In Revelation chapter 18 Babylon “the great,” the ancient city now being rebuilt in Iraq, is foreseen as falling in the period of one hour under the judgment of God in a giant plume of smoke. The smoke that ascends skyward to the extent that it can be seen from ships 250 miles away in the Persian Gulf must have the deep-black sooty look of burning oil. There are clear indications that this will be the case.

First, Babylon is centered smack dab in the middle of the gigantic Mid-East oil fields. Two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves are in five Middle Eastern countries. These are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Secondly, Revelation 18 tells of the merchants of the earth (v.11, 15) bewailing the fall of Babylon because no

one buys the luxury items flowing out of her economy listed in verses 12-13. These merchants “stand at a distance” moaning an event which occurs within a single hour right at the tail end of the Great Tribulation (see Rev. 16:19 for the timing of Babylon’s fall). They must be viewing this scene instantaneously in an era of satellite telecommunications. And these products— money, jewels, textiles, luxury items, and even human servitude— can all be related to the profits of petrol-energy or the products of petrochemicals.

But the real clincher is the passage in verses 17-19. Here we have a different group of tycoons. These are the “shipmaster...and as many as make their living by the sea.” It says they also “became rich by her wealth (v. 19).” Babylon now has a super highway coming down to its only “sea,” the world’s richest oil transport waterway. One billion, 770 million barrels of oil are carried out of the Persian Gulf to the United States alone each year!

Oil tankers and barges are second only to pipelines as the means of transporting oil to production facilities. Supertankers have a dead weight of several hundred thousand tons. Many carry more than 1.5 million barrels of oil in a single load.

Keeping this in mind, notice that shipmasters, passengers, sailors, and “all who had ships at sea” are intimately involved with what will become the world economic center at Babylon in the last days (vv. 17-19). Today the United States and a few other developed countries, all outside the Mid East, consume three-fourths of the world’s energy. From the Middle East, it all gets to this country by ship. In fact, 12 billion barrels of oil leave the Persian Gulf each year for various parts of the world, mostly transported by ship and shipmaster, feeding the coffers of the “merchants of the earth.”

Today, Saddam Hussein has a building project running simultaneously with his weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpiling project. He is lifting “Babylon the great” off the ground atop the world’s largest pool of oil. In our office archives, Dr. Pack has a photo of about two dozen Jews standing on a sandy beach in 1908 dedicating a group of tents and calling the place “Tel Aviv.” The metropolis of Tel Aviv today stands as a signpost to the fulfilled prophecies of the reborn State of Israel. “For who has despised the day of small things” (Zec. 4:10) is a lesson to be learned here! The rebuilding of Babylon in the midst of the fountain of oil wealth spewing forth across the planet via ships “and as many as make their living by the sea” is a startling reality. But here is another lesson: “The Lord is near” (Mat. 24:33). Be Comforted!

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