God's Hitchhike Evangelist

I want to introduce you to a man who was one of the most powerful evangelists of the 20th century in America. His name was Ralph Barnard, and he was known as God's Hitchhiker Evangelist. In fact, that's the title of my biography on his life, God's Hitchhiker Evangelist, because Ralph Barnard had a 40-year itinerant preaching ministry that shook America from coast to coast with revival.

Sometimes people would be carried away on stretchers from a Barnard meeting because they had become insensible. Sometimes sudden deaths would occur to those who stood in the way of his meetings. Sometimes entire towns were shaken in revival under his preaching.

In one town in particular, 300 signatures were raised on a petition to run him out of town because his preaching was disturbing the residents. But it was the disturbing presence of Christ that upset so many when Barnard preached. Ralph Barnard had a way of getting under your skin when he preached like a splinter beneath your finger which gnaws at you and makes you wince.

He could get you mad. He could get you under conviction, get you to the foot of Calvary, and at the feet of a Savior whose fountain of blood can wash all sins away. He preached the gospel in its purity and proper order.

He often preached on the doctrines of ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration. I want to read you, friends, an excerpt from one of his sermons. This one's entitled, I Remember Dixie.

Here now are his words. In my early ministry, I went to the world's largest oil town. There were 50,000 people there crawling over one another's backs to see who could get to hell the quickest.

I was the only preacher there for 16 months, and I watched men die. I preached an average three funerals a day. I preach as many as seven funerals in one day.

I was just a boy of 23, and I lived with death. I lived in the county hospital where the old folks would be sent to rot and die, and when they were dying, they would call for the preacher. I lived in the houses of ill fame and the saloons where men would get shot and poor women would get shot or die of disease, and just before they died, they'd call for the preacher, and there they would look in my face and beg me not to let them go to hell.

They would want me to pray for them, but it would be too late to pray for them. I remember Dixie. Dixie was the queen of the dance hall girls in my oil field town.

When she came to die, she was just 23 years old, but she'd already been married seven times and was now living in sin with an eighth man. I remember Dixie when she called for me. She'd been on the dance floor, and she was dancing with some man, and another fellow came and tried to take her out of the arms of the other man.

They got into a scuffle, and somebody pulled the trigger, and instead of shooting the man, the bullet went to the vitals of Dixie. They carried her into the bedroom there. There was no use to take her to the hospital.

They summoned the doctor and the nurse, and in a little while, my phone rang, and someone said, Preacher, Dixie is dying, and she's calling for you. When I got there, the doctor was gone, and the nurse was there. She said, Preacher, you can come on in.

We've done all we can. There's no hope for Dixie. I went over and sat by the bed.

I said, Dixie, this is the preacher, and you sent for me. What do you want, Dixie? Oh, she said, Preacher, don't let me go to hell. I said, Dixie, I wish I could keep you out of hell, but I can't keep you out of hell.

She said, Preacher, won't you pray for me? I said, Dixie, I'm afraid it's too late to pray now. God never saved anybody unless they were brought to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so she said, well, Preacher, how do you do that? And the best I could, I sat by her bedside in that late midnight hour.

When I could almost see death in her face, I preached unto her the law and the gospel. And when I finished, Dixie turned. I don't know how she had the strength enough to do it, but she turned and faced the wall with her back turned toward me, and great racking sobs filled the room.

I thought they would tear her body in pieces. Great racking sobs came from Dixie's throat. In a little while, she turned back and looked into my face, and I saw hell, brother.

I saw hell. Oh, I saw hell. And as I demanded that she repent right then and there, Dixie said, I can't repent.

I can't repent. And God helped me. She died as she said that last.

I can't repent. I carry the memory of Dixie's beautiful face around with me, and sometimes I wake up in the night and I hear that croaking voice, Preacher, I can't repent. I can't repent.

The last words that girl ever said here on this earth before her body began to rot and her spirit went back into the hands of God who gave it the last word she ever said. I can't repent. I can't repent.