To get
there from my place, you head north from Ludlow on 1-57. Two hours of driving
will take you past some of the richest farmland in the nation and
place you at the south end of the Loop. Taking a right onto Garfield Blvd.,
and continuing east for about a mile, you will find yourself confronted
by the imposing neo-gothic architecture of the University of Chicago. It
is a campus steeped in renown. Here, for instance, one finds the simple
memorial marking the spot where Enrico Fermi and his band of physicists
ushered the world into the atomic age. And it is here, tucked away behind
the magnificent Rockefeller Chapel, that you find a relatively small, gray
stone building that houses one of the finest collections of biblical and
Middle Eastern artifacts found anywhere in the world. Here is found the
famous Oriental Institute.
I never grow tired
of visiting this place. Every section, from the Egyptian to the Palestinian,
is bursting with insight on the people and places of the Old Testament.
Toward the back of the museum, just inside the Chaldean section, is located
one of my favorite displays. Straddling a doorway you find an arrangement
of blue, yellow and red glazed tile forming the profile of two lions. The
sign asks you not to touch (for they fear the oil from your hand will cause
the colors to fade), but when no one is looking it's hard-not to sneak
a touch, for this mosaic was almost certainly looked upon by Daniel, the
three Hebrew children and the great king himself, Nebuchadnezzar. These
tiles, my friend, were taken from one of the eight gates that led into
the city of Babylon; more precisely, they come from the gate named after
the Chaldean deity of fertility and battle - the goddess Ishtar. And the
very fact that you can stand on an Illinois prairie and view tile that
was fired 2600 years ago on a Chaldean plain is striking testimony to the
apologetic value of Bible prophecy.
G. K. Chestertone once wrote, "If I had only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against pride." It's too bad he couldn't schedule a meeting in Babylon. If ever there was a city eaten up with pride, Babylon was it. Called by one writer, "The most splendid and permanent of ancient cities,," Babylon was a place where it was easy to be arrogant (see Daniel 4:30). Her walls are estimated to have been anywhere from eleven to fifteen miles long, taller than a six-story building and eighty-five feet thick. (Herodotus implies that the top of the wall was an aerial highway for the rapid deployment of chariots.) A great ziggurat (the Tower of Babel?), three hundred feet high, dominated the skyline. Over forty temples, the fabled Hanging Gardens, and a thousand-and-one other attractions made it the stunningly impressive city that it was.
But "pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall". For its sin the city by the Euphrates became the target of God's wrath (Isaiah 13:11). And in Isaiah (chapter 13) and Jeremiah (chapter 51), God found the holy men (2 Peter 1: 2 1) through whom He would deliver "the burden (the Hebrew word means 'an utterance of doom') of Babylon" (Isaiah 13:1)
The value of the Babylonian prophecies to the biblical apologist is tremendous. The clear and detailed nature of the predictions offers an extraordinary opportunity for either verification or disconfirmation. Following the general pronouncement, "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh ... to lay the land desolate: and ... destroy the sinners thereof out of it" (Isaiah 13:9), are found a number of specific forecasts which elaborate on the coming judgment. Five in particular arrest the attention: (1) The Medes would be the destroyer (Isaiah 13:17); (2) Babylon would never be inhabited or resettled (13:20); (3) The Arabian would not pitch his tent there (13:20); (4) Sheepfolds would not be made there (13:20); and (5) Wild beasts would live there (13:21-22). Argument here is unnecessary. Should anyone doubt the accurate fulfillment of these predictions, they need but to consult the nearest set of encyclopedias, for the proof of the actual fulfillment is overwhelming. In every detail, with no exceptions, Babylon the Great fell exactly as God foretold.
The apologetic based upon prophecy is simple. True prophecy is beyond the realm of man's capabilities; only God can foretell the future (Isaiah 41:21-24). And when a prediction meets all the criteria for genuine prophecy ("I. The event must be beyond the power of man to foresee; 2. It must be demonstrated that the prediction was written before the event; 3. The language of the prediction must be unambiguous and unmistakable; and 4. The prediction must have a clear and demonstrable fulfillment;" see Everest, The Divine Demonstration,. pp. 259-26 1), the only rational conclusion to be drawn is that God is and He has spoken (Hebrews 1: 1). In fitting every requisite for true prophecy, the Babylonian oracles off unimpeachable evidence of the Bible's inspiration.
I think a number of recent works on apologetics have made a terrible blunder in minimizing, and in some cases ignoring altogether, the argument from fulfilled prophecy. In so doing they have abandoned to the enemy a strategic weapon in the believer's arsenal. The "sure word of prophecy" is one of the "many infallible proofs" which God has given to authenticate His word. Babylon the Great's fall argues strongly that the word of God stands.
My brethren, let us be ready and not reticent, anxious and not ashamed to give the reasons for our hope. God's word is defensible - we should invite people to investigate it. The moment you are really impartial about it, you know why people are partial to it.
Kenny Chumbly