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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.

A letter that I received, I want to read to you that letter. He uses those words in his letter, paralyzed with fear. This is what he says, and this was just this week. My name is, and I have been watching your YouTube videos for several months now. I have found them extremely helpful. I thought it would be best to email you directly for some help on the spiritual roller coaster I have been on. In many of your videos you have shared the simple truth of how a person is saved, and while I find it so refreshing and helpful, I have struggled with several things surrounding it.

With the simplicity surrounding how salvation really works, I mentally struggle with the knowledge that the Bible shares on the multitude of people, including Christians who will find themselves in hell. I just feel mentally paralyzed with fear. At times because of my deep infusion at the way many Christians who will end up in hell despite the simple way you describe salvation as being possible. I fear for my friends and family along with myself at the possibility that we will one day be some of those Christians who end up in eternal torment.

I also have frequent doubts about my own trust in Jesus. Well, I have been a Bible-believing person my entire life. I have only truly started to dedicate more to my faith in recent months, and I often don’t know whether I truly trust in Jesus or how I would even be able to know. Well, I believe in what he did for me. I am just not entirely sure that I have put my complete trust in him. I often feel guilty for my past sins and feel anguish whenever I see my parents and their old age because of the uncertainty I have that we will be amongst the few who walk the narrow road that leads to heaven.

Thank you for all you have done and continue to do. I know you’re a busy man, and I would be overjoyed if you would email me by regarding some of these things, God bless. Now, isn’t that a sorrowful type letter to receive? Someone is so confused, And yet, believing that Christians who will find themselves in hell. Well, I don’t believe any Christian will ever go to hell. But I have been on the phone a number of times talking to people who say they’ve trusted Christ with their Savior and are still in fear.

That they did not trust enough or really understand it or they’re just not sure. and so many questions and doubts because they hear so many things. Paralyzed with fear. Anyway, I want you to take your Bible and look at a few scriptures with me. The word terror is used in the Bible and been with fear and been afraid and not long ago I spoke on this. But in the book of Job I want you turned there with me. Job chapter 3, and Job was in a, well, a sorry situation.

He could not understand why a good loving God who is so just and righteous could be doing him the way that he’s doing. But he knew he hadn’t done anything worthy of what he was going through. It was hard for him to accept. He didn’t curse God, but he did curse the day he was born. And he says, why in the world and my mother just shut up the womb so I couldn’t get out. I’d rather been dead. Says that there in chapter three.

See there in verse 10, because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from my eyes. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? Or why the breast that I should suck? In the words, he was kind of down in the dumps. Things weren’t going right. He didn’t lost so much. He didn’t lost 10 children.

He lost his wealth, cattle, servants. His wife, once she gave him a good word of encouragement, She says, why don’t you just go ahead curse God and die? He says, no one was going to tell the guy to do that. Well, you see there in chapter 2, look at verse 9, then said his wife unto him, does thou still retain dying integrity? You’re good, good, he twoshes, you holier than thou? Why don’t you just curse God and die? And that was exactly the encouragement that Job needed at this time.

He just needed a good word of encouragement. But he says in verse 10, he said unto her, Thou speaketh as one of the foolish women’s speakers. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God? Shall we not receive evil? And all this did not Job’s sin with his lips. But now what he did in his heart was something else. he had a lot of questions and a lot of doubts about a lot of things. And I want you to look there in chapter 3 and look in verse 25.

If you don’t have verse 25 underline, it would be a good verse to underline because we don’t know for sure. But there’s a could be a possibility that the areas of your life that you do not trust God in, God can cause what you worry about, fret about to come to pass. So he says in verse 25, for the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me. That means while he was doing everything right, he also had a fear of losing his kids.

He was sacrificing for his kids in case they weren’t doing right. He may even have a word about what am I going to do if I lose all this wealth? What am I going to do if I lose all my servants? Because you see the things of the world are hard hard to get hard to keep them. Great sorrow when you lose them. He could have thought about, you know, what if I lose everything I have? What if God was taking my kids one day?

And you could always live under that fear of, you know, everything could go wrong. Yes, but you know, some things could go right. Try to think more positive than you think negative. So he made this statement, for the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in safety. Neither had I rest. Neither was I quite yet. Trouble came. In other words, I was busy. I was doing the right thing and all these things that I was doing and trouble still came.

I was told you don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. And some people are trouble makers. They just look for trouble. I got a letter also this afternoon and somebody compared me to Hank Lindstrom and they, they emailed me a letter after this morning’s sermon. Can I share it with you? Because he also talks about this fear. Well, this is what he wrote. I won’t tell you who it is. Hello Yankee. He’s writing to me, Hank and I were very close, very close.

I considered him as one of the very few I would trust with my life. And maybe he felt the same way. His death was awful for me. I was one of the last to see him alive before his surgery. I loved him dearly. I just finished watching your sermon this morning and was just blown away by its truth and power. It is much more than refreshing to hear a preacher speak to power and address today’s condition in our March to catastrophic waters uncharted.

I felt that replacement Hank was going to be pretty much a lost endeavor. I figured a man like Hank well was a wonderful anomaly and we had the best. I like to tell you that my fears were for not. And I am so pleased and thankful that you’re at Calvary Community. If I use my imagination a little bit and you and Hank were brothers growing up, I bet you’d be the one Hank was trying to keep out of trouble.

Your in-your-face energy didn’t just pop up overnight. It most certainly serves you and us well today. Just wanted to express our true appreciation from both my wife and myself. So I do appreciate the letter. And Hank would be trying to keep me out of trouble, I guess, if we were brothers growing up. But sometimes you can have fears. Engineers, and I just set this off right before I came back, because I didn’t know it was on there. They just emailed it to me.

But my fears were for not. You know, you can have fears, and sometimes fears about things that you can’t control. There’s a lot of things we can’t control. And sometimes we can’t control people, can’t control circumstances. But how are you doing in the midst of all of these things that comes our way? Now I want you to look down in chapter 4. Look in chapter 4. Somebody thinks they had a little clue of what might be the reason why all these things came upon him.

So in verse 1 then Ilephaz the Tim and I answered and said, if we say to commune with thee, O that all be grieved. I mean we’re going to give you some good advice. Will you be grieved? But who can withhold himself from speaking? In words, when we look at you, Job, and we know what you’ve gone through, we just can’t hold our peace. We have just got to speak our mind and let you know the words of wisdom were about to bestow upon you.

So he says, verse 3, Behold, thou hath instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weekend. Look, we know what you’ve done. You’ve done a lot of things for a lot of people. And verse 4, thy word have upholding him that was fallen. Thou hast strengthened the feeble knees. That’s in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 12 also. So Job, you’ve done all these things. You are what we call a has been. I mean, you have been all these things. So in verse 5, he says, but now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest, it touches thee, and thou art troubled is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways.

It’s because, Job, you are filled with pride, lift it up. You thought you were so righteous and so good and you were doing so many things, so good and good. He says, but, so you were afraid. Not everything went your way. And now you’ve got all these troubles and you ought to just come clean because you and I know it’s because of sin in your life. Well, is that the truth though? No. So he says here in verse, is not this thy fear, thy confidence?

In verse 7, I pray thee, who ever perished? So what did of a cues in Job of Ben, he’s guilty. Not innocent, he’s guilty. But Job, no, hey, that’s not true. Or were the righteous cut off? And so there is this fear that he has to deal with. And some of us, no doubt, there’s times in our life where we may have a little fear. Sometimes I want the best for my wife and for me and for my kids, my grandkids.

I want the best for the church. I want the college to go. I want Bible on Institute to go. I want ranch to go and I want it to go and Sunday school to go. I want everything we have to grow, don’t you? But you know everything that we have, it may not. We can plant seed and we can water. We can do all that we can do, but if sometimes God doesn’t bless or sometimes the people don’t want it.

Sometimes you can’t make it happen. I don’t care how hard you work at it and try. We have limitations on what we can do. But what do you do when… It’s all a failure. You fail. Remember this? A lot of people don’t feel the feeling of failure because of what it was like to succeed. It’s better to attempt and fail than not to attempt at all. It’s better to take and get out of the boat and seek to walk on water.

Does the Bible tell us to live by faith? Live, the things that you see that determines whether or not you’re right or you’re wrong, whether you’re succeeding or failing. When you walk by faith, it’s like walking on water. You’re trusting the Lord and you’re trusting the Lord to bless and you’re trusting the Lord to supply your trust and the Lord for the results. And they may not be the results we want. But you and I are not successful because we agreed with the consequences or the result of what we’vemodified.

We will be successful if we have faithfully done what God asked us to do, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the results. We cannot be held responsible for other people’s decisions. We can only be held responsible for it. Did you do what I told you to do? Well done, thou good and faithful servant, and I believe every one of us want that. Now take your Bible and turn with me to the book of Matthew in chapter three. The Book of Matthew in chapter 3.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be lost, not believing in God, and not believing in hell, dying and finding out it’s all true. You realize that in a split second when a person dies, they know hell is real. You realize the tear that must go through their system, it was true. There is a hell, and I am there for all eternity, and never get out. The terror that must be there. And here in the book of Matthew in chapter 3, John the Baptist comes on the scene and he’s a preaching.

And he says in verse 7, there was several groups of people that came by and there were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees probably thought they were too righteous and didn’t need to do it. The Sadducees didn’t believe in it anyway. They didn’t believe in the power, no resurrection, no nothing like that. And yet this has falsehood with the resurrection of Christ. So the Bible says that Jesus also was baptized because that was the beginning of His ministry and the beginning of His ministry.

Well, what was His ministry about? He came to die, to be buried, come back to life again. So this is what He announced at the beginning. This is the story of His ministry. You and I, when we trust Christ as our Savior, and we believe He did that for us, then you and I, as a child of God, we should be water baptized. Not to be saved, but because it’s a picture of our death and our burial and our resurrection, not just Christ of what He did for us.

But we are doing this because we believe He did that for us. And I am now to walk in newness of life. And so he says here in verse 7, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees come to his baptism, he said to them, Oh, generation of vipers who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Now the wrath to come, we see that in many places in the scripture. You’ll even read about it in the book of John in chapter 3.

But the wrath to come, knowing that God must be angry. God is upset. God is going to pour out his wrath. And people are going to suffer some terrorizing experiences separated from God for all eternity. I wondered why God doesn’t give us a picture in the word of God of a lost man who is about to die telling us how he feels that he’s going to hell. There’s illustrations about people that are already in hell and there One year, Greg’s dear, call me up.

He does the dare to share ministries. He said, Yankee says, I’m going to do a letter from hell. I said, all right. He said, Now this is what it’s about. He says, a person was lost, but they were with a Christian in a carRequires they had a car wreck and the lost man dies and goes to him. And so he writes a letter to his friend who was a believer and a friend. And he writes a letter to his friend from hell, wanted to know why he never told him about the Lord.

And he gave all the descriptions about what it’s like to be in hell, wondering why his friend never told him. Now, Gray can really tell a story. He is very dynamic. And he did this at his meeting, and there was probably 5,000, 6,000 kids there. And he did this in a drama with some kids acting like a car wreck, and the person dies, and it was very moving. And when he read the letter from hell, you could hear kids all over the audience that were sobbing.

And he asked them if they would dedicate their lives to the Lord. I would say several thousand dedicated their lives to the Lord because they heard the letter from hell. The terror that a man experiences when he goes to hell. And that was just a letter. I wonder what it would really be like. And so there’s terror. Who hath warned you? Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? And yet whenever we preach the gospel, this is what we’re doing.

There are religious people. I believe that go to church. And they have done what the preacher said do. And they have tried to turn from their sin and make Christ the Lord and the Master of their life. And they’re given everything they’ve got and they are as sincere as the sincere can be. And they try and they’re serious about it. They’re not trying to be hypocritical, not playing games, and they take what they’re doing is they really love the Lord and worship the Lord, and they’re trying their best, and yet they have this fear, paralyzed with fear that they’re not going to make it.

That for some reason, and you may not believe this, but this is the truth. I get emails and letters all the time, every week, from somebody who has been so blessed because they heard the gospel. They tell me how they have been so terrorized, even though they’re not bad people in the sense of living in sin. Their church going people, people that believe the Bible, they just don’t know how to have eternal life. not sure of their salvation. They don’t have eternal security.

And with me, without eternal security, you’re not secure. And they don’t understand how powerful that message is. And sometimes we can just take it for granted. I know that even the day I’ve had, what, three of them that indicated they would trust Christ as Savior from somewhere. I didn’t check on where they’re from. And we’ve had some yesterday and the day before that people are a trusted crisis. Say, everybody watching either a YouTube or they’re watching the services or something.

And I think it’s just, it’s incredible. But we can’t lose sight of how important all of this is. Take your Bible and turn to 2 Corinthians in chapter 5, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. The Bible tells us that one of these days we’re going to slip out of these old bodies that we have, and we’re going to just kind of like slide on into heaven. We’re going to slip out of us when in, slip into another body. A home that we have prepared for us by God, in heaven.

He says, if the tabernacle of this body were dissolved, we have a home in heaven. And so he says here, and I want you to see this. Notice what he says in verse six. Therefore we are always confident knowing that while we are at home in the body, we’re absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. But do you see that? To live by faith is to live in agreement with what God says. Taking God at His word.

to take God at His Word, you’re going to live in the flesh and live by sight. And when you live by sight, you see what people say and do and you see only what your eyes can see in this world and that becomes your security. And what about the God that you cannot see to look beyond this life and look into the Lord and walking by faith, believe it or not, with it. An element of fear. Over the years, when I had made up my mind, I’m gonna serve the Lord, and I decided to go to Bible school.

Though I believe this is what God wants me to do, at the same time I was scared to death, but I did it anyway. I was scared to leave my job that I had in Shreveport, Louisiana. We put everything we had in this viewing that we had, took baby cribs, tricycles, and ragged onto the top of the car. It was high, and we had about $35 to our name. And I’m with a wife and two children. We was going to boogie all the way from Shreveport, Louisiana.

I didn’t have a spare tire, but I did notice that there was a little slit in the tire, and I was praying that it was not explode on the way. But we came all the way to Georgia, and I left betting the kids there. When I left Georgia to go to Tennessee Temple, I did not have all my needs met. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep. I did not know how my wife and kids are going to be taking care of it, except they where with their mom and dad.

And I did not have a job waiting for me. I took off by faith, believing that this is what God wants me to do. And at the same time, scared to death. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the fear, you say your prayers and in spite of the fear, you go ahead because you believe it. But if you think, well, I have to eliminate all this fear first, you’ll never do anything because as long as you are in this body with this whole sinful nature, there’s always this element of doubt.

Even though you can believe what God says, but you still have this element of fear. And fear can be a success crusher. It destroys. It holds you back. And yet you’re afraid that if I just trust the Lord and do what God wants me to do, I’m going to fail. And what if God doesn’t come through? Then what do I do? And so a lot of people just play safe and never get the chance to walk on water. They only walk by sight and not by faith.

Faith is taking God at His word, not because you see how God’s going to do it, but you move believing God is going to do it. And so He says here in verse 10, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. And that’s where you find out what is gold, silver and precious, stone, and what is haywood and stubble.

Knowing therefore, knowing, you and I, knowing therefore, the terror of the Lord, what do we do because we know this? We persuade men. Now, there are several ways in which I guess you could take that little phrase, knowing therefore the tear of the Lord. Is that the tear that God’s going to pour out upon the lost man because he’s going to hell? Well, it could be. Or is it that the tear that you and I realize in what we could have done, we could have persuaded more and we did not do it.

And we will have that fear of that feeling because we could have changed something and we didn’t do it. I don’t know. But I know that there’s something here in this verse that makes the difference of why we persuade men. But whatever it is, the results were we were supposed to persuade men. And we’re going to stand before the Lord and give an account to God. Are you a new listener to Bibleline? Do you enjoy the teachings of Dr.

Arnold? Well, if you’ve never contacted us before, we want to give you Dr. Arnold’s book, The Gospel Driven Man. Every day we receive many emails from folks who have questions about repentance and salvation, about faith in works, and about how to share the gospel with friends and loved ones. This book, The Gospel Driven Man, covers all those topics, and we want all new listeners of Bibleline to receive a free copy. There’s no obligation, no donation necessary, simply call us at 1-800-576-3771 or write to us and request your free copy of the Gospel-Driven Main.

Mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again don’t forget to include your mailing address and God bless you and thank you for listening to 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. leaving that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.