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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.

As we begin our class today, this is Lecture 7, Personal Evangelism. Your memory verse is Revelation 21, 27, which says, And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that be phyllus, Neither whatsoever work at the Bomination or make it the lie, But they which are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. And we are beginning to cover the seven steps that we use in explaining the gospel. And so we are covering the doctrine of sin, which we’ve gone through.

And there’s three little illustrations I want to give you first of all. And in your lecture notes, it’s on lecture seven, page two, not the one that I just gave to you that you have in your book. But in lecture page two, there’s three little illustrations that I give to try to explain to a lost person, give them a visual picture of what you’re trying to say. One is the person hanging over the cliff, ten links in a chain, and if you’re hanging on to the last link in the chain, and there’s those 10 links in a chain and that represents the law.

How many links in the chain have to break before you fall? All of them? Just one. Somewhere in the Bible it makes the statement that whosoever shall keep the whole law but offended one point he is guilty of all. Where is that verse found? What’s that? James chapter 2 and verse 10. We just covered that in the last class. So that’s why they all knew that. The other statement was with the simple little illustration that if you get up in the morning you look in the mirror and you say you tiger don’t you ever die?

No, no. You look in the mirror and you see that there’s a little work that needs to be done and so you’ve got to you know your your hair’s all messed up. You got cobwebs in it. You got, you know, matter in your eyes. You got turtleneck sweaters on your teeth. I mean, you got a beard, just the guys. And so you look in the mirror, what do you do? Well, that leads you to what you got to do to get it cleaned up.

So you may want to take a comb and comb your hair. You may want to wash your face. Why pot your eyes? And you may want to shave. But see, the mirror, you don’t take it off the wall and wash your face with the mirror. It just lets you see what you look like. That’s what the law does. The law lets you see yourself. It is a mirror. And if you’re looking to the law, you should see that you have failed or transgressed the law.

And so another simple illustration that we sometimes use is the X-ray machine. And down at the bottom number three there the x-ray machine in the hospital may reveal that you have cancer. The doctors do not operate on you with the x-ray machine. It’s just to reveal another problem. And so that leads you to the doctor who gets the hammer and the saw and you know the drill and all that and goes to work on you. But it has a purpose, a function.

The law has a function. It is to reveal We are sinners and cannot save ourselves by our worth. Now, take your notes, the one that says, fears that stops most Christians from soul winning. That’s in your notes. And you that are visiting with us tonight, you have a copy of these notes. I wish I had a chance to teach all the preachers in America. How to present the gospel? Because believe it or not, majority of them do not know.

And so there’s fear in witnessing because if the devil, he doesn’t care if you go to church and read your Bible in praise as long as you don’t witness. Because faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It’s not because you read the Bible. It’s not because you went to church. It’s not because you gave money. They have to hear the God. They got to hear it. They can’t believe the gospel. they don’t even know what it is.

So faith coming by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And so God said, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel? So one of these days we’re gonna have everybody take off their shoes and see how pretty your feet are. Don’t think you ought to have pretty feet. Well, anyway, we’ll move right along. Look at the top of the page there. Under letter A, the fear of arousing resentment. See, nobody wants to have somebody resent what they’re doing because we all want to be accepted.

But right in the middle of that statement under letter A, we don’t want people to reject here in the gospel because of our, and you ought to underline these two words, attitude and actions. If they reject the truth, that’s between them and the Lord, but they shouldn’t reject the truth because of your actions or your attitude. In other words, some people want to just get it out but not get it across. That’s a good statement. Y’all write that statement down.

You want to get it out, but you want to get it across. In other words, you want the person to understand it. So that’s an important thing to remember. Now look there at number one, 10 ways to encourage people to like you. That is not your goal, but it’s very helpful if you’re not unlikable. You want to be likable, an unlikable person. And so they’re more easy to believe you or listen to you. But after that statement, finish out the sentence with this, where it has 10 ways to encourage people to like you, if time permits or is necessary.

I do not always have time to just sit and jaw and talk about everything under the sun. Usually they’re busy, I’m busy doing something and you don’t have a lot of time. So you’ve got to kind of squeeze down a little bit and find out what is exactly necessary that I have to do. Now That’s not a substitute for not being nice and kind and friendly. You want to always do that. Number one there under that, become genuinely interested.

Underline those two words, genuinely interested. And where it has the in one person or in that person, but one at a time. In other words, when you’re going to go so winning, you want to be a good so winner, see the individual. See the tree, not the forest. If you think I just want to win the world but you never witnessed to anybody. You’ve got to see a tree. Forget the forest. Forget the multitudes. Find one victim. I mean one person.

It’s better to focus upon that one person and show interest in that one individual. It is so important. Let her be there, let her be a little small, let her be be friendly. Be friendly. On the those two of the words be friendly. Let her see, be a good listener. The best soul winners are good listeners because you’re always looking for a, and then you underline this or write this down, a natural point of departure. You’re always looking for a natural point of departure, where when you depart from the natural things to the spiritual things, it becomes a natural thing.

It’s done So how is the weather? All the weather is doing fine. But I got to talk to you about the gospel. No, no, no, no, no. Let it be flow into it. Don’t scare a person half the dead. It ought not be that great of a difference. You’re just going to, Dr. Seemwort used to say, be natural in your spiritual life and be spiritual in your natural life. So that the person you’re talking to, it just flows from one right into the gospel.

a good soul when it learns how to do that. But it takes some time, it takes a little word. But be a good listener. Remember this, God gave you two ears, one mouth. You should listen twice as much as you talk. Number four there, the little D, talk in terms of in underlying these two words, his interest, his interest. Up Melch-Carbonel is always talking about the performance thing that he does, and the temperaments, so on. And he always teaches the people how you’re supposed to show interest in other people.

For example, a sign that you’re You’re talking about yourself too much and always about yourself. You’re always talking about yourself. Hey, look, I’ve talked too much about myself. Why don’t you talk about me now? And some of the people would get that and some people wouldn’t know. I’ve talked enough about me. Why don’t you talk about me? And so everything is about them. But learn how to show interest in other people because that’s what makes a good soul winner.

Well, they think you really care about them and you should. And so it’s a matter of talking to them about certain things. The letter E be complimentary, underline those two words, be compliment. When you can give a compliment, give a compliment. I have, at several times, I have given a compliment, I thought it was a compliment, only to find out it was on the compliment. I mentioned to the kids in the class, I’m in a restaurant, and this waitress comes up there and she’s waiting on us, and I’ve looked up and I didn’t even think about it, I should have, but I did.

And I wanted to give her a good compliment, but I had a question. I said, and she was blonde. And I said, how do you get the roots brown like that? And Betty, she just cringes. And I’m trying to open a conversation to be friendly, but I never thought about that. And then one time, this year, Waitress came up, and I want to compliment. It’s how long, when you do? Now, what’s wrong with that? She wasn’t. I assumed that she was pregnant, but she wasn’t pregnant.

She was just a little on the hefty side. How do I get out of that? You don’t. You don’t get out of it. And they’ll remember you from now on. So you try to be genuine, but at the same time, you better slow down a little bit, because sometimes I dump the gun. I know y’all wouldn’t do like that, but I have done that. G use his name often and pronounce it correctly. This is my biggest sin. I can look at somebody, talk to them, and they introduce each other, and I haven’t got a clue who they are.

I mean, a minute later, after they told me their name, I couldn’t tell you what their name is. I hope that you do a little bit better of that than I do. And then they said, use their name often. Now, I know memory page, and I can put 10 things on it or 100 things on it, and I can remember it. But somehow or other, I just can’t get a person’s name done. And then Betty was up there in America, because Georgia, and we came across the street, and it had Tom something on there.

We came to another straight and it had an umbrella or something on it and I thought, I gotta remember this here, Tom Brady. Okay, I got it on Tom Brady. Believe it or not, that really helped me because I remember Tom Brady. I did have time when I get this, I got to go down to Brady and then turn him. So you try to figure out ways to remember things and sometimes you can associate it with other things. Let her eight there be understanding.

Try to see if they, you know, are following you. you. But it’s also whenever they are telling you something, you want to understand them. So you want them to understand you, but you got to understand them too. And one of the things that I do, you see, if they’re following me and I’ll ask them, and see there it says right here, he that, believe it or them, he hath what? Oh, oh, they weren’t even looking. They weren’t even following.

I just assumed they were. So I will not say the word and get their attention back. He either believed me half the everlasting life. And sometimes when they’re talking, you’re not even listening to them. And all of a sudden they’ll look at you like, cause they ask you a question or say to something and you’re in another world. Cause you’re not really focused upon that person. Learn to be a good listener. Less thing here, be clean and be neat.

Clean and neat. They don’t want to smell a sewer. That your breath ought to smell halfway decent. And if you have to put all of them tick-tacks and things like that in your mouth, Betty’s always giving in to me. Betty’s just, ain’t you here too? There’s 10. No, but she’s always trying to help me to smell better and look better. And after all these years, I bet there hasn’t been 10 times that I have not gone to bed without taking a bath.

She makes me take a bath every day, every day. And then she’d always tell me about, You got to use the odor, you got to smell good. So I told him and I had a friend of mine named Bob Daly, he used that race car deodorant, pit stop. But some people, or you can use that stereo deodorant, no, it doesn’t kill the smell, you can’t tell where it’s coming from. But there’s a way that you’re supposed to be. Learn how to look good, smell good, dress good.

. . . . . . . . . Look at the next thing, number two, 10 things to avoid if you want to make headway with the lost men. So I would recommend this. Don’t argue if possible. The Bible says the Apostle Paul calls no small stir, and they were very contentious, and he had a lot of arguments. But if you can avoid an argument, avoid an argument. You may win an argument and lose the soul, but it’s better to lose an argument and win the soul.

So if you have to kind of sidestep something, just sidestep it. Somebody ask you a question, you know your witness and tell them it’s showing the verses in the Bible. You can know you have eternal life or read Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. And yes, but did Cain have a navel? Well, I know the answer to that. So here you go. You’re going to chase that little rabbit all the way back here to Genesis. And as soon as you ask them that question, lo and behold, they want to know how many animals was on the ark.

So now that little rabbit jumped up there and you’re going to chase that rabbit because I know how to answer these questions. And all you’ve done is chase rabbits. They controlled you. If you want to lead a person to the Lord, you’ve got to get them to follow you, not you following them. So understand that. Let her be there. Don’t embarrass them. Try not to embarrass a person. Even in church, I try to not embarrass people. Now I have done it, but I try not to do it.

You ought to see if I didn’t try not to do it. How bad it would be. And so I was at Northside Baptist Church when I first went there, 1991. I said, the first day I said, all we’re going to do is just I just want everybody to stand up and just tell me how much you weigh, your shoe size, and your age. You think that went over real good? Here’s all these women sitting there. I don’t know what, nobody wanted to say anything.

Okay, so I had to change the question. Sometimes I do it on, you think I would do something like it on purpose just for the fun of it? Maybe just for the fun of it. But anyway, but there’s some things that I do like that and I don’t think of it. I don’t even think in advance. I just think it was a good thing to do. How old are you? I don’t care what time somebody else I am. But anyway, next statement, let’s say, don’t put him on the defense by condemning underlying these two things, his religion or opinion.

In other words, because you can just start an argument right off the bat because you know they don’t believe right and they gave you an opinion about something in government or whatever it might be and you don’t agree with that and you can just start up an argument just like that. But is that what you’re after? So you say, you know, that’s interesting. I see you kind of like where you’re coming from and you can just let it go.

And I’d sometime I have a person ask me a question. And she’d know that’s a good question. When we get through talking about this, remind me. And I’ll try to answer that for you. Now what I did is I didn’t tell them I couldn’t answer. I just told them that this is more important and that I’ll answer that later, you remind me. So if we never get to it, you didn’t remind me. Sure fault, not mine. And then by the time we get through talking, it never comes up.

But if I hadn’t have done that, they would have eat up all my time. Remember, time is valuable. Redeem in the time because the days are evil. You don’t have forever to do this. Look at the next statement. Don’t be self-righteous or fair seagull by talking down to the prospect and given the impression that you are better than he is. In other words, write this little statement down so that you’ve got it in those notes. You know I used to be ignorant like you.

I used to be ignorant, just like you. Now, you may be telling the truth. But do you want to win or start a fight? Now if they’re bigger than you, I wouldn’t do this. Unless you got to choose on and you can run fast. Because sooner or later somebody’s going to give you a Hawaiian punch. Now notice, letter E, don’t be guilty of having an underlying these two little words, bad breath. Don’t get in somebody’s face like it. Let me show you what the Bible says.

And there is a path out. And, or just, you know, you don’t want to, like, uh, so you get the point, right? Good breath. And I mean, if you’re just going to go smooching, you know what you would do, is try to smell good. Don’t y’all do that? Against the rules. Now here we are, we’re moving right along. Letter F, don’t be rude or blunt like a lawyer on cross-examination. be so forceful. You want to lead them. The next statement, don’t lean on the center while dealing with them.

Keep your hands off the person. Don’t be a spiritual psycho or religious nut. Don’t be hollering, jerking, shouting, exhibit a sane, simple, pleasing disposition. In other words, it’s like witnessing to two Jehovah’s Witnesses. One is usually a trainer and the other one’s a learner. One knows what they’re doing. The other one hasn’t got a clue. And if anybody loses their hands. loses their temper, let it be them. You stay under control because when you lose your temper, people turn against the persons.

Usually that loses their temper. They lose control. Because if you’re a Christian, why are you losing your control? See, they just expect more of you than probably what you think that you should do. Look at the next statement. Don’t wear out your welcome. Now, I have gone to many homes. I’ve gone to the hospital. You’re gone to nursing homes. I’ve gone to restaurants and all these things that you meet people. And sometimes if they’re on the job, they’re working, respect that they have a job to fulfill.

You don’t take all their time. If you can talk to them very quickly, briefly, that’s fine. But you cannot hog that person’s time and they’ve got places to serve, things to do, and you can’t eat up all their time because I don’t think that’s wise for you to do so. I was in one restaurant and I was coming through South Dakota and I was so hungry, I stopped there. I think maybe it was with me this time. And there was a lot of people in there and the waitresses were busy carrying stuff all over the place and I had left the track and I got really living, she said, sir, sir, sir.

And we’re standing there, I’m standing up and there’s people everywhere and people to be served. And she’s got, she says, can you explain that to me real quick? Can I explain to her? Now if she asked me that, I’m going to take this, what time it takes to explain it to her. And I explained to her and she trusted Christ as her Savior, just like that. It was just like she was ready, she was right. And she asked me if I would explain it to her.

Now should I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can’t do that. Learn how to have some sensibility in some of this stuff. But remember, if they’re on the clock, another man’s paying that person for their time. So you want to be as wise as you possibly can. Do what you can, but respect their time. The last thing down there is don’t rush them, lead gently. Don’t rush them, lead gently. Because that’s what you’re trying to do.

You want to lead a person. Think of the next statement. At the top of the page, or write this little statement down, in soul winning, you must make a spiritual transition. Because generally you don’t start off with, you know, let me tell you about Jesus Christ, or what you trust Christ as your Savior. Usually there’s gotta be some approach to it ahead of time. Now when you go out cold turkey, you don’t take a lot of time, you may just hit him right between the eyes with some of these questions that we have here.

And if you can do that, fine. But generally, if you’re talking to somebody in a hospital or somebody at home, you don’t walk into a hospital room. Do you know where you’re going when you die? No, you may wanna take and, you know, be a little bit more subtle than what they are. Oh, I hear you’re not gonna make it through the night. No, but you’ve gotta figure out a way to say things that will not be so, you know, scary for somebody.

Dr. Curtis Hudson has a doctor who came to his meeting and he was explaining how that she’d got a witness. So the doctor told him, says, I’m gonna do this. I have not done this in my job and I need to do more, you know, witnessing on the job. And so this guy came in there and just a regular checkup, physical checkup and make sure he’s healthy and all that. And so he said, I need to witness to this guy.

So he went and got him a track and he came back. He says, do you know where you’re going to die? Let me be on a die. It’s my heart. It’s my hard knock. And the guy, he thought he was going to have a heart attack because the doctor asked him, do you know where you’re going to die? Well, he learned how not to do it quite so, boom. And so hopefully, y’all will learn how to do that. But look at that first statement.

This is the fear of beginning the spiritual conversation. You can talk about things in general, but when it comes to making the transition, you freeze. You can talk to them about football, baseball, you can talk to them about the weather, you can talk to them about anything that you want to. Okay, now how do I make this transition? Because you’re gonna go from these natural things to these spiritual things. And so you gotta, there’s gotta be a bridge somehow.

You’ve got to figure out a way to how to get from where you are to where you want to be. And you’ve got to get him to follow you. And some people you can talk to them, but when you mention anything about the Bible, I’m sorry, I got to go. I don’t want to hear that. And they know whenever you have made that transition. Some of them are aware enough and they’ve heard enough preaching over the years and I don’t want to go there.

I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve had people say, I don’t want to talk about death. I just can’t handle it. But if they only knew the truth, they could handle it. But they don’t know. So you’re going to have to deal with that. Look at the second statement there. You have no difficulty talking about current events, but underline this, changing the conversation to the spiritual can be frightening, because you are entering into another world. This is where Satan will attack as much as possible, because see, the other can be a gradual conversation about anything and most people don’t have a problem with that.

That’s not the part of getting started. You can do that and that’s not a problem but when you start on the spiritual things that’s when the battle starts. That’s when your mind begins to rage and you become afraid of saying something because you don’t always know how they’re going to respond. You don’t want to be rejected and all those things. So look at the next statement. These are some of the fixed approaches that I have seen I’ve used and I’ve done a lot more than these.

Just questions that you would have in your mind on how to open up a conversation. Cause you wanna know how to date the line that can get that fish’s attention and lure them and you wanna get them on the hook, but a lot of people can do very well on that but they can’t get the fish in the boat. You gotta know how to draw the net. How do you draw the net? Oh, let’s get them into the boat.

Look at number one, if you were to die today, are you really sure you would go to heaven? Have you ever accepted Jesus Christ as a personal Savior? There’s nothing wrong with any of these questions, but you might have to find out what works for you and what works for somebody else may not work as smoothly for you. You have to find out what you’re like and how you can best present the gospel. Though the gospel has to be the same thing, but you’re opening and closing, that’s a personal touch that you need to develop.

And you can listen to me sometimes in church and you’ll hear how I word it, but you may word it just a little bit different, but it needs to be you and it needs to be natural. And you need to get it to where you can just flow with it, where it’s not a hard, complicated thing. After you’ve done it about 5, 10,000 times, it’ll come to you. You only have to think about it. It’ll just come naturally. But think of how many times you think I have probably given the gospel.

I’ve worn out wallets probably times. So anyway, look at the next statement. Number three, have you ever had anyone take the Bible and show you how to be certain of eternal life? If you were to die right now, are you 100% sure you’d go to heaven? Have you ever thought about where you would spend eternity? Do you know where you’re going when you die? Aren’t they all good questions? They are very good leading questions. And do you know where you’re going today?

In your opinion, what would you believe a person must do to inherit eternal life and go to heaven? In your opinion, that’s a good one. Don’t miss out on all the fun. Join Pastor Jesse and Kyla Martinez on Thursday nights from 7 to 9 p.m. for Tampa Youth Ranch at Calvary Community Church. Tampa Youth Ranch is a great mix of live music, games, Bible study, food and fun, where teens 13 to 18 get to know God and the Bible with their friends.

Check it out online at tampayouthranch.org and see the cool pictures from past activities and all the fun you’ve been missing. No rye, no problem. Call 813-334-4655 today for information on getting a rye to Tampa Youth Ranch. Thanks for joining us on Bible Eye. 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.