Babylon and the "New World Order",
By
Robert King
Watchman
(E-SHUOWANGZHEREN)
www.e-jehovahs-witnesses.com
watchman@e-jehovahs-witnesses.com
A terrifying storm is brewing. A storm unlike any calamity that has ever afflicted this world. It is described in prophecy as a windstorm of jehovah. But this oncoming tempest is no natural phenomenom, such as as supersised hurricane brought on by global warming, neither is it a supernatural act of God, such as the 10 plagues which God once afflicted ancient egypt. The windstorm of jehovah is to be and brought about by sheer human folly, greed and wickedness, drivenby demonic madness, it will be expressed in the form of international wars, global financial collapse, food shortages, .and deadly pandemics. the ensuing chaos will overturn the present political system of things and give rise to a short lived totalitarian New World order, so-called.
Jehovah God being all knowing possessing the unfathomable ability of seeing from the beginning the finale, foresaw the disastrous end of human rulership long ago. the operative principle is as stated at Hosea 8:7, " for it is a storm wind they keep sowing, and a storm is what they will reap". the 30th chapter of Jeremiah describes the storm this way, saying,look a wind storm of Jehovah, rage itself has gone forth and onward sweeping tempest, upon the head of the wicked wirl, the burning anger of Jehovah will not turn back in until he will have executed, and until he will have carried out the ideas of his heart, in the final part of the days you people give your consideration to it.
The bleak period Just ahead of us is variously described by scriptures as the time of the end, the final part of the days and the conclusion of a system of things. without question the long suppressed expression of Jehovah's rage will usher in the most distressing time in all human history. the coming cataclysm will most certainly shake civilization to its very foundation even causing to be called into question the continued existence of mankind upon this earth. As Jesus forewarned when he said , "unless those days were cut short no flesh would be saved".
In Bible times God often accomplished his judgments by using human agencies according to what read in the book of the prophets Gods adverse judgments against Israel and Judah, as well as numerous other nations in ancient times were expressed primarily by means of the conquering Assyrian and Babylonian empires. for example the original windstorm of Jehovah recorded by the prophet Jeremiah, found its expression in the storm like invasion on judah can be by the Babylonians. in order to demonstrate the fact that he was merely using human military forces though, Jehovah invariably disposed of the very agencies he once used. Thus even though the king of Babylon was acting as Jehovah's appointed executioner when he destroyed Jerusalem, eventually God also weighed Babylon the scales of justice and disposed of that kingdom by means of the need of Persian army.
To establish the authenticity of Bible prophecy , the sudden overthrow of Babylon was foretold by Isaiah over 200 years before it occurred, even before Babylon and the chaldeans gained ascendancy over Syria to become the dominant world power. in the 44th and 45th chapters of Isaiah Jehovah foretold the precise detail that he would dry out the mighty Euphrates River of Babylon, and the two leaved doors of the city would swing open before great king named Cyrus. The prophesied downfall of babylon at the very zenith of its power was significant , because at the time the city was considered to be "invincable". Babylons massive double wall system was virtually impenetrable by ancient armies with crude battering rams and spears, but on the night of october the 2nd in the year 539 bce, the combined armies of the medes and the persians, somehow engineered the diversion of the euphrates river, perhaps opening gates upstream to divert water to irregatrion canals or flood detention ponds, whatever the case, they were able to swiftly lower the water level sufficiently to allow the invaders to stealthily wade across the river. And because the city was caught up in a drunken celebration of their god marduke, babylons supposed protector, the gates of the city facing the river were left unlocked . Babylon fell to cyrus in one night exactly as jehovah had foretold in isaiah. To emphasise that the overthrow of babylon was sanctioned by heaven, God caused to appear the back of a human hand, writing on the wall in belshazars palace, moments before cyrus captured the city. The prophet daniel was called into the palace to decipher the enimatic, "mene mene, tekel, parsin" for the terrifeid king. God had indeed numbered days of the babylon kingdomand weighed, and weighed thenm in the balances. Belshazzar was killed that very night and the Medes in the Persians took control of mighty Babylon.
The fulfillment of the foretold fall of Babylon not only establishes the authenticity and reliability of God's prophetic word,. but more importantly it also provides a pattern for what is to come significantly Cyrus the conquering Persian monarch was referred to by Jehovah as my anointed one, or Messiah in ancient hebrew. As such, Cyrus pictures the Messiah Jesus Christ in his role as a world conquering king and as savior and liberator of God's oppressed people. in that respect. Babylon typifies the last King of Bible prophecy, called the 8th in the book of Revelation, which is symbolized by a scarlet colored wild beast riden by a brazen prostitute. the kingdom of the King is destined to rule the wo for symbolic one hour , or 3 1/2 literal years, during which time the final human kingdom will conquer and kill Jehovah's chosen ones only to be annihilated by God's Cyrus like anointed king Jesus Christ.
Elsewhere in prophecy, namely in Habukuk, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel, the king of Babylon is portrayed as the dispoiler and punisher of nations, as a mass murdering tyrant and is the last kingdom in a succession of kingdom's which will ultimately be destroyed by God's kingdom. the prophecy of habbukuk, which is a vision for a time yet appointed, depicts the chaldean on a genicdal rampage, ensnaring all humanity, as if happless fishes caught in a net, and destroying the very city of God, but ultimately the chaldean is destroyed is destroyed in warfare, not with the medes and persians, but by the armies of heaven, harmonising with what revelation describes as the war of armageddon. It is noteworthy that isaiah 14:18-20, said of the king of Babylon, "all other kings of the nations have lain down and glory, each one in his own house, but as for you, you have been thrown away without a burial place for you, like a detested sprout, clothed with killed men, stabbed by the sword that are going dowwn into the stones of the pit, like a carcass, trodden down, you will not become united with them in the grave, because you brought your own land to ruin , you kilLed your own people, to time indefinite the offspring of eveil doers will not be named".
The significance aspect of prophecy, is that it says , "all other kings of the nations have lain down in glory, all others except the king of Babylon. how is that to be understood? Does not ancient Babylon occupy an honored place in history just like all the other ancient kingdoms have come and gone? A trip to the british museum, for example, ought to confirm. As the inheritor as the imperial mantle, its as if London is the prime curator for the remains of the biblical kingdoms with displays commemorating among others, the egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, persian, grecian, and roman cultures of civilisations past. So, how is it that babylon has been thrown away without an honorable bural place in the pantheon of fallen empires? Again, the ultimate relisation of the prophecy has to do with the appaearance with the 8th king, and will not be succeeded by any other earthly empire, as was ancient babylon, no, he will meet an ingloriuos end on the battlefield of armageddon, and as revelation depicts, the vanquished armies that will fight against christ and his heavenly cavalry are destined to become fallen carcasses, left to rot on the ground like manure. Their disastrous ignaminious end will rise like smokeforever and ever. In that respect then, the modern king of babylon will not receive an honorable burial, as did his illustrious imperial forbearers, including the typical babylonian empire of antiquity.
When the prophet Daniel was a Babylon is inspired to interpret a series of dreams that pictured the succession of world powers from the time of Babylon until Christ Kingdom takes complete control. in the second chapter of Daniel the king of Babylon was given divinely inspired dream of an immense metallic image, according to Daniel's interpretation, the head of Gold represented the king of babylon himself, nebuchadnezzar. the silver breasts and arms, bronze belly and thighs, iron legs and feet mixed with an amalgam of iron and clay, each represent a succeeding empire in the timeline. in time the image is struck, at its iron and clay feet and crushed to dust by a stone cut out of the mountain which Daniel explained represented God's kingdom. logically the silver represents the Medo Persian Empire, the belly and thighs of copper symbolized Greece which Daniel went on to foretell by name, and the iron legs represent Rome. but what about the about the feet composed of iron and molded clay? What do they represent? the watchtower says the feet and in toes of the image represents, quote, "a politically divided world". one problem with the watchtower's interpretation, is that the legs of iron supposedly, not only represent the Roman Empire, but also the British Empire, as well as the United States. Contradictorally though, according to the watchtower, an indistcript kingdom made up of various nations composing the kingdom of a "politically divided world", is also ruling along with the Roman Anglo-American kingdom. But that violates the natural progression of kingdoms presented in the prophetic dream, since the Anglo-American king is still very much in control.
Jehovah's Witnesses should also take note of the fact that the watchtower's interpretation of the second chapter of Daniel makes no allowance for an 8th king. while it is true that we live in a politically divided world, in keeping with the meaning of the composite image , the political divide must of necessity, be the result of the political divisions that exist between two world powers. true history reveals that the world is divided between the two antagonistic systems embodied in the Anglo-American dual world power of our modern era, the iron and clay feet perfectly symbolize that union.
the iron typifies the imperial rule handed down from the Roman Empire, perpetuated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy all down to the Middle Ages, expressed then in the form of the feudal system. later the iron like imperial form of ,rulership was extended globally by means of European colonialism and finally of all the colonial powers, the London centered British Empire emerged in the late 1700s as the most dominant. The clay represents the republican form of government , originally championed by the United States. As the prophecy says the rulership of the kingdom will be mixed with the offspring of mankind , clay being a fitting symbol of mankind, since as the Bible says, man was created from the dust, or clay of the earth. for the first time in history America provided a government by the people , and for the people, hence the rule imposed by an elitist oligarchy became mixed with the offspring of mankind., but the natural fusion of iron and clay does not stick together and that is reflected in the fact that the anglo-american American dual world power is an unworkable union of incompatible systems. but what is a composite colossal image itself represent ? it seems most fitting that it symbolizes the eighth king of biblical prophecy, which is to be established upon the power of this soon to collapse Anglo-American dual world empire symbolized by the iron and clay feet of the image that serves as its pedestal. the image itself in its totality, with it's head of gold represents what might best be described as the neo-Babylonian empire of global government.
The 13th chapter of Revelation picks up on the symbolisms of the prophecy of Daniel depicting a composite beast with seven heads and 10 horns, having the body of a leopard , but the feet of a bear , and a the mouth of a lion .the seven heads of the beast also represents seven successive kingdoms, or empires, and satan the devil is said to give the beast its power and authority. And in the 17th chapter of Revelation we are told that the beast itself represents the last King, an eighth king that springs from the seven. in the 17th chapter of Revelation the Angel explained the mystery to John telling him that five kings had already fallen, one king was in existence in the first century, obviously Rome, and one king not counting the eighth , had not yet come on the scene back then. the king that did not exist when Revelation was written is a modern-day Anglo-American dual world power. the 13th chapter of Revelation foretells that one of the beasts seven heads experiences as sword stroke but then miraculously recovers, and after it seeming resurrection from the abyss of death and beast compels all mankind ,under pain of death to worship an image of itself and receive the 666 mark of doom.what do these things portend for the future? well according to the watchtower the visions of Revelation of already been realized in modern times. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the seven headed beast , representing the Anglo-American duo, received its foretold mortal head wound backed during the first world war. however that interpretation is not in accord with reality, after all, Great Britain and the United States were victorious , it is true that Great Britain suffered an appalling number of casualties, but that's the nature of war. besides the first world war was not even fought on the British Isles, the seas of Great Britain were not devastated , the war was largely fought on the European mainland. the massive British Empire did not dissolve either, and furthermore neither the long-standing British monarchy, nor the parliamentarian government suffered collapse. Neither did the United States suffer anything that could be considered comparable to the foretold sword stroke. as a matter of fact the United States suffered far more casualties in the American Civil War and afterwards in the second world war, than it did in the first world war. And the American homeland and government were in no way staggered during America's brief involvement in the first world war. what is more, the prophecy of Revelation indicates that the death and revival of the beast initiates a period of judgement, and that everyone with out exception who accepts the Mark of the beast will ultimately be condemned by God. the 666 symbolizes God's irreversible judgment, yet the watchtower teaches that mankind has already received the mark of the beast, obviously though, that simply cannot be true. the sobering truth is the deathstroke upon the seventh head of the beast has not occurred yet, that means that the leading nations of this world are facing and president an unanticipated calamity. what we are soon to be confronted with is the sudden collapse of the leading nations of the world making up what is known as the Anglo-American dual world power.
but from the ashes of their demise will arise Satan's New World order, most likely embodied in the already existing bureaucratic shell of the United Nations,, but gone will be the democratic system gone will be the republican form of government, gone will be the constitutionally protected human rights, gone will be freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. the eighth king will control everything including the world's nuclear arsenals as well as the monetary system that will be set up in the aftermath of the collapse of the US dollar system so that no one will be able to buy or sell working life's provisions without bending their needed image of the beast any nation or individual that dares to defy the dictates of the beast will be mercilessly dispatched. all indications are that the last hour of the eighth king and the New World order has approached, the windstorm object of his about to be unleashed.