Within the scope of about twenty years, the Babylonian Empire came to be the most prominent nation and power in the Near East. One would never have thought it in 626 BC, when the Babylonians rebelled against the Assyrians and were successful. And then in 612 BC, they knocked off the Assyrian city of Nineveh. And in 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, decisively defeated the Egyptians in battle and chased them all the way back to Egypt, at which time the Babylonians gained control over this little state of Judah, and remained in control until after three waves of deportations carried out by them. At last, they decimated it and levelled Jerusalem in 587 BC. But no one would have really thought it. They would have been totally astonished that some power and nation like that, within a scope of twenty years, would take the dominant place in the Near East. It would be like me telling you today, that within twenty years, the nation and country of Paraguay was going to be the leading nation in the world. You would say, I do not believe it! Well, it may or may not happen…I am just saying that it would be that startling to you. You probably did not even think that thought today. It has not even come into your head. That is how foreign it is to you.

And that is the way it was, you might say, with this situation. Nobody would have thought that this puppet state of Babylon, would have risen up to such prominence in twenty years. [This is] the sovereignty of God: see I am raising up the Chaldeans, I am going to do this.¹

Ralph Davis