Doug Batchelor: Now, we want to welcome our friends who are watching via Facebook or Amazing Facts Television, Good News Television, Roku, and all the different venues. We have members who are watching around the world. This is a high day in Zion, you might say. You'll notice that we have a busy background here for our regular Sabbath school study, and that's because this Sabbath is the Sabbath where we are celebrating the opening of the WORD Center.
Now, we've, you know, been open for a little while, but because of the pandemic, we weren't really able to call everybody together and celebrate the way we wanted to, so we picked this date right here at the beginning of spring, and this is going to be a great day to worship and praise the Lord, amen? And so, we're so thankful that each of you are here, and we've got a very special Sabbath school lesson and a presenter that will share with you in just a moment.
We want to remind you, we're going through our new quarterly dealing with the subject of Genesis. This is just a foundation for scriptural truth and that we have a free offer today that is relevant for our study. It's called "Aliens, Angels, or Adopted" and it's going to be talking about "Who are the sons of God?" And so, if you would like that free offer, the offer number is 866-788-3966, is the number that you would call. Ask for offer number 811, and if you're in the US, you can text SH134, text that to 40544.
You can download and read this lesson, and we know you'll be blessed when you do, but before we get into our study for today and have our prayer, we're going to be blessed with some music.
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♪ Our Father, ♪
♪ which art in heaven, ♪
♪ which art in heaven, ♪
♪ hallowed be thy name. ♪
♪ hallowed be thy name. ♪
♪ hallowed be thy name. ♪
♪ Thy kingdom come, ♪
♪ thy will be done ♪
♪ in earth, ♪
♪ as it is in heaven. ♪
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♪ Give us this day our daily bread. ♪
♪ And forgive us our debts, ♪
♪ as we forgive our debtors. ♪
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♪ And lead us not into temptation, ♪
♪ but deliver us from evil. ♪
♪ For thine is the kingdom, ♪
♪ and the power, ♪
♪ and the glory, ♪
♪ for ever and ever, amen. ♪
♪ for ever and ever, amen. ♪
♪ for ever and ever, amen. ♪
♪ for ever and ever, amen. ♪
Doug: Loving Father, we just want to thank You and praise You for this day of life and the Sabbath day, when we can come together, study Your Word, and just rejoice in the goodness and the plan of salvation. Lord, we pray You will be with us during this study hour, be in a special way with our presenter, and we ask that You'll bless him and anoint his lips with Your Spirit and that we might all be edified. We ask in Jesus's name, amen.
All right, well, I'd like to invite our speaker up here, and while our choir finds their way out, I'm so thankful that Elder Jay Gallimore is here to share our lesson with us today. Elder Jay is not only a pastor, an administrator, he's been a conference president. He's the chairman of the Amazing Facts Board and is a very capable Bible teacher. And so, Elder Gallimore is going to be presenting our lesson today, and then after the lesson, don't rush off, because we have something special that's going to follow immediately after before we go into our normal break time. Brother Jay, thank you so much.
Jay Gallimore: All right, thank you, Pastor Doug. Just a joy to be with you. What a wonderful day this is. It's just a fantastic day. I'm not going to lead music, that's really not my thing, but--this is really nice and big so I can get everything else on that here, but we have a wonderful day. It's a day of celebration. The lesson, however, is serious. It's sober, and it's one we must think about carefully. I'm sure you have your Bibles, and I'd like to have you turn to Genesis chapter 6, and if you have a Sabbath School Quarterly, we're studying the chapter--or the lesson number four, and we're studying the flood.
So this is a wonderful day, but we exist, "Amazing Facts" exists to help carry out the message to a dying world because this world is headed for another flood, not a flood of water but a flood of fire. The lesson has three parts in my mind, the first part is the warning, the second part of the lesson is the judgment, and the third part of the lesson is the rainbow, and so we're going to plunge into this. I'm used to teaching where I've got a lot of feedback. I know that's not going to be possible today, but it's still a teaching. It's not a preaching lesson. So I hope that you will plunge into this with me, and so we're going to look at chapter--we're looking at the quarterly, and we have on Sunday's lesson.
Before I go there, I want to go to the memory verse, because we're going to come back to the memory verse at the end, and it's one that you probably know well, but as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of what? The coming of the Son of Man. So, Jesus himself said look at the antediluvian world, look at Noah, look what happened, look at the flood, because the conditions that were there are also going to be the conditions that are going to be with us in the end of time. And that's why first of all we would need to take the warning and look at the warning.
So, I want to go to Genesis chapter 6, and we want to look at the first few verses here, so if you're following right along with me. I'm using a New King James Version this morning. "Now, it came to pass that when man began to multiply on the face of the earth--" I'm going to stop right there and say if you look at chapter 4 and you look at chapter 5, you will see that something is happening very interesting.
First of all, we have Cain and Abel, you know the story there, and then Seth is born, and the last words we basically hear from Eve is that "I now have somebody to take the place of Abel." Seth becomes the line--the patriarchs, if you please, of those who would be faithful to God. Now, that's important to keep that in mind. There was another line that was given by--it came from Cain who killed his brother, and we find a record of that down to the seven generations. With the line of Seth, we find a line of seven generations, and we have Enoch, who was taken to heaven, and then you come three more generations to ten generations, and you come to Noah.
Now, it's important to flash back and just take a look at what's happening in Cain's line, and the last we hear from Cain's line is found in chapter 4, if you have your Bibles, and you're looking at verse 19. "Then Lamech," this is the last one of Cain's line that we hear from in scripture, "took for himself how many wives? Oh. That wasn't the way it was In the beginning. That's what Jesus said. God gave Adam how many wives? One. So something terrible is going on here. We're finding the introduction of polygamy, why?
Now, something else, and I'm going to do a little speculation, I like sometimes--we do a little sanctified speculation, which tells you that I can't necessarily prove what I'm going to say next, but I think it's logical. Lamech does a poem where he actually brags about the fact that he killed a man. First of all, we have the polygamy, and then we have the fact that he killed a man, he said, who wounded him, and he's basically kind of boasting about it. Cain, his great-great-great-whatever grandfather killed a man, his own brother.
So what's going on here? Here's what I suspect is going on and why it's important for the warning. This Lamech may have got into a conflict with this man because he took his wife by force. If you read "Patriarchs and Prophets," you'll find that the antediluvian world descended into violence. You'll find it in scripture. God said there was violence everywhere. The intentions of everybody's mind was evil, selfish continually. If he took this man's wife by force and they got in conflict, that is one of the reasons why we see the deterioration in the antediluvian world.
I'm going to come back to that, but now I want to flashback to chapter 6. In chapter 6 we find verse 2. "That the sons of God--" by the way, the book that was advertised, you want that book, because there's a lot of information around today that tells you a whole different story, but it's not true. The sons of God and the sons of man are just the two lines that were established, one by Seth, those who were faithful to God, they're the sons of God, and the one established by Cain, they're the sons of men. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful."
So what's going on here? Hello, Samson, wasn't there anybody, weren't there any Israelite women that were lovely and beautiful? Why did you have to go to the Philistines? Why Delilah? We can say that with the sons of God. Why descendants of Seth? Aren't there any lovely women, good women? Why in the world are you going to the daughters of Cain? This comes down to where we have to understand the warning, and the warning becomes personal to all of us.
When God created us, He created us with massive, marvelous, wonderful gifts. He created us with the gifts of pleasure. How many of you enjoy eating? I know the answer to that. He gave us the joy of marriage and intimacy. He gave us the joy to be able to plan and execute. He gave us all kinds of opportunities to find pleasure, but He also gave us something else. He gave us self-control, and self-control that comes from God himself.
The very basis of our existence according to Jesus is to love--and Moses--is to love the Lord with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. Why would you want to love this God? Because this God is a God of unselfish love, and without unselfish love, life cannot exist. Mark it down. That's what this is all about. The great controversy between Christ and Satan was this whole issue. Satan says, "I can be selfish and still live," and God says, "You cannot. That's why I gave my law, is because the law puts a fence around unselfish love and keeps us out of selfishness. It guards everybody else's right to happiness.
So here's the tragedy. This is the line of Seth. They mix it up with women from Cain who have this same concept as Lucifer of selfishness, of unrestrained pleasure. By the way, you take a gift of God--regardless of what it is--that He gave us for pleasure, and you turn that gift into lust by using it without restraint. And so, what did this cause? It caused a huge apostasy. This is the tragedy. We know Cain's descendants were in apostasy, but now we have the descendants of Seth.
God raises up Noah because He finds him the only righteous man that He can trust. Now, I'm not saying there are not other people, but when we come to the tragedy of the flood, you have to understand, we have to understand that many of the people that died in that flood were the brothers, perhaps sisters, perhaps nieces, nephews, cousins, the close relatives of Noah himself, because they had gone into apostasy. And with that, God begins to say something, and it's a warning to all of us. Look at verse 5 if you have your Bibles. "And then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great--" you can look at the descendants of Seth, you can look at the descendants of Cain--"great in the earth, and that every intent and thought of the heart was only evil continually.
I don't know that I need to try to describe the horribleness, the abominations of the antediluvian world, but I will tell you this. If you start looking around and you start looking at what's happening in our world, you are going to see a reflection of why God destroyed that world. We do not understand either the seriousness of sin or the mighty love of God. You can only destroy the power of sin by destroying the love of sin. I just mentioned it, but I want to re-underline this because people get angry at God about the flood. They say, "God, why? How can you destroy every living being? How can you do that? Men, women, children, and the animals, how can you do that?" Because we don't understand the power of sin and what it does to human beings.
Let me share with you what I mean. Now, God loved that race. That's why He raised up Noah and built the ark for 120 years. Noah was a mighty preacher of righteousness, and everything he had went into that ark, and when he built that on dry land, it was a testimony that God meant what He said, and had they repented, God would have spared them the flood like He spared Nineveh. We have to understand this awfulness of sin. The issue is not whether sin can be forgiven by the blood of Christ, the issue is that sin hardness our hearts so that we don't want forgiveness. And we have to understand that that world headed toward a close of human probation and that we--this world is headed once again to a close of human probation.
We are looking at our world today where the entertainment industry, the media industry, and the list goes on, they're actually under the control of demonic forces that want not only to take over the adults, but the young people and the children, and the people responsible for that are their parents. Some years ago, I was speaking somewhere, and I said to a group--this was a long time ago-- and it's 1,000 times worse today. When I jump on my app phone and they send up their advertisements, it's just a bunch of demonic stuff, the games that people are playing today, you just do the list, but I said, how many of you let your kids listen to higher--Harry Potter stuff? Everything got quiet quick. I said, "Listen, that is put together to do one thing, and that's to bring demon possession into your children." And this whole thing is being schemed to do that.
You can come to the place where there is no possible way that you can save anybody, including the children, because they've been so utterly corrupted. We have to understand the awfulness of sin. And that's what happened in the antediluvian world, that God tried everything He could to save them, and He's doing everything He can to save this generation, but a close of human probation is on its way.
Now, I want to say this. If you love the Lord Jesus this morning, and I believe you do or you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be watching. If you love the Lord Jesus, you have a responsibility and I have a responsibility to do everything we can to bring people to a Savior who has the power not only to forgive but to transform, and that power was available to the antediluvian world. They understood the sacrifices. There was no excuse. I'm, you know, they had all their bright people back then too, but I just want to underline, the first thing is the warning, and God is warning not because He's trying to be mean, not because He wants a flood, not because He wants the destruction of the wicked.
In fact, I think I've asked this question as I've talked about the end of time, as I've talked about the destruction of the wicked, the fact is, the book of Revelation says that God dries our tears. My question is who dries God's tears? One person put that the flood was simply God drowning the world in His tears. He didn't want the antediluvian world to perish. He wanted to save it, but he will not take away your freedom of choice. He will not take away the freedom of parents, and our world is fast becoming like the antediluvian world.
I believe there will be a lot of people saved in the end of time, and we need to do everything we can to assist the Lord Jesus in that because it--He invested, by the way, everything He had in Calvary. I tell people, when you go and look in God's treasure house, you'll find it's empty, because when He emptied out His only begotten Son, there was nothing left to give. He's invested in us. He's invested in our happiness, and He was invested in the antediluvian world, but when the warnings finally come to an end, there comes a place where mercy folds her wings. They didn't believe him.
You know the story. Think of the tragedy. Noah wasn't happy. I think Noah was in weeping as that storm came because he knew it was not only the descendants of Cain, but his own relatives. I don't have a long time to get into the flood, but by the way, if you want to find and look at some of the scientific things that have happened, there's some really good minds out there that are seeing the evidence and are applying it to Noah's flood. If you look at Answers in Genesis, you can find it, I think, on YouTube, it's free. Genesis apologetics, they have about a 20-minute thing that shows you a really good picture of what happened at the flood.
The scripture is very clear, that God was going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights, and then it says something very interesting, that he broke up the foundations of the deep, the great foundations of the deep. This is when we come to judgment. Mercy folds its wings. Noah is put into that ark. That mighty door is shut, I believe, by an angel of God. Noah is shut in by God Himself. By the way, when human probation closes--I don't have a lot of time to talk about this--but when human probation closes, dear ones, we want to be shut in by the grace of God. We want to be shut in by the Holy Spirit. We will be protected during that time, but before we get to that time, our hearts must be utterly surrendered, not 90%, not 99%, but 100% to the Lord Jesus. A lot of people love the Lord Jesus as long as they can keep 10%, but the scripture says you must love Him with how much of your heart? Yeah, every bit of it, and that's my appeal.
So, let's talk about the judgments of God. So here we have--the ark is all built, Noah is in, people are laughing and mocking. These are Noah's relatives. All the scientific people have told him, "Oh, it's not going to happen, it's never--" they, you know, everybody today--science is the new god, have you noticed? I'm going to say it clearly. I say it kind of--as Christians of faith, men and women of faith, as Christians we're not against science. We just don't believe it's God. We believe that God is in charge of science and that true science is not going to contradict him.
There may be mysteries that we don't understand. There always will be. The fountains of the great deep were broken up. If you look at the earth like a baseball, you'll find that the baseball has seams all around it. You know that clearly. If you look at the earth, you'll find those seams in the trenches in these mighty oceans that we have, because the earth was all of one great land mass with lakes and shores and so forth, pretty huge. They call it Pangea, whatever, but when the flood came, it just broke the continents up. Now, they'll tell you that these continents have drifted over zillions of years. Not true, it drifted and came to what we see today in the flood, and if you look at some of these references that I gave you, you'll see how that works. In fact, as you look at these beautiful mountains of the Sierras, the Sierras are part of the flood. You're looking at the results of the flood, because what happened is as these grounds of the great deep broke up and they sent these--the water and the stones and the earth and the debris up way into the atmosphere. As that began to happen and as these--this, it began to break the continents and they began to slide away 5 miles an hour, sliding away. That's what's creating these great oceans that we have, and when these--and when it comes to rest, when it finally stops, that is very powerful forces, and that's why you get the mountains coming up on the east coast, on the west coast, anywhere around the world.
So, some people have laughed at us when we talk about Noah's flood, say, "Oh yeah, was the water 15 meters above Mount Everest?" Well, you might want to take a look because Mount Everest has fossils on it. It didn't need to go above Mount Everest. The mountains of those days were much gentler, much nicer. Mount Everest and all of these great mountains that we have today, they came as a result of the collusion of these great continents as a flood broke it up, and the mountains of the great deep pushed them apart.
And when you think about that--they discover with all their oil drilling today, that they was swept by about--this is my lay language here, they have scientific language for it, but I call it, like, great tsunamis that spread a layer of sediment, six of them, and they're the same all over the world. All the oil drilling, they have the bits, they bring the cores up and they look at all of that.
We know right here in North America, the huge number, tens of thousands, we don't really know the number, were buried in Montana, and they weren't buried over time. They weren't buried by a local flood. There's no explanation for that except this worldwide flood. The Grand Canyon was not cut over eons of time. It was cut within a few days probably, maybe even less, because the flood had left a huge lake in the inter part of what we call the United States today. It was blocked up probably by ice or whatever, and that broke, and when it broke, it swept down just like--and we have a good example of that in Mount Saint Helens today. You can find the same thing.
By the way Mount Saint Helens has all the layers, and they've done studies in Colorado, secular universities. They talk about--they study layers. If you've ever been to the beach and you've watched the shore come up, you'll watch it and it'll settle out in layers, and that's why you get the fossil record the way you get the fossil record. There's plenty of evidence, and the scripture is clear, nothing from the land was left alive except Noah, his family, and the animals that were in the ark.
The final destruction, no living thing will be left alive outside of that New Jerusalem. It will be our ark, and there's nothing in that New Jerusalem that's not in harmony with the love of God and the law of God. I want to be inside that New Jerusalem, because what happens on the outside of it is a tragedy, but it has to happen. From God's love flows both His justice and his mercy, and He is not going to allow--despite the Asian, Eastern religions that talk about Yin, Yang and an eternal existence between good and evil, in my best Southern English, it ain't so. Evil will be destroyed, hallelujah.
All the misery and the suffering that we see everywhere that we're involved in, immersed in ourselves, it's all going to disappear, and we will be ushered into a new age of love and grace and opportunities such as we cannot even dream. All made possible by the blood of Christ and the Resurrection morning of God who loves us, who gave His only begotten Son for us. They cannot tell me that God is mean or arbitrary. He's only doing what's got to be done, and He's reluctant to do it. That's the judgment. That's the judgment of Noah's day, and it's the judgment of our day, will be, because we're in the same part.
Now, the wonderful thing, if you look at Genesis--in Genesis 8, verse 1, it says--if you have your Bibles, turn there--Genesis 8, verse 1. "Then God remembered." I love that word. Doesn't mean that He was just--it was just an intellectual thing, it was that when God remembers, God acts, and when you trace it through scripture, God acts with mercy, with great mercy. God remembered Noah and the ark and now He, the waters--God reverses this whole thing. He's flooded the earth, He's announced judgment, but now He turns it around, and He begins to drain the waters off of the earth, and He's going to bring Noah and his family out. Now I want to come to the final one, and that's the rainbow. The rainbow. Noah comes out of that ark. He sacrifices.
Now, many people will say that's an offering of thanksgiving, and it was. I'm not here to argue that, but Noah understood the sacrifice. He understood that that would point forward to a Messiah that would come. He understood that the hope of the human race was in what that sacrifice symbolized. He understood that there was a promise made to Eve, and that promise was that one of her children--the seed of the woman--trying to get that back--the seed of the woman, a man would come and he would reverse all of this curse and the difficulties that we find ourselves facing in this world.
Are you hearing what I hear? Okay, I know there are people controlling this thing, so they'll have to work on the background noise there, but I don't want you to miss this. Don't worry about the background noise, I'm louder than it is, because I don't want to miss this.
So, he comes out and he makes this sacrifice. Now, the Bible says that it was a sweet savor. I said, "How can that be a sweet savor? When God smells it, why is God happy? After all, it's a sacrifice." Well, I went back and I ran this, and you'll find that in the Old Testament--actually, it's really a fast forward because it's after the time of Noah, but they say that when they offer the sacrifices in the sanctuary, it was a sweet savor, why? Why does God take delight in that sacrifice? I tell you why, it's because it pointed forward to the time when His Son would come to Calvary's cross. He didn't take delight in the death of His Son, but He was glad, and His Son was willing to go to give that gift to us in order that He might redeem us and put sin out of the universe because God is getting ready to do something marvelous. He's getting ready to have an eternity where we're both free and sinless, and it's a sacrifice that accomplishes that.
In the two minutes I have left, I want to talk about the rainbow. The reason I know that--one reason I know that we're living in the end of time is because the most abominable perversions, whether it's heterosexual or whether it's the other kind of perversions described in Romans chapter 1, they had chosen the rainbow as their symbol. They are shaking their fists in the face of God. They're saying, "It doesn't matter," and we have a world--it's not just that-- we have a world that's in rebellion. The scientific world is in rebellion. They see all the evidence but don't let a divine foot in the door.
Let me tell you, every time you see that rainbow, that rainbow is a promise that Jesus is able to save us from the guttermost to the uttermost, that he is able and powerful enough to transform us and make new creatures out of us. He is powerful enough, that rainbow says, not only to forgive my sins and to cover them and wipe them clean, but he's also able to make a new creature out of me that can live for eternity in an earth made new. That rainbow is also another symbol. God destroyed the antediluvian world for their sins. He's going to do it again.
God's no respecter of persons. Just because we're the United States of America, just because we live in this world, just because we have all these scientists doesn't make us special. What He did then He will be forced to do again, but I want to tell you the good news. It's in the rainbow. The rainbow is our hope of everlasting life.
Doug: You know, I'd like to just close off our Sabbath school time with prayer, and then we have something very special. You know, the Bible says the last words of Jesus should be the first priority of believers to go, to teach, to meet disciples, to baptize, and we're going to enter into a baptism. So, let's just have prayer right now.
Loving Lord, we just thank you so much for the study of the Word. We thank you so much for the presence that we sense here right now of the Holy Spirit. I pray that you will be in every heart and mind, and bless the service that will follow now. Be in a special way for those who are now committing their lives to Jesus through that sacred rite of baptism. We ask in Jesus's name, amen.
Male: They have been studying so hard for the past nine months. We have been studying through Zoom, through Facebook--Facetime, and they have really, really worked very hard. So, because of your love for Jesus, Abby, and because you want to surrender your life to Him, it is my privilege to be able to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I was hoping, Jackson, the water wouldn't be over his head, so we're glad that he's doing well with that. Jackson studied also very hard. He put a lot of scripture into memory, memorizing the books of the Bible the Beatitudes and everything like that, and Jackson, it is my privilege because you love Jesus to be able to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Male: As Melissa comes down, this--she's very special, and all of them are very special, but as we did the Panorama of Prophesy, she came and she introduced herself to Doug because she wanted to get baptized. And so, Doug shared her with me, and we did many lessons over the phone, and it was a true blessing to see her love and joy for the Lord and wanting to make this commitment to the Lord. And so at this time, Allisa, it's my privilege to baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Male: Happy Sabbath. Today's such a special day here at Granite Bay. As Pastor Al and John already said, today's a special day for many reasons, including that we are able to witness people giving their lives to Jesus. That's what we do here. That is the purpose of this place. It's to lead people to Jesus.
A few months ago I met Eldar, and he's a really quiet soul. Eldar is very quiet, very serious soul, but we started reading the Bible--actually, we became friends, and then he told me that he wanted to be baptized. We studied together for a while, and through the time that I was able to study with Eldar and go through a booklet that I gave him, and we went through a few other deep subjects. It was very clear to see that Eldar is an intelligent, intelligent young man.
Eldar is from the Ukraine. His family is there right now, so we continue to ask prayer for them. His father's name is Dennis. His mother's name is Natalia, and his sister's name is Yeva, hope I said that right, but they're going to be watching this later on, but please keep them in prayer. They have been through a lot and they are still going through a lot. Eldar has shared with me many moments where he's been very worried about them, and the Lord has been good. He has protected them.
And, Eldar, I'm sure that this decision that you're making today, it will reap eternal dividends as Jesus will be the center of your life, and that is my prayer for you always, my friend. And so, Eldar, for all these reasons, for the reason that you have decided to give your life to Jesus, that you have dedicated who you are, your future, your talents, your skills to Him, as a minister of this gospel following the orders of the Master for the forgiveness of your sins and a new life in Jesus, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness O God my Father. ♪
♪ There is no shadow of turning with Thee ♪
♪ Thou changest not Thy compassions ♪
♪ They fail not. ♪
♪ As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness. ♪
♪ Morning by morning new mercies I see. ♪
♪ All I have needed, thy hand hath provided. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. ♪
♪ Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, ♪
♪ moon, and stars in their courses ♪
♪ above join with all nature in ♪
♪ manifold witness to Thy great ♪
♪ faithfulness, mercy, and love. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness. ♪
♪ Morning by morning new mercies I see. ♪
♪ All I have needed, thy hand hath provided. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, ♪
♪ Lord, unto me. ♪
♪ Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, ♪
♪ thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide. ♪
♪ Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. ♪
♪ Blessings all mine, ♪
♪ with ten thousand beside. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness. ♪
♪ Lord, every morning new mercies I see. ♪
♪ All I have needed, ♪
♪ Thy hands hath provided. ♪
♪ Great is Thy faithfulness, ♪
♪ Lord, unto me. ♪
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Diamond Garcia: Hi, my name is Diamond Garcia, and I am from the beautiful islands of Hawaii. I was raised in a very dysfunctional family, like most families. Being in that environment, I would lie, cheat, steal, rob houses, cheat in school and tests, and lie to teachers, and getting into fights, and all kinds of stuff. One day, I was asked to take this little box of something, and I had to walk down the road and give it to someone, and they would give me money and I'd walk back home. And I later realized I was dealing drugs.
Growing up in that environment, I thought that, you know, being an adult was a life of drinking and smoking and partying, and that's just adults did. When I looked at my family and saw the road that they were going down, getting arrested, getting beaten up, coming home drunk and puking all over the floor, I just didn't want that for myself.
Growing up, I had a grandma who was baptized as a Christian in her 20s, but then she wasn't a real, practicing Christian. And so, one day, I was at her house, and there was a box of various books. And I went to the bottom of that box and found a book called "The Great Controversy." And I picked it up and I said, "This is interesting." And I opened to the first page of that book and it said, "If thou hadst known." I had no clue what it meant, and so I said, "You know what? Forget this." I put the book down, I just walked away, did my thing.
But then something told me, "You know, Diamond, go back to that book." And so, I went back to the book, picked it up, went to the last two chapters, and I read it. And I said to my grandmother, I said, "What church is this from? I want to go to that church." So, she brought me down to the local church, and then I walk in from the backdoor. And the piano's off-key, people are off-key, it's like, "Man, this is really kind of--I don't want to be here."
And I got to the front of the church, and I sat down, I was listening to the sermon and the whole service, it was so boring to me. But then someone gives me this set of DVDs and it was called "The Prophecy Code." It was through watching Doug Batchelor explain the truths found in the Bible that really brought me to Christ and brought me to realize that, you know what? There is a life better than my family's life.
My second week at church on Sabbath, there was one person there, he basically told me, "Hey Diamond, do you want to make some money?" And I said, "Sure." I said, "What do you do?" He says, "Well, I'm a colporteur. We go door to door and we sell Christian books." I said, "Oh, okay. Well, that sounds interesting. I do want to make some money too." And so he said, "Okay, well, why don't you come with me?" We drove out to the neighborhood, parked the car, and that night was just raining, it was pouring and pouring, it could not stop raining. He prayed, he said, "God, this is Diamond's first night. If it's Your will, stop the rain so we can go knocking on doors."
And as soon as he said amen, the rain just stopped. I was just thinking in my head, "Is this guy a prophet or what? I mean, he just prayed and asked God and it happened." And so I was so--I was so happy, I grabbed the books and I went to the first door. And the first door I went to, the person gave me 50 bucks.
That night was actually a big night for me because it was where I saw God's power work in stopping the rain and people actually giving me lots of money. I then became a colporteur or a canvasser, and I save money to pay for my way through academy. And when my church began to see how God was using me, they immediately recognized that it was God's Spirit moving and they put me, you know, preaching, and teaching, and sharing my faith. And I've been engaged in ministry for the past six to seven years now, and God has taken me all over the world on multiple continents, sharing my testimony, how God has brought me out of darkness into his marvelous light. It's a total contrast as to how I was before. And now, you know, it's a total contrast. My name is Diamond, and "Amazing Facts" has helped to change my life.
Announcer: Amazing Facts changed lives. Amazing Facts changed lives.
Steve Johnson: I was heading south on Interstate 5. This commercial come on KFBK Radio about a revelation seminar by Amazing Facts. I began--my chest began to tighten up, I began sweating profusely, I had difficulty in breathing. There was this big rest area, and at this time I pulled into there, I thought, well, maybe I'm having a heart attack. I got out of my truck, walked into the men's restroom there and put cold water on my face, and then finally things subsided.
A week later, again, I heard this Amazing Facts commercial come on the radio, and in fact the meetings were gonna start that very night. Just, and again, immediately I had the same symptoms. I thought, you know, this isn't my heart. I have to go to that meeting. And as I was going down to Sacramento, I decided to park and go inside. Well, I got in and walked into the furthermost rear seat they had in the pew there. And this particular evangelist, his name was Kim Kjaer.
It was like taking one layer off at a time of an onion. He laid it out so perfectly that we could all understand it, and I was really motivated, I couldn't believe it. Well, I finished, I didn't miss a meeting. In fact, on the fifth night they had an altar call, and my knees stood right up, and I walked forward, and I gave my heart to Jesus Christ. I've learned throughout this whole thing that when you leave the devil's territory, he gets pretty active in causing a lot of problems.
Well, I had the evangelist come out, and they had prayer with me about my business. I would find a sick business and make it well and then market it. I finally ended up with a business that I really enjoyed, it was one that was building equestrian centers, and they said to me, "Steve," he said, "You know, if you're gonna really keep the Sabbath, you gotta shut your doors on the Sabbath." Well, I did, and so I sold the business to my brother. Took me 22 years to build that business, and he lost it in 33 months.
My son, who was my business partner, I'd been giving him 10% of the business every year, he thought I'd just fallen off the bridge. My son didn't talk to me for five and a half years, and then a few other things happened. I had an ex-employee living in my guest house, he kind of watched after our place, and he said, "Steve," he said, "There's an Allied Moving Van backed up to your front door in your home." I said, "You're kidding." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "They're moving everything out of your house into this truck, and your wife is out there supervising them." And when I went home and opened the front door, my voice echoed in that house. There wasn't any furniture left anywhere. There was one bed left in the house.
I knew my wife was upset because of my coming to this church, but I had no idea that she would move out like this, that was a total shock to me. It was some time there, I locked myself in the bedroom, and I began reading the Bible. I spent about a half a year, just every night getting home, and I would study. It allowed me to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Well, to make a long story short, I met Crystal, and she was a godly woman. That was the Lord's doing, not mine, and he was just there to let me know that I'm with you all the way, even though you're gonna have some trials, you're gonna have some hardships, I want you to know that I'll be with you, because no matter what I do now, he is my leader. He's the leader of my marriage, he's the leader of everything in my life today. That one meeting with the Amazing Facts seminar changed my entire life, and to this day I'm still on fire for God, I'm still witnessing to my neighbors. My name is Steve Johnson, and it's because of you that Amazing Facts has changed my life.