Exploring Babylon and the Prophecies Against Her

The Lion of Babylon Jeremiah 50 17 says Israel is a scattered flock that lions have chased away. The last to crush their bones was Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The Lion of Babylon attacked Judah and destroyed her temple. So Jeremiah declared, The Lord our God has taken vengeance, vengeance for his temple. Therefore repay her for her deeds. Do to her as she has done. Because of the Lord's anger, she will not be inhabited, but will be completely desolate. Now being familiar with the prophecies in the Bible against Babylon, as a Christian and as an archaeologist, I've always wanted to visit the site. I've tried for many years, but have not been able to get a visa until recently God opened that door and I was able to make the right connection and get a special visa that allowed me to get into Iraq and go to the site of Babylon. What I want to do in this video is try to show you what I saw. Try to show you what the city of Babylon looks like today. So of the many excavations that have taken place in Babylon, the most important one was by the Germans under the directorship of Robert Koldewey. These excavations took place from 1899 to 1917. One thing that they really studied in these excavations were the city walls. In their excavation report is a plan that shows the outline of the city walls and therefore the boundaries of ancient Babylon. This is very valuable when we're asking the question, were the prophecies against Babylon fulfilled because the prophecies are spoken specifically to the walled city of Babylon. Therefore anything inside of the city is part of the scope of those prophecies and anything outside of that city is outside the scope of those prophecies. So what I'm going to attempt to do is use Koldewey's plan from his excavation report showing the layout of the city and then aerial footage to try to demonstrate to you the boundaries of the city and what ancient Babylon looks like today. This palace on top of an artificial hill was built by the former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. It is now abandoned. But for our purposes it serves as a landmark that can be seen from different vantage points in this vast city. The red dot marks on Koldewey's plan where Saddam Hussein, much later in history, built his palace. Our first camera position is here, looking to the north. A few miles to the north is the ancient mound called Babil, which marks the northernmost portion of the city wall, and therefore the northern boundary of Babylon. For our next camera position, we'll go to the mound of Babil and look back in the opposite direction. Below we see the mound of ruins of Babil. Saddam's palace can now be seen in the distance far to the south. Turning left we are now looking southeast. Notice the nearby smokestack. From this vantage point the ancient wall line of Babylon's eastern city wall can be seen. This is the eastern boundary of Babylon. For our next camera position, we'll go to the southeastern corner of Babylon where the eastern wall line meets the southern wall line. The southeast corner of fortified Babylon is seen below, where again the city's southern wall line meets the eastern wall line. Saddam's palace is now seen several miles away to the northeast. When following the eastern city wall line for a few miles to the north, the smokestack and mound of Babil eventually come into view. Our next camera position will be here, looking south. The southern boundary is marked by the end of the uninhabited land. The modern town seen in the background is on the southern side of the city wall, and therefore outside of ancient Babylon. In the late 1800s the location of villages are shown on Koldevei's plan. Over thousands of years the course of the Euphrates River has changed. The ancient riverbed is seen here. The villages marked in the plan, some of which still currently exist, are in the old riverbed, and therefore outside of the city walls. Saddam Hussein built his palace in the old riverbed, where the village marked DK on the plan was located. As it was at the time of Koldevei's excavations, so it remains true today. There is no town or village inside the ancient city walls of Babylon. This city lies desolate and uninhabited. One thing that the city walls of Babylon teach us is just how huge this ancient city was. I'm used to standing on these mounds of ruins called Tells in Israel and Jordan, and they represent a city. When you stand on a Tell in Babylon, you're just standing on the ruins of a building, and the city itself is so huge that it's just hard for me to wrap my mind around. So today, the ancient walls mark out this huge area that is uninhabited by people, but it is actually the ideal habitat for wild animals. It was like visiting an archeological site and a wildlife sanctuary all wrapped together as one. Now, this contrast between inhabited and uninhabited land can be seen moving along Babylon's ancient wall lines. Notice that the houses where the people live are seen to the right, outside of the ancient city, and to the left, and therefore inside the ancient city, is uninhabited by people, but an ideal place for wild animals to live. Now, the city of Babylon became the most glorious during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, and this is the Nebuchadnezzar we read about in the Bible. He really is the one who made Babylon an empire, and therefore brought in a lot of wealth and did a lot of building in the city. So a lot of the remains of the monumental buildings were built by him. So these are the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar, and this is where Saddam Hussein focused his restoration work. So we're in the palace area where a lot of building has taken place over many different generations, and so you have stamped onto bricks the builders of these various levels. And so anywhere else you do archeology, you have to kind of guess who the builder is based on pottery and things like that, but here in Babylon, it's all stamped. The brickwork is stamped. So here you see stamped brickwork, and these are from Saddam Hussein. So a lot of what you see in Babylon today is reconstruction by Saddam, and he did the same thing. He stamped the bricks that he was using to do the restorations. Here you can see, if you look at this wall, you can see the ancient bricks and then the restoration above it. Here is a brick that's stamped with Nebuchadnezzar. So it's important for me to point out that though Saddam Hussein did a lot of restoration work in and around the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, that does not mean that it's occupied. It's not occupied. It's just restoration work to the ruins themselves. Outside of the restoration work that Saddam Hussein did, the city all lies in the same desolation that it has for thousands of years. Moving along the line of the ancient processional way, we see Nebuchadnezzar's palace, what remains of the Ishtar Gate, several temples to the gods and goddesses of Babylon, and far to the south, we have the Sanctuary of Marduk. And this is all that remains to be seen of the most important sanctuary that once dominated the city. The Sanctuary of Marduk, whom the Babylonians believed to be the king of the gods, this sanctuary included two temples, a towering ziggurat, and a lower temple which housed a huge golden statue of Marduk seated on a throne. Currently, there is hardly anything left of what once was the pride and glory of Babylon. It truly remains to this very day a desolation. So now that we've seen at least an overview of what Babylon looks like today, we can turn our attention to the prophecies that were spoken against it in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50 and determine whether or not those came true in history. So Isaiah 13, 19-22 says, Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God, like Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations. But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses, there the owls will dwell, hyenas will inhabit her strongholds, jackals her luxurious palaces. And Jeremiah 50, 39 says, so desert creatures and hyenas will live there, and there the owl will dwell. It will never again be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation. So we're here at the temple of Marduk in Babylon. And one thing that I wanted to show you is, as we go here, you can see these are all wild animal tracks that are just zigzagging all across this ancient site. And this huge area, because it's abandoned, of course, it's just wild animals are living all over the place here. You can just see where their tracks are just going all over the place here. And we saw some of them last night. This place is infested with wild animals. I'm following wild animal tracks, this beautiful blazed pottery laying all over this area. This is where they uncovered a portion of the temple of Marduk. Now the reason you can't see any structures or anything is it's been abandoned for so long that the rain has washed all the sediment down from the top and from the sides and covered up everything that they had exposed during their excavations. You can see a den, some dens, up on the side of the hill up here from where all these animals live. Look at all the smashed bricks. You can see the ones that have been burned with fire. So we're up on the mound of the Marduk temple area. The ziggurat remains are right out in front of us. And just laying around up here all over the place are bricks of course. And then you see the stamp that are stamped on these. Here's another one here. See this stamp. In fact I can see a star right there which means God. And so these stamp bricks. Here's another one. These stamp bricks are laying all over the place here. What is this from? So I met this guy while I was in Babylon who was from a nearby village and he told me that he had trapped a wolf in Babylon and that he had this wolf at his house. So I had to see this and so I went to his house and sure enough he had staked out on the ground this wolf on a chain. Can't get over the animal tracks but the animal tracks are cutting through here. They're just everywhere. I mean this place is littered with animal tracks. We saw some of them last night. There's wolves, there's jackals, fox, hedgehogs, all kinds of wild animals which of course makes sense because we're talking about this massive abandoned place and so it's going to be infested with wild animals. That doesn't seem amazing today but when that prophecy was given this was the most amazing place on earth, the most amazing city, the capital of the world and so to say that this magnificent city is going to become a habitation for wild animals was unthinkable at the time and it just leaves such an impression on you when you visit it to see that that is exactly what it has become and what it is today. This once glorious city which we really have to use our minds to try to imagine what it must have been like at the height of its glory and all of those temples and palaces have been reduced to almost nothing. I mean I have never been anywhere that once was so great with so much that over time has been reduced to so little. The ziggurat, the towering ziggurat of Babylon, the temple of Marduk where the golden image of Marduk was enthroned, what dwells in those places today? Foxes, owls, jackals, hyenas, wolves, that is literally true and honestly it put the fear of the Lord in me. Everything that God spoke through his prophets that he said from the ancient past was going to happen to Babylon in the future, all of that has been fulfilled and Babylon today though it might not look like much because it is a desolation, because it is infested with wild animals, what it is is a testimony to the authority of scripture, to the reality that God sits enthroned over all of human history and what he says is going to happen in the future happens and we can rest assured that since everything that in our past has been fulfilled, that everything that is still yet to be fulfilled in our future we can rest assured it is going to happen precisely as God says that it will.