What happened in ancient Babylon 2500 years ago that tells us we can actually trust what the Bible says about the end of time?

<p>What happened in ancient Babylon 2500 years ago that tells us we can actually trust what the Bible says about the end of time?</p>

North New South Wales Conference

The End of Time

Charissa Fong Torossian

Lyle Southwell

01 The End of Time

In tonight's presentation, we're going to learn about signs that Jesus gave that indicate that His return is just around the corner.

Some of these signs could never be fulfilled before our day.

Good evening everyone and welcome to the End of Time series.

My name is Charissa Terocian, and I'm so excited that you are joining us tonight.

We are coming to you live from the East Coast of Australia.

And before Lyle shares his very good presentation, I'm sure, in just a few moments, We wanted you to know that we're coming to you live because we want to invite you to join us by interacting with us.

And right now you may be watching on our website, The End Dot Digital.

You might be viewing through YouTube or even our Facebook page.

Some of you are listening on radio, but if you're online then you can actually send in your comments and questions through the comments section on those Facebook page the YouTube channel and our website and we have moderators who are sending those questions through to me here so that after Lyle's presentation we'll be able to address those questions to Lyle and our Bible study time.

So I don't want to take up any more time.

All prophets will arise and deceive many.

There will be droughts, pandemics, and earthquakes.

When these things begin to happen, look up and Lift up your heads because your redemption is near.

How soon is the end is a question that many are asking and trying to predict at a time when change in our world is accelerating at an out of control pace never experienced before by humanity.

Technology is moving ahead at warp speed, driven by the availability of more information that has ever existed, which in turn is being driven by the ever increasing availability of that information at a few simple clicks.

Currently, every 24 hours, we are creating 2.5 quintillion pieces of data.

That's 2.5 with 18 zeros after it and it continues to roll at an ever-increasing rate.

Now I thought everyone was on the internet by 2016.

After all I'd visited some very remote parts of the world where subsistence farmers were living 100% traditional lifestyles with nothing artificial except for the steel blades of their machetes and their smartphones.

But between 2016 and 2019, the number of internet users increased by 83% with no other form of technology having received anything like the similar global uptake.

Back in 2016 we were only creating 44 billion gigabytes per day.

Now we're creating 463 billion gigabytes with no end in sight to the amount of information we can generate and consume.

Not only do we know more than ever, but we are more connected to more people than ever before.

Social media is by far the biggest driver of new content on the internet.

Approximately a third of the world uses Facebook on a regular basis.

When you factor in the too young, the too old, the too disabled, that's a massive chunk of our planet.

4 years worth of video recording is uploaded to YouTube every hour.

The future for progress and a better world has never been brighter than right now.

Machines do work for us in minutes that once took years and have created a level of efficiency that wasn't even dreamt of a few decades ago.

But with all this information, technology, efficiency and apparent connectedness is the world becoming a better place?

Are we about to enter a Nirvana like new age of enlightenment, peace and prosperity?

Do we really have the tools to say it to solve our world's problems through increased knowledge and machines.

Will a thousand years of peace in the Bible be accomplished by technological advancement and increased civilization?

Well, Let's see how well we're progressing.

In the 10 years leading up to COVID, depression increased by a staggering 18.5%, according to the World Health Organization.

An example of this is the United States, which reached an 11% depression rate in the years leading up to COVID.

Since COVID, that number has jumped to 42% of the United States population suffering with depression.

Amongst young adults, that number is 75%, with 1 in 4 having considered suicide in the last month.

Many are asking if life is so good for our generation why are we killing ourselves?

What has gone so drastically wrong with our species that we are self-destructing so badly?

And not just ourselves, but our offspring.

We take the lives of a quarter of our unborn children, all to make the world a better place for the children we do save.

But after decades of this practice, we are neither wealthier nor happier as a society.

Others are desperately looking for answers and solutions in fads of various kinds.

10 years ago, There was 1 gender clinic servicing the entire United States.

Now there are over 300 and this is not being driven by a cross-section of ages and genders as would be expected if this was the result of the normalization of the trans experience.

Before 2007, gender dysphoria was unknown amongst this demographic.

Now we have the social contagion of young girls dealing with the insecurity of changing bodies and social pressures, receiving permanent life-altering chemical and surgical procedures on their own recognizance, no parental permission required, no psychologist, psychologist or psychiatrist recommendation needed, nothing more than a self-diagnosis from something as simple as Dr Google.

And these operations have increased at a rate of 4, 400% among teen girls, while remaining relatively unchanged amongst other groups.

This social contagion has resulted in some girls' schools reporting 30% of their year 7 students as transgender.

Predictably and tragically, up to 90% of them choose to detransition, and many are then condemned to live their lives without breasts or the possibility of having children.

To think that we approve medical procedures with such a high failure rate in an era when information is so easily obtainable is a tragedy beyond imagination.

How did we reach a point where we won't allow a child to buy a can of spray paint or a pocket knife, but we do allow them to permanently change their gender.

Now think about how we have squandered the resources that all this advancement has made available to us.

Be no surprise to know that the United States is the greatest user of fossil fuels on a per capita basis, with 66, 525 MWh used per person.

What you may not know is that Australia ranks a close second, coming in at 64, 592 MWh per person.

But how much of this irreplaceable resource have we squandered over the last hundred years in killing each other?

The numbers hard to pin down but we know that the United States alone on average uses as much fossil fuel each year.

The United States military alone uses as much fossil fuel each year.

The United States military alone uses as much fossil fuel each year as Norway and Sweden combined.

You really have to question how wealthy our world would be right now without the wars of the last hundred years.

And while we're considering armed conflict, let's take a moment to think about how laws have changed in recent times.

If I'd come to you just the Christmas before last and told you that within months here in Australia, you would need to be able to produce a valid reason just to step outside your front yard, or that you'd struggle to buy toilet paper, you would have called me the wildest conspiracy theorist on the planet.

But look at what a global pandemic was able to accomplish in a matter of weeks.

And what would you have thought if I told you that within 12 months a law would be passed under which you could be extradited to Victoria and imprisoned for merely accepting someone's sincere prayer request and acting on it.

Now, of course, this terrible piece of legislation is not just bad for religious liberty, but tragically it strips the LGBT plus and transgender community of choice as well.

Well, what if I told you that as a parent, a law would be passed that your neighbour could report you for having a conversation with your child explaining to them what their gender was, based on science.

And as a result of that report by your neighbour, you could lose your children and serve a prison sentence.

And now on top of that, here in New South Wales, in the last 24 months, we went from the worst drought on history, to the worst bushfires on record, to floods, to a global pandemic, to a mass plague of truly apocalyptic proportions, back to record breaking floods and finally more lockdowns.

Are we becoming normalized to living in crisis mode?

Now we fight hard for women and children to be protected from abuse.

And yet it seems the harder we fight that battle the worse it gets.

Maybe because we do nothing to stop the causes of that abuse.

In fact society seems to do the opposite.

We left bottle shops open while we closed churches And at the age when children should be playing with Legos, instead they are watching violent, selfish, misogynistic, hardcore pornography and being told that's normal by some school teachers.

Last year, porn sites received more website traffic than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Zoom, Pinterest and LinkedIn combined.

In 1 year, 2019, on 1 porn site, 665, 000 years worth of porn was consumed.

That's more than a hundred times the age of our world and this took place over 42 trillion site visits.

And the latest research indicates that 22% of porn is consumed by under 10 year olds And yet 75% of parents still somehow think that their children isn't looking at porn.

How do we ever expect to solve the problem of abuse?

While we allow the internet to groom our children to be victims who then grow up to be abusers.

We're facing a civilisation that rather than being a society with traumatised people, is a traumatised society.

What will that look like in the next decade?

Now at this point you might think that I'm the most negative person on the planet, but I'm not.

I'm actually filled with hope for a very bright future indeed, and in the very near future.

You see, all that is taking place in our world right now is exactly what Jesus said would be taking place just before he returns.

Thinking men and women of all classes are observing the strained restless nature of our world at this time and are recognizing that something great and decisive is about to take place.

Students of the Bible know and recognise that time is about to end, that Jesus is about to return.

You see, out of all those who predict the end of humanity, whether they're evolutionists or mystics or prophets, the Bible is unique in that it predicts a very bright future full of hope, with promises of joy and peace in a world made new with Jesus establishing a government of love.

And I want to add that these are promises that can be trusted, for how else could Jesus have predicted the exact condition of our world right now?

Let's take a moment to look at some of those predictions and promises.

Wow, Lyle, that was an epic rendition of all the facts that are happening today in our world and it's not a pretty picture.

02 Prophecies of the End

In tonight's presentation, we're going to learn about a prophecy that gives and just keeps on giving because it keeps on being fulfilled.

Our story begins in the newly formed Babylonian Empire, 605 BC.

Good evening everyone, and welcome back to the End of Time series.

My name is Charissa Terrosian, and I'm really excited that you're back.

Literally last night on our opening night, we had people joining us from all over the world.

You're watching, no doubt, on our website or on our Facebook page, live stream or on our YouTube channel and maybe you're even listening to radio.

We want to know, We want you to know that we're happy that you're here.

We also want you to know that after Lyle presents his fascinating presentation in just a few moments, we're going to have the opportunity to ask Lyle questions which you send in.

So if you're watching on our Facebook page or on our YouTube channel, please make the most of this opportunity by sending in your comments or questions for Lyle so that I can share them with him during the next segment that will follow after his presentation.

But Without further ado, let's listen to Lyle's presentation.

Today we live in a world where the International Criminal Court in The Hague will try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of terrorism.

In the past we've seen the execution of Nazi criminals at the Nuremberg trials and in more recent times long prison sentences have been handed out to war criminals and terrorists have been imprisoned in places such as Guantanamo Bay.

Perpetrators of such crimes endeavour to live in obscurity, often hiding in remote areas surrounded by fighters loyal to their cause.

The Babylonian Empire was formed out of the previous Assyrian Empire.

And the Assyrians perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of terrorism on a monumental scale.

And rather than strenuously denying that these events happened or even trying to justify them in some way, the Assyrians published their atrocities on massive billboards right across the world.

These billboards were no temporary structures designed to fade away as the conquered nations came into submission.

No, they were carved as massive stone reliefs designed to be a testimony for all the world to see.

The Assyrian policy was to literally terrorize the world into submission.

The historian Simon Anglum states, the Assyrians had created the world's first great army and the world's first great empire.

This was held together by 2 factors, their superior abilities in siege warfare and their reliance on sheer unadulterated terror.

Assyrian national history as it has been preserved for us in inscriptions and pictures, consists almost solely of military campaigns and battles.

It is as gory and blood-curdling a history as it is possible to record.

For example, the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal boasted, I gouged out the eyes of many troops.

I made 1 pile of the living and 1 of heads.

I hung their heads on trees around the city.

I skinned as many nobles as had rebelled against me and draped their skins over the pile of corpses.

I skinned many right through my land and draped their skins over the walls.

With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool and the rest of them the ravines and the torrents of the mountain swallowed.

I cut off the heads of their fighters and built therewith a tower before their city.

I burnt their adolescent boys and girls." Nebo Palasa, Nebuchadnezzar's father, came to power in Babylon as a client king of the Assyrian empire and had dominated this stage of the world for centuries.

But in a time when the cracks were starting to form in that great nation, the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal died in 631 BC, which resulted in serious political instability.

3 rivals claimed the throne and the once mighty empire descended into a bitter civil war.

The Scythian and Sumerian horse soldiers raided through the empire from their home in the far north all the way to Egypt.

The Egyptians quietly changed their status from being a vassal, a vassal state of the empire to an independent ally.

Nabopolassar Akaldian came to power in Babylon and was able to unite that region, also breaking away from the Assyrians.

In the northeast, Syraxes the Mede, aided by the anger caused by Ashurbanipal's brutal destruction of the Elamite empire, led the Medes in rebellion and formed an empire of his own in what is modern day Iran.

Weakened though Assyria was, it continued to be the mightiest nation on earth.

Recognizing that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Syraxes formed an alliance with Nebopalassa by marrying his daughter Ametis to Nebopalassa's son Nebuchadnezzar.

With the alliance thus sealed and his southern border no longer a threat, Syraxes could now turn his attention on his primary goal, the complete destruction of the Assyrian Empire.

By 615 BC, Syraxes the Mede had conquered, had captured the major Assyrian cities of Nimrod and Arafat, leaving the mighty capital of Nineveh as the greatest prize of all.

Nabo Pelassad had been unable to offer assistance up to this point as he had his hands full defending his own revolution.

But finally the Median-Babylonian-Scythian-Sumerian alliance was able to unite and with an almost superhuman effort and unimaginable sacrifice in human lives.

Sinai Sharishkan died in bitter street fighting while the crown prince Asherubalut managed to rally an elite force of the Royal guard, fight his way out of the city, flee to Haran and form a new capital there.

Syraxes so completely destroyed Nineveh that it never recovered.

Just a couple of hundred years later the Greek mercenary general historian Xenophon would wander through the ruins of Nineveh and wonder what kind of people had built such stupendous monuments.

How quickly the Assyrian people had become forgotten.

The Prophet Nahum had said, It shall come to pass that all those that look upon you shall flee from you, and say, Nineveh is laid waste, who will bemoan her?

How surely were the words of God's prophet fulfilled?

3 years after the fall of Nineveh, Nabo-Pilasa the Babylonian took Haran and then successfully defended it from an Assyrian counter-attack led by Asher Ubalat.

At last in 609 BC the Assyrian allies tardily gathered a mighty army to aid Asher Ubalat to regain his kingdom.

This army had to fight its way through Palestine where Pharaoh Necho met and defeated a Jewish army and killed Josiah in the Battle of Megiddo.

Proceeding from there to the Euphrates, the weakened Egyptian army was disastrously crushed at the Battle of Karchemish by the new Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II.

With this defeat, the Assyrian Empire finally breathed its last.

Nebuchadnezzar proceeded to raid all the way down to Jerusalem, taking captive its most prominent citizens and holding them hostage in his capital at Babylon.

An iron curtain now fell and a cold war began between the Median Empire and the Babylonian Empire.

There were just 2 super heavyweight superpowers left in the world where there could really only be 1.

And it is in this context that our story takes place.

In the book of Daniel chapter 2 and verse 1, the Bible says, Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him.

Then the king commanded to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans to show the king his dream.

So they came and stood before the king and the king said to them, I've dreamed a dream and my spirit was troubled to understand the dream.

Then spoke the Chaldeans to the king in Syriac, Oh king, live forever.

Tell your servants the dream and we will show the interpretation.

It's hard for most of us who have grown up in recent, recent Western culture to imagine the stress that could be created by a dream, particularly 1 that was incredibly vivid and yet could not be remembered the next day, as was the case in this circumstance.

A good example from the ancient world, detailing the level of importance attached to omens that has been recorded for us in detail, is found in the events of the Battle of Plataea.

This was the final battle fought on the Greek mainland of the Persian Greek wars.

It resulted in a decisive defeat for the Persians and ended their influence in Europe.

1 of the greatest battlefield strengths of the Persian army was their massed archers, using volley fire to kill and wound thousands of men and demoralizing the opposing force before the 2 sides even met.

At the previous Battle of Thermopylae, it was reported to the Greek King Leonidas that when the Persian archers unleashed their arrows, they would be so thick that they would blot out the sun.

In 1 of the greatest comebacks ever recorded in history, Leonidas replied with something like, good, it will be nice to fight in the shade.

For the Greeks, their greatest battlefield asset were the hoplite heavy infantry, who specialized in hand-to-hand combat at close quarters in a phalanx formation.

The only possible defense the Greeks could mount against the Persian archers was to charge under the arrows and engage in hand-to-hand fighting.

At Plataea, as the Persians closed on the retreating Spartans and Tegeans, they first sought to soften up the Greek lines with a cavalry charge.

After which, they planted their shields and began to release volley after volley of arrows into the Greek phalanxes.

The Tegeans, having received good omens from their sacrifices, immediately charged.

However, the Spartans had received poor omens and in desperation were sacrificing 1 goat after another, seeking a good omen.

All the while the Spartan hoplites, desperately trying to find what shelter they could behind their shields, were being killed by the hundreds and dying where they stood.

Eventually good omens were seen and the Spartans charged.

When the surviving Greek infantry smashed into the Persian lines, venting up their pent up frustration on the lightly armed Persian archers, the result was a massacre and they carried the day.

The fact that men would rather stand and be shot to death with arrows rather than risk defying a bad omen illustrates the level of importance and fear that the ancients placed on such signs.

It is little wonder that Nebuchadnezzar was desperate to have an explanation for what he had seen.

As Nebuchadnezzar assembled his cabinet for this purpose, There would have been no initial cause for alarm.

Interpreting dreams is par for the course for these men and an art that they were well-practiced at.

Like many of the so-called charismatic prophets of today, they were well-versed in the ability to make an interpretation positive for the emperor and yet so vague that it was guaranteed to be fulfilled in some way.

In fact the Chaldeans, men from Nebuchadnezzar's own ethnic group and probably his family members, were keen to put up their hand to receive the privilege of being the ones to interpret the vision.

1 can only imagine how quickly they pulled it back down and tried to gain a level of obscurity once they heard what Nebuchadnezzar said next.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, My decision is firm.

If you do not make known the dream to me and its interpretation, you will be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a heap of dung." Now that's a seriously unprovoked and over-the-top reply.

What kind of a psycho was this guy who was now leading the world?

Benigneza was a brilliant statesman, businessman and politician.

In fact, he was a true genius of history, but sometimes insanity and genius walk a very fine line within the same individual.

Nebuchadnezzar walked that line and at times stepped over it.

03 How will Time End?

Tonight's presentation will expose a massive deception and it's all about the return of Jesus and the end of time.

Have you ever wondered how it will happen?

Well, stay tuned because you are about to find out.

Good evening everyone and a very warm welcome to you all.

My name is Charissa Turosian and I'm so excited that you have chosen to join us tonight for another epic season together in God's Word and hearing about how the Bible relates to right now today.

Before we listen to Lyle's live presentation, we want to remind you that because we are live, we are really looking forward to hearing from you and we would love to hear from you.

So if you're watching on our YouTube channel or on our Facebook page, please make use of the comment section on those pages because we have moderators watching those, sending them through to me here so that after Lyle has finished his presentation, we can then ask your questions to him.

Series

The End of Time

02 Prophecies of the End

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The End of Time

01 The End of Time

50m

The End of Time

03 How will Time End?

56m

Studies in the Book of Revelation

Revelation 17

54m

Coronation of the King

Coronation of the King, Part 1

28m

The End of Time

10 The Battle at the End

59m

Prophecies of Hope

08 God’s Great Judgment

47m

Studies in the Book of Revelation

Revelation 20

54m

Signs of Christ's Return

Signs of Christ’s Return, Part 2

28m

The Prophecy of History

The Prophecy of History, Pt. 2

28m

The End of Time

05 1000 Years Till the End?

59m

The Coming of the King

28m

Prophecies of Hope

13 Revelation’s Glorious Rapture

52m

Sound Doctrine