The fall of Nimrud. Again

ISIS militants have been chopping off heads like other people go to the mall, but now they have gone too far: They are vandalizing. Men in black masks are rampaging Syria and Iraq, taking sledgehammers to statues and other precious archaeological artifacts. People who didn’t say much about the decapitations and displacement of hundreds of Christians from their homes are now aroused from political correctness. Thomas P. Campbell, director of New York’s Metropolitan Art Museum, issued a public denunciation. This reaction is welcome if it will finally make the world angry enough to get serious about the ISIS menace.

Proportion! Proportion! The destruction of Khorsabad and its Assyrian palaces, painted reliefs, and extensive written documentation of building projects is a waste, but the hacking to death of image-bearers of God is more terrible than that of stone images. The bulldozing of Nimrud in Iraq, ancient ruin of a flourishing city of the Assyrian kingdom between 900 and 612 B.C., with its frescoes, literature, and sacred texts, is a serious loss to humanity’s heritage, but Christ shed His blood for people, not frescoes, so that should make us even more sick.

And yet, many who were a little bit mad about the beheadings will be in great mourning about ISIS putting power tools to the stone faces in King Sargon II’s opulent house. Why? Because lacking any more transcendent meaning in life, this is all they’ve got. When you don’t have God, and a future in heaven, all you have is the past and its nostalgic artifacts. What for us believers is merely a terrible archaeological loss is utter devastation for “men of the world whose portion is in this life” (Psalm 17:14, ESV).

One day when Jesus’ disciples were admiring the beautiful Temple buildings Herod had built, Jesus remarked: “You see all these, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” A day is coming when not only the ancient cities of Nimrud, Hatra, and Khorsabad will be leveled, but also New York City, London, “gay Paree,” and that ancient great Babylon, the fame of all the earth and desire of all worldly men:

“And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, ‘Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come’” (Revelation 18: 9–10, ESV).

In a single hour. If it is unimaginable for us that Nimrud’s treasures have been preserved for centuries and have fallen in a day, imagine that final terrible destruction. Imagine the mourning then.