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Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor

The Devil’s Dungeon

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

You probably know, sometimes notorious criminals will receive a prison sentence that's far longer than the average human lifespan.

Some stretch to more than a thousand years.

But the longest prison sentence on record was handed to Chimwa Hipso, a woman in Thailand who defrauded more than 16, 000 of her countrymen out of hundreds of millions of dollars back in the 1980s.

Her sentence was more than 140, 000 years.

Remarkably, after an appeal that challenged the legality of the sentence, her epic prison term was reduced to 20 years, and she ended up only serving about 8 years.

The Bible book of Revelation explains that following the second coming of Jesus, the most notorious criminal of all time, the devil, will be handed a sentence of 1, 000 years, after which he is briefly paroled.

But where is this prison and why would God briefly let him out?

And what's happening on earth during this 1, 000 years when Satan is bound?

Join me now as we take a closer look at this fascinating Bible prophecy topic known as the Millennium.

Tonight's subject is 1 of my favorites, and it's based on passage you find in Revelation chapter 20.

I think it was George Washington Carver who was famous because he really helped an economic resurrection in the South following the Civil War.

The sharecroppers, they kept farming cotton, cotton, cotton and it sapped the ground from its nutrients.

And Carver said, you've got to let the land lay fallow.

You've got to let it recover so that it can generate more nitrogen.

And he had them introduce crops like sweet potatoes and peanuts.

And that really was an economic salvation for them.

When they finally realized you've got to rest the land, You can't keep farming the same thing all the time.

The Lord told the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt, Moses said, Exodus 23, 6 years you will sow your land and gather its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and life fallow, that the poor of your people may eat.

They were to rest the land, they used to have a farming Sabbath every seventh year, don't farm.

Well, it's kind of hard sometimes to ask farmers not to farm because it represents an economic loss, and evidently the children of Israel often ignored this law.

And so you find that from the time of King David up until the time of the Babylonian captivity, they were farming the land year after year after year, and were not letting it keep a Sabbath.

And so when God finally brought judgment on them, 490 years after David, then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all of its palaces with fire.

And those who escaped from the sword he carried off to Babylon until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths.

As long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years.

So if you've got 490 years, how many annual Sabbaths would you have?

How many seven-year Sabbaths would you have in 490 years?

So for every year that they neglected to let the land rest, God said you're going to spend a year in captivity, Jerusalem and the people, Jerusalem is going to be uninhabited, the land is going to rest.

You can read about this, Nehemiah 1, 3, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, the gates are burned with fire.

So God sort of compelled the land to rest.

You know, the Bible tells us that For about 6, 000 years now, Jesus has been sowing the gospel seed.

Revelation tells us that he's coming with a sickle to harvest the earth.

Several parables, Jesus talks about farming and harvesting.

And during that time, after we are caught up to meet the Lord, the Lord is going to keep, or the land is going to keep, or the earth, a 1, 000 year Sabbath when it is desolate.

Sometimes it's referred to as the Millennium.

First question, What events mark the beginning of this 1, 000 year period, what we call the millennium?

It tells us for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout and the dead in Christ will rise first.

We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed.

And you read on here in 1 Corinthians 15, 52.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead shall be raised.

Now those who are dead, they're raised, they're given glorified bodies.

Those of us who are alive, we get new bodies.

You read in Philippians 3.21, who will transform our lowly body that it might be conformed to His glorious body.

This verse wasn't near as important to me when I was like 19 years old as it is now.

The older you get, the better this verse looks.

And then this lawless 1, what happens to the wicked?

Then that lawless 1 will be revealed whom the Lord will destroy with the brightness of his coming.

And so you've got the righteous who are alive, they're transformed, the righteous dead are resurrected, the wicked who are dead stay dead, The wicked who are alive are destroyed.

And we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

What is the condition of the earth during the 1, 000 years?

Now, this is where a lot of people are surprised.

I beheld the earth, and Indeed it was without form and void, and the heavens and they had no light.

Now if I stop right there, you'll think, he's describing before creation.

It says, I beheld the mountains, and indeed they trembled.

I beheld, and indeed there was no man, and all the birds of heaven had fled, and the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down.

There were people there, but they're not there anymore.

The birds have all fled, and the cities are broken down.

It says, the presence of the Lord and by his fierce anger.

Look at this verse in Jeremiah 25 33, and at that day the slain of the Lord shall be from 1 end of the earth even to the other end of the earth.

They are not lamented or gathered or buried.

There's no 1 alive to gather, lament or bury them.

See what happens is when Jesus comes back, what direction do we go?

They're destroyed by the brightness of His coming.

This earth is going to get a thousand year Sabbath.

We are not living and reigning here on the earth over the wicked.

I don't know about you, I have no desire to reign over the sinners.

We are living and reigning with Christ as his ambassadors.

He says, I've gone to prepare a place for you.

And an angel laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

So we see that Satan is captured, he's bound.

It tells us that the devil is cast into this, what is it?

That word there, bottomless pit, has confused a lot of people and folks wonder, is it a black hole out in the universe somewhere?

Well the word in Greek is abyssos And the word simply means abyss.

It means a place where the devil has no 1 to inhabit.

It is the same word that is used in the Greek Septuagint That is for when the earth is without form and void.

It describes our world in a state of chaos.

Where will the saints be during the 1, 000 years and what are they doing?

All right, Jesus said, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, he's on up in heaven with the father in the mansions he's prepared, you may be also.

We're caught up, we meet Him in the air, we go with Him to that place.

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The Devil’s Dungeon

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