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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 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

One year, Hank Lestrom was always done and appreciated together. He was taking a couple classes, and I was taking a load. And he was going to have a meeting up in Belgrade, Florida, migrant camp. And he needed a few, you know, little coolies to go with him so that we could do all the work and carry things. So we went, and I volunteered to go. And it was right at the base of Lake El Kichobi. So we drove all the way up there, and we got there the afternoon, and there’s a little church out there and that’s where we’re supposed to go and get some people to come to church that night and Hank was going to talk to him.

So when we got there and everybody was doing different things and I was suppose a good on this road and somebody else would go down there and road and so on. So I started down this little dirt road. It was hot. Always it hot. It was hot and dry and I was so thirsty and here come two little girls walking down the road. And there’s walking up to I mean, they were just as happy as can be. I mean, they got close, so I thought, ah, two victims.

So I was gonna talk to those two little girls, but I wasn’t clear yet. So when they got close enough, I said, can I ask you a question? I said, are you going to heaven when you die? It says, I don’t know. The other one kind of giggled. I says, would you like to go to heaven when you die? I said, would you ask Jesus to come into your heart? Yeah, I said, go ahead. I didn’t know what to do with him.

I said, go ahead. I mean, that’s what I heard you’re supposed to do. Go ahead. I hadn’t had full courses of PE yet. So they bowed their head and they went, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, and then they got through, hey, man, how many? So if they know a little bit, they say, amen, that means you’re through. And I said, did you ask him? They said, huh? I gave you. I said, did he come in? And I went, oh, she said, huh?

I said, how do you know? I was curious. How do you know? She says, I feel it right here. And I thought, Yankee, you didn’t mess up somewhere. I never felt it right here. And she feels it right here. And I thought, this isn’t good. I said, you need to come to the meeting tonight. You need to come here Hank. So they came to here Hank that night and a whole bunch of people. And so there was a lot of people that came in and there was a few songs that they sung and Hank got up there and he gives the gospel like he always does.

After it was all over with, it was nighttime now. I mean, really dark. And so we started to go outside and when we went outside, there was this here, Black Boy. And he was standing there. And I was going out the door, but he was standing there and his name was Willie James. Billy James. His eyes were white and his teeth look like a row of corn, and he had a biggest smile on his face. And so, he walked out the door and I walked out with him and he just walked a little bit further and started talking to Billy James.

He said, well, what is your name? He says, Willie. He said, Willie what? Willie, Willie James. He said, Willie James, did you listen to what I said? Yes? He said, you have eternal life, I want them. So he opened up the Bible to John 647 and he read it. I said, very, very, I send you, he that believe it to me, hat everlasting life. He says, you believe that. He said, I believe that. He said, you believe that. He said, I believe that.

And he says, you have eternal life. I don’t know. And he says, if you believe it, you have it. See, if you believe it, and you trust Christ as your Savior, you believe it. If I, right there, if I willy James, if I willy James, believe on him. That means you’ll believe on Christ. Trust Christ as your Savior. Believe me, pay for your sins. And Hank, he explained to him, he says, hat everlasting life. He said, you believe that?

And he said, yes, I believe that. He said, you have eternal life? He said, I don’t know. So he went over it again and again. He couldn’t get Willie James to sit. But somebody else came up and wanted to talk to Hank and so Hank gave him his Bible. So here, well, hold my Bible. He said, now you look at that verse and say it out loud to yourself. So I’m standing there and I’m watching Willie James and the expert at work.

You know, that’s how we learn. We learn from watching somebody. And so he got the Bible and he says, if I, and he looked at me, he said, if I, me, willy James, I’m willy James. If I willy James, believe on Christ. If I believe that he died and paid for my sin, if I, me, willy James, if I believe that. He said, man, and he got Hank’s attention. Hank turned around and he says, you mean if I believe it, I have it?

He turned around smiling and he said, yes, willy James. That’s what I’m saying. If you believe it, you got it. He said, do you believe it? He said, I believe it. He said, do you got it? I said, I got it. He said, what do you got? He said, I got everlasting life. He said, now, will he, James? If you believe on Christ, he gives you everlasting life. If you died five years from now, where would you go? He said, I go to heaven.

Oh, he was proud. He got it. And he said, what if you died a hundred years from now? He says, I’d go to heaven. He said, what about a thousand years from now? I don’t think I lived that long. he would drill that one verse in the Willie James, he that believed it on me, hat everlasting life. One year we was at Tennessee Temple before I went to Florida Baba College. Dr. Lee Robertson, the president of that school. It was a big school.

It was a Highland Park Baptist Church, and he kind of reminded me of Moses over the flock of Israel. Now, I don’t know, but I I saw Charles from Heston one time like that. And anyway, I went up there and after the church service was over with, we got home. And when we got home, we walked in the house and Betty was just crying. She was boo-hooing. I said, honey, what’s wrong? And she says, I’m not sure I’m saved.

I said, what? And that bothered me because the man that led her to the Lord I had made a lawyer. The first didn’t take, made me mind it didn’t take. Now I was messed up. I said, what are you talking about? She says, because of what the preacher said tonight. I said, well, what did he say? I was there. I didn’t hear it. So you can see you can have two people sitting the same service and one person can hear something another person not hear it.

Y’all do that all the time, don’t you? So she came and she asked, well, what did He says, some people are going to miss heaven by nine inches. Okay, that’s getting pretty close. I don’t know if you get within nine inches of the place. Reach out your hand, grab ahold of the gate and pull yourself on the end. Not close. How close are you going to get? I said, what are you talking about? He says some people believe it in their head, but they don’t believe it in their heart.

And so some people are going to miss it by nine inches. And she just broke down and sobbed. And I didn’t know what no world to do. This is my wife. We come to go to Bible school. We’re going to go tell the world how to go to heaven. And here’s my wife and she’s not sure. And the guy that led her, Lord, led me to the Lord. It caused no small stir. And she cried. And I said, honey, if you weren’t sure then, she said, Janky, I believe it.

But I don’t know if my heart believes, because they said you’ve got to believe it in your heart. I don’t know what my heart believes or not. She said, I believe it. You see how damaging that can be to tell somebody? Well, you can’t just believe it in your head. You’ve got to believe it in your heart. A lot of you die. How do you separate the two? Either you believe or you don’t believe. I believe it. Yeah, but was that with your head or your heart?

I know it sounds good to say to a woman, I love you with all my heart. But what you mean is I love you with all my mind. But that doesn’t sound very romantic does it? I love you with all my mind, my toe, my ear, my nose. Sometimes we wonder how can we be so confusing, but we don’t even know it sometime. No more than I did that day with those two little girls on the road. What I said, I meant sincerely, but I was just so messed up, it’s not clear.

I wasn’t clear. Sincere, yes. Love the Lord, yes, I love the Lord. Want the little girls to go to heaven, yes. There’s a lot of preachers out there preaching every Sunday with that same intensity, same compassion, same love and concern, But they don’t even know they’re not making it clear. They don’t even aware. They don’t know there’s a better way to do something. And so I said, honey, I said, if you weren’t, let’s do it now. So we got on our knees and we prayed and she went through that so-called the center’s prayer.

You’ve heard of the center’s prayer? All you’re saying, Lord, I’m a center. Be merciful to me a sinner and save me for Jesus sake Believe it or not. That’s what I said the day that I trust the crisis might say didn’t anybody else in here ever do it that away? If they Not just one person over there Because see that’s what some people you know except that that’s what we did But we’re just as honest and sincere yet I’m gonna just trust Christ as my savior and that little prayer sometime.

It’s just kind of seals it in your mind that I’m just telling God, Lord, I believe that. When He says, believe it, when you pray, it’s just, you’re telling God, I believe it, Lord, I believe that. When we have prayer here, and say, with hedge-bound nice clothes and no one looking around, if you will trust Christ right now, it’s your Savior, would you let me know? Just say something simple like this, Lord, I’m a sinner. And I believe you died on that cross and paid for my sins and I’m going to trust you right now, it’s my Savior.

just something so simple. Can a person get saved just by talking to God and saying, Lord, I believe that, I believe you did that for me. It was he often saying, it’s not the prayer that saves you, but it is telling God, I believe it. Because when you say, I believe that, well, who are you saying it to? Somebody needs to know that. It’s God that knows when you believe and you don’t believe in God, it says, I know them that believe on me and trust me and they have eternal life.

So yes, I had a wonderful time explaining some of that to my kids later on and training trust the Lord and David and Eddie and a whole bunch of relatives. But I went to Bible school and it helped me to clear up my message. That’s why I guess I am so thankful for the ministry of Florida Bible College and for a man, Ray Stanford. He might not have been the greatest guy in the world, but He helped me to understand the greatest truth in the world.

Something that was, you know, it’s life-changing because it’s destiny-changing. When people can really understand and be able to explain to somebody, I know I’m going to heaven, and here’s how I know. Here’s why, and to be able to explain that. Take your Bible and turn real quick to the book of Jonah, the book of Jonah. Oh, they’re in the book of Jonah. In Jonah chapter three, Jonah chapter three, a lot of times you’ll hear preachers make this statement, but sometimes they, not aware of what they’re saying, and then there are some that do.

You see, when they use the word repent, a lot of times in their mind, the word repent means to turn from your sins. If a man’s a drunkard, you gotta stop drinking. If you’re on drugs, you gotta stop drugs. Run around with the women, you gotta stop that. Smoking, you gotta stop smoking. Cusson, you gotta stop cussing. Going to movies, you gotta stop going to movies. Playing cards, you gotta stop that. Playing a ball on Sunday, you gotta stop.

You’d be surprised, I mean, there used to be all kinds of stuff. Chris, you just don’t do that. You’re there, you’re gonna go to hell. So you have to be willing to quit all of your sins. But it’s not just a matter of what you quit, it’s also what you gotta start doing. Now you gotta start going to church and you gotta start reading the Bible, gotta start. So you gotta get a person. You want to go to heaven?

But you have to be willing to give up this, and willing to do this. And if you’re not willing to do those things, well then you’re not ready to be saved. That’s not true. That’s not the gospel. But it confuses a lot of people. Because when you tell a man you have to turn from your sins. Think for a moment. If you were the lost man, even as a Christian, if you’re a lost man in the preacher told you had to turn from your sins to be saved.

What do you think that means? How does it resonate in your mind? What is he telling you that you have to do? You have to repent. Turn from your sins in order to be saved. What do you think it means? And if you think it means I have to stop being bad. Because isn’t that what it would mean? I got to stop. So when would God save you? When you decided to turn or would it be after you turned or in the midst of the turn?

Do you turn all of a sudden or is it progressive or when do you really get saved then? When you decided to really mean business or when you actually did mean business and you quit them? God save you here or here or here. Or you have to wait till you die to find out if you really turn from all of your sins. So that’s why some people say, well, you have to wait till you die to find out if you’re gonna make it.

So most people are asking, where are you going to die? Well, I’m, I hope I’m going to heaven. Or as somebody told me, I’m going to hell if I don’t change. And they don’t really know for sure. How many of you in here know positively that if you died today, you would go to heaven. Let me see. All right. Put your hand down. Most people, if you go to a church that teaches salvation totally, truly by grace, can know they’re going to heaven.

But if you teach that you have to turn from your sin to be saved, they will make Christ to learn the Master. You can’t really be sure you’ve done it or will do it, will perform. So you have reason to question your salvation because your salvation depends upon you and not the Lord. And this is why it is so important. Look here in Jonah in chapter 3 and notice what he says here in verse 9, who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not.

And God saw there and you ought to underline this one word. Saw their works. God saw their works. Now God was going to destroy Nineveh because they were wicked. Jonah didn’t want to go to him because he was Jewish, and these were Gentiles. And you know a good Jew doesn’t want a Gentile to go to heaven or to be saved, he don’t mind if they get destroyed. But God has compassion. And Jonah didn’t want to go, but he went anyway and he preached what God told him to.

And he says in verse 10, And in God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. And God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them. So when it says here in this verse, God saw their works. Remember, repentance is works when it tells you to turn from sin. So turning from sin is works for salvation. True? So if you’re gonna have to turn from your sins, this is what they did and it’s works.

It’s not grace. So whenever you are saved, God wants us to in a sense, not do the same that we were doing before and trusting in our dead works. One of the verses I want to show you. Look there in the book of Hebrews and chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 6. And notice what it says here, in verse 1. Verse 1, this is on page 12.95 in us, church Bible. And verse one says, therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.

That means maturity. Get this not laying again the foundation of repentance from what? Dead works. We are supposed to repent. Change our mind. Our dead works cannot save us. So we forsake works for salvation and trust in Christ. So repent is a change of mind. It means you change your mind. You can’t save yourself. So whether they were the publicans or the Pharisees, it didn’t matter who you are and how you’ve lived, good or bad, everybody has to repent.

Now you can repent from doing something good and you can repent from doing something bad. You can change your mind about things. But when he’s talking about salvation, he’s talking about change your mind. Your dead works. Remember the Bible says you are separated from God. You are dead in your sin. So our works are dead works, work that cannot give life. Your way of life, your trusting in your worst cannot produce eternal life. Life must come from life and exist on previous life.

So when you trust Christ as your Savior, you’re trusting somebody who has eternal life. Christ is God. Christ is eternal life. So your life came from life. Life must come from life and exist on previous life. So for us to have eternal life, we have to get eternal life from somebody who has eternal life. And dead works cannot produce life. So no man can get eternal life by trusting in his worth. And so repent means to change your mind and realize you cannot save yourself by your works.

Ain’t that clear? I mean, can you understand what I’m saying? So once you trust Christ’s Savior, He gives you as a free gift ever lasting life. And so yes, I believe in eternal security. I believe that what Christ said, He that believeth on me hath, present tense right now, hath everlasting life, then it has to be eternally secure. How long do I have this eternal life? Well forever. And if He paid for all of my sins, how can I go to hell?

I don’t have any payment for sin to make. He paid for my sins. All of them. And there is not going to be any more payments made down the road on my sins. God does not give me eternal life with a little booklet says, make these payments every month. You have to buy a card and you got payments to make every month. So that card really don’t belong to you yet does it? The bank says it’s all yours, but if you don’t make those payments, what do they do?

They can take that car back. God did not give us eternal life with some installment payments to make. Well, you got it, but if you don’t make these payments, you go to hell. He going to take it back. You can’t find that in the Bible. Why? Because it’s not in there. When Christ gives you this eternal life, it’s because the payment for your sins was paid in full. Remember Jesus says it is finished. I wonder if you meant that.

He meant it. It’s paid in full. All of your sins have been paid. We go to heaven on what Jesus Christ did on the cross for us. This is the only portion of what I wanted to say, but it’ll take another hour and a half. So we know every service is just a continuation. You know that You figured that out by now? Look up here. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents sin. We all have sin on us.

We’ve all done things wrong. So we are all sinners and we’re condemned to an eternity in hell. But God so loved the world. And He wants us to be with Him in heaven, but we have to be perfect in heaven because God is perfect and so is heaven. There’s no good heaven, so we can’t say, well, you can go to a good heaven if you do good deeds. No, there is no good heaven. There’s only a perfect heaven. And you have to be perfect and because of sin we can’t get in.

So God says, you cannot save yourself. By your works, this is your works. This is your work. All of our works are as what? So this is all of our works. We’ve never done anything good enough for God to save us. And not one good deed have we ever done that pays for all of these bad ones. So you need to realize what Christ did. Now this hand represents Jesus Christ, He’s the Lord God in the flesh. Came into the world because He loves us.

He hates our sin because our sin separates us from Him. So Jesus Christ who had no sin didn’t have to die, so He took all the sin of all the world and paid put on the cross and came back from the dead. And said that if we would believe He did it for us, He would put this payment to our account and we get to go to heaven on what Christ did. See we’re supposed to repent, change our mind.

We were unbelievers. So what should an unbeliever do when he hears this message? Believe. When you believe it, this payment is put to your account and and you get to go to heaven. So God says you don’t lay another foundation of turning from your bad works and trusting your works to get you to heaven because once you trust them, you have eternal life forever. That’s why you can never lose your salvation because you don’t have it. He has it.

I trusted him. And as Paul says, I am not ashamed. I’m not ashamed. of the gospel of Christ. And he says also that I know whom I have believed. I put my trust in him. And I know that he is able to keep that which I have committed under him. He is going to take me to heaven. I have trusted him and my going to heaven depends upon him keeping his word and he said he’ll never cast me out and never lose me.

So do I believe in eternal security? Yes. other salvation. If you’re not eternally secure, you’re not secure. There is not a salvation. B, there’s only a salvation. A, this is the only one there is. There’s no other option except to be eternally lost. No man, and he says, whether an angel from heaven, they even preach unto you any other gospel than that which I preach and you let him be a curse. It’s an accursed message. Any message outside of grace is a curse.

It didn’t come from God. It came from the devil. His gospel is that God will save you by grace and grace alone. You add one word to that, then you have put a little arsenic in the message that destroys the message because then if a person believes and swallows that one little piece of garbage, then it’s not going to be salvation by grace. It changes it totally. And it says, little 11, 11th, oh, lump, let’s pray, shall we? With every head bow and every eye closed and no one looking around.

If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, why not right now in the quietness of this moment say, Lord, I know I’m a sinner, I believe you died on that cross, pay for my sin. And I’m going to trust you and you alone is my only hope of going to heaven. For you can know a lot of Bible, you can quote scripture, you can be good and sincere and all that. That doesn’t mean you’re going to heaven. You’re only going to go to heaven if you have trusted Him and Him alone.

Have you done that? Be sure. And once you trust Him, He gives you eternal life and will never cash you out and never lose you. And if you’re watching by internet, right there on the screen, says, yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior. If you will trust Christ right now as your Savior, would you let us know? Just click it and just let us know that somebody out there was listening tonight and trusting Christ of their Savior and we’d like to know.

Does it tell us who you are? Just let us know that somebody trusted the Lord. I pray that you will. Before we close anyone in here tonight, so yes, that made sense to me and I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. Would you just slip in it very quickly and put a right down zero in the law? I follow we thank you again for your blessings. Thank you for those individuals who have crossed our paths and have helped us to understand.

And Lord, there’s a lot of people out there. We may not reach them with the gospel as far as getting them to trust you, save you, but Lord, they might need a little clearing up. Some help, some compassion along the way, let them see that, you know, I could present this a little better, a little clearer because they may know you and love you, but they just don’t know there’s a better way on how to present the gospel and help us Father, not just to condemn those that don’t do it right, but help us to help them.

In Christ’s name we pray. You’ve been listening to another great lesson from Pastor Arnold, and we hope that you’re growing in the knowledge of the Lord through this ministry. To help you continue your growth and maturing, we are going to give those who make a financial donation in any amount the DVD teaching series, How to Witness to a Jewish Person. You know, most Christians think Jews really know the Old Testament, but in reality, most know very little. Though most are familiar with some terms of the Bible, very few know any details about how Abraham, their patriarch, was saved.

Most have never read Isaiah 53 and have no idea it’s all about Jesus. So for this month only, for a donation in any amount, we’ll send you this DVD teaching series on how to witness to the Jew. Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. God bless you and thank you again for supporting Bibleline. 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 4811 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. 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.