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.

Keepers of the Lost Ark?

It was sometime back in the early 80’s when I first heard the claims that the Ark of the Covenant was somewhere in Ethiopia. It was shortly after Raiders of the Lost Ark first came out, and the possible location of the Ark was a topic of speculation all over the place.

Well, last week, an Italian paper said that the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Abuna Pauolos, met with Pope Benedict XVI last week to discuss the Ark. The Patriarch reportedly said, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses . . . . The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries. As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now.” The Ark was supposed to be unveiled at a press conference on Friday. It’s Sunday evening as I type this, still nothing.

So, where is the Ark? Is it in Ethiopia? Is it in Egypt, or in hidden in some vast secret government warehouse, along with debris from crashed UFO’s and file cabinets containing the truth about the Kennedy assassination?

The Ark is last mentioned in the histories contained in the Scripture in 2 Chronicles 35:3, when, in about 621 BC, King Josiah ordered the Ark returned to the temple during one of the southern kingdom of Judah’s few revivals. It seems that the Ark had been removed and pagan idols set up in the Temple in Jerusalem by Josiah’s grandfather, Manasseh.

621 BC is the last time that we know exactly where the Ark of the Covenant was; in the Temple in Jerusalem. Josiah’s revival period didn’t last long. In 609 BC, just 12 years later, Josiah died in battle against Egypt, and Pharaoh Neco of Egypt assumed control of Judah, replacing Josiah’s oldest son, Joahaz, with his younger brother, Jehoiakim (see 2 Chronicles 36:1-4 and 2 Kings 23:29-36.) 2 Kings 23:35 says that Neco took gold and silver back to Egypt, but the Bible also says that this gold and silver was from a special tax levied on the people of Judah. There is absolutely no mention of the Ark at all.

In 605 BC, just four years later, King Nebuchdnezzaar of Babylon defeated Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish, and took control of Judah. 2 Chronicles 36:7 tells us that, at that time, “Nebuchadnezzar also brought some of the articles of the house of the LORD to Babylon and put them in his temple at Babylon.” 2 Kings 24:13-14 gives us a bit more detail; “He carried out from there all the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD, just as the LORD had said. Then he led away into exile all Jerusalem and all the captains and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land.”

Again, we notice that there is no specific mention of the Ark.

Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest in 605 BC marked the beginning of a very unstable period in Judah’s history, as each king that Nebuchadnezzar place on the throne rebelled as soon as Nebuchadnezzar (and his army) returned to Babylon. Finally, in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had had enough, and he destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. 2 Kings 25:13-17 mentions all the bronze, gold and silver things carried from the Temple back to Babylon: shovels and pans and fireboxes, and even the great bronze pillars that stood in front of the Temple. But there is no mention of the Ark at all.

So, what happened to the Ark?



There are only a few real possibilities:

1. It was carried off to Egypt by Pharaoh Neco in 609 BC (This is not the Indiana Jones story. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, they say that the Ark was taken to Egypt by the Pharaoh Shishak when he sacked Jerusalem in 980 BC. But we have Biblical evidence that places the Ark still in Jerusalem as late as 621 BC, some 340 (+/-) years later.)
2. The Ark was carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, sometime between 605 BC and 586 BC
3. The Ark was destroyed during the burning of the Temple in 586 BC
4. The Ark was hidden by the Israelites to keep it from being captured
5. The Ark was smuggled out of Judah by the Israelites to keep it from being captured (This is the story told by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to explain how the Ark could have ended up in Ethiopia.)

So, which one is true? Let’s hear you best guess! The comment thread is now open!