In this enlightening segment, Rick Hughes explores the timeless insights of Ecclesiastes, illustrating how God’s perfect timing influences every life event. Dive into a profound examination of spiritual rebirth and the stark realities of eternal life and death. Learn how to distinguish truth from heresy in a world filled with false teachings, as the episode exposes the destructive nature of salvation by works and spirituality divorced from genuine faith. Discover the power of divine viewpoint and how it sustains us amidst life’s trials.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. And for the next few minutes, please stick around. You have an invitation to stay with me for about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education, and no, absolutely none, not a manipulation. That’s right. It’s not asking you for money. We’re not going to try to sell you anything. We’re not going to solicit anything. We simply are giving you information. information that’s designed to help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you’re able to do that and you would like to orient and adjust to that plan, you have the freedom to do so. So thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. We’re going on 14 years of being on the air across the country on the flood line. If this is your first time to ever hear us, FLOT, F-L-O-T, is a military term for the Forward Line of Troops, F-L-O-T. What we’re trying to do is teach there are 10 unique problem-solving devices. And when you learn them from the Bible, the Word of God, that is, 10 problem-solving devices out of the Bible, When you learn these problem-solving devices, this is nothing new. This is not some great new breakthrough. These are age-old biblical doctrines. But when you learn them and understand them, then it’s possible for you to stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the inside source of stress. That’s why we say adversity is inevitable, but stress is optional. So, you know, adversity is what you do to yourself or what circumstances do to you. But stress, you don’t have to live that way. You don’t have to live in fear. You don’t have to live with worry. You don’t have to live with anger. You don’t have to live with jealousy. You don’t have to live with bitterness. These are all mental attitude sins that destroy your life. And so by learning God’s wonderful problem-solving devices, such as how to rebound your sin, problem-solving device number one, how to stay filled with the Holy Spirit, problem-solving device number two, how to use the faith rest drill, problem-solving device number three. And living by grace orientation, number four. Understanding doctrinal orientation, number five. Having a personal sense of destiny, number six. Having personal love for God as your motivational virtue and then impersonal love for all, that’s seven and eight. Sharing the Happiness of God, that’s problem-solving device number nine, and Occupation with the Person of Christ, number 10. We have all of these in a book. It’s free. I’ll be glad to send it to you. It’s not a big book. It’s a small book that deals with Christian problem-solving. It’s just a summary of what each one of these are. So if you’d like the book, don’t hesitate to contact us on our website, rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org this morning we’re going to continue our study on change is coming and this will be the third class we’ve done on that third series and we’re dealing with ecclesiastes three one through eight and this is the passage it deals with god’s timing for all events on the earth as solomon saw it and solomon wrote it out to begin with he said there is a time there is a to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heavens. He goes on to say a time to be born and a time to die, and a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which was planted. And we went through all of these, all the way through verse 8, where it says there’s a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. So the bottom line was that nothing stays the same forever. Change is inevitable. And you and I being here, we’ll be gone someday. Change is inevitable. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing, but it’s inevitable, and it’ll happen. It goes on to say, to everything there’s a season, and everything there’s a purpose under the heavens. And the principle was that uncontrollable circumstances in your life are often a way God directs you. And we also saw that sometimes we get out of step with God in our life, but he does not forget us. So we studied a little bit about why Solomon wrote these sayings and what he put down. We saw time to be born, big day 101, and that’s not only your physical birthday, but but your spiritual birthday as well because you know you must be born twice or you will die twice. The first birthday is physical, you had nothing to do with it, your parents copulated and you were conceived. But the second birthday is your spiritual birth and that’s when you must be born again. And then there are two deaths. Death one, it’s appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. And death two, whoever was found, whoever’s name was not found written in the Lamb’s book of life. was cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, Revelation 20 says. So there are two deaths and two births. And that’s why I say if you’re born twice, you’re only going to die once. And if you’re born once, you’re going to die twice. I hope that makes sense to you. So as we went on, we saw that physical death was… unavoidable. There’s no way around it. It’s going to happen. And we saw that there was no way that you could be removed from this life apart from the sovereignty of God. And the principle was that God keeps you here until he makes a decision and nothing’s going to remove you from this life until he’s ready to take you. So none of us have control over the time that we come or the time that we leave. Our future destiny, we do have control over that, whether or not we’re going to heaven. And we do have control over how we live during our time on this sin invested planet. And we saw where Joshua said, as for me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord. So you have to make a decision. How will you live? How will you choose to live? Where will you make your decisions from? And that’s why the Bible says all people are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flower fails. But the word of the Lord will endure forever. And this is the word that was preached to you, Peter said in 1 Peter 1, 24. So God’s timing is critical in all of our lives. Understanding his plan, how his plan works, it starts with us having a spiritual life. That means a spiritual birth, being born again, accepting Christ as your savior, demands you have a spiritual life. And we saw that the spiritual life is operational in your soul. That’s where it’s lived. That’s where it starts. And you have to recognize that and you have to sustain your spiritual life and it’s lived in the mentality of your soul. So your soul not only functions in time while you’re here, but it will also be with you in eternity when you leave here. because you carry your thinking with you into eternity. We studied that, we saw that, and we saw that the soul is made up of mentality, volition, consciousness, self-consciousness, and it’s invisible, it’s immortal. I saw, we tried to show you how husband and wife can copulate and conceive a child in human life, but only God can give the soul. Only God can give the soul. And we saw that the soul is not in the blood. I mean, if you have a blood transfusion and lose all your blood in a serious accident, you can have more blood put in, but your soul is not in your blood. So the soul is in the mentality of the body. And we did see in Psalm 34 where the Lord redeems the soul of his servants. and none of them who trust in him will ever be desolate. And we saw in Mark 8, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? So there we have it. And we want to press on today in our study, seeing how the cosmic recruiter tries to recruit you into evil, the devil system. Peter wrote about these false teachers in his time who were going in and trying to distort the gospel information. He said these words, and I’m going to spend some time here with you, hopefully help you to see what this means. In 2 Peter 2, 1 through 19, 19 total verses. He starts off by saying, false prophets arise among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. And these false teachers will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies. Destructive heresies. What in the world is a destructive heresy? Well, it’s the word apoleia, destructive, and the destructive heresy is nothing more than salvation by works or spirituality by praise and worship. A destructive heresy is someone works their way into your church or into your periphery and tells you that if you want to go to heaven, you’ve got to be a good boy and you can’t smoke and can’t drink and can’t dance, you know, the word dance. You can’t dance, can’t wear this, can’t do that. And it’s a salvation by works. That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and it’s a gift from God, not of works. And a destructive heresy is someone lying to you about how you get saved because in the end you will never have any salvation. You will do what the Bible says. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did I not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out devils? And he said, I’ll tell them I never knew you, never heard of you, don’t know who you are. So salvation by works is a destructive heresy. And spirituality by praise and worship is another destructive heresy. The word heresy is the word that I’m talking about. So we have two words put together here. Apollia heresy. And that’s a destructive heresy. A heresy is a self-willed opinion that’s substituted for truth. And that’s what happens when someone gets away from the word of God and they think they’re smarter than God. Or they’re just plain outright liars deceiving you, drawing you into something that’s not true. So Peter went on to say these sort of people that preach these destructive heresies will even go to the point of denying the master who bought them. That means that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, bought and paid for you on the cross. He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. You’re a bought possession. You have been redeemed out of the slave market of sin as a believer in Jesus Christ. And since they deny the master that bought them, they deny Christ. As a result, Peter wrote, they will bring swift destruction on themselves. And many will follow their debauched lifestyle because these false teachers will slander the way of truth. And in their greed, they will exploit you with deceptive words. He goes on to say their condemnation was pronounced a long time ago, and it’s not sitting idly by. Their destruction is not asleep. And so there are deceptive cosmic recruiters trying to recruit you into a different way of thinking, not having the mind of Christ, not seeing divine viewpoint, and this is the key. Divine viewpoint is how you want to think. It is what is the mind of Christ. not human viewpoint, or what we call evil, because this is exactly what Satan wants you to do. He wants you to abandon the Bible as a guidepost. He wants you to move away from the Word of God and substitute a destructive heresy rather than what is truth. And so he says they are dead already. Their condemnation was pronounced a long time ago, and it’s not sitting idly by. Verse 4, 2 Peter 2 says, For if God did not spare even the angels that sinned, and you know this is what happened to Satan and his arrogance, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains and utter darkness to be kept until the judgment, that’s from Genesis 6 about the Nephilim, and if he did not spare the ancient world but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on the ungodly world, and then it goes on in verse 6, if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. A lot of people don’t like to hear that. They don’t agree with that. But this was a condemnation to the homosexuality that was rampant in Sodom and Gomorrah when the homosexuals there tried to rape some angels that came to visit Lot. And it says, when he condemned them to destruction, that’s the whole city, having appointed them to serve as an example. to future generations and that’s up what we don’t like to hear we don’t like to hear that but that whole thing about sodom and gomorrah is an example to the united states of america and the word is ungodly ungodly an example to future generations of ungodly whenever you turn your back on the divine institutions such as marriage family freedom and nationalism And you began to set up an alternative lifestyle, regardless of what you call it, inclusion or whatever way you want to say you are living an ungodly life, but that’s okay. That’s what you chose to do. You have the freedom to do that. You’re free, American free individual, and you can decide your own destiny. And if he rescued lot, which he did out of solid Gamora, a righteous man who was in anguish, over the debauched lifestyle of the lawless men of Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse eight, because he lived among them day after day, and he was tormented in his righteous soul by the deeds that he saw and he heard. If so, if all of this happened, Then here’s what’s wonderful truth to you. The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials. And are you godly? That’s a good question to ask. 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, No temptation has tried you that’s not common to man. And so God always provides a way out. But are you godly? There’s two ways to answer that. Have you received the righteousness of Christ in your life? Yes. Have you received the righteousness of Christ in your life? Have you, in fact, been born again? And as the Bible says, he who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. When you have that plus R, God’s righteousness, you’re godly in your position. But then we have our experience. Are we living godly lives? And if you are filled with the Holy Spirit and you’re letting the Holy Spirit control your life, you’re going to sin from time to time because you have a sin nature. There’s no way around that. But if you rebound that sin and continue to advance in your spiritual life, then in time you’re living a godly life, and that’s the key to it, living that life in time. So back to the verse. If so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials. And to reserve the unrighteous, that’s those who reject the word of God, who reject Jesus Christ, who reject God’s plan for punishment at the day of judgment. That’s a great white throne. Especially, especially, listen to this now, especially those who indulge in their fleshly desires. This is the sin nature run amok. Those who despise authority, that’s negative volition towards legitimate authority. The first legitimate authority you ever face is God and his word. The first mandate, you love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and mind. So, they’re said to be brazen people, brazen, and this is true of America today. Those who get sucked into the cosmic system, who buy into the devil’s lie, the alternative lifestyle, they are very brazen, and the Greek word brazen means is tomates, tomates. It means daring and irreverent. And then it goes on, another descriptive adjective is they’re insolent, aphades, aphades, which means they are self-willed and inconsiderate of other people. So this sort of person is daring and irreverent, self-willed, inconsiderate of others, and listen to this, They are not afraid to insult the glorious ones. That’s you. Not afraid to run you down. Not afraid to criticize you because you believe the Bible. Not afraid to call you nasty names because you don’t agree with their lifestyle. And he goes on to say, yet even the angels in verse 11, 2 Peter 2, who are much more powerful, don’t bring slanderous judgment against them before the Lord. But these men… like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and to be destroyed. They don’t understand who they are insulting and consequently in their destruction they will be destroyed. And this is exactly true today. What’s going on in this country, so many people that are propagating this lifestyle do not understand that they are planting the seeds for their own destruction. We are teetering on the edge right now in this client nation because of the way people think. They don’t think like you think. The majority of them don’t think like you think. I know I read the same polls you do from time to time, who’s going to be elected, who’s not going to be elected. But if you understand how the lost world thinks and what they believe in and what they think is okay and legitimate and good and true, it is so far from what the Word of God says. they are planting the seeds for their own destruction even this day in this country the verse goes on to say suffering harm is the wages for their harmful ways and by what what does that mean they consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight they are stains and blemishes In other words, you get around them, it’s going to rub off on you. Indulging in their deceitful pleasures when they feast together with you. Their eyes are full of adultery, never stop sinning. They entice unstable people. They’ve trained their hearts for greed, these cursed children. By forsaking the right path, they’ve gone astray. They followed the way of Balaam, the son of Buyor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, yet was rebuked for his own transgression by a dumb donkey speaking to him with a human voice, restraining the prophet’s madness. These sort of people are waterless springs in a midst driven by a storm, for whom the utter depths of darkness have been reserved, because by speaking high-sounding but empty words, High sounding, but empty. They’re able to entice, lure, pull people away with fleshly desires and debauchery. People who have just escaped from those who reside in error. And although these false teachers promise many people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to their own immorality because whatever a person gives into, that’s he’s enslaved to. That’s a lot of verses. I’m sorry it takes so long to read it. And it was written to the false teachers in Peter’s day, but you can see the pattern and the trend in the United States of America today with certain key words that we highlighted there. So what’s an unrighteous person? That’s someone who doesn’t possess the righteousness of Christ. And in this case, It’s the unbeliever who rejects the divine establishment principles and who lives only to please the trends of his sin nature. He does that by despising authority because the ultimate authority of man is the will of God expressed in the scriptures. Without humility, there is no teachability. Isaiah 46.10 talks about the ultimate authority of God. It says, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient time things which have not been done, saying, my purpose, my will will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. And then the psalmist repeats it in Psalm 135, verse 6, whatever the Lord pleases me, He does in heaven and in earth and the seas and all the depths of the seas. So the arrogant man or the arrogant woman who justifies their sin, who justifies their debauchery, who justifies leading you into that same sin does not see the reality of what they really are because they have an unrealistic self-image from their own arrogance and from rejecting the authority of the word of God. When you reject the authority of the Word of God, you’re going down a dead-end street because you think you’re smarter than God, and you find ways to say, well, the Bible doesn’t really mean that, and the Bible doesn’t really say that. Yes, it does. these arrogant people have this unrealistic self-image and that always leads to an unrealistic expectation of how they are to be treated as normal wonderful great individuals wrong wrong it says they’re daring and self-willed they don’t tremble it’s the height of arrogance not for anyone not to respect god in his word or his son our savior the lord jesus christ They are reveling, partying, carousing where they have no knowledge, which means they’re completely unaware or unconcerned about God’s divine design for all members of the human race. And Paul wrote about it and warned in the New Testament, I’m telling you, don’t live like the Gentiles live in the emptiness of their mind because darkness in their soul keeps them from understanding what they’re doing. They’re excluded from the life of God because of their own ignorance and because of the hearts that have grown hard. They become calloused and they have betrayed their own soul or given their own soul over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. That’s descriptive analogy right there of this sort of person we’re talking about. In Ephesians 4, 17 through 19, read it for yourself. The scar tissue that builds up on the soul of the unbeliever or the believer who rejects God’s word and he goes for the alternative lifestyle is very destructive. It’s a debauched lifestyle. It’s slandering the truth, the Bible says, 2 Peter 2, 1 through 19. This total preoccupation with diversity and inclusion is running rampant in our nation today. And if we don’t have the opportunity to teach our children the truth, then they will have no hope of avoiding the lies of the cosmic system. Those lies will promise all sorts of happiness in unrestrained sin nature activity. And they won’t even recognize the lie when they hear it. Because the whole deal that Satan’s concerned about is shutting down this client nation and its evangelistic outreach at home and abroad. We are a threat to his plan. We’re a threat to his goal. He’s headed for the lake of fire, and he doesn’t want us interfering with that. He wants to get out of the lake of fire. He wants to stop you from being a testimony, a witness for Jesus Christ. So these people are exploited by deceptive words. That’s lies. They entice unstable people through organized religion. High-sounding but empty words. They’re great orators, deliver great messages. But listen, here’s the key here. Great delivery does not guarantee accuracy. That’s something you need to remember. These sort of people promise freedom, but they are themselves enslaved to immorality, the Bible says. Though America’s time in history is teetering on the edge, you can deliver us yourself. with an invisible impact as a winter believer who influences your family and your friends by your lifestyle and by your words. You and I are the purveyors of truth and the purveyors of hope. That’s why our Lord Jesus Christ, the anointed son of God said, I am the way, the truth and the life. The life that we’re talking about in Christ is beyond your wildest dreams. It’s a life of blessing. It’s a life of confidence. It’s a life of prosperity, all because of God’s unfailing love for us. It’s never faltered. It’s never changed. All he asks is that you love him and that you obey him. No one’s asking you to destroy your life. No one’s asking you to do anything harmful. Just listen to what the word of God says and obey it. Because Jesus Christ, our Lord said, happiness belongs to those people who hear my father’s word and keep it. There is no chance of happiness if people don’t hear the word of God because they don’t know their options. And there is no chance of happiness if you hear it, but you don’t keep it. So I have given you some information today, rather lengthy information. I hope you heard it. I hope you listened. And I hope you will learn and apply it into your life. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, heard every Sunday here on the Flatline. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like to. Until next Sunday, thank you for listening to our show today.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
