Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor: We are going to be going through a series of lessons dealing with Bible prophecies and talking about the times in which we're living. We're going to be talking about the second coming of Jesus tonight. We're going to be talking about things like the beast, the Antichrist, angels, Armageddon. We're going to cover all the mountain peaks of Bible prophecy.

But I'll tell you right now, knowing the answer to all these things is not going to save anyone. The central theme of prophecy is a personal relationship with Jesus. It's His book. First words in Revelation: the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is the central character of all scripture. And so if you forget anything that you learn during this seminar, I hope the primary thing is that you are drawn closer to Jesus. Prophecy is something the Lord put in His word; He wants us to teach it and preach it, and that's why we do what we do.

A December news report says Mark Zuckerberg is constructing a 5,000-square-foot bunker under his ranch on the island of Kauai. It's about thousands of acres there, and he's not the only one. It's also Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos. A lot of them have places strategically located and they're spending millions building bunkers under their houses that are self-contained. These are thinking people that are looking ahead and saying, "We see the trajectory of society. The world is polarized. Historically, something's going to snap." And they're also concerned about just what's happening environmentally.

And the other interesting thing for me is now you've got these billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, who are building space programs. And if you ask Elon Musk, he said, "My goal is to die on Mars." And the US is sending another mission back to the moon with the object of creating a settlement there. That's pretty desperate because you've got to bring everything with you. You can't live outdoors on the moon.

And so why are they investing so much money in getting off the planet? Where Jeff Bezos, his idea is you need to get a much more elaborate self-contained space station. I think they just say if you want to survive, we may need to go elsewhere. Now, this for me is one of the most startling signs of the nearness of Jesus coming, and it's this prophecy you find in Daniel chapter 12, verse 4. "But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will run to and fro and knowledge will increase."

You notice it doesn't say wisdom will increase because man has a lot more knowledge, but he doesn't have much more wisdom. And has knowledge increased? Knowledge, and with AI, is exploding exponentially. Technology the world over for years just followed this very small trajectory upwards, and then in the last century, it began to rocket forward where knowledge is accelerating.

I think I've got some statistics that I gathered using AI on my computer. It talks about the ancient era is two, then you've got the classical era, thousands of years went by here. Then you've got the Renaissance, hundreds of years. The industrial age, the internet age. Then in the 1940s, they said that technology is doubling every 40 years. And then they said it's doubling every 10 years. Then it got to where it's doubling every year, and now it's a matter of months. And if you buy the latest new iPhone, it's going to be old next year.

Technology is just exploding right now and with AI, it's just knowledge. And AI is not the devil. AI is technology. When TVs first came out, they said it's the devil. Well, you can put amazing facts on television, right? So there's good and there's bad. But radio, books, when they first came out, incredible technology knowledge with the printing press, it exploded because communications increased. And so there are some good things that AI does and there are some creepy things too.

Jesus talked about false Christs and false prophets. I'll get to that in just a minute. One of the signs that makes me think that Jesus is coming soon is actually in Matthew chapter 24, verse 14. Jesus said, "The gospel of this kingdom will be preached in all the world and everyone will believe." That's not what He said. "The gospel will be preached in all the world for a witness, then the end will come."

People are going to have it within their reach. They're going to have an opportunity. God said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge because they rejected knowledge." Many will reject it, but they'll have an opportunity. Then the end will come. Jesus didn't say it might come or it could come or it may come. He said it will come. The gospel is going into the world and then the end is going to come. Well, is the gospel going into the world?

Friends, as Jesus said, today this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing. As you sit here now and we're here in this auditorium in Texas, it's going out by satellite. Two and a half seconds, bounces off the satellite, hits ground stations, bounces up again, goes around the world through the internet, fiber optic, the speed of light or just under the speed of light. The message is going in different languages. It says it'll be preached to every tongue and every nation. And it is incredible to me wherever we go around the world.

Last year we were in Pakistan, we were in India, we were in Dubai and South America, Dominican Republic. I mean, we travel all over the world. And you'll go to very poor communities and these people are living under a blue plastic tarp, and they've got a satellite dish poking up out of the tarp. And they've got phones. We've been in Africa where people are walking down the road and they have no shoes, and they've got a smartphone. Absolutely, friends. The communication ability globally for this prophecy to be fulfilled in this generation is here.

It's happening. And Amazing Facts is one of many ministries that is doing it. So we know that the gospel is getting out there. We have a lot of people in China, Middle East, places where you normally can't go in person, they are tuning in, they are watching online, they communicate with us very carefully. So we know it. Global access.

Daniel said, "Many will run to and fro." International travel. It's just amazing. I took off in Malaysia coming home and I got home before I left. I'm actually a year younger than I say because at one point I took off on March 8th and I landed on March 10th. My birthday is the 9th and so I keep telling Karen, "No, I never had that birthday." So we can just go around the world now.

Now here's something to think about, and don't take this as date setting. This is just sort of a 30,000-foot view of history. You've got 2,000 years biblically from creation, just adding up the ages in the Bible. You might not agree with that, but if you just add up the ages, you've got 2,000 years from Adam to Abraham. You've got 2,000 years from Abraham to Jesus. You have 2,000 years from Jesus to our present day. Right now, if we go back 2,000 years, Jesus is alive. We're living between His birth and His death right now.

And then Revelation 20 says there is a 1,000-year like a Sabbath when we live and reign with Christ, the millennial time. And so you can do the math: six plus one is seven. God uses sevens all through the Bible. You've got three great epochs here. You've got the 2,000 years where God preaches the gospel through the patriarchs: Adam, Enoch, Noah, Methuselah, the faithful who lived during that time. Then after Babel, Abraham is called.

2,000 years God is proclaiming the gospel through the Jewish nation. Paul says to the Jews were given the oracles of truth. Through Moses, the word of God was now codified. Before, they had fabulous memories and they photographically passed on the word orally. The Jewish nation, they had the scriptures. That's what made them especially special. They were the guardians of the word. That book is written almost entirely by Jews.

And then Jesus comes, and the great work of the Jewish nation was to proclaim and introduce the Messiah to the world, which happened at Pentecost. Now here we are 2,000 years after that point. And then 1,000 years we live and reign with Christ. Friends, I think that we're living right near sundown, so to speak, for the world's history. And you're here, you're watching, you're listening because He loves you and He wants you to be ready.

And you can't just tread water until it's too late. You've got to do something about what you're hearing. We don't do these prophecy seminars just to be entertaining. And I go to the door afterward and I shake hands and I ask people how it went, did it make sense? And they say, "Well, that was interesting." That always worries me. I don't want it to be just interesting. I want it to touch your heart. That's the purpose of it.

All right, now I spent all this time talking about signs of Jesus coming. I've got about 14 minutes now to talk about how He's coming. And we need to understand that because there's a big misunderstanding in how He's coming and Jesus said Satan's going to impersonate Christ and there'll be false Christs, and if you don't know how He's coming, you could be fooled. So we need to understand both.

Question number four: What solemn warning does Jesus give about His second coming? "For many will come in My name saying, 'I am Christ' and deceive many." Some will come in Jesus' name saying He is the Christ, but then they deceive. Some will come in Christ's name saying, "I am the Christ" and then they deceive. He warns us, "There will be false Christs and false prophets that will rise and show great signs and wonders." They're going to seem to have some real power so that if it were possible, it would deceive even the very elect.

I'm telling you in advance, you can read here where it says, "Look, if they say 'Look, He's here' or 'He's in the desert,' do not go out. 'Look, He's in inner rooms,' do what?" Does Jesus say we've got the answers for your lesson kind of in a highlighted blue: "Do not believe it." Nobody is ever going to have to tap you on the shoulder and tell you Jesus came or turn the channel, He's appearing right now on the news.

And you need to know that, friends, because I'll tell you with AI now they are doing some really spooky things. I go online every now and then, someone will send me a link and say, "Doug, you've got to look at this." And it's got me with my voice saying something I never said and it looks almost like me, except it looks better than me, which is really troubling.

So yeah, they'll take Billy Graham's image and Billy Graham's voice and they'll have Billy Graham saying things Billy Graham did not believe or ever say. And that technology is just getting better. Now, actors are worried they're going to be put out of business because now they can make artificial actors and they don't have all the drama of their emotions and the big expense and they can recreate these actors. That's the way it's heading. And so can the devil use that? He's already using it to some extent.

So when I talk about false Christs and false prophets, I'm not so much talking about people that are deranged. I don't know if you ever met anybody that said they were Jesus. I did, a couple of times. One time it was really unnerving because I won't tell you my whole story tonight, but I was raised an atheist, got into trouble as a teenager, lived up in the mountains in a cave for a year and a half kind of looking for God and purpose, found a Bible someone left in the cave, read the Bible, became a Christian. That's the short version.

While I was living up there by myself, I was a hermit. I'd go days without seeing anybody. Someone came hiking up the creek, very steep, rugged mountains. Someone came hiking up the creek, stepped over the log that enters my cave yard. I had a yard, I had a pool. It was really pretty, anyway. And this guy, he's wearing shorts and sandals and he's got brown hair down to his shoulders. He looked like the painting of Jesus.

He had the beard, you know, handsome guy about six feet tall, seemed to have a tinge of intelligence about him. I sat and I talked to him because you know, I'm the only one living up in the hills and he was hiking up the Mount San Jacinto. And as I'm talking to him, he says, "I'm Jesus." And when he first said that, I thought I've got friends, you know, Spanish friends whose name is like Jesus, and I thought well, maybe it's just the English derivative of that. And then he said, "No, I am Jesus."

He saw my Bible and he said, "I've come and I have a message for you." And I'm going, I didn't know my Bible that well, but I knew it said lightning from the east to the west and we're going to be caught up to meet Him in the air. And I said, "I thought it says that when You come, it's like clouds of angels." He said, "That's how I'm coming for the general world, but I've been sent specially for a few people in advance." And he knew his Bible.

And I'm thinking to myself, "What do I say?" For one thing, I did have a quiet thought. I thought, well what if it is Jesus? I don't want to say, "No, you're not Jesus" because then that would make him mad and that wouldn't be polite. And then I'm thinking I'm up in the hills with a guy that's crazy and I don't want to offend him. So I'm saying, "Well, I thought I read that when You come that you know..." Oh no, he had an answer.

And he stayed in my cave and I fed him and he just hung out for like three days. I finally had to kick him out because he ate all my food, he did no work, and he started saying some really bizarre things. I saw him in town a few days later. He had gotten into a fight and someone knocked out one of his teeth. And I felt so much better then because I up until then I thought did I kick Jesus out of my cave? But I know Jesus has all His teeth and so that settled it for me.

All right, I've got to move along here. So if they say He's in the desert, if someone says Jesus is on TV, don't even look. You could be hypnotized. What will prevent the righteous from being deceived? Answer: "To the law and the testimony! If they speak not according to this word..." We need to know what the Bible says because AI can change things. If you own a Bible and you know the word of God, that's how you're going to expose the counterfeit. You need to know the truth.

God's people will not be deceived if we are studying the scriptures. Jesus said, "Study to show yourself approved." Talking about the second coming in Matthew 24, He said, "Whoso reads," speaking of Daniel the prophet, "let him understand." Jesus assumes you're going to be reading if you want to understand so you are not deceived. Christ said, "False Christs, false prophets, we must be prepared."

Will Jesus come quietly? You know, some people say when the Lord comes again that there's going to be a secret rapture. Now, that's a fairly new teaching compared to history. For years Christians have understood Christ's coming is going to be the next thing. The tribulation is going to happen before He comes. Then futurism came in that said the church will be raptured before the tribulation.

I respectfully disagree. There's three principal views: there's what you call Preterists, Historicists, Futurists. I'm a Historicist. That's where you have Spurgeon and Wesley and Luther. They all looked at prophecy Revelation, it says, "the time is at hand." Revelation gives a panorama from the first coming to the second coming. The futurism is the other big view that was made popular with the *Left Behind* series. Hal Lindsey, who died last year, may have been absolutely sincere, but he said 1981 and 1988, none of it happened.

And another preacher said "88 Reasons Jesus Is Coming in 1988" because they went 40 years after the re-establishment of Israel and they said, "It's got to happen." None of it happened. And so futurism's really been disproved already. So we need to go back to the traditional Bible view. There's not going to be a secret rapture. Will there be a rapture? Yes, we are caught up. That's what that means. Will it be a secret? No. Let me give you some scriptures.

"The Lord Himself," 1 Thessalonians chapter 4:16, "The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel and with a trumpet." This is loud. "And the dead in Christ will rise." There's a resurrection. "The Lord will roar from on high and utter His voice from His holy habitation. He will roar mightily against His fold. He will give a shout as those who tread the grapes against the inhabitants." A roar, a shout, mighty.

Psalm 50:3, "Our God will come and shall not keep silent." It is not a secret when Jesus comes. "But Pastor Doug, He says, 'Behold, I'm coming like a thief.' He's going to snatch the church away." They're not reading the whole verse. Look at 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 10. "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which," what happens in that day? "the heavens will pass away with what? A great noise and the elements will melt."

Does life go on for seven more years after Jesus comes? "The elements melt with fervent heat, the earth and the works that are in it are burned up." Malachi says there is "the day coming that will burn as an oven. The wicked are destroyed by the brightness of His coming." When Jesus comes again, one danger about this Left Behind, and friends, I know many people listening and you maybe here and you've believed this, you watched the movie and you read the books about the secret rapture, and I don't want to offend anyone.

I should also mention at this point when I first became a Christian, I worshiped with all of my friends were charismatics that believed in futurism. And there are godly, listen carefully, there are godly, heaven-bound Christians in many churches. Amen? I believe that there are people from many denominations we're going to see in the kingdom. But now as brothers and sisters, before the Lord comes, we need to be studying so that we can show ourselves approved.

We need to know what the truth is right now. God wants the church to pull together on the Bible if we're going to take the message to the world. If Christians are all fractured and scattered with different teachings, it's going to cripple our work. So we need to know what we believe. The elements melt with fervent heat. A common misinterpretation: this Left Behind scenario, it's a new teaching that came through, it was written by a Jesuit priest, Francisco Ribera, adopted by Campbell and Darby, then it was put in the Scofield Bible, and then it was adopted and made popular by Hal Lindsey, and it's not biblical.

Number seven: Who will see Jesus when He returns? Answer: "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." They'll see Him. "Behold," Revelation 1:7, "He comes with a cloud and how many eyes? Every eye of everybody alive will see Him." Someone's going to say, "How can everybody see Him at the same time on a round world?" Write that down, send it in, we'll answer tomorrow.

When He left, Acts chapter 1, Christ ascended. The disciples stood there watching Him go up in the clouds. Two angels appeared, they said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here gazing up into the heavens? This same Jesus will come in like manner as you have seen Him go." You saw Him go, you'll see Him come. He left in the clouds, He's coming in the clouds. He was real when He left, He'll be real when He comes. He was audible when He left, He'll be audible when He comes.

It's not going to be people aren't just going to start disappearing and planes and cars crashing. That's not what the Bible teaches. Number eight: Who will be with Jesus when He returns in the clouds? "When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the holy angels with Him." How many angels? All. Friends, I'll tell you, angels are bright, angels are powerful. "For as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be."

I remember in Texas, I was in Dickens and I saw a lightning storm that went from horizon to horizon and you didn't need to tap anybody and say, "Did you see that?" Even with your eyes closed, you could see the lightning. Amen? One angel at the resurrection, the glory made the Roman soldiers fall down like they were dead. Can you imagine all the billions of angels of God coming? He's coming with clouds of glory and light.

And what happens to the righteous when He comes? The Bible tells us the Lord Himself will descend from heaven, voice of the archangel, the dead in Christ rise. There's a resurrection. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, we are changed. For this corruptible will put on incorruption." The word changed there means it's a metamorphosis. That's 1 Corinthians 15. We're going to get these glorified bodies at that point. "Then we who are alive will be caught up to meet them in the clouds."

Now, that's the rapture. What happens before the rapture? The whole world is turned upside down. The wicked are destroyed by the brightness of His coming. Look at what it says about the rapture. It is a literal promise. It's personal, it's visible, it's audible, it's physical, it's vitalizing, glorious, climatic, every single sense. The Bible is using every term it can to tell us that when Jesus comes again, it is the climax of the world's history.

People just don't disappear, life does not go on for another seven years. The elements have melted with fervent heat. Jeremiah says, "The slain of the Lord will cover the entire earth and there's no one to bury them" because there's no one alive. There is no man. Jeremiah chapter 4:23, read it. Isaiah says, "I'll make the earth utterly empty." This world is going to be a void as we live and reign with Christ for 1,000 years in heaven. We go up when He comes back.

He says, "I'm going to prepare a place, I will come again, receive you to Myself, that where I am, you might be." We are caught up. We live and reign with Him in glory. Then at the end, a new Jerusalem comes down. In question 15, what will the wicked say when Jesus returns? They'll call for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them like cockroaches running from the light. But God's people will say, "This is our Lord, we've waited for Him, and He will save us." He will not leave us behind, friends.

Friend, God came to earth 2,000 years ago in the form of a man. His name was Jesus. He came for three reasons: to show us what God is like, to show us how to live, and finally, to die for our sins that we might be forgiven. But this only works if you choose to accept Him as your personal savior, confess your sorry for your sins, and invite Him to be the Lord of your life. His arms are open wide. Why don't you ask Him now?