Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Feb 1963

In Isaiah i4. 1, 3-7, we hear the LORD speaking comfortably to His people Israel.

"For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: ... And it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shall take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre of the rulers; that smote the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, that ruled the nations in anger, with a persecution that none restrained. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing."

The prophet Isaiah, with words both dramatic and fearful, says of the end of the king of Babylon, "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming" (verse 9). One can think of the awful end of Belshazzar the last of the kings of Babylon. He sat with a thousand of his lords in the banqueting hall of his great palace, surrounded by his wives and concubines. They drank wine freely

and praised the gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood and stone. It was a scene of lust and revelry and little did that king know in his drunken state that ere another sun rose over Babylon he would be lying cold in death and that the Babylonian empire would be no more.

There had appeared a hand, writing on the wall over against the lampstand in characters which no one present could read. Was this the Holy Lampstand which Nebuchadnezzar had brought with the other vessels from God's house in Jerusalem? They had brought the vessels of God's house from the house of their gods and drank their wine therefrom. Such was the iniquity of that feast. In their consternation Daniel was brought to interpret the writing on the wall, at the suggestion of the queen. The interpretation was that the Babylonian kingdom was at an end, the king himself had been weighed and found wanting, and God had given the kingdom to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5, particularly verses 22-30). Thus this phase of Babylon passed. But like bees which return to the place of the old hive which had been destroyed, so men have returned and will return to Babylonian ideals.

Though Belshazzar crashed to hell on the night of the feast and the dead there were stirred at his coming, on earth the sudden and unexpected end of Babylon and her king raised the kings of earth from their thrones. But behind this sudden fail of Babylon's king there is seen in the prophet's vision a much greater fall. And of this we read,

"How art thou fallen from heaven [Belshazzar never was in heaven], 0 day star (Lucifer), son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst lay low the nations! And thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah i4. 12-14).

Who is this that says in his pride, "I will, I will, I will"? Undoubtedly Satan, but he fell as all the proud will fall.

So it was that Satan fell, Babel fell, Babylon fell, present-day Babylon (Rome and all her sectarian daughters) will fall, so also will Babylon of the future fall with all her wealth, her sorcery and deceit, and will no more be found (Revelation 18).

A few words in addition to what is set forth in the article "God's Centre and Man's Centre," by our brother and fellow-worker J. L. Ferguson, may find a place as a kind of addendum to his article.

The events of Genesis 11 and 12 were in time to find a wider meaning and application. Scriptural history, generally speaking, is in the truest sense prophecy; for out of these events, small in themselves, God was going to build the grand structure of things that would fulfil His purposes of grace toward men.

Nimrod, who was undoubtedly behind men's enterprise of building a city and a tower whose top was to reach unto heaven, founded the city of Babylon. But little is heard of the importance of that city until the rise of Nebuchadnezzar. He invaded Judah early in his reign and besieged Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim king of Judah. Thrice the Babylonians invaded Judah, carrying off captives, carrying off vessels of the house of God; and at the third invasion they carried off all the vessels of God's house, all the gold, silver and brass, burnt the house of God and all the palaces of the city and broke down the wall of Jerusalem.

Many of the people were carried captive to Babylon, there to languish in captivity and to shed their salt tears beside the rivers of Babylon (Psalm 137). Such was the result of sin on the part of many kings of Judah and of the people in general. This captivity continued for seventy years.

At the end of seventy years came the destruction of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus the emperor, the head of the Medo-Persian empire. In the beginning of his reign he accorded to the Jews freedom to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild God's house that Nebuchadnezzar had burnt. A remnant, whose spirit was stirred by God, arose and trudged the weary miles back to their own land and city. This began a new era for the Jewish people which ended with the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and with His rejection by the Jews and His crucifixion.

A new era began with the resurrection of the Lord and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), when Christ commenced to build the Church which is His Body, and when the church and churches of God were planted, companies of people who, in their own localities, were to be witnesses of and for Christ. To this our brother has drawn attention in the end of his article. These two lines of Church truth continue throughout this dispensation till the Lord comes for the Church.

The return of large numbers of Jews to their own land since the first world war is, with many other pointers in the same direction, a certain indication of the approaching end of the age. Shortly we are destined to see the rise of Babylon again, described in Revelation 17 as " Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth" (verse 5). This city will be the centre of world religion, the centre of world political power and the centre of commerce. One of the kings of this Babylon is called the (wild) beast, greater by far than Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. See my notes on Revelation, chapters 13, 17 and 18.

As truly as God called Abraham away from Chaldea, the land of Babylon, and called the remnant from Babylon, in the words " Ho Zion, escape, thou that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon" (Zechariah 2.7), so truly does God call His saints out to a life and path of separation today, from the Babylonish sectarianism around; even so His call will be to His people of the future, "Come forth, My people out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins" (Revelation 18. 4y. Who of God's saints will hear and heed now the call of God?

J. Miller | Feb 1963
Jottings