I woke up this morning a little before 6 a.m. and Yahweh opened a vision up to me. A saw a clay tablet in front of me, reminding of those use used in ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia. It was covered in inscriptions. Every second another clay tablet appeared, one after the other, over, and over, and over again. I stared at this sight with astonishment, wondering what on earth this could possibly mean, because this went on for two or three minutes so that I must have been shown hundreds of tablets. As one faded away, another faded in, like someone turning a page instantaneously with an invisible hand. And then, after the last tablet had passed, a second vision opened up and I saw in large numbers,

I cannot say, with any degree of certainty, that this vision has come in response to an oft repeated prayer of mine, "What next, Father?" but in view of the general tenor of my petitions in recent months, I have good reason to believe that this is such an answer.

There is very little known about the year 567 BC historically, other than a defeat of the Etruscans by the Romans that was an important stepping stone in the rise of the Roman Empire, but if you look at a cross-section of events from the Middle East at this time you will discover some interesting things.

19 years before Jerusalem and the rest of Judah had fallen (586 BC), the final siege having begun two years earlier so 567 BC was well into the Judahite period of exile in Babylon and the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC). It did not take me long to locate the Astronomic Diaries of Babylon [1] and to the record from 567 BC (see sample below). What is particularly important about these diaries, written on clay tablets, was that they anchor the Biblical narrative into known historical records such as these.

This particular tablet details the position of the moon and the planets during the 37th year of the reign of Nebuchaznezzar, the King of Babylon. This particular tablet is of monumentous importance to biblical historians, for which it has now become famous, because it confirms the 586 BC date for the destruction of Jerusalem. Indeed, the same tablets absolutely confirm that Jeremiah 29:3 is an eye-witness account of that conquest because the same officials are listed in it:

"Then all the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats in the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-Sarsekim a chief officer, Nergal-Sharezer a high official and all the other officials of the king of Babylon" (Jer.39:2-3, NIV).

It is, of course, wonderful to have archaeological evidence confirming the historicity of the Bible (the evidence just keeps on mounting every year now) but why did Yahweh show me this vision? Why hundreds of tabets and not just one? And why the year 567 BC?

It has long been my thesis that the Babylonian exile not only had a major (negative) impact on the Judahite exiles and their leaders, and on the devlopment of Judaism itself, but moulded their apocalyptic traditions which shaped and formed their numerous apocryphal documents (like the Book of Enoch and Book of Jasher) which have so mesmerised and deceived modern Messianics (and not a few Evangelicals) that the former have rushed precipitously into declaring that they ought to be canonical scripture equal in authority to the Bible, with some modern leaders unilaterally and presumptuously canonising them.

Scholar Helge S. Kvanvig writes:

"The emergence of the apocalyptic traditions and literature presupposes both a direct contact with Mesopotamian culture in the Babylonian diaspora, and the syncretistic tendencies in Palestine in the post-exilic centuries" [2]

Sarah Robinson agrees [3]. This is why I have always insisted that Jewish traditions that come after the Book of Malachi, when nevi'im (prophets) were withdrawn by Yahweh until the coming of John the Baptist, should be treated with extreme care and scepticism. The Judahites returning from exile brought with them numerous Babylonian traditions and pagan occultism that became fastened onto Judaism, irreversibly corrupting it.

These included corruption of the Divine Calendar, the invention of man-made festivals like Hanukkah (with a fake miracle) and Purim (which has been used by Judaism as a pretext for racial supremacy and the quest for world hegemony through violence and subterfuge), occultism and kabbalism (which came to full maturity in the Middle Ages and is now part and parcel with Orthodox Judaism), and so on.

There can be no doubt that there has been, what Selz calls, a "knowledge transfer" from Babylon to Judea that includes "story-telling and fantastic lore to the growth of the corpus of apocalyptic literature" which today both shapes the world-view of neo-occultic Judaism and those Messianics who have unwisely bought into it in part or in whole. As Selz also notes, "this may provide the best explanation for why so many different topics and stylistic features are fused into the extant Enochian tradition" [1] (along, I might add, with its spurious calendar).

This explains the almost fanatical drive by some messianic leaders to keep on expanding the Bible Canon to include this Jewish apocalyptic, apocryphal and pseudepigraphic material. One group, led by James Trimm, is laying claim to the Tanakh (Old Testament) canon of the Hasmoneans that included all this Babylonian-tainted and heavily politicised material. So it will come as no surprise to learn that he tenaciously holds onto Hanukkah and Purim too. He uses as his authority a number of apocryphal books, principally the four Maccabbee Books and the Book of Judith (which you will find in various Apocryphal compilations of the Catholic, Eastern and a few eccumentically-minded liberal Protestant Churches). Yet it is significant that not only did the Essenes of Qumran exclude them but also the one Hasmonean work, the Book of Esther, which slipped through the net and regrettably found its way into our canon nonetheless even though it is so obviously a fake [4].

The 'gap' between Malachi and Matthew is not accidental but deliberate because this was a period of major apostacy during which the Pharisees and Sadducees came to power.

So why did Yahweh show me these visions this morning? In the light of His very powerful and consistent calling to me to root out apostacy from Messianism and antinomianism from Evangelical Christianity, for the purposes of raising up a pure Remnant for the final witness before Messiah returns, I am forced to three conclusions:

• 1. To defend the Protestant Canon of the Bible (minus Esther);
• 2. To harmonise the Divine Revelation with Science; and
• 3. To separate out the myths from real History.

If there is one thing we can be quite sure about the Astronomical Diaries of Babylon is that they are historically and scientifically accurate. At a time when believers are losing their minds and turning to myths and pseudo-science in their defence of Flat Earth and messianics are awhorring after Babylonised Judaism and reinventing the Besorah (Gospel) in an occultic, semi-pagan image, and in many bases denying Paul, a prophetic witness has to step forward in defence of the historical Scriptures and Emunah (Faith).

So you will imagine how appalled I was when the other day I read how a leading Messianic minister, who once mentored me - one held in high regard by the Evangelical community as well - started ever so gently hinting that the Gospel of Matthew might not be reliable because no manuscripts (MSS) exist of it before the 14th century AD! To which I would reply: so what? Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) in 1947 there were no copies of the Tanakh (Old Testament) older than the 7th century AD (the Masoretic Text). Was that grounds to doubt its reliability? Clearly not for since the discovery of the DSS we now have Tanakh (Old Testament) texts dating to the 3rd century BC. All scholars, even liberals, acknowledge that at the latest the Gospel of Matthew was written in the last decades of the 1st century AD and the fact that earlier MSS have not been found does not invalidate or cast suspicion on it in the least.

So this is what I have got out of the visions Yahweh shared with me this morning. If I am shown more, I will add an appendix to this article.

Endnotes