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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 you to take your Bible and turn to 1 Corinthians 9, 1 Corinthians 9, Corinthians and chapter 9. I’ve read this verse many, many times. It’s a very convicting verse. It really is. Because it makes the statement in verse 16 and 17 there that’s really powerful. If the Apostle Paul was just a just a man like you and I, God just saved him like he does us. So what made the difference in Paul’s life? I guess we could say he did get a glimpse of heaven, but he was already busy serving the Lord and got stoned outside the city of Lister before he got that little glimpse up there of heaven.

And I do believe he went. And he said, the old man in Christ about 14 years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, he said they couldn’t tell. He said, He said, but such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And he says he saw things that was unlawful for men to talk about. And he says he got had to put a thorn in his flesh to humble him, cause him suffering all the rest of his life, lest he would be exalted because of the visions and revelations that God had given to him.

But whatever it was, it must be something because nothing could hold him back. What a man. Paul gave everything he had. He says, from me to live is Christ in the dies game. He says, and if I do this thing, if I do it willingly, he says, I have a reward. But if against my will, he says, I’m still responsible. A dispensation of the gospel still committed to me. And in this dispensation, this is our responsibility, and we know what it is because of what Paul did.

He went everywhere preaching the gospel. So that’s why we want to have a Bible college so that we can teach kids to fulfill the will of God. We don’t do it. Trust somebody else to do it. I believe every church ought to have it its goal sending forth missionaries From among them raising them up. We ought to win people to Lord challenge people to serve the Lord and send people out So we got to be able to teach and train them the thing about sending them somewhere else is you don’t know what they’re gonna get they stay here we know what they’ll get and I actually believe that that with Dr.

Hank Lindstrom and his knowledge of the Bible. And I have so many zeal, a little bit too. I think between the both of us, we were pretty close together on wanting to get people to serve the Lord and to witness. And he’s not here and I don’t know how long I’ve got. So we ought to do what we can while we can, and not slowing down. And I guess I’d be on a, I didn’t come here to retire. But redread, I guess you could say.

But anyway, if you look there at your notes, I want you to see this. A decision for every Christian to make. Every life has a purpose and the purpose of every man is defined it. A man may live for money, power, fame, but whatever he lives for constitutes his purpose for life. The question to ask is, what does God say should be my purpose for living? Why should I be a soul winner? Because of the need of the lost.

If they are lost and they need to be saved, that makes me very important. That means God needs me and God needs you. I know it’s some… Something we say, well, you know, God is God and he doesn’t need me and he doesn’t need you. Well, the Bible says differently. I would like to think that, you know, if I don’t do it, God will get somebody else, but I’ve watched long enough to know that if I don’t do a certain job, it don’t get done.

I don’t do it, it don’t get done. There’s things that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. People say, well, if you don’t do it, somebody else will. No, they don’t. God even said he looked for a man and he found nobody. He said I found none. Nobody did it. He was looking for somebody to stand in the gap. He says I found none. He said what somebody else would do it. I Don’t believe that Otherwise I’d quit because he don’t really need me.

I Believe that he does He says who shall go for me Isaiah said here my Lord send me Often wonder about that verse that was Isaiah saying, Lord, hear my sin, may you hear my Lord send me. But anyway, here at number two, he says, for though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me. Yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. Now, I don’t know what all would happen if we don’t do it, and I don’t know what all will happen if we do.

I only know that God says it’s necessary. We should. Whoa, unto me, if I don’t do it. I know that, and I mentioned that this morning, the purpose of my life is these statements that I’m making that drive, motivate me to commit my life to doing what I believe God wants me to do. I don’t need to go to a high school. Why drive all the way down to Miami and speaking to school? Because it was an opening. It’s an opportunity.

Why in another couple of weeks I’m going to be up in Alabama. And the preacher up there says that I could speak on a Saturday night to all these Baptist preachers that are coming in for a thing. And I didn’t know that he was the moderator. He said, if you come here, would you mind speaking? I said, no, I don’t think I’d mind. So I get a chance to teach some preachers, and then they want me to teach soul went into the church.

They’ve been listening some of my stuff on YouTube. And I’ve never met the preacher. But it’s it been nice letter and invited me to come. He knows a guy named Ted Horton that’s in their ministry. And he evidently knew Hank and knew some people from this ministry. Does anybody here know Ted Horton? You do. Yes, that’s what he does. He’s doing the Reformers Unanimous up there in Alabama. So we get a chance to influence a few people here. And we don’t know how many people watch the internet and how much is accomplished.

I just know every once in a while we get some good news. And sometimes we get something from the radio. Peter spoke and somebody called in and really appreciated what Peter had to say. So we’re always striving to help somebody. But he says preaching the gospel is a necessity. And why? There is no other way for the lost to hear. How shall they hear without a preacher? That’s a good question. How do they hear without a preacher? Take the way the preacher, and there’s no one to proclaim, Well, I guess they didn’t know about internet.

They didn’t know about cell phones. And maybe they’d call it and go around with heaven tracks. I don’t know. But whether you preach with a track or you preach by phone or you preach by the internet or the radio or the television, you’ve got to have a voice. You’ve got to have somebody explaining it. And believe it or not, if I present the gospel, and people trust the Lord, did you know if you present the gospel, People can trust the Lord.

It’s not because I’ve got some magical powers. I’m just delivering a message. And if you deliver that message, you can have people trust Christ as Savior, just like I do, just like Hank did. Peter does it, James does it. You don’t have to have Reverend in front of your name and you don’t have to preach from a pulpit. God wants all of His children to have the boldness, That boldness comes from confidence. Confidence comes because of your knowledge of what to do to preach the gospel.

So he says here… It is necessary to preach the gospel. Necessity is laid upon me. In other words, evidently God needed Paul. He laid it upon Paul and needed him to do this job. If everybody said God can get somebody else, then who would God use? If not me, if not you, who? If not now, when? So there is the need. Look at the next paragraph. The lost people in this world need Christians to shine the light and reveal the way to heaven.

That light is the gospel. And so you need to understand it. That’s why we know that if we make the gospel clear, it shines brighter and shines further. And anytime you put some wax film over the lens, it’s not going to shine too good. Or if you had a kerosene lantern and you turn up the wick on it, then, well, you know, if it gets too much smoke on the inside of it, we call it SUT. And it would get inside the chimney.

Sometimes you have to sweep it out. But it would get on the inside of that little globe that you put on the thing, you know, and it would just get all and you couldn’t see clearly. I remember my mama taking that thing off, she cleaned it off, put on there, man, it was bright. See that light on the inside was always that bright. It’s just that it was trying to shine through something that wasn’t clean. And that represents our lives.

We have to keep a clean life because it’s so very important. And he says here, in whom the God of this world had blinded the minds of them, which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine to them. So Satan wants to keep the gospel from getting to the lost. That’s just simply put. Well who has the gospel that you would mean? So then who is he trying to stop us? That’s why the Bible tells us that we sometimes get so entangled with the affairs of this life that we cannot please him who have called us to be a soldier.

You can’t please the Lord means you can’t do what he wants you to do because, because, because, because Satan eats up all of our time and just ruins our life. We’re so busy we don’t have time. Don’t have time to study. Don’t have time to come to church. Don’t have time to pray. Don’t have time to fellowship. But it seems like they got time to do everything else under the sun and they have trouble putting their priorities right. Look at the next statement.

Satan, the God of this world, seeks to hinder the shining of the light of the gospel. Thus He will seek to hinder those who are supposed to shine with the light. That’s the Christian. So if you understand what God wants done, understand what message God’s given to us, and understand what Satan’s goal is, then you may understand why so many things happen in your life. He’s trying to stop you, trying to discourage you, trying to weaken delude your life.

Fill it with so many things and worries and everything else so that you can’t do what God called you to do. And that’s why the apostle Paul says none of these things I move me. Neither count I my life dear unto myself that I may please him who have called me. They gave me this ministry so nobody can make a a person serve the Lord. But the scripture reference here that I wrote down in Matthew 5 in verse 16, because it’s every Christian’s responsibility.

I want you to look at that verse because we often see it, but maybe not think of it in the terms of the gospel itself and what our responsibilities are. So Matthew chapter 5, I want you to look at this verse. The Bible has said that we are the salt of the earth and we’re the light of the world. So in verse 16 he says, Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Let your light so shine. So you have a light evidently. A light is something that helps people to see. If you just try to live a pretty life, then fine. You can just live a nice pretty life. And you’ll get all the credit and people bragging about how wonderful you are, what a wonderful individual you are. But if they don’t know you do it for the Lord, because you never give God the credit. And you don’t tell people why you did it, then you reap all the credit and all the glory.

Now, if that’s what you’re after, God says you have received your reward. You won’t get one later, because you didn’t do it for Him, you did it for yourself. You didn’t witness because you’re afraid. You live the nice clean life so nobody could say anything about you. Well that’s fine. But why did you do it? Did you tell him? So you got to have a light, a message to give. And so he says, let your light so shine that they may glorify God.

So there has to be something in this light that they see and glorify God because of it. I would say it this way. The man who led me to Christ, Mr. Raymond Jackson, he led his little light shine. And I have been glorifying the Lord. ever since, because I’m so thankful for the guy who led his light shine, who gave me the gospel. I didn’t hear it in a church. I heard it in a home, a little living room, sitting there with my father, along a couch at night.

We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have hardly anything at all. We were so poor, we couldn’t even pay attention. I mean, we were broke than the 10 commandments. But God is good. It kind of made me stop and have to listen. I don’t know if I’d ever listened to that man if he hadn’t been for that. God had pulled the rug after him under me and I didn’t have a thing. It was a very humbly experience. And yet that was the greatest hour of my life.

I’m thankful to the Lord. I really am. So anyway, look there your notes. I have in Luke chapter 16, you read it many times, talking about the rich man in Lazarus, speaks of Christ, speaks of these two men, and that they both died. What happened to the rich man? And in hell, he lifted up his eyes, been in torment. He was in conscious torment. He wasn’t swooning, like they try to say about Christ on the cryo, he was just in a swoon.

He didn’t really die. He did. He was in conscious torment because he says he lifted up his eye, being in torment. The place mentioned in Luke 16 is Shiel or Hades, the place of the departed dead. It was for both believers and non-believers. Two compartments, goth between. One call paradise and one called place of torment. And these two individuals, Abraham and the rich man, had a conversation going on. So he says, Father, Abraham, have mercy on me. Well, Abraham couldn’t have mercy on him.

It wasn’t Abraham’s responsibility. He didn’t have the opportunity. He couldn’t do it. He could do nothing. He said, I can’t come to you. You can’t come here. Those two places are separated. mercies with me, and sin Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” Now understand, I wrote these two things down here, these two requests. He says, his first request was for Lazarus to be sent to him.

That request was denied. Sin Lazarus denied. Second request was send Lazarus to his brothers. That request was also denied. You have to admit that the rich man was learning how to pray, but a little too late. He said, I pray thee therefore, Father, that thou would have send him. Those two words send him. Even the person in hell wants there to be missionaries. They want missionaries. They have a greater concern for the people that have not yet died than the people that are going to heaven.

Of all the things that he could have asked for, for himself just the touch of water on his tongue, but his greater concern was for his five brothers. He didn’t want them to come to that place. send Lazarus, send Lazarus, that he may, and the next word is testify. So there must be something that Lazarus knew, that if he told them they would hear something and not come there. And that is the truth. Abraham says he has Moses and the prophets.

Let him hear of them. Look at the last part of this. People in hell are more concerned about the salvation of their relatives than our most Christians. We are sent by Christ into the world for the same purpose the Father sent Christ into the world. As thou have sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. Christ was sent to seek and to say that which was lost and so are we. So that’s why we want to try to support missionaries that are on the field and that are so winners.

You don’t just support anybody. On the back page, the most important thing revealed at the judgment seat of Christ is did we or did we not persuade men? Did we or did we not? I don’t think God’s gonna ask you what size home you lived in or what kind of a car you drove Those aren’t important things It’s not gonna matter where you ate you didn’t eat. I mean vacations you have did none of that matters Did you sow the seed?

Did you sow seed? Did you help sow the seed? What did you do for me? There’s a song that we used to sing He gave his life for me. What hasst thou done for me? What hasst thou done for me? It’s a good song. But look at the thing. The fear of the Lord should motivate us to live for Him. The terror of the Lord. Now I have to be honest, I’ve not quite figured that out yet. I don’t know if it’s the terror of the Lord of God’s anger at God’s people when we get there or because of the tear of the Lord that we know what’s going to happen to the lost and we did nothing about it.

I’ll have to be honest sometimes I get so tired and weary. Now I get weary in the work but I have never gotten weary of the work. I get tired and weary and I sometimes don’t feel like I can keep going but you just keep on to go in one day at a time, just one day at a time. And yeah, you get weary, but don’t get weary of the work, even though you may get weary in the work.

It’s so important. The first moment in heaven will reveal to us what loss will miss by not being in hell. Thank for a moment, not only what the lost man has to suffer in hell, which will be bad. But I think about what he’s He’s going to miss in heaven. I thought about, I know I’m going to heaven when I die, but I thought about my mom. I didn’t want my mother to miss out on heaven. I didn’t want my brother to miss out on heaven.

I didn’t want my sisters to miss out on what’s going to be there. I don’t know what I was going to be there, but I don’t want to be there without them. I want them to be there. I want them to see and understand and enjoy it. I don’t want them to be in hell, even though it’s a place of suffering, because after a while, God says that He will wipe away all tears and will remember the former things no more.

I’m not sure I understand all of that. I’d like to say that it means this and this and this and this and this and I could guess. I just don’t want them to miss out on where we’re going. went to the schools the other day and when I see those kids sitting on the stand, you know, I’m interested in trying to get kids to go to camp. No, I sure am. And I’m, I’m, I’m sold and trying to get kids to go to college.

But right now I’m looking at them thinking, I don’t want them to miss out on heaven. I want them to miss out on hell, but I don’t want them to miss out on heaven. What do they need most? If they never go to camp, if they never go college, I don’t want them to go to hell. I want them to go to heaven more than camp and more than college. I want them to go to heaven. See, when it’s in the back of your mind and you’re focused upon this, it keeps you thinking straight because the moment is gone, that opportunity of those four school so far, it’s gone.

But at least some kids have heard the gospel. You sow it some seeds. But I think about how many Christian schools are there? How many opportunities are out there? How many nursing homes are out there with nobody to come and share the gospel with these people who said nursing homes, you know, week after week and year after year, nobody ever comes to see them. A lot of times kids have put their parents away and maybe they can’t get to them, but they get lonely.

They get lonely. And when I would travel around, I would get a chance to somebody. I said, I got to go to a nursing home this afternoon. Would you like to go with me? Sure. And so I would play my harmonica. They like that. Sing a song on a guitar. You know, the only reason I ever learned how to do the guitar is for that. I just wanted to have an opportunity to teach teenagers, you know, in the youth meeting.

So I know I had to figure it out. So, but I see, but that’s what drove that. And whenever I wanted to learn how to play the piano a little bit, I had to have something drives you. You got to have a motive, something to get going. You’d be surprised what you can do if you start moving in the right direction. You see, sometimes I wonder, wouldn’t it be neat if we had the church full on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights?

Wouldn’t it be great? But maybe I’ve got exactly what I need for training those who are going to shake the world. Those are going to do something. You say, well, we’re a bunch of You have old folks in here. Are you trying to tell me that God can’t use older folks? If he can’t, what am I doing here? What’s Al Marshall doing here? He’s in his hundreds or 90 or something, huh? He’s in his 80s. I shouldn’t say this, but the little lady this morning, she was 85 years old.

And we got somebody else, maybe 75, 76, 77, something like that over here on this side of the room somewhere. And then you got Dr. Polson back there. He’s a couple years older than I am. But that doesn’t mean we gotta hang up our shoes. We’re done. No, we’re not done. We are finally at the place where we can do something. Look how much did God has taught for us and done for us. No, we’ve only begun to fight.

We decided to be a prisoner of love. Servalor because we love Him. See there at number three, because of the love of Christ. The love of Christ, for the love of Christ constraineth us, to move us, to motivate us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then all were dead. And that they which live should not hence forth living to themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again. So we have a reason for doing it because God loves them and we love Him.

And I believe it’s the most important thing. Look at this statement. Because I believe it’s such an important statement. His love for the Lord made Paul a prisoner to the desires of the Lord. After Christ’s resurrection, the disciples had become disheartened. So they went fishing. John 21 tells them how Christ appeared to them again. He asked this question of Peter. Love a stommee more than these. Do you love the Lord more than the things of the world? Christ announced Peter, love has stopped me.

Peter says, yeah, I love you. He said, feed my sheep. You see, keep asking the question, do you love me? He didn’t ask him, do you love the sheep? He said, do you love me? So I don’t love those people. Don’t worry about it. Do you love him? Let his love motivate you to reach people. And why do you do it? Because he loves him and he loves me. And I’m gonna let his love motivate me to show them his love.

So then you treat people and you wanna reach people because God so loved the world. And God is simply using you. You’ve been listening to another great message from Pastor Arnold and we at Bibleline thank you for tuning in. In appreciation to those who support this ministry financially, we would like to send to you the Dora Lake story. It is a true story about the splitting of a church in Minnesota after a young preacher taught a gospel message that contradicted the theology of Calvinism.

And can you guess who that young preacher was? Yes, it was Pastor Arnold. In this book, Pastor Arnold thoroughly discusses the dangers of the five points of Calvinism. And this book is offered to you as a free gift for your donation in any amount. Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. We are pleased to be able to give a little something back to you for your financial support.

So for this month, receive the Door Lakes story with your financial contribution of any amount and thank you for helping us reach the world with the Clear Gospel. 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 4 D-811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. 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, just keep looking up.