In this video, Pastor Chuck Smith discusses the burden of Babylon as described in Isaiah chapter 13. He emphasizes the importance of lifting up a banner and exalting the voice to proclaim God's message. Pastor Chuck also highlights the value of mankind, stating that God will make man more precious than fine gold. He then draws a parallel to the book of Revelation, where it is revealed that a significant portion of the earth's population will be destroyed during a period of judgment.

Oh, let the Son of God enfold you With His Spirit and His love Let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul Oh, let Him have the things that hold you And His Spirit and His love Will descend upon your life And make you whole And now, with today's message, here's Pastor Chuck. We find in chapter 13, it opens with the burden of Babylon, which Isaiah, the son of Amos, did see. Lift up a banner upon the high mountain. Exalt the voice unto them. Shake the hand that they may go into the gates of the nobles. For I have commanded my sanctified ones. I have also called my mighty ones for my anger, even them that rejoice in my highness. And thus the noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people, a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together, for the Lord of hosts is mustering the host of the battle. So, when Babylon was destroyed, and we will read prophetically that it was destroyed by the Medes and the Persians, it was not destroyed by a confederacy of nations from all over the world. So, this prophecy that he is speaking here, concerning the destruction of Babylon, was not fulfilled in the overthrow of Babylon by the Medo-Persian Empire. But it becomes quite obvious that Isaiah is talking about another destruction of Babylon, which would be yet future, which would be accomplished by an amalgamation of many nations, the host of the kingdoms that God would gather together for the purpose of destroying Babylon. And they come from a far country. Now, that could not refer to the Medes and the Persians because they were adjacent to Babylon. They come from a far country from the end of heaven. Now, in reality, if you were over there in the time of Isaiah and you were writing of troops coming from the United States into the Gulf region to battle against Iraq or Babylon, you would say they were coming from the ends of heaven. Even the Lord and the weapons of His indignation to destroy the whole land. And so, how ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand. Now, the day of the Lord is a phrase that is constantly used through the scriptures to describe the day of His wrath, the day of His vengeance, and the day of the great tribulation. Now, in the prophecy that God gave to Daniel, He said that there were 77 that were determined upon the nation of Israel and upon the holy city. And He describes the events that will take place in that 77 years period, or 490 years. And He said that from the time that the commandment would go forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, which had been taken, the Jews had been taken to Babylon in captivity, and Daniel was writing in Babylon, from the time the commandment would go forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of the Messiah, the Prince, would be 69 sevens, or 483 years. And from the time that the commandment was given to restore and rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes to Nehemiah 445 B.C., it was 483 years later that Jesus came, the Messiah, the Prince. But Daniel predicted that the Prince would be cut off and that the Jews would be dispersed. Jesus, we know, was crucified. He did not receive the kingdom, and the Jewish nation was dispersed. Now, that leaves one seven-year period that is yet to be fulfilled. That seven-year period is yet future. It will be a time when God will be dealing again with Israel and with Jerusalem and the people, the Jews. And during this final seven-year period, it will end, the last three-and-a-half years of it will be the great day of the Lord, the day of God's judgment, and the day of God's wrath that will be poured out upon the earth. Daniel says there shall be a time of trouble such as the world has never seen before. Jesus said it will be a time of great tribulation, greater than the earth has ever seen at any time or will ever see again. In the book of Revelation, beginning with chapter 6 and going through chapter 18, there are great details given to you of the events that will be taking place in that three-and-a-half-year period of time. The day of the Lord, the day of His indignation, the day of His wrath, and the time known as the great tribulation. It will be a period of three-and-a-half years, but it begins in the middle of the 77th of Daniel, and it is all activated by the Antichrist going to the temple of God that has been rebuilt in Jerusalem and profaning it as he stands in the Holy of Holies and stops the daily worship and sacrifices and proclaims that he is God and demands to be worshipped as God, and this will be the final sacrilege, sort of the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak. This will be the final sacrilege of man that will bring the wrath and the indignation of God upon the earth. So, this destruction of Babylon is tied together with the nearness of the day of the Lord. How ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand. When? At the time that Babylon, or Iraq, is destroyed by this army that has been mustered from all over the world. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart will melt. This is talking about the great tribulation period. And Jesus, speaking of it, said, men's hearts will be failing them for fear of the things that are coming upon the earth. And thus, as Isaiah said, every man's heart shall melt, corroborated by Jesus in Matthew 24 as he spoke of the tribulation period. And they shall be afraid for fear of things that are coming upon them. Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them, and they will be in pain as a woman that is in travail, and they shall be amazed at one another, and their faces shall be as flames, or as on fire. So behold, the day of the Lord cometh, that is the great tribulation. It will be cruel with wrath. In the midst of this time they will cry for the rocks in the mountains to fall on them and to hide them from the face of the Lamb, for they declare the day of His wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand? A day that is cruel both with wrath and fierce anger. To lay the land desolate, He will destroy the sinners thereof out of it. Now some of the events of the great tribulation will be cataclysmic cosmic kind of events. For He tells us that the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light. The sun shall be darkened in His going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. So great cataclysmic events taking place in the cosmos. And the Lord said, I will punish the world for their evil and the wicked for their iniquity, and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and I will lay low the haughtiness of the awesome. So the day of God's wrath, the day of God's judgment, against whom? The evil in the world, a punishment for them, and the wicked being punished for their iniquity. This is one of the many reasons why I believe that the church will not be here when this event takes place. That is, the pouring out of God's wrath, indignation, and judgment upon the earth. Because our iniquities have been forgiven. Jesus took the punishment for your sin. And this seven-year period will be the time in which God's Spirit will be poured out upon the people of Israel, the Jews. And God will be dealing with them once again, which precludes the church being here. The ministry of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles in gathering out a bride for Jesus Christ will have been completed, and thus the church will have been removed. And once the church is removed, it opens the door for the revelation of the Antichrist, who comes on the scene at the beginning of this last seven-year cycle when God begins to work among the Jews once again. So God will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. And I will make man more precious than fine gold, even man than the golden wedge of Ophir. As you read the book of Revelation, chapters 6 through 18, you will find that mankind, for the most part, will be destroyed during this three-and-a-half-year period. In the first of the judgments that come, the four horses that you've heard of the apocalypse, as these demonic forces come upon the world, by them, one-fourth of the earth's population will be destroyed. At a later point, in other judgments that will come, one-third of the earth's population that remains will be destroyed. So that means in just those two separate forms of judgment, over half of the earth's population will be wiped out. And Jesus said that unless those days were shortened, no flesh would remain upon the earth. And thus, for the elect's sake, that is, the Jews, those days shall be shortened. So it will be a time when mankind, much as in the flood, will be destroyed. Only a few will remain. This tremendous holocaust that is going to take place when God judges the wicked on the earth and punishes them, man will become scarce. You talk about an endangered species as he will become as scarce or more precious than fine gold. Therefore, the Lord said, I will shake the heavens and the earth. The Bible tells us that God is going to shake the earth once again. In Hebrews, it speaks about this tremendous shaking. It speaks about it in the book of Revelation. And God said he's going to shake the earth once again until everything that can be shaken shall be shaken and only that which cannot be shaken shall remain. I mean, they talk about the San Andreas Fault and an 8.2 earthquake. They haven't seen anything yet. That's local. That would only affect us here. But it would not affect the world. God's going to shake the whole world with more than an 8.2. And everything that can be shaken will be shaken, will be wiped out. Only that which cannot be shaken will remain. The Lord said, I will shake the heavens and the earth, shall remove out of her place. Now, the physicists tell us that there has been a polar axis shift in past history. In fact, this polar axis shift, they believe, takes place every 5,000, 6,000 years. And that it accounts for much of the climactic changes that we know have taken place upon the earth. It could account for the Great Ice Age and other type of climactic changes that have come to pass. We do know that the area of Siberia was once lush, tropical jungles, and great mammoths roamed in those jungles. For in the frozen tundra of Siberia, they have found mammoths that have been perfectly encased in the ice, and in their digestive tracts there is tropical vegetation. Now, they were flash frozen because the meat was still edible. The dogs ate the meat of these mammoths, which are several thousand years old, frozen in that Siberian frozen tundra as the result of some great cataclysmic event that took place several thousand years ago upon the earth that changed the whole climate of the earth in an instant, almost. Because here they are, frozen in place with tropical vegetation. And that, of course, today, the way the earth is tilted at 23 and a third degrees on its axis, and we have the poles set where they are, we know that that could not exist. You could not have tropical vegetation in the area of Siberia. 200 feet under the ice, in the South Pole region, there are beds of charcoal, which means that there once were forests in the South Pole region. We know that that could not be under the present climactic conditions. And so there have been, in past history, great climactic changes that were caused by cataclysmic kind of events. The physicists talk about this polar axis shift. And there seems to be evidence of the polar axis shift in the ionized iron and rocks and so forth by the directions that the ionization is pointing is not to what we know as the North Pole today. And thus they speak of the polar axis shift and the things that transpired during a polar axis shift. How that mountain ranges are removed. How that ocean bodies and ocean beds are changed. We do know that the area up around the Painted Desert and the Great Salt Lake was once a vast ocean, and there were dinosaurs that roamed around the shores of that ocean up there. The Grand Canyon could possibly have been caused by a polar axis shift when that great vast ocean that was up in that area was emptied on down into the Pacific through the area of the Gulf of Mexico. And the geologists today, rather than ascribing to the theory that the Grand Canyon was formed by billions of years of gradual erosion by the Colorado River, are now saying it probably happened more rapidly by a massive flow of water over a short period of time rather than a small flow of water over a long period of time. We do know that a canyon almost half the size of the Grand Canyon was created in just a few days up at Mount St. Helens. When Mount St. Helens erupted and that lake was emptied, it formed a vast canyon up there that is similar to the Grand Canyon, about half the size. It tends towards the theory of the Grand Canyon being formed by a massive amount of water over a short period of time, and we do have the evidence of the fossils there around the Grand Canyon and up in the area of the Painted Desert and all that show that it was once an ocean floor. So this, they believe, took place during a polar axis shift. And they say that these shifts do take place about every 5,000, 6,000 years. The last one took place, according to them, about the time that the Scripture says that the flood of Noah took place, which is interesting to consider. The Lord says He's going to shake. The heavens and the earth will remove out of her place in the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger. That being removed out of its place could be a reference to a polar axis shift. And it shall be as the chased deer or as a sheep that no man taketh up, and they shall every man turn to his own people and flee every one into his own land. So there's going to be this tremendous cataclysmic event that is going to terrorize the world. And every one that is found shall be thrust through, and every one that is joined unto them will fall by the sword. And their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes, and their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. And these are events that usually take place in war. It's one of those horrible side effects and consequences of war. The inhumanity of man to man is manifested and demonstrated in war. Man is as a wild beast, and it becomes manifested in a time of war. We'll return with more of our verse-by-verse venture through the Bible in our next broadcast, as Pastor Chuck continues to guide us through the fascinating book of Isaiah. And we do hope you'll make plans to join us. But right now, I'd like to remind you that if you'd like to secure a copy of today's message, simply order Isaiah chapter 13, verse 1 when visiting thewordfortoday.org. And while you're there, we encourage you to browse the many additional biblical resources by Pastor Chuck. You can also subscribe to the Word for Today podcast or sign up for our email subscription. Once again, all this can be found at thewordfortoday.org. If you wish to call, our toll-free number is 1-800-272-WORD and our office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Again, that's 1-800-272-9673. For those of you preferring to write, our mailing address is The Word for Today, P.O. Box 8000, Costa Mesa, CA 92628. And now, on behalf of The Word for Today, we'd like to thank all of you who share in supporting this ministry with your prayers and financial support. And be sure to join us again next time as Pastor Chuck continues his verse-by-verse study through the Bible. That's right here on the next edition of The Word for Today. And now, once again, here's Pastor Chuck with today's closing comments. I pray that God will make this a very special week for you that you might follow after the things of the Spirit, that He'll protect and shield you from those influences of the world that are so prevalent. We're surrounded by them on all sides, but may the Lord just put a shield around you. And may you walk in holiness and in purity and in righteousness before Him. And may the love of Christ just dwell in your hearts richly as you experience His love and power working in and through your life. In Jesus' name. The Word for Today would like to invite you to come along on a revolutionary study of the Bible as we introduce Pastor Chuck's Genesis commentary in an e-book format. Not only will you have Pastor Chuck's in-depth commentary, this e-book allows access to enhanced research studies by honored Christian scholars instantly. Features include Hebrew and Greek word definitions as well as images of historical maps and places just by clicking or touching your screen. An online dictionary plus highlighting, note-taking, and bookmarking. And everywhere Pastor Chuck shares what he learned or studied something, you now have access to those very same notes. So get ready to study the Bible in a whole new way. Now you don't have to imagine what it was like to be there. This is the next best thing. To find out how to download Pastor Chuck's Genesis commentary to your electronic device, please call The Word for Today at 800-272-9673. Or to watch a video demonstration, visit us online at thewordfortoday.org. This program has been sponsored by The Word for Today in Costa Mesa, California.