Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

Okay, make sure you have a handout. There's a one-page color sheet on the back which will help shed some light on some things as we go through and we'll of course have slides up front as well. We're looking to Babylon here today and so let's We did a Syrian culture that was following Egyptian culture, so Babylonian culture is the one we're looking at now.

And as you have on a slide there in your first page of the handout, Babylon maintained some level of continuity of culture for over 3,000 years. That doesn't mean that they were dominant as the dominant empire. Their dominance as an empire was actually fairly short. But they did have some continuity of culture there for about 3,000 years. But the invasion of the Persians marked the end of Babylon's dominance. And we'll take a look at that. So what we have there is a thinner line extending over 3,000 years and then a heavier line of more substantial dominance to some degree there for the Babylonian historical period.

We showed this map last time and it's also in a form on your last page color sheet there. Here is the Assyrian Empire, and so Babylon at first broke free, so here's this independent city, at first they broke free from Assyria, and then attacked Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, now modern-day Mosul, as we mentioned. And that was in 612 BC. That's not noted particularly, because that's not the final date.

From there, we also noted the Medes and the Scythians. And we put one arrow, but it's actually a whole line of attacks from the Medes and the Scythians from the north and the east, attacking at the same general time period. And then the Babylonians moving on to Haran. And that was the city where Abraham had gone from Ur, right?

And then from there, Carchemish is the place, and that date is noted on your handout, 605, that was the final battle. That's when the Assyrians lost it, and the Babylonians took them out. So 605 was the end of the Assyrian dominance and the end of the Assyrian Empire. They still continued, but not as the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonians then took over much of the empire.

All right, you do have a picture of this one. We say, here, swallow this tablet. Not really. Here is the tablet, the Babylonian tablet, describing his defeat of the Assyrians at Nineveh in 612 BC. So we have this tablet describing that defeat when he defeated Nineveh.

That was the beginning of the Assyrians losing their empire. When you lose your capital city, I think that's pretty significant, right? So this was the empire under which the Jews of the southern kingdom, starting with royalty, were exiled to Babylon. So this is the Babylonian exile, as it's called, with the Jews being taken to Babylon.

And you have that on the color sheet. And that's the way it was at about 550. Obviously, some of these empires have shifting borders and whatnot, but about 550, that was the definition of it. And you have this on the top of your first page there, and this shows the divided kingdom.

That is, initially Solomon had one kingdom, and it was actually a fairly extensive kingdom, even going up to the Euphrates River. And then after his time, the kingdom split in two, where you had Judah, and Benjamin being the southern kingdom and then the northern kingdom, the other ten tribes. Oh, and by the way, before the Assyrians had taken Israel, it made the point that a lot of the people from different tribes in the north that said, I've had enough of this. and then they would go to the south, so that by the time the Babylonians were taking the Jews to Babylon, they were taking not just Judah and Benjamin, but essentially representatives of all the tribes. So dominantly Judah and Benjamin, but actually representatives of all the tribes were in Judah when it was finally taken. Babylon conquers Judah, and we'll go over that in a little more detail.

Here is a map of modern Iraq. So you have here is Mosul, which is Nineveh, modern Mosul. And then down here is where Babylon, the capital of the empire, is located. down there. So essentially what you have down here is Ur of the Chaldees, right over the border from Kuwait. Here's Babylon, here's Mosul. You have a lot of ancient history in Iraq, right? Okay, Mosul, Babylon, there we go. Here's the modern side of Babylon, partially reconstructed.

What happened is, of course, a lot of things had gone into ruin, but when Saddam Hussein was in power, he actually put a fair amount of resources into trying to get things reconstructed. It was sort of a way of expressing their country's return to some dominance, at least theoretically. And so what you see here that looks in fairly good condition is part of that reconstruction that he had going on there.

Here's an artist's rendering of ancient Babylon showing one of its towers, which were as much as 450 feet high. This would be this. So like about a football field and a half tall. And so these were the towers or ziggurats, as they were called. And the city sprawls on for quite a bit. And we'll talk about why that is in a little bit.

Here's an artist's rendering of Babylon's hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Some of the different seven wonders is, you know, the temple of Artemis and Ephesus was one of them. They had various ones spread around the Mediterranean and Middle East, but this was one of them, the Babylon's hanging gardens. They had sort of a tower type structure and then these gardens that grew from them from way up high. They take the soil and put it up there and grow things up there. Here's another artist rendering of Babylon showing the soldiers entering what's known as the Ishtar Gate.

And Saddam Hussein had that gate there reconstructed. So a fairly nice reconstruction and repainting job. A lot of times, well, what we'll see on this, they've got, you know, they call them lions. We'll actually take a look closer up, but ultimately, yes. Yes, this is a modern picture. And so, I mean, the reconstruction, it was a fairly thorough job of reconstructing things. Yes, Dan?

Do you think the environment was a lot different in Old Avalon and New Avalon? Oh, I think one of the things that has happened in the many places is that, well certainly there are rivers going through there now, but generally a wetter environment throughout much of the world. It's like Nancy and I used to live in Carson City, Nevada and we'd take trips out into Nevada and you could look up above where you were driving quite a bit and see old beach lines. where the water used to be. So, yeah, through a lot of places, even the Sinai Desert, you know, we look at the Sinai Desert as it is now, the Sinai Desert when the Israelites went through it, it was a generally wetter place than it is now. Now it's, desertification has taken place.

Here are some interior painted panels that have been reconstructed. So to give you an idea, that's fancy. This was no rough place. So here's some interior painted panels out of some Babylonian houses there. This is the British Museum. Notice the focus upon these lions here.

And as we'll talk about in a bit, the Babylonians, boy, they really liked the lions and even had a certain worship of them. But they didn't care about fire, right? So we'll talk about that. The Persians that took over, however, they worshiped fire and didn't care about lions. So we'll see that in a bit.

Like the Assyrians, the Babylonians were intense in their interest in astrology. And matter of fact, much of our astrological system now, and I say system with quotes, but our astrological system now is from the Babylonians. We've essentially taken it from them.

Here is a boundary stone of the Babylonian king Melichapach II with Sun, Moon, and Venus. So even on the boundary stones they put various things on there to symbolize control and the objects of worship. Now, here are some of the contrasts that we talked about. Here's a contrast with the Babylonian Empire and the Persian Empire.

One of the reasons for showing these contrasts is you'll see differences in the culture in the book of Daniel. And what you'll notice is that the various points in the book of Daniel fit with the culture. Daniel did not mess up. And he didn't write it centuries later, guessing. It actually, in each case, fits the culture.

And so worshipping lions was typical of the Babylonian Empire, but worshipping fire under the Persian Empire. So what did they do a Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Did they threaten to throw them to the lions? No. They didn't care about fire. The Babylonians didn't. And so they threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fire. Then when the Persians take over, Daniel is thrown into the lion's den because they don't care about lions, they worship fire.

So the contrast is because of the change of empires, and it fits exactly what we know of the background of the culture. It's one of those instances, it doesn't prove the historicity of Daniel, but it supports it. Here's punished with fire in Daniel chapter 3 punished with lions in Daniel chapter 6 again fits exactly the What we know of the culture. Here's another point in Babylon the ruler could change decisions Put it put them in the fire and I'll take them out in the Persian culture The ruler once he made a decision was not allowed to change it. So that's why even though the ruler regretted having made this declaration that would put Daniel into the lion's den, he couldn't change it because that was the rule of the Persian Empire. So again, what you see the rulers doing fits with what we know about the culture.

So here's Daniel 3.29, therefore I make a decree that any people, nation, or tongue that speaks anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and that's their Gentile names, right, shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap.

This is the declaration in Daniel 3.29 and also Daniel 2.5 has a similar kind of declaration. So Babylonian records confirm this is a common punishment.

It's further confirmed by the way Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem after defeating it. This is saying torn limb from limb was not a figure of speech. but also the complete destruction of buildings. What they would do is if they went in and wanted to punish somebody, they would actually do horribly cruel, torturous things, and then they would demolish their house until it was dust. So it appeared there was no record that they'd ever lived. And that's what Nebuchadnezzar did with Jerusalem, which is why the Temple of Solomon was completely destroyed, and even the walls of Jerusalem were all taken down.

So that fits. Now something else that's interesting is the book of Daniel, however, has Greek words in it, and particularly the instruments. Why? Because while the Greeks were not in power, that wasn't until a few centuries later, The Greeks were rather well known as merchants, and one of the things that they would make and sell is musical instruments. So here where you find the Babylonian Empire, and the Babylonians are in control, in the book of Daniel, with the Babylonians in control, you've got these Greek instrument names. Daniel 3, 14 through 15 are lists of several musical instruments, a few of which are Greek borrow words. They're written in Hebrew, but the original language behind it is Greek.

So here's Daniel 3, 5. At that moment, you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, and that's a catharsis. Catharsis sounds like a guitar, right? There's the source of the word. The trigon, psaltery, psalterion. the bagpipe and all kinds of music, symphonia, in the Greek Old Testament. You are to fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king, has set up. Here is a replica of a catharsis.

First Corinthians 14.7 mentions it and several times in the book of Revelation. This is reconstructed after some of the descriptions, Josephus, for example, described what these harps or katharas were like, and they used to play them regularly in the temple. So that was one of the instruments. Did they hold them like a guitar? Yeah, I think you'd hold something like this and they'd do it like that, or sometimes they'd have them down and do them like that. You had a question? Yes. Yes.

And the problem with that assertion, in other words, because what the assertion is, is Daniel was written in the second century B.C. That's what they will say, and say, see these Greek words. Well, the problem with that is that there are other places where there ought to be Greek words if that's the case, and they're not there. However, what we do know is that the Greeks were merchants, particularly of musical instruments, and we have other records of them doing trade with the Babylonians, particularly on the musical instruments. So it fits what would be the date for Daniel if we read Daniel as it appears and presents itself to be.

Now, philosophy of empire. This is one we've showed this chart previously. We started with the Egyptians, where the idea was to capture as needed for slaves and primarily to focus on defense rather than constantly expanding the empire as the Assyrians and Babylonians tried to do. And so we say the Jews were held captive as slaves in Egypt for 430 years, fitting their philosophy of empire, right?

The Assyrians relocated people randomly, they scrambled them essentially, mixed up people and so many Jews were exiled and the Samaritans were a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Why? Because they would take Jews and relocate them somewhere else and then they would take people from other areas who were Gentile and situate them where the Jews had been.

So by mixing the populations you end up with the Samaritans. Which is why centuries later the Jews didn't like to associate with the Samaritans because they were this mixed group and they also had a doctored up version of the five books of Moses. It was doctored up to allow them to practice their temple worship in Samaria instead of centered in Jerusalem.

Okay, so here is Babylon. Relocate leaders, then whole nations to Babylon. Rather than do what the Assyrians did where you move people around and scramble them randomly, the Babylonians took first the leadership and took them to Babylon and put them through an acculturation program where we're giving you our Gentile name, we're giving you the customs and learning and food that's fitting for Babylonians. And so they brought First the leaders and then whole masses of population all around Babylon. Everything was stripped out of all the peripheral areas in order to bring people to Babylon. So here's Babylon, this big sprawling place with all these suburbs. And the other areas stripped out. And the first ones they would bring is royalty and begin them in this Babylonian acculturation program.

Assyria and Babylon of the six cultures we have up here were the most alike. Let's take a look at that. Of the six major empires impacting the Jews most substantially, the Assyrian and Babylonian empires were the most similar. It doesn't mean that they were identical. But they were the most similar of that.

The similarities of culture included language and writing. They continued on with Aramaic. They would write on the clay tablets with the stylus. They would also write on papyrus with Aramaic. So very similar in culture. The religion was similar in that they both had astrology. And they both had a similar pantheon, not an identical one, but a similar pantheon. That is, all the different gods, the system of gods was very similar between the two. They were also not identically, but they were similarly very cruel to their enemies.

The Assyrians were cruel. We showed pictures last week of things that the Assyrians did, like peeling skin off of people while they were living. The Babylonians were not identically, but similarly cruel. We talked about tearing somebody limb from limb while they're alive. That was a Babylonian cruelty. And then relocating captives. So the Assyrians would take people and randomly mix them up.

The Babylonians also relocated people, but they did so by bringing them close to Babylon. So there was a difference in how they carried it out, but the idea of relocating was similar to both cultures. Okay, this is not to say they're identical, but that they had these things generally in common.

Now, the first exile of Jews came in 605 BC with the exile of royalty to Babylon, including Daniel and his three friends. This was right after that Battle of Carchemish. that we talked about here. So they went in, took the Jewish royalty over to Babylon to begin the acculturation program. And so that's what Daniel and his three friends had to deal with.

Remember with Daniel, what was one of the issues that the Jews had to contend with? The diet, yes. It's because the Babylonians had things that the Jews weren't supposed to eat, right? And so, you know, one of the questions was, you know, are we going to be able to stick to our Jewish diet or are they going to, you know, force us to the point of death to eat this stuff?

And so Daniel and his friends just kind of, you know, minimize their intake down to the things that they could eat and then passed on the other things. So they were placed into this intensive three-year acculturation program, including food and other aspects of the Babylonian culture and Babylonian names. OK.

The Hebrew names were changed. Daniel was changed to Belteshazzar. Hananiah was changed to Shadrach. Mishael changed to Mishak, and Azariah to Abednego. So all those names were changed. That was to give them a Babylonian identity. Erase, as much as possible, erase your Hebrew identity and make you right under the noses of the Babylonians and get you pressed into Babylonian culture.

Yes, Dan? nation that is changing culture or putting it's culture into effect. Do you think that's God preparing for the Gospel of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, one of the things that we'll cover, and we actually did in some degree before, and that is, at the right time God sent his Son, and so you look at it, why was it the right time?

It was the right time because the Greek language had been spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean and was even spoken commonly all the way to Rome. So the Greek language was one thing. The Romans also put in a system of roads that allowed for travel to spread the gospel. The Romans ultimately ended up building enough roadways to go two times around the earth, if you were to put it all end to end. And so there was that, and also the Jews, two-thirds of them by New Testament times, were outside of Israel, were being spread around in different places. And the Jews had made essentially the Old Testament stories and accounts something that people had commonly heard of, even if they were Gentiles. So it was the right time. It was the right time by language. It was the right time by the Jews having spread around the Old Testament Bible accounts. And it was the right time because of the roadways. So that's a good point, Stan. OK. Let's see.

Alright, the second exile of Jews came in 586 when Jerusalem was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar. The temple and walls destroyed and the rest of the Jewish population exiled to Babylon. So just like we talked about before, Nebuchadnezzar came in, he didn't just take the people away, he just decimated Jerusalem. Solomon's temple, stood there for centuries, gone. Wiped out. And then even the walls of Jerusalem, which were substantial, all knocked down. So that both of those had to be reconstructed later.

So this is an artist's depiction of Babylon coming in and the Jews putting up their last stand fight there at the temple. This is James Tissot, who was a Swiss artist, who did a lot of biblical topic paintings. This was his picture of the Jews going into exile, pouring out of Jerusalem.

Here, and you do have this on the color map at the end of your package there, This shows the path they took. Rather than taking them straight across, because this would go across desert, they would take the Jews on this path to go back to Babylon. And one of the things that this points out, they didn't put them directly in Babylon, but they put them to the south and to the east. Do you get that? They took them to the Sial. They took them to the south and the east of Babylon and situated them so they were near Babylon but not in it. And so that shows the path of the exiles and also some of the different Bible passages that relate to that. Yes?

Boy, let me see here. It's a long walk. Let's see if I can... Pick that out. Yeah, this looks like about 300 miles just right there. Yeah, I mean you're talking, you know, over 600 miles. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you figure with a group of people like that, you're probably doing 10, 10 days, 10 miles rather at a time. You're you're doing good to do 20 and probably not that with that number of people. So this was a long walk, a long walk. And imagine some just couldn't even make it. Of course, the Babylonians didn't care, you know.

So, Psalm 137, 1-5, By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps, for there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirthed, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? For if I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. So this was one of the Psalms written out of the Babylonian exile there, where they were forced to make this long trek, and then miles and miles away from home, the captors say, sing us a song of Zion. That just hurts.

As recorded in Daniel chapter 5, this is the proverbial handwriting on the wall. Daniel chapter 5, the Medes and the Persians took over the Babylonian Empire in 539 B.C. Here was the last Babylonian ruler throwing a party, and then this handwriting on the wall shows up as described in Daniel chapter 5. What does this mean?

Mene, mene, tekel ferez, wade, wade, and found wanting. So here's Daniel, comes in and he says, Tonight you're done. Tonight you're done. The Persians are coming in and this is your last act here. So next Sunday we'll turn our focus to the Medo-Persian, or simply called the Persian Empire, the last in the Old Testament. The Persian Empire continued actually after the end of the Old Testament period and up to the time of the Greeks, which we'll cover after that.

Babylon in the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation, Babylon is mentioned 15 times in the New Testament. The mentions of Babylon in Matthew have to do with giving the genealogy and then mentioning this is up to the time of the Babylonian exile, right, and then the return from. So that's the reason for the mention of Babylon there. Revelation, it goes on to what is mystery Babylon, which is prophecy for the tribulation period.

So at any rate, continued all the way up to the last book of the Bible. Here are all these listings here, most of them in a few chapters in Revelation. Here's another point to bring up here. During New Testament times, of course, the Roman Empire is dominant, and that's what you read about.

But to the east is an empire that I don't believe is ever named, but some of it's implied in some parts of the Bible. A number of Jews, of course, had been relocated here to Babylon, and some of them moved back. A number of Jews were moved. About, I think it was around 220 BC, about 2,000 families were moved from Babylon over to the area around Ephesus.

They were told, if you will make this move, you'll be tax-free for 10 years. So they said, where do I sign? Right? And so about 2,000 families made that move. So that put a bunch of Jews here. And then when Alexander the Great came in, that put a number of Jews who moved from Israel to Alexandria. And so you had, by New Testament times, two-thirds of the Jews living outside of Israel. spread in several different areas. And they also went to other places from there, but there were large congregations of Jews in those three areas around Babylon, and over around Ephesus, and then at Alexandria. And the Parthian Empire was the empire that actually fought with the Romans off and on for a couple centuries. And they kind of went back and forth giving each other punches.

You have this on page 3 here, Deuteronomy and Israel's future. The Lord actually in Deuteronomy spelled out all the things that would happen to Israel from ancient times up until times yet to come. But it included the exile to Babylon, and that's why we bring it up here. And Israel taken captive shows up in chapter 28, and we get a couple of different passages there in Deuteronomy 28, where Israel is taken captive.

But what's interesting is the Lord began bringing Jews back to the land back in the middle 1800s. And they didn't come in and start capturing anything, they just started moving to Israel and just buying up land. And so you see this, and this also shows up on page 3, you see this movement from the late 1800s and then an increase all the way up to, this was about a decade and a half ago. And the early part of that was before Israel was a country. There was already a move to establish more Jews in Jerusalem and in Israel.

It's very interesting. It's like the Lord, look, I told you this centuries and centuries ago, but it's happening. Right? Stan? It's interesting to see that generally the Lord's work is always being taken care of, but it takes a long period of time, which brings a new meaning to that word quick and revelation, because book of revelations is going to happen quickly, whereas normally His work is very methodical but prolonged.

Yeah, it's interesting to see the sweep of history and to some extent you might look and see history is rather random and crazy, but in fact the Lord is orchestrating everything so that Ephesians 1.10, God is managing everything to the end that all things will be summed up in Christ. He's managing history, even to the point of motivating Jews to start moving back to Israel before there's a Jewish nation to call Israel. Yeah. Yes. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of little pieces of history that keep cropping up.

And, you know, here Jews get spread all over the place. At the first time we went into Afghanistan, there were still, I forget the exact count, but it was something like a dozen Jews left in Afghanistan. And now there are almost none. And it's not that they've been killed off. moved to Israel.

Yes. It's also interesting that when the Gulf War was going to be, prior to the Gulf War, people were talking about the atrocities of Saddam Hussein. Yes. But what you're talking about here, as far as Babylonians are concerned, what he was doing was really quite modest compared to what the culture had done previously in that period of time. Do you think that The fact that it was Babylon and the fact that it is so predominant in Scripture may have been one of the motivations to go in there and take him out because he was trying to grow in size. I always wondered if Scripture played into that. Yeah, well, what's interesting, and this is a point of discussion, is Babylon in the Book of Revelation Intended as some sort of a figure of speech use or is it literally Babylon and I've met some fellows and even even written up whole books talking about the reconstruction of Babylon and you know, will this be it so yeah, that is a point in question and I Guess my my personal inclination is to look first towards literal fulfillment before jumping to you know, something that's figurative.

Jack? I completely agree with Stan. When I look at this history of these different people and the kings of Iraq and Iraqis and everything, and I One of the things that we frequently lose track of is our ancient history For much of the people in our culture, our ancient history is in great part lost to us. We tend to gravitate towards our more recent history. We even build houses that are not designed to last for centuries and centuries. In other parts of the world, and particularly the Middle East, the mindset is much more historically based. And that's in fact, you know, Islam as a religion is founded in, you know, what did Muhammad say, even if it was 14 centuries ago? Yeah.

Which culture was the atrocity of waterboarding? You know, the Assyrians and Babylonians thought that was awfully gentle and they really didn't want to go there. They'd be looked upon as Namby Pamby, right? Curiously, what is now called Daniel's Tomb is now a major tourist destination in Iraq. And Daniel is highly regarded among the people. They may hate Jews, but they'll still respect Daniel. Isn't that interesting? It's a place where people who are fairly well off will go on vacation in Iraq in order to spend time at what's called Daniel's Tomb. Whether that's Daniel's tomb, I couldn't tell you. A lot of these places, there's no opportunity to excavate, so you can't tell.

Now, something else. The degree system that we have, we talk about 90 degrees being the right angle, that is a Babylonian system that we still use now. Okay, so the Babylonians were the ones who developed that. Okay, wow, we went through that fast, I think. Questions, comments? Yes? The Wailing Wall, okay. Pardon? OK, what is sometimes called the Wailing Wall, or they actually prefer to call it the Western Wall.

What happened is Solomon went in and built a temple. He didn't do very much in the way of making it a temple mount in the way it's constructed today. Then, of course, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian, went in and destroyed the temple that was constructed under Solomon. Then it was reconstructed about 515 BC.

And then when Herod came in, remember we talked about the Parthian Empire? Herod was put in place by the Romans because they wanted to keep the Parthians out. And they knew that Herod would do it because he was nasty with a capital N. And so here this nasty man would keep the Parthians out, but he would also do huge building programs. He taxed them to death, which they didn't care for at all.

But rebuilding the temple was one of the things he did. And the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall as it's sometimes called, was part of Herod's building a temple mount. And so when the Romans went in in 70 AD and destroyed the second temple, the Romans took the temple all apart and shoved it all off the edge of the temple mount.

But phenomenal construction there. I mean, huge blocks of stone. Some of the larger blocks of stone are 50 tons. massive, massive blocks of stone and the craftsmanship is such that the contacts are very tight. But that was essentially the origin of the Wailing Wall. 20 BC was when Herod began construction on that. He came in in 37 BC and He was called the King.

He lived till about mid-March of 4 BC. But meanwhile, he had constructed Herodium, which was a military fortress not too far from Bethlehem. You could see it. He just took the top off the mountain and put a watch station there to watch out for the Parthians, right? And he also had the temple reconstruction begun, which wasn't finished until the early 60s AD, a few years before it was destroyed. But he began that. He also built Caesarea on the coast there, which is where Peter went to bring the gospel to the house of Cornelius. It's also where Paul stayed for two years while he was in prison before he was sent to Rome.

So that was one of the things. 12 BC, Herod volunteered to have the Jews pay for the Olympics. The Jews funded the Olympics in 12 BC because Herod said, yeah, we'll do it. And of course, the Jews were saying, yeah, we'll do it. Right. So he had tremendous building. He had two palaces down in Jericho. So he built that up. So he had tremendous building programs, but of course he wasn't doing the work and he wasn't paying for it.

The Jews were. Yes, even the destruction. Think about it, yeah, today we would say, if we really want to destroy something, you know, we've got some impressive bombs. But no, they didn't have that. So, you know, if the order is all this entire building here has to be dumped off the edge, yeah, that's quite a bit of work, and how are we going to get that done? But it was something that the Babylonians didn't want to just knock things down, they wanted to just wipe it out. And same thing with the Romans. Every single stone is going to be off the edge. No exceptions. And it's interesting.

I mean, some of the stones, there were three entrances to the areas where the Jews could go into the inner temple. And each of those had signs warning the Gentiles, don't go past this point or you have yourself to blame for death. One and a half of those signs have been found. There's one place where it's written in Hebrew, this is the trumpeter's place. Interesting, huh?

But the temple was systematically destroyed and taken apart and dumped off the edge with no exceptions. Now, what is there is the Dome of the Rock and a nearby mosque and those are Muslim landmarks, but the temple mount that Herod had constructed is still what is there now, and the edge of that is the Wailing Wall or Western Wall that you talked about. And that destruction of the temple and the tearing down, the horrible genocide that took place in Jerusalem. Jesus talked about that just four decades before it happened.

Other questions? Comments? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, essentially there is a group called the Temple Mount Faithful. You can look up their website. They have a website. They have essentially put together everything that is required by the law of Moses to conduct the temple rituals. They've assembled a number of the different pieces of hardware items and clothing items that are needed for that. It's now in a museum. Bob and Margaret Echol have been through that museum. there in Jerusalem, and having animals that pass the Levitical requirements is another part of it, and that's with the red heifer. And there's been some debate back and forth about that, but at least some seem satisfied that they've got the animals in place.

Essentially, there is nothing to stop the temple sacrifices from happening in a very short period of time, should that be politically allowable. And right now, it would be tough to imagine, but it will take place. Yes? So the red heifer, is that the blood from the red heifer that's necessary to cleanse the temple Yes.

So you have to have that. And of course, it's been under Gentile. domain here for centuries. So now in order to have it fully qualified under law, that's what they would have to do, and that's what they would have to have. So it has to come from a perfectly read... Yeah, and so what they'll do is they'll have the rabbis, you know, who specialize in such things, going over and, you know, checking it out and make sure that it fully qualifies. One right here. Yeah. Yeah. And that was where they thought they found one. And then somebody came along and said, wait a minute, look at this. So they're checking it over very carefully.

And of course, the Jews by tradition have a number of people who go around and determine what qualifies and even what's kosher food. I was in an airport one time and sat down next to a rabbi who went around, his full-time job was going around pronouncing things kosher. Really interesting. He's flying around different places saying, okay, this is kosher, this is kosher. and doing little blessings over it and all that. And that's what he was doing all the time. Full-time job. But people like that will go and look at things and say, okay, this meets the requirements, this doesn't, etc. And some of it's spelled out in the law and some of it's by tradition.

Alright, let's call it good and let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this. Tremendous insights into different aspects of your word all the way from the time of Deuteronomy and even some earlier on into the time of the New Testament. We thank you for the insights that are here and we thank you, Lord, that we can count upon you to be the God, Lord of history, managing everything on this planet to ultimately be summed up in Christ. And we thank you for that. We take confidence in that and give you praise. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.