How to Witness by Rolfe Barnard

I was sitting at my seminary graduation dinner and it was testimony time. Students were getting up on the platform and giving their testimonies. One young evangelist took the platform and made the following comment, I thought you'd all like to know that last week I held a crusade and 1100 souls were saved and the audience burst into applause that is everybody there was clapping their hands except me his comment upset me how in the world did that young evangelist know with any certainty that 1100 people were really born again under his evangelistic appeals no what that young man had was over a thousand people make a physical response to his easy believe gospel altar call i'm afraid friends that many today are more soul butchers and soul winners we spoon feed folks a simple gospel outline and ask them for a casual response and then we call them christians i know of which i speak friends i have made my share of false converts in my time years ago i'd go knocking on doors with evangelism explosion teams we talk our way into their living room and then go through a simple evangelistic outline and try and get them to receive jesus the more persuasive team members got more converts than the others listen friend if you can talk someone into becoming a christian another person come along after you and talk them out of it but we would do our level best to persuade them to become christians some actually took us up on it but the trouble was when we returned to their home a week later for follow-up work they wouldn't answer the door i could see a light on in the house i could hear the television on in the living room but they would not answer the door and acted like nobody was home it was because the previous week the only reason they said yes to jesus was to get us out of their house i used to be a soul butcher and i butchered my victims with my easy belief gospel i was like most of you i just did not know how to present the true gospel with clarity and let god do the rest i made my own converts just like most evangelists do today they'll get you to walk an aisle and repeat a prayer and agree with a verse like john 3 16 and then patch on the back and say welcome to the family of god friend you are now a christian but a soul butcher only makes false converts who are gospel hardened to hear in the gospel next time around if somebody were to hand them a tract they will say i already did that and then go on to hell basically with our modern evangelism tactics all we're trying to do is get someone to agree with a few simple statements like do you believe you are a sinner do you believe christ died for your sins will you receive jesus as your savior congratulations you are now a christian we hand folks jesus like we're handing out a stick of chewing gum and people take it they take our jesus like they would a stick of gum and chew on him for a little while until the taste goes out of their religion we just don't know how to witness today biblically our main problem with modern evangelism today friends is the fact that we offer folks a remedy for sin without first showing them why they are in need of that remedy the gospel is made up of two halves that fit together like a glove the first half of the gospel is god must punish sin and when you get people to believe that then you can come along with the second half of the gospel which is a savior from sin a person who is in good health does not need a pill or a medicine to make them feel better but if that same person is sick unto death and you have a remedy which will cure him he will give you all the money he has to regain his health and live in the gospel in chapter 9 and verses 12 and 13 jesus made the final one statement they that behold need not a physician but they that are sick but go ye and learn what that meaneth i will have mercy and not sacrifice for i have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance when i was conducting research on my biography of the evangelist ralph barnard i was shocked when i learned how god greatly used him as an evangelist it was said of barnard that he was the human means of bringing a hundred thousand souls to christ through his 40-year itinerant preaching ministry he knew how to witness with the pure gospel and leave the rest to god he knew full well that salvation was in the hands of god and not in the hands of men barnard knew how to present the gospel in its purity and in its proper order he was a master at it and i learned so much from studying his sermons that it made me realize just how weak we are today in our own evangelistic labors very few evangelists today friends even know how to preach the gospel in a way to awaken a person to their lost condition and get them lost because a person must first get lost before they can get saved jesus said for the son of man is come to save that which was lost i want us to sit at the feet of ralph barnard this friends and learn to him in regard as to how to witness to folks he was a master craftsman when it came to evangelism he knew his bible and he knew his god he knew the wicked windings of the sinner's heart and all the excuses of the atheist because he was an atheist before he was saved in fact when he was a student in a baptist college in texas he was the president of an infidels club on campus he'd host lectures he got 300 students to join that infidel club at that baptist college when god finally saved him the biggest regret he had all his life was the fact he had led so many of his fellow classmates to hell i want to read us a portion of a chapter from my biography on ralph barnard entitled god's hitchhiker evangelist because in this chapter friends we will learn how to effectively share the gospel with folks i will read you ralph barnard as he relates an incident in his own life here now are his words and let us learn from them we are butchers of souls if we ignore the plain teaching of the old testament that the human heart must be cloud the ground must be harrowed jeremiah 4 3 declares for thus saith the lord to the men of judah and jerusalem break up your fallow ground and so not among thorns listen to hosea 10 12 so to yourselves in righteousness reap in mercy break up your fallow ground for this time to seek the lord until he come and reign righteousness upon you and it is downright disobedience to the principle upon which god works to attempt to sow among thorns and expect to harvest it is true in the new testament and in the old testament that the spiritual laws harvest are exactly like the farmer the farmer goes out and first plows deeply then he harrows it and at a certain time he sows the seed the rain comes and the sun shines and after a while he goes and looks for a harvest but he doesn't look for the harvest before the plowing has been done and he doesn't sow the seed before the heroin has been done and neither does god this is the law of god that cannot be ignored unless you wish to become a butcher of your own soul and a butcher of every soul you touch for it is eternally true that they only get god's best who sincerely want it and long for it and who are capable of appreciating it if god were going around offering it and leaving it up to man as to whether he would accept it or reject it that would be one thing but that isn't what god does salvation is a gift from god now god doesn't simply pass his blessings out indiscriminately he gives them only to those who are prepared to receive them if you try to stuff spiritual truths down the throats of unprepared people you are doing them harm beloved we must be patient as the farmer is in trying to raise a crop revealed truth must be revealed you don't learn reveal truth you experience reveal truth a blessed things from god are received only by people who are prepared when trying to witness to a blind devil blinded sinner we can see this necessity it is not that they are any worse than we are it's just that they are still blind that is when we were once blinded by the god of the sage they are smart as whips in a lot of respects but they are just blind in one thing the average lost person will agree with us on most truths in the bible but the difference is they see no beauty in christ there's nothing about him that attracts them for nearly 38 years i've been trying to preach a gospel that can believe be believed but not understood uh shutting men up to abandonment of all hope in themselves and casting them entirely utterly on god years ago i went down to mississippi wednesday night through sunday night at the request of a friend he said i will pay the bill and help you if you will go so we set it up and i went down the young preacher a student of a baptist college there met me he was pastoring a small country church on weekends uh so i preached on wednesday night and thursday the young preacher who was a go-getter came and got me early and we went out to knock on doors i preached thursday night and friday and we spent all day knocking on doors around in the community talking with people a saturday night after the service was over i was already gone to bed and a knock came on the door of the room where i was being entertained i said come in and that young pastor came in he said brother barnard i don't know what to do you are older than i am and you are here as my guest i am just a young fellow but i'm gonna ask you not to preach tomorrow i don't want you to preach for us anymore he said i just can't stand the way you were doing i asked well what on earth am i doing that is hurting you so he said well brother barnard in all our visiting you just talked about the gospel to one person i said well i haven't found but one sinner you see i am forbidden to sow among thorns i take that pretty seriously i am forbidden to give holy things unto dogs matthew 7 6 says give not that which is holy unto the dogs neither cast your pearls before swine unless they trampled them under their feet and turn again and rend you i remember we had gone into lots of homes and they were all right some of them would try to come to the meeting one night before it closed if it didn't rain some were aiming to come last night and just as they got ready friends came in i heard all the excuses and everybody was just fine and dandy so all i would do in such homes i asked if it was all right for us to have prayer they would say it was so i would pray to them and i would preach them a sermon in my prayer on the holy demands of a thrice holy god i wouldn't invite any of them to come to the meeting or anything else i would just leave but we came to one place and we talked a while then the pastor said we had to go oh would it be all right if we had a word of prayer so we led in prayer and i prayed and while i was praying i noticed a woman was crying and i quit praying i thought the lord would forgive me and i said oh what's the matter with you and she said i wish i could be saved but i can't i asked why can't you be saved she said i'm such a big sinner i've sinned so long there is no hope for me now that's the kind of folks i like to find and i told her about the pearl of great price the son of the living god who came to justify the ungodly for romans 5 6 declares for when we were yet without strength in due time christ died for the ungodly and roman 5 8 says but god commended his love toward us and that oh while we were yet sinners christ died for us let me show you something i was forbidden to tell those self-satisfied in for help church people about the lord i'm not gonna sow among thorns i preach to them the holy claims of god's law and as i explained that to the young preacher he said i understand i said young man if you will let me help you instead of going into homes and trying to get them to take jesus do what the scriptures say i'll break up some fallow ground and use the holy demands of a holy god no man will ever receive christ as lord and savior until he is stripped and slain and conquered by the claims of god's holy law and we are butchers of souls if we ignore the fundamental truth that god gives his best and that is christ two prepared hearts you know what that boy did he took me literally and his visiting from then on was scriptural uh where he found nice little secure people he just shot them with god's holy law if god's holy law won't route you out of feeling how good you are you will just have to go on to hell that is his weapon and in six weeks after the meeting he had 37 grown people in that little country community come to him asking him is there any hope that we might get saved i'm telling you god gives his best and that is christ for christ is everything to people whose hearts have been prepared it is so wonderful now god says before you go out to talk to people spend some time saying lord you go ahead of me and there are not are there not many examples of this in the bible don't you get a little track that's got the same pill for everybody i take no thought of what you shall say luke 12 12 states for the holy ghost shall teach you in the same hour what you ought to say you will never find two persons in the same shape depend on the holy ghost to lead you to that portion of truth that would be meet and due season to that person if he needs his heart plowed by the holy spirit with the claims of the holy law of god then pray that the holy ghost would do that work for the glory of christ well friends that ends our lesson on how to witness by evangelist ralph barnard i hope it has been of some help to you as we go and share our faith with those who are perishing let us pray