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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.

This may be a little bit of a tough sermon for today, But I do want you to hear the whole thing, so don’t turn me off in your mind. Listen to everything that I’ve got to say, because some of it is going to be a little bit, maybe on the difficult side. And you may have a few little bloody toes here and there, but you can handle this. You come to church because you want to hear the truth, and I have all intentions of doing just that, telling you what I believe the Bible has to say.

And it affects our lives. We’re living in a time right now in America where there’s a lot of things that are being said, and some people are just waiting for some crisis so they can jump on it to take away more of our freedoms from us. And we have to be careful. Every time Congress is in session, our liberties are at stake. I like that statement. I need to write that down. So spiritual wickedness in high places. That’s the title of today’s message, spiritual wickedness in high places.

I believe that all problems stems from spiritual negligence, not doing what God says do produces a lot of problems in our society. Whether it’s with an individual, the family, the church, the nation, the whole world, I believe God has given to us things that will work and things that are ideal, but we have left the ideal. left the Word of God. Some people want to progress into the future and I’m saying get back to the old paths the way that it works instead of experimenting with life and experimenting with people.

In the book of Ephesians in chapter 6 I want you to notice there in verse 10. We’re going to read these three verses. Three verses here are very important because it’s dealing with that which is behind the scenes and God says here in verse 10, finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord unless you’re a teenager. Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord unless you’re an adult and you want to go your own way, it doesn’t apply to you.

Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Our nation is not strong spiritually. Our churches are not strong spiritually and our families are not strong spiritually and most individuals are not strong spiritually. We are governed by the flesh, governed by the flesh. That old sinful nature that we have. And there’s only one thing that can curb the old sinful nature. It’s a new one and it’s not more laws. But anyway, looking verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Remember the devil is a liar, he’s a murder, he’s everything that we don’t want to be. But if he teases enough people his ways that this world will be just like the devil wants it to be. In verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. In other words, there’s another world being lived at the same time hours as going on.

And I believe the devil is busy as he can be. And he’s got little demons and he’s working for them. And there’s a good possibility some of his little demons came to church this morning. Some of you may have brought them. Somebody said, well, is the Lord at Calvary Community Church? He sure is. I brought him. And if you have trusted Christ as your Savior, He entwels you, you brought him too. But it would be great if we could just take and check the old sinful nature at the door.

And if we could do that and come in here and know old sinful nature, when we left everybody to pick theirs up and go back to business, so we have to be careful. But there is damage going on in this country. Now I want you to look at what I consider some of America’s problems. Our political leaders have promoted a perfect environment for the destruction of our homes, our teenagers, and our country. Now you may not agree with everything I’m going to say.

That’s okay, that’s right. Not everybody’s right. Not everybody agrees with me, even though when I’m right. But our country has been designed to get to the place where we are today. There’s decisions that people have made to get us to where we are in our country. And I’m not that old of a guide that I can’t remember when, you know, when you went to school, So the worst thing that we did was playing marbles, what class is going on or chewing gum, or coming in late to the class.

Then once in a while I would play hooky, but today people are killing each other. We didn’t do that. And you didn’t have to worry about that. But anyway, I want you to look at some of these things on here. Number one, can we truly raise Godly children without God, prayer, and loving parents. God designed the family. And he says, this is what I want you to know. You gotta know me, and I want you to husband wife, I want you to love each other.

Because the kids, they can’t see God. They see mom and dad. And when they see mom and dad, mom and dad is supposed to be a representative of God, of what God is like. And in most homes, they’re already split. Most homes are not godly homes, and the kids don’t have a good image of what is God like. Because the homes should be a little heaven on earth. You’d be surprised how many kids today are coming from broken homes.

Some of them they broke. But there’s all kinds of things that are going on and the kids live in, they don’t have a good mother or father to raise their kids the way they should be raised. They’re not being taught the right things. But number two, are our teenagers pleading for Hannity’s schools or for fewer guns? And today they’re all hollering for we’ve got to have safety and protection and so therefore we don’t want nobody having these guns. They’ll outlaw these guns.

Our government cannot protect us. And in most cases they don’t. If you don’t know how to protect yourself, you could be in a heap of trouble. But there’s laws to take away the freedom of so many of God’s people because one nut can do something bad. So why do the teenagers want to kill the teenagers? Isn’t that a better question than just taking away the guns? Why did they want to do that? In my day, we didn’t want to do it because there’s an environment that’s been set by by people that are infiltrating the kids’ mind where they don’t know what holiness is or godliness is or righteousness is or morality, they don’t know where’s right and wrong or how to control their old sinful nature.

They donarijuana the consequences of disobedience and the punishment that should be there because we’ve not allowed parents to correct their kids anymore. They live under the threat, will take your kids away from you. You can’t spank your kids anymore, you can’t do this anymore, child abuse. But if you just saw my mom and dad when they got through with me, you’d have put him under the jail. And that’s not a joke, and I’m telling you the truth. But I didn’t die, but I’ll tell you this.

I respected my mom and my dad. I never back-talked my parents one time, never. I was scared to death, because I knew what my daddy would do to me. I didn’t want to sit close to him, Because I knew the consequences that if I just looked cross-eyed it, if I looked funny, sounded funny. There’s a price to pay, bud. You show that’s no way to raise kids. No, he didn’t know the Lord. And most parents back in those days had a little bit more discipline than some Christian parents do today.

Some of the lost people had higher standards of morality than Christians do today. Anyway, y’all get me side-tracked. Now, I don’t want that to happen. Look at number three. Do we really believe the Democrats and many Republicans want safety for our teens and schools but will not lift one finger to stop the murder of babies in the womb? Think of how many kids are murdered every day, thousands are murdered every day and nobody cares whether they are murdered or not.

But if 17 get killed, that is a crisis to jump on and pass some laws because it fits into the agenda. I’m concerned about why somebody wants to do this and how do you curb the real problem? Our politicians have kept on until they have created a perfect environment for the destruction of our country. Our politicians, not more laws, you need to look in a mirror.

They represent the people, the adults in this country. Number four, are we more concerned for the 17 young people that died recently than the 10 millions that will be slaughtered if we surrender our guns? Do you realize that some of these other countries, when they take away all their guns and what happens, is eventually the government totally controls everybody in that whole country is one gigantic prison and they have no rights. That’s where we’re headed because there are people in our place of government that are communist and listen to me many of that are in the Democratic Party are communist and therefore the destruction of our way of life.

If all the teenagers across America protested our government to put, what if they just come out and says, we want God, we want God in our schools? Do you think the Democrats and Republicans jump on board? That’s a bandwagon. We need to put God in our schools. Remember politicians that took it out. We want Bible in our schools. Why don’t these kids have enough morality to say it’s not the guns, that’s not the problem. It’s a solution when you have God in the Bible in prayer in your schools.

Remember they didn’t want that. They didn’t want God. Somebody said, well I didn’t God stop all of that. God wasn’t allowed in the school. But what if the kids came out and says, we want prayer in our schools? That’s against the law. We want the Bible in our… or then that’s against the law. We want God in our… that’s against the law. We have Him there. We can’t have Him in government. And many parents today don’t have God in their life and they don’t have Him in their family.

You may know Christ as your Savior and live like an atheist. Many people do. The next statement, natural causes for our national destruction. Number one, God, prayer and the Bible are not acceptable in our schools. There’s a problem because you can’t teach morality. What’s morality? What’s right and wrong. What no, world’s a school for if not to teach what’s right and wrong. You say you can’t legislate morality. What you’re gonna legislate in morality? Number two, abortion is now acceptable in America.

Stop and think, does that violate thou shalt not kill? Homosexual behavior is acceptable and now people want to bend over back to show how open-minded they are. Well this preacher is close-minded. Homosexuality is a sin against nature, a sin against the home, it’s a sin against the individual, it’s a sin against God. And no, I do not apologize for saying it. It is a wicked, wicked thing. Men with men, women with women. And if they can accept it, then so can the teenagers accept it.

And we’re losing our country because we don’t have enough dulce. We need a revival in in this country, a spiritual revival. But we’re getting further and further away from truth and now people don’t wanna hear the truth. Just pass more laws. Passing more laws doesn’t solve the problem. We created this problem. Adultery is acceptable behavior. Can you believe that? Adultery, isn’t there a law against adultery? Isn’t there a law in the Bible says thou shalt not commit adultery? Is it in there or not?

Adultery is a sin. Adultery is wrong. Men and women living together and not married. Is it writers at wrong? According to God is wrong and you can’t pass a law, that won’t make it right. But it’s acceptable behavior. There’s no shame anymore. I remember when teenage girls used to blush. I remember when adults used to blush. ashamed because of something that was done that you knew it was wrong. Teenagers, college age sex is acceptable. Where do you think goes on with a lot of these spring breaks?

Teenagers and college age kids, let’s just play in paddy cake. And now, who wants to get married? Just do whatever you want to do. Everybody does. It’s acceptable. Should it be acceptable? And now see, there’s pressure upon churches not to say anything because you know, if you hit stuff like this, you’re going to lose a lot of people in your church. Then let me lose them. But I’m not compromising it. Either I’m going to say this Bible is true and believe it in preaching or take the thing and throw it in a trash.

Go live however you want to. live. But I’m not dead yet. I’m getting close, but I’m not dead yet. There is still such a thing as right and there’s wrong. And the laws of our country can’t make what God says a sin acceptable in society. Doesn’t matter how many people are for something. If it’s wrong, it’s still wrong.

Now let’s look at the other part here. It’s a little bit softer. The source of America’s problem. What’s the source? Where does it come from? Why are we like this? Well, I want you to take your Bible looking Jeremiahpositive. Jeremiah, all the way back there in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 17, and you need to look at it. I know you got the Bible committed to memory, but just look at it in your way. It makes me think you’re following the preacher’s advice.

But notice there in Jeremiah chapter 17 and verse 5. We don’t want to read from verse 5 to verse 10. Thus saith the Lord, cursed be the man that trusted in man and make it flesh his arm and whose heart departed from the Lord, for he shall be like the heath in the desert and shall not see when good cometh, and shall inhabit the parts places in the wilderness, in a salt land, and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusted in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is, for he shall be as a tree, planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when he cometh.

But her leave shall be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yield in fruit. The heart here, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it? That old sinful nature that you have dwelled within you,-, it is deceitful, it lies to you, it deceives you. Say, who has one like that? You and me. We have an old sinful nature and this is the way we are.

Now, notice what he says in verse 10, I, the Lord, searches the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doing. In other words, you reap what you sow. America will reap what it sows. We cannot magnify the sins that God has condemned in our nation without paying a great price for it. God is going to judge America, or he owes Solomon Gamara an apology. But we have cities in our country that are just as wicked as Solomon Gamara is in the Bible, and God destroyed them.

So we’re gonna see a lot of things happen. Whenever they came out a couple years ago, I think it might have been that, when about 49 or something people over here in Orlando died. Some guy, I guess you just shot, killed that many people. And how terrible it was, is it because they were homosexuals? Or what? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I know this. If I saw a place for it, they shouldn’t have been there. To this day, I’ve never been, I don’t go to bars and drink.

That’s not my hangout. I don’t have friends. You know, there’s some people that got their Christian friends, then they had their other friends. I got Christian friends. I don’t have the other kind of. Because you cannot rise above the level of your friends. You’ve got to take and pick wisely, choose wisely the companions, the friends that you have. Kids need to learn how to pick wise friends, the people that they hang around, the ones they want to be like.

But I want you to see this. Look down in your notes. In Galatians chapter 5, now the works of the flesh are manifest which are these and it names all of these things. And we’re not going to go through those right there. I would just take and turn your page over and look at page 2. On the back because these are words that are used in the Bible and you need to know what does these words mean. This is that old sinful nature that we have and this is why people do these things.

It’s not because they’re right, it’s because people have a sinful nature and they want to sin. The reason people commit adultery because they want to. The reason people lies because they want to. The reason people still because they want to. It’s your nature. It’s a sinful nature and more laws doesn’t curb these because there are laws against these things. You ever heard that God put some laws down? Look there in the middle of that page, the solution for America’s problems.

There’s a couple of these others I’ll go back to in just a minute. These laws are already on the book. Thou shalt not kill. Does it matter how? Well, a guy did it with a gun. Another one did it with a truck. One did it with a car. None had a vest on. I know some women that done it with their food. Whatever it is, you can kill a thousand ways. You don’t have to have a law against every one of those ways that we kill.

There is a verse in the Bible and there are laws in the land, thou shall not commit murder, not shall not kill, you shouldn’t do it.” Well, he used a hand gun, well, he used a rubber band. He used a sling. He did this. He did a knife. Well, she’d yap him with a fork. And you can have all the laws. But you see, there is a move on in this country to disarm America. And it’s more sinister than you just think, well, they just want to protect the kids.

No, they don’t want to protect the kids. has nothing to do with kids. The best way to protect those kids is to teach them about God. Tell them the truth about who they are and what they are. But no, we’ve turned over our educational system to the humanist so that they can tell our kids that there is no God. There’s no heaven and there’s no hell. You’re just the highest form of an animal. Sex is all right. And they’ll even teach the kids how to do it and supply them with all the condoms they want.

And I was growing up, you never mentioned words like that. You didn’t even say it. And you know I’m telling you the truth. Look at the top of the page. The word adultery, violation of the marriage bed, a crime or a civil injury which introduces or may introduce into a family as spurious offspring. It’s wrong. I’ve seen so many young people today, and so many are having kids, and no husband committed.

Having babies and no husband. Oh, they got a father. But why in the world? Either it was rape, or if it was willingly. You ought to know who the daddy is. He ought to take responsibility to take care of that kid and not get on welfare. It wasn’t the rest of us. It wasn’t our fault because you didn’t say no, but the top of the parent. The word fornication, the incontinence, or lewdness of unmarried persons, male or female. Sex outside of marriage is wrong, whether you’re married or whether you’re single.

You can’t make it right. A man’s not to touch a woman until they’re married. And vice versa. And women with women is wrong and it’s sinful. And some of you need to make sure stop watching pornography and things like that. You see something comes on the TV, turn the channel. The next little word I want you to see, there’s a word called hatred. Great dislike or aversion to hate, emity, it may spring from all springs or offenses or injuries done by fellow men or from envy or jealousy.

Hate, hate, hate. Have you ever noticed how much in the newsmen is of people trying to get everybody to hate everybody? I want you to hate that which God hates, which is the sin. People are not hating sin. They’re turning against good people who are doing right and trying to take away their liberties and their rights. Christians are being marginalized. You’re no good and discriminating against them. And the homosexual is glorified. People living in sin, that’s great. Everybody does that, but when you have a person trace a stand and say, well, that’s wrong.

Oh, you’re the one that’s out of place. And the Bible says that they will come, as it says in the book of Isaiah, the children will lead the home, children. We’re almost to the place where the children, the teenagers, most of them will get where they can’t wait to vote and they’ll straighten out this country. They’ll take care of all of those established people that are holding this back from having our fun and doing what we want. Can you imagine what will be in this country when that power that’s coming up is going to be unleashed upon this country and they do not-, have the wisdom of God?

They can’t even take care of themselves. It’s amazing. Now, look at the next statement. Down here at these laws, these laws are already on the books. Thou shalt not kill. Don’t we have a law? There’s a law. Is killing wrong? Is murder wrong? Is it wrong? It’s wrong. And it’s not to be. Number two, thou shalt not commit adultery. Is it right or is it wrong? You see, you form your view, not from the lust of the flesh, not from your own nature.

Well, what I think is, whoa, whoa, whoa, what did God say? Your opinion is like armpits. Everybody got them. They all stink. What does God say? Well, God says it’s wrong. Then that’s it. You’re closed. Decisions made. It is wrong. And it will destroy. Does people do it? Yes, people do everything. Does people lie? Yeah, people lie. But there’s consequences. But we bring it upon ourselves. Learn to have a higher standard for yourself. Now, look at this. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness.

Now let’s take a look at the parents’ responsibility. Parents can’t teach what they don’t know. Parents can’t teach what they don’t know. So this is how God had to start all over again. He took about two million people out of Egypt and brought him into the wilderness and gave them his law. He gave them the word. The moral law, the civil law, the sacrificial law. He gave it to them. Moses was supposed to teach him. Now take your Bible and look there in the book of Deuteronomy in chapter 6.

Look how God solved the problem or was attempting to solve the problem and if people did what God says, dude, the problem solved. If they don’t, he’s going to have to chase in the discipline. But you’ll notice there in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6, chapter six and look in verse one. Now these are the commandments, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you. Now this is for the adults to learn and adults need to start wherever they are and start learning.

This is what they had to do. He says that you might do them in the land whether you go to possess it, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life that thy days may be prolonged. Here, therefore, O Israel, and observe, to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that you may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy father hath promised thee, and the land which floweth with milk and honey, God promised all kinds of good stuff.

He says, now, here’s my word. And if you’ll do what I’m telling you to do on how to live, it’ll prolong your days and it’ll go well with you. Well this is what most people want in the country, but we’re getting to where we tolerate sin. We magnify the sin. And it won’t work that way. We’re violating God’s word. 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 Mail.

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