Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and SWRC.com. God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things. Today, Dr. Douglas Petrovich will introduce us to the real Nimrod. Our brand new website SWRC.com now has over 1,000 items designed to educate and encourage you in your walk with Jesus. Books, DVDs, all available at SWRC.com. Your favorite authors and teachers helping bring clarity to the chaos. Resources from Greg Patton, Donald Perkins, and Larry Spargimino are all available at SWRC.com. Our weekly email newsletter is delivered to your inbox each week with encouragement, information, and the latest on new resources and events. Sign up today at SWRC.com and start receiving our weekly email newsletter. That's SWRC.com. Last October, author and professor of biblical history, Dr. Douglas Petrovich, shared a special presentation at our Gettysburg conference on Nimrod, the Empire Builder. Today, we're going to listen in on this fascinating talk. I'm excited about the topic, something that's been one of the many passionate topics for me in recent years. I never expected to stumble into, just like with the evidence for Israelites in Egypt, never expected to stumble into the right person to connect him with in history, but God just dropped that in my lap, and I felt the responsibility to share it with others. So Nimrod, the empire builder. All right, many of you, of course, are familiar with the early part of the book of Genesis, and that's where Nimrod's story is. It's in Genesis 10, his very curt biography, if you will. But overall, Genesis 1 through 11, I think, I'm convinced, it's written for one specific purpose. Among others, I mean, there are a lot of purposes, but one main purpose, and that, it's related to how the Israelites were about to enter into the Promised Land. And they were under a commission by God to kill every man, woman, child, and animal belonging to these people who lived there, right? Every single one. Now, you know how faithful the Israelites always are, right? Did they complete the task? No. Did this catch God off guard? No. He knew it would happen. So what did he do? Some of you aren't going to like this, but that's OK. A vaccination. against the virus. The virus was the non-God-centered worldview that the Canaanites held. That's the virus. And God needed to prepare his people to live in a place where they would be exposed to the virus. Day and night, night and day, every day, 365 days of the year. So, it's basically a defense of a God-centered worldview. That's what Genesis 1 through 11 is. How do you account for the origin of the universe? What is mankind? What happens to people at death? Right? Metaphysics. So all of these are areas that will define a person's worldview. Every one of us, whether you think you have one or not, you have a worldview. If someone were to ask you enough questions, they'd be able to maybe define for everybody what your worldview is. And God needed to prepare his people with a God-centered worldview that he was going to reveal to them. There's the revelation of God in all of this, to show them who and what he is, to answer the questions that pertain to life for all of us, so that they could think the way that God wanted them to think. Does that make sense? So that's why Genesis 1 through 11 is written. The overarching reason among many smaller or also large reasons. But within that, there's the story of Nimrod. And why would Nimrod be in Genesis 10? And again, it relates to the fact that the nation was about to to have its own land and experience this national birth, if you will, and enjoy all of what God had for them there. But God knew ahead of time, among other things like we've already talked about, God knew that they were going to want a king over them, didn't He? Because he, if you caught this in the Pentateuch, God was very clear with Moses to tell them. Moses didn't know or expect, I suppose, unless God told him and we didn't read about it, but God knew that the people would want a king. And he knew that he would give them a king as they asked for. So there were two qualifications of a person to be able to be king. One is he had to be a man who was of their countrymen. So he couldn't be a foreigner. It's kind of like in the United States. You have to have been born in this country with citizenship to be the President of the United States. As far as I know still, unless that's changed, you can let me know if I'm missing something. The other qualification is that God had to be the one to choose the king. God had to choose the king. The people couldn't choose him on their own. Isn't that cool? I think I trust God's opinion better than my opinion or your opinion, sorry. So I think that was a good choice. Those are the two qualifications. The three things that a king could not do According to what God told Moses, and it's in the Pentateuch, He said, you can't multiply wives, you can't multiply silver and gold, and you can't multiply horses. Those three things. Those are the three no-no's. You can't do any of those if you're the king. So that's what a king could not do. That being the case, folks, God knew, yes, that there would be a king over Israel, and I'm convinced that Genesis 10's small, what we call pericope or story of the life of Nimrod is in preparation for that, looking forward to the time when there will be a king. This is what you want to make sure your king does not look like. That's the simplicity of it. That's why it's there, all right? Where does all of this take place? And this is, of course, a map of the ancient Near East. Jerusalem is here, and so this is the Holy Land. We have the Syrian or Eastern Desert here. And if you go due east from Israel, you end up in Southern Mesopotamia. And so this is, of course, the center of the world, not necessarily geographically, but the center of the world, kind of historically and logically and geopolitically, because that's where urbanization starts. That's where civilization starts in southern Mesopotamia. And so the land of Nimrod's origin is here. And I'm convinced that it's actually right in this spot where the asterisk is. There's a city there called Kish. Which easily could be spelled in English, in the English Bible it could be C-I-S-H. But it was chosen to spell it K-I-S-H. And I'm convinced that there is a connection between Nimrod and a historical figure, and that's of course what the book is all about. That connection and attempting to prove that to the objective reader, and obviously it's got to be an objective reader. You can't prove something to someone who is not going to accept it walking into the deal. If a person's already made up his or her mind, then that's that. You can try all you want. It really isn't going to get you anywhere. Hopefully people will be objective. So I'm convinced that he is to be connected with the world's first empire builder. The first empire builder. Who is Sargon of Akkad. Sargon of Akkad. So that's what the book essentially tries to persuade the reader of. Alright, quick chronological context. You remember this chart I showed it to you yesterday. It's the third one down that's really the one for our purposes that's important. If I'm correct that Nimrod is Sargon of Akkad, then his rule probably began around 2320 BC, a long time ago, right? This is in the third millennium BC. Where does this fit archeologically? And really, you know, I see way too many people who think they understand a lot about what's going on in Mesopotamia who haven't really studied it formally with great care. And that has to be a precursor to everything. And as part of that, you've got to know the archeological periodization. If you don't know the archeological periodization, you're just playing games. You've got to know this. So no matter how you date these periods, no matter how short or long you consider them, they're all there. They're in the record. You take a shovel and you go over there and you dig it up and you'll find. that each one of these periods is represented. So it's just a question of just when did it start and when did it end and all of that. So again, for our purposes, all that's important to us is number 10 on the list, the Akkadian period, which represents the Akkadian empire, the world's first empire, and it's a Mesopotamian empire. And it's, as you see to the right under the note, Sargon of Akkad, whom I am equaling or connecting to Nimrod. So, a little bit of background here. The city-states conquering city-states. You see, that's what was going on. In fact, it's this period here, I'll just go back for a second and show you. The early dynastic period. That period is basically characterized by, it's a free-for-all. It's the rise of kings and kingdoms and the connection of that with greed. Have you ever seen anybody that's in charge of a nation? In this case, it's a city-state, so it's almost like a nation, but have you ever seen anyone who's in charge of a nation who's greedy? Oh, I'm the only one that's seen it, right? Yeah, you've seen that movie before. If they have a lot, what do they want? More. And if they get more, they need more still. Yes. So the early dynastic period is characterized by this free for all to gain more and more power and more and more cities. So if you're a king, you have your own kingdom. It's probably a city state. You look around, right? You stretch your neck and you look all around and you say, well, there's that city over there and there's that city over there. I think we're more powerful than they are. So you persuade the people under you and say, we can do this. Let's prepare an army. Let's, you know, get all the weapons we need and away we go. And we just grow it. So that's what this period is characterized by, which leads us to the period with the first empire. So it's kind of like a natural progression. And by the way, and maybe in future years, I'll come here and talk about this, but I'll be trying to prove in my fifth book, I mean, we're working on my fourth book now. In my fifth book, I'll be trying to prove that this is the period, the late Uruk period, where you have the, what I call the post-Babel dispersion. It's when God confuses the languages, Genesis 11 and Exodus. allows mankind's selfishness to have its natural end, right? And so God has to separate people, confuse their languages so that they wouldn't be able to conspire together to do these prideful things in such a large way. It didn't completely stop mankind, of course, it didn't even come close to that, but it really put a cork in the bottle for a while. It really tightened things down. And, by the way, and this is important, people who haven't formally studied ancient Mesopotamian or ancient Near Eastern history, they don't get this, and they need to get this, okay? The events that happened at Babel, Babel was post-flood, it's the first what? It's the first? Yeah, it's the first city-state. It's the first urbanized center. There were, whatever we want to call them, villages, towns, there were plenty of those long before this, folks. I know this now, having studied the archeology. Plenty of that. But there was nothing like what Babel was. It was the first of its kind, an actual urban setting with the characteristics of urbanization. It had canalization, which is a drainage system. that includes sewage, right? It has that. It has central authority. It has probably a king. It has scribes. It has accountants. It has, I mean, the list goes on and on for what defines an urbanized center. And it was the first of its kind, wherever it was. And I'm convinced 100% that it's not at the city of Daniel's Babylon, which in the later period wasn't even occupied. It wasn't even occupied as a town, as a little baby town, until the Jemdet Nasser period. So, that's not the right Babel. There are actually ten Babels. Ten. Ten. In ancient history, in and around Mesopotamia. So only one of them can be the right one for Genesis 11. But the point I wanted to get to is, with the first city, is it possible to have wars between city-states? With only one city. Let me make that clear. Is that possible? No. There aren't other cities there yet. So Sargon of Akkad, what's his role? Is he important in his city? He's the what? He's the king himself. And what does he conquer? other cities, other urbanized center cities. So the people out there who want to connect Nimrod with the Tower of Babel are way off the map. They may not think they are, but they are. They're way off the map. You cannot connect Nimrod historically with what goes on at the Tower of Babel. No, because he's a king. And whatever the first Babel was, that's where you had kingship begin. So it has to be something that happens much later in history. There's no connection whatsoever. And I talk about this in the book, and I try to persuade people, you know, talk them off the ledge that you can't connect Nimrod with the Tower of Babel, even though throughout history people have tried. But it represents a poor understanding of history and how ancient cultures work. You've got to study history, you've got to study archaeology. There's a lot you really need to get down pat before you make assertions like that that really go nowhere. Okay, so the city-states conquering each other, that's the early dynastic period. And there was a king named Anatum. He was the king of Lagash. He conquered cities such as Ur, Nippur, Larsa, and Uruk. So you can see he's cutting his teeth already, isn't he, in this capturing other city business to become even more powerful. And that's why, of course, it's the perfect transitional period between the beginning of cities and urbanized center cities, and the actual full-blown empire building of Sargon's day. So, Uma paid him tribute, he also annexed the kingdom of Kish, and that's what I'm suggesting connects us to Nimrod. Because Nimrod's origin is through a man named Cush, right? Who is probably the originator of the people who ended up in the city of Kish, which regained its independence after his death. And he briefly controlled much of Shumer, that's southern Mesopotamia. That's where you have the origin of civilization. And this image says a lot, right? A picture's worth a thousand words. So this is the Stella of the Vultures, and of course you see the vultures here, don't you? Can you notice what this is right here? Yeah, that's a person. The person's experiencing a very bad day. The vultures are after him. This is a dead body that is being consumed by birds. Where do you get dead bodies like this? Well, in his world, when you conquer a city, you have lots of cadavers after you're done, don't you? And so, this depicts what really would have taken place. They're not just drawing imaginary things up here. This is real, what they're drawing. So, with Anatum, you see here, He's the king of Lagash, and Lagash is here with the blue underneath it, so there's Lagash. And he controlled cities such as Ur, Larsa, Uruk, and Nippur. Nippur is important because it's the religious capital of Mesopotamia. It never has a real political role with power, with any ancient ruler. It's mainly a spiritual center. So the religion finds its hub at Nippur. So he conquers all of these cities and he's, you know, feeling good about himself, right? So he's a precursor to Nimrod. He's the one who's showing the plan for how this you know, big conquering business would go about. And this is a drawing of that stela of the vultures. There's, you know, two sides to it and you see where it fits in the upper right. Here's the king here depicted. Now, do you think this king was a giant? Anyone think that king was a giant? Compare him to all the other sized people. Do you think he was a real giant? Think he was really like 25 feet tall? I don't. I don't. I think this is ideology at work. They're trying to persuade the people of something. The king is a big guy. You mess with the big guy, what happens to you? You get whacked. You're beaten down. He's got the whacker in his hand, doesn't he? That's a mace. That will hurt you. The mace is responsible for the invention of what? Anybody know? The mace was the first weapon of choice in ancient war. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, you'd have to defend yourself though, right? What would you use to defend yourself, your most vulnerable part from attack by this guy? Could be a shield. could be a helmet. Yeah, the helmet is the result of the mace. Because a wooden handle and a stone on top, you know, that's not an ice cream treat. That'll hit you right on the head and knock you right out of battle. Even if you don't die, you're out. you're on the ground. So you have to protect the head first and foremost. So you can see him, and he has here a bunch of men who are prisoners. They're depicted as little children or babies. These aren't babies. These are men. And they're probably naked. I'm guessing they're naked because they're stripped down often. So that shows his power that he's gone to a certain city. He's conquered them. There are dead bodies all over the place. There are birds eating the dead bodies. And the survivors are under his control. They're his slaves. So he wins, doesn't he? This is the ancient world. Aren't you glad you came to the conference for this? What a wonderful world the ancient world was. So there's kind of a blow up and this is showing the actual stones, the fragments of the stones and you can see that mace that he has in his right hand and his left hand holds the net of Ningersu and all of his captives are within. All right, now also one thing important in the ancient world is money, right? Because the money always determines how life goes. Same in the ancient world, same from then to now, same now. It's always, you know, you're looking for the money. And in the ancient world, money, they didn't really have money like we have it, like bills and coins and so forth. That was much later. They had especially trading networks, and it was through trade that you could become wealthy. Obviously, conquering was a way to become wealthy, but trading was the most common. It's the most peaceful, isn't it? So you had a lot of great resources up in what's called Anatolia in the ancient world. Now we know of it as modern Turkey. The New Testament era usually calls it Asia Minor. So lots of materials and resources, natural resources, come from there. And others come from that way, and so they all funneled down into this new place of central civilization, right? So the trading network, the main hubs of the trading network that got resources down there, one was Ebla, and that's in modern Syria today, and the other is Uruk. which Aanotoum controlled, right? We just saw that Aanotoum, in his reign, he gained control of it. So, but even before he was alive, you had this trading network going on. And so, then when Uruk became surpassed, overtaken in local power, Kish is the one. What do you know? Kish. Kish was extremely powerful late in the early dynastic period. And of course, Nimrod descends from Kush, which is almost certainly the same word in antiquity. And then there are two other cities, Ebla and Mari that are important in all of this and going back to the map. So Mari is here. Mari is part of that trading network. You can see it's like a, it's a middle player in all of this. Mari became famous for the production of tools and weapons made of a certain metal. What do you think was the metal at that time? Not yet. Bronze, yeah. And what are the two components to make bronze? Copper and? Tin. Tin, good. And tin was located way up here in Anatolia. So, don't you think it's smart that it would come through this, down this line through the trading network, along the Euphrates River, and guess what they do at Mari? That's where everything stops, and you have the production there, the making of instruments, implements, weapons, tools, and so forth. And then, ship them all down to Uruk, or after Uruk-Kish, And, you know, you've got a humming system. Everything's moving along, right? So he who controls the trade controls everything in the ancient world. That's how it works. So all of the ancient players, they want to have a part in that network, if not control it outright, as much as humanly possible. So that's what the competition was all about, right? All right, so Ebla and Mari were big players in this. Ebla, and I talk about this in the book, I have a chapter devoted to it. Ebla, I believe, was conquered by Mari. Ebla is famous because of what? Anyone know why Ebla is famous? And you say, if nobody knows, how famous is it, right? Ebla's famous for its ancient textual archive. from late in the early Bronze Age, okay? Late in the early Bronze Age. And Ebla, did I show you Ebla? Here it is, right? It's at the, it's like the central point, or the beginning point of that trading network that's going down to the south. So Ebla is conquered by Mari, and you gotta think about Mari's role in all this. Okay, if Ebla keeps driving up the prices of things, And Mari doesn't get enough profit. What's Mari going to do? Let's go after them. Let's take their role and remove the middleman in the process, right? Smart thinking. So they conquer, Mari conquers Ebla. And here's a look at Mari. When we saw this before, didn't we? Where you have a city that's kind of cut on both sides of a river. And so two sides of the Euphrates River together comprises Mari. One character who has fascinated readers of the Bible greatly is Nimrod, whose brief biography is hidden away in Genesis chapter 10. He was a powerful king who built a kingdom in southern Mesopotamia, then expanded it northward by conquering and building up cities in Assyria. Since Moses wrote about Nimrod before his death in 1406 BC, the options are limited for the identity of this ancient Near Eastern empire builder. In his latest book, Nimrod the Empire Builder, Architect of Shock and Awe, Dr. Douglas Petrovich reveals the true identity of this tyrant. Historical evidence from archaeology, ancient texts, and ancient drawings points to only one man who fits the description of biblical Nimrod. In his book, Dr. Petrovich attempts to weed out the wrongly identified candidates and prove to the reader just who in history can be equated confidently with Nimrod the Empire Builder. Nimrod, the empire builder, architect of shock and awe. Order your copy today when you call 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. You can also order this fascinating book on our website. SWRC.com. Nimrod the Empire Builder by Dr. Douglas Petrovich. 1-800-652-1144. Tomorrow, Dr. Petrovich will be back, this time sharing the evidence proving Israel's Egyptian sojourn. So be sure to tune in by downloading our free SWRC mobile app, or by subscribing to our daily Watchman on the Wall podcast. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful listeners like you. Visit SWRC.com.