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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 prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage.

We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family. So we go to the funeral home and we try to figure out how to get everything taken care of and what they’re going to do with my body and the sides of the casket, the price of the casket and trying to save money and do all this stuff, you know.

And then we got to get a headstone and all that stuff. So we’ve got everything taken care of. If I die, all she got to do is boom, put me in that casket and drop me in the ground. Or she might want to burn me up, I don’t know, whatever she wants to do. But anyway, we have a lot of things already planned. Because we’re planning that if it happens, I die, or what am I going to do? And you already done the same thing for her because you’re going to die.

But have you made any preparations for your death? Now a lot of people always plan on it. They’re going to. They just never do it. Never make out a will. Never solve the problem. And then whenever they die, it’s nothing but a nightmare for the others that you’ve got to try to figure out what they’re doing. you could have solved so many problems in advance. But you just knew the Lord was going to come back and take you out of here and you didn’t have to worry about it.

But if you was to drop dead right now, have you prepared for your funeral? There’s some things that you ought to do and to think about. You say, I don’t like to think about stuff like that. It’s morbid. Everything in the Bible I get you because it was morbid. It talks about, you can’t even get that heaven unless you leave here. You’re going to die someday. So when you die, okay, who gets what you have? You say, well, I don’t care.

So the state eats it all up. All lawyers get it all. Probate court and all that stuff, or you can bypass all of that stuff by taking care of things in advance. But anyway, it’s something that we all have to do. The other question was, are you ready to defend your faith? Are you ready to defend your faith? Can you tell people why you do what you do, why you believe the way you believe? I have studied long enough that I feel fairly comfortable in telling people why I believe what I believe.

And it’s not just that because, well, I went to Florida Bible College and so I believe like them. I believe what they taught at Florida Bible College because I saw it in the Bible and I believed it. That’s really what it said. I don’t believe what I do because, well, that’s the way Ray Stanford did it. Stanford is not my God, He’s a man. I’m just a man. I want you to be strong enough in the Word of God that you know why you believe what you believe so that you can defend your faith, that you can explain to somebody why they should either trust Christ as Savior or why they should serve the Lord.

And what’s the wisest thing that you want people to do with their lives? Well, that’s the direction you should try to challenge them into and so important. But I just want to show another verse to you. Look over there in the book of Revelation in chapter 2. Revelation and chapter 2. And look in verse 8 and verse 8. So, and unto the angel of the church and Smyrna, write these things, saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive.

I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich. Now get this. There’s a lot of truth said right there in that little verse, just few words. The Lord says, I know, I know your works, I know your tribulations, I know your poverty. But you see, God doesn’t always change all the tribulation out of our life and take it out of us. He wants us to go through the tribulation through poverty, if necessarily. That’s the way God lets it happen.

So he didn’t stop you from being poor. People think, well, if I serve the Lord God, you’re going to automatically Bless me. The material blessings be preached to help and wealth for love, but he makes the statement. So evidently they were not rich concerning the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the things of the suffer. Did you know that most of our fear comes because of what we’re afraid to suffer?

We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to hurt. We shrink back from tribulations and things that causes us heartache and grief and all these things. We don’t want to go through things like that. It’s natural. It’s normal. But you see, you and I as a child of God are supposed to have something so much more important we’re living for. And these people, look what he said. He says in verse 10, fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.

Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison. Well, why don’t God stop the devil from doing it? I mean, if he knows this is what the devil’s going to do, why don’t God stop the devil from doing it? Remember the Bible says Paul wanted to do such and such and he says, but Satan hindered me. Satan hindered me. There’s a lot of things I would love to do, but Satan has hindered me at times. I’ve had to battle against what the devil is doing in and through people with finances.

Like I was on television and then all of a sudden the finances just dried up. So why did I dry up? It’s not because God didn’t tell people to support it. It’s because they didn’t obey God. They listen to what Satan says and then they don’t do it because they lose their vision. So they begin to compromise. I don’t have to do it. This is more important or I need this and somebody else will help support the radio or the TV ministry and so they hold back and somebody else will do it and I don’t have to do it and so they withdraw and Satan gets the victory.

You go off the radio, you go off television, and a great harness done. The devil is alive. If he does that in the work, he can do it every family in this church. The devil is going to fight you. And God doesn’t stop all of that. He wants you to lean upon him and keep doing what he says to do, even if you suffer doing it. And again, what else he says to you? He says that ye may be tried and ye shall have tribulation ten days.

Be thou faithful until the check comes in the mail.” You know what I said? Be faithful to the checker rides. It’s on its way and I will give thee a crown of light. Look, he says be faithful and you mean I could die? You mean this could bring death? And he says I’ll I’ll get I’ll make it worth your while. Oh wait a minute that this is getting over this you’re going too far now I Mean all this other stuff.

I don’t mind, but I mean that you’re talking about dying Take your Bible look here in the book of Hebrews chapter 11 Hebrews in chapter 11 and look what he says here in verse 33 Hebrews chapter 11 verse 33 as he’s talking about the great heroes of faith, what happened in the Old Testament. Now a lot of these, believe it or not, came from the book of Judges and down the road we’re going to cover some of the major topics in the book of Judges.

But it says in verse 33, who through faith subdued kingdoms brought righteousness? A pain promises stopped the mouths of lions. This is what some of God’s people did by faith because they believed and God used them, and this is what they accomplished. Quench the violence of fire, escape the edge of the sword. Out of weakness were made strong, waxed, valiant, and fight. Turn the fight to fight the enemies, the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again.

Others were tortured. Women, God, didn’t you know they were being tortured? Why didn’t he let them be tortured? What is God let you suffer the loss of a job or the loss of your health or the loss of it? God can allow a lot of things. God’s going to let you suffer in this life just like everybody else suffers in this life. He doesn’t stop it because you’re a Christian. He just gives you a reason to endure it, a reason to go through it.

That’s how he gets his glory, not because he takes all those things away from you, but because you give him honor and glory in the midst of it. So he says in verse 35, and others were tortured not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection, because they knew they’re going to get something worthwhile because of what they went through. Now you and I are supposed to believe that. And in verse 36, and others had trial of cruel mockings and scurging.

Yay, moreover, a bond and imprisonment. You see, there’s somebody who’s keeping the books. God keeps the books and he knows what all these people went through. And yet, isn’t God powerful? Can’t God stop all of this that happens to all of these people? Yes? But does he know? In verse 37, look in verse 37, They were stoned. They were sawed, asunder, were tempted, slain with the sword, wandered about in sheepskin, and go skinned, been destitute, afflicted, tormented. So you want to serve a Lord, huh?

How much? Or do you want to compromise along the way? Or are you willing to say, I’m going to serve a Lord? It doesn’t matter what. You should know in advance I am going to suffer. I don’t know how God’s going to do this or that. It doesn’t matter how God does it. Look in verse 38, you ought to underline this. Of whom the world was not worthy. God says the world was not worthy of these people that lived here.

The people that lived here and went through they weren’t worthy of what they did to them. Does God know what those people did to him? Well, he told you right there. He already knew it, wrote it in his word. And then he says, they wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth. And these all obtained, haven’t seen a good report through faith, received not the promise. They didn’t get this earthly kingdom in this lifetime.

They didn’t give what they wanted here, but they all believed they would get it down the road. And therefore that’s why in chapter 10 he says that you endured such afflictions and so forth because you knew that you had inheritance of heavenly benefits because of it and you went through all of that because you knew that your reward that’s why he says cast not away therefore your confidence which has great recompense of reward. So he says, all these things that happened to these people, man alive.

Let me read this!, the disciples of Jesus Christ gave their lives for the preaching of the gospel. You may have heard this before, but it’s okay. You can listen to it one more time. Matthew, He suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia. Kielbassord. Mark, he died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses to the streets until he was dead. Luke, he was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost. John, he faced martin to them when he was boiled in the hub basin of oil during a wave of persecution in Rome.

How bit? He was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patness. He wrote the prophetic book of the Revelation on Patness. The apostle John was later freed and returned to service Bishop in modern Turkey. He died an old man. The only apostle to die peacefully. Apostle Peter, he was crucified upside down on an X-shaped cross. According to Church tradition, it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

One time the sons of thunder came to see Jesus and the mama said, I want my one son to sit on one side and my other son to sit on the other side when you get in the kingdom. And Jesus says, are you willing to be baptized with the baptism that I shall be baptized with? And they said, sure are. He says, and you will. So you’re going to die for me. Now he had already told Peter, he says, you’re going to be carried where you don’t want to go.

Peter says, but what about John over there? And Jesus says, don’t you worry about John? If I want him to remain till I come again, what’s that to you? In the words, don’t worry about what God does with somebody else. You just make sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. But James, the just, the leader of the church in Jerusalem was thrown over a hundred foot down from the southwest pinnacle of the temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.

When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a Fuller’s Club. was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus to an attempt at. James, the son of Zebedee, was a fisherman by trade when Jesus called him to a lifetime of ministry as a strong leader in the early church. James was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem. The Roman officer who guarded James watched the maze as James defended his faith at his trial. Later the officer walked beside James to the place of execution.

Overcome by conviction he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian. Now let’s just stick for a second. Let’s say they haul this out of this church one day and they’re going to literally cut off our head. You know that is a possibility down the road. They could literally cut off our heads. See, we don’t see anybody suffering. We don’t really see anybody dying for their faith. Now, in other countries, they are experiencing some of these things.

The church that Dr. Stanford and I preached stand over there in Cairo about six months ago, something like that. They came in with machine guns and killed 109 of them, just mowed them down. The same church that we’re being here with preaching it. I’m glad we weren’t there. But you never know when something’s going to happen or when the last time you might get a chance to preach the gospel to somebody. God doesn’t always keep us from experience in these things.

Didn’t God have the power to keep these men from dying this way? He could have, but he allowed them to die. And the Bible says in 1st Corinthians in chapter 4, he says they were made the off scaring of the world. They were the filth of the world and the eyes of the world. And yet the world was not worthy of such men the way God sees them. So you don’t have the same value put upon you that God puts upon you by the world.

So there’s a price to pay. Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, he was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed for our Lord in what is present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia, where he was flayed to death by a whip. Andrew, he was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers, they took his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words, I have long desired and expected this happy hour.

The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it. He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired. I was told there was another guy just to marvel at it, that when they were they going to throw him to the lions, that in the lions and the gladiators, he said, rush up on me. He haulers to the lions, rush upon me because he knew he was going to go see the Lord. And see, these are people that lived at a time when they were placed into the arena and fed to the lions.

How would you like to watch your wife or your kids been fed to the lions? You got a book called the Fox’s Book of Martyrs where they would take the women and they would take these sharp stakes in the ground and they would put animal fat all over them and then they would pick them up and they would shove them down on top of that thing and that thing would just ride up inside of them. Then they would put oil all over them in animal fat and then they would light them and they would be lights down the sides of the road.

They did stuff like that to people. Wicked stuff. They burned them at the stakes. When the last time we saw anybody burned at the stakes, But see, there were people that died for their faith, and it was either Jesus was king, or Caesar was king. Who was the king? Who did you bow to? And if you bow to Christ, you die. Now, I believe there’s a time coming in the future where that’s going to become a reality once again.

Thomas, he will stab with the spear in Southern India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church on the subcontinent. They said in the area that we were when we were in India, the different people would talk and said, no, this is where Thomas came. And then he went on the other side of India straight across. And he says, when he got over there, natives, they wound up killing them with a spear. Jude, he was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in the Lord.

And Matthew, the puzzle was chosen to replace the trader, Jesus is carried. you It was ultimately stoned and beheaded. Think about the great apostle Paul. Here’s God in heaven. This man Paul was, as far as we know, the greatest Christian that ever lived. I’ve never seen any man accomplish or be used like this man was used. To write so many of the New Testament books and a lot of them while he was in prison. Said, boy, they locked him up.

Boy, he really wasted it and brought him away his time there, didn’t he? Yeah, but while he was there, he wrote Holy Scripture. And look how many churches there are today. Good and bad. Look how many there are. Look how many churches in this country, not only around the world. And how many people of, well, did they love him or hate him? How many people have heard the name of Jesus Christ? They don’t understand who he is and what he’s done, but they’ve heard, most people have heard his name.

He was a drunkard singing it, but they’ve heard the name. But Paul, he was tortured and beheaded by the evil, Emperor Nero at Roman, 8067. Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches. He had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters, which taught many of the fundamental doctors of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament. A sober reminder that leaders of the early church suffered for the sake of the gospel, which we have been privileged to receive at the end of the church age.

The intellectual content that comprises the content of what we call saving faith. You have saving faith. What is the faith that saves? It has to include five essential components. Jesus Christ. There is no other. can’t be any other. There is no other name given along men whereby we must be saved. Number two is that the Son of God died and rose again. You have to and should know and believe that. Number three, that He paid the penalty for everybody’s personal sins.

Number Therefore that he gives eternal life to those who trust him. And five, it’s him and him alone. There is no other that can save a man except Jesus Christ and to give us eternal life. And if you know you have eternal life, does it matter when or how you die? As long as you’re serving the Lord, does it really matter what tribulations you have to go through what hardships, what sorrow you have to face. Is there anything that you and I are going to have to face that others have not faced before us?

Are we treading new ground? Can we die a more horrible way than anybody else has ever died? And yet they kept the faith. They boarded across. suffered the shame and they died for their faith. And you and I have trouble living for ours. The Lord may never ask us to die for him, but there are Scriptures that says to live for him. Now I don’t know when I’m going to die or how I’m going to die. I really don’t concentrate on that too much, but I am trying to figure out how to live for him.

What more can I do? What other ways can I manifest my faith except by my works, the things that I do for the Lord, the things that I attempt to accomplish. These, I believe, are all very, very important. Anyway, I wanted to read that to you and ask you a question. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you really ready to suffer for the Lord? Die for the Lord. Are you ready to live for the Lord. Are you ready to answer every question that anybody might ask you why you do what you do, why you stand the way you stand?

What problems are you having that you think are so bad that if God really loves you, he wouldn’t let you go through that. Read the book again. Read chapter 11 of Hebrews one more time. Read second chapter of Revelation one more time. And you’ll You see that God is so powerful that He could let His children be delivered from all of those things, but they look beyond this life for a better resurrection, that one day they’ll come face to face with the Lord and it will be worth it all.

Look up here. This end represent you and me and the wall of represent sin. You and I know that we all have sin on us. God loves us. Now he hates what we do wrong, but he loves us. And he says, for us to pay for this sin is eternal separation from God in a place called hell. God wants us to go to heaven and to go to heaven you have to be perfect as righteous as God. And none of us are perfect, none of us are righteous.

We have all come short of God’s perfection. And a man cannot save himself. So there’s only one hope for man, and that is Jesus Christ, God’s Son, God in the flesh came into the world. And he took all the sins of all the world and paid for them on the cross, came back from the dead, and said, if you and I would believe that he did it for us, he would put that payment to our account and we would know that we have eternal life and know that we’re going to heaven when we die.

knows and all the world. So glad to know I have eternal life. But while we live, we’re supposed to live as though we have been already crucified, as though we’ve already died. And that my body doesn’t belong to me, belongs to the Lord, and let him do with it whatever he wants, and let it go through whatever he wants, and let it suffer however he wants, and let him deprive me of whatever whatever he wants and I ought not open my mouth in protest.

Because I already died. Let’s pray, shall we? If you’re here tonight and you never trust the Christ as your Savior, I pray that you would. Just all you got to do is just in your own mind between you and the Lord, so Lord I’m on center. Friend God says that we all are, but he loves us. He died on that cross-paid for it. Would you trust him? Trust him to take you to heaven when you die. even if he paid for all of your sins.

You can’t earn your way to heaven. Nothing good you can do. And God said, if you trust him, he would save you from hell and give you eternal life as a gift. And you can know that you’re going to heaven when you die. If you’ve never trusted the Lord, would you do it right now? Never done it before. I’d like to know it, and I’d like to have prayer for you. Our Father, thank you so much for all that you’ve done for us.

Well, thankful Lord that we have recorded in your Word and recorded in history, things that happens to your people that love you and serve you. And Father, we look by faith beyond this life. Believe in that it will be worth it all. And that Father, according to your Word, you can’t lie. And it is worth it. You do see and know what we go through. That you said you’d give us the strength, the grace to bear whatever it might be.

We don’t know what’s coming in this country down the road, but we pray, Lord, that we’ll be found in tending for the faith. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you are blessed by today’s message. 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. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Radio Broadcast link. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcasts of our services may be seen by clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bibleline and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound, and 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 and just keep looking up.