Jeremiah 51:35-43

Verse 35-38 “The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and my blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say. Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will plead thy cause, and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry. And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant. They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lion's whelps.”

The citizen of Israel will pronounce a judgment against Babylon that the violence done to all of Israel will be visited back upon Babylon. The blood that Babylon shed, she will now shed. God will take up the cause of Israel and exact vengeance upon Babylon for her. He will dry up her waters and make her a desert. Again we are told that she will come a heap of ruins, a place where only animals live. Here we see dragons mentioned. The Hebrew word indicates “monsters.” One might hypothesize that these dragons are dinosaurs, which might very well make a come-back, given the reports coming in from places in the deepest parts of Africa, and the jungles of New Guinea, that people are seeing creatures whose descriptions do seem to match dinosaurs. These dragons will roar like lions. They are a mighty animal.

Verse 39 - 43 “In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD. I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats. How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised! how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations! The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby.”

God is going to encourage Babylon's people to feast, and drink and party, so that they may be taken unaware and be killed. He did this to ancient Babylon. They were partying when the hand appeared and wrote the message on the wall. Daniel 5:1,5,25-28, 30-31 “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old. ”

We see that ancient Babylon was taken in one night, perhaps one hour, just as modern Babylon will be destroyed in one day and in one hour. Revelation 18:8-10 “Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”

Babylon will be taken by surprise. Her destruction will be an astonishment to the nations who never thought it could happen. It says that the sea comes up upon Babylon. Now we know that the sea did not inundate Babylon, it fell to Persia, so this is not to be taken literally in the first fulfillment. It is meant more in a metaphorical way for that time, as the way it fell was as if a tsunami had overflown the land. In the second, we know that the Medes will overrun her, plus she will be burned by fire, by the beast. But what if this is also literal in the future fulfillment. While the land may be burned, we know that California is always under the threat of earthquakes submerging her below the ocean's depths. It is in fact a constant warning that one day California will break off and disappear under water. With all the world's physical upheaval during the last days, it is not unlikely that this will indeed happen. Also, when the “mountain” falls in the ocean in the trumpet judgment, it will no doubt cause great tsunamis which will inundate many lands, including Babylon. And yet again we are told that Babylon will be an uninhabited wilderness where no man even passes by. God is really stressing how complete this devastation will be. How many times have the Scriptures said that it will be a wilderness that will never again be inhabited by humans? He is pounding that piece of information into our brains, so that we will pay attention and, if we are still around when the time comes, get out of Babylon.