Isaiah 14

Isaiah saw far beyond the immediate danger to his people. He also saw the much bigger threat coming down the road.

The Assyrians were Public Enemy no. 1 in his time. But they were never able to conquer his homeland of Judah. That task fell to the Babylonians a century later. They sacked Jerusalem, destroyed The Temple, and exiled the survivors for another 70 years.

Babylon has been the ultimate boogeyman in the Jewish imagination ever since. The city became the symbol for everything evil in the world, a representation of the Kingdom of Man that stands in opposition to the Kingdom of God. There’s a reason the Book of Revelations features a character called “The Whore of Babylon”.

Isaiah doesn’t hold back when talking about the King of Babylon in Chapter 14:

The realm of the dead below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you — all those who were leaders in the world; it makes them rise from their thrones — all those who were kings over nations.  

They will all respond, they will say to you, “You also have become weak, as we are; you have become like us.”

All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noises of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you.  

- Isaiah 14:9-11 

Nebuchadnezzar II was one of the most powerful kings of all-time. Judah was barely a bump in the road for someone who ruled almost the entire known world. This is a man who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, in the middle of a desert in 600 BC:

In his time, Nebuchadnezzar was as famous and accomplished a man as had ever lived. He created a legacy that should have lasted forever.

Yet who has heard of him now? His bones are rotting in some long forgotten tomb, just as Isaiah said. He might as well have never existed for as little as people these days care about him.

Not much lasts after 2,600+ years. The sheer scale of human history is hard for Americans, whose country has been around for less than 250, to fully appreciate.

Take our Presidents. We spend so much time worrying about their legacy and what the judgment of history will be on their time in office. Will they one day be on Mount Rushmore?

The reality is that it won’t take that long for people to forget every face on that mountain. Our Presidents will mean about as much to future generations as the faces on Easter Island statues mean to us.

Most of human history has already disappeared in the sands of time. The Jews were in Egypt for longer than the U.S. has been a country. The Pharaohs were in power for longer (3,100 years) than the entire span of Western Civilization. All that is left of them is a bunch of giant tombs in the desert. Who were the greatest Pharaohs in Egyptian history? Who cares?

The same thing will happen to the U.S. There might be something we recognize as America in 2500. By 3000? No chance. We will be lucky if people have even heard of this country when we are as far into the future (4800) as Nebuchadnezzar is from us.

Most people reading this would probably say there won't even be a world we will recognize at that point. Either because of global warming or a nuclear winter or The Singularity or the second coming or some other apocalypse.

That might be right. But people have always believed the world was coming to an end. Europeans in the 9th century AD thought the coming of the new millennium meant the end times were here. The Apostle Paul thought it was right around the corner a thousand years before.

Jesus constantly talked about the coming apocalypse, although he admitted that was the one thing that he didn't actually know about:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  

- Mark 13:32

The key distinction for all of them is that just because their world was ending didn’t mean the world was. The world that Jesus grew up and lived in around Galilee and Jerusalem ended when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD. The ancient Jewish world that Isaiah knew ended when Babylon destroyed the original in 587 BC. The same thing will happen to the one that you and I know.

The good news is that the fate of mankind doesn’t hinge on the fate of the U.S. The days of nations mattering in the kingdom of God ended with Jesus. There was a plan in the Old Testament for a Jewish society to last long enough for the Messiah to be born into it. The Gospels told his story and the Book of Acts showed how his disciples founded the Christian church. Everything after is just an intermission until Revelations. Then end is already written.

The impact that even Pharaohs and Presidents have on the course of human history is miniscule. All the world is a stage and all the men and women merely players. We have our exits and our entrances. The music cuts, the lights come down, and you get ushered off so that someone else can take your spot.

Your entire career becomes a one-minute TV ad. That’s how quickly it all goes by:



Jay-Z has a song called “Forever Young” about how he wants his music to live forever. It won’t. People won’t remember Beethoven or Mozart. They won’t remember him.

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.  

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.  

Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! There is something new?" It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 

No one remembers the former generations, even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. 

- Ecclesiastes 1:3-4, 9-11

Every human being wants to leave a mark on this world that lasts beyond our death. But none of us will be able to do. Even the greatest kings end up being eaten by maggots and worms in their own tombs.

There’s only one man whose name will live forever. And that’s because he didn't stay in his.

This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?  

- Isaiah 14:26-27