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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 first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Take your Bible and turn to the book of Romans the book of Romans and chapter One Romans in chapter one. I Got an email yesterday and I thought I would read this letter to you Because it was a letter That shares her testimony of 40 years ago See one thing it’s good about if you live long enough enough, you see the results of it down the road. And it’s very encouraging. You know, sometimes the pastor wonders if anybody ever really listens and learns from what he has to say.

Because you know, when you’re on that little perch, everybody takes a shot at you. Everybody demands you got to be perfect or they turn you off. And you’re going to offend people so easy. I never try to offend anybody, but I do because I’m a person. I’m a human being. I have a sinful nature. I say, I do things not always perfect. Christ was here and He was perfect and you won’t believe this, but He offended people. So I like to know when somebody’s blessed because of your life or your ministry.

So she wrote this to me. At the age of eight, I recall a night my father came home from one of his many hunting trips. I was always very excited when he returned because he often brought me a gift. This particular trip included several men from our church who ventured west to Colorado to Hanout and Mule Deer. On Sunday morning, the men took a break from hunting and attended a church service in the mountains of western Colorado. his return, I sensed an unusual amount of excitement from my father.

This was interesting because he was typically such a calm man. Soon he became apparent that the heightened excitement my father exhibited was not coming from the number or size of mule deer he encountered on the trip. But from a preacher he heard doing that Sunday morning service. The only thing that more intriguing to me that my father’s excited state was the name of the preacher, Yankee. I just kept thinking what’s a Yankee doing in Colorado. I thought they were Northerners.

As was my usual practice, I clung to every word that came from my father’s mouth. So as he proceeded to share his excitement with me, I began to envision this young, tall, handsome, dynamic preacher, where they message about going, I didn’t write that now, where they message about going to heaven. Growing up in the church, nothing seemed unusual about a preacher talking about heaven. But it was uncommon to hear Dad explain how Yankee told them they could know they were going to heaven.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in the years to come, This preacher with a strange name would split our church congregation right down the middle. You unite another group of new believers, change many of ourURRENT lives here on earth, and share a message that would affect us for all eternity. She didn’t mention that I also got boycotted, black-balled, and two major denominations one year after I left Florida of a college. But anyway, that’s another story. Yankee was invited to our small town of Dora Lake.

Minnesota, to share this special message with our church. Doing one of his early visits, he prompted questions in my young mind about my eternal destination. A short time later, while fishing with my father on the Big Fort River in northern Minnesota, I asked him this question, if Yankee is right and we have to be perfect to get to heaven, how am I going to get there if I keep doing things wrong? And since I still get spankings, I know that I do things wrong.

Very brilliant kid, huh? It was then that my father explained to me that I do things wrong because I inherited this sinful nature from Adam and Eve. He reiterated Yankee’s message of salvation by grace. When he explained that I cannot escape that sinful nature by doing good things, it is only by believing in the payment Jesus made on the cross that God would give me or see me as being perfect, sinless and able to enter this perfect heaven, even though I didn’t always do everything right here on earth.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment that I trusted Christ as my Savior. I imagined it was shortly after that memorable moment with my father in that beautiful river in northern Minnesota. Bottom line at some point known only to God, I pieced it all together and it made perfect sense to me a small but inquisitive child that God had given his perfect son to pay the complete sin debt for me so that I could spend eternity with him. So this message of salvation by grace preached by Yankee Arnold many years ago to a group of rough bearded hunters from northern Minnesota is one that continues to amaze me.

Even now, some forty years later, the clarity of the gospel makes its way into every conversation between my father and me. I am eternally grateful to Yankee and the women or the woman behind the man, his ever dedicated wife Betty, for the sacrifices they have made throughout their lives to share the clear gospel with so many. They have planted seeds throughout the country, if not the world. Seeds that the Lord has watered result in countless numbers of individuals, knowing what certainty, even though they are challenges in this world, they have absolute assurance of the eternal destination.

No greater gift could ever be given than the message of salvation to the grace of God. you to my Father Jim who not only accepted the message of salvation by grace, but realized the importance of sharing the good news with his family. And that’s a good story. She sent that to me yesterday because she wrote it about her, how she came to know the Lord. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, but in my mind, I remembered the exact moment.

I was riding in the pickup truck with her dad, and she was sitting between us. She was eight years old. And on the way to the church, door like church, on the way there I explained it to her. And she finally understood. Anyway, I emailed her back and I told her that, 40 years ago, when you get to heaven, do you realize that you’re going to see the faces of the people that you want to Christ, to see the faces of the people because of your concern and what you sacrifice to get the gospel to people, whether through money or prayers or individual talking.

There won’t be anything greater. Paul says, ye are my crown of glory. You are my joy whenever he sees you at the coming of Christ. That’s gonna be the most important thing you’ll ever experience in your life. To know that there’ll be people in heaven because you shared the greatest story in all the world with him. So I want you to take your Bible, look there, a verse that we read every Sunday morning, the book of Romans in chapter one and verse 16.

Look what it says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the the just shall live by faith. What two great verses in the Bible. And whenever you think about those verses, you think of how simple everything is that God made.

And I want you to think about this. Of all the messages there are in the world, of all the books that have been written, there is no story as great as this story. There is no message more powerful than this story. That’s why you and I are supposed to love it. And Paul says, I’m not ashamed of the gospel and it didn’t stop there. I’m not ashamed of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So it’s not just anybody, it’s a particular individual. So number one, if you keep any notes on the back of your bulletin, you can write it down because I’m not ashamed because of the person of the gospel, the person, because she is not just anybody. This person is the Son of God. This person is God. And so it’s the good news about what God says. And it’s something that you and I are supposed to love and we’re supposed to tell.

So it’s not about what, it’s about who, it’s about this person. And that’s why If the devil can, he’ll get you to do anything, talk about anything except this person. Because we cannot talk about the gospel without talking about the person. And when I’m not ashamed of the message, it’s because I’m not ashamed of the person. And if you’re ashamed of the person, you will be ashamed of the gospel. And a lot of God’s children, I think, are ashamed to tell the message.

And I don’t understand why. I can’t fathom that yet. But I do believe there’s some things that we need to remember. Without Christ, see, there is no gospel. And there’s several words that we talk about all the time. And yet without Christ these words have absolutely they have no meaning. You see, there would be no such thing as there is no power. See, a man needs to be saved, but there’s no power if there’s no Christ. Without Christ there is no power to save anybody.

You see, without the gospel of Jesus Christ, you and I can’t know God. You may know there is a God, But you can’t know God, except through this story. This is the story that lets us know what God thinks about his attributes. It talks about the perfection of God, why we need to be perfect, how holy, how just, how righteous. All these things about God that you and I need to know about. And then because of Christ we know about justice and law and mercy, compassion, forgiveness.

All those things about God you and I will not know, except through the story of the gospel. You see there’s a word it’s called salvation. You realize there is no salvation without Christ. There is no righteousness without Christ. There is no gift without Christ. There’s no justification without Christ. So without Christ, there’s no life. There’s no eternal life without Christ. But with Christ, we have all these things, but you take Christ out of the equation. There is nothing left.

And as far as this life goes, there’s nothing worth living for. That’s why so many people are so hopeless in their lives. They don’t have anything worth living for. And you can be so discouraged and so in despair. But if you had something that was worth living for, it gives meaning to everything else in life. There’s a purpose there that drives you on. So the first thing I wanted you to see is simply in this verse. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the person.

I’m not ashamed of Jesus Christ. I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. The second thing is the power of the gospel. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power. This message is the most powerful message in the world. There isn’t anything with greater power than this message. It is the dynamite of God. This little story, you see why the devil fights the gospel and the clarity of the gospel, he’s trying to dilute its power where it cannot save by adding works to it, diluting it, Mixing it all up, confusing people.

That’s why you and I have to strive for the defense of the gospel. Where we know that man cannot save himself and therefore only through Christ can a man be saved. It’s so important. You see chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3 of the book of Romans, paints a picture of how terrible man is, how wicked man is, how that when he knew God, he did not honor him as God. That became vain in their own imagination and brought God down to man and worship creation instead of the Creator.

And talked about all the wickedness that people do, men with men and women with women and all the sins and the wickedness and talked about how that he gave the law to Israel and they violated it. Nobody ever kept the law. Talk about the Gentiles and by creation itself, given to man the power of reason with conscience and yet he fails, cannot even live up to that knowledge that he has that there is a God and a seek God.

And then by the time you get to chapter 3, let’s just see just how wicked man is. There’s none righteous, not one. There’s none that seeketh after God, not one. There’s There’s none that doeth good, not one. Let God be true in every man a liar.” And as he says in his word, so I say these things to them that are under the law, that all are guilty before God. All have sinned and come short of God’s perfection, pretty pitiful sight.

So there isn’t any man or woman ever lived good enough to be saved. So God paints a black picture for all of mankind. And then, but God. But God. But God has the power of salvation. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the person. It is the power of God. Think of all the power that will be needed. Now there was tremendous power used in creating the heavens and the earth. A man can’t be saved without the power of God.

It means that man cannot save himself by his power. salvation is by God’s power. He’s the only one that has the power to save you. And if he has the power to save you, he only has the power to keep you saved. Because when you’re saved, you’re saved from something to something. To an inheritance, it’s incorruptible and undefiled that fate, if not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God on the salvation. You see, God is the only one that has the power to save a man.

That’s all wrapped up in that little store that we call the gospel, the Good News, of how a sinner can be made righteous. It’s going to be justified before a righteous holy God. And there is no other message that can accomplish this. No religion can do this. Only the book, the Word of God. So Christ is the answer. We hear it all the time. The next thing I want you to understand is it is the power It is the power of God, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation.

The only power that can save us is in this message. There’s a story and a man must hear it and he that heareth my word and be leaving on him that sent me that everlasting life. The power to save, that we brought that before, the penalty of sin, the power of sin in our life now, and one day to be saved from the very presence of sin. You think the word salvation in the Bible is one of the most important words in all the world, to be able to stand and say, oh yeah, I’m an American.

I’m an Arnold. I’ll be great. I’m saved. I am saved. Not going to be. I am saved. I mean, I’m not going to hell. I am a saved man. That is more important than anything else in the whole world. It’s more important than that job you have or the job you don’t have. I’m saved. I’m saved. My sins are all forgiven. I can never go to hell from this day forward. Never. I’m saved. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, and I’m saying so.

I am redeemed. I am saved. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God on the salvation. You see why is that important? Because see, that’s the purpose of the power. What’s the purpose of the power to save? And I have been saved. It’s the one of the greatest words in the whole world. You can say, I’m a man. You can say, I’m a woman. I’m 70 years old. I’m 30 years old.

I’m saved. There’s nothing better than that. There are no words better than those words. I’m saved. I’m going to heaven when I die. And you stop and think of how many people in this world they cannot say that. They can’t say that because they don’t know that. They never heard this message, this most powerful message in all the world. Oh, they’ve heard religions. They’ve heard that you’ve got to earn your way to heaven by your good works, and that’s not the good news.

The good news is, is he died on the cross and paid for my sins to give me eternal life as a free gift, and I get to go to heaven on what he did for me. That’s the best news in all the world. The next one I wanted to mention two years, because I’m not ashamed because of the plan of the gospel. What’s God’s plan? What’s the purpose and the power? What’s the plan? The plan doesn’t go in all the world until people keep the 10 commandments that go to heaven, to qualify to be good enough.

The plan was that whosoever was the word, believe it. What a simple plan. That’s too easy. You may not have all the things that talks about the person of Christ and everything that He did and who He was. They come into this world and all the power of God that it takes and the purpose of God. The plan is just the man got to believe that’s all, and yet the power that’s in that. It’s the power to save a person, the power to save a person.

You see, that’s God’s plan. The plan is that all that people have to do is the only thing they can do is believe it. You see, sometimes we try to get things so complicated. God made it simple. And He says, all that a man has to do, the only thing that he can do, is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. So simple. You know what I’m encouraged by. The other night I had James call me up and he says, Pastor, we had somebody trust the Lord.

Reformers unanimous. That is so neat. That is so neat. And then Peter calls me up and tells me that they had some people trust the Lord Friday night or Thursday night, Friday night so with him. And I don’t know, 10, 15, something like that. But I think it’s just so great. And different ones that I’ve heard of y’all that are going out and you talk to people. And And you never know who’s going to talk to somebody next. Edgar said that he was in the hospital, and his chaplain came in, her, and he says, do you know where you’re going, you die?

She said, well, I hope I’m going to heaven. So he explained the gospel to her. Don’t you think the chaplain ought to know where they’re going when they die? How can you bring great comfort and hope and so forth to people? And they ain’t got to clue where they’re going when they die. Isn’t it true that you might die? I mean, you go to the hospital, you know there’s a possibility. You might not come out, there’s a possibility. But isn’t it wonderful to know that you can give people this hope, this joy?

And the only way you can do that is by telling them that message. Now, if I was a devil, I don’t care what you do with your life, as long as you don’t talk to people. You see, that’s what really is the crux of the matter. the hardest part is just getting started, getting started. But you’d be surprised how many opportunities God gives to us. I don’t take advantage of all my opportunities. I’m gonna have to answer the God for that.

I do get a few here and there, but I realize that’s why I want the radio and I love to have a TV broadcast. I just want people to hear it and understand it. And they may trust the Lord and He go to heaven when they die. Because sooner or later everybody dies. Everybody dies. And we’re a big understanding. 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.

Part 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 Dye-Link Tool 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 10-30, and at six o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast 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.