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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. you 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 BibleInemistries.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.

If your Bible turned to the book of 1 John 4, 1 John 4, you and I are not alone. You say, I know I got the Lord with me. Well, I wasn’t talking about him. You say, well, I’ve got my wife. Well, I wasn’t talking about her either. Well, I’ve got my husband. Well, I wasn’t talking about him either. but you’re still not alone. The Bible tells us that there are demons in this world. And the more you want to serve the Lord, the more demon activity you’re going to recognize.

If you don’t serve the Lord, you don’t recognize a lot of things. You don’t see things. But when you make up your mind to serve the Lord, it opens your eyes to a lot of things that happens, that you can’t sometimes put your finger on it. there is a spirit world. There is the devil and he has demons. They’re fallen angels. And you say, well, where are they? Where are they? Well, they all live at your house. But believe it or not, they’re everywhere.

And just because, now don’t look at your husband like that, that’s not right. But they are everywhere. And there’s some things you might need to understand about it so that you don’t judge too quickly when you’re dealing with people. You know, a lot of times we jump on people and it’s that they’re being used and not even knowing it. So here in the book of 1 John chapter, before looking verse one, they love it, they leave not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Now, false prophet has a false message. That’s what makes them false. See how deep this is? You didn’t know it, it could get so deep. And he says in verse two, hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is coming, the flesh is of God. Every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is coming to flesh, not of God. And this is that Spirit of Antichrist where, have ye have heard that it should come?

And even now already is in the world. We are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world. Now we often kind of run through that sometimes, but there is a lot of truth in this verse. It’s telling us that there are people and there’s people with false messages and there’s people who have been influenced and are being influenced by false spirits and it is a real world.

you cannot see false spirits. You can only see the results of what they say and what they do. But when Jesus was here, Jesus, as you find out, really had to deal with false spirits all the time. He was always casting demons out of individuals. And it could be a blind one or a deaf one or a dumb one, or just, you know, demons that get you to say and think and do the wrong things. And… It is real.

It is powerful. And Satan uses the demons to use the people, just like there’s God who wants to use us. And sometimes we do the devil’s work without knowing him. This is why a child of God has to study the word so you can discern your thoughts. Because without discerning your thoughts, the devil, through the demons, can cause you to think things and do things that you don’t consider the source of the thoughts you think it’s only from you.

And you can wind up not doing what God wants you to do, not being what God wants you to be. because he is deceptive. The Bible says he hath deceived the whole world. That means there’s times in my life when the devil has deceived me. And if that’s true, there’s times in your life where he has deceived you. The Bible says he gets everybody sooner or later on something. You’re not free from him, he is real and he is after you.

And the Bible tells us that the devil as a roaring lion seeketh whom he may devour. That means to gobble you up to eat you alive. And he may do it in a lot of different ways. And he only does it because he’s able to get away with it because you were not aware. You were deceived. And he can sometimes get to you because he got to somebody you know and love. And he can twist your mind and cause you to have vain imaginations, to imagine things worse than what they are.

He never makes you think better, unless it’s on something that’s really wrong and you want you to think better or that than it is. But the devil is real and demons are real. Looking at the book of Ephesians in chapter 2, the book of Ephesians, it’s always good to have a literary for fresh of course. I know that in many things that I teach, they’re not new to you. You’ve been here long enough and I’m sure that Dr. Lindstrom has taught you all many of the same things.

But sometimes I can just bring you to remembrance, cause you to think to refresh your mind on things that you already know might help you. Look in Ephesians chapter 2. Look there in verse 2. in verse two. It makes a statement wherein in time past, he walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the heir. You say, well, where are these demons? Well, they’re in the air. You say, I can’t see them.

They’re still there, even though you don’t see them. He is called the prince of the power of the air. And so therefore we know that the devil is real. He has demons and they’re busy. And God is going to allow the devil to utilize these demons for the last days. Because there’s things that’s going to happen in the last days, all because of the devil, and all because of the demons. You’ll notice in this verse when it says that we all, and this is Paul talking to the Christians, and these are not the Jewish believers, as it is talking about the Gentiles and Ephesus, talking to them about ye walked according to the course of this world.

And as he says here, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our behavior, our manner of life. In time pass, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. In the words, it appears that demons utilize those three main things, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, in order to lure us because those are things on the inside of us that desires things on the outside of us.

And so, like I mentioned to you before, there is the desire in the rat for cheese. So you and I are able to put cheese on a trap and catch that little rat because something in the rat likes cheese. So the devil knows what we already desire. So he’s able to lure us, deceive us, with those simple basic things. That he has captured the whole human race. And so he’s going to be after you as long as you understand it.

And that he wants to devour you as long as you understand it. You can fight a better battle when you know what your enemy’s up to. And you know the weapons that he uses. Now I spoke one night on the book of Ephesians in chapter six explaining about the weapons that we are to use and the armor of protection we’re to use. So look there in the book of Ephesians in chapter six. And look in verse 12, and you’ll notice it talks about the principalities, the powers in high places.

See the verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we do wrestle. Did you know that most of that which wears you out mentally? Is it you’re always struggling because you’re in battle constantly, and it’s always something that’s plaguing our minds that keep us from thinking clearly to do what God wants to do. And so the devil knows that if he can do this, you’ll do this. And if you do this, he’ll do this. Because generally under pressure, we generally always do what we’ve always done.

We’ll respond the same way. For example, husband and her wife have a problem. And generally he knows that if he says this, she will do this. Or if she knows that if she does this, he will do this. Because after a while you get to read each other. You figure each other out. And you know that if she’s in this kind of a mood, I better not do this. But if she’s in this kind of a mood, I know I can do this, because we’re learning how to read each other.

There’s somebody who’s also watching you, and they’re reading you. Do you think that the devil understands you, can read you, can watch your facial expressions, knows how you think, because of what you have revealed, and he knows what you’re after, what you like and don’t like, he knows everything about you. Now I don’t believe the devil can read minds, But I believe that he can interject thoughts into your minds in order to capture you. So when we want to serve the Lord, understand there’s somebody that doesn’t want you to.

And so he’s always forgetting you to stop, quit, slow down, do something else. He does not stop. He is powerful, he is real. Now look at it. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, things you cannot see, things you probably don’t even understand, and you cannot grasp the power that Jesus Christ when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember that He had told His disciples to watch?

He told them to pray. He told them to watch and pray. And yet He was in such agony that he sweated great drops of blood. In the book of Hebrews it says that he feared, he feared. Now there’s a lot that he went through in his struggle. And I believe that it has to do with a spiritual battle he was going through. That he was struggling and wrestling with. I also believe there’s a possibility that the devil was trying to do everything he possibly could to have a premature death of Christ in the Garden so they could never get to the cross.

Now, we have in the book a warning, and this is to the believer, and it was true 2,000 years ago as it is today. So the enemy they had to face is the same enemy we have to face. And so he says, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So this is talking about something you and I are not familiar with. We’re used to looking at people and I can see you. And if you came at me with a gun, I got a gun.

But to fight an enemy you cannot see. Well the weapon you cannot see. And he’s battling for your mind. And so we know this, we see this. Now in the book of Job, I just want you to look at it real quick. Job chapter 1, the book of Job and chapter 1, the book of Job chapter 1, look there first of all in verse 6. Just want to cover a couple verses here. Job as far as we know was one of the most persecuted, tried, tested individuals I’ve of the road by outside of Christ himself.

And he says here in verse six, now there was a day, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. So even they had to give an accountability. Satan came also among them. The Lord said unto Satan, whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and says from going to and fro in the earth. Now we know he’s a prince of the power of the air, but he’s also going to and fro in the earth.

the earth and He makes a statement and from walking up and down in it. Now, what’s he like? I wonder what he’s looking for. You have any clue what he’s looking for. He’s looking for you. In fact, what he was doing then, 3500 years ago, there’s a good possibility he’s still doing the same thing. He’s walking to and fro throughout the earth looking for somebody he can devour. And God wouldn’t let him get to Job, but after a while God initiated the conversation and removed the barriers so that the devil could get to Job.

But the devil had limitations. He could not do everything he wanted. So you know, and I know the devil is real. Demons are real. In the world, you can’t see them, but they are at His beckoning call to do whatever the devil wants done. And they’re in the air and they’re on the earth. Look in Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12, look there in verse 43. And just get what Jesus is talking about. Now whether or not it’s a reference to the nation of Israel that could cast out the devils, but they never replaced the devils with the sun.

And though Christ went all over the place and he cast out devils just about everywhere he went. But look at the illustration that he uses. And the point that I want to make out of this is that demons are in people. They’re in the world, they’re in here walking to a pro throughout the earth, but demons or in people see there in verse 43 when the unclean spirit is gone out of a and you ought to underline that man when it’s gone out of a man he walketh through dry places seeking rest findeth none then he said I will return into my house from whence I came out.

And when He has come, He finds it that empty swept and garnish. It’s kind of like a person can just clean up their life. And the demons say, hey, look, there’s nobody at home here. We can live here. Now, if a man trusts Christ’s Savior and the Holy Spirit indwells you, greater is He that is in you, than He that is in the world. But the man that doesn’t trust the Lord, doesn’t have the Holy Spirit living there. So you have these false spirits that can come in and then he says this, then goeth he and take it with himself, seven other spirits, more wicked than himself and they enter in and dwell there.

And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also under this wicked generation. So there is a man that now has more demons living within him. And the Bible says that they were more wicked. So there are wicked demons in the world. A wicked demon will cause you to be more wicked than you would have been without the demons. You need to understand that demons can affect people, their lives, their thoughts.

They can be captured and not have a clue what’s going on. And this is why you and I are supposed to understand God has given to us a power that they don’t have. And this is why I’ve never worried about going around the world trying to cast demons out of people. Because I know that if I can get a person to trust Christ’s Savior, the Holy Spirit indwells them, and I don’t have to worry about it. So I believe so winning is the greatest thing that a man can ever do for anybody.

There’s a lot of people and you may wonder why they are like they are. It may be that they have demons within them. I’ve never had to worry about that, but I know others that have had to seriously deal with a lot of demonology and people that are demon-possessed. Now, I don’t want people going on witch hunts getting at your magnifying glass and ah, that’s what’s wrong with James. He’s got a demon inside of him. Or look at Herman, I know he’s got a demon, I bet he got a whole bunch.

And wives don’t do that to your husbands or to the other. Now, if a person doesn’t do the things that are plainly normal and is totally out of the realm of true spirituality, there could be a problem. To a person who doesn’t understand the gospel. There are demons that despise the teaching, the messages that are found in this book and don’t want anything to do with it. And so he says that they are real and they do in dwell people’s bodies.

And they do affect the way people think and it affects their actions. Look in Mark chapter 5 and verse 13, the book of Mark. And you’ll notice that there was a time when Jesus was going to this city and cast this demon out of us guy. Well, look what he says there in verse 1 of chapter 5, and they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country that they got arranged. When he was gone out of the ship, immediately they met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit who had his dwelling among the tombs.

No man could bind him, no not with chains, because he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces neither could any man tame him. Unusual strength. Unusual strength. And then he says, nobody could tame him. Verse 5, And always night and day he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus, the far off he ran and worshiped him, cried with a loud voice and says, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of the most high God?

I adjuté by God that thou torment me not.” Now you think it’s the man speaking or a demon speaking through him. There’s a demon inside of this man and more than one. Is it possible that some people who met this man never figured out what was really wrong with this man? Would you say this man had a problem? I mean somebody wants to live in a graveyard. There’s got to be a little, but there was something wrong with him.

Something wrong with him. Majority of people have said, I don’t want nothing to do with him. Stay away from me and leave him alone. But it says here in verse 8, and he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered saying, My name is legion, for we are many. And he He besought Him much that He would not send them away out of the country. Now there was their nigh unto the mountain a great herd of swine feeding.

And all the devils, the demons, besought Him, saying, send us into the swine that we may enter into them because His spirits need a body. They want a body. They were in a man and was cast out of the man. And they said, can we go into the swine? So they went into the swine. When they went into the swine, what does the swine do? They went over a cliff and went into the sea and drowned. You say, what’s the point?

That people will put up with the devil more than the hogs. This is where you get devil’s ham. See you didn’t know that you just stick around you you learn all that kind of stuff And verse 12 and all the devils be sawed him and this is what they wanted in verse 13 and for with Jesus gave them leave and the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea and there were about 2,000 and were choked in the sea now how many was inside of this man you know there’s sometimes I think people in in seminary that get together and try to discuss how many angels can set on the head of a pin.

Or how many people can have how many demons inside of them at one time. You just need to know and understand that Jesus is the one who tells all this. This is the same one who said, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believe it then Him should not perish but have everlasting life. the one that said that. Also said this, you know, I believe that, but I don’t believe this. So nowCHECK you’re gonna pick and choose the same God.

And to the church, there’s warnings to us about evil spirits, about demons and their power and what they can do. So you and I, before we just automatically just judge other people, try to understand with this knowledge of God. knowledge, there might be something more going on than you just sense by watching and listening to what they’re saying and doing. It may be they need the Lord. They may need you to be a little bit more patient with them and try to win them to the Lord.

There’s something else that can go on. Now, I believe that a Christian can be so oppressed, not possessed whether they take over you, that you can be oppressed, and that you have all these thoughts that can come into your mind, not because of spirits, but because of the thoughts in your mind. And whenever you don’t study the Word of God, you can’t discern your thoughts. And this is what the Word of God teaches us over and over again so that you can discern right from wrong what’s going on in your life.

Understanding it can be helpful in being more patient with one another, more kinder to one another, more compassion toward one another. Or we don’t see that at all and we just think this person is this bad. And it may be there’s something else going on and we’re pre-judging too quickly, too soon. And I just want us to be careful. Look in Revelation chapter 16, Revelation chapter 16. And notice what’s going to take place in the last days. These are things that I know that you’ve already read and understand, but Revelation 16, page 1345, and look in verse 13, verse 13, and I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, and they are the spirits of devils or demons, working miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth

and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Something working behind the scenes. People can’t see it, they can’t figure it out, they don’t know. All they know is that something’s causing them to do things. No, if it’s not real, it ought not be in this book. This is not something that we think, well this is just made up. This isn’t made, this is real. There is a real spiritual battle going on.

And the devil is always working upon our minds to defeat us, to get us to stop serving the Lord with all of our heart, to get his side track, to get us to worry, to get us to fret so that we don’t trust the Lord. He wants us to question and doubt God just like he did to Adam and Eve in the garden, just like he was trying to do to Job. He’s been trying to do the same thing, and he doesn’t stop because his system works.

The devil’s way works. But so does the Lord’s way. And greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tappa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. 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. 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 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. Friends day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. Caught a Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Even if the Lord is coming, just keep looking at it.