Al Baghdadi.

[wingnut-]

7 hours ago, Steve_S said:

It hope it is not difficult to see why someone earnestly searching the scriptures and just taking the words therein to have literal meanings (that are discernible outside of usually easily identifiable metaphorical contexts) may have trouble believing how on earth these chapters could actually, strangely, and without any contextual indication, be speaking of Jerusalem and not Babylon.

 

I understand completely, that is why I held the position myself for my entire life up until a few years ago.  I understand exactly why there is an issue.  What I said before is that there are contradictions, and when that happens only one of the two can be true.  Where my understanding begins and ends on this are specifics regarding the Babylon of Revelation, and that there is only one city that fits all of those areas.

[wingnut-]

7 hours ago, Steve_S said:

Part of the issue I'm having is that there is massive jumping back and forth between passages and contentions being made before previous contentions are settled. I understand that this is warranted to a degree when discussing prophecy, but it is also certainly feasible to just keep it to a few verses of scripture at a time. I much prefer to inspect the minutiae of the scripture before moving on, simply because I believe God is *incredibly specific* with regard to His prophecies (and indeed all of His scriptures). If God is very specific, we should be very specific (this is the outlook I have on all scripture, not just prophecy).

 

No problem, let's just slow it down and focus on one thing, works for me.

 

7 hours ago, Steve_S said:

If you will recall, this started with your contention that Isaiah 40 was somehow proof that this is a country-wide situation.  These are the verses you posted.

Isa 40:1  "Comfort, yes, comfort My people!" Says your God. 
Isa 40:2  "Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, That her warfare is ended, That her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the LORD's hand Double for all her sins." 
Isa 40:3  The voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God. 
Isa 40:4  Every valley shall be exalted And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough places smooth; 
Isa 40:5  The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

 

Ok, so I'll just give a brief summary from scripture of how this reads to me and how I understand it.

 

Zechariah 12:10  [ Him Whom They Have Pierced ] “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

 

This is the emotion from the Jewish people that is going on, and Isaiah I believe addresses that in the first 2 verses by how the Lord responds to His people.  Verses 3-5 are speaking to the restoration of the land, most expositors take the Zechariah 14 passage and make it a worldwide thing, despite the specifics Zechariah gives.  While I tend to agree with them that this is a global event and not just a regional one, I am not willing to agree that Zechariah states that because he does not.  Perhaps the cleansing of the whole earth is done in stages because the Lord says His kingdom begins the size of a mustard seed, and clearly His reign begins in the land promised to Abraham's seed.

 

7 hours ago, Steve_S said:

Firstly, one specific question, just so I understand where you're coming from on this. Is your claim was that this has to be speaking of more than just Jerusalem because of God saying "My people?"

 

I believe He is speaking to the survivors at Jerusalem, words of comfort. 

 

[Steve_S]

49 minutes ago, wingnut- said:

I understand completely, that is why I held the position myself for my entire life up until a few years ago.  I understand exactly why there is an issue.  What I said before is that there are contradictions, and when that happens only one of the two can be true.  Where my understanding begins and ends on this are specifics regarding the Babylon of Revelation, and that there is only one city that fits all of those areas.

I would have to disagree there. There are currently no cities that fit all of those areas. Jerusalem doesn't come close to precisely fitting the old testament prophecies regarding Babylon. You can point out a lot of vague similarities and even some that are more striking, but the differences at least outweigh them.

I don't know if Babylon is going to be reconstituted or if it's some other city. However, I'm fairly certain it's not Jerusalem due to the fact that in almost all the prophecies regarding babylon it seems to be a physical wasteland such that people walk past it and lament it. That simply cannot be the case with Jerusalem. God certainly does things to the land there, physically, but it is not left permanently desolate. To the contrary, it is renewed. The land was left desolate after the Babylonian exile. It was renewed to a degree (one could certainly make a typological argument here and many do) and the old was considered to have been turned into the new. That is how every single scripture reads regarding Jerusalem going into the millennium. Change, yes, even geological changes, but, still the same dirt for all intents and purposes, the same land promised to Abraham.

The reason I do not get dogmatic on this to any degree has largely to do with Israel itself. The argument for close to 1800 years was, what is Israel and Jerusalem representative of in the end times. We know it can't be them, because there is no Israel and Jerusalem is just a mostly islamic formerly glorious city, largely fallen into squalor and disrepair. It sat that way for more than a millennium before it was renewed. Very, very few expositors stuck their necks out and said "Israel is coming back and it will be populated by Jews" and most of those didn't come until the post-reformation era of the 18th and 19th centuries.

I'm not saying dogmatically that it is going to be Babylon. But you say the only city that fits all those areas is Israel. I disagree with this. The only city that *truly* would fit everything with the knowledge that we have now is Babylon itself.

Knowledge will change in the future though, drastically, the closer we get.

 

[Steve_S]

7 minutes ago, wingnut- said:

This is the emotion from the Jewish people that is going on, and Isaiah I believe addresses that in the first 2 verses by how the Lord responds to His people.  Verses 3-5 are speaking to the restoration of the land, most expositors take the Zechariah 14 passage and make it a worldwide thing, despite the specifics Zechariah gives.  While I tend to agree with them that this is a global event and not just a regional one, I am not willing to agree that Zechariah states that because he does not.  Perhaps the cleansing of the whole earth is done in stages because the Lord says His kingdom begins the size of a mustard seed, and clearly His reign begins in the land promised to Abraham's seed.

I do not have a problem with viewing Zechariah 12 as a localized event. The prophet is fairly specific in regards to the situation at hand. I however, do think, that at this point in the prophecy, the Babylon mentioned in Revelation, whatever it is, is probably already gone.

As one moves into Revelation 19, it very much so seems that Babylon is long gone when Christ returns as the rider on the white horse. There are no chapter/verse divisions in Revelation as you know. John's letter would've went straight from 18 into 19 and shortly thereafter, to here:

Rev 19:2  For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her." 
Rev 19:3  Again they said, "Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!" 

Babylon seems, very much to be a smoking ruin at this point, judged by God.

[WilliamL]

On 11/12/2019 at 4:50 PM, JoeCanada said:

Hi William,

"Turkey is not Yavan, which people are the Greeks, long time foes of Turkey. The Turks are from another race entirely."

Yavan was a son of Yaphet (Japhet), Yavan is parallel with the Greek word "Ionia", which is the Greek region of Asia Minor, which is a portion of the land mass of Turkey. 

Which WAS the Greek region of Turkey. Not now; the Greeks and the Greek Church were driven out of Turkey, and displaced by the Turks, another race entirely. None of mainland Ionia is Greek anymore, only the islands, which belong to Greece.

The Bible speaks of races and tribes, which sometimes change their territory. Such as Joseph.

[WilliamL]

On 11/12/2019 at 1:39 PM, wingnut- said:

On 11/12/2019 at 12:38 PM, WilliamL said:

Too many presumptions for me. Try this one, for one oft-repeated interpretation:

The city is Rome, which was already drunk with the blood of the saints by the time Revelation was written, and had dominion over the kings of the earth. The woman-harlot is Babylonian religion, practiced by the Pontifex Maximus of Rome, a title later taken by the Roman popes, which religion also became noted for shedding the blood of the saints.

The problem with this is that the woman is identified by the angel as a city, so that rules the religion out.  It is certainly fair to debate which city it will be, but scripture seems fairly clear it will be Jerusalem.

No, religion is not ruled out. False religion is what Babylon was founded on: rebellion against God, exercised by both a kingdom of man AND pagan religion.

And the city cannot be Jerusalem, because as has been pointed out many times, this Babylon city is to be destroyed, and Jerusalem is never prophesied to be destroyed in the End Times.

[wingnut-]

On 11/17/2019 at 4:28 PM, Steve_S said:

Are you contending that only what constituted old testament boundaries of Judah is in view with regards to the punishment in Revelation 17-18 then, or all of Israel?

 

I couldn't say for certain that it is going off OT boundaries, or if what is in view are the new boundaries given in Ezekiel for the Millennial kingdom.  The most specific I can get is from the Zechariah 14 passage where only Judah territory is in view, from Geba in the north to Rimmon in the extreme south.  As mentioned in another part of the conversation, it appears to me this is done in stages, the restoration of the land, and scripture states that He begins with Judah.

 

Zechariah 12:7  “And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah. 8 On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, going before them. 9 And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem."

 

On 11/17/2019 at 4:28 PM, Steve_S said:

This was fulfilled in history by both the Assyrians under Sennacherib and the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. What armies during the end of the tribulation will be besieging Jerusalem with siege towers and siegeworks? This is why it's important to look at the specifics of these prophecies. This sort of warfare has not been waged for hundreds of years and if you look at Revelation 18, there are no siegeworks:

 

Ok, so you said this is response to the passage from Isaiah 29 I posted, citing that it was related to a historical event.  However, this prophecy speaks to the future and I just didn't post more of it for the sake of longevity, but I will show you now why this is not a historical event.

 

Isaiah 29  Ah, Ariel, Ariel,
    the city where David encamped!
Add year to year;
    let the feasts run their round.
2 Yet I will distress Ariel,
    and there shall be moaning and lamentation,
    and she shall be to me like an Ariel.
3 And I will encamp against you all around,
    and will besiege you with towers
    and I will raise siegeworks against you.
4 And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak,
    and from the dust your speech will be bowed down;
your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost,
    and from the dust your speech shall whisper.

5 But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust,
    and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff.
And in an instant, suddenly,
6     you will be visited by the Lord of hosts
with thunder and with earthquake and great noise,
    with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her,
    shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

 

There are 2 problems with associating this with history.  One, the Assyrians never made it to Jerusalem to set up siege works, God destroyed their army in their camp before they ever reached the city.  Two, the Babylonians were not destroyed, they won the battle for Jerusalem.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 4:28 PM, Steve_S said:

Again, specifics, important! Is this going to be a prolonged siege or is it coming to happen in one day?

Death, mourning, and famine, all in one day. Is it a siege or does it happen in a day?

 

As far as who it is that sets up siege works against Jerusalem I would say it is clearly the nations that come up against her in the last days.  We are talking about an apocalyptic time so having to resort to historical means to take a city is completely plausible if modern technology is stifled by lack of electricity and other such technologies being available.

As for how long, I can't say, scripture does not tell us one way or the other at what point the enemies encamp all around Jerusalem, it just tells us that they do.  It wouldn't appear to be for too long of a period to me though, but that is just my best guess.

[wingnut-]

47 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

No, religion is not ruled out. False religion is what Babylon was founded on: rebellion against God, exercised by both a kingdom of man AND pagan religion.

And the city cannot be Jerusalem, because as has been pointed out many times, this Babylon city is to be destroyed, and Jerusalem is never prophesied to be destroyed in the End Times.

 

Isaiah 29  Ah, Ariel, Ariel,
    the city where David encamped!
Add year to year;
    let the feasts run their round.
2 Yet I will distress Ariel,
    and there shall be moaning and lamentation,
    and she shall be to me like an Ariel.
3 And I will encamp against you all around,
    and will besiege you with towers
    and I will raise siegeworks against you.
4 And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak,
    and from the dust your speech will be bowed down;
your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost,
    and from the dust your speech shall whisper.

5 But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust,
    and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff.
And in an instant, suddenly,
6     you will be visited by the Lord of hosts
with thunder and with earthquake and great noise,
    with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her,
    shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

[WilliamL]

20 minutes ago, wingnut- said:

 

Isaiah 29  Ah, Ariel, Ariel,
    the city where David encamped!
Add year to year;
    let the feasts run their round.
2 Yet I will distress Ariel,
    and there shall be moaning and lamentation,
    and she shall be to me like an Ariel.
3 And I will encamp against you all around,
    and will besiege you with towers
    and I will raise siegeworks against you.
4 And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak,
    and from the dust your speech will be bowed down;
your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost,
    and from the dust your speech shall whisper.

5 But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust,
    and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff.
And in an instant, suddenly,
6     you will be visited by the Lord of hosts
with thunder and with earthquake and great noise,
    with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    all that fight against her and her stronghold and distress her,
    shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.

Lines 1-4 speak of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Has nothing to do with the end times. Towers and siegeworks were ancient tactics.

Line 7 summarizes the deliverance of Jerusalem per Zech. 14.

[wingnut-]

On 11/17/2019 at 11:02 PM, Steve_S said:

I would have to disagree there. There are currently no cities that fit all of those areas. Jerusalem doesn't come close to precisely fitting the old testament prophecies regarding Babylon. You can point out a lot of vague similarities and even some that are more striking, but the differences at least outweigh them.

 

I specifically said the Babylon of Revelation.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 11:02 PM, Steve_S said:

I don't know if Babylon is going to be reconstituted or if it's some other city. However, I'm fairly certain it's not Jerusalem due to the fact that in almost all the prophecies regarding babylon it seems to be a physical wasteland such that people walk past it and lament it.

 

Every year the people of the earth will be required to come to His kingdom, this explains why people will have to walk past it and lament it, because it is in close proximity.  Ancient Babylon is outside the boundaries of the Millennial kingdom and since it is on the Euphrates river that would not be an area anyone would be trying to cross to get into the land.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 11:02 PM, Steve_S said:

The land was left desolate after the Babylonian exile. It was renewed to a degree (one could certainly make a typological argument here and many do) and the old was considered to have been turned into the new. That is how every single scripture reads regarding Jerusalem going into the millennium. Change, yes, even geological changes, but, still the same dirt for all intents and purposes, the same land promised to Abraham.

 

I agree that the land was left desolate after the Babylonian exile, and that is in large part the proof of what I'm saying here.  People, as you point out, make typological arguments about what constitutes "desolate" by their definition of desolate, but isn't it God's definition that matters?  I mean, when God said Jerusalem was desolate after the Babylonian exile, and later scriptures from the prophets define the conditions that existed as desolate, then that is God's definition of desolate which would also apply to the state of Babylon.

 

On 11/17/2019 at 11:02 PM, Steve_S said:

I'm not saying dogmatically that it is going to be Babylon. But you say the only city that fits all those areas is Israel. I disagree with this. The only city that *truly* would fit everything with the knowledge that we have now is Babylon itself.

 

First, to avoid an overload of information, we should probably just stick to the argument I am making, which is in regards to the Babylon of Revelation and the proofs for that being Jerusalem.  Because for example, there is nothing in the prophecies regarding ancient Babylon where God assigns them a double portion.  There is only one city in scripture that is told they will get a double portion, and that is Jerusalem.