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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I want you to go ahead and turn to the book of Luke chapter 16. 16. My father-in-law led me to Christ when I was 18 years old. My mother and dad did not know the Lord, but my father-in-law did. And in 76 years, only one person has ever witnessed to me, and it was him. And I thought, over the years, what if he had missed me? What if he did not have that courage to talk to me about my soul.

As we live our lives, we need to realize the importance of our life. Why do we live? Keeping things in proper perspective. We come to church because we want to leave feeling good and having a wonderful, happy time fellowship. And And it’s wonderful to hear about the love of God. You will never find a greater proof of the love of God than understanding what He came to save us from. There’s a lot of reasons why we can live our lives.

A lot of projects, a lot of causes. But in all these years I’ve never found anything we’re living for that supersedes the one that I have before you. Is hell real? Is it real? So there’s a couple of questions that I have done here. What do you believe about hell? It really doesn’t matter what you think. What does the world think about hell? It doesn’t matter either. God does God believe about Him? That matters. That really matters. And if it matters to God, then it should matter to us.

We should believe what God believes. And God knows what truth is. It’s easy for us not to want to talk about the most destructive thing in all the world. saddest story in all the world. It’s found in Book of Luke in chapter 16. It’s a story, but it’s a true story, and it’s a story about what Jesus says happens to an individual when they die. So you look there in verse 19, I just want to read it to you.

There was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple and fine linen, fair sumptuously every day. There was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate full of sores, and desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores, and it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

And in hell, he lift up his eyes, been in torment, and see Abraham afar off in Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and says, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and sin Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger and water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receiveth thy good things. Likewise, Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted and thou art tormented.

Beside all of this between us and you, there’s a great God fixed so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would come from thence. Then he says, I pray thee therefore, Father, that thou would have sent him to my Father’s house, or I have five brothers. That he may testify to them lest they also come to this place of torment. Abraham said unto him, they have Moses the prophets, let them hear them.

And he says, nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. He said unto them, if they hear not Moses in the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. What a sad story. I think it’s one of the saddest stories in all the Bible. Yet it was told by Jesus Christ himself. I want you to look at some of the reasoning that I put down here in notes. And I want you to think about it seriously.

Because see, if hell is not real, what are we doing here? Why do we have a Bible? What are we counting on God doing for us? Is it if this isn’t real, then the Bible isn’t real. If this isn’t true, the Bible isn’t true. Bible spoke more on hell than he spoke on heaven. So if that’s not real, then how do you know anything? And we are all men most miserable. end first paragraph. The Scriptures will be proven correct and every philosophy and opinion of man won’t matter.

If you are going there, this is your wake up column. If you are saved, this is a reminder that billions are held bound as we speak. Do you believe the Bible? then you have to believe what I just wrote, because this is true. If there’s a hell, all this is true. Look at the next statement. Many in our day have no confidence in the truth of the Word of God. Perhaps no other teaching has received more doubt than the doctrine of hell because that just makes people feel really bad.

Even think about hell. Some people don’t even want to talk about dying to die. They don’t want to talk about that. And yet, it’s a hundred percent guaranteed you’re going to die if God’s a teary. The next statement, appealing to rationality and reason, the concept of an eternal hell where sinners burn forever is ludicrous and demeaning. Some people just can’t believe that, but let’s look at it.

I was teaching in our cult of angelism class about different religions and what they believe about hell. That’s why we call them a cult. They believe in the extra-biblical source of authority. Truth outside the Bible that contradicts the Bible. And sometimes because they had a vision, they wrote a book, but it contradicts the Bible. So it’s an extra-biblical source of authority makes it a cult. Then you want to find out, well, what do they believe about the Bible? What do they believe about Jesus Christ, what a belief about salvation, what do they believe about hell?

And you’d be surprised there’s a lot of religions. And it’s hard for some people to understand, well, how do you know the truth? Remember this, all religions add words to salvation. Whatever it is, and wherever you’re supposed to go, depends upon you earning it. Christianity is that it’s free. It’s by grace and grace alone. Big difference. Look at the next statement. Here’s one of the reasons, or several of the reasons, that some people do not believe in a literal hell.

Because they say it’s holy unscriptural. It’s not taught in the Bible. But the proof is, it is in the Bible, and it is taught in the Bible. today we’re not going to dwell too much on all the scriptures that prove that point, but that the Bible does teach. So to say it’s unscriptural is not true. You see, that’s what the Christian science teaches. You know, Christian science is like great nuts flakes. It’s not great and it ain’t nuts. And Christian science is in Christian and it’s not science.

And it really appeals to older people who have a problem because of sin and they know they’ve done it. And they want deliverance from it. They know that the death is getting close and they don’t want to think about death, because the die means a hell, or a heaven, and they’re not sure how to get there. So you see, they believe that God is all and all is God. They believe in pantheism. See, they believe that God is love and God is all.

And God created the heavens and the earth, but the earth and the heavens is God. God is separate from His creation. His creation is not God. See, the Bible contradicts religions, and there’s many of them and they’re man-made. And they believe that if God is all and God is love, there can be no hate. And if God is God and God is all and God is love, there’s no hate and if God is good, there’s no evil. And since they deny that there’s evil, there is no sin.

And if there is no sin, there is no death. And if there’s no death, there is no hell. So see, you can feel better just because you can deny that it’s true. you feel better? Just deny it all. And so Christian science does a lot of this. And there’s people in various forms that believe a lot of crazy things. But what if hell is real? Jesus says it’s real. That’s why we needed a Savior. See if it’s not real, what do we need a Savior to go to a cross, down the cross, pay for the sins of the world to keep us from going to a place that doesn’t exist.

They say it’s unreasonable. God says in His Word that God says, my thoughts are not your thoughts. Your ways are not my ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. You cannot and do not think like God. You don’t know what God knows. To say it’s unreasonable. You mean because you can’t reason it out because it doesn’t make sense to you as an individual, but there is a difference between a human perspective and a divine perspective. You can see things through God’s eyes as what He’s revealed, or through man’s eyes, and God is unreasonable.

I don’t see how God created the heavens and the earth. You don’t have to see how God did it. Does that mean He didn’t do it because it doesn’t make sense to you or to I? There can’t be a hell because that sounds unreasonable. Says who? You or God? The next thing here, number three, is a contrary to God’s love. Well, if God really loves you and really loves me, why would He allow you and I to go to a literal fire burning hell?

That doesn’t make any sense. So because we don’t understand that God not only is love, God is also holy. And because God is holy and we are not holy, we’ve sinned and God cannot tolerate sin in His presence. If you understood what God says, that’d be great. But some people don’t want to know what God says. Their minds are all married and made up. If they don’t want to believe something because they want live according to some particular lust of the flesh, then you develop a theology to justify whatever the air is that you want to commit.

It’s repugnant to justice. Repugnant to justice. How can that be fair? How can a person spend an eternity in hell? That’s not fair. Do you know all the facts in every case concerning every individual? God does. No man goes to hell unless it’s just. God is perfect and God is righteous and He makes no mistakes. And because there is such a place as a literal fire burning hell, there is a God in heaven that made a way of escape and that’s love.

That’s love and many people reject the love of God. Look at the next statement, still others believe that man is capable of redeeming himself and therefore for every man is working out his own heaven, and there will be Hell for no one. You see, there’s some people who believe that you just learn how to save yourself. You just do the best you can, work hard, go to church, pay your bills, and do all the good that you can, and you’ll go to heaven someday.

And yet there’s people that believe that there is no hell. They want to believe in heaven because that’s a wonderful place. but they don’t want to believe in a hell. And yet they get the information about heaven and hell from the same source. The one that wrote about heaven wrote about hell. You can’t pick and choose. It’s not a smorgasbore. It’s not a cafeteria. You’re not going through a line picking out what you like and throw away what you don’t like.

The whole thing is true. The Word of God. Look at the next statement. The cultists, without exception, have all can calculate plan whereby they and their followers can escape eternal damnation and live joyfully in a better world. The Christian science Jehovah’s Witnesses and another’s teach, there is no hell. So if you teach that there is no hell, there’s no problem. One day I was in Colorado. I was running for the State Board of Education, candidate at large, and I had an opportunity to go and speak to the Republican convention, about 3,000 people there, maybe a few more of them.

And so the guy that was running for governor came over to my house, or I should say at the church, and he wanted to talk to me. And he wanted to know if I would back him because we had to school at the college and we had a lot of families, and so I had radio and all that. And so he wanted me to back him running for governor. We went out and sit down at a restaurant and talk And one of the things he said was, I despise these preachers that talk about this rapture.

He says, they’re the problem in America because they’re people don’t believe in preserving our country and fighting for our country and doing something about our country because they’re all waiting for Jesus to take them out of here. And I looked at him and says, I believe in the rapture. Then I found out he was a Christian science. He didn’t believe in death and he didn’t believe in sin. I don’t know what he was fighting for for the state, but it was a long after this.

He was in the hospital and I went to see him. I said, what are you doing? He says, I think I’m sick. He said, I just believe it. I said, I just believe it. I said, what are you doing? He says, I think I’m sick. He said, I just believe it. I said, are you sick or you just believe you’re sick? He said, well, I don’t believe in sickness. I said, well, what are you? He said, well, I’m having an illusion.

It wasn’t long before he had an illusion. He was dead. He died. They deny sickness, they deny sin, they deny death. How foolish. They buried an idea. It was dead in a hammer. You can believe whatever you want and you can justify it in your mind. But one day you and I are going to literally die. And we can say, well, that’s all there is to it. Not according to God. You see, the next thing I wanted to see here, Still, others believe that everyone will be totally annihilated and or ultimately saved.

Everybody’s going to die and be annihilated, or everybody’s going to be saved. What an extreme. Everybody’s going to be annihilated, or everybody’s going to be saved. Which one of those is true? Neither one of them is true. See, there’s people who lie, lie, lie, because they don’t know the truth. But there’s people who base their eternal destination upon the lies and the hopes that man has given instead of understanding the truth and how to have real joy, how to have real peace, real deliverance.

Know that you have eternal life. Know that you’re going to heaven. Can you know, look at the next statement. All these opinions may sound pretty good, but they’re all lies. Therefore, if hell is real, this could be your wake up call and your opportunity to do something about it. If you’re saved, then you’ve got an opportunity to do something. Look at the first statement I have here. Hell is a real place. The scripture we just read is as real as Athens, Georgia, or Tampa here in Florida.

Or any other geographical location. The Bible says Jesus believed in hell. We just read the scripture where the Bible says hell is real. Names a particular person says what happened when a person dies. You see if this is true, if there really is a hell, then it should shake me to my core. This is why for 57 years that I’ve known Christ as my Savior, there’s one thing that I have tried to do is just tell people how to go to heaven.

I’m not interested in being great. I’m interested in being famous, interested in nothing. I just want to tell people how to go to heaven because I know one of these days I’m not gonna be here, but I want people to go to heaven. If this is true, I cannot find one thing more important to live for than these truths that I’m talking about right now. Jesus believed in hell. In this scripture, He says, concerning heaven in my father’s house are many mansions.

If it were not so, I would have told you I’d go to prepare a state of mind for you, a place for you. That’s heaven. And then when he’s talking about this, he says, for I have five brethren that he may testify to them that they also come to this place of tournament. It’s not a state of mind, it’s a real literal place. And if this is true, and I believe it is, what kind of a person should I be?

at the page two, top of the page. An ABC News poll showed that 70% of Americans believe in heaven, while only 56% believe in hell. Can’t have one without the other. Jesus spoke about both. Hell is an absolute eternal separation from the presence of God. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 1 7th through 8. Now listen, this is so important. If this thing is true, this gives meaning of why we want kids to learn how to tell people how to go to heaven.

The other night, I don’t know how many they had, they went to the fair and they had some people trust Christ to save you. I think you have any idea what they did? 50 or so. And then they had Friday night, soul winning, they just did that. And then they had some people trust the Lord in ranch last week. You know, little by little and we’ve had people just about every day trust Christ to save you because of YouTube.

You just take the soul winning out of it. Take soul winning out of your life. Now what’s the purpose of your life? Why do you think God left us here? Now we have jobs that we have to do, but that’s the pay our way to do what God wants us to do with our life. Everybody has to have a place to work and a place to live. You got to have food to eat and cars to drive and insurance and all that stuff.

But is that all? Isn’t there a reason for all of that? Just so that you can be happy and so forth in life? That’s not the purpose of it. Because life is short and you’re not going to live forever. But I deal with that at the very end here. Now, once you see it, don’t you dare look at the end of the paper. Look at the next statement, hell will be filled with real people. This man was some mother’s son.

Possibly he left a wife and children behind. He never minches his parents. Maybe they were already dead. But he wanted somebody to go and talk to his brother. Like I have five brothers. But he never mentioned his mom and dad. I’ve wondered why. If they were in heaven, had they shown him the way? If the parents were in wanted to be able to help them. When Trina and my daughter. She called up and she was hurting. And she was crying on the phone.

I told Betty. I said, honey, you got to go up there. And Betty was hurting herself. But Betty wanted to go be with her daughter, because mama loves daughter. Well, then mama loves mama. And she could go to the mother of Mary. And I was so happy when she was in the newborn. mama loves mama. And so she went up there and spent time because that’s what you do when somebody in your family is hurting, you want to help them and do all that you possibly can to help them.

This is what this whole thing is about. Do you want someone that you know and you love to spend an eternity separated from God in a literal fire burning hell? I remember Ray Stanford always made this statement. He said, I just didn’t want people to go to hell. I just didn’t want people to go to hell. I just didn’t want people to go to hell. And that’s why he did what he did. And talking to people, always, and putting that into our minds.

Look at the next thing here in your notes. He says here, the truth of the matter is this. People we know will populate hell. Just think about this. People you know and people I know are going to populate hell. Now I don’t know all about your family. You don’t know about all of the ones that I’ve got and so far. But I’ve done everything I can to try to win my family to Christ, my relatives, whatever. I have hounded them to death.

I have pursued them. I have irritated them. them to the place where sometimes they didn’t want to see me coming because I’d always be on them. And on their case, have you trusted Christ to say, do you know where you’re going? You die. I even had my stepdad one time. He got up and he walked out of the room and he looked at me and pointed his finger me and says, when I want to hear preaching, I’ll go to church and he went out of the room.

My mama got up and walked out of the house, took me five years to get my mama to understand and trust Christ’s Savior. She finally said, still one time in a church long enough and heard me preach. But if you love and if this is true, I can’t think of anything else worth living for. That is superior to telling people how to have eternal life. Now one of these days I know I’m going to be dead and I might be some people that have finally.

But I know I want my life to count for something. Remember last week we talked about in the book of Jude, building up your selves and your most holy faith. And then he says, having compassion, making a difference and pulling them out of the fire. All in one person of scripture right there in the book of Jude. Look at the next statement. Hell was made for men. But those who reject Jesus Christ as their personal Savior will go there.

Hell will be filled with real people where you be among them. Hell is going to have real people there. It’s not a fantasy thing. This is real. Look at the next statement. Hell contains real punishment. It couldn’t be any planer that hell is a place of pain and torment. Many believe Luke 16 is just a picture. It’s just a picture. Well, if it’s just a picture, what is it a picture of? Jehovah’s Witnesses like to say, well, that’s just a picture of what?

Of what? Well, it’s just a picture of what somebody who dies is talking about somebody who have to, you see, they don’t even believe none of that. And I get this. Here are some real torments that hell contains. These are word that God uses in His word to describe what it’s like. Unquenchable fire, memory and remorse, intense, unsatisfied thirst, misery and pain, eternal separation. You see, one of the greatest things that any of us have as our one desire is that we would like to see God, to be with God, the one that created the heavens and the heavens and the heavens, to see God and see actually what he’s like, to be with Him.

Christ died on the cross to pay for the sins of the world, as He says in 1 Peter in chapter 3, that He might bring us to God. He did what it is, He could bring us to God. And so the only reason we have for living in this world is to bring people to God, getting people out of this world into the next world. And you can only do that by the light of the gospel. Men, reserve the last Saturday of the month for the Iron Sharpen’s Iron Men’s Bible Study and Breakfast at Calvary Community Church.

Join us at 730 for a home-cooked breakfast. Then, at 8am, the featured speaker of the month will present a one-hour classroom style men’s Bible study in a relaxed atmosphere where questions and dialogue are welcomed. The scripture tells us that Iron sharpens iron. Did this men’s Bible study is open to those of all levels, whether new believers or mature Christians? The Iron sharpens iron men’s Bible study and breakfast. Don’t miss this monthly opportunity for fellowship and the study of God’s word.

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.