Near the River Nile, the pyramids have been silent witnesses to the sun's rising for over 3,500 years.
The Colosseum in Rome stands empty. Some 1,900 years ago, it resounded to crowds cheering gladiators in combat.
A wall carving, a clay cylinder, an ancient warrior.
Why should artifacts and ruins interest us today?
Relics of the past are closely tied to a book that claims divine origin.
Faithful men of God began to write the Bible some 3,500 years ago.
It is actually a collection of books that gives us prophecy, history written in advance.
But is it reliable? And how can it help us today?
To answer, let's examine some prophetic statements found in the Bible.
For example, 2,600 years ago, the Bible writer Daniel saw in a dream the rise and fall of five world powers, four of them before they even existed.
These world powers would have a direct impact on God's people down to our day.
But how did Daniel and other prophets get their information? The Bible answers at Daniel 2,28.
There exists a God in the heavens who is a revealer of secrets.
The source of the Bible's reliable information is its author, Jehovah God.
Archaeological discoveries demonstrate the reliability of Bible prophecy and the accuracy of Bible history.
To verify this, let's consider the march of some world powers.
What was the first world power that ruled over God's people, the Israelites?
Egypt, referred to more than 700 times in the Bible.
Does the Bible paint an accurate picture of ancient Egypt?
2 Chronicles 12, 2 states,
It came about in the fifth year of King Rehoboam that Shishak, the king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem.
What does history establish?
The Egyptians were mighty warriors, and they left records of their military campaigns.
An inscription in the temple at Karnak, Egypt, lists the cities that Egyptian pharaoh Shishak captured in Israel.
As the Bible indicated, the Egyptians were truly a mighty military power.
The Nile, the Earth's longest river, has always been Egypt's lifeline.
The Bible books of Genesis and Exodus accurately describe the Nile as Egypt's main source of food and water.
The Book of Numbers says that the Israelites, wandering in the desert, longed for the variety of food they left behind in Egypt.
Paintings in tombs show life in ancient Egypt just as the Bible's first writer Moses described it.
A country abounding in food.
How did the Egyptian religion differ from that of the Israelites?
The rulers were viewed as gods.
Thus, Hadi Pharaoh disdained the Israelite god Jehovah.
Who is Jehovah, so that I should obey his voice?
I do not know Jehovah at all.
Pharaoh was not the only god the Egyptians worshipped.
The names of 740 other gods were found in the tomb of Pharaoh Thutmose III.
Many of their gods had human bodies and animal heads.
It is easy to understand why Jehovah banned the use of images in worship, as stated at Deuteronomy 4, 16-19.
But you may not act ruinously and make for yourselves a carved image, the form of any symbol, the representation of any beast that is in the earth,
any winged bird that flies in the heavens, of any fish that is in the waters under the earth,
and actually gets seduced and bowed down to them and serve them.
The Egyptians also worshipped triads, or groups of three gods.
They used the cross or ankh, a symbol of life.
And they believed in the immortality of the soul.
What became of Egypt as a world power?
God's prophet foretold its destruction at Isaiah 19, 3 and 4.
They will be certain to resort to the valueless gods, and I will deliver up Egypt into the hand of a hard master.
Did this prophecy come true?
A cuneiform inscription shows the Assyrian king Esarhaddon boasting of his conquest of Egypt.
I fought bloody battles against Tir-Hehka. Five times I hit him with my arrow.
Thus, Egypt's vast wealth and military might could not stop the fulfillment of God's prophecy.
The Bible? Accurate and reliable.
What was the second world power in the Bible?
Assyria, a cruel and ruthless nation.
The founder of its capital city, Nineveh, was Nimrod, described in Genesis as a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.
The Assyrians loved to hunt.
The hunter Banipal, known in the Bible as Asenapper, hunts lions that have been captured, imported and later released.
The Jewish Museum catalog states, the hunt itself was often more of a massacre than a contest.
Animals were not their only prey.
The Assyrians also hunted humans in ruthless warfare.
The Bible writer Nahum refers to Nineveh as the city of bloodshed.
How true that was.
Soldiers play catch with human heads.
Musicians entertain at a peaceful garden party held by King Ashurbanipal.
But what hangs in a nearby tree? The head of Tumun, the king of Elam.
Assyrian King Ashurbanipal boasted,
Many captives from among them I burn with fire. From some I cut off their noses, their ears and their fingers.
Of many I put out the eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads.
A soldier is rewarded for his pile of enemy heads.
Because of Assyria's violence and pagan religion, Nahum warned,
Nineveh has been despoiled. A sword will cut you off. There is no relief for your catastrophe.
Assyria plundered many cities. Then in 632 BCE, Nineveh itself was destroyed.
For centuries its location was forgotten. Critics ridiculed the Bible's account of Nineveh.
In 1847, an English archaeologist discovered Nineveh's ruins.
His sketches depict Sennacherib's palace, the same Sennacherib named 13 times in the Bible.
But more was to come.
Isaiah mentions Sargon, a king of Assyria. Again, critics claimed the Bible was wrong,
since there was no other proof of his existence.
The Bible's accurate history was confirmed when archaeologists uncovered Sargon's 200 room palace at Korsabad.
He is now one of the best known kings of Assyria.
Archaeologists also found inscriptions listing Sargon's claimed conquests, including the biblical region of Samaria.
The Bible tells us Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was assassinated by his sons.
Ancient documents discovered by archaeologists support this biblical statement.
Because of Assyria's bloodshed, Jehovah decreed its destruction.
His prophet foretold at Nahum 313,
To your enemies the gates of your land must without fail be opened.
Fire will certainly devour your bars.
Did this prophecy of fiery destruction come true?
Charred markings of raging fires on the walls of Sennacherib's palace verify the fulfillment of this prophecy.
A Babylonian clay tablet relates the words of Nineveh's conquerors.
The great spoil of the city and temple they carried off and turned the city into a ruined mound.
What was left of Nineveh?
Two great mounds marked the site of a once proud capital.
Arrogant Assyria dared to defy Jehovah God and was reduced to rubble.
The next world power was revealed to Daniel.
He saw four unusual creatures symbolizing kingdoms that would affect God's people.
What did the lion with wings depict?
The mighty Babylonian Empire.
The city of Babylon was described by the prophet Isaiah as the decoration of kingdoms.
A sprawling metropolis astride the river Euphrates and a center of world trade.
Its hanging gardens were famous as a wonder of the ancient world.
An idea of the city's splendor can be seen from the reconstructed Ishtar Gate at the Museum of Western Asiatic Antiquity in Berlin.
Babylon's greatest king was Nebuchadnezzar, referred to 91 times in the Bible.
What was the Babylonian religion like?
They worshiped the triad of the moon god Sin, the sun god Shamash, and a star symbolizing the goddess Ishtar.
A model of an animal's liver was used to foretell the future.
Ezekiel 21-21 says,
The king of Babylon has resorted to divination. He has looked into the liver.
How did Babylon relate to God's people?
The Israelites had become disobedient to Jehovah.
The prophet Jeremiah foretold captivity for them.
He shall give them into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will actually take them into exile.
True to this prophecy, Jerusalem was devastated in 607 BCE.
The Babylonian Chronicle confirms the capture of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar.
How long would Babylon dominate Israel?
Jehovah answers, 70 years.
Then what would happen to Babylon?
Jeremiah predicted,
There is a devastation upon her waters, and they must be dried up.
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight.
Did these details in the Bible prophecy come true?
The date, October 5, 539 BCE.
Daniel relates that Babylonian King Belshazzar holds a feast for a thousand prominent guests.
They praise their false gods while drinking from sacred vessels looted from Jehovah's temple 70 years earlier.
Outside, Medes and Persians have diverted the waters of the Euphrates River which ran through Babylon.
The soldiers slosh up the riverbed and into the city.
Before the sun rises, Babylon is overthrown, and Belshazzar is dead.
Babylon's mighty empire is finished.
God had spoken.
The Nabonitius Chronicle describes the fall of Babylon.
It happened just as Jeremiah foretold.
In one night, mighty Babylon's golden glory had lost its luster.
Medo-Persia marched in to become the fourth world power of Bible history.
As Daniel's dream foretold, it arose to devour much flesh like a hungry bear.
Although different in culture and dress, the Medes and Persians functioned as a united power.
The Persians were known for their archery and horsemanship.
As their empire grew, so did their taste for luxury.
Persian emperors built impressive palaces.
The one located in Shushan is where Persian king Ahasuerus made the Israelite Esther his queen.
Two hundred years before the event, Isaiah foretold the name of the Persian liberator of Israel, Cyrus.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote that the holy utensil stolen from Jerusalem by Babylon would be returned.
How did this happen?
The words on the Cyrus cylinder explain.
I am Cyrus, king of the world.
I returned to these sacred cities, the images which used to live therein.
I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned to them their habitations.
True to his policy of religious toleration, Cyrus the Great allowed Jewish captives to return home
and rebuild the Temple of Jehovah at the end of the foretold seventy-year captivity.
By the fourth century BCE, the Medo-Persian world power was coming to its end.
According to Bible prophecy, who would take over?
Daniel 7.6 states,
I kept on beholding and see there another beast, one like a leopard,
but it had four wings of a flying creature, and there was given to it rulership indeed.
This beast represented the rapidly moving Macedonian or Greek power coming from the West.
But who could move the Greek army swiftly to conquer Persia?
How was his role in history foretold two hundred years in advance?
In Daniel chapter 8, God's prophet sees Medo-Persia as a two-horned ram.
Next, a male goat proceeds to strike down the ram and break its two horns.
Who is this male goat?
Daniel 8.21 answers.
The hairy he-goat stands for the king of priests.
At the age of twenty, Alexander had become the king of Macedonia.
Two years later, he set out on a war of revenge against the Persians.
A brilliant general, he controlled a huge empire before he was thirty.
Like a swift and agile leopard and with lightning speed, Alexander the Great conquered the world of his day.
Thus, Greece became the fifth world power of Bible history, larger than any preceding it.
Alexander's conquest spread Greek culture and language throughout a vast area.
It was the language later used to record the Christian Greek scriptures of the Bible.
At the age of thirty-two, Alexander wanted to make Babylon his eastern capital, but it was not to be.
Speaking in symbolic language, Daniel prophesied.
The male of the goats, for its part, put on great airs to an extreme, but as soon as it became mighty,
the great horn was broken and there proceeded to come up conspicuously four instead of it.
Alexander, at the peak of his conquests, was stricken with fever and suddenly died in 323 BCE.
Alexander's vast empire was divided among four symbolic horns, four of his generals.
The Greek Empire eventually broke into four separate kingdoms.
The last of these kingdoms fell in 30 BCE to the next world power, Rome.
Which beast would represent Rome? Daniel 7.7 describes it.
A fourth beast, fearsome and terrible and unusually strong.
It was devouring and crushing, and what was left, it was treading down with its feet.
Rome became the greatest world power of Bible history when it organized the most powerful army the world had ever seen, crushing everything in its path.
Evidence of this powerful empire can be seen in Europe, Asia and North Africa.
The glory of Rome is echoed in the words of Augustus Caesar.
I've found Rome built of bricks. I leave her clothed in marble.
The Caesars were worshipped as gods.
Emperor worship was a test of loyalty for early Christians.
An inscription from Asia Minor says of the emperor,
He is the paternal Zeus and the savior of the whole race of man who fulfills all prayers even more than we ask.
Altars and temples were built for Caesar worship.
Which Caesars are mentioned in the Bible?
Augustus Caesar was emperor when Jesus was born, as recorded by the Gospel writer Luke.
He also states that Jesus came to John to be baptized in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar.
Jesus' entire three and a half year ministry took place during the reign of Tiberius.
Both Luke and the Roman historian Suetonius state that emperor Claudius ordered all Jews to depart from Rome.
Claudius' successor was the infamous Nero.
He was said to have set fire to Rome and then blamed it on the Christians.
According to the historian Tacitus, Christians were torn by dogs and perished and burnt to serve as nightly illumination.
During this persecution, the apostle Paul was imprisoned for a second time and was likely executed at Nero's orders.
The Arch of Titus commemorates the Roman victory over Jerusalem in 70 CE, a conquest foretold by Jesus thirty-seven years in advance.
Roman soldiers took the sacred utensils of the Jewish temple as spoils of war.
Those not heeding Jesus' warning to flee Jerusalem perished or were taken captive.
While Rome ruled, Jesus fulfilled scores of Bible prophecies, thus proving that he was the true Messiah.
Jesus was the one spoken of at Daniel 714.
His rulership is an indefinitely lasting rulership that will not pass away, and his kingdom, one that will not be brought to ruin.
In contrast, the Roman world power was to be brought to ruin.
Moral, social, and political decay led to its fall.
What was to replace Rome and become the seventh great world power?
Like Daniel, the apostle John saw visions of future events.
At Revelation 1710 he tells us,
There are seven kings. Five have fallen. One is. The other has not yet arrived.
Which five kings or world powers had fallen?
Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece.
Rome existed in John's time.
But which power had not yet arrived?
In Revelation 13, this world power is described as having two horns like a lamb, symbolizing a dual world power.
Which two governments today share the same language and have had influence over all the earth?
Britain and the United States.
The rise of this seventh world power was gradual.
During the 16th century, Britain became a strong maritime nation, able to extend its empire around the world.
In 1776, part of the British Empire broke away and eventually became the United States of America.
In the 20th century, Britain and America act as a dual world power.
Revelation 17 next predicts the rise of an eighth and final king that would exercise control for a little while.
The United Nations today is this eighth king.
A symbol of authority in which world leaders put their trust to achieve peace and a new world order.
Can men really bring about that new world order?
Will they beat their swords into plowshares?
What does history teach us?
Ecclesiastes 8-9 states,
All this I have seen, that man has dominated man to his injury.
The great war of the 20th century.
The prophecies given to Daniel and John have proved true for 2,500 years of man's governments.
Governments that have failed to bring peace and security.
We can have confidence in what is next foretold.
Daniel 2, 44 describes a drastic change in the rulership of the earth.
In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin.
It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.
This is the kingdom government that Jesus taught his followers to pray for at Matthew 6, 10.
Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place as in heaven, also upon earth.
What benefits will God's kingdom bring?
God's word at Psalm 37 foretells that righteous people will live forever on a paradise earth.
And most beautiful of all.
Jehovah tells us at Revelation 21, 4.
He will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more.
Neither will mourning, nor outcry, nor pain be any more.
The former things have passed away.
There is a bright and wonderful future for all who follow God's word, the Bible.
We can be sure that the Bible is a book of faith.
We can be sure that the Bible is a book of accurate history and reliable prophecy.
And God's promises for the near future is guaranteed to come true.
God's word at Psalm 37 foretells that righteous people will live forever on a paradise earth.
And most beautiful of all.
Amen.