America The Babylon

 America The Babylon



Raised on the Bible, I've always liked the stories of Egypt and the Ancient Near East much more than the New Testament with its philosophies and calls to action.  I don't want a parable with everyday examples asking me to do something,

but I know they're right.  I know I need them.  

I want to sit by the flickering light and read of ancient details.  I want to sift through the dust of time and see myself there, not here.  The New Testament is too harsh and too necessary.  It separates the bone from the gristle, not just the sheeps from the goats. 

I want stories I can interpret.

I want stories I can tell. 

Most of all, I want to listen, not stand up and shout. 

The land that is called holy is caught there in the Middle, where continents crashed into one another, but the whole swath, or crescent, up from the Nile through to Mesopotamia has intrigued me since before I can remember.


In fact, I went to Egypt and I've been stuck since.
It was a goal and it was fulfilled, and.... well, now what?

The excavations and the scholarship and the artifacts from Egypt have been a true marvel to me and the art speaks to me so loudly, ever since I first saw images of Pharaoh's daughter and attendants bathing in the Nile.  There's something about bulrushes, papyrus, lotus and black braids that gets me.  Diaphanous gowns, gold and lapis contrasted with carnelian make me anticipate delight. 

The temple of Dendera made my heart sing; despite, or because, of its luxurious paganism.  How privileged I have been to see so many representations, glamorized and authentic, and whitewashed, of Egyptian artistry.  But I think the same would apply if I knew more about Sumer and Akkad and Babylon and Ur and Nineveh.  That's the other end of this wonderful thing.  Egypt is just the Southwestern frontier.  What's to the East?  I don't know nearly enough.

One of my favorite places in the world (as if I know the whole thing, and could even say...) is the British Museum where the Rosetta Stone sits and especially, the Assyrian remains from Nineveh in Room 10.


There must have been nothing to rival the palace in Nineveh, at least on this earth.

Jonah and Nahum speak of Nineveh, in terms of impending judgement delayed and accomplished.  And the luxury and artistry tells me how high they were before they fell.


Today, Dr. J. Vernon McGee at TTB.org spoke about Nahum 3:1-6 and characterized the city, which was the capital of Assyria as "all full of lies."  He's very good at dispelling prophecy theories that don't really apply to today, but yet in his applications, he brings the lesson right back 'round to us, or at least to the United States when he was alive and preaching.  How it manages to be more true today than when he spoke, I'll never know.  It's a good thing we have radio, and the internet.

 When will we have enough?

It's a lie.

It's all lies. 

I'm constantly told that I don't have enough.  My house is full of stuff I don't want and yet I can't get rid of it,

because inside me, but not inside my house, there just isn't enough.

But let's think about this.  McDonald's has more choices on the menu than the greatest feast served by the most sumptuous pasha ever to wear silk curly shoes.  Well, that may be an exaggeration, but it's hard to argue with the fact that an aisle in a grocery store contains more selections than the richest person ever had to choose from in their entire life, for nearly all of human history.  And it's not just history.

I'll say it again, to convince myself.  If you have a safe place to sleep tonight, and a choice of what to eat in your next meal, you are materially rich.  You are rich.  I am rich.  If you have time to read this, or write it, and you're not scrounging for food or a place to stay right now, you are rich.  Yet, America doesn't have an upper class, not really... since everybody seems to think they're in the middle.

Yet we wander through the store, clearly overweight because we've been gorging ourselves, complaining about every aspect of our lives.  The cart is too dirty and the wheel doesn't roll right.  All I want is to buy groceries to stuff in my face and feel good about myself for a minute after I leave the store and return to the couch, but what a tragedy that there is always that one wheel that veers off to the left because there's something caught in its tiny axle.  My life is so rough.  We drink water and drown our metabolisms with it and sit all day, except when leaning on the grocery cart.

I remember Joan Rivers said that we couldn't cross the street without a sip of water.  What are we so thirsty for?  It's not water.  And there's nothing much different on the other side of that street to get to, anyway.
 
We drink and aren't quenched.  We whore and don't multiply.  We gather gold for years with both bloody hands only to pile it up inside a busted up rusty giant sieve with jagged holes in it the size of Volkswagons.

It's all falling out.  It's not yours.  It's going back into the earth from whence it was wrested, one swing of the pick-axe at a time.


The preacher asked Nahum, as he went to study it this time in preparation of his message, "Who are you talking about, us?"  And I feel the same way when I read the prophets.  We are the fat cows on the hills of Bashan, or maybe a single blade of grass one of them may or may not even deign to eat.   






Great civilizations can be studied with ease and in depth, that are now crumbling because God judged them, and they sit now "in the dust and the debris of the ages."  Well, what about us?

We're no pet of God. we're not something special, we think we are as a nation and we can boast of the fact right now we're the strongest nation in the world but you know, that might even be questioned today. 

Isn't everything questioned today?  Is there anything that everybody agrees with?

America is not in prophecy, but haven't I always thought of it as Babylon?  Are we not a well-favored harlot that all the world courts and plays up to?  Everybody wants to be us or U.S. right now, but it won't last.  Fifteen nations would drop the bomb on us today if they thought they could get away with it.  But they sell their souls for a chance to buy our products, consume them, and fill up a landfill.

And I will cast abominable filth upon you. 

I will bring you down, because I am opposed to you and I will expose you to the world for what you are

and for all to see. 

This is "an apt picture of this present day.  I don't think He's changed his method and if He hasn't we're in deep trouble." 

We're going to have our skirt tossed up around our necks one of these days, and then everybody is going to see what's under there.  It's for your spouse, by the way, not for the benefit of everybody who has the Internet.  I guess the seeing what's up the skirt part can't be about us because God didn't have to do it since we pulled the skirt up ourselves to show off what we've got for a $50 payment (as Mona) or a like (as Kim). 

Continuing the idea that Nineveh was full of lies and so are we, Dr. McGee says with resigned certainty:

What better description would you have today in our country right now?  I feel very much like we're given very little fact, but we're given a great deal of propaganda.  And that not only pertains to Washington, and the news media, but it comes from every area.

Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same as any other businessmen.  They tell us what they want so they can sell their product.  And what, behind all the talk, is their product, if not power for themselves and the people they like?


McGee's lament was only "to be free of this thing today, where I'm fed nothing in the world but propaganda and never given the truth.  One thing that's needed today is the truth."

When's the last time you heard somebody say what they meant?



When's the last time I said what I actually meant?