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Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor

The Wonder of the Word, Part 2

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

After losing his godly mother when he was just 7 years old, John began to hang out with the wrong crowd.

Disturbed by his delinquency, his father, a sea captain, began taking him along on ocean voyages.

But John's life soon spiraled into increasingly bad behavior.

After being pressed into the British Royal Navy, John gave up on God entirely.

He adopted atheism, and he loved tormenting Christians with his blasphemy.

Consumed with anger and hate, the rebel's life overflowed with misery and despair.

Eventually, he signed on as a crew member on a slave ship.

But through a strange turn of providence, John became a slave himself.

When finally rescued, John continued in his reckless lifestyle of cursing, fighting, and drinking.

But all of this dramatically changed during a terrifying storm at sea when John Newton, the author of the best love hymn Amazing Grace, finally acknowledged his need of Christ.

John Newton's dramatic and famous conversion certainly isn't unique.

I personally know of thousands of remarkable accounts of people from all ages who've experienced total transformation through the incredible power, love, and grace of Christ, myself included.

I invite you now to join me as I share my own personal testimony, and I pray that you'll be blessed.

And many people in the world think that happiness comes from either physical pleasure or if I could be wealthy enough or if I could be more beautiful or more popular then I'd have real happiness and so many people go through life dissatisfied with what they do have, wanting something else and I've learned that happiness does not come from those things.

Now I'll start by giving you a little background, tell you about my parents briefly.

Mother and father were as opposite as you could get.

My mother grew up with a Jewish background, but she wasn't practicing.

My father grew up with a Baptist background, but he pretty much became an atheist after World War II.

He was a pilot, captain in the Air Force, and flew in Europe during World War II.

He started buying Army surplus planes and built it into an airline, delivering cargo, then delivering passengers.

He knew a lot of very wealthy, powerful people like Howard Hughes and others in that business.

Started in L.A., moved the business to Miami, had a company called Batchare.

Now here he is, this is wife number 4, meeting Pope John Paul II.

If you got enough money, you can meet presidents, and he knew a lot of people.

There's a philanthropist gave a lot of money away and But that's our where happiness comes from My dad used to drink himself to sleep every night.

He was so stressed Jesus said a man's life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses.

The Lord tells us, do not lay up treasures on earth for yourself.

This is not my dad's Rolls, I just grabbed 1 online.

He had a white Rolls Royce, a Maserati, stepmother had a Jaguar, Ferraris, I mean they had all the toys.

Fighting, coldness, unhappiness in the family and I thought What's the purpose of life?

Rust and moth corrupt, the Bible tells us.

Mom, I don't know how they ever got married.

And that's maybe why they divorced when I was 3 years of age.

She did not have much formal education, but she could sing, she could write, she was an attractive lady and she started writing songs for Elvis Presley when she was still a teenager and recorded 2 or 3 with Elvis, but she had songs that were in movies like stagecoach and She knew people like you know Frank Sinatra and and Andy Williams recorded her songs and she wrote some standards She was an actress if you've ever seen the movie the 10 Commandments Mom had a really little part in that movie.

And I tell the kids, I said, there goes grandma.

But she did some acting in a couple of movies in Hollywood.

At that time she started having kids, and so she gave that up.

And she, and I'm condensing her whole life very quickly, but she was the president of the film critics in Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

And in that position, it's a very powerful position because she knew everybody in Hollywood.

If a movie came out, and they spend millions of dollars on these movies, if the film critic gave a bad review, then their income went down.

And so they were always afraid of the power of her.

She was a film critic on Good Morning America and replaced Rona Barrett and I just threw in a few pictures I could just sit here all day and show you pictures of mom but like here's mom with Muhammad Ali with Sir Paul McCartney, Sylvester Stallone, Natalie Wood, Some people say she looked a little bit like Natalie Wood.

Roger Moore, he was 1 of the James Bonds.

There's mom with Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman.

So I just show you these to let you know that when I was with mom, the dad, I was born in Burbank, California and dad mom split.

He ended up moving his business to Miami Beach.

My brother and I moved around through these different places, but when she died she was all alone.

And we saw growing up these people that had lots of money and they had lots of influence and fame and we knew some of them that good-looking, wealthy, healthy, miserable, killed themselves.

And so that was the the thing that struck me.

But then I decided I'm just gonna, I'm gonna try and have all the fun I can.

I saw this commercial where it said, you only go around once in life, get all the gusto you can.

I thought all right well I'm I'm gonna die having fun I'm gonna just have as much fun as I can and just go out enjoying myself and I started to live a very reckless life.

I began using drugs I started smoking when I was 13 because mom and dad both smoke And I just take their cigarettes.

And 1 night she said, well Doug, I know that you're going to end up being exposed to this out on the streets.

And she said, I just assume you did it here at home.

So she started to smoke pot with me 2 or 3 times a week or hashish and we'd eat ice cream and watch TV.

But you know and so when I was with mom I began to use drugs at home and then when I was with dad in Florida this is actually a Google Earth photo of the island that dad lived on it's still there today Sunset Island number 1 and he had that house on the on the top of the picture right on the water with the dock and had security guards that kept you from going on the island.

Dad had a bar in the house, bigger than some bars you might find in a city.

So whenever I wanted to go drink, my friends and I would go drink all we wanted.

And so I learned how to drink with dad, and he never realized it was missing because the butler kept replacing it, thinking dad was just drinking more.

And so my friends and I would often party during the day, and I started drinking.

But more of my friends have died from alcohol than anything.

And I just mention that because I encounter Christians every now and then that think drinking a little bit is okay.

I'll tell you, friends, 1 out of 7 people that drinks becomes an alcoholic.

And it's just caused all kinds of misery in our society.

Christians shouldn't drink anything, any alcohol.

But then I started getting into more and more trouble.

I ran away from home the first time when I was 13.

The last time when I was 15, Dad said, I don't know what to do with you.

I was getting into trouble with the police and drugs and I'm condensing the story.

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The Wonder of the Word, Part 2

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