Buried Evidence 3

BURIED EVIDENCE

Report on A Personal Tour of the Middle East

My Visit to Rose-Red Petra

THE CITY THAT THE WORLD FORGOT

WITH what amazing precision and exactness of detail the Scriptures spoke in the ancient prophecies! In the early dawn of history there were two brothers named Esau and Jacob. Two nations were to come of them, and it was declared at their birth that they would be widely differing peoples. In Genesis 25: 23 we read: “The one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”

Esau was the father of the Edomite nation, while Jacob, became the father of the Jewish people. Side by side these people developed. The Jewish nation out reigned Edom for many generations as the prophecy said.

Regarding their later history, Bible prophecy dealt with exactness of detail. The land of each was to be desolated. But one was to perish off the face of the earth, while the other was to remain a living witness throughout all, time to the justice of the living God. Well, the people of Israel out reigned the Edomites by many generations. However, the latter became strongly entrenched in their many cities on the great trade routes between the East and West. Petra became their capital city. Petra means “rock,” and is called Mount Seir in Genesis 36: 8, 9.

The Edomites despised the truth of God, and the ancient prophecy foretold their doom. In Jeremiah 49:13,17 we read: “All the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes,” and “Everyone that goes by it shall be astonished”; while in Obadiah, verse 18: “There-shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau: for the Lord hath spoken it.” And in Joel 3:19: “Edom shall be a desolate wilderness.”

So literally were these prophecies fulfilled that not only was Edom overthrown and its people defeated, but the very name of their city was forgotten for over a thousand years. It was truly the city that the world forgot. That great and mighty people disappeared leaving no trace and no record in secular history of the part that they had played in world events.

Petra had dropped from the memory of mankind. In fact, so completely had it disappeared that the critics of the Bible ridiculed the statements of Holy Writ. They maintained that there never was such a people. Their strong argument which seemed unanswerable was: Where is Edom situated? The city had disappeared, the people were forgotten. Not one of the race remained. No one could even produce a relic of the Edomites.

However, the spade of the archaeologists unearthed a record of Rameses III of Egypt who boasted of his campaigns and the defeat of the Edomites at Seir. The tablets of Tiglath Pileser the king of Assyria, the monuments of Esar-Haddon, and the records of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, mention the Edomites and their wonderful, city.

With the discovery of these ancient tablets from Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, interest was again aroused amongst Bible students and archaeologists, and the result was that in 1812 the British Archaeological Society sent in a young Swiss explorer to try and find this lost city. He disguised himself as an Arab so as to avoid the certain fate of infidels in those parts. He traveled throughout Jordan with little success. However, through becoming friendly with the Arabs and aiding them medically he was told of wonderful ruins that had been discovered, and the Arabs led him to a remarkable cleft in the rock nearly a thousand feet deep and barely wide enough to permit the passage of a single file of men.

The local Arabs being very superstitious, feared to enter it. However, undaunted, this Swiss traveler plunged into this slot in the rock wall. The winding passage down which he traveled narrowed until he could touch the two walls with outstretched hands and could scarcely see the top of the mountains 1,200 feet above him.

The path lay in perpetual gloom, the chilly darkness hiding the fierce rays of the desert sun. This passage provided the most impregnable entrance that any city has ever possessed. It is the only approach to this the most wonderful natural fortress that I have ever seen anywhere in the world. This canyon, three miles in length, is so narrow that in places it would be well-nigh impossible for two horsemen to ride abreast.

The traveler pressed on regardless of the menacing cliffs until suddenly the passage widened, and a flood of sunlight was admitted by a gap in the mountains. Here the Swiss scholar looked in amazement, for before him carved in one piece from the living rose-red sandstone cliff was a wonderfully preserved temple, sixty feet in height, a temple carved literally like a cameo from the cliff face.

He was looking at a city that no European had seen for well over a thousand years. There was this great dead city, carved from the sheer sandstone heights that ringed the valley, tier after tier of majestic, but empty, tombs, temples, dwelling places, and palaces-every structure hewn from the living, multicolored sandstone. It was well called the “rose-red city, half as old as time.” It was evident that a very large city had once existed here. These ruins were not relics of a feeble race certainly not of a people who were likely to perish utterly, but how true are the Bible prophecies!

Petra, this principal city of the Edomites, is found in one of the most rugged places on earth. Ranges are thrown up to form the weird mountains, like mountains of the moon, thus looming one of the wildest, weirdest, and most fascinating regions on earth. The sandstone is brilliantly hued with a wide range of color-yellow through to brown and then through red to purple. The buildings that once evidently covered the floor of the valley are gone, worn away by the wind and rain of centuries, but here and there small remains are yet to be seen. However, far up the sides of the encircling mountains these valley people have left imperishable records of their former existence in buildings, some of them as large as churches.

There the are tombs, palaces, and dwelling places, all hewn from the solid rock. I saw flights of steps, temples were beautifully carved pillars, and excavated residences of large dimensions in one of which is a single chamber which I calculated to be at least sixty feet in length.

I climbed up an old path of a cliff face to the high place. God strongly warned Israel against the worship connected with these high places. There, the Edomites worshipped the sun, and one can still see the altar facing the east. This rock-hewn altar is made in a perfect circle symbolizing the sun, and here the human victims were offered to the blazing orb of day. The circular hollow in the center which caught the blood and drained it away is still to be seen. The prophets of God warned that this counterfeit worship would lead to destruction. Utter desolation both of the country and the family of Esau was foretold, and utter desolation is certainly now their condition.

When Christ was riding into Jerusalem in triumph, the Pharisees requested: “Master, rebuke Thy disciples.” They did not want to hear the hosannas come to Christ. Christ answered them: “If they held their peace the very stones would cry out!’ In this infidel age when nations and people are dishonoring God and disobeying His Word, God has raised up witnesses from the dead to show forth His authority and power and truth. Rocks of the rose-red city of Petra cry warning. Rocks from that rock city witness to the truthfulness of the Word of God. The God of the Bible is today worshipped by millions, while the high places of Edom and other heathen centers are but tourist attractions.

It would take days and weeks to visit every excavation of this wonderful fascinating rock city of the dead. One can count at least three thousand temples, tombs, and dwelling places cut from the rock.

I wish that every unbeliever could stand as I did in this city of the rock and there open the sacred Book of God and read the words of the inspired pen written when this desolate place was one of the great cities of the ancient world. His unbelief would be arrested as the stones of this ruined city speak as one risen from the dead. One is compelled to read the handwriting of God Himself in the desolation and perpetual ruin around it. Petra, the wonderful city of the Edomites, would become “the stones of emptiness!’ See Isaiah 34:11. May we heed the advice then given in verse 16 of the same chapter: “Seek you out of the book, of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail!’

Prophecy Speaks and Cities Fall

Our purpose is not only to make clear that the only true explanation of world development is found within the covers of the Bible but also to show that fulfilled prophecy is an antidote of doubt and infidelity. It is just as McKinley declared: “History is the unrolled scroll of prophecy.” These words are far more true than many realize.

For instance, notice that the ruins of ancient capitals testify to the marvellous accuracy of the Scriptures of truth. Tyre is an excellent example. I visited the site of this ancient city recently. For two thousand years Tyre grew in importance until she was mistress of the sea as was Babylon of the land. She was the commercial center of the world. Carthage, the rival of Rome, was only a colony of Tyre-Tyre the beautiful, the rich, the learned, into which flowed the fine gold of Tarshish, the precious stones of Aram, the spirited horses of Armenia, the beautiful ivories of Damascus, the fine linen of Egypt, the flocks of Arabia, the rich perfumes of Sheba, the slaves of Javan. In short, Tyre was the London of Asia. Ships from all nations anchored in her harbor, and their passengers bartered in her streets.

While Tyre was at the height of her glory and power, while it would seem she must stand for ever, along came Ezekiel, who prophesied about 590 BC, saying: “They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; for I have spoken it, said the Lord God. They shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shall be a place to spread nets upon; thou shall be built no more: For I the Lord have spoken it, said the Lord God.” Ezekiel 26: 4-14.

Immediately after the giving of the prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre, and after thirteen years of effort, took the city and destroyed it, wreaking fearful vengeance on buildings and people.

Perhaps some will maintain that it cannot be proved that this prophecy was made before Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre. While personally, from a close study of the facts, I believe it was, I shall not refer merely to that siege. Though the prophecy began with the king of Babylon’s siege its marvellous predictions looked down more than two thousand years into the future-in fact, even to our day, as we shall see.

While the ruins of the old city remained after Nebuchadnezzar had finished with it, the prophecy declared that the timbers and rocks and even the very dust should be cast into the sea, and men would dry their nets in the midst of the sea. This prediction was not fulfilled by the king of Babylon, and it certainly seemed improbable it would ever be fulfilled, for if Nebuchadnezzar in his anger had taken full vengeance and had not thought of this, who was likely to care enough about the ruins of a deserted city to be so violently destructive? It would be the frenzy of madness. Meanwhile there stood the prophetic words awaiting fulfillment.

Two and a half centuries passed, and still the ruins stood, a challenge to the accuracy of prophecy.

Then through the East the fame of Alexander the Great sent a thrill of terror. He marched swiftly to attack new Tyre in 332 BC. Reaching the shore he saw the city he had come to take with half a mile or more of water surging between them, for it was built upon an island. Alexander’s plan of attack was speedily formed and vigorously executed. He took the walls, towers, timbers, and ruined houses and palaces of the ancient Tyre, and with them built a solid causeway to the island city.

So great was the demand for material that the very dust was scraped from the site and laid in the sea. By this military stroke Alexander signally fulfilled two prophecies that had been given centuries before: “I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.” And “They shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.” Ezekiel 26:4,12.

The island city was ruthlessly reduced to ashes thus answering the prediction of Zechariah 9:4: “She shall be devoured with fire.”

Considering the suddenness of the downfall the words of Isaiah, penned nearly four centuries earlier, convey an added significance. As the ships of Tyre, returning from a two- or three-year voyage, reached the harbor, the mariners looked out in astonishment to behold not a stately metropolis, but heaps of ruins and tottering walls; hence the prophetic picture: “The burden of Tyre. Howl, you ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in.” “Howl, you ships of Tarshish, for your strength is laid waste.” Isaiah 23:1,14.

Now twenty-four centuries have passed away and what are the facts? The place of old Tyre is just a bare wilderness that has been scraped like the top of a rock. The island city of Tyre is also gone. The sole tokens of her ancient splendor and strength are scores of columns of red and grey granite one can see lying broken and strewn amid the rocks that once formed the island city of Tyre. The causeway built by Alexander the Great to reach the island city of Tyre, has since silted up and on it a small fishing town has been built and I saw the fishermen drying their nets on the ruins of ancient Tyre. They are literally drying their nets on what was once the midst of the sea!

Every year, every day, every minute that Tyre remains in utter ruin and that the fishermen continue to dry their nets on what was once the midst of the sea, disproves the statement of skeptics that the prophecies are vague, or that they were written after the event. Some may say, “It’s a good guess.”

Ah, no, my friends, that is not a sufficient answer. In fact it is an exceedingly lame answer in view of the fact that no person outside the Bible has made a solitary correct forecast covering hundreds of years concerning any city of earth. Only Bible writers were able to foretell with perfect accuracy events two thousand years in the future. Believe it or not, there has never been a single failure in Bible prophecy. The prophets of God, with never a single mistake in hundreds of prophecies, unerringly stated the facts. From the public platform before thousands in many lands I have repeatedly asked anyone to point out a single instance in which the prophet said that a people or a city, or a nation was to be utterly destroyed and that people, city, or nation is in existence today.

Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, Assyria, and scores of others are in the exact condition in which the Bible said they would be. I have seen prophecy fulfilled to the letter in these ancient places. We can know that the Christian Scriptures on this point are unassailable.

Take as another example Babylon, the grandest city that ever pressed the earth. For wealth and magnificence it has had no equal. The metropolis of “the golden kingdom” was a marvel of plan and execution. In vivid language the doom of the great city was foretold. “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures.” Isaiah 13: 19-22.

When Isaiah delivered this message he might have been considered insane; and he died long before his words were fulfilled. But, literally and accurately was the word of the prophet fulfilled: “It shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. . . . It shall never be inhabited . . . neither shall the ‘Arabian pitch tent there.” Verses 19, 20.

Writing of this “desolate metropolis,” a nineteenth century traveler said: “The name and remnant are cut off from Babylon. There the Arabian pitches not his tent; there the shepherds make not their folds.”

And again: “While the lion in one part of Babylon is howling his testimony to the truth of God’s Word, the bittern in a pool in another part, and the ‘doleful creatures’ in another, the heaps and burnt mountains in still others, are warning the traveler over its ruins to ‘take heed’ to the ‘sure word of prophecy.”

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