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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, 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 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.

I want to talk to you a little bit about what if, what if, your father really loved you. Do you think that He should try to teach you the most important thing in all the world? Whatever the most important thing is in the world, that’s something He ought to make sure that every one of His children come to know. Now we know that the most important decision any child could ever make is to accept Christ as their Savior, to know that they’re going to heaven when they die.

But there’s a lot of talk today that talks about everyone needs to have a relationship with God, a relationship with the Lord. I don’t use that terminology like a lot of people do. I’m not against it, but I don’t believe that you’re going to have a relationship with God because you just want to sit around and snuggle up to the Lord. And because you just want to sit and read his word, let him talk to you. That’s good. And prayer, we know that prayer is important and sometimes we just want to just read the word and talk to the Lord.

But a lot of people have bypassed something. They forgot to trust Christ as their Savior and they’re just working on their relationship with God. mind you of studying the Scriptures, unless you have accepted Christ as your Savior, you have no relationship with God. It cannot even happen. You may know that there is a God and you may want to know this God, but you can’t know God except through His Son Jesus Christ. Therefore I believe that one of the most important things you could ever know in this life, and That is the reality of hell.

I want you to take your Bible in turn with me to the book of Luke chapter 16. Luke chapter 16. And I want to show you something because I’ve read it many times. I’ve taught it many times. But there’s also something else that seems important to me. It was when you leave this world, where will you be? where you go. That’s to me is the crux of the matter. Where are you going to spend eternity? Now I did not always know the Lord.

My dad, as I know of, didn’t know the Lord. Now he went to church at times and he would even sing in the choir. They would beg my dad to sing in the choir. And the reason was because the drunker he got the better hit sing and And he had a liquor steel. His name was Shine. He went by the name of Shine. And Moon Shine. I’ve heard about the Sun standing still, but he made the Moon Shine. But he did not ever tell us kids, as I know of any of us, how to know that we can go to heaven when we die.

Because we know that nobody lives forever. Now some dads will spend all their time and money making sure that their kids get a good education in this world. They want to send you off to some nice college or university where you can really make a lot of money because you’ve got a good education. That’s not necessarily that bad. But is there something better, something more important? I think there is. And because of the importance of that, it’s the kind of a dad that I have always tried to be.

What are the priorities? What’s the most important thing in the world that I can know and order to pass on? That whenever I leave this world, have I given to my kids the most valuable thing I could have ever given them? And I assure you, it’s not money. It’s not things. It’s the knowledge of the Lord. To know God is to have eternal life. So he says this. verse 19, and remember Jesus is the one that’s telling this. It’s a story about after death.

When you have ceased to live on planet Earth, what then? Evidently Christ had not yet died. The sins of the world had not yet been paid for but they had gone their own credit in a place called paradise. So he says there was a rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. There was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laded as gate full of sores, desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.

More over the dogs came and licked his sores, and he came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried, and in hell he lift up his being in torment and seeeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom and he cried and said, Father Abraham. Father Abraham. Now Abraham was the father of the nation of Israel. You see, God used Abraham and brought into this world Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob and then the 12 So that’s where the nation came from.

A lot of people today traced their roots back to this one particular man. He must have been quite a man. But he was just a man that God had brought out of the early calvays and brought him into this promised land and promised him all kinds of things. He was going to make him a great nation. And he was already an old man. But God was going to give him a miraculous son. He was going to heal his body and his wife’s whose body were beyond having children and yet he was going to quicken their bodies where they could have a child.

And Abraham believed God. And it was counted in the him for righteousness. You see he had this promise by God 430 years before the law was ever given. In the book of Galatians it tells us over and over again about Abraham, Abraham. Chapter 4 of the book of Romans talks to us about Abraham. And the reason that salvation is the way it is so that it can be free to everybody. And that even though all he had to do was believe God and God put his righteousness to his account and then it tells us if we believe it will also be imputed.

that God would take His righteousness and put it to us, to our account. And we would have the righteousness of God and go to heaven just like Abraham did. And God says that those who believe by faith and faith alone are the children of Abraham, because it’s the faith that we have in the Lord, it’s without works. It was before the law, and it was only by believing. And so in the book of Galatians talks about how but we are the children of God by faith.

And so that Abraham was an example of how God saved an individual and how God made promises that he kept. So we that no Christ is our Savior can say we’re so thankful for Father Abraham. There’s a little song that Betty sung years ago, I don’t know it, but she does. And she did it with the little kids. And it was go, Father Abraham, da da da da da da da da da. And she did all kinds of things with him.

I don’t even know what they are. I should have had her come up here and demonstrate for you, but I’ll just bypass that today. Oh, she’s shaking her head no. So that means no. But it’s called Father Abraham, and it’s a nice cute little song, but it is so true. because when we believe we are part of this. Now what I want you to see, how that God later on says so much about this man Abraham. And what a father he was and because he believed what God said, that God blessed his son and gave him the same promise and then blessed his sons and then bless their sons all because of Abraham.

So, we have a good example of a father. Now, not every area of Abraham’s life was a bubbly approach. There were times when Abraham said and did things he shouldn’t have done. Now, he lied about his wife, but it was a half-life. You know, it’s only white. But anyway, he got in trouble with Pharaoh and a few other things, you know. But God said he was his friend. He was a friend of God. Now, when you consider Abraham and all of his family and all the people, whether they’re Jews or Gentiles, we go back to Father Abraham.

Even the Muslims like to claim Abraham as their father, and in the way he was. The people right here in the book of Luke chapter 16, man said, Father Abraham. If he’s Father Abraham, and what’s he doing in hell? Well, because you see, they still believe that Abraham was their father. But Jesus says, if he was your father, you would believe what I’m telling you. But you don’t believe me. Therefore, he’s not your father. Physically, yes, spiritually, no. So when he says that you are the children of God are the children of Abraham by faith in Christ Jesus, yes.

But picture for a moment. Here is this great Abraham. He dies and he is in a place and God calls it Abraham’s bosom. It’s the place that we know as a place of paradise, a place of paradise. That’s where Abraham went after he died. Another man comes along and he’s a, he’s a, he’s a, he’s a poor man and he dies and he goes to Abraham’s bosom. He goes through the same place with Abraham. Another man dies. He was the rich man, but he had never accepted the Lord, never believed on the Lord.

He didn’t believe what the prophet said. He didn’t believe what Moses said because Abraham told them, says, if they will not, your brothers, he had five. If they will not believe Moses and the prophets, they won’t believe if somebody rose from the dead. But now, notice Jesus is telling the story. It’s about something that’s after we live. It’s a picture of something that’s taking place in hell. And the word is used as shield in the Old Testament, Hades in the New Testament, but it’s the place of the departed dead.

And in this one place, there is a place of paradise and a place of torment. And they can see, but they can’t cross from one place to the next. The Bible talks about how that hell has enlarged itself because of its desire to get more and more and more people into hell. Now, what bothered me was of all the things that we read about Abraham after he dies is the story. So this is the most important thing anybody could have ever known while they’re alive because when you’re dead, it didn’t matter about how rich you were, how you ate, how you dressed, who you knew, it was, you didn’t listen to what God’s Word says.

There is a place, a torment, and a lot of people today, they don’t want to talk about sin because that makes people feel uncomfortable. Well, I’m sorry, be uncomfortable. There is a way of solving the problem. We all sin, we just all commit to maybe the same ones. So God’s word is telling us, listen, Abraham after death told him something that he should have listened to while he was still alive. This means that to me, if Abraham knew this was the most important thing when he was dead, I believe he thought it was the most important thing while he was living.

God credits this individual with so much of being the Father of all those that believe by faith, because we then become the children of God, because we believe just like Abraham did. You see, Christ hadn’t yet come. The payment had not yet been made, but he believed it. And when he took his only son and he offered him up as a sacrifice, . . . . . . . . . Abraham believed God in, it says so in the book of Hebrews in chapter 11 that he believed that God would have raised him from the dead in which he received him in a picture, in a type.

Of God sending his son to the very same Mount, Mount Moriah, and it was going to offer up his son. So Abraham did that, which was a picture of God giving his only begotten son. and he believed that if he had taken the life of his son, he would have raised him back again from the dead because he believed in the death, the burial, and the resurrection of God’s son. So therefore we believe that Abraham knew the truth, believed the truth, and taught his son, and so forth on down the line.

So it is important of what we believe. Now what I want you to do is take your Bible and turn to 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel and chapter 22. 2 Samuel, chapter 22. And look there in verse 6. And notice that here, even though it’s in the Old Testament, but there are some things that it does kind of give us an idea that they understood more than what we think. We don’t know how long this Lazarus in the rich man, How long ago that happened from the time Jesus told it?

It could have been right after Abraham died. It could have been anywhere for the next thousand years. It could have been because we know that when Jesus was there, a very few ever died if anybody died in his presence. But now notice, in 2 Samuel in verse 6, he says, The sorrows of hell compass me about, the snares of death prevented me. and you ought to underline those words, the sorrows of hell. Now, the Bible doesn’t tell us all that the prophets knew, all that Moses understood.

But we do know that Moses made the statement in the book of Hebrews in chapter 11 that he believed that the reproaches of Christ would bring him greater riches than all the treasures in Egypt. And so therefore he knew about Christ, he believed on Christ. So they did know a lot of things that we just don’t have the precise scripture. For the Bible says in the book of Genesis, Enoch walked with God and he was not. For God took him.

We find in the book of Jude that Enoch was a preacher of righteousness and that he He preached about the coming of Christ. You read it, it’s all there. With ten thousands of His saints taking judgment upon those that do not know and believe on Him, upon the world of the ungodly. So they knew a lot more than what we give them credit for. Look in Psalms 18, the 18th Psalm. Psalms 18 and look there in verse 5. And you’ll notice even David, even in the 16th Psalm David talked about, they will not leave my soul in hell.

And that’s the verse that refers to Jesus Christ. And that Christ had made this statement, and even an adult generation sicketh after a sign, but there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonah for his was the only one who was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, even so shall the son of maybe three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So when Christ died, He went to the place of paradise in the heart of the earth.

And before He ascended, was it that He first descended person to the lower parts of the earth and led captivity captive, the book of Ephesians. But here He makes the statement in verse 5 of chapter 18, the sorrows of hell compass me about. The snares of death prevented me. You are going to find that there are statements that are made throughout the Old Testament about the real hell in the Old Testament and about the sorrows of hell. Also look there in the hundred and sixteenth Psalm, the hundred and sixteenth Psalm.

See where Abraham was is where the rich man wanted to go, but he wanted Father Abraham’s sin, lazzar that he may come and dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. Now, a lot of people like to just do away with the whole story of what Christ is talking about in Luke. But you see, I never trusted Christ as my Savior because I wanted to have a relationship with God.

I know it sounds spiritual to say, that’s all that I want. It’s just to love God and praise God and worship God. I did not. What woke me up was I was going to hell. I found out I was going to hell. And that’s what brought the tears into my eyes. I didn’t want to go to hell. If I have to trust Christ as my Savior to keep me from going to hell, I’ll do it.” And I did. I did it for nothing more than fire insurance.

If you say, well, I trust a little cause I just love God. I don’t believe it, but you can say it. I believe this is when you talk to people and you’ve got to tell them the most important thing they’ve got to know. There is a literal fire burning hell. you are destined for it. Unless you trust Christ as your Savior, you are going to lift up your eyes in hell. Now, that doesn’t appeal to a lot of people.

It’s better to say, look, God just loves us all and just wants us to have a glorious time in heaven sitting around worshiping Jesus. Okay, that sounds good. Now, you tell me, how do you get there? You can’t have a relationship with Todd. He can’t even be your father and you can’t be his child unless you have accepted the payment Christ made on the cross for you. You must believe that Christ died to save you from hell. Otherwise, what’s the purpose of being saved?

saved me from the hell. And I enjoy telling people, I can’t go to hell today. I can’t go tomorrow. So I would just prefer nobody ever tell me to go there. I can’t. If I tried, I can’t go to hell. And it’s because Christ died for my sins. What does that mean? It means that I don’t have to pay for my sins, what He paid for them. All I had to do is believe it. And if I don’t believe it, I’m going to hell.

If you do not believe on Christ and you do not trust Him as your Savior, one day when you die, you’ll lift up your eyes in hell and you’ll be crying out, Father Abraham, send somebody the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame.” And Abraham says, you can’t get out of where you are. Nobody from here can go to you and you can’t get out. It’s a done deal. And so he says, remember in your lifetime, remember Lazarus in his lifetime, in your time of life, your lifetime is when you have to make the most important decision in all the world.

Let me ask you this, do you have a mother that you, that’s still alive and your lover and yet you know and believe that there is a literal fire burning health and you’ve never talked to your mother about that. But you love her. I told you this one day because Dr. Ray Stanford said it. One day after he had trusted Christ in his Savior, his mother said that she had gone to church all of her life and so prayed and drugged him and he had all these preachers preaching all these wrong messages.

Finally a man by the name of Clitna followed, let him to Christ. And after he trusted the Lord, he was sitting in the house one day and his mom was there. She was about 90 years old. He said, mom, I got to ask you a question. He says, do you love me? He says, yes, I love you. He said, no, mom, I mean, do you really, really love me? He said, you know I do. Of course I love you.

He says, if you are saved and you’re going to heaven when you die and you knew that I wasn’t saved and I was going to hell, why didn’t you tell me?” And she started crying and walked off. Later on she got behind the ministry and so forth. But it broke his heart when he really understood. You really care about me, you really love me. Have you got a son or a daughter and you never explained it to them? The most important thing in all the work, there isn’t anything more important.

The food in their stomach is not as important as the clothes on their back or roof over their head and you know how to have eternal life and you won’t tell them because you don’t want to hurt their feelings. You don’t want to be offensive? Well, it all depends on what you really believe. Do you really believe there is a hell? And is it the one that God talks about in His word, with the descriptions of it, that it’s everlasting fire?

We needed a Savior. The Savior’s from what? Hell. And so I trusted Christ as my Savior 52 and a half years ago. And I know I have eternal life and I know that I’m going to heaven. whenever I die. But that verse Psalm 116 and verse 3, when he says, the sorrows of death compass me, and the pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble in sorrow. When I listened to my father-in-law, you see, I used to think I was pretty good.

I’m not that bad. But after he explained it to me. I knew that if what he says is true, I’m going to hell. I’m a busted wide open. I used to think I had a chance, but after he explained it to me, I knew I have no chance. I’m not going to heaven. And I stood there at that door and I started balling like a baby. And he asked me, says, what’s wrong? He knew what was wrong. He doesn’t let a lot of people to Christ.

He He had already set me up and he knew how to catch fish. He knew he couldn’t force me. He had to let the Word do the work. And I said, I want to be saved. He said, well, let’s don’t do it in the dark. So I’d cut on the light and I went over to the couch and I got on my knees. And he explained a few things to me. And I trusted Christ as my Savior that night.

only reason that I’ve gone to Bible college because I believe in a hell. The only reason that I have sacrificed so much for all these years, given up so much and dragged my wife and my kids all across this country is because I believe there’s a hell. And the only reason I still do the same thing is because I believe there’s a hell. Now in the process of obeying God’s command. I’ve gotten closer to the Lord. We have a wonderful relationship.

But you see, me being his child and him being my father will never change. I have more fellowship with the Lord now as I walk with the Lord. But see when I first got saved, that was not the issue. And I believe people getting the cart before the horse, get it all messed up because all you have to understand, look, I’m not interested in you having a wonderful relationship with God. There’s too many people that use that terminology and I don’t think to have a clue what they’re talking about.

That’s just my own opinion. When I talk to people about getting saved, I want them to know, look, there’s a hell, there’s a heaven. You’re going to hell, but God loves you. And this is what He did. Now they see a need for being saved. And I want to explain it to them just the best that I know how. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tapp of Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message.

Part 2 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 Bible and programs, just go to our home page 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 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 airDeclip today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep lookingRepublic.