Times of Change

Have you stopped lately and considered what amazing times we live in? I’m talking about our material culture; our technology. When’s the last time you really gave it some deep thought?

If you go back to the beginnings of recorded human history, which we cannot reliable extend further then about 2000 BC (I would place Noah’s flood in the 3000 to 5000 BC range, certainly no further back then 8000BC +/-), you will find a world much like the world that would exist for thousands of years afterwards. Let’s take Hammurabi’s Babylon, circa 1800 BC, or thereabouts. In Hammurabi’s Babylon, people heat their homes, cook their meals, and light their nights with fire. They walk and ride horses to get around. Cargo is moved by wagon or by ship. And the ships are moved by the wind or by muscles. War is fought face-to-face, with weapons of bronze.

Fast forward almost 2000 years, to 334 BC when Alexander the Great overthrows the mighty Persian Empire. Other than a few language issues, a man from Hammurabi’s Babylon would pretty much be right at home in the world of Alexander’s Macedonian Empire. People still heat their homes, cook their meals, and light their nights with fire. They walk and ride horses to get around. Cargo is moved by wagon or by ship. And the ships are moved by the wind or by muscles. “Hey,” our fictitious Babylonian time-traveler might say, “your iron is a bit better then my bronze, where can I get some?”

Continue our fast forward journey through time, and we see that, through the Roman times, the Dark Ages, the High Middle Ages, even into the Renaissance, technology remains pretty much the same. Let’s have out time traveling Babylonian land in Colonial Williamsburg in the 1750s, almost 4000 years from when he began. What does he find? People still heat their homes, cook their meals, and light their nights with fire. They walk and ride horses to get around. Cargo is moved by wagon or by ship. And the ships are moved by the wind or by muscles. And, “Hey, those muskets are kind of neat! Where can I get one?” (I’m not saying that gunpowder had not already changed warfare, but the sword was still a viable weapon on the battlefield. And, let’s face it; a musket in the 1750’s was mostly just a one-shot spear…)

But now look at the 260 years since 1750. Steam engines provided power to ships, trains, and vast factories. The automobile, the airplane, even spaceships. We’ve gone from muskets to B-2 Bombers armed with nuclear bombs that can wipe out entire cities in one pop. Our Babylonian time traveler stayed in a mostly recognizable world for 4000 years, but a guy born just 100 years ago would be lost today. He’d have seen automobiles and airplanes by 1910, but you set him down on the south side of LAX by the freeway and his brain would flip out!

I’m old enough to remember life when there were only 3 television channels. Now, I’m not so old as to remember life before television, that is my parents’ generation, but I’ve been around for a while. Who knows how many channels are in existence, now. More than any of us want to watch, I’d wager.

The first computer I ever worked on had 8 kilobytes of RAM. The year was 1980, and I was able to take computer science in high school. And our school had four computers! Wow! I remember telling my Dad that one day computers would be like televisions & most every house would have one & that they’d all be hooked together. He scoffed and said that he’d never own one; yet, within 3 years, he had bought one for Mom to use keeping the books for his construction company. (It was an IBM AT, and had a 1 megabyte hard drive. I told Mom that hard drive was so big that she’d never fill it up…)

What’s the point in all this? Am I leading up to some deep theological zinger? No, not really. Just taking a little time to be amazed at the world we live in & wondering what new & wondrous things tomorrow will be bringing. (Me? I still want my flying car!)

A Future for an Ancient City?

There are those who see the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy every time somebody butters their toast or orders a cup of tea somewhere in the Middle East. I'm not one of those people. However, I do believe that the Scriptures have a lot to say about the end times, and that the Bible means what it says.

Take Babylon, for example.

It would be difficult not to notice the fact that the city of Babylon is mentioned very prominently in the book of Revelation. Actually, it is mentioned 6 times: Rev. 14:8; Rev. 16:19; Rev 17:5; Rev. 18:2; Rev 18:10; & Rev. 18:21. Each verse foretells Babylon's destruction, and portrays it as a world power beforehand. Clearly, for the prophecies to be true, Babylon must first become great again, before it can be destroyed for good.



Could an ancient empire like Babylon once again become prominent in world events?

Yes it could, and there is an interesting parallel in recent history and that is the rebirth of Israel as a nation.

In the late 1800's, when Fundamentalism and Dispensationalism were in their early formative years, there was a series of Bible conferences held across North America, the most famous of which were the Niagara Bible Conferences, held annually from 1876 to 1897. The focus of these conferences was not primarily the study of prophecy, but papers on prophecy were presented. Some of those papers concluded that, since Israel plays such a large part in end-times prophecies, God would cause the nation of Israel to somehow be reborn.

The authors of those papers received scorn and ridicule. Israel hadn't been a nation since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, and burned the Temple, in 70 AD. No nation, lost to history for such a long time, had ever been reestablished. But in the face of such criticism, these men just pointed to the Bible, and what it said. They were shown to be right when an amazing thing happened; in the wake of WWII and the Holocaust, Israel was reborn as a nation.
(Note: I need help documenting this. I've read some of these papers, I've read the critical reviews that they received. Do you think I could find any of them? Of course not! If someone could help me out, I'd be most grateful. Thanks! ~Squirrel)

Like the men 100 or so years ago, there have been those who have looked at what the Bible had to say, and reached the conclusion that Babylon, too, must be reborn. And, now it seems that Babylon has been in the news. And, guess what? The news says that the city of Babylon is being rebuilt!



For now, Babylon seems like nothing more then an Iraqi version of Williamsburg, Virginia, a place for tourists to see what life was like in ancient times. The Bible says that Babylon will be a center of commerce, religion, and politics at the time of it's destruction. Given Iraq's oil wealth, all it would take would be a few years of free enterprise, and the political will to re-establish Babylon as a modern city, and it could easily become a brand new very old major city.

Also, we should not loose sight of the fact that Babylon was an nation-state and an empire, not just a city. Babylon isn't all that far from Baghdad, the capital of modern Iraq, as this map shows, so it isn't inconceivable to consider that Iraq, in a sense, is Babylon! It is also not inconceivable to imagine a new, modern city of Babylon arising next to the ancient ruins.

I read what the Bible has to say, and I think, "Well, it certainly says Babylon." But often I'm told, "Yes, but it doesn't really mean Babylon." Many people see "Babylon" as a code word for something else. But what?

Throughout church history, Babylon in Revelation 17 & 18 has been interpreted to mean different things. Preterists usually equate the destruction of Babylon in Revelation with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, while most amillennialists follow Luther in identifying Babylon with Rome, and the Antichrist with the Pope. Others see "Babylon" as symbolic of all ungodliness that opposes Christianity. The problem with the whole "code word" idea is that nobody knows the key to the code, so everybody's got their own ideas of what the code means.

Well, here's a novel idea. Look, "Bethlehem" meant "Bethlehem" in Micah 5:2, right? And, in Jeremiah 25:11, "seventy years" meant "seventy years," correct? What if the Bible means what it says? What if, when the Bible says, "Babylon," it means, "Babylon"? Just a thought.