Prophecy Speaks And Cities Fall
Pastor H. L. Hastings
THE WITNESS OF SKEPTICS TO THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE
WHATEVER men may say of the Bible, one thing is certain, in scores of places its authors claim that they speak by divine direction’ declaring the word of the Lord. Hence the Bible makes claims that are made by no ordinary book. But are these claims just and well founded? What is there in the Bible that could not have written by mortal man? In it there is history, but men can write history; there is poetry, but men can write poetry; there are laws, but men can make laws; there are instructions, but men can give instructions.
But there is one kind of writing in the Bible, which no man is able to imitate. No man can tell what will happen five hundred years hence, or five years hence; for no man can tell what will happen on the morrow. But page after page of the writings both of the Old and of the New Testaments are filled up with plain, distinct, definite, and positive statements as to what was to come to pass in future days.
And these predictions are not threats which their authors could themselves fulfill, as a man might prophesy that there would be a fire, and then go and kindle it himself. But they reach on through centuries, down to “the latter days,” and they claim to be, not merely the words of wise men, foreseeing what will be, but the words of God, declaring what shall be, and saying, I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.” Isaiah 46:9, 10. “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” Isaiah 42: 9.
And the prophet summons the idolaters to meet this test, saying, “Produce your cause, said the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, said the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods: yes, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.” Isaiah 41: 21-23.
This very rule we propose to apply to the records of Scripture, and see whether the prophets can abide their own tests. If they can, we accept them as teachers inspired of God; if not, we must reject them as impostors and deceivers.
We know full well that the books of the Bible are very ancient, for we can trace them back step by step from age to age, for more than eighteen hundred years. But how shall we know that the prophecies there recorded have been fulfilled? We may know it by appealing to existing facts. The prophecies speak of cities, countries, kingdoms, and nations; and those countries still exist, and we have only to go to those lands to see for ourselves whether those prophecies have been fulfilled, and are being fulfilled today. But if we are not able to go ourselves, we can take the testimony of men who have been there. And lest skeptics should question the truthfulness of the witnesses, we will depend mainly upon the testimony of skeptical travelers and writers.
The learned French skeptical writer, C. F. Volney, wrote a journal of “Travels in Syria and Egypt,” of which the Edinburgh Review, after mentioning numerous geographers and writers, remarks, “It was reserved for the genius of Volney to combine their detached accounts with the fruit of his own observation and study, so as to present the world with a complete description of Syria.”
Prophecy Tested by Records of Historians
We shall therefore take a few of those prophecies which are admitted by infidels to have been written at least two thousand years ago, and lay them side by side with the writings of skeptics, like Volney and Gibbon, who wrote in the eighteenth century. Whose statements we shall also confirm and amplify by a number of extracts from the writings of several other more modem travelers. And thus bringing the predictions contained in the Scriptures and the records of the historians side by side, we shall test the pretensions of the prophets by historic facts which have existed for ages and which exist today. If the prophecy and the facts do not agree, the prophecy cannot stand; but if the prophecy, uttered two thousand years ago, is fulfilled by the facts that meet the traveler’s gaze today, then Omniscience must have dictated the predictions, and Omnipotence secured its fulfillment. And if this be proved, then it is plain that the Bible contains the revelation of the mind and will of God to men.
In exhibiting the facts in the case, we shall make use of the collection of Dr. Alexander Keith, who has with much pains and labor compiled the following parallel statements, which we copy entire, with very slight additions:
Edom
PROPHECY: “Edom [or Idumae] shall he a desolation.” Jeremiah 49:17. “I will make thee most desolate.” Ezekiel 35: 3.
FULFILLMENT: “The traces of many towns and villages are met with. At present all this country is a desert.”-Ibid.
PROPHECY: “I will stretch out Mine hand upon Edom. . . . and I will make it desolate from Teman.” Ezekiel 25:13.
FULFILLMENT: “And Maan [Teman, as marked in the map prefixed to Burckhardt’s Travels] is the only inhabited place in it.” - Id., page 436.
PROPHECY: “If grape gatherers come to thee, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? If thieves by night, they will destroy till they have enough. But 1 have made Esau bare.” Jeremiah 49: 9, 10. “Edom shall be a desolate wilderness.” Joel 3:19.
FULFILLMENT: “The whole plain presented to the view an expanse of shifting sands’; the depth of sand precludes all vegetation of herbage.” - Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria, page 442.
PROPHECY: “I will make thee small among the heathen. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of your heart, O you that dwells in the clefts of the rock, that holds the height of the hill: though thou should make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, said the Lord. Also Edom shall be a desolation.” Jeremiah 49:15-17.
FULFILLMENT: “The ruins of the city [of Petra, or the Rock, the capitol of Edom] burst on the view in their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices, from which numerous ravine and valleys branch out in all directions. And the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings, presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld.” - Irby and Mangles’ Travels, page 422. “The rocks are hollowed out into innumerable chambers of different dimensions,” etc.-Mackmichael’s journey, page 228. “Some of them are so high, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost.” Burckhardt’s Travels, page 442.
PROPHECY: “I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: And you shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel 35: 9. “Every one that goes by it shall be astonished.” Jeremiah 49:17.
FULFILLMENT: “I would that the skeptic could stand as 1 did among 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 scoff 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 the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God Himself, in the desolation and eternal ruin around him.”-Stephen’s Incidents of Travel in Arabia Petra, Volume 11, page 58.
PROPHECY: “They shall call them, The border of wickedness.” Malachi 1:4.
FULFILLMFNT: The Arabs in Edom are called “a most savage and treacherous race.” - Irby and Mangles’ Travels. “They have the reputation,” says Burckhardt, “of being very daring thieves.” And Pococke describes them as “a very bad people, and notorious robbers.” - Volume 1, page 136.
PROPHECY: “They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall he there, and all her princes shall be nothing.” Isaiah 34:12.
FULFILLMENT: “There is not a single human being living near it.”-lrby and Mangles’ Travels, page 439. The sepulchers are numerous and magnificent; and “great,” says Burckhardt, “must have been the opulence of a city which could dedicate such a monument to the memory of its rulers.” - Travels, page 425.
PROPHECY: “Thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof.” Isaiah 34:13.
FULFILLMENT: “Most of the plants at Petra are thorny.”-lrby and Mangles’ Travels, page 435. “The thorns,” as described by Laborde, “rise to the same heights with the columns; creeping and prickly plants hide the remains of the works of man: the thorn or bramble reaches the top of the monuments, grows on the cornices, and conceals the base of the columns.” - Burckhardt’s Travels, page 366.
PROPHECY: “Shall I not. . . destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the Mount of Esau?” Obadiah 1:8.
FULFILLMENT: Even the clearing away of rubbish merely “to allow the water to flow” into an ancient cistern, in order to render it useful to themselves, is spoken of by Burckhardt “as an undertaking far beyond the views of the wandering Arabs.” - Id., page 366.
PROPHECY: “The cormorant [Hebrew, kath] . . . shall possess it.” Isaiah 34: 11.
FULFILLMENT: “The bird katta is met with in immense numbers; they fly in such large flocks that the Arab boys often kill two or three of them at a time, merely by throwing a stick among them.”-Id., page 406.
PROPHECY: “The owl. . . shall dwell in it.” Isaiah 34:11.
FULFILLMENT: “Eagles, hawks, and owls were soaring in considerable numbers above our heads, seemingly annoyed at any one approaching their lonely’ habitation.” - Irby and Mangles’ Travels, page 415.
PROPHECY: “And the raven [or crow] shall dwell in it.” Isaiah 34:11.
FULFILLMENT: “The fields of Tafyle [in the immediate vicinity of Edom], are frequented by an immense number of crows.” Burckhardt’s Travels, page 405. ‘
PROPHECY: “It shall be a habitation of dragons.” Isaiah 34:13.
FULFILLMENT: “The Arabs in general avoid them [the ruins in Edom] on account of the enormous scorpions with which they swarm.” - Volney’s Travels, Volume 2, page 344
Nineveh
PROPHECY: “He will make an utter end,” “of the place thereof. 1 will make thy grave; for thou art vile.” Nahum 1: 9, 8, 14.
FULFILLMENT: “The mounds show neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building, but are in many places overgrown with grass.” - Buckinaham’s Travels in Mesopotamia, Volume 2, page 49, etc
PROPHECY: “She is empty, and void, and waste.” Nahum 2:10 “Your crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which. . . flee away, and their place is not known where they are.” Nahum 3:17.
FULFILLMENT: “Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected: the city, and even the ruins, had long since disappeared; the vacant space afforded spacious field for the operation of the two armies.” -Gibbon’s History, Volume 8, pages 250, 251. ‘Where are those ramparts of Nineveh.” - Volney’s Ruins, chapter 2.
Tyre
PROPHECY: “It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.” Ezekiel 26:5.
FULFILLMENT: “Instead of that ancient commerce, so active and so extensive, Sour [Tyre] is reduced to a miserable village.” -Volney’s Travels, Volume 3, page 212. “They live obscurely on the produce of their little ground and a trifling fishery.” - Id., page 225.
Egypt
PROPHECY: “I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers.” Ezekiel 30:12.
FULFILLMENT: “Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and, at length, the Ottoman Turks!” - 1d., Volume 1, pages 74, 102.
PROPHECY: “They shall he there a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of kingdoms.” Ezekiel 29:14, 15.
FULFILLMENT: “Egypt above five hundred years has bee under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves.”-Gibbon’s History, Volume 6, page 109.
The Arabs
PROPHECY: “His [Ishmael’s] hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” Genesis 16:12.
FULFILLMENT: “They are ‘armed against mankind.’ A single robber or a few associates are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band [of Arabs] assume the character of a lawful and honorable war.” - Id., Volume 9, page 237.
Chaldea
PROPHECY: “I will punish the land of the Chaldeans.” Jeremiah 25:12. “I will send unto Babylon fanners, that shall fan her, and shall empty her land.” Jeremiah 51: 2.
FULFILLMENT: “These splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain two or three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country, afford a remarkable proof of the singular desolation to which ii has been subjected.”-Transactions of the Literary Society, Bombay, Volume 1, page 123. It is an “immeasurable wild, bounded only by the desert,” “a barren waste,” “a bare desert,” “a barren country,” etc.-Captain Mignan’s Travels, page 31; Major Keppel’s Narrative,” Volume 1, Page 260; Buckingham’s Travels in Mesopotamia, Volume 2, page 242, etc.
PROPHECY: “A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up.” Jeremiah 50:38. “Behold, the hinder most of the nations shall he a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.” Verse 12.
FULFILLMENT: “The canals at present can only be traced by their decayed banks.” - Transactions of the Literary Society, Bombay, page 138. “They are now dry and neglected.” – Rich’s Memoirs, page 4. “The absence of all cultivation, the sterile arid and wild character of the scene, formed a contrast to the rich and delightful account delineated in Scripture.” - Mignan’s Travels, page 5.
PROPHECY: “Her cities are a desolation.” Jeremiah 51:43.
FULFILLMENT: The ancient cities of Chaldea no longer exist.” - Major Rennell’s Geography of Herodotus, page 335. The more modern cities, which flourished under the empire of the caliphs, are all in ruins.” Mignan’s Travels. The Whole country is strewed over with the debris of Grecian, Roman, and Arabian towns, confounded in the same mass of rubbish.” - Malte-Brun’s Geography, Volume 2, page 119.
Babylon
PROPHECY: “Babylon shall become heaps.” Jeremiah 51:37; Isaiah 13 and 14; Jeremiah 50 and 51.
FULFILLMENT: Babylon has become “a vast succession of mounds,” “a great mass of ruined heaps,” “uneven heaps of various sizes. The larger ruins have the appearance of irregular and misshapen hills; the lesser form a succession of little hillocks!’ (See Keppel, Porter, Rich, Mignan, etc.)
PROPHECY: “Cast her up as heaps.” Jeremiah 50: 26.
FULFILLMENT: “In seeking for bricks, the workmen pierce into the mound in every direction, hollowing out deep ravines and pits, and throwing up the rubbish in heaps on the surface.” Rich’s Memoirs, page 22.
PROPHECY: “And destroy her utterly.” Jeremiah 50: 26.
FULIFILLMENT: “From the excavations in every possible shape and direction, the regular lines of the original ruins have been so broken that nothing but confusion is seen to exist.”-Sir R. K. Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 338.
PROPHECY: “Let nothing of her he left.” Jeremiah 50: 26.
FULFILLMENT: “Vast heaps constitute all that now remains of ancient Babylon.”-Keppel’s Narrative, Volume 1, page 196. Some of the heaps are “completely exhausted of all building materials; and nothing is now left but heaps of earth and fragments of brick.”-Mignan’s Travels, pages 199, 200. (See also Porter’s Travels, pages 335, 356, etc.)
PROPHECY: “Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness.” Isaiah 47:5.
FULFILLMENT: “A silent and sublime solitude, a silence as profound as the grave.”-Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, pages 294, 407.
PROPHECY: “Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate.” Jeremiah 50:13.
FULFILLMENT: Babylon, “the tenantless and desolate metropolis.”-Mignan’s Travels, page 234. “The eye wandered over a barren desert in which the ruins were nearly the only indication that it been inhabited “-Keppel, page 196.
PROPHECY: “Sit in the dust, sit on the ground, O daughter of the Chaldeans!” Isaiah 47:1.
FULFILLMENT: “The whole face of the country is covered with buildings.” - Rich’s Memoirs, page 2.
PROPHECY: “Thy nakedness shall he uncovered.” Isaiah 47:3.
FULFILLMENT: “I am perfectly incapable of conveying an adequate idea,” says Captain Mignan, “of the dreary, lonely nakedness that appeared before me.” Id., page 116.
PROPHECY: “It shall never be inhabited.” Isaiah 13: 20. (See also Jeremiah 50:40, etc.)
FULFILLMENT: “Ruins, composed Eke those of Babylon, of heaps of rubbish impregnated with niter, cannot be cultivated.” Rich’s Memoirs, page 16. “The decomposing materials of a Babylonian structure doom the earth on which they perish to a lasting sterility.”-Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 391.
PROPHECY: “Neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.” Isaiah 13:20.
FULIFILLMENT: “In the sixteenth century there was not a house to he seen” at Babylon-Ray’s Collection of Travels, Rawolf, page 174. In the nineteenth it is still “Desolate and tenantless.” Mignan, page 384.
PROPHECY: “Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there.” Isaiah 13: 20.
FULFILLMENT: “I saw the sun sink behind the Mujelibie,” says Captain Mignan, “and obeyed with infinite regret the summons of my guides,” Arabs completely armed. He could not persuade them to remain longer, from the apprehension of evil spirits. It is impossible to eradicate this idea from the minds of these people.” - Travels, pages 2, 198, 201, 235. (See also Buckingham.)
PROPHECY: “Neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.” Isaiah 13:20.
FULFILLMENT: “All the people of the country assert that it is extremely dangerous to approach this mound after nightfall, on account of the multitude of evil spirits by which it is haunted.” Rich’s Memoirs, page 27. “By this superstitious belief they are prevented from pitching a tent by night, or making a fold.”
PROPHECY: “But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there.” Isaiah 13: 21.
FULFILLMENT: “There are dens of wild beasts in various parts.” - Rich’s Memoirs, page 30. (See also Porter, Keppel, Buckingham, etc.)
PROPHECY: “And their houses shall he full of doleful creatures.” Isaiah 13: 21.
FULIFILLMENT: These dens, or caverns, “are the retreat of jackals, hyenas, and other noxious animals.” “The ‘strong odor’ or ‘loathsome smell’ which issues from most of them is sufficient warning not to proceed into the den.”-Keppel’s Narrative, pages 179, 180. (See also Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 342, etc.)
PROPHECY: “Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handles the sickle in the time of harvest.” Jeremiah 50:16.
FULFILLMENT: “On this part of the plain, both where traces of buildings were left and where none had stood, all seemed equally naked of vegetation.”-Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 392. “The eve wandered over a barren desert, in which the ruins were nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited.”-Keppel’s Narrative, page 196.
PROPHECY: “The sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.” Jeremiah 51: 42.
FULFILLMENT: “For the space of two months throughout the year, the ruins of Babylon are inundated by the annual overflowing of the Euphrates.”
PROPHECY: “Neither does any son of man pass thereby.” Jeremiah 51:43.
FULFILLMENT: “So as to render many parts of them inaccessible by converting the valleys into morasses.”-Rich’s Memoirs, page 13. (See also Sir R. K. Porter, Buckingham, etc.)
PROPHECY: “A desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.” Jeremiah 51: 43.
FULFILLMENT: After the subsiding of the waters, even the low heaps become again “sunburned ruins,” and the site of Babylon, like that of the other cities of Chaldea, is “a dry waste,” 4a parched and burning plain.”-Buckingham’s Travels, Volume II, page 302, 305. (See also Keppel, Volume 1, page 196.)
PROPHECY: “I Will. . . make thee a burnt mountain.” Jeremiah 51: 25.
FULFILLMENT: “The Birs Nimrood presents the appearance of a circular hill.”-Rich’s Memoirs, page 35. “It is strewed over with petrified and vitrified substances.” - Mignan’s Travels page 10. “On the summit are immense fragments of brick work, of no determinate figure, tumbled together [confounded], and converted into solid vitrified masses” (Rich’s Memoirs, page 36), “the change exhibited on which is only accountable from their having been exposed to the fiercest fire, or rather scathed by lightning.” Mignan’s Travels, page 208. They are “completely molten,” and ‘ring like glass.”-Keppel, page 194. (See also Sir R. K. Porter’s Travels, Volume II, page 308, 326.)
PROPHECY: “I will stretch out Mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks.” Jeremiah 51: 25.
FULFILLMENT: “Throughout the whole of these awful testimonies of the fire (whatever fire it was!), which doubtless hurled them from their original elevation, the regular lines of cement are visible.”-Sir R. K. Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 312.
PROPHECY: “They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shall be desolate forever.” Jeremiah 51: 26.
FULFILLMENT “The vitrified masses” are unfit for either use and the bricks in other parts of the ruinous heap, “cannot be detached whole.”-Mignan’s Travels, page 206. It cannot, therefore be rebuilt. (See also Porter, Rich, Buckingham, etc.)
PROPHECY: “Merodach [the palace] is broken in pieces.” Jeremiah 50: 2.
FULFILLMENT: “The Mujelibie is a mass of confusion, none of its members being distinguishable.”-Buckingham’s Travels, Volume 2, page 273. “On the southeast it is cloven into a deep furrow from top to bottom.”-Mignan’s Travels, page 166.
PROPHECY: “Thou shall be brought down to the sides of the pit.” Isaiah 14:15.
FULFILLMENT: “The sides of the ruin exhibit hollows worn partly by the weather. All the sides are worn into furrows.” - Id., page 167. (See also Rich’s Memoirs, page 29.)
PROPHECY: “Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols.” Isaiah 14: 11.
FULFILLMENT: “His very pile was once the seat of luxury and vice; now abandoned to decay.” - Id., page 172.
PROPHECY: “The worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.” Isaiah 14: 11.
FULFILLMENT: “The base is greatly injured by time and the elements.” - Id., page 166. “The summit is covered with heaps of rubbish.”-Rich’s Memoirs, page 29. “The mound was full of large holes, strewed with the carcasses and skeletons of animals recently killed.”-Keppel’s Narrative, page 179. In the warm climate of Chaldea, wherever these are strewed, worms cannot be wanting.
PROPHECY: “Thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch.” Isaiah 14:19.
FULFILLMENT: “Several deep excavations have been made in different places.”-Sir R. K. Porter’s Travels, Volume 2, page 442. After being brought down to the grave, it is cast out of it again, for “many of the excavations have been dug by the rapacity of the Turks, tearing up its bowels in search of hidden treasures.” - Ibid.
PROPHECY: “And as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword.” Isaiah 14:19.
FULFILLMENT: Several of the large holes, whereof it is full, “penetrate very far into the body of the structure.” - Id., page 342. (See also Keppel’s Narrative, page 179; Mignan’s Travels, page 171, etc.)
PROPHECY: “That go down to the stones of the pit.” Isaiah 14:19.
FULFILLMENT: On the supposed site of the hanging gardens of Babylon, near to the palace, there are now disclosed to view “two subterranean passages, covered over with large masses of stone. This is nearly the only place where stone is observable.” - Keppel’s Narrative, Volume 1, page 205.
PROPHECY: “As a carcass trodden under feet.” Isaiah 14:19.
FULFILLMENT: “The Mujelibie rises in a steep ascent, over which the passengers can only go up by the winding paths worn by frequent visits to the ruined edifice.”-Buckingham’s Travels, page 258. From the least to the greatest of the heaps, they are all trodden on. “The ruins of Babylon are trodden under foot of men.”-Volney’s Ruins, Chapter 4.
PROPHECY: “Her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces!’ Jeremiah 50: 2. “All the graven images of her gods he has broken unto the ground.” Isaiah 21: 9.
FULFILLMENT: “Engraved marbles, idols of clay, small figures of brass and copper, bronze figures of men and animals are found among the ruins.”-Rennell’s Geography of Herodotus, page 368. (See also Rich, Porter, Mignan.)
PROPHECY: “The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken.” Jeremiah 51: 58.
FULFILLMENT: “Where are the walls of Babylon?” asks Volney (“Ruins, chapter 2). “In common with other travelers,” says Major Keppel, “we totally failed in discovering any trace of the city walls.”-Narrative, Volume 1, page 175. (See also Bombay Literary Transactions, Captain Frederick, on the Ruins of Babylon, Volume 1, page 130, 131; Rich’s Memoirs, page 43, 44.)
PROPHECY: “Babylon shall become an astonishment.” Jeremiah 51: 37. “Every one that goes by Babylon shall be astonished.” Jeremiah 50:13.
FULFILLMENT: “I cannot portray,” says Captain Mignan, “the overpowering sensation of reverential awe that possessed my mind while contemplating the extent and magnitude of ruin and devastation on every side.” - Travels, page 117. (See also Sir R. K. Porter, Rich, etc.)
PROPHECY: “The Lord will do His pleasure on Babylon.” Isaiah 48:14. “Every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon.” Jeremiah 51: 29. “I will bring upon that land all My words which 1 have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book.” Jeremiah 25:13.
FULFILLMENT: “It was impossible to behold this scene, and not to be reminded of how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present: that she should never be inhabited; that the Arabian should not pitch his tent there; that she should become heaps; that her cities should be a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness!”-Keppel’s Narrative, page 197. (See also Rich, Porter, Mignan, Buckingham, etc.)
Conclusion
We here conclude our lengthy extracts from the work of Dr. Keith, which is fitly named a “Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity,” and ask the reader to candidly weigh this subject. Our arguments are facts, facts visible to the world, a few of which are here laid before the reader. The question before us is, Does the Bible contain a revelation of the divine will and mind? Does it record a message from the Creator to His creatures; from God in heaven to man on earth?
It is certain that no mortal man, no heathen oracle, no spirit from the spheres, ever has definitely disclosed the events and circumstances of future ages. People talk about the sacred books of heathen nations; but what are they? Where are the prophets that in heathen countries have foretold coming events? It is true the oracle at Delphi said to Croesus when he inquired about the advisibility of invading the Medes, that if he crossed the river Halys, he would ruin a great empire. He crossed it, and he did ruin one-he ruined his own. Whether he was defeated or victorious, the ambiguous oracle was sure to come true, and he was left to guess his way along as best he could.
The sacred books of ancient and idolatrous nations, whatever else they may contain, do not contain distinct and definite prophecies foretelling future events. These are peculiar to one book,-the Bible. And these predictions, uttered thousands of years ago, by men devoid of reputation, wealth, and power, whose moldering dust is hid in long-forgotten graves, have been watched over by an omniscient eye, and accomplished by an omnipotent hand; being fulfilled by men who were ignorant of their existence, and having had their fulfillment unconsciously recorded by infidels who denied their inspiration.
And as we mark these accurate and circumstantial predictions, compared with their equally accurate fulfillment, what must our conclusion be? What must be the conclusion of every candid skeptic, and every honest man? Must it not be, that “the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”?