ΤΟ

PROPHETIC ENQUIRY.

BY

B. W. NEWTON.

Second Series.

LONDON:

JAMES NISBET AND CO. BERNERS STREET.

1849.

EVIDENCE FROM SCRIPTURE

RESPECTING

THE FUTURITY OF THE FINAL JUDGMENTS

ON BABYLON.

THERE are few names from which we more instinctively shrink than that of Babel or Babylon. The very occasion of the name was an act of God's judgment upon evil. And it is so connected with the history of human iniquity; the locality which it designates has been so fearfully marked as a place of manifestation-manifestation of evil on the part of man and of judgment on the part of God, that it stands ресиliarly as a memorial of proud ungodliness met by the visitations of righteous vengeance from above. Whensoever Babylon is mentioned in the Scripture, its name is a symbol of concentrated iniquity. Evil may and does exist in scattered elements everywhere. But God may permit its concentration. He may allow it to be concentrated either in individual men or in places. Babylon is one of the places which exhibits such concentration: and as God marks its history in his Word, and reveals the method of his dealings with the evil, we learn the more easily the lesson he intends to teach. The pattern is, as it were, before our eyes, and we discern more simply the ways of Satan and the ways of God.

The first mention of Babel in the Scripture is in connexion with the name of him who first after the flood attained to greatness in the earth-a greatness

evidently apart from God. Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, whose sin had called forth his father's curse. "The sons of Ham," it is said, "were Cush. . . . and Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord; and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. . . . . in the land of Shinar." (Gen. x. 7-10.) Thus " mightiness in the earth” and commencement of kingly rule are first mentioned in connexion with one, the seat of whose power was Babylon and the land of Shinar. Nimrod-Nebuchadnezzar-Antichrist are, as we shall see, the three great names connected with that region and with that city.

Immediately after this, the land of Shinar is again mentioned as the place where men first united in confederate action against God. God had commanded diffusion. He willed that they should spread over the earth. But they preferred to settle and to centralize. They wished to make themselves a name, and disliked being scattered abroad," as they said, " upon the face of the whole earth." "And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." But the Lord interfered; He came down, confounded their speech, and scattered them: "The Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them

abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Gen. xi.) So early was the land of Shinar the scene of confederate evil, and of judgment from the hand of God.

After this ages roll away, and we hear nothing of Babylon or of Shinar. It is casually mentioned as supplying the goodly garment which tempted Achan amongst the spoils of Jericho: but until Jerusalem had been sufficiently tried, to see whether she would prove herself worthy of being God's city, Babylon was kept in abeyance. The founder of Babylon's greatness was that great king who was raised up to scourge Jerusalem, and who commenced the "Times of the Gentiles," by receiving from God that endowment of power which was taken from Israel and remains vested in the Gentiles, till Jerusalem shall be forgiven and cease to be trodden down. It was Nebuchadnezzar who "walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spake and said, Is not this great Babylon which I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty ?" (Dan. iv.) The greatness of Babylon therefore dates only from Nebuchadnezzar.

Nevertheless long before Nebuchadnezzar--whilst as yet the glory of Babylon was not-its greatness is mentioned in the Scripture, but prophetically. It belongs to the Prophet of God to describe things not yet come to pass, to speak of the things that are not as though they were. Isaiah lived more than a hundred years before Nebuchadnezzar. At that time Babylon was comparatively insignificant and unknown: yet Isaiah speaks of it as "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees excellency,"-" the golden city." He speaks of a glory not seen as yet, and then describes its final doom. "It shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah ;"-it shall be "swept with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." He speaks also of the hand which was about to raise up Babylon as the scourge of Israel, being finally