Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Man ran away from God and God pursued him. God came to die for us in Christ to reconcile us to himself. He has given us so many warnings: distant warnings and near warnings, early warnings and late warnings. But He wants us to know that He has arms that can penetrate any defense that we might seek to throw up against Him. His missiles will penetrate all human devices. The unsaved stand naked before God today. The night is far spent. The darkest hour is nearer than we think.

And thus man stands before God. Oh, unbeliever, flee then to Christ while there is yet time. For the night of darkness that envelops the earth is nevertheless the day of salvation. Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Oh, believer, wake up and watch for the morning star. The Lord Jesus is coming.

Guest (Male): The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals presents the timeless teaching of Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse. Over a half-century ago, the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, then pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, saw the need to spread God's word beyond the hearing of his local congregation. He started the radio ministry which has become known as Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible. The application of God's word as taught by Dr. Barnhouse is as relevant today as when he first taught over the radio airwaves decades ago.

The message we'll be featuring on today's edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is entitled Earth's Darkest Hour. During the day, the sun lights up the entire sky. But at night, we must see our way by the moonlight. During a full moon, we can see well at night because the moon is reflecting much sunlight. But at other times, the night can be pitch black because the moon reflects very little sunlight.

Jesus, the light of the world, has left the earth and ascended into heaven, and the world has passed from day into night. The church must now be like a full moon and reflect the light of Jesus Christ to our dark and dying world. Are you shining the light of Jesus Christ into these darkest hours of our world? The scripture text for this edition of Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible: Romans chapter 13 and verse 12. Here again is Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse with a message entitled Earth's Darkest Hour.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse: Through the Lord Jesus Christ, we come unto Thee our Father and our God, and in the Holy Spirit. Thou hast led us through the years and hast blessed us with all of Thy love, and the overflow from it fills our life. In Thee we live and move and have our being. Day by day, as we come to know Thee better, we learn to love Thee more and that continues to transform all of life.

We pray Thee for those who do not know Thee and who continue to live for self. Give them a clear vision of what they are in themselves and of what Jesus Christ has done for them on the cross. Touch all of Thy people who do not know Thee with the fullness of Thy Holy Spirit, that there may be more triumphant living that acknowledges Thee in truth in all of the relationships of life. We ask these things so that men may see Christ in us and glorify Thee, our Father, which art in heaven. And this we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Today we look at another of the verses in the 13th chapter of Romans that speak of the end of our age. In verse 12, we find, "The night is far spent." 1,900 years ago, the Holy Spirit told the Christians that the night was far spent. If that were true then, how much more is it true at the present time? Let us ask, first of all, what is the night? The answer comes from the Bible. It is the time during which Jesus Christ, who was once the light of the world, is absent from the world.

When I say that Christ was once the light of the world, some people may prick up their ears and ask, "Is not Christ at the present time the light of the world?" The Lord Himself answered that question. Seeing a man who had been born blind, the disciples asked a theological question: "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They had the foolish idea, which cannot be found in scripture but rather is contradicted by the scripture, that God always punishes men for their sins now and that all trouble is somehow a payment for sin.

Christ answered, therefore, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. Then He went on to show the urgent necessity of working. He said, "We must work the works of Him who sent me, while it is day; for the night is coming when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." He then gave sight to the man who had been blind from birth.

Now our Lord's statement established the principle concerning spiritual day and spiritual night. While in the world, Christ is the light of the world. But when Christ returns to heaven, the world is plunged into night and the only light is that which is reflected by those who truly know Christ. In this same vein, Christ said to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, "You are the light of the world." In one sense, the Lord Jesus may be likened to the sun in the heavens.

When the sun has arisen, there is light, even on a cloudy day. But when the sun goes down, it is dark, even though the sky is clear. The light of the night is the moon, and as Christ is the sun, so His true church is the moon. A glance through church history will show us how true this example is. On the day of Pentecost, the church began to shine like the little sliver of moon that appears in the eastern sky and which we call the new moon.

It rapidly increased until in the days of Paul it was a full moon. It then waned throughout the post-apostolic age and went into that long dark period for several hundred years which even secular historians have called the Dark Ages. And then the slight new moon appeared again in Wycliffe, Tyndale, and John Hus, and finally the full moon shone again in Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers. It was not long, however, before darkness fell again and the cycle was repeated.

The moon has been full in such times of witness as that of Wesley and in bright shining revivals during various periods of history. As we look around us today, we see the church as a half-moon, so blurred by earth-born clouds that we cannot tell whether it is waxing or waning. Now, I am aware that meticulous people can pick my illustration to pieces and point out that there are many days in between the nights that make a complete turn of the moon.

But I'm not going to force my examples to become steeds that are harnessed to go on all fours. Sometimes I want them to fly and be not conformed to the laws of time or scent. The Holy Spirit can take these truths to our hearts and the true Christian will stand sorrowful before God because the world's darkness is partly due to our own obscure witness. We let the shadow of earthly things fall across the testimony that should be ours, and instead of being the full-orbed light of the world during the absence of our Lord, we present a diffused and broken light.

The white light of Christ passes through the prism of our sinful natures and comes out broken into shades that can never give a true idea of His glory. Into this shadowy world, shadowy because of the sin of the church, comes the great promise of God: the night is far spent, the day is at hand. To me, this can mean but one thing: the end of the age in which we live will draw to its close and the second coming of Christ will take place, bringing with it the judgment and joy that are linked with that consummation throughout the Bible.

I thank God that I early learned to look for the end of this age and for the return of Christ. I never was permitted by the Holy Spirit to stray into the horrible swamp of thinking that man, man was somehow going to bring all things to perfection by his own accomplishments. I have always held that there was no good in man that could satisfy God, and that left to himself, man would bring all of the disasters that have been announced in the Bible.

I was delighted to find some time ago, in a work that is generally liberal, a paragraph which sets forth the change of view that is coming to many and should come to all interpreters of the Bible. Gerald Cragg writes the following: "The doctrine of the last things occupied a great deal of the thought of early Christians. During the first half of the 20th century, the complacent attitude which formerly had looked forward to an endless prospect of assured and largely automatic progress was rudely shaken by the disclosure of what man is and what he can do."

"Eschatology no longer seemed to be an antique from the lumber room of theology. It became instead a living issue of tremendous urgency. When it ceased to be a figure of speech to write of the elements melting with fervent heat, the essential religious message of the New Testament became unexpectedly relevant. When the discovery of nuclear fission, announced by the destruction of Hiroshima, marked the middle point of the 20th century, it brought only clarity of detail to those who had long since believed that the prophecies of the Book of Revelation would be literally fulfilled."

More and more I believe that every curse announced for this world and its inhabitants will be fulfilled by man's misuse of the gifts which God has given to him. During the earlier years of my ministry, I was accustomed to being ridiculed because of my belief in and my earnest preaching of the truth of the second coming of Christ. Some 20 years ago, when the Atlantic Monthly wrote of the lunatic fringe that believed this doctrine, I stated that I gladly accepted the classification and was willing to be a fool for Christ's sake.

Now that the Atlantic has passed its century mark, just when the Russians have fired a missile into outer space, it may be more cautious in applying the epithet. Certainly, the fringe has grown quite large and includes an ever-increasing roster of notable names. In those earlier days, many people shrugged off prophetic preaching with the sneer, "Oh, he's been reading the apocalypse too much." Then came a great change. With the invention of powerful bombs, scientific leaders warned that man now had the power to destroy himself and the world.

A professor at Harvard wrote a two-column letter to the New York Times pleading against test bombing underwater in the Pacific. He argued that the explosion might make a hole in the shallow ocean floor and let a quantity of water in on the volcanic fires which are so near the surface in many parts of the Pacific world. This might create a great mass of superheated steam that would tear a greater hole in the ocean floor, he said, and allow a still greater quantity of water to flow down upon the volcanic fires.

This would create even greater masses of steam and greater explosions, and might even send tidal waves against our whole Pacific coast, or even explosions that might move the earth from its axis. When I read this letter, I said, "Oh, he has not been reading the apocalypse enough." Man does not have the power to destroy this world or put it off its axis or end life upon this planet. Today it is the Bible student who must assure the present generation that some of its worst fears are without foundation.

We must also warn that some of its highest hopes will be deceived and that while wars and rumors of wars will continue and greater and greater desolation will engulf the earth, the climax of the apocalyptic judgments cannot come while the true body of Christ, the living church, remains in the world. For before the Lord Jesus comes back as the sun to light the new day, He will come back as the morning star to raise from the dead all who have believed in Him and to transform all living believers.

After this will come the blackest hour the world has ever seen. The old proverb that the darkest hour is just before dawn is borne out by the outline of prophecy. I cannot state too strongly that the key to understanding Bible prophecy is that it not only concerns itself with the details of the age in which we live, but its prophecies have their fulfillment in the future. Trends are indicated, tendencies are pointed out, but the detailed march of armies and destruction of multitudes lies in the future.

The seals of the Book of Revelation, the trumpets and the vials, are all judgments to be visited upon this earth after the Lord has removed His own. And I wish to spend the remaining moments of this study in showing some of the outstanding apocalyptic judgments that are to come, and to note that it is more than probable that these judgments will be triggered by man himself. The beginning of the prophetic judgments is found in the famed sixth chapter of Revelation which describes the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

The first horse is white, the second red, the third black, and the fourth is a color that is called pale, but which is actually quite different in the green as we shall see. The white horse bears the Antichrist. He carries the weapons of Satan: the bow that shoots the fiery darts of the evil one; the little crown that is a piece of costume jewelry, imitating the diadem of the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ. The bright red horse is the horse of war, and the Revised Standard Version is correct in calling it bright red.

With the coming of this rider, peace is taken from the earth. The black horse is famine, and its rider carries the balances and weighs out the necessities with care. A measure of wheat is valued at a day's wages. But the luxuries of oil and wine are not hurt. During the worst famines in history, a few people have always continued to live in luxury. The fourth horse is called pale in English, but the Greek word is *chloros*, the common word for green, the word that is used in the gospels when the Lord Jesus was feeding the 5,000 to have the people sit down upon the green grass.

When Sir Humphry Davy discovered chlorine as an element, he named it for its color. The point I wish to make is that the fourth horseman follows the other three. After Antichrist, war, and famine, comes the rider on the chlorine horse. The rider's name is death, and one-fourth of the population of the earth dies. Chlorine, incidentally, is the base of most of poisonous gases used in chemical warfare. Man now possesses destructive forces that could kill a fourth of the earth's people in a short time.

Sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts will accompany these other judgments, but a fourth of the population of the earth will die in one short period of time. The language of the sixth seal judgment in this same chapter seemed fantastic a few years ago. But there is scarcely nothing now that cannot result from man's own doings. I have shown that a noted geologist fears that an atomic explosion might penetrate the ocean floor.

It can easily be understood that such an explosion on the edges of one of the great rifts that rim the continents could bring about an earthquake that would make all previous ones look small. A few years ago, I wrote and published in our magazine some studies on the Book of Revelation, and I showed there that a figurative explanation of these judgments is perfectly possible. But now we must realize that a literal fulfillment is possible.

With satellites in outer space and man announcing that he can splash color on the moon, we should not be astonished if some of his experiments get out of hand and things take place in the universe that would make the sun look as black as sackcloth and the moon appear as red as blood. The earthly result is only too comprehensible. The screaming hordes of human beings rushing for caves and rocks of the mountains and calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath is come, and who can stand before it?"

25 years ago, I wrote that these judgments were merely little rehearsals. These were the judgments that came from man's doings. Yet people at that time will think that these are the final judgments and that they come from God. But when the real judgments come from God, we can be sure that no one will stand against them. It should be noted that men who refuse to bow the knee to Christ will be forced to bow before Him in His own time, and that men who refuse to pray to God will ultimately pray to rocks and mountains.

It behooves us to get our lines of communication straightened out. In anticipation of an attack from Russia, our country has spent billions of dollars on its defenses. Most interesting to me is the line of radar across the Arctic that is known as the DEW line, for D-E-W, Distant Early Warning. The texts that we are studying constitute God's own distant early warning. He tells us that He will break through all of man's defenses and that there is only one place to hide.

David has described this in Psalm 32:7: "Thou art a hiding place for me. Thou preservest me from trouble. Thou dost encompass me with deliverance." During the war in England, there were little children who learned this verse: "Thou art a hiding place for me. Thou art my air-raid shelter." And it's a wonderful thing to know that we can flee into Him. Flee then to Christ while there is yet time. For the night of darkness that envelops the earth is nevertheless the day of salvation.

Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. A recent magazine article describing the 18-billion-dollar defense network that has been woven around this continent includes the following. "A defense in depth, it was designed to and will limit to a minimum the breakthroughs of Soviet long-range bombers coming to pour nuclear destruction on the United States." And then follows this significant confession: "Now a whole new problem confronts the system. The cold fact: it cannot detect missiles."

Warns the commander-in-chief of NORAD, North American Air Defense, "If the aggressor's weapon is the intercontinental ballistics missile, the continent stands today almost as naked as it did in 1946. For I have no radar to detect missiles and no defense against them." And thus man stands before God. Man ran away from God and God pursued him. God came to die for us in Christ to reconcile us to Himself. He has given us so many warnings: distant warnings and near warnings, early warnings and late warnings.

But He wants us to know that He has arms that can penetrate any defense that we might seek to throw up against Him. His missiles will penetrate all human devices. The unsaved stand naked before God today. The night is far spent. The darkest hour is nearer than we think. Oh, unbeliever, flee to Christ. Oh, believer, wake up and watch for the morning star. The Lord Jesus is coming.

And our Father and our God, we pray Thee to speak to listening hearts in this hour. If there be unbelievers who listen, give them great restlessness until they come to rest in Christ. Arouse Thy people and awaken the sleeping church. Give a sense of urgency to this nation, not merely urgency to advance in science, but to advance in spiritual knowledge. Not merely urgency to race for armaments, but to seek shelter in Christ. We ask it all in the name and for the sake of our Redeemer God, the Lord Jesus. Amen.

Guest (Male): The night is nearly over and the day is almost here. Let us therefore put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light that we might be ready to meet our Lord and Savior. We hope you've benefited from today's message, Earth's Darkest Hour. To listen to additional Bible teaching by Dr. Barnhouse, visit us online at alliancenet.org. An audio copy of today's teaching is also available by calling us toll-free: 1-800-488-1888.

Today's message again is entitled Earth's Darkest Hour, or simply request message number R13-16. We would also like to make available to you a free copy of our booklet entitled The Cost of Discipleship. Although salvation is a free gift of God, it does not come cheaply. It cost Jesus His life to redeem us and will cost us something if we are serious about submitting to His lordship.

This free booklet will show you that as pilgrims in this life, we must count the cost of discipleship, learn to travel light, and realize that following Jesus radically changes our relationships. Discipleship is demanding, but the Lord promises that He is always with you. Ask for your free copy of The Cost of Discipleship when you call or write. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible is a radio ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

We exist to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of Reformation theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide contemporary Christian teaching which will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place. The Alliance also produces the radio broadcasts The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teachings of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice, and Every Last Word, featuring the teaching of Dr. Philip Graham Ryken.

For a full listing of stations carrying our programs, visit us online: alliancenet.org. Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible comes to you through the generous gifts of listeners like you. If you have benefited from the broadcast and would like it to continue, please prayerfully consider a donation to help us keep this ministry on the air. For more information or to make a contribution to help further our work, contact us by calling toll-free: 1-800-488-1888.

Again, that's 1-800-488-1888. You can also write to us at Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Box 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Visit us online at alliancenet.org. Be sure to ask for a free resource catalog featuring books, audio teachings, commentaries, booklets, videos, and a wealth of other materials from outstanding reformed teachers and theologians, including Doctors Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, Martin Lloyd-Jones, and Philip Graham Ryken. Thank you for listening today. Join us again next time for more classic teaching on Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible.