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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. 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 prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us at 813-884-4328, or you can donate on the homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

We’re gonna talk about a little subject here tonight. I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Titus, the book of Titus. And it’s a little easy book, right before another little book, and before you get to Hebrews, you know. So you got Hebrews and Philemon, that’s that little book. If you find Philemon, you ought to find Titus. So the book of Titus in chapter one. And I want you to look there in verse 9.

Now this is just something that you’ve heard me say many times that a lot of times I believe Christians live like they’re an atheist. Christians living like an atheist. And here they are a child of God. They’re going to heaven when they die. And yet they live either like an agnostic or a skeptic or an atheist. So there’s these three different mindsets that I wanted to show you that it can be very offensive to God. So here in the book of Titus, we’re challenged to have sound doctrine.

Sound doctrine comes from sound teaching that comes from sound words. And so that’s why it’s so important to study the book. But in verse nine, it says, holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gain-sayers, which means you’re not going to be able to if you don’t know sound doctrine. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision.

In other words, his telling us there’s a lot of people in this whole world that are very articulate in their position, and they’re able to convince and persuade and to cause people not to be edified but edified. In other words, it destroys instead of builds them up. So he says in verse 11, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, but they’re being successful. And there’s a lot of preachers in this world that are very successful, but not according to what the Word of God says.

They’re able to get a following. And so this is why this is so important. Look, they’re in verse 13. This witness is true. Wherefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. Now, there’s people who know Christ is Savior and get off into wrong teaching. I believe they can have shipwreck in their faith. that’s taught also in the book of Timothy. But he says here in verse 14, but not given he to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn from the truth.

I don’t know the truth, but not grounded as well as they ought to be. And then they’re listening to people who can present their cause. And this is going on a lot. And I’ve noticed a lot of this because of the ministry of the YouTube that we have and people that are making comments and they are taking verses totally out of context, twisting it, and not really even listening to what you’re saying. And so in verse 16, look what he says, that they profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable and disobedient and under every good work reprobate.

No in the Lord, but then acting like a reprobate. People that are totally contrary to what the word of God has to say. So we can know Christ is our Savior, God is our Father, and we’re His children, we’re going to heaven when we die, and then. And then we have this mindset. You see, our minds can be twisted so quickly, so easily. That’s why we have every person to get the Bible, study the Bible. Don’t believe everything the preacher says, except even on right.

But you should believe it because you believe it’s taught in the book. Jesse’s going to be preaching. Don’t believe everything he says. Even he may be right, but you want to believe it because you saw it in the book. And that’s the same thing with every sins school teacher. Learn the word because when you get to heaven, it’s not going to be good enough to say, well Lord, I believe everything Jesse told me. And the Lord says, well, he was wrong.

Now, Yankee, you should have listened to him. No. But you’re going to find out you’re going to be accountable for what you believed. The Bible even tells us that in the Old Testament, the pastors led the people astray. They taught air. The prophets prophesied incorrectly. I have a dream and there was a nightmare. And so these things are important. But look there in your notes now. In your notes, a little question that I wrote down at number one, and it wouldn’t hurt you to write this question down because I didn’t write it in the notes here.

Can a believer live like an agnostic? Now the agnostic without knowledge of God nor seeking to know them, they just consider you can’t know and they don’t know and they’re not trying to seek truth. And it means like without knowledge. They just don’t know. And there’s a lot of people like that and they’re proud they’re agnostic. It means they’re proud they don’t have any knowledge. It’s kind of stupid really. But look at the statement. The natural attitude of a thinking mind toward supernatural is that of skepticism.

Now it’s not wrong and not bad to be a skeptic as long as you’re seeking. See you come to a crossroads the agnostic says you can’t know which way to go but a skeptic wants to find out which way to go. So he tries to get together the right information so he can make a better decision. So a lot of people are skeptical. I’ve witnessed a lot of people who don’t have all the answers and they want some and I can give them a couple little scientific reasons or prophecy and they see it and they can make your right decision.

But most times agnostic all they want to do is just argue they don’t want to know they don’t want to listen but look at the rest of that. The skeptic halts at the crossroads to take his bearing but at the sight of a cross road the agnostic gives up his journey altogether. True skepticism connotes intellectual caution, but agnosticism is intellectual suicide. And so don’t be intimidated by anybody. Somebody asked me this question just today. Are you intimidated? And I said, no, I don’t feel like I’m intimidated by anybody.

In other words, it just is going to speak Sunday night. Okay, and I’m setting him in here. Are you intimidated because I’m sitting in this room? Or you just go ahead and just teach anyway. You don’t worry about me. But sometimes when I have college kids do the wall of illustration for the first time publicly, they were scared to death. They’re intimidated by the other kids that are sitting there and they know that they don’t know anything. And so sometimes whenever I was the dead public speaker, I’d go completely out of the room just so that they can talk freely.

because sometimes they run to that page, here I am, and I’ve got Bob Gilbert and Bob Brooks. Man, I hate to get y’all mixed up. You don’t look like each other at all. And so, but I don’t get intimidated, I don’t get intimidated because look who they are. Oh, I gotta be real careful here because Bob Gilbert, he knows the Hebrew and the Greek. I’ll bet you right now he’s got his little thing out, and he’s looking at the Hebrew and the Greek on me.

Now, I don’t know if he does or not, I’ll never ask him. But you’ve got to watch, you don’t get intimidated by people. Know what you believe and learn how to defend your belief. Now look at the next statement. A professor, Alexander Stewart says, the name by which those designate their position who do not deny the existence of God, the future world, and other doctrines of religion, but declare that we do not and cannot know anything about these subjects, and that’s the way some people are.

And that’s why sometimes you can live like an agnostic. I don’t know and nobody does. If you witnessed anybody and says, do you know where you’re going to die? I don’t know and nobody knows. And they don’t even want to talk about it. Nobody knows. You can’t know. And then you have some people that are skeptical. And you can give them a few little things and that makes it clear and they can trust Christ as their Savior. But can a Christian live like a skeptic?

In other words, you’re always struggling. Every time you turn around, can you trust God? Is God going to come through? Can I take God at His Word? Can I really trust Him? And you have a few successful past experiences. And lo and behold, you get to where you can grow in your faith and you can trust the Lord more. But there are a lot of Christians are very skeptical about what is the will of God now for my life?

What is God’s will for my life? Well, you can’t know the will of God. And then there’s other people who say, yes, you can. and so they’ll read and study what the word of God says, and learn the word of God. Look at letters C there. Such a halfway position with atheism on one side denying the very existence of God, and skepticism on the other side, endeavoring to find the way is surely only possible to those who refuse to know and are willfully blind.

Now, one can have much patience with the honest daughter. The man with sincere intellectual difficulties who is willing to make use of even a rush like if it will but lead him in the way of truth. But no amount of argument will avail for one who deliberately rejects his agnosticism is with him a creed, a creed of illogical ignorance. And I can say this, there’s a lot of those right now and you’ll hear them on the news. Totally illogical.

They can’t reason because they don’t wanna know the truth, they don’t wanna hear what the facts are. their mind is already made up because they’ve got a creed, they’ve got an ideology and nothing else matters. And some people are so bad, they’ll hate Trump and they can’t even tell you why. But if it’s going to help Trump or be in favor of anything that he says or does, it might be right, they’ve got to deny it, find something wrong.

But there’s a lot of people that do that in a lot of ways sometimes. Look at the next statement, the atheist. Now the atheist is supposed to be somebody who doesn’t believe that there’s a God. So there is a religion for atheist and the religion of the atheist is very simple, it’s evolution. Evolution is man’s way of arriving in this world. If there is no God, there is no Creator. no creator, there can be no creation. If there’s no creation, then everything had to evolve.

So then you can use reasoning and logic with them if you choose to do so. So that becomes very interesting. Look at the statement here. The atheist will usually try to put you on the defense by saying something like, I don’t believe in God. Prove to me that there is a God. Now, these are some of my notes that I’ve used for 50 years. Prove to me there is a God. I said, no, no, no, no. You proved to me there is no God.

Why should I prove you that there is a God? You proved that there is no God. And it’s amazing how that atheism has to be taught. You’re not born as an atheist. That comes by the process of education, listening, and rebelling against reveal light, because the world itself is an evidence. People are evidence. And there’s evidence everywhere, and evidence is light. It’s knowledge. And if you accept the light, the evidence that God has put in this world, then you can come up with the conclusion there, there’s got to be somebody that made this.

The cause the world is here. Now either somebody made it or it made itself. And if it made itself, that’s illogical. That’s illogical. Have you ever seen something make itself? You’ve never seen it happen. So why would you believe it now? And so you have a position that you can take and put them on the defense. You You proved that there is no God. And so I told a guy, I want to hate to ask, told me that he didn’t believe in God.

I said, well, that sounds very intelligent. I said, can I ask you a couple of questions? Sure. I said, before you came to this conclusion, you had to base it upon some kind of evidence. Oh, yeah, intelligent he was. I says, if you say there is no God, then you should be able to prove that there is no God. So do you know everything that there is to know in the whole world? I said, no man knows that. If there’s anything that you don’t know, it could be the knowledge of God, right?

I said, have you ever been everywhere in the whole world, all at the same time? Because you can’t just go over here behind this planet. He’s not here. Run on this out of the moon. He could have been moving over there. I said, you have to have the ability to be everywhere all at the same time. Have you done that? Well, of course, I already know the answer. No, he’s not done that. And so he hasn’t been everywhere. He doesn’t know everything.

So he cannot prove that God does not exist. Now look at the next statement down here. This puts him on the defense, plus gives you an opportunity to find what his particular problem might be. He will have to admit, if he is honest, that he cannot prove there is no God. By getting him to think, he may realize that he is just believing that God does not exist because somebody he admires believes that way. You can ask Him how He arrived at His conclusion, inductive or deductive.

You see, you can get all the information and then come up with a conclusion based upon the evidence. Or you can come up with a theory and then try to find a way to prove it. And that will make you think, well, they’ve done that. They haven’t done either one. That’s why evolution was used to be called what? A theory. In other words, it could have, it may be, but there’s no facts, it’s not scientific. That’s even an issue that’s going on right now in the newspapers.

I don’t know if y’all have seen that, but there’s an issue. But anyway, look at letter B. You can explain your faith to be based upon evidence which show beyond any reasonable doubt that God does exist. And here’s a few arguments that I’ve used. And I would usually always like to cover these things like in a ranch meeting, in a casual way, kids sitting there and you can say certain things. And with the kids I hardly ever used any notes and things like that, because I already knew what I wanted to say and just to say it.

But get these certain points here. But can a Christian, a Christian live like an atheist, to where you live your life as though God is dead that you really don’t know the Lord and you don’t really trust the Lord. It’s like you can trust Christ to save you, have He turn life, you’re going to have Him to die, but you really don’t know Him. You don’t know Him and you don’t know what He’s like. I’d want to know what my Heavenly Father is like.

I studied God’s Word enough. I want to know how He thinks. And the Bible is God’s love letter to his children. So as we study God’s love letter to his children, I learn a lot about God. But remember, God the Father is revealed in God the Son. So as you study about the Son, He reveals the Father. And you’ll learn a lot about God that way. Now, the next little bullet point there under letter B, in a court of law, the jury does not have to see a crime committed.

only be shown beyond any reasonable doubt that it was committed by the accused in order to convict. I don’t have to see God just the evidence. Now I’ve mentioned this before in church. Everybody knows that when I lived in Colorado, 18 out of 20 years, I went to El Cotton and looking for mule deer. Now mule deer was big and the deer, you know, in the south is like a little, like a little don-nice dog. I’m not gonna bother.

Big deer. Muteed big ears. And an elk is big as a horse. And I enjoy getting in the mountains about 10 to 14 days every year for all of you and go hunting. I get up in those mountains all by myself. And once in a while, I would bring my, that my two boys go in sometime, one time I think, a couple of times maybe train to go with me. And Betty would also sometime not have her, and I said, keep your eyes peeled.

And she says, you tell me that one more time. Keep your eyes peeled, keep your eyes peeled. What does that mean? Keep looking for an elk or a deer. And so I would get up and if I could find some deer tracks or some signs where they had made a deposit, I could like to know is it hard, is it warm, is it soft and tracks. If I saw the deer tracks or an elk track, I would know. I don’t see the elk, I don’t see the deer, but I see the evidence.

Now I can deny the evidence there’s no animals ever been here. Well, I don’t try to get there. It just happened. No, I don’t think it just happened. No, I believe everything that I see. Whether it’s the stars, the sun, the moon, the people, everything, tree, I didn’t make it. Did you make it? If you didn’t make it, did it make itself? Isn’t it amazing how ever trees, grass, people, animals all have within itself the power of reproduction? fruit bearing seeds.

In other words, everything reproduces after it’s going to come. What if nothing had within it the power to reproduce? When it died, that was the end of that one. That’s the end of that one. The end of that one. All the people would be dead because we couldn’t reproduce. But it isn’t amazing. Everything can reproduce after its own kind. Do you know that’s actually in the Bible? They reproduce after their own kind, after their own kind. of their own kind.

Well there’s animals, sea, crawling bugs, mosquitoes. I don’t know why I know I ever took two mosquitoes on the ark. Out of swadd one of them, that would have took care of that. It would not have been a good decision to me. But anyway, down here at the bottom, one we call it the cosmological argument. That’s the same principle that we have the day learning that there’s a cause. And another scripture that we often talk about is in the book of Galatians in chapter 6 where it says, we read what we want.

So there is a cause. And when it comes to this world, there is a cause and a faith. How did that pain get there? Cause I put it there. How did it get there? Cause I put it there. In life there is a cause and effect. I had a wreck. Why? Well cause I wasn’t watching. There’s a cause and effect and that’s cosmological. It’s an argument that you can use. The world is here. Something caused it. So we often go back to what was the first cause.

If this was caused by this, and this was caused by this, and this was caused by this, well if you go back to the very beginning, whatever was in the beginning could not have been created are done because of a cause. Because if God was made by something, then whoever made him, well who made him and who made him and who made him. So that’s why God is the beginning. God has always been. God did not have a cause.

There was no reason, nothing that created God. That’s why in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But people think they got you because you see you got it. Who made God? You said God. Who made God? God was has to be self-sufficient. He has no beginning and he has no ending. It’s hard for me to believe that we will always be. But it’s just as difficult to think that we have always been or God has always been.

I think that just blows my mind. All right, look at page two. We call it the first mover. Nothing could be in motion now unless there was first a self-moving one. You and I need to learn from what God’s Word has to say. God told us to pray, cause, He will answer. So if I do this, it can cause this. If I serve the Lord, it can cause this. So there is a cause and effect. But when you get to the place where you don’t think anything’s worth living for, then you annihilate the will of God for your life or the purpose of God in your because God doesn’t have a purpose for me.

I don’t have a reason to live. There’s no purpose for my life. I have no value. Look at yourself the way God sees you. Don’t look at yourself as though there is no God. You are God’s child, you are important, you do have value, and God can do things and work in your life. That’s why if I know I walk with God, it’s going to cause something. It’s going to cause me to have greater peace and love and joy and happiness.

I’m going to have better purpose in my life. I know God’s going to bless me. And I know that when I get to heaven, I’m going to have rewards that God’s going to give to me. So there’s a cause and effect. So when you understand it, it can help you in your Christian life. Now look at the next statement. It’s called teleological argument, the argument of design. In other words, here is my watch. Where did my watch come from?

You say, well, somebody made it. No, no, no, no, no, no. It made itself. Would you believe it made itself? You really believe it made itself? Well, you see, the other day I was riding on a highway and there’s this beautiful mansion. And you would think, well, somebody made that. No, no, no, it didn’t make itself. You see, the other day it was just plain piece of land there. I came driving by there and I saw dirt just kicking itself out out of the ground.

The next day I came driving by there and there was concrete blocks and coming up and down the road and they jumped. I don’t talk to each other and submit. No plan, no purpose. The next thing you know, there’s walls going up and there was doors and there’s windows. And there’s a roof. And you would think, there’s a design to this. So a design must mean, and that’s why you’ll find in the book of Hebrews, in chapter three, where it makes the statement, every house is built by some man.

Somebody did that. And so there’s evidence. So you and I are supposed to know that there is a evidence of a God because there is a design. When you study about the earth itself, look what we have here. The universe has an order and design to it that indicates the fact that there is a God, one who designed it all. If the earth rotated any slower than 24 hours per cycle, approximately 1000 miles an hour, one side would have its vegetation burned while the other side would be freezing.

If the earth was any larger, there would be too much free oxygen, hydrogen in the air. If smaller, we would not have sufficient atmosphere for life. If the moon were closer, ties would increase, cause and floods and continual hurricanes and erosion, why is it that ice rises to the top and doesn’t fall to the bottom? Eventually freezing all water and killing all fish. There’s a lot of things in this world scientifically, we know, that if it wasn’t the way it is, it couldn’t exist.

If life was any different upon this planet, if it was bigger, be too much weight, probably thrown it off in space. If it was a smaller size than way less, it might be sucked right into the sun. We’re in a perfect place to keep perfect time just like a Swiss watch. No, this was made. And if evolution was treated through, let’s take this watch, put all the pieces on the top of the table. How long will we have to watch before these pieces will come together all by itself, without any plan, without any design, without any outside force, and watch all of it happen?

How long will we have to wait? Because of the second law of thermodynamics, the atmosphere itself will take its toll upon every one of those pieces and it’s going to destroy. It corrupts, it goes downhill, decays. The world isn’t getting better and better and better and better and it gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message.

If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing 813-884-4328. That’s 813-884-4328. To listen to today’s message again, or to obtain a free download of any of our Bible line programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the radio broadcast link. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634.

Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030, and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcasts of our services may be seen by clicking the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound, and we will be changed. Cut up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, and just keep looking up.