Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. This is Gary Neron welcoming you to the Lamp and Light broadcast coming to you from the studios of Central Baptist Church in beautiful Ocala, Florida. Lamp and Light is a ministry taking a book of the Bible verse by verse teaching, as it is, to men as they are, without compromise or apology, speaking the truth in love, and our purpose is to give the lamp and light to all. Today we will be continuing our question and answer series with more of our listeners' questions. Let's listen as Dr. Bloom addresses each of these questions. Now, here is our teacher and pastor, Dr. Andy Bloom. Now the scripture of which you inquired is found in Acts chapter 20, verses 7-11. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep. And as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him, said, Trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. Now, folks, what you have to understand is this. Education does not equal understanding of spiritual things. Amos was a farmer. Gypsy Smith, an evangelist of yesteryear, could not read, but was used of God to call multitudes to repentance and faith in Christ Jesus. The Sanhedrin The most educated men of their day in Jerusalem took note that the disciples, particularly John and Peter, were unlearned and ignorant men. Now, since I don't get to hear most pastors, I don't know what they say, but when I address pastoral students at various Christian colleges, and I speak at pastor's fellowship, I do encourage expository preaching. But it also calls for them to study. Recently, I spoke to a pastoral staff at one church and told them, you are a student of the word the rest of your life. not just a casual reader each day, but one who gets down into the word and in prayer seeks to understand it. Now, funny, you should mention it, but just a few weeks ago a lady asked why did I quit. I needed to keep on going in the sermon that I was preaching. Now, of course, if you read sermons in the Bible, they're often less than an hour. However, Paul preached till midnight on one occasion. It's a shame that in this era of television, the general public lacks the ability to concentrate for more than 30 to 40 minutes, changing images to grab their attention on TV, and at the same time, it shortens the attention span. In the final analysis, the content is more important than the length of a sermon and more important than the one delivering the sermon. For example, we have a men's Bible study on Tuesday morning at 6 o'clock. Now since many of those men need to go on to work, They have to leave by seven o'clock, if not earlier. So it is important that the length of the study stays within a certain time limit. So I hope this answers your questions, and may the Lord bless you as you seek His will and way. Those were questions that perhaps has popped up into some of our listeners' minds, and so I wanted to share those with you today in that answer. Okay, Brother Gary, would you give us the next question, please, sir? How many of those in your church, even you, Pastor, have had a black family in their home, or one from the poorer community, a drug addict, a prostitute, etc.? What do the scriptures say about entertaining a stranger? I find that the brightest and the best of the bright, whether it is Washington University, Cambridge, and Vanderbilt, think of your church and most churches as a bunch of yapping, education-light Bible schools with little salt and light that's observable in neighborhoods or cultures. It's only talk. Read James, 1st John, 1st and 2nd Peter, and you will find it's a lot more about doctrine that your, our doctrine is right and everybody else is wrong. If your doctrine is right, how would the neighborhoods around your church know if they didn't come within the four walls of your building? Normally, I delete accusative, non-use-of-the-Bible questions that are rants instead of inquiry. But I thought maybe some of the things that come up here are things that the folks in our radio audience have heard, and it's good for your edification. Now the door-to-door visitation of which I told you earlier, and by the way, this was the second answer I'm giving him to an earlier email, because he wanted to know how the people around our church, if they even knew about us, and so I told him about our door-to-door visitation. And then he also had condemned in that earlier email two and three week Mission trips, you know for for teenagers and others go to a mission field. They said that wasn't the real thing And so he was writing condemning that and so I had answered those questions in his earlier one And again, normally I delete things like this. They're not really seeking to know Truth that they just want to debate and argue because I don't debate and and I don't want to get into debate because the Bible so condemns that and it really shows the ones that tried to get debate going, are very carnal, and at the very most, a baby Christian. So, as I move on with this, the door-to-door visitation of which I told you earlier is for the purpose of sharing the gospel with these folks at their house. If they don't want to hear it, then we leave the gospel track. I, too, am not a fan of the two-to-three-week group from the church going to a mission field. There are instances in which they try to help build a building or hold medical clinics, and they have been greatly helpful to the missionary. In our church, we support nearly 120 missionaries. They are to go and plant local churches by canvassing areas, and then after leading people to Jesus Christ, they baptize them And then follow it up with teaching them the word and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded us. Well, that's what Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20 instructs us to do. And that is missions. Now you asked, have I ever had a black family in my home or poor family? And it's funny to me that You would ask that question. I have had black families in my home, and I've had poor families in my home, and sometimes I felt like I was the poorest man in the house when the poor families were in my home. But isn't it interesting that on the political front, and I'm not accusing you of this when I'm making this statement, but it's rather an illustration or an observation, but why is it that race hatred is so abominable to most folks, which I also think it is. For example, it's very horrible what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust and the way so much of the world continues to hate the Jew. And so, you know, we do not accept that kind of race hatred. But then they think class hatred is acceptable as in the hatred of Wall Street or the rich. Now, I'm not Wall Street or the rich. And if you know me, you know that quite well. And you mentioned the people at Vanderbilt, Cambridge, and Harvard. I do expect the people there to think of us as a bunch of yapping whatever. Why? Because they're spiritually discerned. They can only think in philosophies, not absolutes. They're taught that there are no absolutes, so they can't think that way. So they actually lack the capacity to understand. Now, these young people have great learning, but they have also a great lack of understanding. So all we can do is ask God to use us to preach the gospel to them. Now too often their educational elitism has blinded their eyes to the truth, just like 1 Corinthians 1. 18 through 31 shows us. And there it's kind of comical. I think that we're told that God takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and I take great comfort in that. Now, I know doctrine is right. For example, in 1 John 5, verses 11 through 13, it lets me know that I can know, not that I can hope or have a strong maybe, but that I can know. that I'm saved, that heaven is my home, that I have eternal life. See, Satan is at work. He has brought confusion into this world. That's why there are today Catholics and Protestants. Now, to be quite honest with you, I'm not either one. I'm a Baptist. Stephen, who was the Bishop of Rome in A.D. 250, not the Stephen of the Bible, kicked out everybody that believed like us, that believed that baptism comes after a person's salvation instead of at birth. And, oh, I tell you what, we didn't protest, we got ran out. But when you stand on the Word of God, you get ran out of a lot of places. So I'm basing my eternity on what is written in the Word as the very Holy Spirit of God reveals it to me. Now, probably, the most idiotic and absolutely most ignorant statements I hear from people are those who say, oh, so you think you're right and I'm wrong. Or those who say, well, there are so many different denominations. What makes you think yours is right and theirs are wrong? Well, would I be so ignorant to base my eternity on a book I thought was wrong in any way? Would I be faithful if I thought this book was 25% wrong or that I was 25% wrong? See, Satan tries to make it about the church so people will get their eyes off the Lord Jesus Christ and the matter of their soul. That is why so often their questions do not involve a scripture. Rather, it involves a second-hand attack that says something against the person or the church. exalting some philosophy that some professor that's never done a day's work in his life has expounded in a classroom. Now, in my flesh, it's kind of fun to tantalize them sometimes with answers that frustrate them because they're trusting in their intellect. And when I get carried away with that, I'm wrong because I just need to stick to Bible questions. Now I have given this answer. Normally I just delete this thing and not give the time of day because of the manner in which he asked it and the accusative manner, but I did it this way so that this gentleman I couldn't see what the Bible has to say to him, which I don't know if he paid attention to it or not, I don't know his heart, but I knew that there were some things there that you people as well have heard, and you'd like to get the answers to those things as well. This is your radio pastor, Pastor Andy Bloom, saying, May the Word of God be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your pathway today. We want to thank you for listening to the Lamp & Light broadcast. If you would like a CD copy of today's message by Dr. Bloom, send us your name, mailing address, and include the radio station by which you are listening, and the date of the broadcast. We would appreciate a gift of $5 to Lamp & Light Broadcast, 1714 SE 36th Ave, Ocala, FL 34471. You may also visit us on the website and freely download the sermons by clicking on the sermon library. That website is www.centralbaptistocalla.org. Again, the address for the Lamp and Light broadcast is 1714 Southeast 36th Avenue, OCALA, Florida, 34471. And again, our website is www.centralbaptistocala.org. This is your announcer Gary Neiron saying, may God's peace be with all that are in Christ Jesus. I will plant my feet on its firm foundation for the Bible says. I will plant my feet on its firm foundation for the Bible says.