What we want to deal with in this session primarily is why every Christian should study the Bible, study Bible prophecy. This is in the introduction there. Why every Christian should study the Bible prophecy, and that's the only part of that introductory material we're going to deal with together. Most churches are very weak about educating God's people about Bible prophecy, in my experience and understanding, very weak. And they might have, God's people might have, I'm talking about Bible-believing churches, might have a general idea about some of the major events in Bible prophecy, but they don't understand prophecy well. They don't know the rules of interpreting Bible prophecy for themselves. That's fundamental. That's what we want to do. That's what I want to do in our church. I want all of our people, every single one of them to the best of their ability to understand these fundamental things like interpreting the Bible for yourself. We need teachers. We need preachers. We must have the right ones, but we also must learn for ourselves how to handle the Word of God. But most don't do that. Most churches don't even teach that. They might have a general idea about the rapture, but probably can't defend the doctrine of the pre-tribulational rapture, can you? Against other views. That's when you know something. They don't know much about Ezekiel or Daniel or Zechariah or Malachi. Do you? But a major part of the Bible is prophecy. So here's some of the reasons why Bible prophecy should be studied and studied well, and that is, number one, prophecy is necessary for spiritual perfecting. as a part of the Holy Scriptures, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. And what I would suggest you to do in this conference is when we read the Scripture passage, look at it and also listen to the preacher read it. And that way you're getting it double-dosed through your ears and through your eyes. and helps you focus on the scripture. But I would ask you to do that for this conference, and then if that helps you, keep on doing that. Because a lot of people just kind of sit there. You've got to put some work into capturing these things. You can't just sit there like a robot. II Timothy 3, 16 and 17. Oh, what a fundamental passage this is. But endlessly educational. There's two little verses, but infinite in teaching. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the men of God may be perfect, truly furnished unto all good works. And so all the Scripture is necessary to do these essential things in our lives, all of it. And a major part of Scripture is prophecy. So that's number one. It's necessary for spiritual perfecting. According to the Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, the Bible contains 1,817 prophecies, comprising 8,352 verses, forming 27% of Scripture. You've got to know that for the test. Actually, you don't. But that's an amazing amount of Scripture. And we give some things here in a practical sense, how that the prophecy is essential. It gives hope in a hopeless world. Wow, that's important. I am not a hopeless person. I know as much just about as of the negative things that are going on as anyone probably on every level, politically, spiritually, United Nationally, whatever it is, Australianly, wickedness and evil on every hand. Well, it's prophesied in Scripture. And it doesn't discourage me. I'm not happy about it, but it doesn't discourage me because I'm able to look beyond those things and see the important things that give hope. It gives joy. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Yeah, Abraham had joy by seeing the future. It gives comfort in trials. We're for comfort one another with these words about the rapture as we sing tonight through the words of Fanny Crosby. It gives understanding in the midst of confusion. Daniel, in that confusing time, times that he was living in, the Babylonian Empire and the Persian Empire. He was praying for wisdom and understanding, and God gave him understanding of prophecy through the angel. It produces diligence and moral purity. Yeah, Romans 13, 11 to 14. Romans 13, 11. And by the way, look up scriptures as quickly as you can. Don't be a slow person. Life's too slow for that. I'm not slow, short. Life's too short to be a slow person. Romans 13, 11, and that knowing the time that now it is high time to wake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believe. Yeah, it is. If it was then, it certainly is now. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. At hand, right there. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, and not in strife and envying. And so the prophecy, knowing the time, and you know the time by the prophecies, it mightily affects your life. It should, it's supposed to, producing diligence and more purity. It produces patience and endurance in the midst of troubles. 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. What a great passage this is. 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. Produces patience and enduring in the midst of troubles. Well, we have plenty troubles, plenty of troubles. 2 Corinthians 4, 16, for which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. The outward man is perishing. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Light affliction. Light affliction, God says. We think it's really heavy. God says it's light. Whatever it is, it's still light. That's great stuff. The world knows nothing about this. And it's for a moment. We think it's just gonna last forever. Our light of fiction, it's just for a moment. And light of eternity. This is a great way to look at life. This is a good worldview mindset, healthy. You can't get this through yoga. While we look not at the things which are seen, so we're looking at something. The reason we have this healthy mindset and proper understanding of what's happening to us is that we're seeing things that are not seen through the Word of God, through prophecy, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. That's all the world can see. That's all the lost person can see, the temporal things. But the things which are not seen are eternal. And so we're talking about the advantage of prophecy. It produces patience and endurance in the midst of trouble. It brings this life into a proper perspective with eternity. Only the Word of God can do that. And it stimulates zealous Christian service. And I was amazed in COVID. What a weird thing COVID was. I'm glad I can say it was. United Nations wants to bring it back. And they're trying to get China to reinvent it, I think. Just joking, sort of. Not really. But COVID. Talk about lockdown. We were super locked down in Nepal. When it first started, the police made this high-tech device You weren't supposed to be on the streets. Nobody's out on the streets. You're all up down in your house. And so they made this metal hoop. And they had a long metal handle on it. And the police, if they caught you out there, they would go and hoop you. So they wouldn't have to touch you, which is pretty smart, right? If that's a disease that's going to kill you instantly. And they would hoop them and take them to jail. I don't know what they did with them there. It was a crazy time. But I'll tell you something. I get communications from all over the world, people constantly, a lot of mail. And I was shocked at the sad condition of so many independent bandits, just so full of frustration and politics. Trump's the answer? Trump's not the answer to anything. I'm here to tell you that. You can't vote for him anyway, you're Australian. No, just all politics and just all caught up in the temporal things of this world. And I'm thinking, why aren't you looking beyond this? Why do you think, why is your thinking like a political conservative, a lost political conservative? Why is your thinking like that? Because you're not looking at the eternal things enough. Your eyes are not looking properly, and the prophecy is what gives us the proper perspective to look beyond these things that are happening, the crazy things. They're prophesied, so there's nothing to be surprised at here, but God's given us something to do, and we're going somewhere, and we have certain promises, and yeah, prophecy is very important. It is, number two, a light in the dark world. 2 Peter 1, 19-21. 2 Peter 1, 19-21. Prophecies light in the dark world, how dark it is. We have also a more sure word of prophecy, where unto you do well, ye do well that ye take heed. As unto a light that shineth in a dark place. It's a metaphor, but wow, how true it is. Until the day dawn and the day star rise in your hearts. It's coming, dawn's coming. And knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Right, the prophecy, the infallible prophecy given by divine inspiration to these chosen holy men, prepared holy men. And they spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. That is the character of the Bible. And don't let anyone move you one iota from that. It is 100% the infallible Word of God. And it's light in a dark place. You want some encouragement and light? Get in the prophecies. Number three. light in the dark world. Number three, the believer will be held accountable for knowing and believing Bible prophecy. If you're saved, you will be held accountable according to this passage as an example to us of how Christ is going to deal with things. In Luke 24, 25 through 27, Christ rose from the dead, and now he is appearing in various places and times to his disciples, as he did for 40 days. And here he is on the road to Emmaus, just right by Jerusalem, road to Emmaus with those two. And he's talking with these two. They don't know that it's Jesus. And one of them was named Cleopas. We know the name of one of them, Cleopas. That's an interesting name. But here's Jesus having this amazing conversation with them, and they're saying, you know, we don't know what's happening, and we don't know where Jesus' body is, and he tears into them. Look at this, verse 25. Then he said unto them, All fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Would you like to have Jesus say that to you? He said that to Cleopas and whoever the other one was. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? Why should they know that? Bible prophecy interpreted literally. They should have known this. Why are you in such ignorance? You should know the prophecies, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them and all the scriptures the things concerning himself. He rebuked them sharply for not knowing the prophecies and believing them and applying them to their lives and living according to them. Yeah, prophecy is so important. Number four, prophecy is an important apologetic It is sure evidence that the Bible is God's Word, and God Himself uses it as such. Now, this is, I think, very powerful. Isaiah, in four or five different passages, by way of repetition, repetition is an essential part of learning, and it's used greatly in the Word of God, repetition. But look at Isaiah 41, 21 through 23. God, God's talking to the whole world through Isaiah. And by the world, by the way, the whole world will listen to God's Word. Either now or later, we'll listen. Every knee will bow. Man's not going to just continue to ignore God. It's not going to happen. Either in repentance or in judgment, man's going to listen to God's Word. None of this is spoken in vain. All this will come up at the great white throne. The Word of God. Man better listen. Isaiah 41, 21 through 23. Produce your cause, saith the Lord. Bring forth your strong reason, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and show us what shall happen. Let them show the former things and what they be, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them, or declare us things to come, things for to come. God is saying, okay, you say there's gods, these little idle things you have over there, you say they're gods, let them predict the future. Can you do it? No. We don't know what's going to happen later on tonight. We don't know. We don't have a clue about the future. Not a clue. And no man does. And God is saying that the fact that I can tell the future through my prophets proves that I am God and proves that they are not God. It is an amazing apologetic prophecy. It impressed me. The man that led me to Christ, he showed me fulfilled prophecy in Jesus' life. It impressed me. Because who knows the future? The fact that this man's life is all written down in a book hundreds of years, in some cases more than a thousand years before he's born, in detail, the very place that he would be born, Bethlehem, the name of it, the words he would speak from the cross, And when David wrote that in Psalm 22, there was no cross. Crucifixion was not practiced. How did David know that? And not only know that crucifixion would be practiced, they pierced my hands and my feet, but that the very words he would speak, what the soldiers would be doing down below the cross, the Roman soldiers gambling, and exactly what they would gamble for? No, it's impossible. It has to be God. It has to be God. Bible prophecy. The better you know it, the better you can use it as apologetic and to defeat the devil. The devil's a liar. He's endlessly a liar. He is always on the job. You got to give him that. And we defeat him by the word of God. Isaiah 45, 21 and 22. Isaiah 45, 21 and 22. Tell ye, God is speaking to man, which is amazing. Tell ye and bring them near. Yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient times? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? Who gave these prophecies? Have not I, the Lord Jehovah God, the God of Israel? And there is no God else beside me. The nations had all gone over to idolatry. And God raised up Israel as a light in the darkness of those times and these times. The nations today are all given over to idolatry. There's not a nation on earth that reveres the Word of God, that reveres the one true God. Not a nation on earth. There was a time when some Western nation had some semblance of respect toward the God of the Bible. Some semblance. But not today. There's no such thing today. Not Israel. Certainly not America. I doubt Australia. God is speaking to the nations. He's still speaking to the nations. And he's saying, I can prove that I'm God, the God of these prophets. I can prove that I am God because I can tell the future. The king of Nepal was killed in 2001 and murdered by his own son. One night, they had a big party, family party. All the royals were there. And the crown prince was there. He was a gun lover, loved his guns. I like guns too, but he was a nut. I'm not a nut. So a lot of people think I am, but I guarantee you I'm not. And he was all tanked up with drugs. And so he got his powerful guns and he shot his dad first, King. And then he shot everybody. Shot his mother, killed his mother, killed his brothers, killed his sisters, killed everybody. Killed aunts and uncles. Slaughtered the whole royal family there. And so the King of Nepal at that time, he was the head of the Hindu state. He was considered the Hindu god. And he had all these powerful goddesses that were supposed to be leading and protecting the throne. Over the throne, he had images of these goddesses. And he had this official astrologer, the royal astrologer. He's got to be the best. There he is. It was the only Hindu kingdom left on the earth. And here's the royal astrologer. This is as good as it gets. And so I read later, after his death and later on, I read an interview that a Westerner had with this astrologer. And she said to him, did you see that coming? I mean, talk about a major event. The whole royal family walked out. He said, no, I didn't. I thought there was going to be an earthquake. They don't know the future. They don't know a thing. Sometimes they guess something. I can guess that maybe Trump might win the next election. But I don't know. He could easily lose, too. We don't know the future. Nobody knows the future. The best astrologers don't know the future. There were two major astrologers before World War II, two major ones, that were in the newspaper every day. And they said, Hitler's not going to start a war. It's not going to happen. There you go. That's a false prophet. But there aren't any false prophets here. These prophets, they were right. They were always right. And everything that has been predicted historically has been fulfilled perfectly. And so the rest of it will be just good common sense. The rest of it will be. And that's what God is saying in Isaiah. It's apologetic that the fact that this book is full of prophecy, And a major part of it has already been fulfilled so we can look and see and examine the fulfillment of it. And the fact that it was fulfilled exactly and literally, that is irrefutable evidence that there is an Almighty God and that Almighty God is the one that is revealed in Scripture. You can deny it all day long, but that's irrefutable. Men can deny irrefutable things because we're that perverse. in our fallenness. Peter Stoner, professor emeritus of science at Westmont College, but he examined the probabilities of just eight of the 456 prophecies being fulfilled concerning Jesus Christ. And so 456 specific prophecies about Christ's coming just eight of them, probability research, and he said it would be 1 in 10 to the 17th power. And that would be like putting a mark on a coin, and then putting that coin in the midst of enough coins to cover the state of Texas, or the country of India, two feet thick. That's a lot of coins. Then having a blind man wander all over that ocean of coins and pick one out at random, and that be the marked one. And what is the chance of that? But that's just eight. That's just eight. And he figured the probabilities of 48 prophecies being fulfilled, and it just becomes really mind-boggling. Just 48. He said, don't take a silver dollar or even an atom, but the electron, which is the little thing that runs around the atom. And electrons are so small that if you take, if you had a line of electrons laid side by side to make one inch, and you were counting four electrons every second, and you counted 24 hours a day, it would take you 19 million years to count the number of electrons one inch. That's a little thing, electron. But how many electrons would it take if we're dealing with 10 to the 157th power of electrons? And so imagine if we packed the whole Earth with electrons and piled them up till they reached out a mile, 10 miles, 1,000 miles, a million miles, no, not enough yet, 38 trillion miles. Nothing packed with electrons. Well, that's not enough either. Now let's multiply that number by a billion, a billion times 38 trillion miles. How much is that? Nobody knows. That's America's debt, by the way. in both directions and you have a solid ball of those tiny little electrons. Imagine marking just one of those and put a man in a spaceship and let him fly around as long as he wants to and finally he stops and he gets out his electronic microscope and points to one of the electrons and nails it. Yeah, that's all going to happen. That's how impossible it would be for these prophets to just happen, somebody to just kind of guess. No, this is irrefutable evidence. Number five, prophecy describes the believer's future. If you're saved, why would you not be intensely interested in your own description of your own future, your own house? your own everything, joint heir with Christ. And it would be like having learned that you were inheriting this massive inheritance and a description of it being written down in books and you're not interested. But this is our future, if you say, the millennial reign of Christ. The renewed creation, the new Jerusalem. Number six, prophecy challenges believers to preach the gospel before it's too late. Powerful incentive. I think about it every day. The hour's late. I'm 74 years old. What am I doing here? I could be on a lake in Florida with a boat. But if I did that, I'd be dead already because God would have killed me. But I mean, really, 74 years old, going as strong as I can. Why? Because this is the only time we'll ever have to do this. It's the only time. Everyone's lost that's not saved, which is a whole lot of people. And there's no promise of tomorrow for the young believer. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. It really does motivate me. The lateness of the hour, the understanding, not just that I'm an older person, and that limits how much time you have left, of course, but just the fact, prophetically, that the hour is very late. Think about what's happening in Israel. That's fulfillment of prophecy. Israel's back in the land to prepare for the Antichrist. They don't know that, but that's what they're there for, prophetically. And they want to build that temple. And they want peace. They want peace so much, they're willing to almost pay any price, give away part of their land. They want peace so much. Well, Mr. Peaceman's coming. Mr. Peaceman's coming. He'll be a liar, but they will think he's Mr. Peaceman. And He will enable them to build that temple that they so much want to build. They've prepared everything. We've seen it. Our trips to Israel. The golden candlestick. It's sitting out there tonight. And right out there, a stone's throw from the Temple Mount, the old Temple Mount. Why is it there? Because they want to put it up on the Temple Mount in the Third Temple. And what is that? It's all prophetic, and the next thing that's going to happen on God's prophetic calendar is the rapture of the New Testament saints that we sing about tonight, that Fannie Crosby knew about, the blind hymnist. And it just gives you a perfect understanding of where we are, what's on the horizon, and powerful motivation. Number seven, prophecy is necessary for a New Testament church. The coming of the Lord is mentioned in almost every New Testament epistle. It just permeates the New Testament prophecy everywhere. We give references there. And so a New Testament church is going to make a lot about Bible prophecy. It's going to be talking about it all the time. It's going to give God's people an understanding of it, and they'll just keep reminding us of it. It's been said that nothing can be maintained without a campaign. And whatever a church campaigns about, well, that's what is emphasized in the hearts and lives of the people. And as soon as the campaigning stops, Everything goes down. We're not evolving, folks. We're devolving. And evolving takes a lot of effort and intelligence. Bible prophecy. I love Bible prophecy. The Baptist church I grew up in, I don't remember anything, ever hearing anything about Bible prophecy. Nothing. I don't remember it. I don't think there was anything there. Southern Baptists, I don't think most of them interpret Bible prophecy literally. I don't think most of them were pre-tribulationists. I'm not sure, but that was my experience. And as soon as I began learning the Bible and learning Bible prophecy, I just fell in love with it. I saw how important, how powerful this is, and interesting. To know the future, is that not interesting? Yes, it is. And it should permeate our lives. And that will depend, of course, on what we do with Bible prophecy and what kind of church we're in. It's very important what kind of church you're in. It's worth moving to the other side of the world. You don't have to. But if necessary, It would be worth moving to the other side of the world to be in a church like this. A church like this. Oh, absolutely. Whatever it would cost, it would be worth it to be there. There's people that have moved quite long distances to be in this church in their elderly years. That's big stuff. When you make a major move, sell your house, make a major move in your elderly years, Old age is a real thing. I didn't say it's a good thing, I said it's a real thing. And that's big stuff. That's conviction. You really believe something to do that. Oh man, but the New Testament church is worth it. Prophecy is necessary for a New Testament church. God bless you, Pastor.