Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern-day Iraq 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name is derived from bav-il or bav-ilim, which in Akkadian meant “Gate of God” (or “Gate of the Gods”), given as Babylon in Greek. In its time, it was a great cultural and religious center.
The city was referenced with awe by ancient Greek writers and was reportedly the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Its reputation has been tarnished by the many unfavorable references to it in the Bible beginning with Genesis 11:1-9 and the story of the Tower of Babel associated with the ziggurat of Babylon.
The city also appears unfavorably in the books of Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and, most famously, the Book of Revelation. Scholar Paul Kriwaczek notes that Babylon “can blame her evil repute squarely on the Bible” (167). Although none of these narratives speak well of the city, they were ultimately responsible for its fame (or infamy) in the modern age, which led to its rediscovery by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899.
Babylon was founded at some point prior to the reign of Sargon of Akkad (the Great, 2334-2279 BCE) and seems to have been a minor port city on the Euphrates River until the rise of Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 BCE), who made it the capital of his Babylonian Empire. After Hammurabi’s death, his empire quickly fell apart. The city was sacked by the Hittites in 1595 BCE and then taken by the Kassites who renamed it Karanduniash.
It was briefly ruled by the Chaldeans (9th century BCE), whose name became synonymous with Babylonians to later Greek writers (notably Herodotus) and biblical scribes, and then was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (912-612 BCE) before being taken by Nabopolassar (r. 626-605 BCE), who established the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Babylon fell to the Persians under Cyrus II (the Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE) and was a capital of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) until it fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.
It continued as a trade center under the later Seleucid Empire (312-63 BCE), Parthian Empire (247 BCE to 224 CE), and Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE) but never attained the heights it had known under Hammurabi or the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605/604-562 BCE). The city declined after the Muslim Arab conquest in the 7th century CE and was finally abandoned.
It was known only through biblical narratives and classical writers until its discovery in the 19th century. In the 1980s, restoration attempts were made under then-president Saddam Hussein including a reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate (the actual gate presently in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin, Germany). In 2019, the ruins of the great city were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Port City and Hammurabi
The earliest mention of the city comes from an inscription from the time of Sargon of Akkad. It seems to have been a small, but profitable, port city on the river by this time. Under the later Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri (r. 2223-2198), it is recorded that two temples were built at Babylon, and it later fell under the control of the city of Kazallu until liberated by the Amorite chieftain Sumu-abum (r. c. 1895 BCE) whose successor, Sumu-la-ilu (also given as Suma-la-El, r. 1880-1845 BCE), was founder of the first dynasty of kings in Babylon. The city was still a small port at this time, overshadowed by neighboring city-states.
King Sin-Muballit (r. 1812-1793 BCE) beautified the city but could not elevate it above the others and finally led a military campaign against the most powerful of the neighboring city-states, Larsa, but was defeated. He was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Hammurabi, who quietly submitted to the king of Larsa and busied himself with strengthening Babylon’s walls and beautifying the city while, secretly, building and training an army.
When Larsa called on him to supply troops to repel the invading Elamites, Hammurabi complied but, as soon as the region was secured, he took the cities of Isin and Uruk from Larsa, formed alliances with Lagash and Nippur, and conquered Larsa completely. He then continued his campaigns, issuing his law codes, conquering Mesopotamia, and establishing his empire.
The Code of Hammurabi is well known but is only one example of the policies he implemented to maintain peace and encourage prosperity. He enlarged and heightened the walls of the city, engaged in great public works, which included opulent temples and canals, and made diplomacy an integral part of his administration.
So successful was he in both diplomacy and war that, by 1755 BCE, he had united all of Mesopotamia under the rule of Babylon which, by this time, was a major city and the largest in the world with a population at well over 100,000. The city was so powerful and famous after Hammurabi’s conquests that all of southern Mesopotamia came to be called Babylonia.
The Assyrians and Nebuchadnezzar II
Following Hammurabi’s death, his empire fell apart and Babylonia dwindled in size and scope until Babylon was easily sacked by the Hittites in 1595 BCE. The Kassites followed the Hittites and renamed the city Karanduniash. At some point between the 14th and 9th centuries BCE, the great ziggurat of Babylon was built which would later become associated with the Tower of Babel. This connection is thought to have been made owing to a misinterpretation of the Akkadian bav-il (Gate of the Gods) for the Hebrew bavel (confusion).
In the Genesis story, the people hope to make a name for themselves to be remembered after death and so begin to build a great tower to reach the heavens. God is angered by this as he worries that, if the people are allowed to reach their goal, they will then be empowered to attempt others and so disrupt the natural order. He therefore decrees they shall no longer speak the same language, confuses their tongues, and since they cannot understand each other anymore, the tower is left unfinished. Scholar Samuel Noah Kramer explains the story as an attempt to account for the many ziggurats, including Babylon’s, found in ruin and seen by or described to Hebrew scribes (Sumerians, 293-294).
The Assyrians followed the Kassites in dominating the region, and under the reign of the king Sennacherib (r. 705-681 BCE), Babylon continually revolted. Sennacherib finally lost patience in 689 BCE and had the city sacked, razed, and the ruins scattered as a lesson to others. His extreme measures were considered impious by the people generally and Sennacherib’s court specifically, and he was soon after assassinated by his sons, who justified the act as revenge for the desolation of Babylon.
His successor, Esarhaddon (r. 681-669 BCE), initiated the efforts to return Babylon to its former glory, personally overseeing the work. The city later rose in revolt against his successor, Ashurbanipal (r. 668-627 BCE), who put down the rebellion but did not damage Babylon to any great extent and, in fact, personally purified the city of the evil spirits which were thought to have led to the trouble. The reputation of the city as a center of learning and culture was already well-established by this time.
After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldean king Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon and, through careful alliances, created the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II, renovated the city so that it covered 900 hectares (2,200 acres) of land and boasted some of the most beautiful and impressive structures in all of Mesopotamia.
Every ancient writer to make mention of the city of Babylon, save for the biblical scribes, references it with awe in describing the great ziggurat Etemenanki – “the foundation of heaven and earth” – the immense walls, the Ishtar Gate, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Herodotus comments on the city’s size:
The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty stadia in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty stadia. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width and two hundred in height. (I.178)
Although it is generally believed that Herodotus greatly exaggerated the dimensions of the city (and may never have actually visited the place himself), his description echoes the admiration of other writers of the time who recorded the magnificence of Babylon, and especially the great walls, as a wonder of the world. It was in the Neo-Babylonian Period, under Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign (which also saw the beginning of the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews), that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are said to have been constructed and the famous Ishtar Gate built. The Hanging Gardens are most explicitly described in a passage from Diodorus Siculus (l. 90-30 BCE) in his work Bibliotheca Historica Book II.10:
There was also, because the acropolis, the Hanging Garden, as it is called, which was built, not by Semiramis, but by a later Syrian king to please one of his concubines; for she, they say, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her mountains, asked the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden, the distinctive landscape of Persia. The park extended four plethra on each side, and since the approach to the garden sloped like a hillside and the several parts of the structure rose from one another tier on tier, the appearance of the whole resembled that of a theatre. When the ascending terraces had been built, there had been constructed beneath them galleries which carried the entire weight of the planted garden and rose little by little one above the other along the approach; and the uppermost gallery, which was fifty cubits high, bore the highest surface of the park, which was made level with the circuit wall of the battlements of the city. Furthermore, the walls, which had been constructed at great expense, were twenty-two feet thick, while the passage-way between each two walls was ten feet wide. The roofs of the galleries were covered over with beams of stone sixteen feet long, inclusive of the overlap, and four feet wide. The roof above these beams had first a layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen, over this two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and as a third layer a covering of lead, to the end that the moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath. On all this again earth had been piled to a depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground, which was levelled off, was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size or any other charm, could give pleasure to beholder. And since the galleries, each projecting beyond another, all received the light, they contained many royal lodgings of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading from the topmost surface and machines for supplying the garden with water, the machines raising the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside could see it being done. Now this park, as I have said, was a later construction.
This part of Diodorus’ work concerns the semi-mythical queen Semiramis (probably based on the actual Assyrian queen Sammu-Ramat, r. 811-806 BCE). His reference to “a later Syrian king” follows Herodotus’ tendency of referring to Mesopotamia as ‘Assyria’. Recent scholarship on the subject argues that the Hanging Gardens were never located at Babylon but were instead the creation of Sennacherib at his capital of Nineveh. Scholar Christopher Scarre writes:
Sennacherib’s palace [at Nineveh] had all the usual accoutrements of a major Assyrian residence: colossal guardian figures and impressively carved stone reliefs (over 2,000 sculptured slabs in 71 rooms). Its gardens, too, were exceptional. Recent research by British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has suggested that these were the famous Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Later writers placed the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, but extensive research has failed to find any trace of them. Sennacherib’s proud account of the palace gardens he created at Nineveh fits that of the Hanging Gardens in several significant details. (231)
If the gardens were in Babylon, they would have been part of the central complex of the city. The Euphrates River divided the city in two between an old and new city, with the Temple of Marduk and the great towering ziggurat in the new, where, most likely, the gardens would have also been located. Streets and avenues had been widened under Esarhaddon to better accommodate the yearly processional of the statue of the great god Marduk in the journey from his home temple in the city to the New Year Festival Temple outside the Ishtar Gate, and these were further improved upon by Nebuchadnezzar II.
The Persian Conquest
The Neo-Babylonian Empire continued after the death of Nebuchadnezzar II, and Babylon remained a significant city under Nabonidus (r. 556-539 BCE), known as “the first archaeologist” for his restoration efforts of older sites (such as the ziggurat of Ur). In 539 BCE, the empire fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great at the Battle of Opis. Babylon’s walls were impregnable and so the Persians cleverly devised a plan whereby they diverted the course of the Euphrates River so that it fell to a manageable depth.
While the residents of the city were distracted by one of their great religious feast days, the Persian army waded the river and marched under the walls of Babylon unnoticed. It was claimed the city was taken without a fight, although documents of the time indicate that repairs had to be made to the walls and some sections of the city and so perhaps the action was not as effortless as the Persian account claimed.
Under Persian rule, Babylon flourished as a center of art and education. Cyrus and his successors held the city in great regard and made it one of the administrative capitals of their empire. Babylonian mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy were highly respected, and it is thought that Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE) studied there and that Pythagoras (l. c. 571 to c. 497 BCE) developed his famous mathematical theorem based upon a Babylonian model.
Conclusion
After the Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, he continued a respectful treatment of the city, ordering his men not to damage the buildings or molest the inhabitants. He hoped to beautify and restore the city but died before his plans could be implemented. Scholar Stephen Bertman notes:
Before his death, Alexander the Great ordered the superstructure of Babylon’s ziggurat pulled down in order that it might be rebuilt with greater splendor. But he never lived to bring his project to completion. Over the centuries, its scattered bricks have been cannibalized by peasants to fulfill humbler dreams. All that is left of the fabled Tower of Babel is the bed of a swampy pond. (14)
After Alexander’s death at Babylon in 323 BCE, in the Wars of the Diadochi, his successors fought over his empire generally and the city specifically to the point where the residents fled for their safety (or, according to one ancient report, were relocated). By the time the Parthian Empire ruled the region, Babylon was a poor version of its former self. The city steadily fell into ruin and, even during a brief revival under the Sassanian Empire, never approached its former greatness.
In the Muslim conquest of the land, in 651 CE, whatever remained of Babylon was swept away and, in time, was buried beneath the sands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European travelers began to explore the area and returned home with various artifacts of interest. In the 19th century, European museums, and institutes of higher learning, hoping to find archaeological evidence for biblical narratives, sponsored several expeditions to the region which unearthed many of the greatest Mesopotamian cities; among them was Babylon, the once-mighty Gate of the Gods.
Bibliography
- Bertman, S. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Ctesias & Llewellyn-Jones, L. & Robson, J. Ctesias History of Persia. Routledge, 2012.
- Diodorus Siculus & Oldfather, C. H. Diodorus Siculus Histories. Harvard University Press, 2000.
- Farrokh, K. Shadows in the Desert. Osprey Publishing, 2009.
- Herodotus & Waterfield, R. Herodotus: The Histories. Oxford University Press, 2015.
- Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. University of Chicago Press, 1971.
- Kriwaczek, P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Thomas Dunne Books, 2010.
- Leick, G. The A to Z of Mesopotamia. Scarecrow Press, 2010.
- Scarre, C. & Fagan, B. M. Ancient Civilizations. Pearson, 2007.
- Van De Mieroop, M. The Ancient Mesopotamian City. Oxford University Press, USA, 2015.
At the time of Mohammad (7th century AD), the
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| Moons everywhere. Coincidence? |
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| The black stone at Mecca, kissed by worshippers. You can draw your own conclusion about the connection to the fertility moon goddess. |
Its center:
Well, what do the kings of the earth today want?
The wilderness of the sea, on many waters, was a vast wasteland, populated by destitute Bedouins until the discovery of oil. Almost overnight,
Oil runs the world today. I'm guessing that for most of us, wherever we go today, we will not walk or ride our camel. By the way, I don't believe this means you have to sell your car and get a camel.
The kings of the world want this oil, and they are willing to kiss the feet of the beast in order to get it.
Revelation 18:8-10 tells us that this alternate religious system - evident all over the world in many faiths but culminating in Islam - will be gone in one hour. All the wealth – gone. Burned up. (Oil is quite flammable).
Revelation 18:4 warns us: come out of her, my people! Leave this false religious system behind and return to pure worship.
All this purging has to happen so that pure worship of the Jewish Messiah, the Lamb of God, will be restored. All the pagan junk that has crept into the church will be gone. Hallelujah!
However, Mystery Babylon appears at the end of the age as we see the revival of the Roman Empire in the European Union within a world system, a New World Order, touted through international entities like the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, etc., and even includes the Roman Catholic Church and the ecclesiastical leadership of most of the non-Catholic denominations. Other than 3 million Israelis in Israel, the Jew is still captive in the world. Therefore, it would seem logical that Mystery Babylon is the one-world system in its tripart identification: political, economic, and ecclesiastical. It would appear that the titular head of the system will be the person who will sit in the Temple of God on Mt. Moriah and claim to be the Messiah.
We read in Revelation 13:7 that this person, called the Son of Perdition and the Antichrist, will have power over all races, nations, and languages-this will be total political power over the earth. In Revelation 13:8 we read that everyone who is not a saved person during the Tribulation will worship this world dictator as a god. This will be total religious and ecclesiastical power. According to Revelation 13:12, there will be a high priest of the false religious system, but this ecclesiastic will be part of the beast system and preach that everyone should submit to the religious authority of the Antichrist. We also read in Revelation 13:15-17 that it be mandated by the Son of Perdition that any person who does not worship him as the "messiah," in order to get a mark and number, will be killed. This is total economic power.
The old Babylon, at least today, could not possibly fulfill the prophetic destruction described in Revelation 18. However, what about the destruction prophesied for the literal city of Babylon on the Euphrates River?
According to all archaeological reports found in numerous biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias, the Babylon (or Babel) founded by Nimrod and later ruled over by Hammurabi, encompassed 200 square miles. The city was protected by a double wall, with the great wall being 344 feet high and 86 feet wide. Chariot races were held on the wall, and in times of danger, troops could be swiftly moved to points of attack. The city was so big 25 bronze gates were in the wall on each side. In numerous prophetic scriptures in the Old Testament, the ultimate destruction of Babylon, just as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, is to come swiftly. Most biblical references claim that this was fulfilled when the armies of the Medes and Persians in about 540 B.C. diverted the Euphrates River and marched into the city under the walls. While the account of the fall of Babylon to Medo-Persia did, according to Daniel 5, happen in one day, it certainly was not destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. The city was only slightly damaged by the Medes and Persians because its fall happened so suddenly.
Babylon remained an important city during the 200 years of the Persian Empire. It was also an important political and commercial metropolis during the Grecian Empire. Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 320 B.C. When the Jews were allowed to return during the time of the Persian Empire, many remained in Babylon. At the time of Jesus Christ there were still 25,000 Jews in Babylon. Jesus commissioned Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, and Peter was to go to the circumcision (Israelites). In carrying out this responsibility, we know that Peter did preach the Messianic Gospel to the Jews in Babylon in A.D. 63 (1 Pet. 5:13). The opinion of some that the Babylon referred to in this scripture was Rome is ridiculous.
With the decline of the Roman Empire the city of Babylon was not that important to world trade and commerce. Political, religious, and economic centers moved eastward and westward. Many of the beautiful bricks were carried off to be used in construction projects in Baghdad, Damascus, and cities of the decathlon. However, this was such a huge metropolis that the majority of the buildings and walls remained to be covered up with the sands of the Euphrates River and the blowing sands of the Middle East. The decline of Babylon was a slow process that occurred over a thousand years. There was no sudden destruction of Babylon, nor was it destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.
There was considerable activity by German archaeologists during and after World War I. However, this activity was more of a nature of archaeological pillage, and certainly not reconstruction. The top 100 feet of the Ishtar Gate at Babylon was removed brick-by-brick and reassembled at the Pergamum Museum in Berlin. After the Germans, the French and English pillaged the ruins of Babylon under the sand. Many of the Babylonian artifacts are piled in the basement of the British Museum in London where there is so much junk from around the world that it probably will never be cataloged.
In 1971, UNESCO announced that it would help Iraq completely restore the ancient city of Babylon. The reconstruction would be under the general supervision of Saddam Hussein, who made his appearance in 1969 as the Iraqi strongman by hanging eight Jews on the streets of Baghdad as a warning for others to hit-the-road elsewhere. In 1978, 1 led a Southwest Radio Church tour of 103 to Iraq. One of the sites we visited was Babylon. There was a four-lane highway between Baghdad and Babylon with brick factories along the way turning out bricks for this tremendous reconstruction project. On one end of the brick was the name Nebuchadnezzar, and on the other end was the name Saddam Hussein who, then and now, envisions himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzar to restore the glory that was once Babylon's.
In spite of the 10-year suicidal war with Iran which began in 1980, Hussein continued the restoration project. In 1987 the rebuilding of the temples, the palaces, and the gardens had proceeded to a point where a month's Babylonian festival was set to declare to the world that Babylon had been restored to its former glory, and a new Nebuchadnezzar has been resurrected, or at least his spirit now lived in Saddam Hussein. To reference a story that appeared in the January 16, 1987, edition of the Los Angeles Times,Hussein appointed as marshal of the festival a musician by the name of Bashir, who invited famous musicians and personalities from around the world-the very best talent possible-to participate in the Grand Festival. In the invitations sent out to musicians, dancers, opera singers, movie stars, kings, queens, etc., a specific invitation was extended to Madonna, the sleazy rock singer, because as was noted, she lives in the heart of all Iraqi people.
It is not known exactly how the Babylonian Festival turned out, but we would presume it fared some better than Belshazzar's affair. In any event, the long war with Iran left Hussein short of funds to complete the rebuilding process, so in 1990 he invaded oil rich Kuwait. President Bush, along with the New World Order proponents, concluded that if Hussein got away with this take-away, he would also move to include Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the other oil-producing fields in the Middle East. Then, as we read in Daniel 3, the world's leaders would have to come to him and fall down and worship his golden image.
All these plans were foreshadowed in the Babylonian Festival where he placed his huge portrait beside a replica of the Ishtar Gate; he commanded a world festival to convene in Babylon; he intended to prove God a liar, and he announced that Madonna lived in the heart of the Iraqi people. Mea Domina, Madonna, in Latin corresponds in meaning to Semiramis in the Chaldean-Goddess of Heaven. So, Mea Domina, Madonna, or Semiramis indeed is worshiped by Iraqis. Semiramis constructed the first huge obelisk (phallic symbol) in honor of her late husband, Nimrod. According to tradition, she conceived a son by Nimrod after he was dead. Semiramis named him Tammuz, Son of Heaven, and he was worshiped by some of the women of Israel who were captives in Babylon (Ezek. 8:14). This past year Madonna, the movie star, said she just had to have a child, so she did have one even though she was not married. Perhaps she was destined to fulfill the type. However, any connection between Mea Domina (Semiramis) and Mary, the mother of Jesus, is of pure Catholic invention.
President Bush based his hopes on a combined alliance of nations to stop Saddam Hussein. He announced on an international television network on September 11, 1990:
A new partnership of nations has emerged...Out of these troubled times, a New World Order can emerge...A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor Today that new world is struggling to be born...a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle; a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice; a world where the strong respect the rights of the weak...This is the vision I shared with President Gorbachev in Helsinki.
The subsequent effort to divest Saddam Hussein of his Kuwaiti dream was 90 percent the United States; 9 percent England; and 1 percent the other 37 nations. However, all members of the alliance were represented in some way, even though they may have only sent a symbolic firecracker. And President Bush, who was the idol of the free world in just six months, became one of the most unpopular presidents in the history of the United States, and was replaced by an unknown womanizing Arkansawyer, showing just how fickle is the uncertainty of the human mind.
The scenario for the Desert Storm/New World Order war was prophesied by Isaiah. We read in Isaiah 13:1, 4-5: "The burden of Babylon... The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: the LORD of hosts musters the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the LORD, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land."
In January 1991, representative armies from five continents, 39 nations, came with loud weapons to destroy the ability of Iraq to make war. Did it happen? No! Did the Bible say it would happen? No! Why? It was not God's time. However, what did it signify? We read in verse 6: "Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty."
Even though the military capability of Saddam Hussein was not destroyed, it signaled that the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord, the Great Tribulation, was near. Following verse 6 is an interlude until we get to verse 19 in the Day of the Lord: 'And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldea's' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah."
Babylon will be destroyed in an overwhelming judgment of fire, but it will be in the Tribulation, which may be near, but not now. This is why we see Saddam Hussein continuing to be such a problem today, and also why it defies reason, human or inhuman, as to why the job was not completed in 1991.
Now why would, from a New World Order viewpoint, this reconstructed city be destroyed, perhaps by an H-bomb? We keep hearing about the germ factories that Hussein has, but so do other nations. Why is the U.N. so concerned ,about the germs that Hussein owns? According to the February 4, 1998, edition of the Near East Report, both the Washington Post and New York Times have confirmed that U.N. inspectors uncovered a 1995 agreement between Russia and Iraq whereby Russia would give Hussein factories to produce huge quantities of biological weapons. Inspectors also uncovered evidence that the machinery had already been delivered, then the Russian government, evidently with the knowledge of Boris Yeltsin, lied about it. This caused grave concern in the Pentagon. Biological warfare is just not the same anymore. I refer to pages 41-45 of the book The New Creators:
At least twenty years ago Congress was warned to place government restrictions on microbiological experimentation. The April 1, 1977, edition of Time reported in part:
"Appearing before a Senate subcommittee ...HEW Secretary Joseph Caliban asked Congress to impose federal restrictions on recombinant DNA research, a new form of genetic inquiry involving E. coli ....DNA with the DNA of plants, animals, and other bacteria. By this process, they may well be creating forms of life different from any that exist on earth....What would happen, they ask, if by accident or design, one variety of re-engineered E. coli proved dangerous? By escaping from the lab and multiplying...it could find its way into human intestines and cause baffling diseases...Calder's biology chairman, Robert Sunshine, concludes: 'Biologists have become, without wanting it, the custodians of great and terrible power It is idle to pretend otherwise.'"
That the AIDS virus could have been the result of mutations resulting from genetic engineering experiments seems to be the insinuation of Karl Johnson of the National Institute of Health, quoted on page 603 of The Coming Plague:
"I worry about all this research on virulence. It's only a matter of months--years, at most--before people nail down the genes for virulence and airborne transmission of influenza, Ebola, Lassa, you name it. And then any crackpot with a few thousand dollars' worth of equipment and a college biology education under his belt could manufacture what would make Ebola look like a walk around the park."
Microbes and viruses can be genetically re-engineered now to cause any number of new and deadly diseases. Jesus said that disease epidemics would be a judgment in the last days, and we read of the boils that would affect men on earth during the Tribulation. There are at least 30 references to pestilences in the books of the prophets, and many of these are in a Tribulation setting. Hussein has played games with the U.N. inspectors, and through trickery keeps moving his deadly pets from one location to the next.
A news report from Jerusalem titled "Saddam Hiding Bio-Weapons Under Babylon?" dated March 9,1998, is interestingly related to our subject:
German newspapers this week published new disclosures on Iraq's military capabilities. The Daily Bold reported that Saddam Hussein has hidden a large supply of nerve gas and biological weapons beneath the ruins of ancient Babylon, on the assumption that the United States would not dare to bomb the archaeological and historical site.
A few weeks ago I watched an imagined scenario on television where the inhabitants of a town had been infected with a deadly new virus for which no vaccine could be found. In order to save the country, the military was ordered to obliterate the town and its inhabitants to save the rest of the nation and, perhaps, the world.
The biblical scenario in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50-52 specifically state that God uses the nations to bring judgment against Babylon. Could Israel, the United States, or some other nation drop nuclear bombs and missiles on Babylon if it meant saving other nations? Yes! Would this fulfill the biblical prophecy that Babylon will be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah? Yes!
We read in Ezekiel 29 that Egypt will be so desolated that even a dog will not be able to walk over the land for 40 years. This indicates nuclear destruction. However, we continue to read that Egypt will be in the midst of the nations that will be desolated.
No better close to this article can be found than 2 Peter 3:9-14: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
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