Prewritten History, Part 1 B

Beloved, there is no human eye that could look down the corridor of time and know that Tyre would be destroyed, never to rise again, but Sidon would not. God wrote this book. There is no other book that gives prophecy. The Bible gives it and fulfills it. All you have to do is mix the two names, and the Bible you can throw away, but God doesn't mix names. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In an article in a Christian magazine, a minister commented on a survey he had seen about divorce rates. The survey showed that people identifying themselves as Christians got divorced at least as often as unbelievers. The minister's conclusion? Scripture is not sufficient to deal with all of life's problems. Or to put it another way, the Bible isn't practical enough to help us with modern issues.

How should we respond to that claim? What should you do when the Bible's relevance and authority and clarity and historical accuracy are called into question? Especially within the church. John MacArthur will help you stand up for God's Word today as he continues his study called, Is the Bible Reliable? And here's John now showing you how biblical prophecy confirms the trustworthiness of Scripture. Ezekiel 26. Now notice verse 12 of 26.

The end of the verse. They shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. Now you notice the walls have been broken down, the towers have been broken down, but let's face it, the prophecy isn't completely fulfilled.

Two hundred and fifty years later all the rubble is still laying on the ground. You'll notice also that the prophet said that the place would be scraped like the top of a rock. Verse 4 would be just scraped clean like the top of a rock.

And verse 14 says the same thing. That was not fulfilled for 250 years. Then came a man that the world knows, Alexander the Great, age 24. He came east conquering the world. In fact, it wasn't too long after that that he cried because he said there are no more worlds to conquer.

He had 33,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry, and a few ships sailing along the coast. And he was coming east from Greece and he was going to go down through the Phoenicians territory into Egypt and take Egypt because Egypt was loaded with treasure. And so he set out to establish his great world empire. He had just defeated the Persians. You remember there were four great world empires, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Roman.

This is Daniel's image, another very accurate prophecy. The great battle of Isis, I-S-S-U-S, took place in 333 BC and Alexander at that point had defeated the Persians under Darius III and he was now on his march toward Egypt. He came to Tyre and he called on the Phoenician cities to open their gates to him, to let him just sweep through and take over.

The citizens of Tyre refused to do it. They were Phoenicians. They felt secure on their little island. They had the best fleet going. They weren't afraid of the minimal kind of fleet that Alexander perhaps could have mustered against them.

And so they just said, forget it. But Alexander was a very persistent fellow. Since he had no fleet to match theirs, if he had any at all, he decided that he would approach them in a very unique way. He decided to build a causeway from the mainland to the island and just march out and take the island. It was an amazing thing, you know, all for 250 years that rubble's been sitting there and I'm sure somebody was thinking to themselves, you know, that old prophet once said they were going to throw this stuff in the water.

Anybody who ever did that would be out of their mind. Why would anybody come to this mess and start picking up stuff and pitching it into the ocean? It's exactly what Alexander did. He built a 2,000-foot causeway at least 200 feet wide for one-half mile. And you know what he used to build it? Every bit of the debris that was lying around old Tyre.

He just started pitching it in the water. Arian, a Greek historian, has written in a book called The History of Alexander and Indica, which is published by Harvard Press in 1953, how this was accomplished. This is history.

All the historians know how he did this. Tyre was fortified like Alcatraz. It sat out there like a rock. And the walls came down to the edge of the water. And I mean the walls were formidable walls.

Alexander knew, says Arian the historian, the only way to approach the place would be a land peninsula stretching out to the island. And so they began. And they started pitching this stuff into the water and piling it up and leveling it all up so that they could march out on it. But as they got closer and closer to the island, naturally it got deeper and deeper and deeper and it became very, very difficult work.

When you get out a half a mile or so into the ocean, you know, you're going to throw a lot of rocks down there before you start seeing them under the surface, especially if it's 200 feet wide. And it became a very, very difficult task. And to make things worse, the Tyranians, the people sat on the wall and bombarded them with missiles. And they fired things at them all the time.

So in order to safeguard the operation, Alexander built mobile protecting shields and they're called tortoises, says Werner Keller in his book The Bible as History. And they had these movable things over their heads. And as they moved out, they covered themselves with these shields that would accept all of the missiles and they'd all bounce around on there.

But it was still difficult. The walls of the city out there were very high. And Alexander knew that even when we get to the place, we still got to look at those walls. And so he built what history called Helipoleis, 160 foot high towers, nearly 20 stories high on huge giant moving wheels. And the whole idea was to roll these big lumbering monsters right out on the causeway up against the wall, flop down a drawbridge and march right across the top of the wall into the city. Now these were the largest towers ever used in the history of war.

They were high above the city walls and the bridges would have opened right flat on the wall. But they had a terrible time trying to get this thing coordinated because they were being raided. Not only were they being raided from the city, but they began to get in boats and raid them from the sides.

And they were being bombarded incessantly, but Alexander was persistent. But he realized he needed ships because he couldn't defend his flanks. So he had knocked off a whole pile of cities on his way this far. And so he went back to all the cities that he had conquered and demanded that they make ships available to him. And so he built a fleet. He got a fleet from Sidon. He got, in fact, 80 ships from Bibulus, from Rhodes, from Soli, from Malos, from Lycia, Macedon. Cyprus gave him 120 ships. He built this fleet to protect his flanks. This, again, is interesting because you remember that as I read you the prophecy, the prophecy says in verse 3, he will cause many nations to come up against thee.

And then it even says, as the sea causes its waves to come. And here were these different nations recruited by Alexander, coming at the time that he needed them and banging up against Tyre to fight against her as he needed them, fulfilling that prophecy as well. Well, finally the operation succeeded. The walls were conquered. Those great big lumbering things rolled out there.

The monsters flopped out their drawbridges and the men fired across the place. Eight thousand of the people of Tyre were slain. Seven thousand more were executed.

Thirty thousand were sold into slavery and they took the city. In seven months from the time he first arrived, he did it. You want to know something interesting? If you go there today, you'll see that causeway.

It's still there. Now you tell me how prophet Ezekiel knew that. You tell me how he knew, first of all, the city would be conquered and second of all, the stuff that was lying around, all of it would be pitched in the ocean.

That is the only thing. There is no way that a human mind can do it. The only thing that can explain it is the mind of God. Philip Myers is a historian. He says this, Alexander the Great reduced Tyre to ruins in 332 B.C. She recovered into measure but never to the place she previously held in the world. Myers goes on, the once great city is now as bare as the top of a rock.

And he says, it's a place where fishermen dry their nets. So says Philip Myers, historian, so said God before it happened. Philip Myers knows because history tells him. God knows because he makes history. The island city was later repopulated and later destroyed by the Muslims in 1281 A.D. But the mainland city, God said, will never be rebuilt and it has never been rebuilt and it will never be rebuilt. Why has it never been rebuilt? Jerusalem has been rebuilt 17 times. Why hasn't Tyre been rebuilt? Because 25 centuries ago, a Jew in Babylon said, thou shalt never be rebuilt. And it won't. And today you can't even find a ruin to mark the spot.

It's as flat as a rock. Turn over in your Bible for a minute to Ezekiel 28...Ezekiel 28, 22. Now there was another great city that you know about in that area named Sidon. Verse 22 says, 21, Son of Man, set your face against Sidon and prophesy against it and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Sidon. I will be glorified in the midst of thee and they shall know that I am the Lord when I have executed judgments in her and shall be sanctified in her, for I will send into her pestilence, blood into her streets.

The wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side and they shall know that I am the Lord. Twenty miles north of Tyre and much older than Tyre is the city of Sidon. Sidon was founded by the firstborn child of Canaan in Genesis 10, 15. It's a very ancient city. It was the center of idolatry connected with Baal and Ashtaroth and Tammuz. It's the center of idolatry as we know it in Baal worship. And that really is the spawning of many idolatrous religions. But the prophecy says there will be blood in the streets, swords everywhere, but it doesn't say Sidon will be ultimately destroyed.

Did you notice that? It just says there's going to be blood in the streets, swords everywhere, and you're going to know that I'm God. There is no statement of ultimate destruction for Sidon.

You want to know something interesting? Today Sidon exists. Today Sidon exists as the seaport city of Syeda, still there. The prophecy was fulfilled, the prophecy of blood in the streets and swords everywhere, in 351 before Christ. The city was ruled by Persia. It revolted and the Persian army tried to quell the revolt and there was a horrible slaughter. The slaughter was so bad in that city that 40,000 of the citizens of Sidon, rather than find the vengeance of the Persians against them, locked themselves in their homes and set their homes on fire and 40,000 of them perished in the flames they had set themselves because of the horrors of the vengeance of the Persians. Blood flowed, swords were everywhere. It was rebuilt again and again and always endured battles and more battles and more battles. Floyd Hamilton says, blood has flowed in the streets of Sidon again and again. But the city stayed in existence and stands today a monument to fulfilled prophecy. That city was wiped out three times by the Crusaders, three times by the Moslems.

In 1840 it was bombarded by the combined fleets of England and France and Turkey and it still stands. But there is no human eye that could look down the corridor of time and know that Tyre would be destroyed, never to rise again, but Sidon would not. God wrote this book. There is no other book that gives prophecy.

The Bible gives it and fulfills it. All you had to do was mix the two names and the Bible you can throw away. But God doesn't mix names. It's true.

Let me give you a third one. Ezekiel 30 verse 13, thus saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols and I will cause their images to cease from Memphis. Your Bible may say, what, Noth? They have the old indication of Phi Noth, N-a-u-f, which was the ancient term for Memphis. I will cause their images to cease from Memphis and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt and I will make pathos desolate and will make fire in Zoan and will execute judgments in Noh. Noh is another name for Thebes. You heard of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes?

Noh is another name. So we have a prophecy here regarding Egypt, particularly Memphis and Thebes. And I'll pour my fury upon Sin, that is Sin with a capital S, Pelusium, which was the key city to Egypt, and I will cut off the multitude of Thebes. I'll set fire in Egypt, Sin shall have great pain, Noh shall be torn asunder and Memphis shall have distress daily. Now all of this is prophesied against Egypt.

Now notice, here are the prophecies. The idols of Memphis would be destroyed, verse 13, destroying the idols, causing their images to cease from Memphis. Memphis was a very ancient city. It was the place for the origin of religious worship for Egypt.

It was a very, very sacred city and regarded with great sacredness. Another prophecy was that Thebes would be destroyed, the land called Noh. The people of Thebes would be cut off, it says at the end of verse 15, cut off the multitude of Thebes. And notice a fascinating thing, verse 13, a prince in the land of Egypt no more.

So here he has some interesting prophecies. Memphis, to begin with, was the capital of the Middle Egypt area and it was the stronghold of idolatry. God said, I'll cut off your idols. It happened. Of course, the conqueror Cambyses came there and Herodotus, the historian, records for us that Cambyses came first to Pelusium, which was like getting to the key of Egypt.

If you could knock off that, you could move in. And you know how he conquered Pelusium? A most interesting way. He was really a sharp character. The Egyptians revered dogs and cats and felt that they were sacred. So he just piled up dogs and cats in front of his army and herded them right in front of him into the city and they wouldn't kill the animals. And he took the city. No Egyptian could ever kill a dog or a cat because he would be violating his religion. And he took all the idols in that area, including Memphis, and flattened them.

You know why? It's obvious, isn't it? To show that they were more powerful than the gods of Egypt. That when they come in and wiped out their idols and they knocked them down face down into the sand and nothing ever happened and their gods never retaliated, boy, it was easier to subject the people to the new conqueror. So they destroyed their religion and they flattened them. Today, the spot where Memphis was is somewhat in doubt.

The general area is known. There's nothing there. And the sands just shift and blow. There's nothing there.

Absolutely nothing. Second largest city in Egypt. You see, what the Word of God said would happen to Egypt happened to Egypt. The idols were cut down. Well, to add to the fulfillment of the prophecy, there were to be great judgments on the city of Thebes. It doesn't say anything about the idols of Thebes being broken down. It just says there would be great judgments on Thebes.

The idols had to do with Memphis in verse 13. The judgments, in a verse 14, execute judgments on Thebes, cut off the multitude of Thebes in verse 15. Cambyses, the same conqueror, invaded Egypt. He was a Persian. He brought on the destruction of Thebes. He burned their temples and destroyed all kinds of things. But Thebes recovered.

Memphis didn't. Second blow came in 89 B.C. Some people laid a siege against Thebes and it fell and it fell into complete oblivion. And it was some city.

As somebody said, the walls were approximately 66 feet high and 24 feet thick and they conquered it. Strabo records Thebes in 25 B.C. and he claimed that the city was broken up into multiple villages in which form it still remains, broken up and disunited. Look at verse 16, Thebes or no shall be broken up, torn asunder, fragmented.

Strabo recorded in 25 B.C. that that city is broken up, absolute accuracy. In Thebes, some idols still stand.

In Memphis, none stand. All God had to do was get His names mixed up and you could chuck your Bible. He didn't get them mixed up. Amazing, startling, not so amazing, not if you believe in God. Well, let me give you one more prophecy. Nineveh. You remember Nineveh? You remember Jonah.

Turn to the book of Nahum, Nahum 1.8. The whole thing is the prophecy that Nineveh would be destroyed. Nineveh was really a great city. It was one of the great cities of the ancient world. It was a rival city to Babylon and the two greatest cities in the ancient world were Babylon and Nineveh.

So it was really a great place in terms of the world's ability to build a city. The whole prophecy of Nahum is just spelling out the demise, the destruction and the doom of Nineveh. Verse 8, but with an overrunning flood, he will make an utter end of the place and darkness shall pursue his enemies. What do you imagine against the Lord? He shall make an utter end.

Afflictions shall not rise up the second time. In other words, God's only going to do it once, one time and Nineveh's wiped out. While they are entangled together like thorns and while they are drunk like drunkards, they shall be devoured like stubble fully dry. While they're having their orgies and their drunken brawls, we're going to come in and that place is going to be wiped out on one particular occasion. Now notice, it says in verse 8 it would be overrunning...an overrunning flood that would make an end of the place. It would end by a flood.

It's interesting. Chapter 3 verse 10 tells more about it. It talks about young children being dashed in pieces at the top of the streets, cast lots for honorable men and all her great men are bound in chains. It tells various things about what's going to happen when Nineveh is destroyed. Now just looking at 1 to 8 to 10 and starting at that point, Nineveh was a tremendous city. Sennacherib was the great ruler in the area and Nineveh did have a problem. It was where a lot of rivers were and there were three major rivers in the area and they did have some problem with flooding.

And so, Sennacherib had endeavored to change the situation a little bit by rerouting the river in a moderate fashion and refoundationing the walls and the pallets. And the temples, he put in mighty slabs of limestone, historians tell us. But Nineveh was strong. It was one of the largest of the ancient cities. It had a hundred foot inner wall, 50 feet thick. It was a hundred feet high, 50 feet thick and the towers went up to 200 feet. And then it had 15 gates. It had a 150 foot moat and the thing was walled for a seven mile circumference.

And that's another startling thing. They had a double wall, an outer wall that was about 2,000 feet from the inner wall, which is nearly half a mile. So you had to get over the outer wall, go a half a mile, cross a 150 foot moat and scale a 100 foot wall with 200 foot towers to take that place.

Formidable. Now listen, at its high point in 663 B.C., 51 years later it was in oblivion, 51 years later and it has never been heard from again. The Medes absolutely destroyed that city. You know how long the siege took? Three months. That's unheard of. It is incredible that anybody could knock off one of the major cities of the world with a three-month siege.

There's no way those people would run out of supplies in three months. And yet that's what the prophet Nahum said would happen, Nahum chapter 3 verse 12, all thy strongholds shall be like fig trees with the first ripe figs. If they be shaken, they shall even...what?...fall into the mouth of the eater.

He says, taking Nineveh is going to be like going up to a fig tree with ripe figs and open your mouth and shaking the branches. That's just going to crumble. It's going to fall with ease. Why, that was an incredible prophecy. Ah, Nahum said it's going to be just like rattling an overripe fig tree.

How's it going to happen? Chapter 2 verse 6 tells how it's going to happen. The gates of the rivers shall be opened and the palace shall be dissolved.

Well what did it say back in 1 John 8? It would be with an overrunning...what?...flood and the gates of the rivers would be opened and the palace would be dissolved. The whole thing that happened would be that a tremendous flood would come and wash away the river gates. You see, rivers ran through cities in those days. And, of course, they had to put an area in the wall where the river would come through and then they would put iron gates through the river and the water would flow through the gates. But in a flood, the gates would wash away. And there were no gates and there was no protection. History tells us that this is exactly what came to pass. God said it would perish in a flood. That's what happened.

The river gates were carried away and the army marched right back into the city and took the city. And chapter 3 verse 19, there is no healing of thy bruise, thy wound is grievous. In other words, that city will never be rebuilt. You want to know something? It never has.

There is no Nineveh today. You say, what does all this mean to me, all this means to you, that this book is true? Is the Bible reliable? That's the question John MacArthur has been answering here on Grace to You.

Along with teaching on this daily radio broadcast, John is also chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John, as we think about the ebb and flow of past history, it's hard not to look the other direction into the future and wonder, where are things headed? But how much value is there in thinking about what's coming down the road? Well, I think the value is summed up in what the Bible says.

He that has this hope in him purifies himself. What the Scripture is saying is when you know that Jesus is coming, and you know that he says, my reward is with me to give to every man according as his work shall be, you know the Lord is going to show up, and you're going to be evaluated, whether your life is wood, hay, and stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stones. And on that basis you're going to be given an eternal reward.

I think that accountability is very, very important. Also, when you know you're going to see face to face the one who gave his life for you, the one who loved you and died for you, and the one who sent his Holy Spirit to live in you, your love and affection for Christ has a motivating effect on your life. So yeah, I think the Second Coming is the believer's motivation to a holy life, because we have to have that kind of accountability. I used to think about what happened in school when I was in elementary school when the teacher left the room, and it was chaos until you heard the feet heading toward the door and everybody dove back into the desk.

It's kind of that. We need to have that accountability with one we love and the one who will come to reward us and to evaluate our love at his return. I think we need to know not only that he's coming, but I think we need to know everything possible about his coming, and the most full presentation of the elements of his coming is the book of Revelation. And a number of years ago, I decided I would teach the entire book of Revelation in one message, and it went for an hour and a half. Darrell Bock That was a great message.

Steve McLaughlin It was called A Jet Tour Through Revelation. We went through the entire book. It begins, Blessed is he who reads and understands this book. So since it can be understood and we are blessed if we do, we went through that jet tour, high-altitude, panoramic view of Revelation.

We have it in a booklet. It's available free to anyone who asks. You will understand the flow and impact of the book of Revelation and details about the coming of our Lord Jesus.

Darrell Bock Thanks, John. And, friend, make sure you're not missing out on life-changing truth found in the Bible's final book. Request a copy of John's booklet called A Jet Tour Through Revelation.

Again, it's free to anyone who asks. So get in touch with us today. Give us a call at 855-GRACE or visit our website. That web address is GTY.org.

The title of the booklet to ask for, again, A Jet Tour Through Revelation. Call for your free copy today, 855-GRACE or go to GTY.org. And when you visit GTY.org, you'll find numerous ways to take in John MacArthur's verse-by-verse teaching.

You can listen to the radio broadcasts you may have missed. You can watch Grace to You television. You can search John's entire sermon archive by date, by book of the Bible or by topic. And that's 3,600 sermons, all of them free to download in audio and transcript format. And if you're not sure what to listen to first, a great option is Grace Stream. That's a continuous broadcast of John's teaching through the entire New Testament.

All of that and more is ready for you at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you to consider. How prepared are you to proclaim biblical truth and to defend attacks on Scripture? John's lesson can help you build the strength you need. Join him tomorrow for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.