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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the Internet. Your regular prayer… prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can And reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at calpryoftampa.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Take your Bible and turn to 2 Corinthians in chapter 6. 2 Corinthians in chapter 6. We’re going to go around the world. We’ve got a lot of scriptures to cover, so make sure your fingers are ready to go. You’ve got your Bible and your Latin, and that you don’t just take me at my word, you look at the book. The scriptures is the authority. 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 14, be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?

What communion have light with darkness? Some things cannot coexist. Righteousness and unrighteousness cannot exist and coexist together. Light and darkness cannot coexist together. There’s many things that God says cannot coexist. And he makes a statement in verse 16. He said, in what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? They don’t go together. Some things just don’t go together. We have a philosophy in America a day that anything goes. Anything is okay. No, it’s not. Righteousness has to be viewed from the eyes of God.

What God says is right is right and what God says is wicked is wicked. It’s not left up to government to decide for us. It’s not left up for your neighbors, for the people at school. The Bible is the word of God and God is the one that says what’s right right and what is wrong? Take your Bible and turn all the way over there to the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis in chapter 6. This is in the Old Testament, first book in your Bible.

Turn your Bible upside down and be the last book in the Bible. But it’s on page 13, Genesis chapter 6. And you can believe this, God is not dead. He is on the throne and he is looking down from heaven and he sees what’s going on in the world today. hallucinations and verse 5 and God saw and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. If God saw the wickedness in this day before the flood, do you believe that God sees the wickedness that’s in the world today?

And if he sees what’s in the world today, do you think that he might be upset if he is as righteous and holy and just as he says he is? If God does not judge the America, then he’s going to owe an apology to the people before the flood. Now listen, it makes the statement in verse 5, God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.

Now the word here, repent thoughts. I believe mainly refers to a change of mind. The way a man thinks and you can change your mind. cases it might refer to leading to a change of action but it refers to, I guess you had to find out whether, is it talking about in life where you’re talking about a nation of the judgment of God upon a people or are you talking about a heaven and hell issue? When it comes to heaven a man has to repent and when it talks about repent concerning salvation It’s always just a change of mind.

But if it does refer to a change of action, it means that you’re gonna trust the Lord and not in your works for salvation. But God repented. The Bible says it repented the Lord. It greed God. Look what he said in verse seven. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. Both man and beast and the creeping things and the foul of the air for it repented me that I have made them.

God was grieved because of the sins of the people. You and I cannot live as we please and get away with it. Whether you’re saved or whether you’re lost, it rains upon the just and the unjust. God is good to all mankind. And what God does for one, He does for everyone. There’s certain things that we all enjoy in this life. Whether we trust the Lord as our Savior, or we don’t trust the Lord as our Savior. There is a certain amount of standard of righteousness that God wants from a people, whether you trust Him as Savior or not, is a different question.

In other words, can you just live as you please if there were no Christians on the earth, no Christians? Can you then freely live the way you want without consequences from God? No. Because God is still God, and you’re still a creation, and you still cannot live as you please and get away with Him. Now you can try, but there’s still a price to pay. And God said that He would bring judgment upon the earth, and that’s why there was a flood.

But the Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And he says in verse 12, he says, and God looked upon the earth and, behold, it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. That’s what God calls corrupt. When his way is corrupted, when things are not the way God wants them to be, when people don’t hold his views, when your thoughts are not his thoughts and your ways are not his ways, it’s wickedness.

Now, there’s many things that happens in our country. We today can murder little babies, call it abortion, but it’s still murder, it’s wrong, and it’s wicked. There are many people that are living together, shacking up together, calling it love. God calls it sinful and wicked. It is not right. All sex outside of marriage is wrong, and it is wicked. It is not to be. Men with men, women with women, sodomites, it is wickedness, it is not right, it’s not decent in a society, and God will judge America.

Those are my humble opinions, and I don’t want anybody to misunderstand me. I want to be clear. Take your Bible and turn to the book of Zechariah, the book of Zechariah, and look in chapter eight. Zachariah and chapter 8, this is on page 972 in an Old Schofield reference Bible. There are some things that God will not repent of, and there are some things that God will. And yet He also makes the statement, God does not repent for God is not a man that He should repent.

And then He also makes the statement that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. You have to find the context in what God is talking about. God does not make mistakes. God does not lie. God does not contradict Himself. All the mistakes are with you and I. In Zechariah, I want you to notice this. Look there in verse 13. Zechariah chapter 8, and it shall come to pass that as you were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah, and house of Israel, so will I save you, and you shall be a blessing.

You see, in the book of Deuteronomy, God laid out for Israel as a nation, blessing and cursing, choose to live, choose life, but they rebelled against God. So they brought upon them a curse. And so God cursed the land, took them out of the land, and took them into captivity. It didn’t have to be that way. That was because they turned their backs upon God. chose to rebel and to live in sin. Thinking it doesn’t really matter. We can do whatever we want.

It’s my life, isn’t it? And after all, you don’t see God doing anything, so we’re getting away with it. And lo and behold, then God lays the hammer down. But He says, I brought a curse upon you. Now I’m going to bring a blessing upon you. He says, fear not. He said, let your hands be strong. strong. In verse 14, for the saith the Lord of hosts, as I thought, now remember when we talk about repentance, you’re usually talking about the way a man thinks because repent means repentance metanoia, metanea, it’s talking about changing your mind.

So if you think one way and you repent, you change your way of thinking. So he says here in verse 14, as I Thought that’s your mind. I thought to punish you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, sayeth the Lord of hope, and I repent and I didn’t change my mind. So in verse 50, so again have I thought in these days to do you well unto Jerusalem, and he’s not going to change his mind. See, there’s some things that God has made up his mind on what he’s going to do.

For example, you as an individual. Let’s say you trusted Christ as your Savior, your His child, you’re going to heaven when you die, and you choose to serve the Lord. Well, God has already fought to do you good and to bless your life and reward you when you get to heaven because of your obedience. God ain’t going to change his mind on that. And God’s already made up his mind on something else. If you as a child of God rebelled against the Lord and choose to go your own way, then God your heavenly Father is going to blister your bottom.

He’s going to take you to the woodshed. He’s going to hoof you. You get the point yet. He’s going to beat the tar out of you is what I’m trying to say. And you can’t get away with it. And God’s not going to change his mind on that. But what God does is if you correct the problem, then God can change his mind. God will do certain things based upon what you do. It’s so important to understand this matter of repentance.

Otherwise we understand why did John the Baptist go about preaching the baptism of repentance? And today you have a multitude of preachers from all walks of life preaching that you gotta repent in order to go to heaven and you do. But by that they mean you gotta turn from your sins in order to be saved. Does a lost man have to turn from his sins, stop his sinning in order for God to save him? No, no. In a nation, as an individual, do I have to stop my sin in order to have the blessings of God upon my life?

Yes. So you gotta find out the context of what you’re talking about. Now take your Bible and look in the book of Jonah. book of Jonah, and now it’s on page 944, just turned to the left a couple pages there, it’ll help ya? But Jonah chapter 4, God had told Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh, I want you to preach to those wicked people. Why didn’t Jonah want to go? Well Jonah didn’t care if God hooked up on those wicked people.

God, Jonah didn’t care if he annihilated the whole city. Why? Because Jonah wasn’t Jew. He didn’t like him anyway. Jonah knew that if he goes and he tells them the truth, they’ll get right and God won’t help him. He wanted God to get him. Isn’t there people in your life that you wish, oh I hope God gets them. Somebody said something about you, did something wrong Jew, oh God get him. Get him Lord and And you wish that you could be his avenging angel, get even with him if it’s not the last thing we ever do.

Now here in Jonah, in chapter 1, he was told to go and preach to these people. And so in verse 4, Jonah had to have a little, well God had to deal with him just a little bit. He had to go and get into a vicious belly and things that weren’t working out right for him. If Jonah hadn’t got right, that whale would have never vomited. He says in verse five, so the people of Nineveh believe God, he went preaching and told him the message and proclaimed the fast, put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least of them.

For a word came unto the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, laid his robe from him, covered him with sackcloth and satin ashes, and he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout none of about the decree of the king and his noble saying, let neither man nor beast herner flock taste anything let them not feed nor drink water but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let every one of them let them turn everyone get this from his evil way.

So is it in the Bible? Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hand. Who can tell if God will turn and repent? How do we know if God won’t change his mind if we do right? Now this is talking about as a nation to keep God from annihilating them and bringing judgment upon them because God can be swayed. Isn’t that why we pray? You realize that a prayer of an individual can move the mighty God to do do something that maybe God would not have done if you had not have prayed.

I have a good Sherman on that. Look what he’s saying. And God saw their works turning from evil ways, turning from sin is a work. Can’t deny it. Right there. So when it comes to salvation, going to heaven, and a man has to repent. But if a man had to turn from his evil ways, turn from his sins, then what he did would be works for works for salvation. And a man is not saved by his works. You are not saved because you quit one sin or you quit ten sins or you changed your life or because you started going to church.

Nobody has ever been saved because they turned from sins, not one person. Now, correcting things in your life might bring the blessings of God and it might keep you from being under a curse because you live wickedly, but you cannot live as you please and get away with it. But the penalty is not always hell. Hell is because you reject Christ as your Savior, not because you live the sin for wicked life. God took care of our sins when he died on the cross.

He paid for all of those sins in full. And yet the Bible is full of scriptures that talks about And the Bible even says that God repent. Did God turn from his sins? God didn’t have any sin to turn from. God turnedependent from your wicked ways. No, but God repented that he made man. And God could repent. See if God will repent. See if God will change his mind. That’s in the Bible and that’s scriptural. But it’s wrong for a preacher to try to get a man to promise that he’ll stop his sins in the Bible.

sins in order for God to save him. That makes it works for salvation. Look at verse again, and God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not. He didn’t do it. Ain’t that wonderful? So we’re not talking here about heaven and hell, but as national blessing. If the people in America want God to bless this nation, We still need to do right as a nation.

We’re going to get the kind of government that we deserve. And the reason that we can accept the fact that they can go trillions of dollars in debt is because most Americans are already in debt. We have broken the biblical principles of finances and we break the laws of physiology where we don’t do right by our bodies. We don’t eat right. We just do whatever we want to do and pop a pill.128 We’re on drugs. We’re pathetic. And we are a wicked nation.

We’re tolerating things in this country. We should not tolerate because we want to be politically correct. We don’t want to offend nobody. We don’t show how well we can get along with everybody. Lot. Remember Lot? A believer who went to Sodom. and chronicles. And look there in chapter 7. Many people read this verse and many preachers do. I have. And I will. But remember Israel was under a theocracy. It means they were under God rule. God made a covenant with Israel.

So now you’re talking about Solomon that built a temple. They’ve had a dedication service and the Lord appears to Solomon. See there in verse 12, and the Lord appeared to Solomon by night. Said, I’ve heard your prayer. He says there in verse 13, if I shut up heaven, that there be no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, see God can do all of those things. Verse 14, If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray and seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, then when I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land.

This is not a promise to America. We are not in this verse. This is a covenant God made with Israel. If Israel will do this, this is what God will do. We can pray this and hope that God might spare our land. I’d like to see America safe free to the rapture, but buddy, we’re on a slippery slope and we’re going fast. We’re becoming a very wicked nation. Every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes.

I don’t see anything wrong with this. I don’t see anything wrong with that and that’s the problem they don’t see because you see you either see things from a divine perspective, gods, or a human perspective, man. You even believe in what God said? Or humanity, humanism, how you see it, has nothing to do with how God sees things. Wickedness is what God calls wickedness. And He makes this statement. In verse 17, as for me, if thou wilt walk before me, is David thy father walk, talking to Solomon?

And do according to that I have commanded him. And shall observe my statute, my son, and my son. Then, well, I establish the throne of thy kingdom and so forth, and there shall not fail to have somebody rule, but Israel did. And there hasn’t been a ruler on that throne for over 2,000 years in Israel. But you see, God does know what’s going on in nations. God knows what’s going on in this nation. God knows the hardships and all that’s coming down the road.

But we have violated the principles of what God has given to His Word. people in churches and God’s people, if they fail to give to the Lord’s work what they’re supposed to and take care of one another, okay, then by taxes they’re gonna take it from you and they’re gonna give you that just a little bit and they always take from you more than they will ever give back. And you know a democracy is whenever you see that you can vote for yourself money out of a then you’ll always vote for the person who promises to give you the most.

And because of greed, getting something, take care of me, because we’ve lost our trust in God. We’ll feel more comfortable if government will take care of us from the cradle to the grave. And it won’t matter as long as they take care of me, let my grandkids and all the rest of us let them all go to hell then. again, not a believer in that philosophy. Take your Bible and turn to the book of Mark chapter 1. The book of Mark, in chapter 1, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Not all of them at one time just Mark right now. The book of Mark. John the Baptist came on the scene, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. It says in verse 4, and John did baptize in the wilderness, preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Verse 8, And I indeed have baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. What was this baptism of repentance? If you believe the message that John the Baptist preached, then you were baptized in water.

And it was a picture that when Christ came, he’ll baptize you with the Holy Ghost. So they were baptized in water because they look forward to the baptism that Christ would give them. That’s what He said. Some people like to make it a lot more than that, where if you’re willing to turn from all of your sins and stop all your bad stuff and God will save you. That’s not what He said. And God will forgive you if you’re sin.

That’s not what it said. To help you understand what He said, look there in the book of Acts in chapter 19. Acts chapter 19. The apostle Paul had come through the coast there of Corinth. And on down to Ephesus found certain disciples. And in verse 2 he said unto them, Have you received the Holy Ghost since she believed? They said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them unto what then will you baptize?

Because then baptize in water is because you’re looking forward to be baptized by the Holy Spirit. That was before Christ died. After Christ has died, we’re baptized in water because we have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ when you trust that Christ is your Savior. See how easy it is? But now look what he says in verse 3. And he said unto them, under what then were you baptized? And they said unto John’s baptism.

Then said Paul, John barely baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him which should come after Him, that is on Christ Jesus. So John the Baptist preached that a person to be baptized by Him had to believe on Jesus Christ who was coming after Him. Should not. It’s not card, it’s not complicated. But people like to twist things and make it more complicated. And how to tell a lost man that He’s got to be worthy of salvation.

You’ve got to do this and this and this and this and this so that you’ll be good enough for God to save. Like you’re too bad that God can’t save you, but you’ve got to be good enough to Him to save. No. Salvation is the gift of God. It’s not a works list. Any man should boast. Let me show you something. You’ve probably never seen this before. This hand represents you and me. This wallet represents sin. Now we all have sin on us.

You see God says that he loves us. He hates our sin. And the wages of sin is death. Eternal separation from God in hell. But he loves us and wants us to go to heaven. And to go to heaven you have to be perfect as righteous as God. None of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We’re all sinners. Because of sin, we can’t get in. Everybody’s in the same boat. Nobody can save themselves. It’s not by your works.

You’ll never be gonna, you don’t have to promise God you’ll quit your sins. Because when you go back to your sins, you’ll think, well, God never really may be saved me or he’s lost me now. That has nothing to do with it. Christ is gonna take care of your sins. Because you can’t. This end represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh, came into the world because He loves us. Now He hates our sin because our sin separates us from Him.

So Christ who had no sin took ours. All of it and paid for it. See, that’s why we don’t have to pay for, say why, he did. He paid for how many of our sin, all of them came back from the dead and said if we would believe he did it for us, he would put this payment to our account and we go to heaven on what it did for us. You see, many people think they can save themselves by their good work.

God says, you need to repent. Change your mind. That is not true. Change your mind. Think differently. Reconsider. Look now in the book of Luke chapter 13. Luke chapter 13. Matthew, Mark, Luke. Luke chapter 13. And notice what he says here in verse two. People came to Jesus and they had thought that something, but it wasn’t true. What they thought was it true? So he says in verse two, and Jesus answered instead of them, suppose ye. Now look up here, suppose, think.

Has to deal with the way a man’s mind is. It’s talking about what he’s thinking. And he says, suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things. I tell you, nay, but except you repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Repent, change your mind, think that’s not true. They were believing something that wasn’t true. The reason people are deceived today is because they believe something not true. You can listen to a man with flowery words and it sounds so good and sounds so believable, but if it’s not true, it’s still not true.

You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. Our two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll-free 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage.

If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 3, 3, 6, 3, 4. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10.30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live. And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed.

caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.