Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P579 (10-15-20)
Synopsis
The older you get, you will be at a funeral of a mother or father or close friend. That is a part of life. That was not God’s design for people to die. That came about when the first created beings sinned, and so sin and death entered the world.
But, God, out of His deep love for us, provided a solution so that we can be raised to new life in Him. If you grasp the depth of His love for you, of His taking away your cause of death, called sin, then you can appreciate the cross. For you realize how depraved and hopeless you are, and have come to grips that not only are you a sinner, but you are separated from your creator, who loves you so much. When you realize He died to take away your sins, and then rose again so you can freely come to Him, to receive new life, His life you were unable to live. You accept the life in Christ Jesus that is full of joy and peace and patience and kindness. You respond to that and receive Him, His life. For this is eternal life, to know God and His Son Jesus Christ.
So this life is such a short time on earth, but in Christ you live forever, where there is no more death, sorrow and pain and you shall be changed, for you will see Jesus as He really is. You will be reunited with loved ones, who are in Christ, who have gone on before you. So we have this hope, that we hold onto, that the things of this earth seem strangely dim.
So listen as Bob encourages believers in this faith, hope and love in Christ Jesus. Yes, while in this weak and fallen flesh of ours, that continually needs a renewing of the mind, we are with Christ, and we will have a new and glorified body, not plagued by indwelling sin in our flesh. But we overcome the flesh by faith, for that is what keeps us dependent on Him, who is our life.
We are designed to be totally dependent on Christ, through His Spirit living in us, for that is how we were designed to be made. We have been made complete in Christ. God in the man is indispensable to the proper functioning of the man. And when you grasp the depth of God’s love for you, when you realize what Christ accomplished for you, then you respond to Him and experience that love.
2 Timothy 3:12-14
12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
Yes, we know in this world, that things will continually get worse, but God tells us when you see these beginning to happen (Matthew 24), look up, for your redemption draws near. Yes, wide is the road to destruction, and narrow is the way to life, and few find it. So, I urge you to come to Christ for life, as a great falling away that Jesus said will come. Jesus warned us ahead of time, to let no man deceive you. There will be a time of great delusion where the ability to find and grab a hold of truth will be so much harder. The god of this world, or Satan, has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Transcript
Francisco from El Cerito, CA
Francisco: I listen to Christian music and Christian preaching on different stations on the air. The question came up. One of the callers asked, “Will Christians have their memory intact when they go on with the Lord?” He said, “no”. He referred to Isaiah 65:17. But I was under the impression you would have your memory in the Lord because the beggar and the rich man had memory. So that is my question.
Isaiah 65:17
“See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
Luke 16:22-23
22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
Bob: All that I can say to that, Francisco, is if we have a memory of what we did down here on earth while in heaven it would cease to be heaven. There is nothing on this earth worth remembering. I think one of the reasons is being a new creation and leaving this body of flesh of ours, and all of that goes into the ground.
1 Corinthians 15:50
50 I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Bob: Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. Nothing we got from mom and dad will inherit the kingdom of God.We will get a glorified body that has nothing to do with anything down here. It has everything to do with what God gave us. We will be in the presence of God and be totally preoccupied with God and will not be thinking one earthly thing of what is taking place down here.
Francisco: I was not referring to events that are past events. You do not want to remember these things anyway. I was just thinking about loved ones that went on to be with the Lord. You mother who died in the Lord, and she is in heaven.
Bob: They will be in heaven. You will not have to be thinking about them down here.
Francisco: But you will recognize them when you go on to be with the Lord?
Bob: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Francisco: That is what I was referring to. No sense in finding your mother if you do not remember who she is.
(Laughing)
Francisco: Our loved ones who have gone on with the Lord, we will know them?
Bob: It says that. We will be known.
Francisco: I have a very good friend of mine, who knows the Lord, who was brought up in drugs, fornication and homosexuality. That was about 20 years ago. He gave up all that drinking and partying and cursing. He loves the Lord and goes to church and God blessed him with a beautiful family. But one thing he asked me, “God delivered me from all this, but I can never get rid of the cigarettes ”. He says he cannot pray or read the bible because he thinks that his habit is hindering his relationship with God.
Bob: He is not functioning under grace. He is functioning under law. I can say without question that a person who is functioning under the law, he might say he loves God, but I do not believe it. It is not that we love God but that God loved us first. If we do not understand the unconditional love of God, then how can we love Him back? Now if you say that you cannot pray because God has turned His back on him, then that is not unconditional love, is it? That is conditional love. How can you know unconditional love, that God loves you, if you put conditions on it? Therefore, how are you going to love Him back? So what you have is a stupid habit. To say you cannot quit is utter nonsense.
Bob: Before I got saved, I smoked like a furnace, and I did not have the Holy Spirit in me. I just made up my mind I had enough and I quit. If you are a Christian and are still smoking that stuff, then you need to put it down. Smoking is not a testimony of Christ. So what you are saying is you love cigarettes more than a testimony for Christ. In a church setting, you hide those things. But you cannot hide it. You can smell it. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. Would you go into a church building and smoke a cigarette? No, goodness no. Yet, you are not thinking of not lighting up in the real church, but would not dare to light up in a man-made building we make. Those kinds of things have no place in a Christian experience. If you are a Christian, put that stuff aside and ask God to give you enough discipline to do what is necessary to quit a habit that is offensive not only to lost people but saved people as well. That is, if you want to have a true opportunity and witness into the lives of others. Does that mean you cannot pray? Of course not. Does it mean you cannot go to church or study the bible? No. It just means you are stuck in a habit you are having difficulty getting out of. But I can tell you from experience, if you can get out of it if you just follow a few simple steps and it may be difficult for the first two or three days, but after that you can get through it. The key is, do you want to?
DW from San Anna, CA
DW: Thanks for being there, Bob.
Bob: You are welcome.
DW: If we are connected to Christ by faith, when we sin are we living by faith?
Bob: Not at that moment. In other words, sin is denying the truth of God and believing the lie. That is the root of all sin. That is why when we do things we are always confessing, and trying to get the fruit cleaned up instead of going to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is I was not trusting Jesus. That is where you get down to the root of it. “Lord, I do not want to be living in unbelief in all things. In this area, that is obviously what I was doing. So continue to renew my mind.” That is where you hear the words of God, “Come let us reason together. Let us work this thing out.” Until your attitude is changed toward that sin, nothing is going to matter. You can put a person in jail, and quite frankly, living a lot of these sins, but until the heart is changed, nothing is changed.
DW: But we are going to keep sinning, right Bob?
Bob: I jokingly tell people if you want to quit sinning, pray for death.
DW: How can that be if the only time we are not going to sin is when we are gone?
Bob: But that is true, isn’t it? Have you ever stopped sinning?
DW: No.
Bob: And I haven’t either.
Bob: The issue is when Jesus took away the sins of the world, he took them away from the eyes of God. He did not take sins away from you. He took them away from the eyes of God so He does not see them any more. God is not dealing with you on the basis of sin today but on the basis of a new life. The sin issue has been settled. The unpardonable sin of the rejection of Christ Jesus has been settled. You are now a believer. Now as a believer you are in a lifelong process of being conformed into the image of Christ.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Bob: Quite frankly, DW, if you never sinned you would forget Jesus in a New York minute. That is why Paul says to rejoice in your weakness. It is in your weakness that God’s strength becomes manifest. If I never sinned, I know how we are as humans. We would forget Christ. When I realize my weakness is when I depend on Him for His strength. When I realize, “Lord, I can’t”, that is when I am going to depend upon Him who can. Even though it seems like it is just a terrible thing we have to live with. There is a sense in which God could have saved us and eliminated the sin nature within us. He did not do so for a reason. I think the reason that is, is what keeps us dependent upon Christ. So do not get preoccupied with your failures. Your failures have been put on the back of God never to be seen again. What God wants to deal with you now on is the basis of a new life.
1 Corinthians 10:23
23 “I have the right to do anything,” you say – but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything” – but not everything is constructive.
Bob: That is our decision making process. Is it permissible? Yes, it is. Can I go out tonight and get drunk tonight as a born again believer? Absolutely. Is it permissible? Yes. Is it profitable? Is it constructive? It would be the dumbest thing I would ever want to do. That is the decision making process. If it was’t permissible, it would be the law and the power of sin is in the law, making me want to go do it.
1 Corinthians 15:56
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Bob: Yes, I can go do it if I wanted to, but it would be the dumbest thing in the world for me. It is not profitable.
DW: So when we regret our sins, we are not living in faith. Once the regret is over, we are back in faith?
Bob: You are never out of faith if you are in Christ Jesus. There is no such thing as being out of faith, it is just in a particular issue of life when you believed a lie of Satan and started denying the truth of God. When that occurs, the Holy Spirit is there, saying, “DW, what do you think about what you just did?” “It was really stupid, wasn’it Lord?” “Yes, it was. Why did you do it?” He forces us in reasoning together to go down to say, “the reason I did it is because I was believing the lie of the flesh instead of you”. “Now you got it. Now let us come to reason together.” It is a continual discipleship. It is a continual loving discipleship. God does not come to condemn. He comes to restore. Okay, brother.
DW: Thank you, Bob .
Bob: Does that help?
DW: That helps a lot. Take care, Bob/
Debra from Los Angeles, CA
Debra: I had a conversation with a lady today who said she was Mormon. She said that she is a Christian. They believe in Christ. Then from that point on I was at a loss for words.
Bob: They are desperately trying to make themselves acceptable in the Christian community and they are never going to do that. What they are talking about? Again, I do not know what is in a person’s heart, Debra, but I do know what is taught in Mormon theology. If they are grabbing a hold of that, then then they are no more saved than a man on the moon. They have a different Jesus than the one that we have. There is no such thing as a Jesus who came over to America after he left Israel. The Jesus we had went into the clouds and said the next time you see me I will have my feet planted in the Mount of Olives, not over here in America.
Bob: So they have a different Jesus. There God is “God the Father who was a man like us and progressed to be God and has a body of flesh and bone.” So, they teach that God was a man who worked his way into being God? Is that true? No, that is not true. So if your premise is off in who God is, your premise is off in everything, when a person says he believes in Jesus. I have to look back on that and say, “Could it be possible a person is studying the New Testament or is listening to the teaching on television about the New Testament, and hears about Jesus of Israel, his death, burial and resurrection and says, “I believe in that Jesus” and then they go back to the Mormon church, that Jesus back there, that he came to America? And Joseph Smith, he looked with these little binoculars and looked into these Egyptian hieroglyphics and wrote the book of Mormon. That is a bunch of nonsense. For someone to believe that someone looked through a pair of binoculars and then interpreting those and then destroying those so no one can check it out. You would have to be a moron to hold onto something like that.
Bob: Look at how people will question the writings of the New Testament and those were verified and kept preserved. They wrote about people and they knew who they were writing about. You had to be an apostle or an emisserant of an apostle to be in the bible. It is so ridiculous the thing they teach out of their church teachings, and how it has changed back and forth through the years. It is not Christian in any shape or form. It is a manifestation of their own Jesus they have made up. Jesus was not Lucifer’s brother. They got this all over. Every doctrine practically basic to salvation is contrary. They do not believe in the Trinity. They believe in three separate gods. All of those things. And so, we have to realize they are desperately trying to make themselves acceptable and they are not going to do it unless to people who are biblically illiterate.
Debra: I did not know how to witness to her. I do not know what to say, because I did not know anything about their religion.
Bob: It is all around the book of Mormon. Whenever you take something and add to the bible, you subtract from the bible. So the issue is when you ask them to sit down to study the bible, they will ask you to sit down and study the book of Mormon. I have no desire and intention to study a book of garbage. Incidentally, these Egyptian hieroglyphics, they are supposed to be hundreds and thousands of years old, but surprisingly enough they translated them into King James English. You figure that one out.
Debra: The Jehovah Witnesses say they translated from the King James version also, I understand.
Bob: Theirs is a different thing altogether. Jehovah Witnesses deny the deity of Christ and have had the right to their own bible and changed scriptures around although got a bunch they forgot in regard to the deity of Christ. Whenever you deny the deity of Christ, you are called in the New Testament an anti-Christ. You are denying the existence of who God is and who Christ is.
1 John 2:22
22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist – denying the Father and the Son.
Bob: Everything comes down to Christ. The whole thing turns down to the person of Christ Jesus.
Debra: Okay. That is what she said. She said that she believed Jesus as God’s son and he died for her sins.
Bob: Yes, but they look at that as God had intercourse with someone and had a son.
Debra: Oh.
Bob: Everything is totally off. There is no need for the virgin birth. That is not how Jesus got conceived. Jesus was born from a virgin according to scripture.
Debra: Where do we find something to understand their teaching?
Bob: Go into any Christian book store and there are books written about Mormonism. John Ankerburg has literature on that type of thing. Dave Hunt has extensive writing on it also.
Debra: I would like to witness to her and let her know.
Bob: You are not going to easily reach her. There are a lot of evangelical Christians who have dealt with that subject. I do not mean to be discouraging to you. These people have been brain-washed so much. It is not that a person cannot come to Christ but they are so full of Satanically induced teaching that it is going to take a lot to pull them out of that. But if they do not forget and let go of that dumb book of Mormon and to keep their eyes on the bible. You do not substitute a book for the bible. Especially when the book contradicts the bible. And so that is where people get off and get into cults. They teach a misinterpretation of the bible or they form their own. But you can find that in any Christian bookstore, Debra.
Debra: Okay, great. Thank you.
Bob: You are sure welcome. Bye.
Caller
Caller: I am not trying to trick you up here, but I never heard anyone else ask this question. It is a really hard question. Here it is. We are in a war between God and Satan. We know there is more going on. In the bible, it talks about how the path to heaven is narrow and the path to hell is wide. So in the end, I think that it means more people go to hell than to heaven. Does that mean that God did not win the war? God always wins. I am confused.
Matthew 7:13-14
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Bob: First of all, you are in a war situation with a win and lose and that is not what God is in. It is God’s will that none should perish and all come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Bob: But He gave man a will. When He gives man a will, we have a choice as to whether we are going to accept His provision for us in Christ Jesus or whether we are not. Very knowledgeable of the fact that there is a gamble doing that, in that people will choose other routes, choose their own way of trying to obtain salvation rather than God’s way. God is not looking at that as a win and lose situation. As a matter of fact, I don ’ t even want to discuss things with people who want to win all the time. Don’t you play a game just to have fun instead of having to win all the time. No, He is not in a win-lose situation. He is in a situation where He has offered the world His salvation. Man has the right and the will to either accept Him or to reject Him. Unfortunately, there will be many more rejections than there will be acceptance.
Caller: So you are saying he really does win because that was His plan to offer salvation to us?
Bob: Get the win out of your vocabulary. God is not in a ball game.
Caller: Well.
Bob: Do you see anything in the bible about God winning?
Caller: But God always wins.
Bob: You are leaning on your own understanding, hon. That is not correct thinking. Get win and lose out of your vocabulary. It is not there. God did not get us into a ball game. He is not into a competition. He is into salvation. He is there to bring salvation to the world. It is not a win-lose salvation. It is an offer of acceptance in Christ Jesus. Get the word win out of your life. It is not there in relation to God. It is good if you want to go to a Ranger game or a Mavericks game or wherever you are for, but it has nothing to do with God.
Caller: It is not a competition, you are saying.
Bob: Right. It is not a competition at all. How can God be competing with Satan? Who is going to win? When you are dealing with God, you are bucking up against the wrong person. There is never going to be a win or lose situation for you. He is not in that business. “Here is my Son. Here is salvation. You are in a mess. Humanity, you are a fallen race of people. Here is the solution to your problem. It is in Christ Jesus. No one else can give life to the dead.”
Bob: So, man has that choice, to reject that. The entire Muslim world has rejected that truth. The entire so-called Christian world has rejected it. They do not believe you are saved by faith in Christ alone. They think you are saved by works or by belonging to their denomination. There are very few people on the face of the earth that really have come to the point of accepting those two things I have talked about. You have to accept them both. You cannot accept the one and not the other. I have to accept what God says about me. If I do not accept what God says about me, then what do I need to know about what He says about Himself. There are very few people who have accepted the fact I am a sinner and there is a consequence to sin called death and that is why Jesus came to take away my sins. That cures the sin issue. And to be raised from the dead to give me life. That takes care of the death issue. Until we come to faith in that, we will remain dead. In the final analysis, God does not send us to hell. We have just chosen to go where we want to go. “I do not want to go to heaven. We do not want to go to be with Jesus. We want to rebel against Him.” He says, “Fine. That is where we will live for eternity, apart from Him.”
Caller: Thank you. That was the question that was haunting me for years.
Bob: Yes. Again, that is how very easy it is for Satan to get in to add to scripture. You see, win and lose is not there. We talk about the fact we know who wins. But the issue is that it is not there. The issue is that God has a plan and He is going to carry that plan out. So we have the chance to grab a hold of that by faith or we reject it.
Caller: Okay.
Bob: Okay?
Caller: Yes. Thanks a lot.
Bob: You are sure welcome. Thanks for your call. I sure appreciate it.
