This generation would like to get to heaven, but they just haven't got time. They had time to make a profession and join a church, but they just haven't got time to seek the Lord. When I started to preach 36 years ago, people would come hear me preach and I could keep a crowd for a while, and in that way somebody would listen to the Word of God. And since no man has saving faith, and God has to give it to men, He gives it as men hear His Word, and after a while they say "that's God talking".
You must hear the law of God preached long enough for God to reveal to you that you are a guilty lost sinner before you will be interested in hearing the good news of the Gospel of Christ. If God can get you lost, He will save you. If God can get you to sit still long enough to let a little of His Word sink in and grant you repentance and faith, He will save you. If you don't have time to seek the Lord till He is pleased to reveal Himself to you and speak peace to you, why you will just live on a little while, then go to hell. You haven't had time to hear what is being said.
A personal confrontation of the soul by a gracious redeeming God; this leads to repentance and faith, this leads to the terminating of a self-centered existence, and the beginning of a Christ indwelled life. You will lay down the arms of rebellion and run up the white flag of surrender. That's what it means to be saved. I don't know how long it will take you to get there, but it would be time well spent if you got to Christ.
In the Book of Acts a man said: "What must I do to be saved?" (and the answer was) "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." But this answer wasn't given to anybody unless the work of grace (in conviction) had already begun and they were in a repentance stage, just dying to be saved. But God is saying to ALL PEOPLE, "Seek the Lord". How long? Till you find Him.
God isn't filling hell with innocent victims. Hell is being filled with rebellious refusals to walk in the light that has been given. Men and women are responsible to walk in the light they have and could have from Almighty God. WE ARE TO WALK IN ALL THE TRUTH AND LIGHT GOD IS PLEASED TO GIVE US. If a person walks in the light God gives him, I believe God will give him more light.
But man will say, "I can't believe". Well, lets look at an illustration of Biblical truth. (God says to every man, "The tithe is mine"! Can you believe that? "Yes, you say, I can believe that". Well why don't you walk in the light you have? God went on to tell us in Malachi 3:8 "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee? God replied: In tithes and offerings."
You could at least be honest, couldn't you? Why don't you start walking in that kind of light? God always takes you through the school of law in order to get you where you will appreciate grace. Somebody says, "I am not a Christian, so God does not expect anything from me." ALL HE EXPECTS FROM YOU IS "to love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, and with ALL your soul, and with ALL your mind and with ALL your strength..." That is His commandment to you.
Well I want to be saved. No, you don't, you won't even walk in what you know is so. You must walk in the truth and light that God brings across your path. He doesn't bring it for you to argue about. He brings it to light your pathway so you can walk straight. A man cannot walk in the light he doesn't have, a man dare not DO LESS. There can be no unbelief and no faith apart from revelation, but there is revelation in the stars above your head, the creation beneath your feet. Every time your conscience speaks to you, that is God's gift, and every time it speaks to you, you must make a response. YOU IGNORE IT OR OBEY IT. Every time the Word is preached in your hearing, something takes place in you; and you make some sort of response to the demands of Christ who is presented in every line of the Gospel.
Unbelief is not ignorance, unbelief is rejection of truth. Men and women reject truth every day. Read Psalm 19 and Romans 1:16-32 WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?
REBELLION OR OBEDIENCE?
All hell hasn't got power to keep you from seeking the Lord with all your heart, and if you do, you will find Him. That's walking in the light you as you have light.
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Rolfe Barnard (1904 - 1969)
Was evidently a prophet from God for the 20th Century. With a profound sense of the absolute sovereignty and glory of Jesus Christ, he was able to preach a message that produced conviction of sin. He maintained through all his ministry what he himself called a "sweetheart love for the Lord Jesus," and it is most surely apparent in his messages.He was an acclaimed preacher of primarily the 1940's and 1950's.About 100,000 professed faith in Christ during his decades of preaching. He was initially associated with John R.Rice in the 1940's. However,after giving a scripturally based message on John 6 Before rice and some other fundamentalist leaders he was kicked out of the Fundamentalist camp. He then went on the independent circuit. His preaching tours as an evangelist were mainly in the American south.But he also ministered in the mid-west and Canada as well. Rolfe Barnard on Google+