The Richest Caveman, Pt. 1

Announcer: Coming to you from New York City, at the historic Manhattan Center with your host Doug Batchelor. Join this exciting journey of discovery as we learn the truth about Bible prophecy, explore the timeless wisdom of God's Word, and see how it relates to our lives today. Stay tuned, your "Amazing Facts" adventure begins now.

Doug Batchelor: Welcome, friends, to a special aspect presentation in the "Prophecy Odyssey" series. And I'm so glad to see each of you here. We just put this program together in two days. We didn't know if anybody would come, and so bless your hearts that you came early for this special program. And I hope you'll pray for me as I do share with you, because, you know, there's always a risk when you take so much time, and you talk about yourself, that instead of glorifying God, you could glorify yourself. And I certainly don't want to glorify sin. And there's a risk that you can sometimes, like a fisherman, the fish keeps getting bigger every time you tell the story. It's like, you know, the girl in eighth grade. She had to do a book report on Abraham Lincoln, and she wanted to make a big impression, so when she stood before her class, she said, "Abraham Lincoln was born at a very early age in a log cabin that he built with his own hands." So, we don't want it to be bigger than life.

And I always like to start with the Word of God, because that's what it's all about. And so, I want to direct you to a story in the Bible. You actually find it in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It's a story I titled, "Broken Chains." And if you look in Mark chapter 5, I'll read this to you, and then I'm going to jump to Luke quickly. Jesus has just calmed the sea during a storm on Galilee. The next morning He directs the boat, and the disciples row over towards the southeastern shore of Galilee. "And they came to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him, out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, no, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; and neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him."

Now, go to Luke, Dr. Luke adds a few little aspects to the story that Mark doesn't mention. "Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes that is opposite Galilee. And when He stepped out on land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house, but in the tombs. And when he saw Jesus, he cried out, and he fell down before Him. And with a loud voice he said, 'What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!' For He, Jesus, had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness. And Jesus asked him, saying, 'What is your name?' And he said, 'Legion,' because many demons had entered him. And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss."

Now, I share this story because I, in some ways, I feel like I can relate to this man. You know, everybody is looking for happiness. And many people in the world, they think that happiness comes from fame and fortune. And in reality, if we are not serving the Lord, we are bound by the devil. This man that we just read about is the most lost person in the Bible. You cannot find an example of anyone in the Bible whose condition is more hopeless than this man. Just look at this. He's running around in the mountains, naked, living with the dead. You read on, it says. "Surrounded by pigs." He's got a cutting problem. Have you heard of that before? Cutting himself with stones, always crying, dragging broken manacles and pieces of chains around his wrists and his ankles and his neck, scarred, blood. By the way, if you're a Jew and you read this story, pigs are unclean, blood is unclean, tombs and death are unclean. This story is saying to any Jewish reader, "Unclean, unclean, unclean. Filled with not just a devil, a legion of demons."

Can you find anybody in the Bible whose condition looks more hopeless? But this man came to Jesus, and it changed everything. You know, I sometimes feel like I can relate to that story because I was running around, naked in the mountains, living like an animal. And it didn't start that way, but it grew into that. You know, little by little, the devil can come into our lives as we give him permission, until we feel like our whole lives are controlled by the enemy, and you wonder, "Is there any way out?"

Now, let's get back to basics. Everybody wants happiness. Jesus wants you to have an abundant life. But the problem is, most people in the world think happiness comes from the wrong things. They think, "If I had more money, I'd be happy." And a lot of us think a little more would help, right? Or "If I was better looking, or more popular, or more talented, then I'd be happy." And I want to tell you, that's not true.

I had some very unusual parents. I didn't realize it until I kind of got out in the world how unusual it was, but that's a picture of my mother and my father, George and Ruth Batchelor. They were not married very long, six years. During that time, they had two sons, my brother and I. My brother, his name is Falcon. My name is Douglas. My father was in the aviation business, and he was very successful. He was a pilot during World War II. He flew during D-Day. He was a pilot before the war, so he was an officer when he entered the Air Corps, and he was decorated. After the war, he began to buy and sell--you know, there's just a great surplus of aircraft after the war--he started buying and selling airplanes until he owned controlling interest in two airlines. He was friends, I should really say competitors, with Howard Hughes and some of the other millionaires.

He was very wealthy, very successful, had a lot of money. He was a workaholic. Here's just a few of many clippings I could show. "George Batchelor, International Air Leases." He not only owned Batch Air, they repaired airlines, Aero Airways, Capital Airlines, controlling interest. Anyone remember Western Airlines? Some of these were merged and bought out again. And lived on an island in Miami Beach. Here's the new Miami, "George Batchelor: Miami's 'Mr. Aviation."' He had all the toys of millionaires. That's his yacht. That's not just a picture of a yacht, that's his yacht. By the way, it was called "The Batchelor Party." [congregation laughs] This is the inside, and I've been on it many times. One day, the plug broke. They walked out in the harbor and the yacht had sunk. Can you imagine that? A multi-million dollar investment went down.

But my father was, he was a thrill junkie, in a sense. He was not afraid--you know, a pilot, and he used to water ski. We had three boats in the backyard when I grew up. My dad had a large fishing boat. We had a ski boat. I had a sailboat that was in the backyard in Miami Beach. He lived on an exclusive island. My father raced cars. That's my dad and one of his race cars. And he just, he loved adventure, had all the toys that you think would bring happiness. In our garage, at one point or another, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce. Surely, we must have been happy. No.

This is my dad with wife number three out of five. She was a very nice lady. She was Miss Kentucky. And when she divorced him, you've probably heard of someone named Donald Trump. When Donald Trump's wife, was it Ivana, divorced him, she got a minimal settlement of like $14 million because she had signed a prenuptial agreement. When Betty divorced dad, it was the largest divorce settlement in Florida history. So, my father had a lot of money. Here's a "Miami Herald Business," this is 1992. You can't read it, so I'll read it to you. I can see it from here. "At 71, aviation pioneer George Batchelor is not ready to descend. He runs one of Miami's most successful businesses, pilots jets, races cars, water skis, and is soon to take a bride aged 29." He was 71.

My new mother-in-law was younger than my wife. [congregation laughs] But it gets better than that. Now, I know this is--the ladies are going to go, "Now, how did that work?" My father's mother-in-law was younger than me. He had a brother-in-law that was 11 years old. Complicated family. Friends, we could have had a reality show in the Batchelor family during this time. Here's a continuation of that same magazine. "At 71, Batchelor 'going on 16,'" and it's got one of his planes from Aero Airlines behind him.

But you know, everybody has trouble. My father's first wife and son, his name was Patrick, died in a plane crash, and it was one of his planes, a pilot flew into a mountain. And some of you remember in Gander, Newfoundland, New Year's Eve, a plane full of Marines was flying home. It took off, and it blew up, a DC-8, and everyone wondered if it was frost on the wings. Years later, they closed their investigation. It was blown up, but you never heard much about it. They put a bomb on the plane in Egypt, it finally exploded just on takeoff, a lot of tragedy in the life.

My brother, Falcon, had cystic fibrosis, born with a terminal lung disease. And so, you think, "Well, if I had money, I wouldn't have problems." Everybody's got problems. And my father only had two sons, blood sons--I had a stepbrother--that survived, and it was me and my brother. Falcon has since passed away. It--you know, Falcon and I, it was so different because we're the same height, same weight. He had brown eyes. I have blue eyes. He had freckles. I didn't. He had flaming red hair. I had no hair. We were named after airplanes. He was named Falcon. He got teased a lot, because you have the name Falcon Batchelor. I was at least named after the DC craft, Douglas McDonnell, so you know, it's--you can find that on a keychain at Walmart. It's not that bad.

This is my father with wife number four, who was younger than my wife. And Karen took this picture that way, my brother, his wife, Sandy. Here's my dad with Pope John Paul II. And you think, "Oh, how do you meet the Pope?" If you donate $2 million, anyone can meet the Pope. It's not that hard. I don't know if you remember, back in 2000, the Pope had a jubilee and my father donated $2 million worth of jets to fly everybody around, and you got to meet the Pope. And that's, again, wife number four, who was Italian and spoke Italian. But you know what, all that money, my father had to drink himself to sleep every night, slept with a gun under his pillow because he had so many enemies. Karen, my wife Karen, is a physical therapist. I don't know if I mentioned that. He had so much stress. She was trying to work the knots out in his neck.

You know what Jesus said? "What profit is it to a man if you gain the whole world and you lose your soul?" Or, "What is a man advantaged if you have all of these things?" A man's life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses, because the Bible says, "Thieves break through and steal, moth and rust does corrupt." If you're going to have treasure, where do you want to store your treasure? In heaven, friends, that's the only thing that lasts. So, I saw growing up, a lot of my friends, they had a lot of money. A lot of my friends and their families had a lot of money, but there wasn't happiness.

Now, on the other side, my mother, my father had been raised a Baptist, but by the time of World War II, he saw so much death and destruction. He thought, "If there's a loving God, then why would this happen?" And he pretty much became agnostic or atheist. Though he did steal a Gideon Bible once, he told me, during a crisis, and he was trying to find some answers. Can you imagine that? Multi-millionaire, he steals a Bible out of a hotel room.

My mother, she was Jewish, Ruth Batchelor, and that's my brother and I. And she--she wrote songs for Elvis Presley. She was a film critic. She was an actress. My mother was very talented. She dropped out of high school, but she had a gift for music and she kind of taught herself to write songs and to play the guitar. And she knew the right people, and she was a beautiful woman, and she grew up in New York City. My family, grandfather, they all lived in New York City. And she moved to California where she met my dad, who started his business in Burbank. And she was making her way in show business as a film critic. My mother was a leader in the Women's Lib Movement in New York City. That's her marching, and she actually wrote a series of songs on Women's Lib. She wrote songs on astrology. All of her friends in Hollywood were into the occult and witchcraft. And does anyone remember the TV program called "Dark Shadows"? Yeah, those people were all friends of our family. They were at our house, and we lived on 81st Street.

Some of you remember Lloyd Bridges, who had the diving show. He lived upstairs from us. His sons, Beau Bridges, Jeff Bridges, we used to see them as--when we were kids. And Red Buttons, Academy Award winner, good friends of our family, lived on the corner. And his wife, Alicia, and his daughter, Amy, we knew. I mean, so we grew up knowing a lot of these people that were in show business because my mother was not only a songwriter, an actress, a film critic, but she was a playwright, had some programs off Broadway.

She founded the LA Film Critics, a very powerful position. Because, you know, when a film critic--producers put millions into a movie. Those first reviews can make the difference in millions of dollars. And if the critics say, "I wouldn't waste my money," they lose millions, so they were always sending her gifts, and rewards, and free cruises, and restaurant tickets, and it's a very powerful position as president of the LA Film Critics. She replaced Rona Barrett, if you ever remember that name, on "Good Morning America." She would do the "Hollywood Reports." It was called "Ruth Batchelor's Hollywood." And she was an actress, but usually they were small parts in big movies. She was in the "Ten Commandments," and she was in another movie, "The Buccaneer," with Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston, but her real success was as a film critic.

Now, some people think, "You tell these stories, you're just making things up," so I'm just going to show you a few pictures of my mom with some of the people that she knew. Anyone know Paul McCartney, Sir Paul McCartney? Sylvester Stallone? I've got a lot of other pictures, but they're dead and you might not know. So, I do these youth programs, and the kids have no idea who Frank Sinatra is, so I show the ones that are still alive. This is Natalie Wood. She's passed away since. Roger Moore was one of the James Bond. That's mom with each one of these people. Sally Field, Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Muhammad Ali. So, people in Hollywood knew my mother. And we knew a lot of these people.

Sometimes Karen and I will be seeing something on television, I'll say, "Oh yeah, I know them," and I'll start--she'll say, "You'll ruin it for me. Don't talk about it." But you know what? We had friends that were rich, and famous, and healthy, and handsome, and they killed themselves. I had a friend that was a famous child actor. He locked himself in the garage in West Hampton, turned on the car, and killed himself. Had money, talent, good looks; empty, saw no purpose in life. And so, I saw money doesn't-- or happiness doesn't come from fame. So many of these people, they just weren't happy. A lot of drugs in Hollywood, if you didn't know that.

You wonder why so many of them, they get married and divorced, some of them--they're unhappy. When mom died, even though everybody knew her, only ones there? Karen and I, my grandparents. A man's life does not come from the abundance of things he possesses. If you are going to be famous, be famous before God. It's not what people think of you, it's what God thinks of you that makes the difference.

Well, as I mentioned, I grew up in New York City. Here's an old shot where the World Trade Center was still there. And I was born in Burbank, California. I hope you'll forgive me, though I did grow up in New York City. My mom and dad divorced when I was three years old. And mom was married four times, dad was married five times, had a lot of intrigue in the family. Mom had an affair for 20 years with a married man, and I had to act like I didn't know who he was when I saw his wife. I tell you, friends, you have no idea.

But when my brother and I learned way too much, because when we were kids in New York City, Mom would say, "Go play on the streets." And my brother and I, seven, eight, nine years old, we all rode the subway. Back then, the kids all--we rode the bus. Sometimes we'd pay, we'd get on the bus, sometimes we'd hop on the back. Any of you remember that? Hop on the back and grab the edge of the window and hope you didn't fall off. How many of you know what I'm talking about? And there were gangs on the streets, and we would go play at 42nd and Broadway, and it was pretty seedy back then. Any of you remember the penny arcades? You go in and play Skee-Ball and-- And so, my mother just sent us out on the streets, and we learned way too much, way too young.

But my parents had money, not mom so much as dad, but I, because they moved, and for a while dad had custody, then mom had custody, and then they sent us to live with our grandparents, then they sent us to boarding school. I went to 14 different schools by ninth grade. First military school, Black-Foxe Military Academy, I was five years old. And because my parents were so driven, they would send us to summer camp, just whatever they could do to get us out of the way. And so, we got sent off. And here's my brother and I at summer camp. And there I'm at New York Military Academy, some of you have heard of that. By the way, that's where Donald Trump went. That was not a political statement. Karen says, "Don't say that," just a fact. And that's a friend of mine named Bobby Boyer there. I reconnected with him after 50 years. He saw my TV programs. And you know, he called up our Amazing Facts office, he says, "Is Doug there? Tell him Bobby is calling." [laughs]

And I not only went to military schools, then I got into trouble in the summers. Now, let me tell you kind of how that happened. One day, my mother--mom and dad both smoked and drank, and mom used other things. A lot of people in Hollywood used drugs. And one day, she said, she rolled a joint and she said, "Doug, I know you're going to run into this out there on the street," of course I already had. She said, "I just assumed you did it at home," so she started smoking pot with me. And it became a regular thing that, you know, two or three times a week, at night, she wouldn't let me do it before school, we'd smoke pot and eat ice cream. It was our bonding time.

Well, at this point, my brother had been sent to live with my father because of his lung disease. The New York climate was not good for cystic fibrosis. And then Falcon would come to visit, and he'd see Mom and I smoking pot, and he said, "That's not fair. I can't smoke pot." And she said, "I'm going to make you some hashish cookies." So, my mother would make marijuana hashish cookies for my brother. And we took some to school one day and gave them to the teachers and said, "You're going to like this. My mom's got a special recipe. They're really good"--to get the teachers to loosen up a little bit.

So, I was a real troublemaker. I got into a lot of trouble. And you know, I used to think about suicide. Because, going to all these schools, even though I went to Jewish schools, I went to-- when I was here, mom sent me to Jewish schools to make my father mad, and then I'd go live with dad, he sent me to Catholic schools. And he wasn't Catholic, but I never really knew about God. I was--I thought, "You die, you turn into fertilizer." And I used to think about suicide all the time. I thought money doesn't bring happiness; most people are unhappy. I had friends that had committed suicide.

Now, "Why not just end it all?" I felt like my parents didn't really love me because they kept sending me away. And so, I was always fantasizing what would be the best way to kill yourself. And living here in New York, you know, there's some tall buildings. I'd climb up on the roof--they'd leave the roof open--I'd climb up on the roof, and I'd put my toes over the edge, and I'd see how far out I could lean until I felt my center of gravity. And the reason I didn't jump is because I remember reading one time about a man who jumped 9 stories, but he hit some trees, and landed on some cars, and he lived, but he was paralyzed. I thought, "Well, that's even worse." I thought, "I could jump and what if I don't die?" And so, I was afraid it wouldn't work.

I know another time, my mother took sleeping pills. And she was out one night, I'm alone, I'm in trouble all the time, and I'm unhappy, I'm always bad grades. And I went into my mother's bathroom in her medicine cabinet, I found a bottle of pills that said, "Take one at bedtime, Valium." And I said, "I just want to go to sleep and never wake up." You ever felt that way? And so, I filled my hands with the pills, and I was getting ready, I got the water, getting ready to swallow all these pills and just go to sleep and end it all. But then it occurred to me, it did not say sleeping pills on the bottle, it said, "Take one at bedtime, Valium." And I was 13 at the time, I wasn't sure what Valium was. I thought, "What if Valium is like a pill for ladies?" And I thought, "Then what could happen to me if I took a lot of these?" And so, I thought, "I better not do that," and so I put that away.

Then I saw a beer commercial. I don't know if any of you remember the old Schlitz beer commercial. It said, "You only go around once in life. Get all the gusto you can." And I thought, "Okay, that's my new motto. If I'm going to die, why die by jumping off a building or taking pills? I'm going to just have--I'm going to live as exciting a life as I can and go out with a bang." And I started getting into a lot of trouble.

Doug: Friends, I hope you've been blessed by today's presentation. But the most important thing is not the information and the details, it's the relationship. Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? You're watching because He's planned that, and He wants to come into your heart and change your life. He wants to forgive you of all of your sins. He died for your sins, but you need to ask Him. He won't force His way in. You can ask Him now. He loves you, He'll accept you. Do it right now.

Doug: Hi, friends, I trust you're being blessed by what you're watching. If you want to be doubly blessed, then you're going to want to get the "Prophecy Odyssey" study guides that go along with these presentations. There's 15 study guides, they're beautifully illustrated, and they will greatly enhance your Bible comprehension. So if you'd like to get them, simply follow the instructions that you see on the screen. You will be glad you did.

Doug: Friend, perhaps you need a little hope and direction in your life as badly as I did. You know, I found it in God's Word. That's why I'm inviting you to request your free copy of a little book I wrote called, "The Ultimate Resource," so that God can set you free too. To get your copy, follow the instructions on the screen, and we'll send it to you absolutely free and right away.

Doug: What you've seen just now is only part one in this presentation. Make sure and join us for part two in our next broadcast for some of the most important points on this topic, and to complete the corresponding study guides. Until then, God bless.

Announcer: This presentation was brought to you by the friends of the Amazing Facts ministry. ...