Latest / truthunedited / Who Were the ASSYRIANS_ _ The First Evil Empire to Rule The World
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: The Assyrians were the most powerful, wicked nation the world
- 0:04Speaker 1: had ever seen. No army could stop them. No wall
- 0:09Speaker 1: could hold them. Entire cities surrendered at the sound of
- 0:12Speaker 1: their name. And God himself looked at this nation and said,
- 0:17Speaker 1: You are my weapon. They skinned their enemies alive and
- 0:21Speaker 1: nailed the skins to the city walls. They built pyramids
- 0:24Speaker 1: of human skulls at the gates of conquered cities. This
- 0:28Speaker 1: was not a myth. This was the official policy of
- 0:32Speaker 1: the Assyrian Empire, the most terrifying military force the ancient
- 0:36Speaker 1: world had ever seen. How did a small city-state on
- 0:40Speaker 1: the Tigris River become the first empire to rule the
- 0:43Speaker 1: known world? Why did God himself call this brutal nation
- 0:48Speaker 1: the Rod of My Anger and use them as his
- 0:51Speaker 1: own weapon against Israel? And what happened on the night
- 0:55Speaker 1: one angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers before sunrise? This is
- 1:02Speaker 1: the story of the Assyrian Empire. The nation that ruled
- 1:06Speaker 1: the world with fire and blood. The weapon God used
- 1:11Speaker 1: to judge his own people. And the empire he erased
- 1:15Speaker 1: so completely that the world forgot it ever existed. The
- 1:19Speaker 1: story begins with a city. Asher. a settlement on the
- 1:24Speaker 1: banks of the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq.
- 1:28Speaker 1: For centuries, Assyria was small, vulnerable, surrounded by enemies. The
- 1:34Speaker 1: Babylonians to the south, the Hittites to the north, the
- 1:37Speaker 1: Egyptians to the west. Nobody feared the Assyrians. Nobody noticed them.
- 1:44Speaker 1: They were prey, not predators. Genesis 10.11 mentions the founding
- 1:50Speaker 1: of Nineveh by Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord.
- 1:54Speaker 1: The Assyrian capital was built by a man the Bible
- 1:58Speaker 1: associates with rebellion against God. That detail is not an accident.
- 2:04Speaker 1: It is a preview. But something changed. Between 900 and
- 2:09Speaker 1: 750 BC, Assyria transformed from a regional power into the
- 2:14Speaker 1: most dominant military force the world had ever seen. This
- 2:20Speaker 1: was not gradual evolution. This was a quantum leap in
- 2:25Speaker 1: organized violence, and it began with iron. While the rest
- 2:30Speaker 1: of the ancient world still wielded bronze weapons, the Assyrians
- 2:34Speaker 1: mastered iron production. Iron swords cut through bronze like fabric.
- 2:39Speaker 1: Iron spearheads pierced bronze armor. Iron gave them a killing
- 2:43Speaker 1: advantage that no enemy could match. But weapons alone do
- 2:47Speaker 1: not build empires. Systems do. The Assyrians created the first
- 2:52Speaker 1: professional standing army in history. Not farmers called up during
- 2:56Speaker 1: planting season to fight for a few months. Not tribal
- 2:59Speaker 1: militias loyal to local chieftains. These were soldiers trained from
- 3:04Speaker 1: childhood for war, paid by the state, equipped uniformly. drilled constantly.
- 3:12Speaker 1: They did not fight when needed. They fought because that
- 3:16Speaker 1: was their profession. Then came the siege technology, battering rams
- 3:21Speaker 1: mounted on wheels, covered in metal plating to protect the operators,
- 3:26Speaker 1: mobile siege towers that could be rolled up to city walls,
- 3:31Speaker 1: allowing soldiers to climb directly onto the ramparts, tunnel engineers
- 3:35Speaker 1: who could dig beneath walls and collapse them from below.
- 3:40Speaker 1: The Assyrians did not just attack cities, they systematically dismantled them.
- 3:45Speaker 1: But sieges require more than machines. They require supply lines.
- 3:50Speaker 1: The Assyrians built roads, not simple dirt paths, but engineered
- 3:55Speaker 1: highways that connected every major city in the empire. They
- 3:58Speaker 1: established garrison cities every 50 miles. Fortified outposts where troops
- 4:03Speaker 1: could resupply, rest, and receive orders. They stockpiled grain in
- 4:07Speaker 1: fortified depots, enough to feed an army for months during
- 4:11Speaker 1: a prolonged siege. They conscripted labor from conquered peoples to
- 4:15Speaker 1: dig canals and maintain infrastructure. Entire populations were put to work,
- 4:21Speaker 1: building the machinery of their own subjugation. This was not
- 4:27Speaker 1: a raiding party. This was industrial warfare, the first logistics
- 4:33Speaker 1: empire in history, and it was administered with precision. Assyrian
- 4:37Speaker 1: governors ruled conquered provinces, tax collectors extracted tribute with brutal efficiency,
- 4:44Speaker 1: garrisons enforced compliance. The empire did not just conquer territory,
- 4:49Speaker 1: it absorbed it, reorganized it, turned it into a machine
- 4:54Speaker 1: that fed the war effort. Every conquest was made the
- 4:58Speaker 1: next one easier. Every province provided soldiers, resources, and labor
- 5:03Speaker 1: for the next campaign. Cavalry units and chariot divisions gave
- 5:07Speaker 1: them speed. Coordinated infantry formations gave them discipline. A logistics
- 5:12Speaker 1: system gave them endurance. By 900 BC, Assyria controlled Mesopotamia.
- 5:19Speaker 1: By 750 BC, they controlled the entire Fertile Crescent. The
- 5:25Speaker 1: transformation from prey to predator was complete, but it was
- 5:28Speaker 1: not their weapons that made them the most feared empire
- 5:32Speaker 1: in history. It was what they did after the battle
- 5:37Speaker 1: was over. Assyrian warfare was not just about conquest, it
- 5:43Speaker 1: was about psychological domination, and the evidence is carved in stone.
- 5:49Speaker 1: The Assyrian kings did not hide their atrocities. They documented them.
- 5:54Speaker 1: They bragged about them in official inscriptions. Ashurnasirpal II wrote,
- 6:00Speaker 1: I flayed the chief. I draped his skin over the
- 6:04Speaker 1: wall of the city. Sennacherib recorded, I cut off their hands,
- 6:09Speaker 1: their fingers, their noses, their ears. These were not the
- 6:14Speaker 1: exaggerations of enemies. These were the boasts of the perpetrators.
- 6:19Speaker 1: Mass deportation became state policy. Entire populations were ripped from
- 6:25Speaker 1: their homeland and scattered across the empire. Not as slaves
- 6:29Speaker 1: in one location, but dispersed to prevent rebellion. Families separated.
- 6:35Speaker 1: Languages erased. Cultures dissolved. The Assyrians did not just conquer land.
- 6:42Speaker 1: They erased identity. Impalement was common. Rows of prisoners on
- 6:47Speaker 1: wooden stakes lining the roads into conquered cities, left to
- 6:51Speaker 1: die slowly in the sun as a warning to anyone
- 6:54Speaker 1: who dared resist. Pyramid sculptures of severed heads were placed
- 6:58Speaker 1: at city gates, visual monuments to what happened when you
- 7:02Speaker 1: fought back. This was not random cruelty. It was strategy.
- 7:08Speaker 1: Fear is a force multiplier. One city destroyed this way
- 7:13Speaker 1: meant the next ten surrendered without a fight. Assyria did
- 7:17Speaker 1: not need to kill everyone. They just needed everyone to
- 7:20Speaker 1: believe they would. The Assyrian empire ran on terror, and
- 7:25Speaker 1: it worked. For centuries nations trembled at the sound of
- 7:28Speaker 1: Assyrian chariots, but there was one nation that did not tremble,
- 7:33Speaker 1: because their god had plans of his own. You see,
- 7:37Speaker 1: Israel had been warned. For generations, prophets had told them
- 7:42Speaker 1: to repent. They did not. The northern kingdom, the ten
- 7:46Speaker 1: tribes descended from Jacob, had descended into full idolatry. Golden
- 7:51Speaker 1: calves were erected at Dan and Bethel as alternative worship centers. Baal,
- 7:58Speaker 1: worship spread through the land. Child sacrifice was practiced in
- 8:02Speaker 1: the valley of Hinnom. The covenant had been abandoned. The
- 8:05Speaker 1: warnings had been clear. Hosea 8-7 They sow the wind
- 8:12Speaker 1: and reap the whirlwind. The prophet had watched Israel chase
- 8:16Speaker 1: after foreign gods and foreign alliances, ignoring the covenant that
- 8:20Speaker 1: had made them a nation. Amos 5.18 Woe to you
- 8:24Speaker 1: who long for the day of the Lord! Why do
- 8:26Speaker 1: you long for the day of the Lord? That day
- 8:29Speaker 1: will be darkness, not light. The people assumed God's favor
- 8:34Speaker 1: was automatic, that their identity as His chosen people meant
- 8:39Speaker 1: they were untouchable. The prophets told them otherwise. For decades
- 8:44Speaker 1: the warnings came. Hosea described Israel as an adulterous wife,
- 8:49Speaker 1: chasing lovers who would destroy her. Amos pronounced judgment on
- 8:53Speaker 1: the wealthy who oppressed the poor and corrupted justice. Both
- 8:58Speaker 1: prophets named the consequence exile, deportation, the loss of the land.
- 9:05Speaker 1: And still Israel did not repent. They ignored every warning.
- 9:09Speaker 1: They broke every covenant. The day of the Lord was coming,
- 9:13Speaker 1: and it would not be what they expected. God's response
- 9:17Speaker 1: came through the prophet Isaiah. Chapter 10, verse 5. Woe
- 9:22Speaker 1: to Assyria, the rod of my anger, in whose hand
- 9:26Speaker 1: is the club of my wrath. I send him against
- 9:29Speaker 1: a godless nation. I dispatch him against a people who
- 9:33Speaker 1: anger me. Read that again. God did not just allow
- 9:37Speaker 1: Assyria to attack Israel. He sent them Assyria was not
- 9:42Speaker 1: an accident. They were an instrument, a weapon in the
- 9:46Speaker 1: hand of the living God. When the Assyrians arrived, it
- 9:51Speaker 1: was not a surprise. It was a kept promise. But
- 9:54Speaker 1: verse 7 adds a staggering detail. But this is not
- 9:58Speaker 1: what Assyria intends. This is not what they have in mind.
- 10:02Speaker 1: Assyria did not know it was being used. The empire
- 10:06Speaker 1: believed it was conquering by its own power, its own strategy,
- 10:10Speaker 1: its own strength. It had no idea it was a
- 10:14Speaker 1: tool in the hand of the God it did not
- 10:17Speaker 1: believe in. This is the theological bombshell at the center
- 10:22Speaker 1: of the Assyrian story. God uses empires as instruments. But
- 10:27Speaker 1: the empires never know they are being used. They think
- 10:30Speaker 1: they are acting independently. They think their victories belong to them.
- 10:35Speaker 1: And that ignorance does not save them from accountability. And
- 10:39Speaker 1: centuries later, a prophet named Nahum would predict the exact
- 10:44Speaker 1: method by which God would destroy Nineveh. and it sounded impossible.
- 10:50Speaker 1: We will get there. God sent the most brutal empire
- 10:54Speaker 1: on earth to punish his own people, and what happened
- 10:58Speaker 1: next erased an entire civilization from existence. 722 BC The
- 11:06Speaker 1: northern kingdom had been under siege for three years. Shalmaneser
- 11:11Speaker 1: V surrounded Samaria, the capital, and slowly starved it into submission.
- 11:17Speaker 1: When the city finally fell, Sargon II completed the conquest.
- 11:21Speaker 1: 2 Kings 17.6 records it plainly. The king of Assyria
- 11:27Speaker 1: captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. According to
- 11:32Speaker 1: Assyrian records, 27,290 people were taken. They were scattered across
- 11:38Speaker 1: the empire. Hala, Gozan, the towns of the Medes, regions
- 11:44Speaker 1: hundreds of miles apart. They never returned. They became the
- 11:49Speaker 1: lost tribes of Israel. 2 Kings 17 verses 7 through
- 11:55Speaker 1: 18 explains why. All this took place because the Israelites
- 11:59Speaker 1: had sinned against the Lord their God. The text then
- 12:03Speaker 1: lists every idol they worshipped, every commandment they broke, every
- 12:08Speaker 1: warning they ignored. This was not arbitrary punishment. This was
- 12:13Speaker 1: the execution of a clearly stated covenant. Foreign peoples were
- 12:18Speaker 1: brought in to replace the deported Israelites, the origin of
- 12:22Speaker 1: the Samaritans, a mixed population that would later be despised
- 12:26Speaker 1: by the Jews of the southern kingdom. Ten tribes deported,
- 12:31Speaker 1: never to return. Not because God was cruel, but because
- 12:36Speaker 1: covenant loyalty is not optional. The warning had been given
- 12:40Speaker 1: for generations. The judgment when it came was not a surprise.
- 12:44Speaker 1: Ten tribes were gone, but two remained in the south,
- 12:48Speaker 1: Judah and Benjamin with their capital in Jerusalem. And the
- 12:53Speaker 1: Assyrians were coming for them next. 701 B.C. Sennacherib, king
- 13:00Speaker 1: of Assyria, launched his campaign against Judah. He had already
- 13:04Speaker 1: destroyed 46 fortified cities. The Lachish reliefs, now in the
- 13:08Speaker 1: British Museum, show the siege in carved detail, prisoners impaled,
- 13:14Speaker 1: families deported, the city burning. Lachish was the second most
- 13:18Speaker 1: important city in Judah. It fell completely. Sennacherib sent his
- 13:23Speaker 1: army to Jerusalem, but before attacking, he sent his chief officer,
- 13:27Speaker 1: the Rabshakeh, to deliver a message. 2 Kings 18, verses 28-35.
- 13:35Speaker 1: The Rabshakeh stood outside the walls and mocked God in
- 13:39Speaker 1: front of the people. Has any God of any nation
- 13:44Speaker 1: ever delivered his land from the king of Assyria? Do
- 13:47Speaker 1: not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you. Where
- 13:52Speaker 1: are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the
- 13:55Speaker 1: gods of Samaria? Did they save their people? He was
- 13:59Speaker 1: not just threatening Jerusalem. He was challenging Yahweh directly. He
- 14:05Speaker 1: was saying, Your God is no different from the wooden
- 14:07Speaker 1: idols of the nations we already crushed. He had watched
- 14:10Speaker 1: those nations pray to their gods and fall anyway. He
- 14:13Speaker 1: assumed the God of Israel would be the same. The
- 14:16Speaker 1: most powerful army on earth stood outside the gates of
- 14:19Speaker 1: Jerusalem and mocked God to his face. They would not
- 14:23Speaker 1: live to see the sunrise. Hezekiah tore his robes, put
- 14:28Speaker 1: on sackcloth, and went to the temple. He spread Sennacherib's
- 14:32Speaker 1: threatening letter before the Lord and prayed, Lord, you alone
- 14:38Speaker 1: are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. Deliver
- 14:41Speaker 1: us from his hand so that all the kingdoms of
- 14:44Speaker 1: the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God.
- 14:49Speaker 1: God responded through the prophet Isaiah. He will not enter
- 14:53Speaker 1: this city. He will not shoot an arrow here. By
- 14:56Speaker 1: the way he came, he will return. I will defend
- 15:00Speaker 1: this city and save it for my sake and for
- 15:04Speaker 1: the sake of David, my servant. 2 Kings 19.35 That night,
- 15:12Speaker 1: the angel of the Lord went out and put to
- 15:15Speaker 1: death 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. When the people got
- 15:21Speaker 1: up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies.
- 15:25Speaker 1: One angel, one night. 185,000 soldiers, scholars have proposed theories. Plague,
- 15:33Speaker 1: food poisoning from contaminated supplies, a sudden sandstorm that suffocated
- 15:38Speaker 1: the camp. Some have suggested a rapid outbreak of disease,
- 15:42Speaker 1: perhaps bubonic plague carried by rodents. But none of these
- 15:46Speaker 1: explain why Sennacherib would retreat immediately. Why an empire that
- 15:51Speaker 1: prided itself on endurance and brutality would abandon a siege
- 15:57Speaker 1: at the moment of apparent victory. Why he would never
- 16:00Speaker 1: mention it in his records. Why the most boastful king
- 16:03Speaker 1: in Assyrian history would go silent about a campaign he
- 16:07Speaker 1: had invested so heavily in. The Bible offers one explanation.
- 16:13Speaker 1: And the Taylor Prism's silence does not contradict it. It
- 16:17Speaker 1: confirms it. Sennacherib retreated to Nineveh. He never returned to Jerusalem,
- 16:23Speaker 1: and we have his own account of what happened. It
- 16:26Speaker 1: exists today. A six-sided clay prism sitting in the British Museum.
- 16:33Speaker 1: It is called the Taylor Prism. On it, Sennacherib boasts
- 16:37Speaker 1: about every city he conquered during this campaign. He names them.
- 16:41Speaker 1: He counts the prisoners. He describes the plunder. City after city,
- 16:47Speaker 1: he claims total victory. But when he gets to Jerusalem,
- 16:51Speaker 1: the record changes. All he says is this, I shut
- 16:56Speaker 1: up Hezekiah like a caged bird in his royal city.
- 17:00Speaker 1: He does not claim to have taken the city. He
- 17:03Speaker 1: does not mention a victory. He does not explain why
- 17:07Speaker 1: he left. Every other conquest gets a paragraph of boasting.
- 17:12Speaker 1: Jerusalem gets one sentence of containment. What he does not
- 17:16Speaker 1: say is the loudest part of the entire record. The
- 17:20Speaker 1: silence is deafening. Archaeology cannot explain what happened that night,
- 17:25Speaker 1: but 2 Kings 19.35 can. Later, Sennacherib was assassinated by
- 17:32Speaker 1: his own sons while worshipping in the temple of his god, Nisroch.
- 17:35Speaker 1: 2 Kings 19.37 The man who mocked the living god
- 17:42Speaker 1: died on the floor of a dead god's temple. Assyria
- 17:47Speaker 1: survived Sennacherib's humiliation. but the wound was mortal, and the
- 17:52Speaker 1: prophets had already written the obituary. The book of Nahum
- 17:56Speaker 1: is one of the shortest and most ferocious books in
- 17:59Speaker 1: the entire Bible, written roughly between 660 and 630 BC,
- 18:06Speaker 1: when Assyria was still the dominant superpower. Nahum 1.1 An
- 18:12Speaker 1: Oracle Concerning Nineveh The entire book is addressed to one city,
- 18:17Speaker 1: God's full attention turned against the Assyrian capital. Nahum 1.3
- 18:23Speaker 1: The Lord is slow to anger but great in power.
- 18:27Speaker 1: The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. Nahum 2.8
- 18:32Speaker 1: Nineveh is like a pool whose water is draining away.
- 18:36Speaker 1: Nahum 2.13 I am against you, declares the Lord Almighty.
- 18:42Speaker 1: Nahum 3.19 Nothing can heal you. Your wound is fatal.
- 18:47Speaker 1: and then Nahum made a prediction that sounded impossible. Nahum 2.6
- 18:52Speaker 1: The river gates are thrown open, and the palace collapses.
- 18:59Speaker 1: 612 B.C. A coalition of Babylonians and Medes besieged Nineveh.
- 19:06Speaker 1: But this coalition was not random. Nabopolassar of Babylon had
- 19:10Speaker 1: spent years building alliances, consolidating power, and preparing for this moment.
- 19:16Speaker 1: Syaxares of Media, had reorganized his army using the same
- 19:20Speaker 1: tactics the Assyrians had used to conquer his people. They
- 19:24Speaker 1: knew how the empire worked because they had been conquered
- 19:27Speaker 1: by it. They had studied its strengths, they had memorized
- 19:30Speaker 1: its weaknesses, and when they came for Nineveh in 612 BC,
- 19:34Speaker 1: they did to Assyria what Assyria had done to everyone else.
- 19:39Speaker 1: The siege dragged on. The city had walls one hundred
- 19:44Speaker 1: feet high and eight miles long. It seemed impregnable. Then
- 19:49Speaker 1: the Tigris River flooded. The floodwaters breached the city walls.
- 19:54Speaker 1: The palace collapsed. Nahum had written the blueprint thirty years
- 19:59Speaker 1: in advance. The exact method. The exact weakness. as though
- 20:05Speaker 1: God had handed the prophet a military briefing from the future.
- 20:09Speaker 1: Nineveh fell, and the destruction was total. The city burned
- 20:14Speaker 1: for weeks. The palaces were systematically demolished. The libraries, which
- 20:19Speaker 1: contained thousands of clay tablets documenting Assyrian history, science, and literature,
- 20:24Speaker 1: were destroyed. The reliefs showing their military conquests were shattered
- 20:29Speaker 1: and buried. This was not just conquest. This was obliteration.
- 20:34Speaker 1: The coalition did not want to rule Nineveh. They wanted
- 20:38Speaker 1: to erase it. The Assyrian Empire, which had terrorized the
- 20:42Speaker 1: world for 300 years, was finished. The destruction was so
- 20:47Speaker 1: complete that within generations, no one knew where Nineveh had been.
- 20:52Speaker 1: For 2,000 years, scholars debated whether Nineveh had even existed.
- 20:57Speaker 1: Some called it a myth, a legend invented to scare children. Then,
- 21:02Speaker 1: in 1847, Austin Henry Layard began excavating a massive mound
- 21:09Speaker 1: near Mosul, Iraq. He uncovered the ruins of Nineveh, the palaces,
- 21:15Speaker 1: the libraries, the reliefs showing the siege techniques and the deportations.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Everything the Bible described was buried under sand. The empire
- 21:25Speaker 1: God erased from the map was buried so deep that
- 21:28Speaker 1: the world forgot it was real. Most people think Jonah
- 21:32Speaker 1: was a coward who ran from God. He was not.
- 21:36Speaker 1: Jonah was a patriot. He had seen what the Assyrians
- 21:39Speaker 1: did to his people. The skinning, the impaling, the deportations.
- 21:44Speaker 1: He knew what they were capable of. And God told
- 21:47Speaker 1: him to go preach mercy to the nation that impaled
- 21:51Speaker 1: Israelite children. Think about what God was asking. Not courage.
- 21:55Speaker 1: Jonah had courage. God was asking him to offer forgiveness
- 21:59Speaker 1: to monsters, to look at the nation that stacked skulls
- 22:02Speaker 1: and say, repent and God will spare you. Jonah did
- 22:08Speaker 1: not run from danger. He ran from the idea that
- 22:11Speaker 1: God would forgive the unforgivable. And God did. Jonah preached.
- 22:16Speaker 1: Nineveh repented. The entire city, from the king to the
- 22:20Speaker 1: lowest servant, put on sackcloth and cried out to God.
- 22:25Speaker 1: And God relented. Jonah was furious. Jonah 4 verses 2
- 22:31Speaker 1: and 3. I knew that you are a gracious and
- 22:34Speaker 1: compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love. That
- 22:38Speaker 1: is why I fled. Now, Lord, take away my life,
- 22:42Speaker 1: for it is better for me to die than to live.
- 22:45Speaker 1: He would rather die than watch God forgive them. And
- 22:49Speaker 1: if you are honest with yourself, you understand that feeling.
- 22:52Speaker 1: You have felt it towards someone who hurt you The
- 22:56Speaker 1: rage when mercy goes to people you believe do not
- 23:00Speaker 1: deserve it, that is Jonah's rage, and it is deeply human.
- 23:05Speaker 1: God's response, Jonah 4.11. Should I not have concern for
- 23:10Speaker 1: the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more
- 23:12Speaker 1: than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from
- 23:17Speaker 1: their left? God showed mercy to Nineveh through Jonah, roughly
- 23:23Speaker 1: 760 B.C., A century later, he destroyed them anyway. The
- 23:29Speaker 1: repentance did not last. The mercy had an expiration date,
- 23:34Speaker 1: not because God's grace is limited, but because repentance that
- 23:38Speaker 1: does not last is not repentance at all. Isaiah 10
- 23:43Speaker 1: verses 12 through 15. After God finishes using Assyria as
- 23:49Speaker 1: his instrument of judgment, he says, I will punish the
- 23:53Speaker 1: king of Assyria, for the willful pride of his heart
- 23:57Speaker 1: and the haughty look in his eyes. Verse 15. Does
- 24:02Speaker 1: the axe raise itself above the person who swings it?
- 24:06Speaker 1: Does the saw boast against the one who uses it?
- 24:10Speaker 1: God called Assyria an axe, a tool, an instrument. But
- 24:15Speaker 1: the axe began to believe it was the woodsman. It
- 24:19Speaker 1: began to take credit for the cutting. It forgot that
- 24:21Speaker 1: it was being held. And the moment it forgot, it
- 24:25Speaker 1: was discarded. This is the deepest lesson of the Assyrian story.
- 24:32Speaker 1: Every gift, every power, every success you have ever experienced
- 24:36Speaker 1: was given to you by God. The moment you begin
- 24:40Speaker 1: to believe it belongs to you, that your intelligence built it,
- 24:45Speaker 1: that your effort earned it, that your strength conquered it,
- 24:49Speaker 1: you have made the same mistake Assyria made. This pattern repeats.
- 24:55Speaker 1: Babylon conquered Assyria, absorbing its territory and its wealth. Then
- 25:00Speaker 1: Babylon fell to Persia. Persia conquered Babylon, building an empire
- 25:05Speaker 1: that stretched from India to Egypt. Then Persia fell to Greece.
- 25:10Speaker 1: Greece conquered the known world under Alexander, spreading its culture
- 25:14Speaker 1: and language across three continents. Then Greece fragmented and fell
- 25:20Speaker 1: to Rome. Rome conquered the Mediterranean, building roads and aqueducts
- 25:25Speaker 1: and systems of law that shaped civilization for a thousand years.
- 25:31Speaker 1: Then Rome collapsed from within, broken by corruption, invasion, and
- 25:37Speaker 1: the weight of its own size. Every empire believes it
- 25:41Speaker 1: is different. Every empire believes it has solved the problem
- 25:45Speaker 1: of permanence. Every empire looks at the ruins of the
- 25:49Speaker 1: one that came before and says, We will not make
- 25:52Speaker 1: those mistakes. We are smarter. We are stronger. We are destined.
- 25:59Speaker 1: And every empire discovers the same truth the Assyrians did.
- 26:03Speaker 1: You cannot outlast the God who made time itself. Nineveh
- 26:08Speaker 1: was erased so completely that the world forgot it existed.
- 26:12Speaker 1: God did not just defeat them. He deleted them from
- 26:15Speaker 1: human memory for 2,000 years. That is what happens today.
- 26:20Speaker 1: When a tool forgets, who holds it? The Assyrian Empire
- 26:25Speaker 1: lasted 300 years. It controlled the entire known world. And today,
- 26:32Speaker 1: you are watching a video explaining what it was, because
- 26:35Speaker 1: most people have never heard of it. Every empire believes
- 26:39Speaker 1: it will last forever. None of them do. Every person
- 26:44Speaker 1: believes their strength is their own. It never is. The
- 26:48Speaker 1: Assyrians terrified the world, but they could not terrify the
- 26:52Speaker 1: God who made it, and neither can you, neither can I.
- 26:57Speaker 1: And that is either the most frightening truth you have
- 27:00Speaker 1: ever heard, or the most comforting. It depends entirely on
- 27:04Speaker 1: which side of God you are standing on. Every generation
- 27:08Speaker 1: builds its own version of Nineveh, a system so powerful,
- 27:12Speaker 1: so dominant, so successful that it feels permanent, and every
- 27:17Speaker 1: generation watches it crumble. So let me ask you this,
- 27:21Speaker 1: and I want you to be honest. What is the
- 27:23Speaker 1: empire you have built in your own life that you
- 27:26Speaker 1: have convinced yourself cannot fall? And who do you think
- 27:30Speaker 1: is really holding the axe? Tell me in the comments below.
- 27:35Speaker 1: I read every single one. If this video changed how
- 27:39Speaker 1: you see power, share it with someone who needs to
- 27:42Speaker 1: hear it. Like this video. Subscribe to this channel and
- 27:47Speaker 1: check out our other videos that will bless you deeply.
- 27:50Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.