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Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor

A River of Life

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 in the water.

Our lesson today is a very important subject.

Some of you are going to think, Pastor Doug, are you pulling a fast 1?

Why are you dropping this subject into a prophecy seminar?

As we move on, I think you'll understand why it belongs and why it's so important.

And I would like to direct your attention to a story that you find in the second book of Kings.

Second Kings, chapter 5, It tells us about a character.

He's an Assyrian by the name of Naaman and says Naaman was a mighty man with his master.

And by him, the Lord had given deliverance to Syria.

But at the end of that first verse, it's got 5 words.

I mean, what profit is it if you gain the whole world and you're dying of a deadly contagious disease for which there is no cure?

He was strong, had a great reputation, says he was an honorable man.

1 day he came down with this terrible, dreaded, contagious disease of leprosy.

The Bible often compares leprosy to sin, you may know.

Well, the story goes on to tell that Naaman bought a slave girl that worked in his household, he's a wealthy man, and she had been captured from Israel.

This little girl, she had probably heard the story of Joseph, how Joseph found himself a slave in a foreign land and he said, well if I'm going to be a good slave, God's got a reason for me to be here, I'm going to trust the Lord, if God was able to use Joseph in that capacity, then perhaps he can use me.

And when she found out that her master had leprosy, she said to her mistress, she said, for if he, Naaman, would go to Israel, the prophet there, Elisha, would heal him of his leprosy.

So Naaman goes down to Israel, and they'd often been enemies, so it's kind of an odd request.

I mean here Naaman has been the general who has attacked Israel and there's this brief period of truce so he goes down there and gives a message to the king of Israel that says, king of Syria, sent a message to the king of Israel, I've sent Naaman my servant unto you so you can heal him of his leprosy.

Well, word came to Elisha what had happened.

He said, send him to me that you may know that there is a prophet in Israel.

And so Naaman comes to the house of Elisha the prophet, but Elisha doesn't even come out.

He sends out his servant Gehazi and he's got a very short simple message.

Go and wash in the Jordan River 7 times and your flesh shall be restored to you again and you'll be clean.

Evidently his leprosy had advanced which says your flesh will be restored.

He may have already gotten to the stage in his leprosy where sometimes you can lose digits or piece of them through injury and it was pretty far advanced.

Well, the Jordan River was not the best river in the world.

Matter of fact, in the summertime the Jordan is like a series of stagnating pools.

But what does it mean if someone tells you to take 7 baths in a dirty river?

The Jordan River, it's either green or brown.

And when Nahum heard that, I mean, he was expecting the prophet to come out and go through some incantations and say, you know, magic words and he'd be healed or ask him to do something like climb a mountain, go kill some other enemies or...

And he says go wash and it offended his pride.

Here he's brought millions of dollars in gold and silver and clothing to pay for his healing.

I think someone once calculated it was over 52 million dollars in gold and silver had been sent by the king to heal Naaman of his leprosy.

Well he had just ridden by the Jordan River on his way to Israel.

See, he's so mad, he turns his horse around, he begins to gallop off, and he said, the Bible says he left in a rage.

He said, are not the rivers of Damascus, Abana, and Parfar cleaner than all the waters in Israel?

And on his way down to Damascus, he had to ride by the Jordan River.

And the soldiers came to him and they said, Master, they drew near because they had been keeping their distances contagious.

They said, if he had asked you to do some hard thing, wouldn't you have done it?

If he had said, you know, go conquer a thousand Philistines, you would have done it.

Ne'eman thought, well, I'm going home to die.

And he gets off his horse and he steps on down into the river, has to take off his clothes and his armor with his men watching.

And the water's brown and he gets off there and he can see little clouds of mud coming up underneath his feet and he thought, how can this possibly help?

So he goes and he dunks himself the first time and it comes up and all he knows is it stings and he's still got his leprosy.

And he thinks, well, you know, why am I going through this?

They said, no, he didn't say 1 time, master, 7 times.

And he thought every time he dunked himself that it was washing away his leprosy.

Finally after 6 times, he thought, oh, enough's enough, and he's gonna get out, and he said, no, no, master, he said 7 times.

When God told Joshua to march around Jericho 7 times on the seventh day and you'll gain the victory.

So Naaman obeyed and he went down the seventh time and something happened.

He came up out of the water, leprosy was gone, any missing digits popped back into place, he was completely and totally healed.

Well this was 1 of the first times we see something connected with washing in the Jordan River and cleansing.

Now there are several miracles that happened in the Jordan River and 1 of the greatest miracles was this is where Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit because this is where John the Baptist began baptizing and that is our subject for tonight.

We're going to be talking about the subject of baptism.

It is a prophecy subject and so people who are coming to a prophecy seminar and say, well Doug, I don't want to know about salvation.

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