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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · February 11, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 9

Read the full edition

Historical Department.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Prophecy is History in Advance.

HISTORICAL SKETCHES SHOWING THE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY.

BY ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.
(Continued.)
Now about this time, that is, about 600 B. C., God gave this king of Babylon a dream which none of his wise men could either tell or interpret. He saw a great image. “This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” Dan. ii, 32, 33. Daniel, explaining this to the king, said: “Thou art this head of gold.” Verse 38. Evidently this image was to represent all the successive universal monarchies beginning with the first one after the flood, and ending with the last one at the end of the world.
“Thou art this head of gold.” Nebuchadnezzar being the king of Babylon, is taken as the representative of that nation. This, as we have seen, was the first universal monarchy founded after the flood. It existed about 1700 years with various changes. It was fitly represented by the head of gold, as it was the richest and most opulent kingdom that ever existed. But the Lord continues: “But after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee.” This is what the prophet told the king when Babylon was in the height of its glory. As there are many things very wonderful and interesting to the Bible student in the prophecies relating to the overthrow of Babylon, we will notice them and their exact fulfillment.
It would seem like presumption in the prophet to predict the overthrow of Babylon after it had stood nearly 2000 years, and was now the unrivaled mistress of the world; but our wonder is greatly increased when the Lord proceeds by the mouth of other prophets to give the exact circumstances with regard to the time when, and the manner in which, it shall happen. When these predictions were made, the event seemed to be the most improbable of anything which could transpire.
1. God sent his people into captivity at Babylon, and foretold the number of years they were to stay there. To the Jews he says: “And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it a perpetual desolation.” Jer. xxv, 11, 12.
2. He foretold the nation by whom Babylon should be overthrown. Jer. li, 11: “Make bright the arrows; gather the shields; the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple.”
3. The very man who was to conduct this mighty work was mentioned in prophecy by his name 200 years before he was born. Isa. xlv, 1–5: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron; and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. For Jacob, my servant’s sake, and Israel, mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.”
4. Babylon was to be taken suddenly, by surprise. Isa. xlvii, 11: “Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off; and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.” Jer. iv, 24: “I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware. Thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord.”
5. Babylon trusted in Euphrates for defense; but God declared that he would use even this in her overthrow. He says: “I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry.” “A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up.” “The passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire.” Jer. li, 38; li, 32, 36.
6. Babylon was to be taken in the night time, while the inhabitants were feasting and rejoicing. “In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord.” Jer. li, 39. “I will make drunk her princes.” Verse 57. Isa. xxi, 2–5, 9: “A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam; besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. Therefore are my loins filled with pain; pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth; I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it. My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me. The night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods hath he broken unto the ground.”
7. The king was to be seized with great surprise and terror. Isa. xxi, 2–4: “A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam; besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. Therefore are my loins filled with pain; pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth. I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it.”
8. At the very time they were feasting, God gives command to arise and take the city. “Arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield.”
9. The Lord foretells the confusion of the mighty men, the captains and the watchmen of Babylon, at the time it was to be taken. Jer. li, 30, 31: “The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight; they have remained in their holds; their might hath failed; they became as women; they have burned her dwelling-places; her bars are broken. One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end.”
10. He says that the loins of the king shall be loosed. “And I will loose the loins of kings.” Isa. xlv, 1.
11. God said that he would open the gates of Babylon before Cyrus, that he might take the city. “To open before them the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.” Isa. xlv, 1.
Various other particulars are made, but we cannot notice them here. Now, if any one of these predictions should fail in the overthrow of Babylon, the prophecy would fail, and prove the prophet an impostor. None but one divinely inspired would dare enter into so many particulars. Most of these predictions were made 200 years before Babylon fell. Now, if we find them minutely fulfilled in history, it will greatly strengthen our faith in the Bible.
Now to return to the history of Babylon. After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, four of the kings in succession followed him on the throne of Babylon in the period of about twenty-five years. The last of these was Belshazzar. He ascended the throne B. C. 555, and reigned till B. C. 538. Some years before this, Cyrus, son of the king of Persia, was born. His grandfather was the king of Media. His grandfather dying, the uncle of Cyrus, known in the Scriptures under the name of Darius, Dan. v, 31, became king of Media. Cyrus married his uncle’s daughter 550 B. C., and thus became heir to the thrones of both Media and Persia. 556 B. C., Cyrus and his uncle, the king of Media, marched against the king of Babylon, and defeated his army in a great battle. Ten years after this, Cyrus unites the forces of Persia with those of Media, and again marches against Babylon. Being defeated on all sides, the Babylonians take refuge in the city of Babylon.
Thus Rollins in his Ancient History Vol. I, p. 128 describes this interesting event:
“Cyrus stayed in Asia Minor till he had entirely reduced all the nations that inhabited it into subjection, from the Ægean sea to the river Euphrates. From thence he proceeded to Syria and Arabia, which he also subjected. After which he entered into Assyria, and advanced toward Babylon, the only city of the East that stood out against him.”
“The siege of this important place was no easy enterprise. The walls of it were of a prodigious height, and appeared to be inaccessible, without mentioning the immense number of people within them for their defense. Besides, the city was stored with all sorts of provisions for twenty years. However, these difficulties did not discourage Cyrus from pursuing his design; but, despairing to take the place by storm or assault, he made them believe his design was to reduce it by famine. To this end he caused a line of circumvallation to be drawn quite round the city, with a large and deep ditch; and that his troops might not be overfatigued, he divided his army into twelve bodies, and assigned each of them its month for guarding the trenches. The besieged, thinking themselves out of all danger, by reason of their ramparts and magazines, insulted Cyrus from the top of their walls, and laughed at all his attempts, and all the trouble he gave himself, as so much unprofitable labor.”
And well they might laugh at all the efforts of Cyrus, or the power of man, while protected in that mighty city. The reader will remember that it was fifteen miles square, surrounded by a wall 350 feet high, and 87 feet thick. It had one hundred gates of brass. Around the outside of the wall was a wide and deep canal filled with water. The Euphrates ran through the center of the city. On each side of the river in the city were high walls so that none could pass over the river within the city only through strong gates which were always well guarded. They had provisions for twenty years, and thousands of soldiers to guard the city. But God had said that Babylon should fall, and had named Cyrus as the man to conduct the work. The time had come, and the city must fall. Cyrus knew that he could never take it by force or by starvation. It must be done by stratagem. To accomplish this, Cyrus dug an artificial channel for the river, which would carry it around the city instead of through it. When all things were ready he opened large sluices both above and below the city, from the Euphrates into this artificial channel. This soon drained the river of its water, and allowed the soldiers of Cyrus to march into the city through the bed of the river. As Rollins beautifully describes this, I give his words entire:
“After having seen the predictions of everything that was to happen to the impious Babylon, it is now time to come to the accomplishment of those prophecies; and to resume our narrative of the taking of that city. “As soon as Cyrus saw that the ditch which they had long worked upon was finished, he began to think seriously upon the execution of his vast design, which as yet he had communicated to nobody. Providence soon furnished him with as fit an opportunity for this purpose as he could desire. He was informed that in the city a great festival was to be celebrated; and that the Babylonians, on the occasion of that solemnity, were accustomed to pass the whole night in drinking and debauchery.
“Belshazzar himself was more concerned in this public rejoicing than any other, and gave a magnificent entertainment to the chief officers of the kingdom, and the ladies of the court. When flushed with wine, he ordered the gold and silver vessels, which had been taken from the temple at Jerusalem, to be brought out; and, as an insult upon the God of Israel, he, his whole court, and all his concubines, drank out of those sacred vessels. God, who was provoked at such insolence and impiety, at the same instant made him sensible who it was that he insulted, by a sudden apparition of a hand, writing certain characters upon the wall. The king, terribly surprised and frightened at this vision, immediately sent for all his wise men, his diviners, and astrologers, that they might read the writing to him, and explain the meaning of it. But they all came in vain, not one of them being able to expound the mat-ter, or even to read the characters.
It is probably in relation to this occurrence that Isaiah, after having foretold to Babylon that she should be overwhelmed with calamities that she did not expect, adds: “Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up and save thee from those things that shall come upon thee.” Isa. xlvii, 12, 13. The queen’s mother (Nitocris, a princess of great merit) coming upon the noise of this great prodigy into the banqueting room, endeavored to compose the mind of the king, her son, by advising him to send for Daniel, with whose abilities in such matters she was well acquainted, and whom she had always employed in the government of the State.
“Daniel was therefore immediately sent for, and spoke to the king with a freedom and liberty becoming a prophet. He put him in mind of the dreadful manner in which God had punished his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, and the flagrant abuse he made of his power; when he acknowledged no law but his own will, and thought himself empowered to exalt and abase, to inflict destruction and death wheresoever he would, only because such was his will and pleasure. ‘And thou, his son,’ says he to the king, ‘hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this, but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of Heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them: and thou hast praised the gods of silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know; and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified. Then was the part of the hand sent from him, and this writing was written: And this is the writing that was written, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE, God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it; TEKEL, Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting; PERES, Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.’ This interpretation, one would think, should have aggravated the consternation of the company; but they found means to dispel their fears, probably upon a persuasion that the calamity was not denounced as present or immediate, and that time might furnish them with expedients to avert it. This, however is certain, that for fear of disturbing the general joy of the present festival, they put off the discussion of serious matters to another time, and sat down again to their banquet, and continued their revelings to a very late hour.
“Cyrus, in the mean time, well informed of the confusion that was generally occasioned by this festival, both in the palace and the city, had posted a part of his troops on that side where the river entered into the city, and another part on that side where it went out; and had commanded them to enter the city that very night, by marching along the channel of the river as soon as they found it fordable. Having given all necessary orders, and exhorted his officers to follow him, by representing to them that he marched under the guidance of the gods, in the evening he made them open the great receptacles, or ditches, on both sides of the city, above and below, that the water of the river might run into them. By this means the Euphrates was quickly emptied, and its channel became dry. Then the two fore-mentioned bodies of troops, according to their orders, went into the channels, the one commanded by Gobryas, and the other by Gadatas, and advanced without meeting any obstacle. The invisible Guide who had promised to open all the gates to Cyrus, made the general negligence and disorder of that riotous night subservient to his design by leaving open the gates of brass, which were made to shut up the descents from the quays to the river, and which alone, if they had not been left open, were sufficient to have defeated the whole enterprise. Thus did these two bodies of troops penetrate into the very heart of the city without any opposition, and meeting together at the royal palace, according to agreement, surprised the guards and cut them to pieces. Some of the company that were in the palace opening the doors to know what noise it was they heard without, the soldiers rushed in, and quickly made themselves masters of it; and meeting the king who came up to them sword in hand at the head of those who were in the way to succor him, they killed him, and put all those that attended him to the sword. The first thing the conquerors did afterward, was to thank the god for having at last punished that impious king. These words are Xenophon’s, and are very worthy of attention, as they so perfectly agree with what the Scriptures have recorded of the impious Belshazzar.
“The taking of Babylon put an end to the Babylonian empire, B. C. 538, after a duration of 210 years from the beginning of the reign of Nabonassar.” Rollins’ Ancient Hist., Vol. I., pp. 130, 131.
“Cyrus having entered the city in the manner we have described, put all to the sword that were found in the streets: he then commanded the citizens to bring him all their arms, and afterward to shut themselves up in their houses. The next morning, by break of day, the garrison which kept the citadel being apprised that the city was taken, and their king killed, surrendered themselves to Cyrus. Thus did this prince, almost without striking a blow, and without any resistance, find himself in peaceable possession of the strongest place in the world.” Ibid. p. 133.
Thus it will be seen that all the wonderful prophecies relating to the overthrow of Babylon were minutely fulfilled. Truly every word of God is sure. Of this event the scripture record says: “In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain, and Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.” Dan. v, 30, 31.
By reference to the margin it will be seen that this event occurred B. C. 538. It is said that Darius the Mede took the kingdom, although it was actually Cyrus, because Darius was yet living and Cyrus was acting under his command. Darius soon after died, leaving Cyrus king. Says Kitto: “Under Belshazzar, the last king, B. C. 538 or 539, Babylon was taken by Cyrus after a siege of two years. Thus was fulfilled the prophetic words, ‘Thou art this head of gold, and after thee shall arise another kingdom.’ Thus passed away Babylon the first universal kingdom represented in the great image of Daniel ii by the head of gold, and in chapter vii by the lion. Mede-Persia thus overthrew and succeeded Babylon.
(To be continued.)