Bible Skeptics Take Note: Babylon Is Being Rebuilt, Just As Prophesised

flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com ^ | June 28, 2009 | Joel Rosenberg

[GiovannaNicoletta]

Regular readers of this weblog and my books know that Bible prophecy says the ancient city of Babylon, Iraq will be rebuilt and become the greatest center of wealth, commerce and power in the “last days” of history. The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Revelation are explicit on this subject. Skeptics and cynics abound, to be sure, but the fact is Babylon is being rebuilt right now, in part with U.S. taxpayer funds. Iraqi leaders hope that eventually millions of tourists will come to visit, and real progress is being made. Consider today’s edition of Stars & Stripes, a U.S. military publication. They have a fascinating story this morning headlined: “U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon, build local tourism industry.”

Excerpts:

• Soldiers with the 172nd Infantry Brigade are exploring the ruins as part of a U.S.-Iraqi effort to preserve the ancient city and plan for the return of Western tourists.
• Members of the brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment escorted a group of U.S. heritage tourism experts to the ruins last week for the first of several visits to develop a preservation and tourism plan for the area. U.S. and coalition troops have been criticized in the past for damaging and contaminating artifacts. In a 2006 report, the head of the British Museum’s Near East department said that, among other things, military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, and sand and archeological fragments were used to fill military sandbags. Now the rapidly improving security situation in surrounding Babil province has persuaded the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to embark on the preservation project, dubbed the Future of Babylon Project.
• The State Department and the World Monuments Fund have committed $700,000 to the project, which will see U.S. and Iraqi experts develop a plan to preserve the site and develop a local tourism industry, said Diane Siebrandt, the U.S. embassy’s cultural heritage officer. The Babylon project is one of several that the State Department is involved in to conserve ancient sites in partnership with the Iraqi government, she said.
• Two people with expertise developing tourism plans for historic sites in third-world nations, Gina Haney and Jeff Allen, have been employed by the State Department to run the U.S. side of the project. They visited the ruins for the first time last weekend. Haney said the pair will involve the local community in the plan’s development, as they did with a similar project encouraging Western tourists to visit Ghana’s Gold Coast. “You could throw money at it and do all this work, but unless you can create a sustainable situation, your opportunities for tourism will run out,” Allen said. “The idea is to develop something that is going to be here 30 to 40 years from now and has benefits for the local people. We don’t want something that will only benefit outsiders.”
• The Iraqi government will be involved in the planning as well. “If you have 200,000 people a year coming to this site, you will have people staying at hotels, visiting restaurants, buying souvenirs,” Allen said. “The site is in some ways a revenue generator for the local community.” Babylon could be comparable to the Egyptian pyramids, which draw millions of tourists each year. But the area lacks the tourist infrastructure that has been built at sites such as the pyramids, he said. “There is nothing for tourists here, but if you interpret and present it in the right way, you can spark interest,” he said.
• Allen, who has experience designing walkways and signs for other heritage sites, said detailed planning won’t happen until authorities have worked out how best to preserve the ruins. The crumbling rocks of the original city are surrounded by more elaborate and modern fortifications, including a maze-like collection of interior walls built on top of genuine ruins during Saddam Hussein’s time.
• “Some of the past restoration work hasn’t been very good,” he said. “Saddam was trying to inherit the power of the ancients and continue that legacy. His restoration methods helped reinforce that vision of himself, and he created a pattern of restoration and repair work that benefited a certain agenda.”

  Last month, a British art publication had a story headlined, “Controversial move to reopen Babylon: State board of antiquities and heritage believes site needs more protection.” The story indicated that Babylon would be open for tourists on June 1st. Another recent story out of Taiwan noted that a Taiwanese tour agency is starting to take people to Iraq to tour — among other things — the city of Babylon as it is being rebuilt.

  As Iraq becomes increasingly stable and secure, direct foreign investment is going to flood in, and Iraq will become the wealthiest country on the planet. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest company, for example, is positioning itself to become a major investor in the Iraqi energy sector. Other major oil companies are doing the same. The Iraqi government in recent months has been developing investment incentive packages to draw in such companies. And this week, such energy companies will actually begin bidding for licenses to develop Iraq’s immense but badly atrophied oil exploration, drilling, and refining industry. Consider, for example, this headline from the Associated Press: “World’s big oil companies prepare for return to Iraq.” And this is just the beginning.

  Skeptics take note: the Bible is coming true, one prophecy at a time.

[Lee N. Field]

I’m not a “bible skeptic”. I’m a dispensationalism skeptic. Different thing altogether.

[Watershed]

I see bittersweet times till He takes us home.

I agree.

2 Timothy 3: 1-2 - But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy....

[Matchett-PI]

Religious KOOK ALERT!

[john in springfield]

Aw Geez...

[Star Traveler]

Even Bible Prophecy teachers who know that Jesus is coming soon and the many prophecies of the end times will be fulfilled, don’t necessarily agree with one another on this one...

There was an interesting program from David Reagan’s ministry, Lamb and Lion Ministries (out of McKinney, Texas, just north of Dallas) — about this subject of Babylon, actually, more to the point, where will the Antichrist’s headquarters be.

You might take a look at it, as it involved interviewing many different prophecy teachers about this subject...

http://www.lamblion.com/television/programs_pretrib14.php

[GiovannaNicoletta]

• http://www.100prophecies.org/page2.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page3.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page4.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page1.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page5.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page6.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page7.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page8.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page10.htm
• http://www.100prophecies.org/page11.htm

God keeps His promises and fulfills prophecies and there's nothing shrouded in figurative language or obscure.

Here are one or two Biblical prophecies that have been fulfilled throughout history. Makes you pretty certain that all the rest of God's prophecies will be fulfilled as well, including those concerning Babylon.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

He duped the middle income people to vote for him because he said that none of their taxes would go up, and now, I just heard on TV CNN that Mr. Obama might have to break that promise to help pay for ?? Guess what ? medical , health care ....
Ummm ? isn't that what the taxes on tobacco, sodas was suppose to be for ?

[GiovannaNicoletta]

I think Joel Rosenberg's purpose was to demonstrate how Babylon is in the process of being rebuilt after having been nothing but ruins for several thousands of years.

Things are beginning to happen with an area of the world that been forgotten and ignored for a long, long time. And I'm positive that it's not coincidental that God said that Babylon would be rebuilt and be a major center of commerce during the Tribulation.

As an aside, a friend of my son's who had served over in Iraq was home about a year ago and, in the middle of a picnic, stood up and told the people there that they better make sure they're saved, because things are beginning to happen with Babylon. He would say no more about it, but I thought it was rather odd.

[karatemom]

I pray that be soon!

[Lee N. Field]

I think this is like Babylon 5.

Hmmm. The beast from the sea?

[nmh]

I truly don’t understand HOW they can believe a Demoncrat when they say they won’t raise taxes on the middle class? They truly have NO LOGIC or COMMON SENSE.

[Lee N. Field]

So turning the ruins of Babylon into a tourist attraction is the equivalent of rebuilding the city and turning it into the seat of world government? OK, sure.

Ho, ho. Just wait until someone eisegetes Isaiah 17.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

[nmh]

Ah jsut wait till he OPENS THE BORDERS!

With companies not hiring and laying off, that will be fun! We can literally fight over jobs.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

" I truly don’t understand HOW they can believe a Democrat when they say they won’t raise taxes on the middle class? They truly have NO LOGIC or COMMON SENSE. "
.....
It's as if they were blinded by something.... kind of like weird Twilight Zone Bizarro World all mixed up in one...
As things unfold day by day, min by min .... this is becoming more and more like a bad B movie becoming reality... just freaky ....

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Yes... very odd....
Was he in INTEL in Iraq ?

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Just speculation ....
Would Damascus be destroyed by one of Iran's nuke missiles heading towards Europe but failed in it's boost stage and fell on Damascus ?
or ? would be a suitcase nuke that someone set off in Damascus ?
or ? the USA hitting Damascus in retaliation for something ?
or ? Israel dealing with Damascus ? ...
all are possible scenarios..

[j_tull]

This evening works for me...

[Costumed Vigilante]

If we would have used nukes, like we were supposed to, this problem would not have re-manifested in our lifetimes.

A verbis ad verbera

[visualops]