Bibleline Radio Show – 2015-02-11 – Mark Them Which Cause Divisions Pt.1
Transcription:
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
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 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.
The truth of the gospel is heaven and hell. If you don’t know the truth of the gospel, there’s good news, what it is, what it is not. Do you realize hell is a long time to be wrong? It’s a long time to be wrong. It’s forever. And the thing that’s also bad about this is even in the book of Matthew where Christ is talking to the Pharisees, he says, you will take across, you know, bodies of water and mountains and whatever to make a convert.
And when you have got done, it’s just a twofold more of hell than what you are because you’re not going and you’re keeping others from understanding the truth. That’s what Jesus said. Because they taught something contrary to what God told them. So that goes on. But look at the first paragraph here. The Lord has not given to any man the right to manipulate his gospel by adding works to it or by gutting it of content. In other words, adding to it or taking away from it, where it’s lost its power.
The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. So therefore, if Satan can take dedicated people and give them a confusing message to who preach to people by adding works to it or by getting the power out of it, Satan has succeeded. There are three doctrinal positions that pertain to the presentation of the clear gospel message that is and will be adhered to by all teachers of Florida Bible College. Now there is a lot of other things, but these are the three main ones that I see at this point.
When you consider a Bible college for yourself, your son or your daughter, You should be aware of its positions on these three issues. I assure you that all of our teachers will be on the same page, and I believe they should be. Number one, the dangers of redefining repentance. Now this would not be bad if nobody was doing it, but they are. And the thing that hurts is that there’s a lot of people that I’ve gone to Bible College with that are fallen into a new definition of the word repent.
always thought that repent men change your mind to think differently to reconsider. And therefore, if you change your mind from being an unbeliever, you change your mind, you become a believer. And so you simply trusted Christ as your Savior because you realize you cannot save yourself, and we always kept it easy and simple. And most of the time, we never even used the word repent. We just used its meaning. And because you can read the whole gospel of John, which is God’s heaven track, and there is no mention of the word repent, but there is in there its meaning from being an unbeliever to being a believer.
And it says that Christ did all these miracles and these things are recorded so that we might know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and and by believing in his name, we could have the free gift of everlasting life. So the thing that he did was for this purpose so that we can know we have eternal life, to take somebody from being in a state of unbelief to believe. So it’s a very simple thing.
But look at this statement, we believe every man must repent to be saved. Bible even teaches that God hath commanded every man to repent. And I don’t believe that that just means to turn from your sin so that you can have a little extension of life so you can live a little bit longer. It’d be a total waste of time. We believe every man must repent to be saved. This simply means to change your mind about doing good works to save yourself and trust only and completely clearly in what Christ did on the cross for you.
A saved man and a lost man, May repent, change their mind about many things that may lead to a change of actions. There’s no problem with that. But when it comes to salvation, a change of mind should lead a man to trust in the Lord. And that’s all it does. So it’s a repent toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. You change your mind and hear what God has to say and trust Christ as your Savior. A saved man and a lost man can both change their mind about doing a bad deed or a good deed and do just the opposite.
No saved man turns from sin to be saved. But every believer is commanded to repent, change his mind and correct an ungodly life. If you are a child of God, you’re commanded by the Lord to walk with the Lord, to serve the Lord to yield your body, to be not conformed to this word, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So however you’re thinking, God wants to renew your mind, get you to change your mind. So you’ll think differently because that’s the only way to transform your life.
So there’s no problem with that. The next statement, there are those in the grace movement, which is the grace evangelical society that have adopted a new position concerning repentance that we believe is not biblical. And so I preached a sermon on repentance reapplied and I give the website where it can be found. I recommend that people that have additional questions about what I’ve said can go there and listen to the whole message. Number two, the dangers of Calvinism. Many people don’t see that it is that dangerous.
I believe it is dangerous. Because you see if I believed in Calvinism, I would not see the urgency of being a soul winner or presenting the gospel all the time. Because whatever will be will be, because I would believe in predestination. I would believe that God’s already chosen who’s going to save and you’re not going to change it. So he really doesn’t need me to do anything. So if I don’t witness and he’s already pretty determined then to be saved.
They’re going to be saved. So why should I jeopardize my life to reach somebody that God’s either not going to save them anyway, or He’s already determined He is going to save them. So what does it need me for? I don’t see any sense in playing that game. But see, I believe that all the world is guilty before God and that when Christ died, He died for every man and because he died for every man, he says that we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature because every man can be saved.
But there are people who do not believe that. So number two, the dangers of Calvinism. I believe it is a sin to teach that a man is so totally depraved that he does not have the ability to choose act or believe in what God says, because this is what a Calvinist do believe. And because he’s so totally depraved, he can’t even believe. So what God has to do is regenerate him, save him so that he can believe. So God has to save the man before he actually believes on the Lord.
And that’s how he gives him the faith to believe. So God has to save him first. And they believe that because the premise is all wrong, because man is so totally the prey that him believing would be a work. And he can’t do that. He can’t generate it up because he’s a dead man. And a dead man can’t do anything. So don’t expect the dead men to even believe. So God has to come down here and he pan-picks a few people out of all the rest of them and save them by his choice.
Isn’t that grace? If you’re not one of the chosen, you would have a problem. The other part of this problem is this. Because they believe God chose them, they believe they’re saved, they’re going to heaven when they die. But the proof that they’re going to heaven and that they are saved is why the majority always wanted to believe in lordship salvation because they have to have Christ as the Lord and the master of their life and there has to be this change in their life.
And they look at their life as the evidence that they’re really saved, that they’re really of the called ones, that they’re the ones that God has chosen. Their only problem is if they mess up real bad, that was a sign they weren’t really chosen. And so you could mess up on your last day on earth. And what that would prove is you never were really saved because if you were really saved. You wouldn’t mess up. So now they have to live their whole life believing that they’re one of the chosen.
And how can they prove they are one of the chosen? What would they use to prove they are of the chosen? Because they believe in Lordship Salvation, making Christ the Lord of the Master of their life. So therefore, they’re trusting in their works as the proof or the evidence that they’re really saved. But they can’t really know it until they die. And then they find out, oh, you weren’t really one of the chosen. Wouldn’t that be devastating? God has chosen before the foundations of the world to save everyone that believes.
saying that God has chosen everyone to believe and God causes them to believe and gives it irresistible grace where they can’t refuse it. So I want you to look there in the bold. For those who teach that God has chosen from the foundations of the world a select few to be saved predestinated to heaven while the majority of people remain lost, condemned to hell, without the possibility of ever being saved because they were not chosen, is to be in total denial of what God said and what Christ did.
Did God say that He so loved the world? And did Christ die for all the sins of the world? Now what they’re saying is that is not true, and they don’t see that as calling God a liar. is calling God a liar and I have no respect for anybody that does that. It’s not to be honored. I don’t care how much Greek and Hebrew they know. That doesn’t make them right. I believe the Bible teaches that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever, whosoever, that sure looks like an open invitation to me.
Whosoever, believe it in it. So it’s your choice to believe But whosoever it would believe would not perish means will not go to hell But have everlasting life would go to heaven when they died Look at the next paragraph The Lord has not authorized any man To alter his word that he commanded the entire world to hear To limit the payment that Christ made for sin to a select few Makes the claim that God did not so love the world or that Christ did not die for all men.
This is to teach heresy. What man has the gall to set himself up as the judge of the Word of God, saying God didn’t mean what he said. Because you can’t deny that is what he said, God does love the world and he did die for the sins of the world and whosoever can be saved. But that is to me, the erickency of their ego, to think that they are so much better than everybody else that God would save them.
Oh, I don’t know why he loved me more than everybody else, but I’m so thankful that he chose me. Piddle that junk. Next statement. To teach that God’s grace is so irresistible that the man whom God hath chosen to be saved is helpless to resist, is to also teach that no man can be saved whom God has not chosen. This damnable teaching in reality denies to every man the choice of heaven or hell by removing every man from the responsibility of his destination because he really doesn’t make a decision.
And what he does and doesn’t do does not affect eternity because God has already pre-determined before the foundation of the world who he’s going to save and who he’s not going to save and you have nothing to do with it. I call that heresy. That is heresy. Next statement, because of God’s great love for the whole world, he sent his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to pay in full all the sins of the world. This enables a righteous just and holy God, The power to forgive each and every one all their sins who simply believe he died for them.
You see God is a righteous God and sin has to be paid. Christ came and paid that sin so that God could forgive every man of all of his sins and give to him as a free gift ever lasting life. Ever lasting life? Is the result of accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. You can ask for the free gift of everlasting life to your blue in the face and it will not happen. You get that as a result of you dependent upon that payment that Jesus Christ made on the cross for your sins.
You don’t do that. You don’t have any foundation for your faith. What do you believe? How do you know? Christ came back from the dead. That is the living proof of payment. He is our receipt, paid in full. The scars in his hands and his feet coming back from the dead mean the check has cleared the bank. And we’re good to go. Look in the bowl down to the bottom of the page. What right does any man have because any person in this world who believed that God doesn’t love him?
Christ did not die for him, or he could not go to heaven even if he wanted to, because God did not choose him. Am I to believe that this man speaks for God? You can hear the rest of that message on the five dangers of Calvinism. When we have this statement here that God did not love him, Christ did not die for him, did you know a true Calvinist is not able to stand until the pulpit and tell everybody God loves all of you?
You can only see God loves those that He chose to save. God loves the elect. And by the way, Christ did not die for all of you. He only died for those He chose. Of course we don’t know who He chose. I like knowing that if I go to India or Mexico or Egypt, if I give the gospel, I expect people to trust Christ as their Savior. I don’t care who they are. I don’t care what they’ve done because grace has to be extended to everyone or it really wasn’t a truly compassion of God.
Why and how could God have compassion up on some and not on all? What would determine His grace not extending to every man, if it is grace. How can you choose some and not others? If it’s grace, it has to extend to all. If Christ died for anybody, He would have to die for everybody. Or His love has a spot on it. It’s not true divine love. love, he has to love all for it to be love. Down at the bottom of the page, can a man be forced by God to accept Christ as Savior against his will?
Call that grace. You know, here’s people that I decided to be an atheist and lo and behold, I was told I was one of the elect. Now I’ve got to go to heaven and I’m believing God. You say, well, listen, God will give them the desire and God will change them and all that there. There’s no chapter and verse for their theology. It’s not based on that. See I believe I can talk to an atheist and win them to Christ if I can get them to clear the gospel and understand it.
That doesn’t mean they will trust the Lord, but at least they’ll have a chance to understand and trust the Lord. Look at the next statement, can a man be forced to persevere in the faith to prove he is saved and call that living by grace? Is grace truly grace if it cannot be rejected? If God is not a respecter of persons, what did God use to determine his choice for salvation if Calvinism is true? Calvinism and grace are not compatible.
Turn your page over. three, the dangers of a cross lesson, gospel, you said, what’s that? Well, it’s where you gut the message. It’s not adding something to it, it’s taking everything of value out of it, leaving you only with the conclusion. If you trust Christ, you’ll have eternal life, but you don’t have to know who He is, and you don’t have to know what He did. So you You could say, you know, trust Dan Hall for eternal life. Now who would be so foolish?
He can’t give you eternal life. Well neither can just any Jesus give you eternal life. That’s why the Bible talks over and over again about who is Jesus. Except you believe that I am He. God in the flesh, the Son of God, to be the Christ, the anointed one, the suffering Savior, the one that dies. And as it says in the book of Peter that the prophets of old search what manner of time that the Holy Spirit which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
This Jesus that came came was this one and he was the sufferer for my sins and then he’s coming back to rule and reign. So that’s why John was written that you might believe that this Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing this, and that’s why he told Martha and Mary, he says, believe us now this, I am the resurrection and the life. See he has eternal life, he would die. He’d come back from the dead.
But just so that you know that I have the power to do what I’m talking about, Lazarus come forth. And I guess if he hadn’t called him by name, everybody in the whole cemetery would have got her. So look at this. There are many that are now accepting the new condensed version of the so-called gospel. It’s merely a one-liner. I believe Jesus for eternal life. Now, in the right context, that might not be that bad because I often, when I talk to a lost person, I will say something like, if you could know you could have eternal life, wouldn’t you like to know?
That’s not the gospel. That’s the bait. I might even quote to them the 1 John 5, 13. Did you know the Bible? You could know that you have eternal life. But that’s not the gospel, that’s the bait. Now I need to get them on the hook, pull them in so I can explain some things to them so that they will understand and trust Christ as their Savior. These things have already written you that believe in the name of the Son of God.
What do you believe about the Son of God? It is so important. And there’s people that want to strip it away. You know the thing that’s so important to understand is this. that think the way they do today, it’s nothing new. They thought that way years ago. When Dr. A. Ray Stanford started at the Florida Bible College, there were people that were often a lot of stuff, different names, fuzzy grace, spacey gracey. But what was given to us was the content of the gospel.
What makes this message so powerful is an understanding of who we are, what we’ve done, what God requires, how we’ve failed, and what Christ did for us to solve the problem. And those are found in the seven steps that we do when we give the wallet illustration every time. There is content there. There’s something that says to the lost man, I have sinned. I got a payment to think and therefore I need to be perfectly go to heaven but I can’t earn my way to heaven.
Five Christ died. Number six only believe. Number seven go to heaven. So we use those seven things to explain to a person and this is why I believe that the graduates that left Florida Bible College were some of the greatest soul winners in the world. could go anywhere. And it didn’t matter about all the other schools and colleges and universities, and all those people that got degrees and so forth after their name. And these were just young 22, 23, 24-year-old kids that came out of Fort Ababa College and they could go anywhere in America and start a Bible study in their backyard and get a few kids to come and win them to the Lord, to some more and one to the Lord.
And yet you could go to majority of churches and the preacher hasn’t got to clue how to give the gospel clearly. But those who came from Florida Bible College did. They did not have to take a back seat to anyone. So we had something and we were not ashamed of our ability to present the gospel. We were bold, confident, and we didn’t have to be afraid of anybody knowing how to do it better than what we could. It was not in a sense a proud and talented of ourselves.
We were just that sure that this was the truth and it worked. We were effective in thousands and thousands of people that trusted Christ of their Savior. Now should we give up the way that we used to do it that worked? For something that doesn’t work. When they say, just trust Jesus for eternal life. Show me five people that have been saved by that. That understood. Knew they were going to heaven and why they were going there. And that’s all they did.
They didn’t know anything else. Go to some foreign country and have a translator say those words to somebody else and see how many get saved because of that. It won’t work. Why? there. That’s not the good news. That’s the results of understanding the good news. The good news is, yes, we’re justified by faith, but without the death, birth, and resurrection of Christ, there is no hope. There is nothing to trust. There’s nothing to believe. What am I supposed to believe about Jesus?
just that he lived, that I’m going to cut it. So, look at the next statement. Believe Jesus for eternal life. So, what’s wrong with that? Those that follow this new gospel also teach that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not necessary for one to know, but they will always say, oh yes, that’s the basis, that’s the foundation. Well, it is. but the lost man needs to know that. See the more you explain the easier it is for people to trust the Lord.
When I understand I have led people to the Lord very simply like this. I was talking to somebody the other day and I said can I ask your question? He says sure I says you got about a minute, a minute and a half, two minutes. He says, sure, go ahead. I says, isn’t it true that you’ve heard almost all your life, that Jesus Christ died on the cross and paid for all the sins of the world? I said, yes, I am.
Now, think what I just said. Jesus Christ died on the cross, paid for all the sins of the world. Have you ever heard that? Yes, I am. I said, now, if he paid for all the sins of the world, mind yours and everybody’s. I said, why should we have to go to hell and pay for sin? So now, all the children, there’s a hell. He knows there’s a heaven. He knows there’s a hell.
And God says that if we would believe that what he did was for us, he would put that payment he made to our account. And I’m going to have him because Christ died for my sins. He died, paid for my sins. That means I don’t have to pay for my sins. You know, most preachers don’t want to tell people that you don’t have to pay for your sins. That’s what trusting Christ is your Savior means. I don’t have to die and pay for my sins.
Should I pay for my sins? Yeah. Am I guilty? Yes. He paid for mine. And when I really understand that, that is the greatest foundation for believing in eternal security. We at Bibleline would like to extend a free offer to those who support this ministry financially. This month we are sending a free copy of the book, The Gospel Driven Man, for a donation of any amount. It is a small way that we can show our appreciation for your support of this radio program.
Without your thoughtful gifts and prayers, we would not be able to remain on the air. The book explains the basic doctrines of the Bible and can help you to be more confident in leading people to Christ and for understanding the driving principles of the gospel itself. So during the following month, we would like to send to you a free copy of the Gospel-Driven Man by Dr. Ralph Yake Arnold for a donation of any amount to Bible on. Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634.
And don’t forget to include your mailing address. Thank you again for your continued support and prayers in helping us bring the clear gospel message to the world. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4011 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed. Cut up to meet the Lord in the air.
So live today and every day. Believe in that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.
