This issue looks at Babylon and God”s supremacy.

SINCE YOU ASKED
The story of the final years of Alexander the Great is another example that God is indeed in complete control over Israel”s (and God”s) enemies. After Alexander”s victories, he sought to make Babylon the central headquarters of his worldwide empire. It had been 200 years since Babylon had fallen to the Medes and Persians. Considerable destruction had taken place in that great city, but much construction still remained, including the famous walls, which still stood at the time of Jesus. Considering the size of these massive walls (200 feet high, 187 feet thick, 14 miles square), they weren”t going to disappear overnight. Rebuilding Babylon wasn”t out of the

question, except for one thing-Jeremiah”s prophecy. At the height of Babylon”s power, Jeremiah had predicted that the great walls of Babylon would be destroyed completely, leaving no trace of their existence. They would never be rebuilt (Jer. 50:13, 39; 51:26, 37, 58). Shortly after Alexander ordered Babylon to be rebuilt, God struck him dead while only in his early thirties.

When the walls eventually came down, their destruction attested to the sovereignty of God in all things, while displaying the irony of the situation. By the 4th century A.D., time had taken its toll on the great walls, but some portions remained. The ambition of the Roman emperor Julian (the Apostate) was to rid the empire of Christianity and belief in the Scriptures. While battling the Persians near the remains of Babylon, he ordered the complete destruction of the remains of Babylon”s great wall so the Persian army could never use it for protection. Consequently, Jeremiah”s prophecy was fulfilled by one of Scripture”s greatest antagonists of all time. God had once again made His point.

AS I SEE IT
I see a couple of powerful lessons here. The first is that God will make sure that every biblical prophecy fill be fulfilled, one way or another. This is one of the things that separate the Bible from every other book. No other book can claim the hundreds of fulfilled prophecies detailed in the Bible. The other lesson is that God loves to use His enemies to make His point. He will have the last word. Here, we see God using a Pagan Christ-hating Roman Emperor to fulfil the very Word he wanted to stamp out.

Thirteen hundred years later, the philosopher Voltaire boasted that one hundred years from his day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker. Within 50 years of Voltaire”s death, the first printed version of the Bible was produced in his house from the presses of the Geneva Bible Society. No book has been attacked, mocked, challenged, and ridiculed more than the Bible, yet it remains as the best selling book of all time. God may allow His critics to rant and rave for a season, but eventually, He will have the last word.

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