Babylon’s Ruins and Bible Prophecy
The illustrations of the ruins of Babylon found on pages three and ten of this issue are intensely interesting. Some two thousand five hundred and twenty years ago the prophet Daniel and his three distinguished young companions, together with a host of other Israelitish captives, were marched within the magnificent walls of which these are the ruins. It is easy for one to imagine the prophet viewing these very walls and being stirred with appropriate indignation at the evidences of cultured and seductive idolatry. The animals that are still so conspicuous in relief on the ruined walls, and which stood for so much in the idolatries of Babylon, have, no doubt, many a time met the earnest disgust of Daniel while he was compelled to mingle among the most talented of the historic empire, a leading characteristic of which was its devotion to its senseless gods. Divine providence has permitted these ruins to remain, and men have been led to spend time and money in uncovering them, so that this skeptical age may have the great object-lesson that the Bible is dealing with fact, and not fancy or fable. The book of the Bible that Daniel wrote, through its sublime prophecies, points us to the time when the Lord Jesus Christ will come to this earth the second time. The second coming of Christ, and the culmination of all earthly dominion, is the sublime climax of the prophet's vision. We are living in the days when the great event is hovering over the world, ready to burst forth with all the glories of eternity and immortality. Daniel was one of the leading characters chosen of God to write the prophecies that forecast the glorious culmination of events that reach forward to the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven. It is very fitting that the God of Daniel should providentially work to save the ruins of the place where the prophet lived and labored, and to have them disclosed to us in this momentous time.