Preaching the Devil Out of Business

There was a time, friends, when Christianity changed the world, instead of the world changing Christianity, when America had preachers like Mordecai Ham and Sam Jones and Rolf Barnard, men who were burdened for the souls of men and feared God more than men, and who weren't afraid to preach against sin and warn sinners not to go to a hot hell, and they preached up a bloody cross and a blood-stained savior who was the substitute for sin, men of God who preached the word of God in the power of the Spirit of God, and the fire fell, and entire towns were shaken for God by preaching that set the captives free and put the devil out of business. The gospel that they preached was the old gospel that was like a double-barreled shotgun that peppered their hearers with the double message of repentance and surrender to the Lordship of Christ, that if you want heaven, friend, then you must turn from your sins and come in utter surrender to a living Lord. That kind of preaching could arrest the hearts of the most vile sinners, as the presence of God would grip an entire town, to where taverns closed, and brothels closed, and other haunts of sin were put out of business because the devil was being put out of business in that town by the power of the gospel, because God's word still works, if only we would believe it and take it out of its scabbard and hew men down with that double-edged sword.

When Ralph Barnard preached the old gospel in Borger, Texas, in 1927, he single-handedly put the devil out of business in that oilfield town of 50,000 souls, with two Texas Rangers by his side. Ralph Barnard struck a match to 1,200 slot machines, and then led a procession out of town of over 1,200 prostitutes, and in a 16-month period, under Barnard's mighty preaching, he baptized 2,361 persons. When Mordecai Hamm preached the gospel in Macon, Georgia, in 1934, he erected a preaching tabernacle in the very center of the red-light district of that town, and thirteen brothels surrounded that tabernacle lot, and as Mordecai Hamm began preaching the old gospel, within a very short time, all thirteen houses of prostitution were closed, and on the buildings appeared for rent signs, as all the girls had been converted.

Preaching that puts the devil out of business, brings conversion to the souls of man, and brings glory to God. O great God, raise up and ordain some fearless preachers who will take you at your word, and take your book in one hand, and grab sinners by the collar with the other hand, and proclaim the old gospel that still has power to save.