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Doug Batchelor: You know the Bible says Christians don't die. Eternal life begins now. Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." And while a Christian may sleep, like the grave says, rest in peace, it's temporary, amen? But there are a lot of misunderstandings and not knowing what the Bible teaches about death can set you up for a major deception in the Last Days, and that's why our lesson titled "The Spirits of Armageddon" is a very important one.
Going to start with an amazing fact. Queen Victoria of England, she was very close to Prince Albert. They had several children, but they were always intrigued by psychics and mediums that could ostensibly communicate with the dead, and they both participated in seances in the royal residence. After Prince Albert died, there was a young man, he was a 13-year-old medium named Robert Lee--Robert James Lee. He claimed that during a seance he had heard from Prince Albert, and he had a message for Queen Victoria. And intrigued, you know, if you're going to get a message from someone you love on the other side, you'll fall for almost anything. They invited this young man, and during the time of the seance, he spoke with Albert's voice, and he used a pet name that only Victoria and he were aware of. Was this really Prince Albert speaking from the other side? Victoria continued to hold these seances with various mediums, and she was known to seek her husband's, her dead husband's, advice in political matters, and I think we're not surprised by this.
A few years ago, we remember when Hillary Clinton visited with a friend who was a medium and wanted to communicate with Eleanor Roosevelt. And in order to be fair, Nancy Reagan, after they attempted an assassination of Ronald Reagan, she had a friend that was consulting his astrological charts and tried to match it up with his schedule. Do you know the Bible says that this is going to be something that will happen more frequently in the Last Days? Now, we've been going out on the streets of the city and getting some information, just what do people think about death and communicating with the dead and resurrection. So, let's find out what our man on the street has to say on this subject.
Male 1: Our souls, our soul deteriorates. Once we die, our soul dies with us, that's why we rot.
Female 1: Some people believe in, you know, turning into another being, or creature, or whatever else, but I think that once our soul goes back into, you know, God, we just become part of the earth and live eternal.
Male 2: Probably nothing. You just, you disintegrate, and that's it.
Female 2: I think that we go see the angels. I think we, I don't know, we go see heaven.
Male 3: I think our body reverts to energy.
Male 4: Ghosts, they're like, I don't know, phantom photoplasmic beings. Like, they don't exist within our realm, but they're able to come here. And real, I'd say, yeah, I think a little bit they're real.
Female 3: Oh, I don't know what they are because I don't think they are real.
Female 4: Again, I don't know if it's real or not, but sometimes I feel that you can feel somebody's present. Is that a ghost or not? I don't know.
Male 5: Ghosts are paranoia, but it could be real, it could not, depending on the person and depending on situation.
Male 6: Dead people that you can't see, and I do believe in ghosts.
Male 7: You know, I don't, I don't think the dead can communicate back, but I can tell you this, at my father's eulogy, the last thing I said was, my hand on his casket, and said, "I'll be talking to you."
Female 5: Yeah, probably, it could be, you know, a possibility.
Female 6: I'm gonna say yes 'cause I have a healthy fear of ghosts.
Female 7: Yes, I talk to my husband every night.
Male 8: I don't know that the dead would be interested.
Male 9: Yes, under certain circumstances, that it's possible for the living to speak with the dead because King Saul went to the Witch of Endor and had the shade of the prophet rose in the Old Testament. That's why I believe it's possible under the right circumstances. Now, was he supposed to? No. Was it forbidden? Yes, but it can be done.
Doug: Well, the last gentleman there wasn't that far off about something we're going to talk about. I think some of the people are getting their information from "Ghostbusters" or something, but I think it's clear to everybody there is a lot of chaos, confusion in the world out there about what happens with that final destination. What's going on? Where do we get our answers? What does the Bible have to say about this?
Now, our lesson is called the "Spirits of Armageddon." I want to read this to you. If you have your Bibles, go to Revelation chapter 16, and if you start with verse 12, it's talking about the sixth plague, "And the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried up," it is just interesting to me that the Euphrates River is going dry, "so the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of demons, performing signs, miracles, which go out to the kings of the earth and the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty." And right after it says that, if you've got a red letter in your Bible, the words of Jesus say, "Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest they walk naked and see his shame."
You remember when we talked about the Second Coming, the first thing Christ said was, "Beware that no man deceives you." There's going to be massive diabolical deception just before the Lord returns. Now to understand our study today, you need to know something about a story. It happens in the first book of Samuel, chapter 28. King Saul, the first thing--first king of Israel, he started out, God had chosen him, he's a good king, but he gradually became corrupted by power, and he drove away the Holy Spirit, until finally God would not answer him. He killed the priests of God. And then when all the Philistines gathered against him for this massive battle, he said, "I need the priest to talk to me." They wouldn't speak. "I need a message from God. Is there anything from the prophets?" They would not speak to him.
He had grieved away the Holy Spirit. So, he said, "Well, give me a witch to call up the spirit of Samuel." And he went to the Witch of Endor, and she went through her incantations, and this apparition appears that claims to be Samuel and gave a totally discouraging message to King Saul, said, "Why'd you wake me up? You're going to be with me tomorrow, and your sons are gonna die because you forsook the Lord, and David's going to be king." The next day in battle, they were defeated by the Philistines. Saul wounded, discouraged, fell on his sword. You ever heard that expression? He took his own life, grieved away the Holy Spirit like Judas, who hung himself. And you can read in the Bible about Ahitophel, who betrayed David, hung himself. People who grieve away the spirit, sometimes they lose all hope.
Now the question is, was that Samuel the prophet? Does a witch have the power to resurrect? Or are there evil spirits that work miracles to deceive the kings of the earth before the final battle? The story of what happened there with King Saul is an allegory of what's also going to be happening in the Last Days.
So, let's find out what the Bible says. Go to our Questions and Answers, Lesson Number 9 in your "Prophecy Odyssey" series. Was the spirit conjured by the witch really Samuel the prophet? What does the Bible say? 1 Kings 22, verse 21: "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said...'I will go out and be a, a lying'"--what? Got it on your screen? "A lying SPIRIT in the mouth of his prophets." Are there lying spirits out there? A lot of people, when they say, "I think I saw a ghost," they saw a fallen angel that may be impersonating the dead.
Let me ask you, we talked about Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, did the devil know what Prince Albert's pet name was for Victoria? Sure he did, the devil's got lots of inside information about you. Not only does God have guardian angels, you can be sure the devil's got angels that know you too that are trying to tempt you and trip you up. Bible's pretty clear. Read in 1 Chronicles 10:13: "So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the Lord, because he did not keep the word of the Lord, also because he consulted a medium for guidance." It says it was a medium. They communicate with evil spirits, and those evil spirits, Satan can appear as an angel of light. Isn't that what the Bible says? Those evil spirits can deceive.
Question number 2: Through what agency will Satan gather the armies to the final battle of Armageddon? It tells us, "I saw three unclean spirits like," what? "Frogs." Now, you ever been bitten by a frog? Scratched by a frog? What's the frog's most powerful rapid weapon? Its tongue, and it's going to be through these messages that go out, these spiritual messages, that's going to deceive the world. By the way, frogs were one of the plagues that fell on ancient Egypt. "Three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of," what? "DEMONS, performing SIGNS, that go out to the kings of the earth," and they will claim to be deceased prophets, saints, and apostles, and they're going to be manipulating world leaders to make decisions that will bring about the final battle of Armageddon, "to gather them to the battle of that great day of God… And they gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon."
Now, Armageddon is a word appears one time in the Bible. It's found there in Genesis--I'm sorry, Revelation chapter 16. But the valley of Megiddo, we believe Har Megiddo means the Mount of Megiddo, there's a mountain up above Megiddo, and this great valley, many pivotal battles happened there, including the battle where Saul died, the battle where King Josiah died, the battle where Gideon--by the way, Gideon fought against a threefold alliance in the valley of Megiddo, it says that the Midianites, and the Amalekites, and the people of the East, a three-fold enemy. Revelation talks about the beast, the dragon, the false prophet. And Gideon fought with the armor of God, and he won the battle. He blew a trumpet, "Lift up thy voice like a trumpet," the Word of God. "Pull out a sword," said the sword of the Lord. "the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword." They broke the pitchers, and the lamp was shining, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." How do we win the battle of Armageddon? By the word of God, "Thy Word I've hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee."
Friends, there's a lot of distractions in the world today, Christians need to read their Bibles, amen? The Word of God has not changed, our weapon has not changed. We need to know what the Word of God says.
Number 3: Do the dead come back to converse with or haunt the living? If you believe the people on the streets, they think, a lot of them think, "Oh yeah." But where we get our answer, man on the street or the Bible? The Word of God is where you find truth. Do the dead come back to haunt the living? What does the Bible say? Job, speaking of someone who had died, "His sons come to honor, and he does NOT KNOW it; They're brought low, and he does not perceive it." Now, my father's mother, Grandma Batchelor, was a, a dedicated Christian, and she went to church, and I hope to see her in the kingdom. And if suddenly Grandma Batchelor should appear and say, "Doug, I've got messages for you." Here, you get the cemetery. Poof, there's Grandma Batchelor, okay? And she said, "Doug, I need to tell you that you don't need to worry so much about the Bible because things have changed and the Bible's an old book. It's gone from person to person, and it's been changed over time, and you can't really trust it. Everybody's going to make it to heaven, just live the way you want to live."
Should I believe what Grandma Batchelor says to me through an apparition or should I believe the Word of God? But it looked just like Grandma Batchelor, and it sounded just like her, and it even smelled a little bit like Grandma Batchelor. Does the devil know all about Grandma Batchelor? Don't be deceived, because the devil can create illusions.
Now someone's going to say, "Oh, Pastor Doug, my departed loved ones, I just sense their presence, and it's so powerful." That's normal. You know, if you're married to someone for 50 years, and then they die, and you find yourself feeling their presence, your mind is absolutely saturated with memories of that person, and it's going to be normal to think of them. I remember years after my brother died, I always had Falcon on auto dial, I'd just press one button, and I'd talk to him, and we'd visit and hang up, and, and even after he died, I didn't have the heart to delete his messages to me. And one day, I picked up the phone to call him and I had forgotten that he was dead. I don't know if any of you have had that experience. I know saints that are married for years, and they have a problem, and they call down the hall, "Jack, can you come give me a hand?" And they forgot Jack's been dead ten years. They, and they felt his presence.
Well, you feel their presence because your brain is filled with the person, but what does the Bible say? The Bible says they're asleep. Ecclesiastes 9, verse 5, do we believe the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon? "For the living know that they will die; but the dead," how much do they know? "KNOW NOTHING, they have no more a reward for the me"--meaning in this life, "they have no more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also, their LOVE, their HATRED." If you've got someone that hated you and they died, you don't have to worry about them haunting you. Their love, their hatred, their envy has now perished. And you know, it is very liberating once you realize that the dead are dead and they're not going to bother you.
I don't worry about evil spirits. I've got Christ, "Greater is He that is in you, than he." Some people live in absolute fear of the devil, and fallen angels, and ghosts, and that is awful. I can walk through a cemetery in the middle of the night and all I have to worry about is tripping. I'm not scared those people are going to come bother me, they're dead.
Have you ever gone through a cemetery and read some of the tombstones? It's very interesting some of the, the scenes you might find. Oh, I had a little list, do I still have it here? Yeah. I remember one guy, he put on his tombstone, "Stop, my friend, as you go by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you soon shall be. Prepare yourself to follow me." Well, a young man was walking through the cemetery one day coming home from school and he read that, and he pulled a crayon out of his bag, and he wrote on the tombstone, "To follow you, I'm not content until I know just where you went." Some people have a sense of humor even on their tombstones.
I think it was Dr. James Dobson said that his father told his mother, "When I die, I want you to put on my tombstone, 'I told her I was sick.'" "Here lies the body," this is really on a tombstone in Nantucket, Massachusetts, "Here lies the body of old man Peas, buried beneath the flower and trees, but Peas ain't here, just the pod. Peas shelled out, and he went to God." It's not theologically completely correct.
You know, a lot of them actually say RIP. What does RIP stand for? Rest in peace, that is more theologically correct. What happens when a person dies? They're sleeping, a dreamless sleep. You can read in Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10, "Nevermore will they share in anything done under the sun...For there is no more work or device or," what? "KNOWLEDGE or wisdom in the grave," where you go. Psalm 146, "Put not your trust in princes, neither in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goes forth, and that very day his thoughts perish." I could go through 50 scriptures right now, there's just no time. Psalm 6, verse 5: "In death there is no remembrance of You." "The dead do not praise the Lord," Psalm 115, verse 17. "He shall never return to his house."
Now, friends, I know some of you are thinking, doesn't the body say--doesn't the Bible say in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord?" That's true, when a believer dies, their next conscious thought is the Resurrection and the presence of the Lord. But 1,000 years might have gone by, they're not there yet. For them, it's like that, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. But the Bible's pretty clear.
Is the Resurrection past or is it future? Read John chapter 6. It says over and over, the Resurrection, the Last Day, the Resurrection, the Last Day, it's in the future. That's when we get our rewards. Can you say amen?
Number 4: According to the book of Revelation, who has the keys of death? Revelation 1:18: "I am He who LIVES, and I was DEAD, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I've got the keys of Hades," that means the grave, "and Death." The last enemy to be cast in the lake of fire is the grave and death. There will be no more death, but the dead are not haunting, they're sleeping. And the reason we emphasize this in a prophecy seminar is because the devil and his demons are going to use this misunderstanding to manipulate the world in the Last Days with the great masterpiece of deception, because they don't know that the dead are dead, and a lot of people try to communicate with the dead. Do you know the Bible very explicitly forbids that. We'll get to those verses in just a minute. If you want to know something about what happens when you die in life, look at how God made us in the beginning.
Question number 5: How did God make man in the beginning? It says, "And the Lord God formed man from the," the what? "The DUST of the ground, and he BREATHED into his nostrils the breath of LIFE," that word life there, that breath is "ruach" in Hebrew, "the breath of LIFE; and man became a living being." So, you get the elements of earth, God puts him in the right position, he inspires man with this power, this energy, this breath of life, and they became a living being. They're conscious, they're alert, they're thinking. Adam was different from most babies born in that Adam, when he was made, he came factory preinstalled with the ability to walk, and talk, and think, right? He had a certain amount of knowledge that he was made with. He was not made a baby, he was made a full-grown man, and he was made in the image of God. And when a person dies, you've got creation in reverse. What happens at death?
Question number 6. "Then the DUST will return to the earth as it was, and the SPIRIT," that's the same word as breath, it's the word ruach, "and the breath will return to God who gave it." By the way, Ecclesiastes said not just the breath of people, not just the breath of the saved, the breath of the saved, the breath of the lost, the breath of animals, the breath of life, of all creatures returns to God. It is not saying that word "spirit" is a little conscious ghost that flies out of a person when they die and goes off roaming around looking for a place until the Resurrection. It simply means the power of life.
Right now, this building, this studio is illuminated with all these lights, and apparatus, and devices through the energy of electricity. If heaven forbid someone should kill the switch and everything went dark, I would say, he might not hear me without the PA, but I'd say, "Where did the light go? Where'd the power go?" It's back at the power plant where it came from. That one power operates many devices. It gives life to these things. Well, that's the breath of life that you find in the Bible.
Let me give you more proof. Job says, "All the while that God is with me and the breath, the spirit of life is in my nostrils." The spirit, it's the same word. Do you have a ghost in your nose? We hope not. The very fact he says the Spirit of God is in my nostrils, he's in the breath of God. In Hebrew, the word is "ruach." In Greek, it's the word "pneuma." When someone has trouble breathing, they call it pneumonia. And you men, if you've ever used those air-powered tools, they're called pneumatic. It's because it's wind, pneuma, comes from that Greek word.
And so, often in the Bible, when it uses the word spirit, people think it's talking about a ghost, and it's talking about the breath of life, that the wind. The Bible teaches that the "spirit" that returns to God is simply the breath of life, that God breathed into man at the beginning. You can look in James 2:26, Job 27, verse 3, and others. "Take away their breath, and they die and return to their dust. You send forth Your Spirit [your breath], and they are created." This is what it's talking about.
Number 7: Where do the dead go when they die? Don't we go somewhere? Yeah, you know where they go? You've probably seen it before. They go to the tombstones. They go to the cemetery. It says, "Yet he will be brought to the," what? "The GRAVE, and a vigil kept over the tomb." Listen to the words of Jesus in John chapter 5:28-29: "All who are," where? "IN their GRAVES will hear His voice." Where are they now? Where did Jesus say they are? Did he say they're in Abraham's bosom? Did he say they're in limbo? Did he say they're in purgatory? When He comes again, He said, "When I come, all that are in their graves will hear His voice," that's when they hear His voice. He says, "Come forth."
Now, how long does it feel for them? Instant! To be absent from the body, no consciousness of time, present with the Lord. But the Bible says that the Lord descends from heaven and then the dead in Christ rise, amen? And we're caught up to meet Him in the air. Now what about people who say, "Well, I had a near-death experience. I died on the operating table, my heart stopped, and all of a sudden, I began to hover above my body, and I could see the doctors working on me, and I heard their voice, and I could see what was going on."
People will say, "I went through a channel, and all of a sudden, there was a pink light, and then there was a blue light, and this voice said, 'In the pink light, you're going to be a girl in the res--reincarnation. In the blue light, you're going to be a boy in the reincarnation.'" And people have these near-death experiences, and they all vary. And you know what happens when you die and when your heart stops beating? Your brain is robbed of oxygen, you get too much of the wrong gas there in the brain, and it causes hallucinations. They've re--they've done this, they've induced it through in the experiments.
Doug: Friends, I hope you've been blessed by today's message, but really the reason we do this is so that people might know Christ. You know, information is not going to save us. It's a relationship with Jesus, the one who died on the cross for your sins. You must personally accept Him, and that's the most important thing and why we do these programs. If you've not asked Him into your heart before, then I'd encourage you to do it right now. His arms are open wide. Just come to Him as you are and ask Him.
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: Hello again, today we've learned what the Bible really says about the subject of death to help you avoid the devil's deceptions, but there's much more to discover, so I hope that you'll request "Spirits of the Dead," our booklet that helps uncover the real truth about the afterlife. To get your copy, simply follow the instructions on the screen, and we'll send it to you quickly and free of charge.
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.
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