Babylon’s Fall (Part C)

The sin of Solomon and Gomorrah as widely embraced today by something honorable to God. And they're doing that. Maybe you've not come across it, but they're doing this. They're trying to leaven it into Christianity. And in that leaven is strict nine, spiritual strict nine.

To think that God is somehow good with this is identical to think that God is pleased by cold-blooded murder or any other sin. It is Satan. It is the voice of the devil. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio.

Specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Isaiah chapter 13 is the text Pastor Rick will be teaching from today on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Verse four, the noise of the multitude in the mountains like that of many people, tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together. Yahweh of hosts musters the army for battle. Verse five, they come from a far country from the end of heaven. Yahweh and his weapons of indignation to destroy the whole land. And so this is a judgment on Babylon.

Usually we've been reading things like this against the northern kingdom of the southern, but this one's Babylon. And the ones that are singled out for this, you could say sanctified or anointed for this task, they're set aside for this purpose. It's non-moral, it's not spiritual in that sense. They don't have to know that they are God's instruments. There have been people in history that have been God's instruments and they didn't know it. God used them anyway. I mean, you know, it would come to Cyrus later in the latter chapters and God said, you know, he's my shepherd because I'm going to use him like a shepherd. Well, coming back to this, they're instruments of Yahweh and Babylon was overthrown, of course, by the Medes and the Persians. So, but there's more to the story in that. A lot of stuff about Babylon is not, ancient Babylon is not available. The historians have not been able to preserve a lot of it.

And what is preserved often makes more questions and gives answers. Verse 6, well, for the day of the Lord is at hand, it will come as destruction from the Almighty. So now he shifts gears to verse 14, all the way from 6 to 14. Now he pauses on ancient Babylon's doom and he talks about end time, apocalyptic Babylon.

And the context gives us that. And that's what you say, how come he does it like that? Well, I think because God showed him things. John, how much of what he saw could he communicate?

He does a masterful job using the symbols, the emblems. But how do you describe things that no one else has ever seen before and have it survive through the ages? Well, that's where the signs and wonders, the similitudes come from that Jesus said I've spoken in.

Anyway, and that's why. With verse 6 to 14 he sees beyond the Medes conquering and he sees end time judgment of God on the whole earth to the end of the ages. Read from verse 11 when we started this, I would judge the whole earth, the whole world. And the sign is the day of the Lord. That is that end time judgment, that greater day, the final destruction of Babylon by the intervention of Messiah Jesus himself. And Messiah, he wasn't aware of Jesus. He was aware of Messiah, but not like we know him. It was very difficult for the Jews to see this.

Paul missed it entirely until God got hold of him. Anyway, verse 7, therefore all hands will be limp, every man's heart will melt, verse 8, and they will be afraid, pangs and sorrows will take hold of them. They will be in pain as a woman in childbirth.

They will be amazed at one another. Their faces will be like flames. Behold the day of Yahweh comes, cruel in both wrath and fierce anger, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate. He will destroy its sinners from it, verse 10, the stars of heaven. For the stars of heaven and the constellations will not give their light.

The sun will be darkened in its going forth and the moon will not cause its light to shine. Well, we're very familiar with that kind of language from verse 10. But before I get there, you know, when ancient Babylon was conquered, it was really liberated. There wasn't a lot of killing going on in the city. That happened in another city where the Babylonian army was defeated at Opus. And that allowed the Medes and Purges to pretty much just walk into Babylon.

Such a big city, it was almost impregnable with moats and walls. And the Babylonians fell out, we're fine, so we lose the battle here, lose the battle there, we're fine. And that's when the handwriting appeared on the wall, as Daniel records.

And that night, the king was killed by Darius the Mede when he was 62 years old. That doesn't mean he pulled the trigger, but he gave the order. Anyway, we'll come back to a little bit of that. So here in verses 7 through 8, he's depicting reactions of dreadful news. Because this is global, this is going to be global. Everybody's going to be trying to get home, and the sun and the sky darkening.

Well, in ancient times, that could have some application to when they were burning a city, and if it were close enough, you know, that would be the effect. But this is bigger than that. Now, again, usually picturing Israel, this time it's a great tribulation misery, as God begins to execute judgment before he delivers the kingdom of man or the world back to the Father. But these cosmic disturbances, well, Joel talks about them. Jesus talked about Matthew 24, 29 says the same thing.

Mark captures it, Luke captures it. And this is what Jesus was talking about in the tribulation period. And all of Matthew 24 is about the end times. So that's where Isaiah, he's certainly in agreement with Christ. Christ is not in agreement with Isaiah. Isaiah's in agreement with Christ. Anyway, verse 11, and here's the lead-off verse we used. I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will halt the arrogance of the proud and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

How many politicians in Washington do you think would be receptive to that? Well, some would be. Some, I believe, are genuine believers. But here's globalized judgment because of globalized defiance. And it is going to lead to the end. Verse 12, I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Well, Ophir is that exotic and unknown place to us. Isaiah knew where it was.

Evidently, valuable and precious goals came from there. But this is population reduction on a scale unknown to mankind. And it matches what Jesus said. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.

But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. And in context there, the elect are the Jewish people. Because the Gentiles are getting beheaded for Christ. And the Jews are being wiped out. So the Lord will intervene on behalf of both. Verse 13, therefore, I will shake the heavens and the earth will move out of her place. The earth will move out of her place in the wrath of Yahweh of hosts and in the day of his fierce anger. Well, where earth has been moved out of place many times, but globally, was a flood. I was talking with my daughter today about a book from Immanuel Vilikovsky. He's got two of them out. One of them, Earthen Collisions and Earth in Upheavals. They're out of print because the scientific community wants to shut it down. Because he offers so much evidence that, you know, how come we're finding these giant boulders, just don't hold me to the exact places, but for example, we found this giant boulder in Michigan that is found nowhere else in Michigan, but it is found in Scotland.

How did it get there? So, you know, he does many things like this. And the science community wanted to shut him down because he was not claiming to be a Christian.

He probably was not. He's just going with facts. Anyway, I have the books. If you want to borrow them, I'll set the price.

Let the bidding begin at 50 million dollars. All right. So, verse 14, it says, It shall be the hunted gazelle, and as a sheep that no man takes up, every man will turn to his own people, and everyone will flee to his own land. So this is global, I think. It's a global picture. The people are defenseless, they're isolated, and they're paranoid. Now, just because you're paranoid, you know, the old saying, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone's not after me.

Somebody may be after me, and I am paranoid at the same time. So now, back to chapter 15 to the end, Isaiah then returns to ancient Babylon. And it's fate for her mysticism, and so the context lends to that. You can say, wait, this is global. So when we get to talking about Satan, we come across things that says, well, this is the king of Babylon, but no human being is experienced with now this now says.

And that's, you know, one of the indications. Okay, this is moved into the spiritual realm. Verse 15, Everyone who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is captured will fall away by the sword. Their children also will be dashed to pieces. Before their eyes, their houses will be plundered, and their wives ravished.

Okay, now, of course, some of this will be taking place in the tribulation period, but he's really focusing back on ancient Babylon. Well, women and children always suffer more in war, but everybody suffers a lot. Usually, the women and the children are claimed as spoils of war, at least in the ancient warfare. But here, they are brutally, their armies, their brutality is not restrained. So you say, well, I thought Babylon was preserved from war when it fell, and this stuff didn't happen. It did in Ophir where the battlefield was. That's where the battlefield over Babylon was.

They couldn't get into the city, but they wiped out the Babylonian army pretty much in Ophir, the Medes and the Persians. And so verse 17, Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not regard silver as for gold. They will not delight in it.

No, you can't, they were not going to be bribed. They're going to say, oh, you want to pay us off from coming? I'll tell you what, we'll just kill you and take the money anyway, which pretty much happened. So Darius, he's the first ruler of Babylon. We get that Daniel 5 verses 30 and 31. And there would be more conquest of Babylon, that footprint, that geographical footprint, but it will never be the Babylon it was under Nebuchadnezzar. It now becomes the empire of the Medes and the Persians because God's looking out for his people because they're captive in Babylon, and Cyrus will be raised up, and Cyrus will have a whole other approach to captured people. His approach would, let's send them all home and let's get them all to contribute to the kingdom. And that's why the Jews were allowed to go home and other peoples were also.

It was a radical shift. We would get that in detail when we go to Ezra, the first chapters of Ezra. Anyway, whatever happened after the Babylonians were ousted, other kings came in rules. It refers to Medo-Persian rule. Then Alexander, ultimately, Alexander the Great conquers Persia, where Babylon is under their authority back then. Today it's in Iraq, but the Persians, today it's Iran.

Pardon me. Iran is Persia, and Iraq is where ancient Babylon was. So after Alexander wanted to rebuild the city, but he died before he could do a lot of things, and of course his kingdom was divided up into four sections. Two of those sections became very big, you know, Ptolemy and Seleucids. And Seleucids produced Antiochus Epiphanes, or Antiochus, and he was like a type of Antichrist, the way he treated the Jews, and he's just an evil, evil man.

Again, that's in, Daniel covers that. So eventually, in time, ancient Babylon was stripped of whatever she had to offer in building materials, left in ruins, the deserts, sands, covered her up. And ironically, the ruins are still there, and the archaeologists are protecting it, so to speak, keeping anybody from building it to fulfill prophecy.

Let's move on and find some of that. Verse 18, Also their blows will dash the young men to pieces. They will have no pity, no fruit of the womb.

Their eye will not spare children. And so this still belongs to the destruction of ancient Babylon. When he says it will dash the young men, it means suddenly they will be struck down dead. And again, the violent battle of Opus. Well, you know, you're not going to find a lot of information about that, except to know that there was a great slaughter of the Babylonians, and the city was indeed ravished.

Verse 19, In Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans, pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You have to be impressed by cities. The bigger cities really have a lot of material things to offer. It's just that they're, of course, a mess, and I wouldn't want to live there unless I was filthy rich.

And I'd have a country, a beach home too. But anyhow, it's impressive. You go to some cities, it's really impressive. Well, Babylon was impressive as men go, but in the end, what is a prophet? They get destroyed by God.

It's what men do with these resources. Anyway, here in verse 19, he brings up Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible does not let man forget Sodom and Gomorrah.

You would think, okay, we read about that back in Genesis, we're good. God says, no, you're going to hear about this all the way to the end. In fact, before you get to Revelation, I'm going to write a preface to the Revelation, and I'm going to use Jude the dude to do it. And Jude writes, and it's an excellent preface to the book of Revelation. He says, as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them.

You catch that? Because we know from the Genesis record, it tells us the five cities around were also destroyed, not just Sodom and Gomorrah. But you see, they were advocates. They were close enough to the evil because they wanted to be. And God says, I'm not leaving you out.

You're going to get the judgment too. So as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, Jude verse 7, in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. So Jude is saying, oh, don't think that's outdated and don't forget it.

And don't think that it's going to somehow be outdated in future generations. You know, you get the people that try to say, you know, Christians can be this way too without repentance. They're lying to themselves because they are believing what Satan is saying.

And then when you have a lie, you can't wait to tell it. And that's why they're promoting this stuff. And they're doing it to the death.

They're very serious. Well, it's going to encompass the world. And so when he, verse 19 says, in Babylon, the glory of kingdoms. Again, cities have a glory to them. The beauty of the Chaldeans, pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. See, not letting it go. Sodom and Gomorrah, mentioned 49 times in the Bible, in 15 books, and never in positive light. It's never, oh, but you know what?

They had the greatest jelly donuts you're ever going to have. It never gives a kind word. That is pertinent. And that's something we need to point out.

You know, just remember this. The wrath of God is still on Sodom. Not because they sinned, but because their attitude towards their sin. That's what did them in. They were defiant in their luxury against Yahweh, as has come to be known amongst the Jews. And so to think of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as widely embraced today, as something honorable to God. They're doing that.

Maybe you've not come across them. But they're doing this. They're trying to leaven it into Christianity. And in that leaven is strychnine, spiritual strychnine. To think that God is somehow good with this is identical to think that God is pleased by cold-blooded murder, or any other sin. It is Satan. It is the voice of the devil. And don't for one minute, when you say, well, can Satan speak through human beings? Why me, Satan? What did Jesus say to Peter?

To Peter! You know, you're not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men. And that's what the act of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities surrounding it. They weren't mindful of God. They were mindful of what pleased them. Eve wanted to better herself. It says that she saw that she was good for knowledge.

I would like a degree. Not that there's anything wrong. But where the error comes is that you want to improve your, you think you're improving yourself by going against God.

You're not. You're improving Satan's power. And that is the story of mankind.

And same again. I don't want to feel like I have to, oh, now let me also knock Adam. Every time I say something negative about women, let me do Adam. Every time I say negative about men, let me also say that's the world today.

You can't mention any nation today in a negative light, regardless of how true it is, without apologizing in some form. Well, I'm not saying they're all like that. Well, who said you were?

But if you don't say it, what are you trying to say? We're all that way? You know, if I say La Costa Nostra was, you know, Italian.

Well, not all Italians are part of the Mafia. And you shouldn't even have to put anybody through that. I think I went through this on Sunday. I felt like I just wanted to use another kind of people as an example. And I felt myself, oh, but if you do that, you've got to apologize. And I said, no, I don't care.

I'm walking around. I'm sorry I used that analogy even though it was true. I mean, you make you so timid that you can't tell the truth anymore.

And the result is you can't say, I serve Jesus Christ. And if you don't like it, that's your business. When someone doesn't like your politics, just ask them. So are you? Just let me understand this.

You're demanding that I think like you whether I want to or not. Let's just be clear about this. And then you can say, get behind me, Satan.

Can you be using it in the proper context? You're not mindful of the things of God but the things of men. Anyway, verse 20, it will never be inhabited.

That's pretty serious. Nor will it be settled from generation to generation. See, that's why we know it's a local Babylon here. Otherwise, the whole planet, you know, if it was spiritual Babylon, it would be the whole planet. But anyway, nor will the Arabian pitch tents there. Oh, don't say Arabians.

Got to apologize. Nor will the shepherds make their sheepfalls there. Well, Babylon never regained her royal position once the Medes and Persians. Jeremiah, he quotes Isaiah. You'd love to see the prophets quote each other. But Jeremiah even, Daniel, you know, researched Jeremiah and said, we're going to be here 70 years. I got it.

I cracked the code. Jeremiah said this and he just lets everybody know. So anyway, Jeremiah says, therefore, the wild beast, and he comes 100 years after Isaiah, and you say, well, was Isaiah's record still around? That's a joke because we're reading Isaiah. Obviously, it was still around.

Anyway, not a ha-ha joke but, well, maybe it is. Therefore, the wild beast shall dwell there with the jackals and the ostriches shall dwell in it. Will the jackals eat the ostriches?

How does that work? Anyway, coming back to this, it shall be inhabited no more forever, nor shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, pause there. There's Jeremiah now using it. You're not going to let you forget this. And again, if it's one thing to struggle with such sins or any sin, it's another thing to be defiant with that sin. And that's what, you want to get on God's bad side? Thumb your nose in his face over your sin.

That's what will happen. Again, so as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbors, he doesn't leave that out either, says Yahweh, so no one shall reside there, nor son of man dwell in it. And that's true to this day. Archaeology has preserved the ruins of Sodom. They found it and this is it. And you can't say, well, you know what? I think I'm going to have an apartment on the ruins of ancient.

You're not. He says, so the glorious past, there have been people living in the vicinity, but that's not the ancient city. The Greek historian Strabo, he described the site as a vast desert, just desolate, nothing there. He said, well, this is where it was? There's nothing here. It's desert.

And again, the archaeologists dug it up. Verse 21, but wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and their houses will be full of owls, ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. That means they're going to rob banks. They're going to pull a caper. Anyway, verse 22, and the hyaenas will howl in their citadels, and the jackals in their pleasant places.

Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged. This is again ancient Babylon. Knowing the spiteful nature of the Jesus haters, who are in power especially, it is very likely that Antichrist will draw up plans to rebuild ancient Babylon. And he may start sort of like a suburban kind of a, you know, thing to start building it up.

He's got to bring water into it, Wi-Fi, got to have Wi-Fi. So anyway, an outright defiance, but he's going to fail, and no one's going to rebuild over the ancient city. Let's pray. Our Father, so much history in your scripture, both past, present, and future. May we become masterful at sharing these things, but we understand that before we could share these with those who need to hear it, you have to go ahead of us.

And we pray that you would. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick. Right here on Cross Reference Radio.