Is the Bible Reliable?……Prewritten History–Part 2……by…John MacArthur…All Rights Reserved……(A copy of this message on cassette tape may be obtained by calling 1-800-55-GRACE)……Selected Scriptures Tape GC 1350

Introduction

The prophets of the Old and New Testaments had a knowledge that was beyond the ability of the human mind–they recorded prewritten history. Fulfilled prophecy vindicates the divine authorship of the Bible. Because only God is omniscient, prewritten history is a strong apologetic for the truth of Scripture.

A. Abraham

In Genesis 12 and 15 God told Abraham that his wife Sarah would have a son from whom a great nation would come. God gave that prophecy when Sarah was ninety and Abraham was nearly a hundred. Unable to have children, their faith was wavering. But God came to Abraham and said, “I will surely return to you at this time next year; and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son” (Gen. 18:10). Because Sarah laughed at God’s Word, Abraham named their son Isaac, which means “laughter.” The birth of Issac vindicated God’s Word to Abraham and Sarah.

B. Moses

In Exodus 3 we see Moses in a state of weakness and vacillation. He needed something to transform him; God chose prophecy. He told Moses that the very place where he stood would be a place of worship for Israel (v. 12). In Exodus 19-40 Moses returned there and worshiped God with the nation.

Also, God told Moses that his brother Aaron was on his way to meet him (Ex. 4:14). Then after forty years of separation they met at the place of the burning bush. God used prophecy in the life of Moses as He did with Abraham and Sarah–to prove He is God.

C. Jesus

The incarnation of Christ was the consummation of all that the prophets had said. The Jewish leaders came to Christ, saying, “Master, we would see a sign from thee” (Matt. 12:38). And indeed, Christ predicted His resurrection (vv. 39-40), then fulfilled it (Matt. 28:6). John the Baptist wanted to know if Jesus was the promised Messiah so he sent some of his disciples to the Lord. Jesus answered John by alluding to His fulfillment of messianic prophecy (Matt. 12:2-6).

D. Zedekiah

1. His fate foretold (Ezek. 12:12-13)

“The prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the twilight, and shall go forth; they shall dig through the wall to carry out through it; he shall cover his face, that he see not the ground with his eyes. My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.”

The prince in this passage is King Zedekiah. Ezekiel called him the prince because Jehoiachin was still the king of Judah, though he was in captivity. Ezekiel prophesies that a man would be taken to Babylon, stay there until death, but never actually see the city.

2. His Fate Fulfilled (2 Kings 25:1-7)

“It came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about. And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. And on the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed in the city and there was no bread for the people of the land. And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king’s garden (now the Chaldeans were against the city round about); and the king went the way toward the Arabah. And the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; and all his army were scattered from him. So they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah; and they pronounced sentence upon him. And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of bronze, and carried him to Babylon.”

This prophecy came to pass. The last thing Zedekiah ever saw with his eyes was the slaughter of his sons. Jeremiah 52:10-11 says, “The king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he slew also all the princes of Judah, in Riblah. Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.” How could Ezekiel have known all that? Because He who knows everything told him. This a great testimony of fulfilled prophecy in the context of Scripture.

Review

I. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING TYRE

II. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING SIDON

III. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING EGYPT

IV. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING NINEVEH

Lesson

V. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING BABYLON (Isa. 19-22; 14:23; Jer. 51:26, 43)

Babylon one was of the greatest cities of the ancient world. It was famous for its wealth (which was greater than even Nineveh), culture, education, trade, and architecture.

A. The Forecast

1. Isaiah 13:19-22–“Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldean’s excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and ostriches shall dwell there, and he-goats shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the coastlands shall cry in their desolate houses, and jackals in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.”

God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. Today those cities are underneath the Dead Sea. When the prophet said that Babylon would be like Sodom and Gomorrah, he was predicting the destruction of the greatest city in the ancient world.

2. Isaiah 14:23–“I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.”

3. Jeremiah 51:26, 43–“They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou shalt be desolate forever, saith the Lord. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land in which no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass by it.”

These prophecies tell us many things about the ruins of Babylon: certain animals will be there. Arabs won’t pitch their tents there they will be uninhabited and it will be totally desolate.

The Vindication of Archaeology

Babylon was founded by Hammurabi in the eighteenth century before Christ, but reached its zenith under Nabopolasser and his famous son, Nebuchadnezzar, in the seventh and sixth centuries.

Archaeological digs in the nineteenth century gave us an understanding of how great Babylon once was. Before that, the city was so desolate, no one knew where it existed. Now it is known that the EuphratesRiver ran through the middle and under the walls of the city. The city was surrounded by marshes and swamps. From Herodotus we learn that Babylon covered an area of about 196 square miles with fifty-six miles of wall around it, surrounded by a broad and deep moat. The wall was about 311 feet high and eighty-seven feet wide. Embedded all along the wall were one hundred gates made of bronze (Histories 1:181).

B. The Fulfillment

1. The fall of the city

Herodotus tells us how Babylon fell. The Persians saw how great the city was and wanted it for themselves. However, they knew they could not break down walls. They calculated that the river bed of the Euphrates was deep and wide enough to march an army through. So King Cyrus ordered his troops to dig huge canals off the river to divert it from the city, which dried up the river (Histories 1:190-92).

a) Belshazzar’s feast

The Babylonians felt so secure that while they were being stormed by the Persian army, they had a party. At Belshazzar’s feast men drank wine from the gold vessels his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the Temple of Jerusalem.

Daniel 5:1-12 says, “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the lampstand upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spoke, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me its interpretation, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. Then came in all the king’s wise men; but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation of it. Then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were perplexed. Now the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet house; and the queen spoke and said, O king, live forever; let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed. There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him, whom the king, Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, the king, I say, they father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers, forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams and revealing of hard sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel.”

b) Belshazzar’s fate

So the king called for Daniel. And Daniel told the king, “O thou king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honor; and for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down. But when his heart was lifted upon, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him. And he was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses; they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the Most High God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that He appointeth over it whomsoever He will. And thou, his son, O Belshazzar, 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 thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine from them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of bronze, 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, 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. In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain. And Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom” (Dan. 5:18-31).

2. The result of the fall

In 539 B.C. Babylon came crashing down. By A.D. 116 Trajan described it as a pile of mounds (Dio Cassius, History 68:30). Today, forty-five miles south of Baghdad lies the wind-swept ruins of Babylon. Archaeologist Kerman Kilprect said in his Explorations in Bible Lands in the Nineteenth Century, “What a contrast between the ancient civilization and the modern degradation. Wild animals, boars, and hyenas, jackals, and wolves, and an occasional lion infest the jungle [ancient Babylon]” (cited by George Davis, Bible Prophecies Fulfilled Today [Philadelphia: The Million Testaments Campaign], 1955), pp. 78-9). And that is exactly what Isaiah said would happen. That region is so desolate, the Bedouins won’t live there and vegetation won’t grow because the soil is so bad. Statistician Peter Stoner commented on the prediction that “stones will not be taken away” by observing that the “rocks, which were imported to Babylon at such great cost, have never been moved” (Science Speaks: An Evaluation of Certain Christian Evidences [Chicago: Moody, 1963], p. 94). The prophet also said that men would not pass by the ruins. Today there is no road leading to Babylon and it has very few visitors. Isaiah said Babylon would be covered by swamps and in fact most of that region is buried under a deep bed of silt.

Peter Stoner says that the probability of all those predictions happening by chance is 1 in 5,000,000,000–which essentially is no chance (p. 95). God wiped out the city. In The Bible as History Werner Keller quoted an inscription that said, “Altogether there are in Babylon 53 temples of the chief gods, 55 chapels of Marduk, 300 chapels for the earthly deities, 600 for the heavenly deities, 180 altars for the goddess Ishtar, 180 for the gods Nergal and Adad and 12 other altars for different gods” ([New York: Bantam, 1956], p. 338). Idolatry destroyed Babylon.

An Archaeologist’s Fascination with Babylon

The following is part of a letter written by Edward Chiera to his wife while he was excavating Kish, which is eight miles from Babylon: “This evening I made my usual pilgrimage to the mound covering the ancient temple tower … Seen from below, it does not look so high as might be expected of a Babylonian temple tower. Did not that of Babylon pretend to reach to heaven? One gets the answer after ascending it. Though rather low (it can hardly be more than five hundred feet), still from the top the eye sweeps over an enormous distance on the boundless, flat plain. The ruins of Babylon are nearer. All around the tower small heaps of dirt represent all that remains of Kish, one of the oldest cities of Mesopotamia.

“…The large network of canals, which in ancient times distributed the waters of the Euphrates over all this land, is now represented by a series of small mounts of dirt, running in all directions. Even the Euphrates has abandoned this land by changing its course….

“A dead city! I have visited Pompeii and Ostia, and I have taken walks along the empty corridors of the Palatine. But those cities are not dead: they are only temporarily abandoned. The hum of life is still heard, and life blooms all around. They are but a step in the progress of that civilization to which they have contributed their full share and which marches on, under their very eyes.

“Here only is real death. Not a column or an arch still stands to demonstrate the permanency of human work. Everything has crumbled into dust. The very temple tower, the most imposing of all these ancient constructions, has entirely lost its original shape. Where are now its seven stages? Where the large stairway that led to the top? Where the shrine that crowned it? We see nothing but a mound of earth–all that remains of the millions of its bricks. On the very top [are] some traces of walls. But these are shapeless: time and neglect have completed their work.

“Under my feet are some holes which have been burrowed by foxes and jackals. At night they descend stealthily from their haunts in their difficult search for food, and appear silhouetted against the sky. This evening they appear to sense my presence and stay in hiding, perhaps wondering at this stranger who has come to disturb their peace. The mound is covered with white bones which represent the accumulated evidence of their hunts.

“Nothing breaks the deathly silence….

“A jackal is now sending forth his howl, half-cry and half- threat. All the dogs of the Arab village immediately take up his challenge, and for a moment the peace is upset by howling and barking.

“… But a certain fascination holds me here. I should like to find a reason for all this desolation. Why should a flourishing city, the seat of an empire, have completely disappeared? Is it the fulfillment of a prophetic curse that changed a superb temple into a den of jackals? Did the actions of the people who lived here have anything to do with this, or is it the fatal destiny of mankind that all its civilizations must crumble when they reach their peak? And what are we doing here, trying to wrest from the past its secrets, when probably we ourselves and our own achievements may become an object of search for peoples to come?” (George C. Cameron, ed., They Wrote on Clay: The Babylonian Tablets Speak Today [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1966], pp. xi-xiv).

The Bible solves Edward Chiera’s mystery.

VI. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING SAMARIA (Micah 1:6)

A. The Forecast

“I will make Samaria like an heap of the field, and like plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down its stones into the valley, and I will uncover the foundations.”

Samaria was a famous city, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. Its was to Israel what Jerusalem was to Judah. Samaria was built by Omri, who was a horrible king. First Kings 16:25 tells us he was one of the most wicked kings who had ever lived. However, Omri’s son, Ahab, was even more wicked (1 Kings 16:30). Jezebel was Ahab’s wife and the daughter of the king of Sidon. She had the true prophets of God killed and led the people to worship Baal. Because of all that, God said through Micah that He would destroy the city.

B. The Fulfillment

Samaria was wiped out by Sargon of Assyria in 722 B.C. It later fell again to Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. and John Hyrcanus in 120 B.C. during the Maccabean revolt.

Today there are fields where Samaria once stood. Historian Van de Velde in his Syria and Palestine remarks, “Samaria, a huge heap of stones! her foundations discovered, her streets ploughed up, and covered with corn fields and olive gardens. Samaria has been destroyed, but her rubbish has been thrown down into the valley; her foundation stones, those grayish ancient quadrangular stones of the time of Omri and Ahab, are discovered, and lie scattered about on the slope of the hill” (cited by John Urquhart, The Wonders of Prophecy [New York: Gospel Publishing House, n.d.], p. 128).

VII. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING MOAB AND AMMON (Ezek. 25:3-4, 11; Jer. 48:47; 49:6)

Today Amman is the capital of Jordan. Until recent years what was the ancient city of Ammon had been desolate. Now, it’s a city of thousands of people.

A. The Forecast

Ezekiel 25:3-4, 11 declares, “Say unto the Ammonites, Hear the word of the Lord God. Thus saith the Lord God: Because thou saidst, Aha, against my sanctuary, when it was profaned, and against the land of Israel, when it was desolate, and against the house of Judah, when they went into captivity, behold, therefore, I will deliver thee to the men of the east for a possession, and they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their dwellings in thee; they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall drink thy milk. And I will execute judgments upon Moab; and they shall know that I am the Lord.”

Jeremiah also commented on Moab and Ammon: “Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days, saith the Lord. And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the Lord” (48:47; 49:6). God said He would judge Moab and Ammon–they would be occupied by “men of the East.” But He also said He would restore them in the end times. Babylon did not receive that promise, so it has not been rebuilt.

B. The Fulfillment

Conquered by men from the East, this region remained desolate for over two-thousand years. But today there is a growing city in that very place where Moab and Ammon once was. There was only a handful of people there in the 1920s, twenty thousand in the 1950s, and now hundreds of thousands–exactly as the prophet said.

VIII. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING EDOM (Isa. 34:6-10, 13-15; Jer. 49:16-18; Ezek. 25:13-14; Obad. 18)

A. The Forecast

1. Isaiah 34–Verses 6-9 say, “The sword of the Lord is filled with blood; it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the wild oxen shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their hand shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch.”

Petra, the capitol of Edom, was built inside a tremendous canyon. The only way to get in was to go through a long gorge that was so narrow, only a single horse could pass through at some places. Because that was the only entrance, Petra could be guarded by a few men. Once inside, it opened up into a massive city carved out of the rocks. Although there was no water inside, there was a spring nearby that continued to bubble up. So the Edomites ran water along little ridges in the walls and if anyone wanted water they could tap this supply. The conquerors of Petra simply plugged the water supply and so “the streams thereof [were] turned into pitch,” just as the prophet said.

Isaiah 34:10 says, “It shall not be quenched night nor day; its smoke shall go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.” Verses 13-15 say, “Thorns shall come up in its palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be an habitation of jackals, and a court for ostriches. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the kites [hawks] also be gathered every one with her mate.”

2. Jeremiah 49:16-18–“Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from there, saith the Lord. Also Edom shall be a desolation; every one that goeth by it shall be appalled, and shall hiss at all its plagues. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring cities, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it.”

The people of Petra lived in the clefts of the rock. They thought they were impregnable, but God said He would tear them down.

3. Ezekiel 25:13-14–“Thus saith the Lord God: I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman, and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword. And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people, Israel; and they shall do in Edom according to mine anger and according to my fury; and they shall know my vengeance, saith the Lord God.” said that Edom would be devastated as far as the city of Teman. And just as he said, every city of Edom was wiped out except Teman, which is the modern-day town of Maan (Floyd Hamilton, The Basics of the Christian Faith [New York: George H. Doran, 1927], pp. 312- 13).

4. Obadiah 18–“The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord hath spoken it.”

B. The Fulfillment

In the sixth century B.C. the Nabateans, an eastern Arabian tribe, moved west. After they took Petra by cutting off their water supply, they swept north and conquered that area. Later, the Jewish people under John Hyrcanus and Simon of Gerasa conquered it. This fulfilled the prophecy that Edom would be eventually taken by Israel.

Until the nineteenth century, which is when Petra was discovered, some skeptics believed that the Edomites never existed. When archaeologists discovered Petra, it became obvious that what the Bible said about the Edomites was true. That city was one of the wonders of the ancient world, but today is absolutely bare– nothing lives there except lizards and animals. Alexander Keith said, “I would that the skeptic could stand as I did, among the the ruins of this city among the rocks, and there open the sacred Book and read the words of the inspired penman, written when this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the world. I see the scoffer arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ruined city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as that of one risen from the dead,– though he would not believe Moses and prophets, he believes the hand-writing of God Himself in the desolation and eternal ruin around him” (Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion [London: T. O. Nelson and Sons, 1861], p. 339).

IX. BIBLICAL PROPHECY CONCERNING CHORAZIN, BETHSAIDA, AND CAPERNAUM (Matt. 11:20-23)

A. The Forecast

“Then began he [Jesus] to upbraid the cities in which most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee Bethsaida! For is the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, that for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hades; for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sidon, it would have remained until this day.”

The people of Chorazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida were favored by God because the Messiah did most of His miracles in those three cities. In fact, Matthew 4:13 tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ made His home in Capernaum. The cities were at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of Christ, tells us that this area was rich in soil and pasture, producing every variety of tree, and inviting by its productivity even those who had the least inclination for agriculture. Not one spot of ground went used (Wars 3.3.2). In Jesus’ day it was a thickly populated area as well as being very beautiful. Four main roads converged in that vicinity so that everything criss- crossed.

B. The Fulfillment

Today there is no Chorazin, no Bethsaida, and no Capernaum. Apparently they were destroyed in an earthquake about A.D. 400. King Albalid of Damascus tried to build a palace at the ruins of Bethsaida around A.D. 700, but his plans were waylaid.

Jesus said the three cities would be destroyed and they were. On the shore of Galilee there’s another city called Tiberias. Tiberias was there when Jesus walked the earth and it is still there today. The Romans destroyed 985 Jewish towns during the Bar Kokhba revolts of A.D. 132-135–but Tiberias is still there. Jesus made no mistakes. When you stand on the ground of Tiberias and look at the spot where Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum were, you know that God wrote the Bible.

Peter Stoner took the nine prophecies covered here plus two more and figured out that the probability of them all coming to pass by accident is 1 in 5.76 x 10 59 (pp. 95-98). The odds are absolutely incredible that all these things could happen by chance after they had been predicted. They didn’t happen by chance because Someone ordered them. As we see what is coming to pass in the world around us, we anticipate the return of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. We see God’s Word being vindicated in the past, the present, and the future. I praise the Lord for prewritten history because it proves that He wrote the Bible.

Focusing on the Facts

1. Who is the king in Ezekiel 12:12-13?

2. What did Ezekiel say would happen to that king’s children (2 Kings 25:1-7)?

3. In Isaiah 13:19-22 God said Babylon would be like _______ and ___________.

4. Under whose reigns did Babylon reach its Zenith?

5. Who was the ruler in Babylon when it fell to the Persians (Dan. 5:5- 12)?

6. Samaria was built by __________, who was one of the most wicked kings in the Northern Kingdom (1 Kings 16:25).

7. What did God say about Moab and Ammon that He didn’t say about Babylon (Jer. 48:47; 49:6)?

8. Name the capitol city of Edom.

9. God said that the entire region of Edom would be destroyed except for the city of __________ (Ezek. 25:13-14).

10. Why were Chorazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida favored by God?

Pondering the Principles

1. At times, someone gains popularity because he claims to possess the ability to predict the future. Such fame also brings considerable wealth to that “prophet.” Christ spoke of the future, but not out of a desire for worldly gain. His prophecies vindicated His Messiahship (Matt. 11:2-6). Only God could speak of events before they happen with one-hundred-percent accuracy. In addition, prophecy give support to the supernatural character of Scripture. Certainly, inaccurate prophecy would undermine the veracity of the Word of God. But Scripture is profitable not just for an accurate view of the future, but for directing our steps. The God who knows tomorrow cares about your needs today.

2. Christianity is a religion based on actual historical events. Jesus lived, died, and rose again in history. The Bible claims that peoples such as the Hittites and Edomites existed in history. In fact, the Scriptures have many specific references to persons, places, and events in history. In addition we have seen that the Bible records history before it happens–what we have termed “prewritten” history. The Bible said Babylon would fall–Babylon fell. The Bible said Samaria would be destroyed–Samaria was destroyed. The Bible said Moab and Ammon would be devastated and later rebuilt–Moab and Ammon were devastated and later rebuilt. Similarly, the Bible says God created the heavens and earth in six days. The Bible says Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible said eternal life is through faith in the person and substitutionary work of Christ. The entire Bible is God’s Word–the Bible is truth!