To Babylon You Will Come
Babylon was the third empire of Bible prophecy. It came into
the dominant position after overthrowing the Assyrian
capital of Nineveh around 632 B.C.E. About seven years later
the combined armies of Assyria and Egypt were decisively
defeated at the battle of Carchemish, not far from the
modern Syrian city of Aleppo that has been in the news of
late. King Nebuchadnezzar’s victory over the first two
empires was a strategic turning point that opened the way
for the Chaldean juggernaut to flood southward into Canaan.
While historians confirm these events that are recorded in
the Bible, they do not appreciate that Nebuchadnezzar was
acting as Jehovah’s official punishing agent. Before Babylon
ever rose to power the prophets foretold that all the
treasurers of Jerusalem would be plundered and the Jews
would be taken to Babylon until they paid off their debt to
Jehovah —the God of Israel.
Besides that, God used Babylon to annihilate numerous
nations such as Moab, Ammon, Edom, and the offshore city of
Tyre and even the land of Egypt itself. In fact, Babylon was
said to have destroyed the whole earth. Babylon was
described as Jehovah’s hammer for smashing all the nations.
Hyperbole? No. Rather, a prophetic pattern of things to
come.
In time though —70 years to be precise —Jehovah judged
Babylon too. Somehow the invaders engineered the diversion
of the Euphrates River, allowing the combined armies of the
Medes and Persians to wade across under cover of darkness
and into the impregnable fortress through the opened gates
facing the river. Thus, in one night, October 2, 539 B.C.E.,
mighty Babylon was toppled and her king killed.
As if to emphasize that the overthrow of the kingdom of the
Chaldeans was an act of God, it was on that very night that
a captive Judean prince by the name of Daniel interpreted
the miraculously appearing handwriting on the wall
announcing the end of Babylon on that very night.
As foretold in Isaiah 200 years before, Cyrus, whom Jehovah
called “my anointed one” —literally, my messiah —released
the Jews from captivity and allowed them to return to their
homeland and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.
Although Iraq has undertaken to
build a full-size replica of
the once mighty citadel on the
Euphrates
as
a
tourist
destination, the real Babylon
remains nothing more than a
mound of ruin —just as Jehovah
foretold.
However, far more significant than the literal ancient city,
is the role that the empire of the Chaldeans once played on
the world stage that casts a far-reaching prophetic shadow.
And what is that? Babylon typifies the last kingdom —the
eighth king of Revelation that is destined to rule the world
for a prophetic one hour. The eighth king, in fact, will
fulfill all the prophecies concerning the final
confrontation between the nations and the Kingdom of Christ.
The prophecy of Habakkuk portrays the kingdom of the
Chaldeans as being appointed by God to execute judgment,
bringing God’s punishment upon all the nations. However,
although cast in the ancient setting of horses, archers and
cavalry, the prophecy is set for fulfillment at a future
date. That is why God commanded his prophet to “Write down
the vision, and inscribe it clearly on tablets, so that the
one reading aloud from it may do so easily. For the vision
is yet for its appointed time, and it is rushing toward its
end, and it will not lie. Even if it should delay, keep in
expectation of it! For it will without fail come true. It
will not be late!”
While the Watchtower rightly claims that the vision is yet
for an appointed time in the future, contradictorily the
prophets of Bethel suppose that God’s authorized punishing
agent has already begun his work. According to the February
1, 2000, Watchtower, the modern Chaldean is a hodgepodge of
various warmongering nations and even drug dealers and
swindlers, who have oppressed and defrauded the people of
the world during the past century.
At the same time they also contradictorily assert that
Babylon’s conquest of Judah foreshadows the future
destruction of Babylon the Great; this, in spite of the fact
that the Chaldean attack upon “Judah” ultimately provokes
God’s wrath, as Habakkuk foretells: “You marched through the
earth with indignation. You trampled the nations in anger.
You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your
anointed one. You crushed the leader of the house of the
wicked. It was exposed from the foundation to the top. You
pierced the head of his warriors with his own weapons when
they stormed out to scatter me.”
The true interpretation of the prophecy of Habakkuk is presented in
detail in the book Jehovah Himself Has Become King. The second edition
(2010) is available as a website, including a complete audio version.
The 2010 edition is also available as a website in French and Spanish
and as an illustrated e-book on iTunes. (Don’t buy Apple’s
unauthorized e-book. The illustrated edition is free) The Final
Edition (2016) is available as a PDF for download and as a soft bound
book for purchase on Amazon.
That Babylon is a type of the last king is evident from the
fact that the 13th chapter of Isaiah also presents Babylon
as God’s appointed avenger that brings ruin to the entire
inhabited earth.
However, Isaiah’s prophecy reveals that Babylon’s
destructive conquest of the world is an immediate precursor
to the day of Jehovah. Here is what Jehovah has said: “I
have issued the command to those whom I have appointed. I
have summoned my warriors to express my anger, my proudly
exultant ones. Listen! A crowd in the mountains; it sounds
like a numerous people! Listen! The uproar of kingdoms, of
nations gathered together! Jehovah of armies is mustering
the army for war. They are coming from a distant land, from
the extremity of the heavens, Jehovah and the weapons of his
wrath, to bring ruin to all the earth. Wail, for the day of
Jehovah is near! It will come as a destruction from the
Almighty. That is why all hands will go limp, and every
man’s heart will melt with fear. The people are panicstricken. They are seized with convulsions and pain, like a
woman in labor. They look at one another in horror, with
faces inflamed by anguish. Look! The day of Jehovah is
coming, cruel both with fury and with burning anger, to make
the land an object of horror, and to annihilate the land’s
sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their
constellations will not give off their light; the sun will
be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its
light.”
The overthrow of antitypical Babylon will be accomplished by
Jehovah’s anointed one, Christ. It will result in the end of
Satan’s reign over the nations. That is why in the 14th
chapter of Isaiah the end of Babylon brings peace and quiet
to the earth. And that is why all the other kings and their
empires that have come and gone are said to be laying in
memorial tombs, not so the shining one of Babylon, who
sought to supplant God’s throne. He receives no honored
burial. Isaiah says of him: “All other kings of the nations,
yes, all of them, lie down in glory, each one in his own
tomb. But you are discarded without a grave, like a detested
sprout, clothed with the slain who were stabbed with the
sword, who go down to the stones of a pit, like a carcass
trampled underfoot. You will not join them in a grave, for
you destroyed your own land, you killed your own people. The
offspring of evildoers will never again be named.”
The inglorious end of Babylon harmonizes with what is
revealed in Revelation; namely, that the last king will
suffer a most ignominious death, being plunged into the lake
of fire, where the smoke of his torment will forever ascend
and the carcasses of his supporters will serve as a great
feast for the birds of heaven.
Certainly Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome and
the present Anglo-American duo, all had/have their religious
consorts to sanctify their wars and conquests, so too, the
eighth king is depicted as having immoral relations with the
international prostitute known as Babylon the Great. Most
assuredly the eighth and final king will be a world
government to whom all the kings of the earth will give
their authority and more than likely Babylon the Great will
be manifest as a one-world, pantheistic religion.
Contrary to the interpretations imposed upon Jehovah’s
Witnesses by the Watchtower, such as the notion that the
Bible Students were released from spiritual captivity to
Babylon the Great back in 1919, not only has the last
kingdom not come on the scene yet with its brazen harlot
mount, neither have God’s people gone into captivity to the
greater Babylon.
Since coming online in 2002 I have pointed forward to the
coming judgment of the house of God. Through mass mailings
of open letters, brochures and the aforementioned book, the
leadership of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been put on notice
regarding Jehovah’s coming judgment and the reasons for it.
Although I am not privy to the details of how things will
unfold exactly, neither did the prophets of old understand
how God’s words would be fulfilled. They merely made
announcement in advance, as have I.
In response the Watchtower has doubled down and reassured
Jehovah’s Witnesses that Christ has already come with the
fire of the refiner and the lye of a laundryman. There are
no issues that God could possibly have with them. They are
as white as the driven snow.
In this respect there is an interesting parallel with what
took place immediately prior to Babylon’s conquest of Judah.
For many years Jeremiah put the Jews on notice that
Jehovah’s judgment was coming. Pashhur, the son of a priest
and the leading commissioner over the house of Jehovah in
Jerusalem, struck Jeremiah and had him put in stocks. In
response, however, Jeremiah prophesied, changing Pashhur’s
name to “Fright All Around” to underscore the certainty of
the frightening tempest Jehovah was sure to bring upon them.
Jeremiah went on to say: “And as for you, O Pashhur, and
all the inhabitants of your house, you will go into
captivity; and to Babylon you will come and there you will
die and there you yourself will be buried with all your
lovers, because you have prophesied to them in falsehood.’”
Like Pashhur, the leading commissioners of Bethel —“Bethel”
being the Hebrew word for the house of God —have prophesied
in sheer falsehood. The Governing Body suppose they can
control Jehovah’s judgment by simply writing their own story
with a false stylus. How wrong they are! To Babylon they
will come!
How will that come about? That will be a topic for a future
article.