How sure is prophecy in Scripture? In fact, EVERY word spoken from the Lord comes to fruition. Not a word from God falls to the ground. We see a hint at the surety of prophecy in the way it is sometimes delivered. In Jeremiah 51:41-43 the prophecy speaks in the past-tense, as if these things had already come to pass. They would not come to pass until years in the future, but God speaks, "Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!"
Why will Babylon fall? Jeremiah 51:49 says, "Indeed Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel." In verse 24 God said, "I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes."
Some specific prophecies concerning Babylon:
Jeremiah 51:26 - "They will not take from you even a stone for a corner nor a stone for foundations, but you will be desolate forever."
Jeremiah 51:37 - "Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants."
Jeremiah 51:43 - "Her cities have become an object of horror, a parched land and a desert, a land in which no man lives and through which no son of man passes."
After this eventually came to pass, Israel would look back upon this as a time of the Lord's deliverance. They would not forget this. And when the inspired apostle John penned the Revelation towards the end of the first century AD, he would include a lot of imagery borrowed from these Babylonian prophecies. "Babylon" became the great oppressor of the Christians. By this, the Christians could understand how terrible the oppression would be, but also have full faith God would deliver them from its clutches with the same annihilating power as He did the Babylon of old.
Nathan