A lively, attentive audience of more than 1,000 filled the auditorium of the Seventh-day Adventist Church world headquarters for the March 4 start of “The Prophecy Code,” a series of satellite television evangelistic meetings conducted by Pastor Doug Batchelor, director/speaker of Amazing Facts. The meetings are part of the NET 2005 outreach of the church, along with companion meetings that opened the same day in Kiev, Ukraine, led by Pastor Mark Finley and sponsored by It Is Written, a television ministry.

The 20-meeting series, which runs through the month of March, is the first evangelism outreach held at the headquarters site. It is being broadcast over several satellite television networks, including The Hope Channel, Esperanza, ADvenir, and 3ABN, into 225 countries. At the same time, a total of 1,841 registered downlink sites have been established in the United States, of which 1,542 are open to the public. Over two-thirds of the sites are churches, while home/cell groups largely represent the remainder. An additional 217 overseas sites were also registered to host the broadcast.

“I believe you are here tonight because the Lord has brought you,” Batchelor told the audience. “This seminar will affect your family, finances, friends and your future. It will affect every area of your life.”

The evangelistic seminar is designed to unfold Bible prophecy for those questioning the subject, one made wildly popular by books such as the “Left Behind” series of novels, as well as best sellers such as “The DaVinci Code” and “The Bible Code.”

He said a goal of the series was to put the key to prophecy in the hands of his hearers, and to emphasize that “a lot of the prophecy in the Bible is of good things,” and that all of prophecy, at its core, centers on Jesus Christ.

Batchelor said he was impressed that technology allowed for such a wide dissemination of the meetings: “Through this incredible technology, God’s church has become one huge family tonight.”

The “Prophecy Code” meetings mark the tenth anniversary of satellite or NET evangelism series. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was a pioneer in using satellite broadcast technology to blanket the planet with such events, as churches around the globe are able to receive the signal and share it with their audience.

As is standard with most NET events, translators simultaneously interpreted Pastor Batchelor’s words into Spanish, French and other languages.

An Internet Web site, www.prophecycode.com, has been established where notes from each of the meetings, as well as a video archive of each message, will be available.