Habakkuk had long prayed against the sins of God's special nation – Judah. Like most of us, he was a patriot. He loved his nation, and he loved the saints who lived within his homeland. Living through an extended season of moral decay and spiritual corruption had made the prophet hunger for revival.

It was not merely to bring relief for himself from the discomforts of living on sin's playground that he prayed. There was also the question of what kind of land would be left to his children and grandchildren. 'Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people' (Prov. 14:34). Destruction awaits the godless. 'The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God' (Ps. 9:17).

If only the Lord would make the ministries of priests and prophets powerful and effective to turn the tide to righteousness and to bring God's blessing! This was the longing of Habakkuk's heart.

When we genuinely enter into long-sustained prayer about our national declension from morals and religion, we are wrestling with the history of God's providence. How, we wonder, can the Holy One tolerate the multiplying of wickedness; how can he refuse to heed the prayers of the godly?

In Habakkuk 1:5-11, the Almighty broke the long silence toward the praying prophet. In this short text God gave a specific answer. It was a direct, verbal revelation about the near future (we do not receive such revelations now, though perhaps by the Holy Spirit's aid we receive insight as to how biblical texts apply to our present circumstances).

A Warning Label⤒🔗

It was necessary for the Most High to precede his answer with cautionary preparations. The observer of coming history must be conditioned to interpret rightly the plainest truths. The essence of all that God told Habakkuk was, 'I share your concern about godliness and morality in Judah' (and yours if you are praying – in Europe, in the Americas, or elsewhere, in the twenty-first century). 'I am preparing a definite response to this infidelity toward me and to its expression in widespread lawbreaking.'

1. You will have to look at the nations for my chosen solution: 'Look among the nations, and watch … For I will work a work in your days' (Hab. 1:5). You are so focused on your local interest. Look to international affairs. Our God is Lord of all nations. His purposes are global! Did not Jehovah tell Abraham, 'In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed' (Gen. 22:18)?
   
   God had not forgotten Judah. Yet Judah was not God's only interest, nor was she his only love. No! God's answers are not always seen in the sending of revival. Sometimes they appear by way of multi-national events.
    
2. As you look at international news, do not forget what the news reporters seldom say. 'I am working' (verse 5) what you observe. 'I am raising up' a new power among the nations (verse 6). In answer to your prayers and to correct the deplorable religious and moral decline in your land, I am empowering a heathen nation! What occurs across the face of the whole earth has been designed by God's eternal, intelligent plan. All kings' hearts are in God's hand, to be turned into the course of God's choice. When great armies assemble and begin to march, they are under the dominion and direction of our God. Watch these international events! Know that all of them are directed from God's throne. We have the book of nature in which we read of God's creative power. We have the book of Scripture in which we read of God's redemptive power. We also have the book of current events in which we read the outworking of God's providential purposes.
    
3. God is at work 'in your days' (verse 5) to do something about Judah's rebellion (and in our days to do something about rebellion in the West). The text speaks of events that will occur during Habakkuk's lifetime. He would see some of the Lord's works with his own eyes. So shall we.
    
4. Habakkuk would have found the prediction incredible. 'Be utterly astounded' (verse 5)! 'I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told'. Even God's people are inclined not to believe what they never wish to see. God would not solve Judah's moral crisis by Habakkuk's preferred method of revival! He would solve it in unexpected and undesirable ways. When we pray about the slippery slope of modern western irreverence toward God and immorality toward fellow-citizens, we advise God to handle our case with gentle kindness. We hope for a 'soft landing', for a 'happy ending'. This is not always preferable to our God. After his people's long years of massive defection from faith, from decency and from justice our Maker and Judge may prefer an appropriate solution which stuns us.

Chastisement from God is Described←⤒🔗

For Judah, God was raising up the nation of Babylon (verse 6). A new world-dominating power was being formed to execute God's will among the nations. Its armies would be the instrument God would use to bring final destruction to nations whose measure of sin had become full. Some enemies of Babylon would cease to exist as nations. In Judah's case violent defeat at the hands of Babylon would be a severe chastisement. Plundering of the nation and deportation of its people would be a means to Judah's spiritual improvement. Just as a father cannot always correct gently, so also the Lord must use the infliction of pain to call his people back to a fear of his name and to a more righteous course of conduct.

Had Habakkuk searched diligently in Scripture he might have guessed what God would do to his nation. Seven hundred years earlier Moses had written in Deuteronomy 28, 'If you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God … the Lord will bring a nation against you from afar … as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance … Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other'.

Then, only one hundred years before Habakkuk lived, God had spoken to Hezekiah, king of Judah, through Isaiah the prophet: 'Behold the days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the LORD' (Isa. 39:6).

A Brief History of Babylon←⤒🔗

For centuries Babylon had been a small state, little involved in international affairs. Although it was the location of the first historic attempt to form a one-world government not long after the Flood (the tower of Babel, Gen. 11:1-9), Babylon began building an army only in the year 626 sc. In 609 BC Babylonian conquests began to alarm Assyria (whose capital was Nineveh) and Egypt, the two great centres of world power. These two nations united to attack certain Babylonian outposts. The Babylonian king, Nabopolassar, however, held his ground at the Euphrates River. In a sense the battle was a stand-off, although in truth it would prove to be a last gasp of power for both Assyria and Egypt.

In that very year of 609 BC, Josiah, king of Judah, had died, and his son Jehoahaz had been crowned in Jerusalem. However, on his way back to Egypt from the battle with Babylon, Pharaoh Necho deposed Jehoahaz and installed Jehoiakim as Egypt's servant-king in Judah. With this event Judah's genuine independence as a nation ceased until AD 1948.

In 605 BC Babylon was led into battle at Carchemish by Crown Prince Nebuchadnezzar. Again the foes were Assyria and Egypt whose combined forces were utterly smashed by Babylon. The balance of power among the nations had dramatically shifted, never to return to Assyria or to Egypt. Following this great triumph Nebuchadnezzar made his first incursion into Israel, also in 605 BC. It was in this military conquest that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (then young teenagers) were marched off to Babylon along with much of the royalty of Judah. Two later invasions by Babylon, in 596 BC and 586 BC would further depopulate the nation of Judah and leave the city of Jerusalem in ruins with its temple demolished.

Babylon gave new meaning to the word 'empire'. A series of heathen world powers – Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome – would control Palestine, along with most of the civilized world, for nine hundred years until the reign of Jesus Christ ended these horrors. Babylon was the rod of the Almighty to punish disobedient and depraved nations. Babylon was the axe in the hand of the Most High to cut down the tree of Judah at the height of its pride and idolatry. Although such world empires have not reappeared since the fall of Rome, many nations have aspired to like achievements, and in doing so have, on a smaller scale, served the same purpose of God to judge and to chasten evil societies.

Characteristics of Warring Nations←⤒🔗

In Habakkuk 1:6-11 the Lord described for the prophet what Judah might expect at the hands of their fellow-men. If nations will imagine that life is to be preferred without 'interference' from the God of Heaven, consider what such countries experience at the hands of their fellow-men when the Almighty's restraining hand is removed from their enemies. Babylon would be ruthless, ill-tempered, acting out of bitterness, and lacking in compassion (verse 6). They would be impetuous. Their cruelty would be irrational, like that of a bear robbed of her cubs (verse 6). This army would sweep in all directions, like none had done before her. There would be no serious challenge at all to her power.

So too would the invaders be greedy for plunder (verse 6). They would be eager to seize that to which they had no claim. 'Terrible and dreadful' were they (verse 7). All who faced them recoiled in fear. They were lawless, following no international conventions of war. All rules of engagement originated with themselves alone (verse 7). Arrogance and pride were their guides.

The assaults of these armies were swifter than leopards rushing suddenly upon their prey (verse 8). Their soldiers were like evening wolves for fierceness – tearing apart their victims in the darkness (verse 8). These armies were like eagles swiftly flying to devour (verse 8).

They were bent upon violence (verse 9), sweeping like the wind, scooping up prisoners as grains of sand. Displacement of the population was their settled method of dominance. Babylonian warriors crushed kings and laughed at fortifications (verse 10). From these rapid and wild assaults they rushed on to their next foes. Not only would they conquer Judah, but they would defeat all the nations round them. They worshipped their own prowess (verse 11). In short, they had made a god of human might.

This was God's work then, and he is the same yesterday, today and forever. As Judge of all the earth he is impartial. He has always been patient with sinners, as he calls men to repentance. But he also is a God of great wrath against the sins of the nations. Nebuchadnezzar began his conquests against Judah at God's direction.

Peter said, 'The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel?'1 Pet. 4:17

Habakkuk was being told that God would bring savage war upon the prophet's beloved nation, a people who had rejected the God of their fathers. As we look at current events and the near future of our nations we do not have the advantage of revelation to delineate what God is about to do. But we do know from this prophecy that, at times, God brings brutal armies against fallen churches, societies and nations to correct their foolishness.

Nations of the West have largely renounced the faith of their fathers of former days. Secular government has been chosen over the fear of God in national affairs. The most depraved and heathen practices fill our culture and our educational systems. Churches imitate the world rather than following God's Word in worship. All of this is taking place amidst a refusal to admit that we are vulnerable to the wrath of man and of God.

Nations to our east are gathering strength. These nations have false gods; they are brutal, ambitious, and increasing in military power. Such nations have served as rods of the Almighty to be used on the backs of his wayward people.

Will not even the seriousness of the threats lead God's people to repentance? Must there not be such humiliation of spirit in us to bring revival which may return the western nations to their senses? Without such humility and sorrow for sins a yet more bitter reminder of God's seriousness in his programme for the earth will surely fall upon us.