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Amazing Facts

Prophecy Encounter

Doug Batchelor

Signs of the Coming King, Pt. 1

Signs of the Coming King, Pt. 2

The Hero of Revelation, Pt. 1

The Hero of Revelation, Pt. 2

The Villain of Revelation, Pt. 1

The Villain of Revelation, Pt. 2

The Law of the Lamb, Pt. 1

The Law of the Lamb, Pt. 2

A Woman Rides a Beast, Pt. 1

A Woman Rides a Beast, Pt. 2

144,000 & The Seal of God, Pt. 1

The Woman of Light

A Prophet in the River

The Mark of the Beast

The Great Judgment Day Pt. 1

The Great Judgment Day Pt. 2

This presentation is brought to you by the Friends of the Amazing Facts Ministry.

Did you know that when a human baby is born, about 78% of its body is made up of water.

Our water ratio drops somewhat as we age, but water remains an essential part of our survival.

In fact, a mere 2% drop in body water can cause fuzzy short-term memory, difficulty with basic math, and trouble focusing on a computer or a printed page.

If the water in your body drops 5%, you'll no longer be able to see.

A 10% drop takes away your ability to hear.

Water plays a crucial role in almost every body function, but some researchers estimate that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.

Insufficient water increases the risk for obesity, fatigue, and a host of common diseases.

Water is essential not only to our physical bodies, but our spiritual survival as well.

As the living water, Jesus is the ultimate thirst quencher for our souls.

And we receive Him in a special way when we enter the waters of baptism.

So join me now friends for today's program as we take a closer look at this very important subject how we can be born of the Spirit and the water.

The purpose of prophecy is that you might have a personal encounter with God.

If we're only studying Bible prophecy so that we can, you know, have our curiosity about the future satisfied, it won't do you any good.

You know, the Bible says the devils believe and tremble.

You need to have a personal encounter with Jesus, a relationship with Him.

And that is the reason why we're having this special study tonight called A Prophet in the River.

Now when you talk about the river, we're thinking principally about the Jordan River.

And if you look in the Bible at the different experiences in the Jordan, they all tell us something about the plan of salvation.

And it does tie into prophecy as you'll see.

There's a number of miracles that happen in the Jordan River in the Bible.

For example, before the children of Israel entered the promised land, when they were still coming out of the wilderness, the border really between the wilderness and the promised land was the Jordan, and God wanted to test their faith and He said you've got to get across that river, but it was flooding in the spring He said here's what I want you to do, the priests are to put the ark on their shoulders, They carried it on these poles, and I want them to march off into the river.

Now, when they left Egypt, God parted the sea before they started walking.

But before they got to the promised land, He wanted to see, have you learned to trust me?

I want you to start walking before I part.

So the priests obediently, and they're carrying this virtual golden anchor, they were going to sink if there wasn't a miracle.

They started walking off into the river and when their feet touched the water, the waters at that point flowed down, the waters ahead began to wall up and just created a great big dam, an invisible dam, and the ground dried before them.

Now the Jordan in the Bible represents death.

You know the Jordan River is the lowest river in the world?

Where the Jordan River runs into the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth.

It's a symbol of death, And it's also connected with baptism and salvation.

So here before they got into the promised land, God works this miracle, the whole nation passed by the priests who were holding the word of God.

It's like their lives were passing in review as they went from the wilderness into the promised land.

Then the next interesting miracle is regarding a Syrian general, wasn't even an Israelite, by the name of Naaman, good man, mighty man, but he came down with a deadly case of leprosy.

And Elisha the prophet said, Go wash in the Jordan River 7 times and your flesh will be restored to you again.

And so he dipped in the river finally, he was stubborn at first, covered with leprosy, maybe even missing fingers and toes, washed in the Jordan 7 times, and finally he came up the seventh time and he was clean.

Now, that ought to make you think, because leprosy in the Bible is a type of sin.

Someone came to Jesus once covered with leprosy.

They said, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

He reached out and he touched them and he said, I will be clean and their leprosy was gone.

When we come in faith right away and said, Lord, if you will, is he willing?

That's what he said to the leper and he was clean.

Now that leads us, a good segue, into our first question about tonight's study.

What New Testament prophet washed people in the Jordan River?

And it says in those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea And there went out to him all of Judea and Jerusalem, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

Now it talks about John the Baptist there in Matthew chapter 3, but if you read the story in the Gospel of Mark, you realize that the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John begin with John the Baptist.

John the Apostle is different from John the Baptist.

Gospel of Mark Gospel of John start with someone baptizing.

The Old Testament says, Behold I send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

And Jesus said, if you can receive it, that John the Baptist was Elijah who was to come.

He came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

The angel Gabriel told John the Baptist father this child is going to come in the spirit and the power of Elijah.

It was prophesied that he was going to come and Revelation tells us there's going to be another wave of the spirit and power of Elijah in the last days.

So this does relate to prophecy, but we're going to talk a lot about baptism tonight.

We're going to talk about what John talked about.

If it's important to Jesus, it should be important to you.

What glorious Bible ceremony symbolizes the washing away of the leprosy of sin?

You can read in Acts 22, and this is relating to the conversion of the Apostle Paul.

He said, arise and be baptized and wash away your sins calling on the name of the Lord.

Now, is it clear to everybody Jesus came to save us from our sin?

Has God created a ceremony, an institution by which we submit our lives to Him and our sins are washed away?

Baptism is as important to a Christian as a wedding is to a marriage.

And this is not Pastor Doug's teaching, this is what the Bible teaches.

Call on the Lord, being baptized, washing away your sin.

Third question, according to the Bible, how many different kinds of baptism are acceptable?

Well, you can read there in Ephesians 4, verse 5, it's pretty clear, it says there's 1 Lord, 1 faith, 1 baptism.

I believe there's 1 faith we are baptized into.

I believe there's 1 Lord that we serve, the hero Israel, the Lord our God is 1.

You know, the devil is a master of counterfeits.

The devil has a counterfeit for virtually every truth of God.

And there's also a counterfeit for baptism.

And in the counterfeits the devil is trying to rob the power of the teaching.

Where did all these other counterfeit forms of baptism originate?

You can read about this in Mark 7, verse 8, it says, for laying aside the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.

Christ said they often lay aside the commandment, We've learned that about the Sabbath and other things where people lay aside the commandments of God to follow popular traditions.

And if you go back and you look around the Middle East, it is really clear from history and even archaeology that the only method of biblical baptism in the beginning was immersion.

Here's a picture of a 1st century baptistry in Philippi and it's really clear, it had steps going into it, it was in the church.

Here's 1 from, it's in the Negev desert during the Byzantine time.

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Series

Prophecy Encounter

A Prophet in the River

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

A River of Life

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Cleansing the Sanctuary Part 1

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Pride

The Prince of Pride, Part 1

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Dream of the Empires

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A Woman in the Wilderness

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From Cover to Cover

Jesus in All the Bible, Pt. 1 – Abraham

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The Rest of Our Work

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Prophecy Encounter

The Great Judgment Day Pt. 1

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Pride

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Refusing Babylon’s Buffet

Refusing Babylon’s Buffet, Part 1

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