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Bro. Bill Nichols
one true objective thing that exists in our world. And thank you for giving us the
Holy Spirit to help us to be able to understand what that word says, because we know that of our own understanding, we will learn nothing, but we have to have you to guide us.
Protect us and keep us, go through all the services today. Bless us and bring us back next week, if it's thy will.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Last week we left off with Isaiah prophesying of events leading up to the destruction of Babylon.
And we saw that these will be very dramatic, and you probably noticed, because I did that on purpose, that I have two different tenses in my verbs in that sentence.
We saw, and it will be. That's because what we're looking at is a prophecy. The prophecy we see and we can read and we can understand with the help of the
Holy Spirit, but the event has not happened even yet. Now that's in contrast to what, for example,
Scofield thought, he thought that this event had already taken place. One of the reasons he thought that is he didn't read either one of them very carefully.
Because if you read the two accounts, actually the four accounts that we have, if you read the four accounts, they could not possibly be the same account of the same event.
There's two different. So what we're gonna do today is look at the fall of Babylon as described by Isaiah.
Now remember, we've already looked at it as described by Herodotus and as described by Daniel. And in Daniel, the king of Babylon was still conferring title and power on Daniel or trying to,
Daniel wouldn't take it. He said, I don't want all of this because Daniel knew that it wasn't gonna last long.
The same day, he was killed. He didn't know that the city was captured until three days after they had taken the outer part of the town.
So it was not a very severe capture. And then after Babylon was captured, people continue to live in it.
In fact, the secular historians said life got better. Life got better for the
Babylonians. Alexander the Great, 200 years later, was going to use
Babylon as his capital if he hadn't died. So Babylon continued to be in existence.
Now let's look at what Isaiah's account is. And then we'll go back and look at, again, at Revelation. It's been so long since we did the
Revelation account that I thought I'd start at the beginning of it. So we're in Isaiah 13, 19,
I think. It may be 14, 19. 13, 19, I believe. It should say, and Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms.
If that's 13, we're gonna run over into 14 this morning. That's why I was kind of lost.
And Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms and the beauty of the Chaldeans' excellency shall be as when
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Now that's not a gentle thing.
God was not gentle in his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And it shall never be inhabited.
Well, right there, you know, it can't be the Persian overthrow because they continue to live there.
It continued to be the capital. It shall never be inhabited. Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.
Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there. Neither shall shepherds make their foal there.
But the wild beast of the desert shall live there. And their houses shall be full of doleful creatures.
And owls shall dwell there. And satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beast of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses and dragons in their pleasant palaces.
And her time is near to come and her days will not be prolonged. So no, the destruction of Babylon described in Isaiah and Revelation is not the quiet one whose account we read of in secular accounts, nor in Daniel.
This is a destruction quite unlike anything that Babylon has ever seen, even until today.
Even Shackanoff, you remember Shackanoff? When they just destroyed Iraq in three or four days and left everything burning on the road up to Baghdad and in Babylon, not even
Shackanoff could rival what's gonna happen to Babylon in these end days.
So now we've got to the end of chapter 13 and Isaiah's getting ready to shift his focus.
He's gonna shift it for a few verses to Israel and he's gonna introduce one of the strangest passages in the
Bible concerning the plight of Babylon and its future king.
Not his past king, its future king. So let's just begin. For the
Lord will have mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel and set them in their own land.
Now that was a problem for people, biblical scholars of the time of the age of Scofield.
They could not see Israel being back in the land. There was no land to be back in.
Israel didn't control the land. Israel was scattered out all over the world and they'd just come out of World War II and the
Great Holocaust. He had written it slightly,
I think, before that time, but he had no way of seeing the events that were gonna happen to Israel and that they were gonna, in fact, be put back in the land.
Well, when Isaiah wrote this passage, it was prophetic, but now it's not.
That is no longer prophetic. It's now part of history. On May the 14th, 1948,
David Ben -Gurion, you may have heard of him. If you're old as me, you know who David Ben -Gurion is.
The airport's name is David Ben -Gurion. The first president, it'd be like landing at Washington International Airport.
David Ben -Gurion, the head of the Jewish agency at the time, proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel.
And US President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation the very same day.
So now Israel is back in the land. And so when we say, for the
Lord will have mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel and set them in their own land, that's what
Isaiah said, and that's what has been done. And strangers shall be joined with them.
And they shall cleave to the house of Jacob, that's the strangers. And the people shall take them and bring them to their place.
And the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and for handmaidens.
And they shall take them captives whose captives they were. And they shall rule over their oppressors.
And it shall come to pass that in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow and from thy fear and from thy hard bondage wherein thou was made servant.
I'm gonna stop there for a second. Has that happened? Let me say that differently. Is Israel at rest from sorrow?
Are they at rest from fear? They may think they are.
They have great military power, they have great strength, and they have the Lord God protect them even though they don't know it.
Or maybe they do know it, I can't speak for them. From hard bondage? Eh, I don't know.
Now Israel, not Isaiah rather, is getting ready to shift his focus from Israel back to Babylon.
I'm gonna read that very same verse again. And it shall come to pass that in the day that the
Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow and from thy fear and from thy hard bondage wherein thou was made to serve, that thou shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon.
Now that's not the king of Babylon that existed way back in the day, 500 BC. That's the one that's going to exist at the time when
Israel has been given rest, which is not even yet. That is, in my opinion, and opinions are worth,
I guess, where they come from, the Antichrist. That's Antichrist, will be the king of Babylon at the time that they shall take up this proverb.
So as we continue to read, the object of the proverb is
Antichrist for a while. And then it's gonna change. Take up this proverb against the king of Babylon and say, how hath the oppressor ceased?
The golden city ceased. The golden city is Babylon. It is no more. The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked and the scepter of the rulers.
He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger.
Underline the nations. Not Babylon, not Iraq, not
Persia, not the U .S., all of them. He that ruled the nations in anger is persecuted and none hindereth.
The whole earth is at rest and is quiet. They break forth into singing.
Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee. And the cedars of Lebanon saying, since thou art laid down, no fellow is come up against us.
I like that. It's like Southern, at least Southern, maybe Texan, but certainly North Carolinian.
No fellow has come up against us. Is that the case yet? When will it be the case?
Okay, I'm not asking for the date. I'm asking what sequence. What is gonna have to happen before this fellow is laid down?
The return of Jesus. The return of Jesus the first time, well, the second time, when he comes back at the end of the tribulation.
Chapter 19, he's gonna talk about it. And he's gonna destroy the
Antichrist. And he's gonna destroy the false prophet. And he's gonna toss them into the lake of fire, reserved for the devil and his angels.
So it's got to happen after the tribulation is over, but before the millennial kingdom begins.
So it is in the millennial kingdom that no fellow is gonna come up against us. That they'll be at secure, peaceful, and they'll be secure and peaceful because they'll be ruled by a ruler that is infinitely good and is infinitely powerful and will rule them with a rod of iron and they will do what they should do, whether they want to do it or not.
Hell from beneath thee is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming. It stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth.
It has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nation. And they shall speak and say unto thee, art thou also become weak as we?
Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy violas, and the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee."
And as we went over this the last time, Diane said, that is clearly an indicator of the death of this man.
He is covered over, swarmed with worms.
That's a nice, clean thought. That's talking about the man Antichrist.
The man indwelt by Satan at this time. But it's not talking about Satan.
It's not talking about Lucifer, but it's getting ready to. Now the focus is going to shift one more time.
No longer is it on the man. It's now on the, it's on Satan himself.
I don't even know whether Antichrist is indwelt by a demon or by Satan himself.
I don't know how that works. Does anybody have more information on that?
Antichrist, is he indwelt by a demon? I know he's indwelt by somebody that comes up out of a pit. He's indwelt by Satan himself.
So, no longer is the thrust of this proverb directed at Antichrist, the man, even though the man indwelt by Satan, it's now focused on Satan.
You can't help but understand that. Look at verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken nations?
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.
I will also sit upon the mount of congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
I will be like thee most high. So that was Satan's aspiration. Satan wants to be
God. There's something in a lot of men that make them want to be
God too. Antichrist wanted to be God. The original king of Babylon wanted to be God.
The king of Tyre wanted to be God. But only
God is God. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell. Talking about Antichrist, no not
Antichrist, talking about Satan. Satan won't stay there. Thou will be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
And they that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider saying,
Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake the kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners?
All the kings of the nations, even all of them lie in glory, every one in his own house.
But thou art cast out of the grave like an abominable branch, as a remnant of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit, as a carcass trodden under feet.
Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people.
The seed of the evildoers shall never be renowned."
Now Isaiah goes on to describe the future, further punishment of this figure,
Satan. But we're going to go back to Revelation and pick up and carry because our focus is on Babylon.
We're going to focus on the destruction of Babylon, but now as described in Revelation.
And I want you to look at the similarities between what we just read and what we're going to read now and how dissimilar there was to the account in Daniel.
We're going to go all the way back to verse 2 and read a couple of verses and then we're going to skip to new material.
And he cried mightily, this is a strong angel. Did I say Revelation? Revelation 2,
Revelation 18 verse 2. Revelation 18 verse 2, I'm sorry. John, I did say
Revelation 2. That's why it's not going to, you would have had trouble getting this out of that chapter.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen.
And we did like 30 minutes of discussion of is fallen, is fallen and didn't get it all done.
What I was so focused on was the fact that this was a double expression, emphasizing a great fall.
This is not just a barely simple fall. Already we know it's a great fall that he's going to be talking about. And then
Brother Raj pointed out to me and to all of us that the tense of this verb is,
I think he said, eris past. Eris future.
Okay, I had the words backwards. Eris future. It is done in the future, but it's done with such certainty that it is expressed as if it had already been done.
I think I got that right. So certain. Well, we talked about this yesterday morning,
Raj, not this exact question, but the word of God, if it's the word of God, it is so certain that it is that same as if it is always past.
It's always happened. The word of man is different. If I tell you something is going to happen tomorrow, if I say it's going to be sunny tomorrow and 60 degrees, you know,
I've got, I've got a thing on my phone that tells me that. And another person has told them that, and it may be that, and it may be not.
We'll know tomorrow. We'll know when tomorrow comes, whether what was said by man is true.
So the word of man is the word of man, but the word of God is different. The word of God is the word of God.
God always knows the end from the beginning. So if he says it, it's as good as if it's already done.
Wow. I totally lost track of where I was. It's fallen, it's fallen.
And it's become the habitation of devils. Remember that? The satyr shall dance there.
And the whole of every foul spirit. And the cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
Isaiah said, out of the walls shall live there. For all nations have drunk the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
And the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her. And the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven saying, come out of her, my people, be ye not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Remember who else he said that about?
What other city? He said that of Sodom and Gomorrah, that the cry has come up, and I have heard it, and I'm going to go down and check and see if it's so.
Well, he knew it was so. But it is reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah.
So what did he do? He destroyed Sodom, such that Sodom has not been lived in to this very day, nor Gomorrah, nor any of those other cities.
And then he put them underneath the Dead Sea. I believe that's where they are. Covered in the
Dead Sea. The kings, and now
I'm going to skip some other stuff and go down to verse 9, and we'll pick up new material out of chapter 18 today.
Verse 9, And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication, and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning.
That is again reminiscent of the next morning when Abraham got up and looked out toward Babylon, where Sodom and Gomorrah should be.
What he saw was a pillow of smoke. That's what these kings of the earth see.
Where Babylon should be, they see a pillow of smoke.
The kings of the earth. This is the first of four groups of earth dwellers who lament the fall of Babylon.
They are, one, the political leaders. Two, the sellers of merchandise. Three, the transporters of merchandise.
And four, the consumers of merchandise. These are the four people that we're going to meet in chapter 18 as we continue our way through it.
We've now met the first one. The kings of the earth. These are the political leaders.
And what are they doing? They're standing afar off. Why do you think they're standing afar off?
They don't want to be too close. They don't want to partake in the judgment.
They can see it and that's enough. They weep and mourn. Do they weep and mourn because they're sad for the demise of the city?
It's their personal loss that they're weeping for. They're not sympathetic to the judged city. They are weeping and mourning because in its collapse, they've been stripped of the key source of their political power.
Without the money, without the economy thriving, they have no power.
So the kings have no power anymore. Now for the buyers and sellers.
Verse 11, And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.
So the merchants are weeping. The sellers of the merchandise are weeping. And it doesn't say that right now, but the buyers are too.
The buyers and sellers are both weeping over the collapse.
Why? The commercial system has collapsed. The merchants weep over Babylon.
The world's system of commerce, even though it will be headquartered in Babylon, is ruled by who?
Antichrist. Now what else does Antichrist rule at this time? Everything.
He is in control of the entire world. Not just Babylon, not just Israel, but the entire world.
Now he has sub -kings that are set in different parts of the world and they all report to him and back him and support him.
But he is the main man. So the engine of commerce does not have to be in Babylon.
It could be in America. It could be in China.
It could be in Europe. It could be Russia. It could be anywhere. They weep not for Babylon, but because they have no customers.
Verse 12. And the merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones, of pearls and fine linen, of purple and silk, and scarlet and all fine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood and of brass, and of iron and marble, and cinnamon and odors and ointments and frankincense, and wine and oil and fine flour, and wheat and beast and sheep and horses and cattle.
And I was kind of looking ahead when I lost my place because I wanted to leave out two for right now.
These are things representative of the kind of things people normally buy and sell. Clothing, wood, vessels, brass, iron, cinnamon, and all kinds of things.
But there are two strange ones at the end. One strange and one very strange.
The first strange one is slaves. Now we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
Most civilized nations have rejected slavery. The U .S.
rejected slavery in about 1860. Is that right?
The Civil War. But it's making a comeback.
There are many, many slaves present today.
Not only in places where you would expect them to be found, but even in places where you want.
Like maybe downtown Corsicana. One of the biggest problems and one of the reasons that the
President wants to build a wall across the southern border is because of the vast number of human beings that are taken across the border and put in a position of being a slave.
And I think it was Miss Blood that told me last week that her daughter in her church has a mission program where they are giving information on how to recognize a person that might be a victim of human trafficking.
Did I get that pretty close? Primarily young people, but it could be all ages.
But it is a problem today in the United States. Slavery is again a problem.
It's no longer the slavery of the black man and the black woman as a field hand or plantation worker.
It's now slavery of a different sort for a different purpose, but it is still slavery.
But that's not the worst one. Look at the last one. And the souls of men.
Think about that a minute. Not just to possess your body and put you in servitude, but they bought and sold the souls of the men and women.
That's a lot more tragic than just to have your body bound.
It's one thing to be bound and be required to work or be imprisoned or do something, but it's something else when it infringes upon your soul.
Okay, verse 14. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after were the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee.
And all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.
So where are we now? There are no buyers. There are no sellers. There's no product.
There's no commerce. The entire system has collapsed. Materialism, which is the god of today, the new god of the deceived is vanished because there's no material goods available to lust after anymore.
So the sellers and the buyers alike mourn because the system has crumbled. And the merchants of those things which were made rich by her shall stand afar off for fear of her torment.
That's why they're not getting close. They don't want to be part of the torment. Weeping and wailing and saying,
Alas, alas, that great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.
Like the political leaders, the merchants stand afar off. And they weep and mourn not for sympathy of the city, but because in its collapse they also have been stripped of the key source of their power.
Verse 14. For in one hour, so great riches is come to naught. What that means is that this happens suddenly.
It happens all at once in a very short period of time. And every ship master and all the company in ships and sailors and as many as trade by sea stood afar off.
Now, when I went through this, it occurred to me that there was another group of people.
The ship masters, those who traded by the sea.
The ship masters, the sailors, and the ships. There is a whole study that you could do, and I'm not going to do it because I'd have to do all of Ezekiel.
There's a whole study in Ezekiel that will parallel what is done to Babylon, but the key city in Ezekiel is not
Babylon at all. It is Tyre, or he calls Tyrus. 26 talks about the destruction of Tyre.
27 talks about all of the people who mourn for the destruction of Tyre.
And 28 talks about the Antichrist being destroyed and then partway down, just like in Isaiah, he switches from Antichrist to Satan himself.
And that's worth a study, but we're not going to do it over the next three months.
We're going to let that pass. And they cried when they saw the smoke of her burning.
Who's burning? Babylon's burning. I'm back to Babylon. Saying, what city is likened to this great city?
Babylon. And now you can say Sodom and Gomorrah. And they cast dust on their heads and cried, weeping and wailing, saying,
Alas, alas, that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea, by reason of her costliness, for one hour she is made desolate.
But it's not all mourning all the time. Verse 20 is strange in its position compared to verse 19.
Read those two silently. Read those two verses 19 and 20.
Now let's focus on 20. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye hope for her holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her.
Now, after all of that, all that weeping and wailing and mourning, and the great city was being destroyed, and now it says,
Rejoice over her, thou in heaven. What are they rejoicing about?
Are they rejoicing about the damnation of the city? They're basically rejoicing because he took revenge on them.
He made them pay for their sins. Heaven rejoices not over the damnation of the sinners, but because of the triumph of righteousness, the exaltation of Jesus Christ, and the elimination of his enemies, and the arrival of his kingdom on the earth.
That's what they're rejoicing about, the coming millennial kingdom, not the past of the old one, not the destruction of the dam, but the arrival of the kingdom, the millennial kingdom.
And a mighty angel took a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall the great city
Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more. That millstone is symbolic of the engines of commerce having ceased to function.
The millstone is thrown into the ocean. He clarifies that in just a second. And the voice of the harpers and the musicians and of pipers and trumpeters shall be heard no more in thee at all.
And no craftsman of whatsoever craft he be shall be found in thee any more. And the sound of the millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.
And the light of the candle shall shine no more at all in thee. And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee.
For thy merchants were the great men of the earth. For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
Now, how long do you think the world can exist in this post -Babylonian collapse condition?
It's worse than over and ruined. Let's see what you don't have. You don't have music.
We can get along with that music, I guess. No more industry, maybe.
No more food. It won't last long. No more powerful light.
No more weddings. Not just in Babylon, but throughout the world.
So we know that the time between verse 23 of chapter 18 of Revelation and chapter 19, verse,
I think, 6, is not a very long period of time. From the time
Babylon is destroyed until the time the Lord comes and destroys it all is not very long.
In fact, the return of the Lord might, in fact, be before the fall of Babylon.
But the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom is not until after. And in her was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and all that were slain upon the earth.
The religious and commercial and political systems symbolized in Babylon and embraced by the entire world will have committed unspeakable atrocities against God's people.
Now God will avenge the slaughter of His people. Now, 24 is the last verse of chapter 18, unless I left one out.
We're going to peek two verses ahead to verse 19, verse 2, and look at the judgment and what the
Bible says about the judgment. Here's what it says. For true and righteous are
His judgments. For He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth, with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand.
So it is a just judgment. It is a righteous judgment. It is a true judgment.
And it ushers in a period unlike any other period of history.
A period so good, ruled by such a good leader, that you would think that people would do right.
They're forced for a thousand years to do right, because if they do wrong, the
Lord will send them no rain. The Lord will punish them. He will rule them with a rod of iron.
But at the end, He will loosen Satan. Because remember, Satan is not in the great sea of fire yet.
He is in the pit waiting to be released after a thousand years. When He releases it, there will be plenty of people joined, enough that when they rebel, and He does the final victory, a river of blood.
That's an Armageddon. And not just a little river, a big river.
I tend to think it really is a river, the length and width and depth that it's described.
Some people say, well, it's just symbolic of a major, major, bloody victory. I don't think so.
I think it really is. It really is this deep for thousands of square miles.
Okay. I am almost on time. Any comments or questions or anything to add?
Yes, sir. Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm. Yeah, they thought that they, whether they did or not, they thought they had not only control of the bodies of the subjects, but of their souls.
And they thought it was theirs to ration out. That's part of what led to the
Reformation, is Martin Luther couldn't quite come to terms with the fact that he had to buy his dead father out of purgatory.
Well, we were talking about that. I don't know whether it was at home or yesterday. One might think, maybe, yeah,
I'm going to say it anyhow. Maybe if we're going to be so generous and when we say a person has a right to their life to be taken, that is it okay to kill a baby before it's born or it's okay to kill it just immediately before it's delivered or maybe within five hours after it's killed.
Maybe we should just go ahead and push it up to 40. And then at the time of the decision, flip a coin and say mother or child and let the lot fall where it may.
No, it is always, it is always, when you take a life, you're taking something that belongs to God.
You're taking something that's created in the image of God. It's not like killing a chicken to eat for breakfast.
It's taking a something that is created in the image of God. No, you can't take the soul.
Oh, okay, it does. You're killing something that has a soul. Maybe that's a little harsh, but I think most of us understand what
I'm saying. I'm not saying that we should, I'm just saying if you extend the logic, there is no difference between saying a week old, you can still kill it, but two weeks you can't.
We are. Yes, sir. And he shed probably more blood than anybody.
Well, I don't know. I can't even say that. He shed a lot of blood. Well, Stalin did more.
That's why I hesitated and the Cambodians did even more.
It's always been in man to destroy and kill by blood because they're all motivated by the same killer,
Satan. It is.
It is. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for giving us your holy word that when we come together and study and compare what is to what really is, we know that all the things that we take as facts are subject to man's ability to measure and understand.
But all things that really are, are subject only to God.
And he will tell us what we need to know if we belong to him and if we study his word and have the
Holy Spirit to enlighten us. Bless us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray.