Ruins of Babylon | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 24, 1885

Ruins of Babylon.

We select the following facts: that whereas the soil of the country around Babylon was so fertile, and cultivation brought to so high a pitch, that two hundred fold was the ordinary produce,—now all is a barren waste, "and the sower and reaper are cut off from the land." Where the palm trees grew a hundred feet high, and the captive Israelites hung their harps on the willows, now not a tree is to be seen, but "a desert, a dry land and a wilderness." Ctesiphon, its rival city on the opposite bank of the Tigris, is in the same condition. Mr. Buckingham says of its site, that the smallest insect under heaven would not find a single blade of grass wherein to hide itself. Where vast treasures of gold and silver were heaped together, now there is nothing but heaps of rubbish, or according to the prediction, "Babylon has become heaps." Immense tumuli (says Sir R. K. Porter,) of temples, palaces, and human habitations of every description are everywhere seen, and form long and varied lines of ruins. And though it was foretold of Ammon and Philistia that they should be stables for camels, and a crouching place for flocks, which is fulfilled by the Arabs pasturing their sheep there, yet, though the same nation infests the country of Babylon, yet a contrary prediction is literally verified in them. "The Arabian shall not pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there." Instead of the shepherd and his flocks, "wild beasts of the deserts" were to lie there, and the houses were to be "full of doleful creatures." And thus Sir R. K. Porter describes, that two or three lions were seen by him on the ruinous mound which marks the site of the ancient temple of Belus. Their broad footmarks were everywhere seen; and Major Keppel describes it to be the unmolested retreat of jackals, hyenas, and other noxious animals. Finally, Keith notices that of Babylon generally it was said, "it shall be taken from thence," which he considers fulfilled in the circumstance of the Arabs coming and taking away its bricks, which form the chief building materials far and near. Yet of the temple of Belus, although it was a part of Babylon, it was foretold that it should become as a "burnt mountain,"—and, "They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for a foundation." And thus it has actually come to pass, through the action of lightning or fire, that its ruins are so firmly cemented together, that Captain Mignan states it to be utterly impossible to detach any of them! —Investigator of Prophecy.