While the Old Testament was being written Israel was surrounded by a number of nations, most of which no longer exist. Some of them were great powers, like Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria and Phoenicia. Others were quite small nations (just as Israel herself was a small nation) such as Syria, Edom, Moab, and Ammon.
Israel had a great deal of contact with these nations. She traded with them; sometimes she went to war with them; and all too often she was corrupted by their idolatrous religions.
Consequently the prophets of Israel sometimes mentioned these other nations. They condemned them when they behaved wickedly, and occasionally praised them when they did what God required of them. And as with Israel, only much more briefly, their future history was sometimes foretold. Whenever such prophecies were made, as John Urquhart has shown,1 they were fulfilled with great accuracy.
Two of the most splendid cities of the ancient world were Babylon and Tyre. Babylon was the capital of the land we now call Iraq. Eventually she conquered so much territory that she ruled the mightiest empire the world had then seen. Tyre, a seaport, was the capital city of the Phoenicians. Her navy dominated the Mediterranean, and her traders owned the greatest fleet of merchant ships in the ancient world.
The Bible said plainly that each of these cities was to be punished for its wickedness. But the nature of their punishments was to be very different.
Babylon was to be destroyed, and to remain a collection of uninhabited ruins.
Tyre was also to be destroyed, but not to remain as ruins. In her case, the very stones of the city were all to be cast into the sea.
Here are the actual words of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
BABYLON: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there."2
" It shall be no more inhabited for ever, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. . .. And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the Lord.... And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant."3
TYRE: "And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise. And they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses, and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.... And I will make thee like the top of a rock. Thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon. Thou shalt be built no more."4
You can visit the sites of both these cities today, and see how precisely the prophecies have been fulfilled. Babylon, whose hanging gardens were once one of the seven wonders of the world, and whose surrounding countryside was then a fertile plain, now lies deserted.
Many other ancient cities have had modern cities built on top of them. But not Babylon. As far as the eye can see lie the deserted heaps of ruins, an archaeologists paradise, just waiting to be excavated. Not even a Bedouin encampment breaks the monotony, for the ruins are too inhospitable to provide grazing for their flocks, and in any case they have a reputation of being haunted. Only wild beasts and birds find a dwelling place among the fallen towers of Babylon.
Now read again the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah quoted above.
Ask yourself: how were they able to describe this scene so accurately? For more than a thousand years their words have, in effect, challenged the world: "Re-inhabit Babylon, and you will prove the Bible false!" But nobody has taken up the challenge.
If you wish to survey the ruins of ancient Tyre, however, you really should have a frogmans suit. History tells how the ruins of the city really were cast into the sea, hundreds of years after Ezekiel had said they would be. In 332 B.C. Alexander the Great wanted to subdue an island fortress off the coast, near the ruins of the former city. He achieved his aim by building a causeway out to the island, and he used the remains of ancient Tyre for material.
Every scrap of rubble from the ruins of Tyre was used by Alexander, so that the site really was, as Ezekiel put it, "made like the top of a rock". Moreover, as the prophet foretold, the site of the old city was never built on again. The city of Tyre mentioned in the New Testament, and which still exists today, stands on an entirely different site.
When they were first uttered, these prophecies about Babylon and Tyre must have sounded most unlikely to be fulfilled. Yet fulfilled they were, down to the last detail.
One of the most fascinating prophecies in the whole Bible is contained in Daniel chapter 2. Here, in the space of only 49 verses, we are given a birds-eye view of world history, from about 600 B.C. down to the present day and beyond.
The late Mr. Henry Ford is often quoted as having said, "History is bunk." But according to his friends, what he actually said was this:
"History as it is generally taught in schools is bunk."
If this really was what he said, he was right. Badly taught history can be deadly dull. Perhaps this is why the history lesson-in-advance of Daniel 2 is given to us in such an unusual and interesting way. It is in the form of a parable. But we do not have to guess at its meaning. Like some of the parables of Jesus, this one is accompanied by an explanation.
You really ought to read the whole chapter for yourself. But in case you dont feel like doing so just now, here is a summary.
King Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of the mighty Babylonian Empire, had a dream. It was a strange dream, and it worried him. He felt sure that it was no ordinary dream, but that it meant something. So he called for the royal astrologers and soothsayers and asked them to explain the dream.
The astrologers then made the obvious request. "Tell thy servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation."5
But the king was no fool. He was not going to play into their hands. Any self-styled magician with a good imagination could concoct an "explanation" if he were told the dream. So he put them to the test. "You show me the dream-and its interpretation!"6 he demanded. As an inducement to do so he added the interesting information that, if they failed, they would all be cut in pieces.
Fortunately for the gentlemen whose bluff had been called, there was a young Jewish captive in Babylon. He saved their lives (and his own) by going to the king and saying: "The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show unto the king. But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the King Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days."7
Daniel explained that what the king had seen was a great, fearsome statue of a man. But it was no ordinary statue. Its construction was weird and wonderful. It was like this:
The dreaming king had stared in wonder at this strange figure for a while. Then he noticed something beginning to happen. Some distance away from the statue a stone was being quarried. But there were no quarrymen to be seen. It was as if the stone were being carved out by invisible hands.
Then the fresh-hewn stone moved towards the statue, and struck it violently upon its brittle feet of iron and clay. This brought the statue crashing down, and then the stone attacked the ruins. It broke the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron and the clay into tiny pieces. Then the wind sprang up and blew all the debris away in a cloud of dust, so that the stone was left alone.
Finally, the triumphant stone began to expand. It grew and grew and grew until it had become a great mountain. Before the king awoke, he saw the stone become so vast that it filled the whole world.
"This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof",8 said Daniel.
The king listened intently to Daniels explanation. He realised that Daniel was the possessor of superhuman knowledge. Within a few minutes the mighty man would be kneeling down before Daniel, and saying, "Of a truth, it is that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets."9
Meanwhile, this was the secret that Daniel had revealed. The statue was a kind of "map" of world history, with a time scale running from top to bottom. Like any small-scale map, this one could not attempt to show any detail, but only the broad outline of history. And the outline was this:
(Note how the words in italics show that Daniel is not talking about local kingdoms, but about what might be called "world empires"-bearing in mind that the known world in those days was a great deal smaller than it is today.)
Since God has not yet intervened openly in world affairs, Stage 6 must still lie in the future. But what of the first five sections of the prophecy; have they been fulfilled, or not?
We cannot all be historians, so we must compare the prophecy with a history book. H. G. Wells Short History of the World16 is doubly suitable for this purpose. First, because it is very brief (250 pages) so that, like Daniel 2, it gives a birds-eye view-"shorn of elaborations and complications", as the author says in his preface. Secondly, since Wells was famous for his anti-religious views, we can be quite certain that he did not frame his book to fit Daniel 2.
Yet a careful look at the contents page of Wells book shows that he recognised four, and only four, great empires in the ancient world. Until modern times, when he speaks of the colonial "empires" of the European powers (which were, of course, quite unlike the world-empires of the past) the only chapter headings that mention empires are these:
XX The Last Babylonian Empire and the Empire of Darius I
XXVI The Empire of Alexander the Great
XXXIII The Growth of the Roman Empire
XXXV The Common Mans Life under the Early Roman Empire
XXXVI Religious Developments under the Roman Empire
XXXIX The Barbarians Break the Empire into East and West
XL The Huns and the End of the Western Empire
XLI The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires
What are these empires that Wells mentions?
He begins, like Daniel, with the Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar.
His second empire is "the Empire of Darius I". In the text of his book he explains that this was the Empire of the Medes and Persians, which swallowed up and succeeded the Babylonian Empire. A later chapter in Daniel17 also names the conquerors as the Medes and Persians, and their emperor as Darius.
Another chapter in Daniel18 stated that the Medes and Persians would be conquered in their turn by the Greeks. This ties up with Wells next chapter heading, "The Empire of Alexander the Great", who was the greatest of the Greek rulers.
Fourthly, Wells comes to the Roman Empire, which was so important and lasted so long that it occupies several chapters. (A hint of its greatness was given by Daniel when he said, "the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron".)
In Chapter xxxix Wells speaks of the splitting of the Roman Empire into two halves, East and West. Chapter XL tells what, happened to the Western Empire, and Chapter XLI the Eastern Empire (the Byzantine-Sassanid half of the Roman Empire). Here again is a remarkable correspondence with Daniel: the empire that ended its day split into two parts is represented in Daniel by two legs.
Daniel was quite emphatic that this fourth empire would be permanently divided. He was right. Wells book makes it perfectly clear that after the final extinction of Rome there has never been another all-powerful world empire.
But this conclusion-that the empire of Rome was the last world empire-is too important to rest upon the testimony of Wells alone. So here are some words by one of the greatest of all historians, Gibbon. He, like Wells, did not believe in the Bible, and certainly did not write this passage with the intention of supporting Daniel.
"The division of Europe into a number of independent states, connected, however, with each other by the general resemblance of religion, language and manners, is productive of the most beneficial consequences to the liberty of mankind. A modern tyrant... would soon experience a gentle restraint from the example of his equals, the dread of present censure, the advice of his allies, and the apprehension of his enemies. ... But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies."19 (The italics are mine.)
Here, then, is another remarkable fact about the Bible that demands explanation. The prophet declared that there would be four world empires, and only four. A twentieth-century historian, unbeliever though he was, admitted that this has happened.
How did the prophet manage to foresee this? How did he know that the fourth empire would be the strongest of them all? That it would be divided into halves? And, above all, how did he know that never again would some power-hungry conqueror unite western civilisation under one rule?
The unbelievers attempts to explain the facts are pathetic. The best they can do is to argue (despite a lack of conclusive evidence) that the prophecy was not written by Daniel, but by an unknown forger writing in the days of the Greeks.
All this does is to evade the facts, not to explain them. Even if the unbelievers were right in saying that the book of Daniel was written in the third century B.C. instead of the sixth, what of it? That would still leave 2,200 years of fulfilled prophecy to account for!
Once again the only explanation that really fits the facts is the Bibles own explanation: "There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known... what shall be in the latter days."20
The motto of one politician (his friends call him George) is this:
"When you cant reasonably answer an opponent, poke fun at him. The audience will laugh, and forget that he has a better case than you."
George, who is an unbeliever, applies the same tactics to the Bible. When he is faced with arguments based on fulfilled prophecy, he makes no attempt to answer them. He just grins, and talks like this.
"So the Bible is like a racing tipster, is it? The horsey fellow says, I picked the winners of the last two races, didnt I? So you can trust me to give you a good tip for the three-thirty. And the Bible says, Ive foretold a few things about this world. So you can trust me to give you a few tips about the next."
Poor George. His crude caricature only reveals his complete ignorance of the Bible. For one thing, unlike the racing tipster, the Bible is right every time. But there is an even more important fallacy in his attitude. Bible prophecy is not just a matter of: "Such-and-such will happen; it has happened; therefore I was right." Bible prophecy is not just a lot of bits and pieces. Bible prophecy is a vital part of Gods message to mankind.
From Genesis to Revelation the Bible tells one connected story. It starts with the creation of a beautiful world, and says how man brought tragedy into it. It goes on to explain how God introduced a wonderful Plan to put things right. How He first raised up a chosen people; then provided a Saviour from among the chosen race; then sent that Saviours followers to preach the gospel to all nations; and how at last that Saviour will return to earth, to judge the living and the dead, and to fill the earth with Gods glory.
But the Bible was not written all at once. It was written a book at a time, over a period of some fifteen hundred years.
During that time Gods Plan was steadily unfolding, step by step. And all the time the Bible was gradually telling how the Plan was getting on. It recorded each important step in the working out of the Plan. And it frequently foretold future developments in the Plan, many of which have already happened, although some have still to take place.
Now we can look at Daniel 2 in a new light. Previously it was nothing more than powerful evidence that "there is none like God, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done".21 But now we can see it as a picture of human history guided by God, moving towards a wonderful climax.
The stone that grinds the statue to pieces, and then grows until it fills the whole earth, is Jesus Christ. He quoted the words of Daniel about that stone, and applied them to Himself.22 This last scene in Nebuchadnezzars dream will be fulfilled when Jesus returns to the earth.
But this is going too fast. There are many interesting Bible prophecies about the events leading up to Christs Second Coming. They must have a chapter to themselves.
And before the Second Coming there had to be a First Coming. The Old Testament is full of prophecies about that. We must have a look at those first.
1 John Urquhart, Wonders of Prophecy. Pickering & Inglis, London, 1939
2 Isa. 13:19-21
3 Jer. 50: 39; 51:26, 37
4 Ezek. 26:12, 14
5 Dan. 2:4
6 Dan.2:6 RSV
7 Dan.2:27,28
8 Dan. 2:36
9 Dan. 2:47
10 Dan. 2:37, 38
11 Dan. 2:39
12 Dan. 2:39
13 Dan. 2:40
14 Dan. 2:41-43
15 Dan. 2:44
16 H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World. Thinker's Library, London, 3rd (revised) impression, 1934
17 Dan. 5:28, 31
18 Dan. 8
19 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. I, chapter 3
20 Dan. 2:28
21 Isa. 46:9, 10
22 Luke20:18