By TONY PEARCE
Babylon shaken, if not fallen! Within one week of the pickets arriving at the Stanlow oil refinery in Cheshire (UK) on September 7th a crisis situation had gripped this country. Most petrol stations had no petrol, those that did were besieged with massive queues, schools were closing, there was panic buying in the shops and dire warnings from government ministers that the National Health Service was about to collapse and there would soon be food shortages. The Prime Minister, Mr Blair, was close to calling in the troops and using emergency powers to get the fuel moving. The protests have clearly been about more than just the high tax on petrol. Despite the general disruption to people's lives, polls indicated 70% support for the action. In a reversal of the situation in the Miners' Strike of the 1980's, we have the left leaning government of Tony Blair complaining about activists picketing and taking direct action (and some Trade Union leaders hinting at a right wing conspiracy to overthrow the govern-ment). As well as William Hague, the right wing opposition leader, calling the protesters `fine upstanding citizens'. This indicates the shift that has taken place over the past few years. There is a growing perception amongst many people that the establishment should now be identified with those who hold a left leaning ideology and have the greatest influence over the main power centres in our society — education, TV, the judiciary, social services and the government. Many people feel increasingly alienated from this new establishment and threatened by it and so welcomed the fuel protests as an opportunity to express their feelings.
Daniel 2: the iron and the clay
How does this tie in with bible prophecies? Two passages are particularly significant— Daniel 2 and Revelation 18. In Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2:31-45) God gives us an overview of world history from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the second coming of the Messiah Jesus. The successive empires represented by the head of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron and the feet partly of iron and partly of clay are the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.
The Roman Empire will be revived in some form at the time the stone strikes and destroys it (35). The stone then fills the earth representing the kingdom of God, established by the Messiah at His second coming.
What concerns us here is the final stage of this world system, the toes of the feet.
This stage is the one, which immediately precedes the return of the Messiah, so it is about our time. This is how Daniel interprets it (42-43): "And the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.
As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men but they will not adhere to one another just as iron does not mix with clay."
This describes the present world system very well. It is partly strong and partly fragile. Human ingenuity has created an amazing technology, which has raised living standards for many, increased life expectancy, enabled us to communicate and travel to the whole world, filled our homes and work places with a multiplicity of machines able to do things which our recent ancestors, let alone prophets like Daniel, could not have conceived. At the same time there are multitudes of people who have none of these things and exist in desperate poverty.
This basic injustice threatens the stability of the system. Another reason for instability is the one, which was heightened by the recent fuel crisis.
The industrial world system is totally dependent on certain vital ingredients to keep it going — oil, electricity, computers, and telecommunications. Take any of these out and we are helpless.
What recent events have shown us is how easy it is to take one vital ingredient out and just how soon everything starts to fall apart. The other point in the Daniel passage is that the iron and the clay do not adhere together. In other words the system is unstable and does not hold together in a crisis. That was also demonstrated by recent events.
The world system today is part democracy and part dictatorship and the two are mingling in ways, which are increasingly unstable. The communist dictatorships of the Soviet bloc have given way to a form of democracy, which still retains many elements of the former dictatorship, and is largely failing to meet the basic needs of the people.
The democratic governments of Western Europe are in the process of surrendering their sovereignty to the unelected bureaucracy, which rules the EU, which shows signs of becoming a dictatorship and whose unpopularity is growing with the people. In Britain today we see a society, which does not hold together. There is conflict of interest between town and country, left wing and right wing and different racial and religious groups. The rejection of Christian values by society at large and by those who control the media and the educational system has resulted in a spirit of selfishness and aggression, which was very evident during the crisis. We watched the scene outside our local petrol station, which had just received a delivery.
Drivers were turning right across the line of traffic to barge into the queue, blocking the main road, one even driving on the pavement.
There were near fights and a general spirit of aggression and chaos. Far from the Dunkirk spirit of everyone pulling together in a crisis, the dominant spirit was "me first and to hell with everyone else". If the crisis had continued and there had been real food shortages it is frightening to think how many people would have behaved.
The danger of the kind of action taken by the protesters is that it leads to a breakdown of law and order, which may lead to someone taking on dictatorial powers to restore order. With modern technology now available (surveillance cameras, computers, credit cards etc) it is easy to see how a dictatorship could quickly gain control of most people's lives.
Revelation 18: Fall of Babylon
In Revelation 18 we have a prophetic view of the end of the Babylon world commercial system. Here we see a world wide trading system, which is very powerful and yet is brought very quickly to ruin. As a result of the fall of Babylon the merchants are no longer able to buy and sell. In other words the trading system collapses. Obviously the events of the recent fuel crisis have not caused this to happen. But they have been a glimpse of what could happen and a warning about just how vulnerable our inter-connected world system has become. I remember some years ago while we were on holiday in Cornwall visiting an exhibition of village life in the 19th century.
It struck me that although life was much harsher then, the village was basically self sufficient, depending on the skills of the people who lived there and the products of nature. Life was sustainable whatever happened elsewhere. It would not have been greatly affected by what was happening in London and not at all by what was happening in the Middle East, a region, which to them would have been a remote part of the world. Today skills related to the products of nature which were passed on by many generations have been completely lost. Ours is a society which relies on the multitude of our machines to keep things going.
We may know how to use cars, computers and mobile phones, but very few people would have survival skills if the system goes down and none of our gadgets work any more.
Whether we live in the town or the village we are very much affected by what happens in the rest of the world, especially what happens in the Middle East. This ties in with the picture of an inter-connected global system, which we see in the prophecies of the end times in the bible. Babylon in the book of Revelation takes on a role beyond its geographic area and signifies the world economic, political and religious system, which is in rebellion against God.
At the same time Babylon is a geographic area. It is the modern country of Iraq. The Babylonian empire comprised the major oil producing area of the Persian gulf. The recent oil crisis has been about the cost of petrol at the pumps. There are three main factors in this — taxes, the oil companies' profits and the cost of crude oil charged by the countries that produce it. The largest oil producers are Islamic countries of the Middle East, which has given them an enormous lever with which to influence the rest of the world. On the day the oil crisis broke on September 7th The Times had a headline "Petrol to hit £4 a gallon by the end of the year".
The article said, "Soaring energy prices are already causing unrest around the world, with protests in America, strikes in France and consumer boycotts in Britain. The EU warned OPEC countries that they would jeopardise world economic prosperity if they did not reverse the increase. Leo Drollas, chief economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, is concerned that OPEC inaction, a cold winter and low oil stocks could send the price soaring to $40 (US) a barrel. `A lot depends on the winter,' he said. `Consumers are in for a tough time".
The three countries, which are able to increase production, are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. Iraq is unlikely to want to do anything to help in the West. In fact an article in The Daily Telegraph (19/9/00) said, "Rising oil prices are giving President Saddam Hussein of Iraq an economic windfall and a burst of bellicose confidence that is raising military tension in the Gulf. He has renewed sabre rattling with accusations that Kuwait is `stealing' crude from oil fields close to the border with Iraq, an echo of the claims that preceded his 1990 invasion of Kuwait".
The article speaks of "fears that Saddam could disrupt the flow of oil—either by undermining Kuwait's production or by cutting off Iraq's supply. Iraq accounts for about 4% of world oil production and analysts say any reduction in its exports could send prices soaring even higher".
Saddam's Iraq has reasons to cause disruption to the west. I
f Saudi Arabia and the UAE do not have any at present, that situation could change if there was a major conflict between Israel and the Arab world. In 1973 after the Yom Kippur war, the Arab oil boycott caused years of recession worldwide.
That is why the USA and the EU are desperate to see a resolution to the Arab Israeli conflict which, they hope, will not only bring peace to the region, but also ensure that oil continues to flow from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.
Amazingly the key issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the status of Jerusalem. In the prophecy of Zechariah 12 we read that in the last days of this age, Jerusalem will be a "burdensome stone burdening all nations".
In other words a dispute over Jerusalem will affect all the nations of the world. One wonders what Zechariah thought at the time of writing down that prophecy. "
That's a bit over the top Lord!
How could all nations of the world be involved in a conflict over Jerusalem?"
Today we see how an inter-connected world, dependent on oil, is desperate to prevent a conflict over Jerusalem setting off a spark, which provokes a general Middle East war and cuts off oil supplies to the rest of the world.
One interesting postscript on this: If you take the creationist view rather than the evolutionary view (as I do), the origin of the oil fields of the world was the sudden crushing of plant and animal life in the world wide flood of Genesis 6.
Therefore it is significant that this substance created at the time of the previous worldwide judgment of human wickedness is to play a part in the final judgment of the great tribulation.
Conclusion:
The house on the sand and the house on the rock
Only the sovereign God who knows the end from the beginning could reveal details about our time to prophets living centuries ago.
The same sovereign God has also shown us how we can find security in an increasingly insecure world.
"See that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth: but now he has promised saying, `Yet once more I shake not only the earth but also heaven.' Now this `yet once more' indicates the removal of things that are being shaken as of things that are made, that the things which may not be shaken may remain. Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear" Hebrews 12:25-28.
There is every indication that created things, and especially the present world system, are going to be shaken by a series of crises which will lead to the time Jesus described as the Great Tribulation. Out of this crisis will arise the worldwide dictatorship of the beast or Antichrist.
The only thing, which will not be shaken, is the kingdom of God. Jesus said in order to get into the kingdom of God "You must be born again" by repenting of sin and believing in the one sacrifice the Messiah Jesus made when he died and rose again. This same Jesus is coming again, not this time as a suffering servant, but as King of Kings and Lord of Lords with all the power of God at his disposal.
He will judge all human beings according to how we have responded to the message of the gospel.
Jesus spoke of two house builders, one on the rock and one on the sand.
The storms, floods and winds beat upon both and the house on the sand fell while the house on the rock stood firm.
If your life today is built upon the rock of a living faith in the Messiah Jesus, you will stand whatever storms come your way. If not you need to know that you are heading for a crash not just in this life, but also in the life to come. Now is the day of salvation, now is the time to get right with God.
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