My Visit to Nineveh
A FEW months ago I stood amidst the ruins of the great city of Nineveh, capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire. When the prophet Jonah preached in its busy highways, 2,800 years ago, Nineveh was then centuries old. Its mighty walls rose from the right bank of the River Tigris opposite where the modern city of Mosul now stands.
Nineveh, I was told, means “agreeable dwelling,” and from the records of reliable historians and what I have seen taken from its ruins, the old city must have been well named. According to the divine record in Genesis 10: 11 it was founded by Asshur in the early dawn of history.
The prophet Jonah gives a little insight, too, into its size and importance when he refers to it as “an exceeding great city.” It was surrounded by mighty walls, one hundred feet in height, which were built on a rock foundation. Overshadowing the walls were fifteen hundred watchtowers, some two hundred feet in height. Its kings lived and played in the lap of luxury, in magnificent palaces, their every meal a banquet, their every day a coronation day. There were polished walls of jasper, glazed tiles and sculptured reliefs depicting hunting scenes, and the victorious battles of their military exploits. The royal mansions were adorned with bronze and carved ivory, with ceilings of mother of pearl and floors of alabaster.
But while Nineveh was a thing of beauty, it was also a sink of corruption. One well-known writer describes Nineveh as “a center of crime and wickedness” and the Holy Scriptures agree with this description. The prophet Nahum calls Nineveh the gory city, “full of lies and robbery.” Nahum 3: 1.
Behind her mighty walls Nineveh stood, defiant of earth or heaven. At her feet rolled the commerce and wealth of Eastern and Western Asia. But fraud was in her storehouses and uncleanness was in her houses. Obscene displays were in her theatres-iniquity was everywhere. Nineveh the magnificent! Nineveh the vile! Nineveh the doomed!
Because of God’s mercy, despite, the wickedness of Nineveh, Jonah the prophet was sent with a message of warning. Every child acquainted with the Old Testament narrative knows the story of disobedient Jonah who tried to escape the task of preaching a disagreeable message, and of his remarkable rescue. Jonah’s tomb is still to be seen in Nineveh, preserved in the ruins of the city as a shrine particularly sacred to Mohammedans.
Standing on the elevation by Jonah’s tomb I looked over hundreds of acres of desolate mounds-hundreds of acres of fulfilled Bible prophecy. Listen while I read from the prophet Zephaniah: “And He will stretch out His hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness.” There it lay before me. Nineveh was indeed “a desolation and dry like a wilderness.”
The mounds of Nineveh stood as a mute but forceful testimony to the inspired character of the Holy Bible. “He will make an utter end of the place” the prophet of the Bible had declared in the heyday of Nineveh’s glory. And so it lay before me “empty, void, and waste” as Nahum 2:10.declared it would be. But its overthrow and desolation was but the beginning of the fulfillment of a whole series of most astonishing prophecies concerning this cruel city.
For nearly 200 years after Jonah preached in Nineveh, it continued to grow in beauty and power. It looked more beautiful, more enduring, than ever. Its army was large, completely equipped with iron weapons; they were the first to employ the battering ram and several other siege machines. Their armor clad and mounted archers were unsurpassed. Even the famous legions of Caesar were not so uniformly well clad as were the Assyrian soldiers on the eve of their country’s final eclipse.
Now notice seven prophecies regarding Nineveh. Nahum 1: 10 is the first: “While they are drunken as drunkards they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.” The heathen historian Diodorus Siculus relates that, “the king of Assyria, elated with his former victories ... had abandoned himself to scandalous inaction and had appointed a time of festivity and supplied his soldiers with abundance of wine. The general of the enemy, appraised by deserters of their negligence and drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian army while the whole of them were fearlessly giving way to indulgence.”
Second, in Nahum 1: 8 we read: “With an over-running flood he will make an utter end of the place,” and again in chapter 2 and verse 6: “The gates of the river shall be opened and the palace, shall be dissolved.” It was indeed a supernatural event, when we remember that Nineveh, by means of river gates and walls, had been able to control the torrents of the Tigris for some two thousand years, that now after God had declared it, when an army was besieging it, that the waters should suddenly rise to such an unparalleled height as to tear away two and a half miles of its walls, and through the breach the attacking army rushed.
The third prophecy you will find in Nahum 3: 13: “The fire shall devour thy bars,” and again in verse 15: “There shall the fire devour thee and the sword shall cut thee off.” Fire and sword were the forces by which God had said He would destroy the city. According to the heathen historian Diodorus Siculus, the king of Nineveh knew of the prophecy that the river would lead to their destruction, and so gave up in despair when the calamity came that he fired his own palace.
Fourth. “I will make thy grave” declared God through His inspired prophet. (Nahum 1:14.) “Thou shall be hid.” (Nahum 3:11) Nineveh was to be buried. The silent years rolled by, and Nineveh was not rebuilt. The winds blew the voiceless dust until the city was so completely buried in its grave that its site was unknown and even its existence questioned. Critics ridiculed the Bible statements and maintained that Nineveh had never existed.
Fifth. Nineveh became a desolation, empty, void, and waste, just as Nahum 2: 10 had foretold.
Sixth. We read in Zephaniah 2:13,14: “He will stretch out His hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her.” While there I saw a small flock of goats and sheep searching for pickings amidst the mounds that once were the glorious palace of Sennacherib.
Seventh. Remarkable as these prophecies are, the Bible goes further. Nineveh was not to remain buried, with critics continuing to cast reproach against those who believe and obey God’s Word. Oh, no! For although God would leave her buried throughout long centuries, it was foretold that before time should close, Nineveh would be raised from her grave and become a “gazing-stock.” “I will set thee as a gazing stock.” You will find that statement in Nahum 3: 6.
When modern excavations started in Assyria first by Botta, the French consul of Mosul, and then by Layard, the Englishman, no one knew where Nineveh was located. When the Frenchman uncovered the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, he thought he had found Nineveh, so he entitled his report “Monument of Nineveh.” When Layard the British archeologist excavated the Biblical city of Calah (Genesis 10:11) he thought he was digging up the old palaces of Nineveh, therefore he named his famous work describing these discoveries, “Nineveh and its Remains.”
This will give you some-Idea of how completely Nineveh was lost to the world. However, with the deciphering of the Assyrian tablets, it was discovered beyond all question that Nineveh lay beneath the mounds just across the Tigris River from the present town of Mosul. These mounds when opened told the story of the glories of Nineveh and its downfall.
One building had contained over seventy halls, rooms, and passages, lined with sculptured slabs of alabaster. Another contained nearly two miles of bas-reliefs, and twenty-seven portals framed by colossal winged bulls, each weighing forty tons, cut from one solid piece of rock. All around were obelisks, statues, and carved ivory. In the library were discovered 25,000 books of baked clay tablets, some with such fine, delicate handwriting that a magnifying glass was needed to read them. They consisted of dictionaries of all kinds, poems, rituals, contracts, and letters by the hundred, medical prescriptions, revealing a wide knowledge of drugs, and chemical texts explaining how to make clear and colored glass.
Some tablets told of certain kings of Israel, and heathen kings mentioned in the Bible, while still others confirmed the Bible story of creation and the Flood of Noah’s day. After spending much time in research among these wonders of Nineveh and comparing them with the Holy Bible, I was again impressed by the singular accuracy of the Bible. The Bible deals with facts, and the ruins of the past confirm it.
I Saw the Treasures of Egypt
SOME time ago I had the privilege of going down into the ancient tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of Kings, which is over 700 miles up the River Nile. Later I went to the Cairo Museum and saw the wonderful objects that had stood in that tomb for over three thousand years.
A floor of the museum is devoted to its treasures. My first impression was gold, gold, gold! Gold shining, gold gleaming, gold almost rose red and dull, gold in solid masses, gold hammered paper thin, everywhere as far as I could see down to the end of that great corridor gleamed the bright metal for which men have fought and died throughout all time.
I looked in amazement and I began to realize what the Scripture meant when it said that Moses left the treasures of Egypt to walk the ways of God. “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the value of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.” Hebrews 11: 24-27.
The expression “the treasures of Egypt” was no meaningless phrase. The four chariots in the tomb were completely covered with gold; every inch was decorated either with embossed design and scenes hammered into the gold itself or with inlaid design made of colored glass and stone.
The shrine was 17 by 11 feet by 9 feet high, and was also completely covered with gold. Within this shrine was another and still another, each overlaid inside and out with gold. Within the third shrine was the sarcophagus of the finest yellow quartzite, with a lid of red granite.
The lid weighed twelve hundredweight. Within were three coffins, one fitted within the other. It was difficult to get them out, for the mass weighed several tons. The coffins were made in the shape of a human body, the first one of wood, the second with pure gold beautifully inlaid, and the last coffin cover in which the king’s mummy was found, was made of solid gold. The value of this coffin alone is said to be a quarter of a million pounds. (much more today)
The mummy was covered with twenty-two layers of mummy cloth; over the face was a solid gold mask which was the portrait of the king. King Tutankhamen was a young man, probably about eighteen years old, when he died. Inside the mummy 5 bindings 143 pieces of jewelry of various kinds were discovered.
Of the thirty-two pages that Carter, the discoverer, used to describe the examination of the mummy, more than half are given over exclusively to listing precious articles found wrapped in the coverings. The eighteen-year-old Pharaoh was wrapped in several layers of gold and precious stones.
As I looked at the almost unimaginable treasures of the Cairo Museum, especially that golden room of King Tutankhamen, I realized afresh why every child of God should not value gold very highly, for some day in the city of God we will walk on gold. It will be the paving-stones of New Jerusalem.
We think again of Moses who turned his back on all the glory and all the gold of Egypt “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Hebrews 11:25. Why should we not follow his example; why should we not in these days when everything human is passing away, give our allegiance too, to the King Eternal, and choose like Moses, if need be, “to suffer with the people of God?
It was the custom to bury an immense amount of wealth with a king. It has been estimated that some of the tombs must have contained treasures valued at ten million pounds or more in the form of jewels, precious stones, gold, silver, cups, thrones, etc. However, practically all the tombs discovered had been robbed thousands of years before, the mummies removed, and the apartments left in a wrecked condition.
Now what does all this mean to us as Bible believers? It means a great deal, and I will tell you the main point that I wish to make. A few years ago some of the skeptics, trying to discredit the Bible, drew attention to the statement in Exodus that the Israelites made the sanctuary in the wilderness. In harmony with God’s commandment they used a great deal of gold in its construction: they covered the ark with gold, they made the cherubims out of pure gold; in fact, according to the Scriptures, a vast amount of gold was used.
But these skeptics claimed that there was not that much gold in the world in those days, that gold was practically unknown, and that the Israelites could not have had it because there was no gold in Egypt. It was not mined there, they said. But just this one tomb of an Egyptian king, a king who reigned only a short time, and only shortly before the Israelites left Egypt, has been found to be so full of gold that it has been the astonishment of the modern world. Then, think of the many Pharaohs whose tombs have been robbed during the ages; of the millions and millions of pounds’ worth of gold that must have disappeared from them. The opening of this practically untouched tomb proves that there were vast quantities of gold in Egypt at the time the Israelites left that land. Yes, the Bible is true.
And as I sat and watched the sun sinking to rest in a blaze of crimson and gold behind the overwhelming grandeur of the magnificent and enormous structures of stone that told of the departed glory that was Egypt’s, these enormous relics of a dead past, although cold, massive, and forbidding, told a story.
Whether it be in Karnak with its magnificent time-defying ruins, mightiest of antiquity, or the seventy-seven pyramids that lift their heads above the desert wastes, one of which required two and a half million blocks of stone in its construction, and one hundred thousand slaves working steadily for twenty years, they all tell of the might and grandeur of ancient Egypt and of the amazing evidence that God has given to us of the inspiration of His Holy Book.
For remember, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel lived at the time when Egypt was a mighty nation. She had had a line of kings such as no other nation under heaven had possessed, and it seemed as though she would last for ever. These prophets predicted certain things about Egypt, which at the time of their prediction, about 600 years B.C., seemed impossible of fulfillment. When most other people were predicting unending prosperity for Egypt, the prophets of God pronounced the very opposite. See Isaiah 19 and Ezekiel, chapters 29 and 30.
These prophecies have all been fulfilled. Notice some of the statements from Ezekiel: “They shall be a base kingdom; neither shall it [Egypt] exalt itself any more above the nations, for I will diminish them, and they shall no more rule over the nations. The pride of her power shall come down. I will make the land of Egypt desolate and the county shall be desolate in that thereof it was full. I will sell the land into the hand of the wicked, and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein by the hand of strangers. I the Lord have spoken it; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.”
When the city of Rome was founded, Egypt was already two thousand years old. Rome became powerful and conquered the world, including Egypt, and it was in turn conquered by barbarian nations from the north. Egypt was still powerful, still rich and full of people. When the Arabs came in the seventh century it took them fourteen months and the lives of 23,000 men to capture Alexandria alone, and then its fall was due to treachery. They destroyed the famous Alexandrian library, which was a world calamity. This library supplied the Arabs with fuel for six months.
If the prophecy had said that Egypt, like Babylon, would be utterly destroyed, the skeptics would have good reason to laugh, for Egypt has not been destroyed. It has been reduced and brought down to a low level, a very low level compared with its former glory. Babylon was destroyed, Chaldea was destroyed, Assyria was destroyed, but not Egypt. The Scripture says that Egypt would be diminished but not destroyed. She is still a nation, but on a very low plane compared with her past.
Egypt stands today as a great witness to the Word of God. A testimony to the truthfulness of the Bible. As I saw its ancient ruins, its mighty pyramids, its endless deserts, the smiling green of the valley of the Nile fertilized every year by the overflowing of the river, my mind meditated on the brevity of human life, for remember, if time should last, the great cities of our modern age would probably not endure as long as the ancient temples’ of Egypt. They would pass away and new civilizations would arise, but the Word of God stands for ever.
In His kingdom God’s people will look back on this earth as the kindergarten which preceded the great university of heaven. My friend, Let Him be King will you not give your heart to Christ now of your life and Savior of your soul?
“Him that comes to Me,” Jesus declared, “I will in no wise cast out.” John 6:37. And never forget the eternal words: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
