demand of people in an hour like this? Just three things. It will demand that men and women come utterly under the authority of King Jesus. We talk about the good old days. I don't know whether it's a good or not, so they get bad all of a sudden. When they said it was easy to get saved and easy to be a Christian and all of that, tell me right now, it ain't easy now. It will affect your business, it will affect your job, it will affect your home life, it will affect your physical condition, it will affect your mind, it will affect your emotions. Oh my soul, you talk about snatching people out of the fire, out of the fire of the anti-Christian atmosphere of this day is red hot. And there'll be some ties severed and some households torn all to pieces and some philosophers go down the gutter. If men in this awful atmosphere are unable to get out of the fire of the Holy Ghost, to make wholesale or to commit all of themselves to the authority of Jesus Christ, well you can't tell me that my Lord will be satisfied with less authority over his subjects than Satan's going to have through his man over everybody that's got their roots growing in this earth. Satan's man's going to have authority. It's going to be given him all the people who dwell in this earth. And my Lord Jesus Christ's gospel now comes with the glorious truth of a dying risen ascended all-powerful Lord who comes and demands and will settle for nothing less than total commitment to his sovereign rule. That's the message of the gospel. What demands does God in the gospel make today? For I remind you that the gospel is not simply the announcement of some facts, it's that, that the gospel brings its own demand, and the gospel brings its own command, and the gospel brings its own call. For the gospel not only demand that oh I'll find the gospel for such an hour as this, for brother it's all out of nothing now. Not this Sunday morning stuff now that's not going to be worth a dime. It's all out of nothing! The lions are gone! And the gospel coming with a demand that men and women lovingly, willingly worship him on the throne. Long since I came to know you boys and girls, listen to me, I love you. Listen to me. You mothers and fathers, listen to me. All this religious perfection and crying a little bit, but listen to me, listen to me. A man ain't saved till he's awfully glad that Christ is in utter authority on the throne. A man isn't saved until he can love and worship him in the seat of absolute authority over your life. My Lord's not going to be content with lip service. The gospel demands today that God shall mark you. Satan is going to mark his people that dwell on the earth. They laugh at me in Winston-Salem, my phone number, the last three numbers of it, 666. They call me the mark of the beast, whatever that means. It means something. I expect they knew, scarce to death, was being marked by it now, the spirit of hostility to the holy gospel. I just found one mark in the New Testament that my Lord marks his people with. And I read where he loved us and gave himself promise that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. And the thing that makes them peculiar is that they stand out with the red heart after good works, zealous of good works. We talk a pretty good ballgame, but show me somebody who is running after good works. That's the mark my Lord demands. And the choice men have is the same they've always had, only it's getting a whole lot hotter now. There has not been a time since my Lord went back to glory when the earth wasn't filled with little Christ preparing, little antichrist preparing for him who shall come. There has never been a day that hadn't had the impact of this awful antichrist spirit. But it's getting hotter and hotter all the time. And there has never been a time when men could have two gods at the same time and worship Satan and God at the same time. But that crisis is getting closer all the time to where men are going to make their decisions. Look at the decision a man will have to make when the spirit or system of antichrist is fully developed, if it isn't now, to sin. He can have one or two choices. He can come under the authority of antichrist, he can worship him, he can surrender, take his mark upon him. But if he does that, he will drink of the wrath of God. Why? He can fear God and give him glory and worship him and come under the wrath of antichrist. It's never been any different. A man can't have the spirit of this age and Christ at the same time. He can't with his lips praise the Lord and with his life put his roots down in the spirit of this hour at the same time. There's never been a time when a man didn't have to choose which spirit you follow, which gods you worship. There's never been a time, and it's going to be worse tomorrow, when a man could have God in Christ and the blessings of his work in person, without being utterly divorced from the spirit of this age. There's never been a time, and it will be worse and feel it more, when a man or a woman could make this decision without facing how much it will cost you. My Lord told people what it costs, and in language that's as plain as it can be. My Lord said, Mister, I'll tell you how much it'll cost you to be under the blood, to be secured. Just get out your little piece of paper there, young man, and a pencil, and sign your life away. That's all it costs to get to Jesus. Just sign your life away. That's all. I believe that this is the gospel for this hour today. I believe that his path for religious faith is going to wind up worshiping Satan. I believe only men and women who sign their lives away. You can't kill them, they're already dead. You can't rob them of the property, they ain't got none. They sign their lives away. I believe the scripture teaches that a man who's a Christian is a martyr to be. When my Lord said, if any man will come after me, let him be myself, sign your life away, take up your cross, that's death! And I believe those people are going to be under the blood, safe and secure. Some years ago, I was in the state of Kansas in meetings, and I'd been waiting home a long time. But I phoned my wife in Winston-Salem, said, Honey, I'm going to be a day late. I'm going by Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we lived for 14 years before we moved to North Carolina. I said, I'm tired. I'm about halfway under the juniper tree. I need somebody to cheer me up and encourage me. Get me old bones, rather than a set of spiritual blood flowing through my veins. I went by Tulsa, Oklahoma, and looked up a little Jewish woman. About 12 years before I made this visit on her, I got acquainted with her. She's a missionary and a church minister right now in a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She's the mother of two children, but she hadn't seen them in many years now. She had a husband, but she hadn't seen him in many years now. She had a mother and a father, but she hadn't seen them in many years. I remember the night. I got my raincoat, my hat cover, and my big old boots, and managed to wade to my car. There had come a downpour in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was preaching in the church. I struggled through that awful downpour, water running through the streets to get to the church. I thought maybe I'd be the only one there, but we had a little breath of revival, and the church was packed in it. I went in to the vestibule to disengage myself from my clothes. Two blessed women were standing there waiting. They had a message for me. When I got my wet clothes off and started going off to them, the two women said, Brother Barnard, tonight's the night, tonight's the night. I said, She's here, Brother Barnard, she's here. And she was. Through some miracle of God's providence, these precious women had won the friendship of the wife of the leading banker in that city, a young Jew, very wealthy. And they had so been used of God that they'd been bringing that Jewish woman to the meetings night after night after night. And they'd been telling me every day how the battle was going. And that night they said, This is the night, Brother Barnard. They said today it came to a crisis. Her mother and father told her that if she in Jewish language, they use language like this, her mother and father said, Daughter, if you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no longer be our daughter. Her husband had told her that day, If you embrace the religion of Jesus, you'll no longer be my wife, and I'll not let you see the children again. And they meant it. They meant it. And in spite of that, that little Jewish woman waited through the rain. She was there. And I preached that night, and we stood and began to sing. I saw the Jewish woman take her glasses off and wipe her eyes. And directly she took her glasses off, and with a handkerchief wiped her eyes. And directly with a great sob, she came running. She wasn't indiscreet. She came running, and she put her arms around me, put her head on my shoulder, and sobbed. And then when the sobs had gone away, she said, Preacher, I surrender to Jesus. To that Jesus she'd been taught from childhood was the bastard son of a fallen woman. I surrender to Jesus. When we stood to welcome the folks who'd come, I put my hand on her shoulder and called attention to the congregation, to an old Isaiah, what is it, 3-9? Tells she's a Jewish. And I said, this little woman comes tonight to surrender to Jesus Christ. She knows it's going to cost her mother and father, going to cost her her children, going to cost her her husband, going to cost her her home. But she comes to Jesus to surrender. Two days later, I drove by. I didn't go in. They had a tremendous funeral in that city. They brought an expensive casket out of a hearse to the Jewish synagogue and had the funeral of that woman. They took that her husband was when they met as he got a divorce from her. And at the time I went to see her, she'd not seen her precious children, her mother and father, or her husband for years. And I went to see her because I needed her. She's the happiest person I've ever known. She's the happiest person I've ever known. Unless God, just to be in her presence, would lift you up. Never a murmur, just joy. She found him precious. All it cost her was everything. But bless God, he's worth it. He's worth it.