Go On To Hell
One of my all-time favorite preachers is Rolfe Barnard. Brother Barnard brought it when he preached. I’ve listened to over 400 of his sermons online. But when I recommend him to my family and friends, they all say the same thing. They can’t take the yelling. I admit that I hate it when he yelled, just because that’s when he was trying to make the main point and I can’t hear what he saying because he’s yelling too loudly. But in the next breath, he’d plead “Why don’t you come to Jesus” and you can hear the pleading in his voice. But one of the most shocking things he’d say is “Go on to Hell, that’s where you want to go anyway.”
Brother Barnard used to preach a lot of revivals back in the 1950’s and 1960’s and I believe the Holy Ghost convicted many souls back that then. He tells the story that one time he was asked to preach for 3 or 4 weeks and the only condition was that he couldn’t give an altar call until the end. Rolfe readily agreed to that. He believed that we tried to soothe unbelievers with an easy-believism salve when they needed was to fester and be convicted by the Holy Ghost. So for three weeks he preached his heart out and at the end of each night he’d end by saying, “Go on to Hell, that’s where you want to go anyway.” We’ll after 3 weeks of being convicted by the Holy Ghost, people couldn’t stand it any longer and they begged Brother Barnard to give an altar call which he finally did.
Star Dust And Other Nonsense
I’m relaying this story because I think I’ve only ever used that line one time while out witnessing. I was witnessing with some friends on the square in downtown Springfield, Mo and a cocky Atheist started talking to me. I’m not an apologist. I don’t have the patience for it. No, I’m an open-air preacher and a street evangelist, but no apologist. I don’t like getting into long debates. I just want to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll listen to your star dust theories and that everything came from a tiny dot that exploded, etc. But after you tell me what you believe, I want to share the glorious Gospel with you.
That night, this Atheist told me that we are all just star dust and other such non-sense. I kept trying to steer him back to Jesus, but he kept wandering off various rabbit trails. So after about 30 minutes or so of this, I finally said, “Look, it’s obvious that I could talk to you till I’m blue in the face and you aren’t going to change your mind. So have a nice life. Eat, drink and be merry and then go on to Hell because that’s where you want to go anyway.” You should have seen the look on his face. He started stammering around saying, “You can’t say that?” “Why not?” “Because you’re a Christian!”
I explained to him that what I was saying is was true. Nothing I said or was going to say was going to change his mind. The Bible says unbelievers know that God is real (Romans 1:18-22), but they pretend that He isn’t because they love their sins (John 3:19-20). Because they don’t want to be responsible to God (Matthew 12:36). So they act like God doesn’t exist. But they know that He does exist and they know that they will be accountable to Him. The young man walked away still saying that I couldn’t say that to him. But I did and who knows, maybe God wanted to shock him out of his complacency. Again, I don’t think I’ve ever used it any other time, but I did that time.