The Return Of The Medes

By Jack Kelley

http://gracethrufaith.com

See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold. Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children. Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flocks there. (Isaiah 13:17-20)

If you’ve been following the news in the Middle East, you know the Kurds are having a very difficult time lately.  Although the majority of Kurds are Muslim, the Islamic State considers them to be idolatrous and has threatened them with extinction.  An example of their plight is the city of Kobani on Syria’s border with Turkey.  Surrounded on three sides by IS fighters, the Kurdish city desperately needs help.  But Turkey, whose army is camped just across the border on Kobani’s fourth side, won’t help because, for reasons you’ll see below, they don’t like the Kurds.  And since the Kurds have been on Syria’s side against IS other countries won’t help for fear of inadvertently helping Syria. This is the latest in a long line of struggles the Kurdish people have endured in their effort to reclaim the national identity and homeland they had in ancient times.

The Kurds are the modern  descendants of the Medes, an Indo-European people who were joined by the Persians in their successful effort to overthrow Babylon and establish themselves as a world power in the 6th century BC.  The Persians, while joining mid-campaign, eventually became the more dominant partner in the coalition, but together the Medes and the Persians reigned for over 200 years until Alexander the Great defeated them.

The original ancestor of the Medes was Madai, the 3rd son of Japeth, a son of Noah. After the confusion of tongues at Babel he migrated north and east into the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea where Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Georgia converge today. Locals call this area Kurdistan, or land of the Kurds.  Mosul, a prominent city in Iraqi Kurdistan, was known in Biblical times as Nineveh. You may remember how the Kurds held off the Islamic State in the battle for the Mosul Dam this past summer.

Turkey has been a resolute opponent of granting the Kurds a national homeland in Kurdistan because much of the land they would occupy is in Turkey, with some in Iran and Iraq as well. In fact, Turkey thinks it owns the land currently occupied by the Iraqi Kurds, including the rich oil fields there, claiming that their ownership dates back to the days of the Ottoman Empire.

What’s The Point?

The Kurdish army, called the Peshmerga (those who confront death), is a fearsome fighting unit, and with modern arms, enough ammunition, and some training could probably defend themselves against the Islamic State.  But they are struggling from the lack of these things because their neighbors are afraid they might become too strong and win their long and hard fought battle to regain their homeland. This is something that no one else wants, no matter which side they’re on.  In fact, WND is reporting that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the US have all agreed to let Kobani fall to the Islamic State, putting 160, 000 Kurdish people at risk of massacre, rather than coming to their aid.  They clearly don’t want an independent Kurdistan, primarily because its historical lands sit atop rich oil reserves that Turkey, Iraq, and Iran want for themselves.  These countries have reportedly agreed to let the Islamic State solve their Kurdistan problem, thinking they can deal with IS later.

The purpose of this study is to show that no matter what the odds are against them, the Kurds are not going to disappear from the world stage.  We know this because their destiny is to be God’s agency for the never before fulfilled judgment against Babylon at the End of the Age.

By now we all know that Babylon was never destroyed in the way Isaiah and Jeremiah described when the Medes and Persians took the Babylonian Kingdom in 538 BC. When Darius the Mede assumed the throne in Babylon, he did so without having fought a battle for the right. A contingent of the Medo-Persian armies had slipped into the city at night after Cyrus the Persian diverted the River Euphrates far upstream.  With the river reduced to knee high depth they crawled under the bronze bars that descended into the river to keep the city secure, and opened the gates for the Medo-Persian armies to capture the mighty fortress without throwing a spear or swinging a sword.

(This was foretold 150 years earlier in a prophecy from the Lord inIsaiah 44:27-45:3  which describes the manner in which Babylon would be taken and even mentions Cyrus by name. Before he was born, Cyrus was chosen to be the one who would free the Jews from their 70 year captivity in Babylon.)

And yet Jeremiah said that the Babylonian army would be completely destroyed, falling down slain, fatally wounded in the streets of Babylon (Jere. 51:3-4) and“her thick wall will be leveled, her high gates set on fire. The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing, the nations’ labor is only fuel for the flames” (Jere. 51:58).   The use of the plural for nations in this verse conveys the idea that multiple countries were involved in building the city, another clue that Jeremiah wasn’t talking about the Babylon of his time, but of a future one.

Speaking of Babylon’s destruction, the Lord had Isaiah say,

Listen, a noise on the mountains, like that of a great multitude! Listen, an uproar among the kingdoms, like nations massing together! The LORD Almighty is mustering an army for war. They come from faraway lands, from the ends of the heavens—the LORD and the weapons of his wrath—to destroy the whole country. Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. Because of this, all hands will go limp, every man’s heart will melt. Terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame (Isaiah 13:4-8).

This sounds more like 21st century weaponry. I’m told that a neutron bomb will melt flesh right off the skeleton while the victim is still standing. Perhaps this is what Isaiah saw.

Never Again

Read more at Rapture Ready:

http://raptureready.com/featured/kelley/jack338.html