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

Look at the next statement here. Faith is not the gift. Every man has the ability to trust, to believe or not to believe. Where you put your faith is your choice. If God gave special faith to a man to believe in Christ, did he also give a man the special faith to believe in Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius or any other of the false religions? Don’t they believe in their stuff? Would God give him the faith to believe that? If he gave the faith to believe in Christ, well, who gave the faith to believe in the other?

Where’d that come from? Every man has the ability to place his faith, wherever you want to. You can place your faith in Peter. I mean, I heard him on the radio and the YouTube. I mean, he’s a famous man. So let’s just all put our trust in Peter of auto. How do you know you’re going to heaven? Peter said I was. Or would you rather say, how do you know you’re going to heaven because Jesus says I was? See, you go about what God’s word has to say.

Now look at the next verse. Any Ephesians 1, 4, and 2, 5, as we read this verse while ago, according to that he have chosen us in him. See those two little words that are bold there? Because they have a tendency to want to leave out those words. And he says, chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holding without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself.

according to the good pleasure of his will. In other words, when God designed this plan of salvation, He did not ask us into this, you know, into having to seek our counseling. He didn’t need it. God’s the one that designed this. And He says, I’m gonna save a man by faith. I’m gonna send my son into the world. And he’s gonna pay for the sins of all the world. And whosoever in the world that will believe in Christ will be placed in Christ.

So God from the foundation of the world. So I’m gonna save all of those who believe and not those who don’t believe. You and I are the one to determine whether or not we are in Christ. See, when I trusted Christ as my Savior 55 years ago, I was placed in Christ. And God has chosen all those that are in Christ. But how do you get in Christ by your personal decision to accept Christ as your Savior. So God has from the beginning chosen to save all of those who believe in Christ, and predetermined predestination the adoption of His children.

And one of these days, these bodies of ours are going to be changed, and we’re going to be placed into heaven. That day is coming. That’s why He talks about in Ephesians 1, 13. We’re sealed until the day of redemption, the redemption of these bodies. Romans chapter 8 talks about how that we groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, meaning the transfer, the change of these old vile bodies that would be made like unto his glorious body. That day is coming.

So look at the air. The air here, God not only chose us, but He also predetermined to save us from the foundation of the world, thus leaving out man’s choice. Truth. God chose or determined, predetermined from the foundation of the world to save all those who trust in Christ, who chose to trust Christ, faith along. He chose those that are in Christ so that when you read that verse and you hear some preacher try to make something out of that that’s not there, you’ll know that isn’t true.

And he has a limited atonement theology. Look at the next question. Yes, God has chosen from the foundation of the world to save all those that are in Christ. To be holy and without blame before Him. The Lord has chosen to save all those who believe on Christ along for their salvation. It is your faith in Christ that puts you in Christ. So there’s no problem with that verse. But if you try to make it say something, you’ve got to change a lot of verses in the Bible.

You’ve got to take away the plain meaning of John three six. 16, and Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. Because they can’t mean what they say. Because they got to put their twist on it. When you go to the Bible, O’Reilly doesn’t know this, but the spin stops here. Does my humble opinion. Look down at the bottom of the page. Second Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14 says, but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brother, beloved of the Lord.

Because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctimic of the Spirit, belief of the truth. We’re unto He called you by our gospel to the opinion of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So they read that part where it says, God have chosen from the beginning to salvation. See that God chose you from the beginning. Don’t you feel special? Now there are some people God didn’t choose. That’s not what He says. That’s leaving out a lot of what this verse says.

So look at the top of the next page. Here’s the air of how you can take a verse and try to make it say something it doesn’t say. God chose to save me from the beginning without any decision being made on my part. Since God knew who he had previously elected he only had the die for those whom he knew would believe because he only gave the gift of faith to those he wanted. Therefore this irresistible grace dictated that the will of God would be fulfilled.

Oh, isn’t that wonderful? But it’s not true. Look at the truth. The rest of the verse tells you how God chose to save. The Lord chose to save all those who were made pure and holy by the Holy Spirit and our belief of the truth. that out. God’s word tells us that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Not as a gift, faith cometh by what? Hearing and hearing by the word of God. It didn’t come as a gift apart from the word of God.

And that’s why he says, preach the word to everybody. So he says in verse 14 says that God called us by the gospel. He says to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, notice the word propitiation, meaning payment, and the words for the sins of the whole world in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 2. Look what it says. And he is the propitiation, the payment, the satisfaction for our sins, and not for ours only.

That’s the believers, but also for the sins of what? The whole world. That’s in the Bible. I didn’t write that verse. I’m not the author, but the author said this, that not only for my sins and your sins, but for the sins of the whole world. Now look at the next statement here. Why anyone would want to change what God so clearly states is beyond me. What right does any preacher have to stand in judgment on God and alter his word?

The message to gospel is how a man goes to heaven. Think about the people that have been blinded because they don’t think God can save them or put a requirement upon people. You’ve got to turn from your sins. Well, I’m not ready to do that yet. Well, you’re just not ready to be saved. When you’re ready to be saved, you’ll have to be ready to do this. Listen, I’ve traveled all across this country and I’ve listened to preachers all across this country and they’ve preached and you’ve got a term from your sins to be saved.

You’ve got to repent. They said, repent means a term from sin. Repent does not mean that. Repent is a change of mind. That means that if you’re an unbeliever and you’re supposed to be a believer, what do you need to do? change your mind from not believing to believing. So when you believe on Christ, you repent it. You changed your mind. They said, well repent means it turned from sin. Wait a minute. God repented, but God didn’t have any sins to turn from.

Slap him upside their face with a couple of these things. Now notice this. You’ll notice in Matthew 23 and verse 37, 38, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill of the prophets and stoned of them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together? Even as a hen gathered her chickens under her wing and you see those in the bowl and what? Ye would not. How often God said, I would have done this, but you wouldn’t.

Well whatever will be, will be. That’s not true. Because you see it’s not like everything is the will of God. Everything is the will of God. No it’s not. God is not willing that any should perish. So that means nobody’s going to perish because it’s not the will of God. It’s the will of God that every person here the gospel and believe the gospel and to have eternal life. But some of God’s children are always trying to find a way not to do the work God called us to do.

And one way to eliminate our responsibility is that God’s already determined who’s going to heaven. and our witnessing is not going to change it. Because God already knows he’s going to heaven, God already knows he’s going to hell, and all of my work and sacrifice and given and all that is not going to change one thing, one eye, Oda. See now, don’t you feel better? You don’t have to do anything. Whatever will be, will be. I don’t believe that.

It’s not the Bible. So you look here in the era. Since God has determined everything, whatever will be will be. The truth. The Lord blames the people of Israel for their decision. To kill the prophets or to stone them was not the will of God. And He held them responsible for their decision. The words how often what I have shows that things could have been different. He held them accountable for their rejection. They could have made a different choice.

Christ says, ye would not. He did not say you could not. Verse 38 showed the result of their wrong decision. Your house is left under you desolate. Look there in Romans in chapter 9, verse 21 here in your notes. Have not the potter power over the clay? Same lump to make one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor. What if God willing to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath afford prepared unto glory.”

Now here is the heir. God is the potter. We are the clay. God has the right to do with the clay whatever he desires. The decision is not ours. We have no say in the matter. We cannot judge God. So whatever will be, will be. See there? God is the potter and we are the clay. So the potter can do with the clay whatever he wants. But God says in his explanation, yes he is the potter and yes we are the clay.

And he uses it as a great illustration in Roman chapter 9. And he says that there are vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor. So during our life you You and I, by the hand of God, are been shaped in mold. By your decisions, you’re yielding to the Lord, and He’s shaping you. Or you rebel against the Lord, and He’s shaping you, based upon how you yield to God. So God says, because He’s a God of love and grace and mercy, He’s also a God of wrath than anger.

So the vessels that harden themselves against the will of God, God says, these will be the vessels of dishonor. And those individuals who choose to yield themselves unto the hand of God, God going to shape and mold them into vessels of honor. So whether you are a vessel of honor or a vessel of wrath is your choice by the decisions you make. See when you accept Christ as your Savior you became a vessel of the Lord. You accepted His will.

You become His child and even as a child of God is it possible that a child of God can harden themselves to the will of God. So as a Christian, if you harden yourself to the will of God, stiff net hardhearted, then God can use you as a vessel to show his wrath upon. He can chasten you, discipline you. But if you, as a child of God, will you to the Lord and do what God wants you to do with your life, then God can use you to demonstrate His blessings upon and His grace upon.

God can use you. So you see, there’s no problem in the book of Romans in chapter 9. Sure he is the potter and I am the clay, but how he works with the clay depends upon the will. Will you submit yourself to the Lord? And as a child of God, we should. And so God is going to deal with us. Look at the top of the page there. Yes, God is the potter. We are the clay. God has the right to do with the clay, whatever He desired.

God has chosen before the foundation of the world to take vessels of wrath, to show or demonstrate His wrath or His dishonor upon. God has chosen before the foundation of the world to take vessels of mercy, to show or demonstrate grace upon. God has allowed us to make the decisions to be a vessel of honor or dishonor. If we yield ourselves to the Lord we will be a vessel that God will use to display His grace upon. And if we choose to rebel against the will of God He has chosen to use us as a vessel to display His wrath upon you are a child of God.

You’re a child of God. Can you live any way you please? Absolutely. but there’s consequences. You can’t live as you please and get away with it. You will reap what you sow. Your heavenly Father who loves you so much is going to be the tar out of you and maybe take you home before your time. I’ve had a lot of people over the years. They know the Lord, they’re going to heaven, but they think they’ll just have a little folly while they can.

Play the fool while they can. the better there’s a price to pay and you cannot escape. God will deal and He will chase them and maybe even take you home before your time. So look there now in John 539. This verse says, search the scripture. Jesus says this to these Pharisees, for in them you think you have eternal life and they are they which testify of me and you will not come to me that you might have life. Notice they could have come and they could have received eternal life.

Wouldn’t you get that out of that verse? The reason you don’t have eternal life is because you won’t come to me. It’s not that you can’t come, you would not. You would not believe. That’s what it says. So why do they say what they’re saying? They’re blind to the simple truths of what God’s Word has to See, when you begin to have one lie, then that lie leads to another lie that leads to another lie, see they’re using human philosophy, psychology, but not the Word of God.

It’s against man’s human nature to think, you can’t tell me it’s free. That’s too easy. You’ve got to do something. It can’t be just, you just believe and go to heaven. Well, what do you believe? You have to believe what Christ did, what He said. Well what did He do? He died on the cross and paid for my sins. Well what do I have to do? Believe He did it for me. Well there’s gotta be more to it than that.

What if God in heaven says only believe? They gotta do more, no, no, no, no. That’s the human part of you that says, I don’t agree with God. So you’re gonna make your own way. you make up religions and add to it. Yeah, you can believe but you but but if you don’t live it and they don’t get it. Now look there at the next statement, the air God’s grace is irresistible and therefore all those that God has chosen to save will have no choice but to respond.

Because this grace is irresistible. That’s why once God’s gives you the faith, you can’t resist it. Therefore, if you really get it, then persevering in the faith is automatic. And if you don’t persevere in it’s automatic, then I sign you really didn’t have it and you really didn’t have the faith and God really didn’t choose you. Well, not a bucket of bolts. So look what He says here. The truth. Why is Christ rebuking these Israelites for not coming to Him if they had irresistible grace?

Evidently they could resist God’s grace. Christ says, He will not come to me. He did not say, You cannot come to me. Notice how they resisted the will of God in the following verse. Now look at this following verse. We stiff neck and uncircumcised and heart-neers get this, you do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before they come into the just one.

Of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers. You did it. You did it. Well, whatever will be, will be. You know it’s not their fault. Did God hold them accountable? You’re responsible? The reason Christ never set up His kingdom upon the earth when He came the first time, they rejected Him. Why did He just give Him this irresistible grace? It didn’t happen. Look at the bottom of the page. Am I a Calvinist? After all of this, would you classify me as a Calvinist?

You better not. We execute everybody that says that I am. No, I am not. Nor should anyone be. Just for the record, please do not send me any books to read. E-mails or phone calls in order to straighten me out. My view is in concrete and will not be changed. I pray that you have been enlightened to the dangers of believing in Calvinism or believing that saints will or must persevere in the faith until the end. Calvinism may get you to temporarily change your life, but it will not nor can not give you assurance that you will go to heaven.

Christ saved me, holds me, keeps me, and yes, Christ will preserve me until the end. If you have enjoyed this lesson, share it with a friend or better yet, share it with a pastor. Make a copy of it and give it to some preacher. You know the Bible says, going all the world and preach the gospel to every preacher, a creature. Now look up here. Letting this hand represent you and me. This wallet represents sin. We all have sin on us.

God says there is no difference, no difference. We are all sinners and none of us can go to heaven because we have an old sinful nature. See, if we went to heaven the way we are and we sinned down here, what were we doing heaven? We’d sinned there. Then heaven wouldn’t be heaven anymore. So God won’t let you in unless you’re perfect. Nobody’s perfect. So by your good works, you’ll never be perfect. So Jesus Christ, God’s Son, came into this world and had no sin, had no sinful nature.

Never did anything wrong. for 33 years and then have to die because he was God in the flesh. He could have called 10,000 angels, but the Bible says he loved us, hated 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 sins of all the world, paid for them on the cross, came back from the dead, says, go into all world, preach this good news, he paid for your sins.

And tell them all they have to do is believe it and I’ll put this payment to their account. And they’ll get to go to heaven on what he did, not on what they do, so what he did. It’s not because, well, I’m going to heaven wide because I stopped sending. Why are you going to heaven? Well, because I lived a good life. It has nothing to do with me. For by grace are you saved through faith that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not of works, lest any man can boast.

But you see, the people who believe, well, I persevered in the faith, all to their wonderful dedication. Look at me. I made it. No, I’m a dirty lousy stinking rotten sinner and I ought to bust hell wide open just like you. But I’ll go to heaven. And if you trust that Christ is your Savior and Him alone, you’ll go to heaven because He gives you as a free gift eternal life. If it’s eternal life, how long would it last?

If it lasts forever and all you’re centripated, where would you go when you die? So can you know you’re going to heaven before you die and has absolutely nothing to do with how I live. Me going to heaven was to show me how much God loved me. Do I want to live like the devil? Or a part of me does. But there’s also this new birth that God gave to me and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And I made up my mind years ago that I’m going to serve a Lord, but I don’t serve a Lord to get to heaven.

I serve because I want to. I want to please the one who died for me. And I’ll give him my whole life. I want to serve him. I’ve tried to clean up my life and there’s things that I don’t do, but that’s not the proof that I’m saved. It’s just to show that I love the Lord. Well, see, I’m doing it for a totally different reason. They have to do it or go to hell. It becomes a question or doubt that they’re really saved.

If I mess up, I still know I’m saved. I can’t go to hell. The best news in all the world. Why? Because I’ve got God right where I want him. He’s bound by His Word. He means what He says. He that believeth on me, the Son, hath, present tense right now, everlasting life. Let’s pray, shall we? With His bow nice clothes and no one looking around. If you hear this morning and you’ve never trusted the Lord, maybe you’ve heard a lot of different messages, but friend, I hope that you’re not one of those that’s been looking at your life and worrying about whether or not you’re going to lose your salvation or even questioning whether you ever really say because there’s times in your life when you didn’t live like you should and you really mess up.

God loves you so much. He made it free. He doesn’t ask you to stop anything or join anything. You don’t have to join this church to go to heaven. You don’t have to be baptized in water to go to heaven. You don’t have to give any money to go to heaven. All you need to do and see only thing you can do is, well, you believe that when Christ died, He died for you. He paid for your sins because He didn’t want you to do it.

And He wants to give you that payment. And He is the payment. The scars in His hands and in His feet, He’s that living proof of payment. And you have Him forever. Your sins are paid. God loves you so much. And if you’ve never trusted the Lord, would you do it right now? I’m not going to ask you to stand up and come forward, but I’m going to ask you in just a moment to raise your hand. Raising your hand doesn’t save you.

It just lets me know that what I said may sense to you. And said in preacher, that may sense to me. And I will trust Christ as my Savior this morning, and I’d like you to pray for me. Would you just slip your hand very quickly, put her back down and send one of those? Then one of those? If you’ve already trusted Christ as your Savior, you have eternal life, your God’s child. He’ll never cast you out and never lose you.

A lot of people don’t know this, But let everybody know God loves them. Christ died for all of them. Eternal life is free. If you’re watching by internet, right there on the screens, it says, yes, I will trust Christ as my savior. If you haven’t done so, I pray that you will. Father, once again, we thank you for loving us. Loving us so much. All of us that you sent your son into the world to pay for our sins.

And Lord, by faith alone in what you did for us, you would guarantee us as a free gift, eternal life. Because you determined before the foundation of the world, you would save all of those that believe. And we thank you for that. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. 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 Man. 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 4081 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.

Believe in that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.