Amazing Facts

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Doug Batchelor: We're going to be going to the middle of Revelation and talking about the woman in the wilderness. And this is a a very important subject that really you know Revelation is written in what they call a chiastic structure where it sort of makes a statement at the beginning, it reaches the pinnacle in the middle and and it reinforces the statement at the end. And we're going to be looking at the pinnacle of the prophecy you find in Revelation chapter 12. But as our custom is, we like to start with an amazing fact. You know in 1977, National Geographic did a special report on a woman named Robin Davidson.

She embarked on an extraordinary journey across the Australian outback with only four camels and her faithful dog for company. She traveled 1,700 miles of harsh desert terrain alone. A woman in the wilderness. In preparation, she trained camels and learned how to survive in the desert for two years. On the journey that lasted nine months, it pushed her to her limits. She faced scorching heat, poisonous snakes, and the challenges of managing her temperamental camels. You know they got wild camels in Australia in the desert there as well. Davidson solo trek from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean became an inspiring tale of human endurance and self-discovery.

And there's a book written about this called Tracks that's rather inspiring about her adventure. I think they even made a movie about her adventure of surviving in the wilderness. And one time they got she and her camels got attacked by a bull camel that was in heat and they said the only alternative is you need to kill it because it will kill you. And had some amazing adventures. You know a woman in the Bible is a symbol of what? The church. God had his woman in the wilderness for 40 years in preparation to going to the Promised Land.

And there's other stories about God's woman in the wilderness. So we're going to get to our lesson. Question number one. How does God How does Revelation I'm sorry picture God's true church? How does Revelation picture God's true church? You can read the answer Revelation 12 verses 1 and 2. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a garland or it's called a Stephanos. It means a crown of 12 stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and pain to give birth. Bible says I have likened the daughter of Zion to a lovely and a delicate woman.

God's church is symbolized by a pure woman. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the church. In the book of Hosea, he talks about his love for his people, his bride. And when she's unfaithful, he accuses her of adultery. Now if you have your Bibles and I hope you do either in paper or digital form, go to Revelation 12. We're going to look at this together. And I want you to read the first few verses with me. Revelation 12 verse 1. Now a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman Now this is in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet and on her head a garland of 12 stars.

Then being with child, she cried out in labor in pain to give birth. This woman is getting ready to bring forth a child. And another sign appears in heaven. Behold a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns. This dragon with seven heads and 10 horns appears several times in Daniel and Revelation. And seven diadems or crowns on his heads. And his tail drew a third of the stars of heaven. These are the fallen angels. And threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth to devour her child as soon as it was born.

And she bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. Who is that child? Jesus. And her child It's capital C if you're looking in many Bibles. Her child was caught up to God in his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God that they should feed her there. And I notice the number 1,260 days. All right, we're going to explore this passage very carefully because this woman is a picture of God's church. And then if you get to the very end of the chapter, go to Revelation chapter 12 and verse 17.

And the dragon was enraged with the woman and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus. So in this chapter, we see a battle and it's dealing with a woman, a dragon, a child of the seed of the woman. First prophecy in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 3. And it's talks about that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent and the serpent would bruise the heel. A battle involving a woman, the seed of the woman and a dragon or a serpent.

And so this is tell talking about just the the apex or the pinnacle of this battle. Now with that, let's get back into our lesson and we'll go through some of what we just read. I'll stop and expand on it as we go. What does it mean? It says she's clothed with the sun, the moon, and the stars. The sun represents the light of God. God made the sun. Psalm 84, Malachi 4:2 it says the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings. The moon represents the promises in the history of the Old Testament.

So God's church is clothed with the light of God's glory. The sun she's standing on the moon. The foundation for the early church is the moon and the promises and the prophecies of the Old Testament. The stars above her head represent the leadership. Above the head means authority. The Old Testament you've got the 12 tribes. You've got the 12 judges, the patriarchs. The princes of Moses were 12. In the New Testament, you have the 12 apostles. The number 12 matters to God. If you read Acts chapter 1 just before the Holy Spirit is poured out, you know what happens?

Peter said Jesus chose 12 apostles. They weren't even all from same from different tribes. There were many of them from the same tribe, but they had to be 12. Judas killed himself. Peter said we need to replace Judas, get back the number 12. And they cast lots and they picked Matthias. After it says they got the 12 apostles, then the place is shaken and the Holy Spirit is poured out. The number 12 is a symbol for the leadership. This is a picture of God's church. She bore a male child who's to rule all nations with a rod of iron.

Iron was the strongest material. It would break and shatter everything else. And her child is caught up to God in his throne. Jesus ministered for 33 and 1/2 years. He was crucified after being tortured, died, buried, rose, and then he ascended to heaven where he is now at the right hand of God. Can you say amen? That's the child. Now contrast that woman we just looked at in Revelation 12. Take your Bible, go to Revelation 17. You're going to see that there is a a dramatic shift here. Revelation chapter 17 talks about another woman. These two women are like polar opposites.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls These are the bowls of vial vials of wrath come to talk with me. And he said to me, come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. This is on earth now. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. That's not good. Kings of their governments, politicians. And the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. This wine is not the unfermented grape juice of the communion. It's fermented. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness.

And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy having seven heads and 10 horns. There's that beast again except before the beast is trying to eat the man child of the woman clothed with light, now this woman is riding on the beast. Who's in control? They're working in partnership. If you're riding a beast, you're usually going the same direction as the beast, right? And this woman she's clothed but not the glory of God. It's the glory of the world with purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.

And on her forehead is written a name Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. So here you have these two women. One represents the true church. The other represents a church that has become apostate, unfaithful, a harlot. One's got the light and the glory of God, the sun, the moon, the stars. God made all of that. The other is purple and gold and pearls and earthly adornment.

And she's working in cooperation with the beast and commits fornication with the governments. It's a church that is in cahoots with the governments of the world, okay? Two different women in the Bible and they're both in history today as you sit here. So who is the great red dragon? Let's identify him. And what does he do? It's hard to misunderstand who the dragon is. Revelation 12 verse 9 brings it all together for us. The dragon was cast out. That serpent of old called who? It's on your screen. He's called the the devil and Satan. Dragon, serpent, devil, Satan who deceives the whole world.

Christ says he is the prince of the world, much of the world, most of the world deceived by the devil. He was cast to the earth. He's claimed this is his dominion and his angels were cast out with him. The devil and his demons have been cast down here and they're wreaking havoc on the planet. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth to devour her child as soon as it was born. The devil did not want Jesus to complete his ministry of redemption and salvation to our world. Number three.

What happens after Satan fails to destroy Jesus? He could not get Jesus to sin. It says her child is what? He's caught up. That's called the ascension. He's caught up to God and his throne. Now the devil cannot reach Jesus anymore. This is you can read in Acts chapter 1 as the men the apostles stood there gazing. Christ ascended. He was caught up into the clouds. And now he is seated. He is enthroned before the Lord. And Jesus who is the king of kings and Lord of lords. Now I want you to notice something. There's a pattern in the Bible.

You have the example of eight miracle births in the Bible. Each of the births are a type of Christ. Notice Sarah and Isaac. Sarah could not give birth, but through a miracle of God's power when she was what? 90 90 or 99 she gave birth to Isaac. Rebecca and Jacob. Rebecca was barren. So Rebecca gives birth to Jacob. And Jacob is a type of Christ. Rachel gives birth to Joseph. Rachel was barren. Jacob prays and she gives birth. Manoah's wife It doesn't tell us her name was barren. She has Samson. Hannah is barren. She goes and she prays at the temple.

She has What's his name? Samuel. Then there's a Shunammite woman. And Gehazi says she has no child. Elisha prays and she has a miracle son. And Elizabeth is barren. And through a miracle, she and Zechariah have John the Baptist. And then the final miracle birth is who? Is Jesus, okay? Every one of these first seven miracle births are types of Christ. Notice Is Isaac a type of Christ? He goes up the mountain. He's a willing sacrifice. The father's beloved son. Jacob who has the 12 apostles is a type of Christ. He has 12 sons. Joseph who is sold by his brothers as a slave.

He forgives them and feeds the world with the bread of life during a famine. Samson He kills more by his death than than he did by his life. He stretches out his arms and he dies is a type of Christ. Samuel who is a prophet, a priest, and a judge of Israel. And he interceded for them. He is a type of Christ. The Shunammite woman He has a boy. He dies in the field, but he is miraculously resurrected like Jesus. Is he a type of Christ? Then you has Elizabeth and John. John who is the greatest prophets who introduces Christ.

They are all forerunners. Isn't it interesting all these miracle births are all males because they're types of Christ. And then the ultimate when it says a woman is striving to bring forth is Jesus. And the devil wants to destroy him. Now this is not the first time that the dragon has wanted to destroy the man child. What happened during the time of Moses? The devil knew that a savior was coming. He wanted to destroy the savior. He knew that it was going to be a boy. So he had all the baby boys thrown in the river, right?

But one survives and he becomes a savior. Then we read about David's descendants. The devil knew that a savior was coming. There was going to be a great king who is a descendant of David. The devil heard the prophecy saying the Messiah would be a descendant of David. And during the time of Queen Athaliah, she tried to kill all of the royal seed of David, but one escapes. His name is Joash, right? And he ends up restoring the true worship. Becomes a type of Christ. And then when Jesus was born, does Herod try to devour the man child before he's born, kills all the babies in Bethlehem?

You can see this consistent effort. The devil is trying to keep the savior from getting started, to take him out while he is a weak baby all through the Bible. But after Jesus is caught up to heaven, what does Satan do? He can't now persecute Christ, so he directs his tension to the church. When the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he can no longer reach Christ. He now persecutes the woman who gave birth to the man child. If you want to hurt somebody, it's one thing to hurt them, but you're much more effective if you hurt what they love the most.

And God loves us even more than his own son in that he sacrificed his son. Jesus offered himself that we might be saved. So the devil knows that Jesus greatly treasures. He's desperate to save us. He loves us more than his own blood. He gave his blood to save us. And the devil wants to hurt Jesus by hurting us. So whenever you're going through trials and you think that God doesn't care, oh he cares. He knows. He sees it. He cries. The Bible says that in as much as we do it to one of the least of these, we do it to the Lord because the Lord feels everything we feel.

And so Jesus it breaks his heart when we suffer. Sometimes he allows us to suffer for our ultimate good and he turns it to good. But catch this friends, not everything bad that happens to God's people is God's will. There are bad things that happen in the world that are not the will of God. Why do we say in the Lord's prayer thy will be done? If God's will is always done, then why do we pray thy will be done? And why does the Bible say God is not willing that any should perish? Will many perish?

Yes. Is God willing? No. There's a lot of things in this world because of the devil that happen that are not his will. So don't blame everything bad that happens on God. Can God take bad things and turn them for good? Yes. That's the important truth. But the devil wanted to destroy the church. So plan A the devil says I'm going to destroy the church by annihilation. I'm just going to make it illegal. And the early Romans declared Christianity even during the time of Peter and Paul. He declared it Nero religio illicite. Paul because he was a Roman, he was beheaded.

You can die quickly if you're a Roman. If you are not a Roman, you are crucified. Peter was crucified, but he said I'm not worthy to be crucified. Crucify me with my head down. And legend has it that Peter was crucified head down, which actually accelerated his death. Many Christians then were thrown to the lions or Nero smeared them with pitch and set them on fire to light his gardens. And the Christians went underground because you got catacombs all through the Roman Empire where they would bury their dead underground. I've been through the catacombs and they go on for miles and miles and miles.

And the whole Christian church went underground, but you know what? The more the Christians were persecuted in the arenas and the spectators saw them dying while they were praying, dying with peace, dying with faith, the blood of the martyrs is seed for the gospel. The church spread through persecution. Devil said this is not working very good. I need to go to plan B. And if I can't destroy the church from the outside, I'm going to try to destroy the church from the inside. Says in Revelation 13 verse 7, it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.

He tried to annihilate Christians. But then when he legalized Christianity, it became a bigger problem. Around the time of Constantine, the Roman emperor, he said you know the Christians aren't hurting anyone and there was already they were fighting other wars with other branches of the Roman Empire. Constantine fought the battle of Maximilian Bridge and he claimed to have seen a vision in the sky. By the way, his mother converted to Christianity. So Constantine said well I'm going to fight under the sign of the cross. So he had all his soldiers paint a cross on their shields and then he ordered them to march through the Tiber River.

And he said well that's baptism. He says you're all baptized now. You're all Christians. But the problem is that they went into the water dry pagans and they came up wet pagans. They had no idea. And all of a sudden something terrible happened. The devil accomplished through compromise what he couldn't accomplish through outright attack. When he went into the church and he brought in compromise. See the Romans they had statues everywhere. Someone said there were more statues and idols in Rome than there were shingles on the roof. They had idols everywhere. And so all these pagans came to the church leaders.

They said what do we do with all of our idols? And the faithful ones said we'll get rid of them. And the other church leaders said oh no no no. We want them to join the church little by little. They they can get rid of those things. Let's just let them let them give Christian names to their idols. Nothing wrong if they're praying to you know Peter, James, and John. We'll just rename Jupiter, Mercury, and Apollos and the statues of Diana holding her baby. We'll call her Mary and baby Jesus. And they began to rename the statues.

The statue I've been to the Vatican. The statue of Saint Peter in the Vatican predates Saint Peter. It used to be the statue of Jupiter and they moved it. And they've actually kissed away the foot several times and replaced it. And all this compromise came in. Pastors were people just like everybody else. And now the pastors were being treated like a royal class the way the pagan pastors were. And they had their holy vestments and they were above the people. And they took the Bibles from the people and they chained them in the churches and the monasteries.

They said you're ignorant. You can't understand. We'll tell you what it says. Cuz they were afraid that if people read for themselves, they'd find out salvation was free and you could not pay to get a person out of purgatory. And that hell did not burn forever and ever. They got that from the Greek mythology. And what you had now is a milkshake. It was a stew with Christianity mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions. And they became the state religion. The woman committed adultery with the kings of the earth. And that lasted for 1,260 not days, years because in prophecy a day is what?

It's a year. So in 538 You can remember that date. In 538 Justinian he moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople and he told the bishop of Rome they moved the capital from Jerusalem to Rome. And they said we're going to give the bishop of Rome an army so you can enforce religious observance. And now was being forced on people. Did Jesus ever use military to force his beliefs? They became a religious political power that had almost uninterrupted power from 538 to 1798. Now what happened during that time? Any of you ever play chess? And you got the king and the queen and who's next to the king and the queen?

The bishop on the right and the left because that's the way it was through Europe. The monarchs in Europe couldn't do anything without church approval. The reason the Church of England broke away and became its own church is because Henry VIII kept trying to have a male child and it wasn't working out. And so he would divorce his wives or he'd kill his wife. And when he finally wanted the church to approve a divorce, they said hey look Henry enough is enough. You can't keep divorcing her. You don't have biblical grounds. They did have some values.

He said well I'll start my own church. By the way, you know what's going to happen this week? For the first time in 500 years King Charles is going to meet with the Pope and they're going to pray together. Isn't that interesting? And so you see that there was this big compromise that took place.

Guest (Male): Do you long to experience the peace that can only come from our loving heavenly Father? Do you desire your heart to be clean and at rest? Jesus stands before you right now with his arms open wide to receive you. Why not ask him into your life right now? Why not receive him now as your personal savior? Take that first step and say yes Lord, I choose you. He's ready and waiting to receive you now.

Guest (Male): I have a question regarding what is going on in Iran as in regards to Bible prophecy. What does the Bible say about the the the fate of Iran?

Doug Batchelor: Well, there are a number of prophecies about the various kingdoms you can you can see Ezekiel and Nahum and Zechariah. They kind of go one by one. I think it's Ezekiel that says for three transgressions and for four and he pronounces judgments on on Nineveh and Assyria and Damascus and Edom and Ammon and the Philistines and they they go through the future of these different nations in their prophecies. You're not going to find the word Iran per se in the Bible prophecies. Uh Iran today is principally an Islamic country. You do see Islam in prophecy and you're going to find more think about Islam in Revelation because keep in mind the religion of Islam did not develop until after the time of Christ.

And both in now there a difference between the the Sunni Muslims and the Shia and the you know there are different sects. But uh you're going to find differences between Iraq and Iran and Egypt and even some of the Palestinians. But Islam The two principal religions in the world today are Christianity and Islam. They're they're by far number one and number two. Then I think a third place would be Hinduism coming down the line. There are prophecies in Revelation that talk about the rise of Islam that became a judgment on apostasy that was happening to Christianity in Europe.

And it's interesting when you get into the book of Daniel and even some of the other prophecies that it it mentions the number of countries that are today Islamic countries. The last chapter chapter 11 rather of Daniel talks about Edom, Moab, Ammon, Egypt, Libya. It's just interesting. And you wonder well what does that mean? So I wouldn't focus so much on Iran as a country though they have been Iran in the last 50 years or so. They have sort of been central intelligence for terrorism against Israel and some of the West. Uh they've been helping to subsidize it.

So we are going through some amazing changes right now.

Guest (Male): And of course historically in the Bible as you mentioned Pastor Doug, the name would be Persia. You read in the Old Testament about Persia. Well, that became Iran as we as we know today. And they were positive. I mean several things. Number one, they conquered Babylon when the Jews were captive in Babylon. And they were allowed to go back. It was the Persian Cyrus, but then also Artaxerxes later on that allowed the Jews to go back and rebuild the temple and the city in Jerusalem and and institute the worship of the true God. So they were friends at one point, but they were always pagan until as you mentioned they converted to Islam around the It must have been close to a thousand that time period with the Ottoman Empire.

So that's Revelation chapter the the fifth and the sixth trumpet. You read about Islam in prophecy, yeah.

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