ISAIAH UP TO DATE
SOMETHING new came to my attention, about a week ago, which surprised me considerably. It has to do with one of the ancient countries, yet it is startlingly modern. It shows one of the Bible’s prophecies working out now, which I believe none of us had expected until at least into the time of the final great war.
I want to tell you about Egypt and about something that is happening there now. It came about unexpectedly and it shows that Yahweh knows events that are to happen, well ahead of us. Perhaps at this point we should have a short review of ancient Egyptian history.
This history is quite difficult to pin down with exact dates. The Egyptian priest named Manetho, about 250 B.C., wrote the only authentic history of Egypt. The difficulty is that no copy of Manetho’s history exists; all we have of it are the fragmentary quotes, in the works of some Greek historians. These Greek historians didn’t all quote it alike, so we do have problems.
The origin of Egypt is lost in pre-historic legend. Long before there was a single country called Egypt, there were settlements there of quite a substantial civilization. These settlements, or small cities, were scattered into a number of independent cities. Apparently Egypt was gathered together by a king named Menes. Menes united these scattered cities into the one nation of Egypt. When Menes united Egypt, is something on which we can get quite a variety of dates.
Some of the ancient historians give quotes, purportedly from Egyptian sources, of early dynasties going back over a period back to about 36,000 B.C. These ancient historians say the early kings of this dynasty were the gods. Of course this can be wholly fictitious, or it can have a partial basis in truth.
Odin, who was worshipped as a god by the Scandinavians and Germans, when they were pagan and before Christianity reached them, was a real living person in his day. Odin was a Scythian chieftain who led his people from Scythia up into Denmark. As a matter of fact, he is found in the family tree of George Washington. Odin was such a remarkable leader that in time the people deified him.
There could be some such background as this behind the Egyptian legend, but it is so lost in antiquity that we don’t know whether it is pure fiction, evolved by the priests, or whether they have simply very greatly exaggerated the dates.
By sinking a shaft to a considerable depth, archaeologists have found stone age implements that can be reasonably and reliably dated about 13,500 B.C.. At this particular point, there is one of those huge statues that the Egyptian pharaohs liked to put up in their own honour.
The soil has accumulated around the base of this statue, to a depth of about ten feet. Judging by this rate of accumulation, where these implements from a late stone age culture were found, they date from about 13,500 B.C.. However, there is no evidence found, historical or archaeological, of a gradual rise of civilization in Egypt. Civilization arrived suddenly, as the evidence indicates, an already highly civilized people, from somewhere else, moving in and settling there bringing their own civilization with them. The Egyptian priests were also their historians. They kept the records, other than the king’s official record of his reign. The priests told some of the Greek historians, who inquired about it, that the Egyptians were survivors of the sinking of the lost continent of Atlantis, who had made their way across north Africa and settled in Egypt. This is altogether possible because we can’t find any other place from whence we can say they came.
The first dynasty beginning with Menes, according to some of the lists of kings, began as early as 5948 B.C. Sir Flinders Petrie, one of the great authorities on Egyptology, gave a date of about 4777 B.C. Later on this was reduced to perhaps 3300 B.C. to 3000 B.C. Among the self-admitted experts on the subject, there is a great tendency to believe that nothing could possibly be as old as the people who lived at that time, said it was. Their attitude seemed to be to take off a few thousand years whenever it made things more convenient.
The Great Pyramid was built in the time of Pharaoh Kufu, who was in the second dynasty, not the dynasty established by Menes. Some authorities place his reign at about 3969 B.C. to 3908 B.C. Others try to make it as late as 2700 B.C.- the true date is probably between 3300 B.C. and 3000 B.C. The Egyptians, having started with a rather high type of monotheistic religion, finally became among the most debased of the pagans. They were animal worshippers and the sacred bull Apis was worshipped by them; much the same as the order of the Hindus of today worship the cow as a god.
If you have seen pictures of the various pagan gods worshiped by the Egyptians, note that while they have human bodies, they had the head of a bird or a jackal, or something of that sort. Well, I guess a bird-brained god is sufficient for a bird-brained people. The earliest traces of an Egyptian religion, that can be found, indicate monotheism of a rather high type. Some of their hymns are surprisingly parallel to some of the Psalms in the Bible, showing they started out with a very much higher religion than they ended up with.
We get these indications when we have been able to dig up the mummies of some of the early kings, or have found their mummified bodies in some of the pyramids where they were buried. The Great Pyramid of Cheops was never a tomb and has no writings in it like the others have. In those pyramids that were used as tombs, there are very extensive carvings in the passageways. Their theory was that the soul of the dead had to pass through a rather rigid examination, to determine whether the deceased came to a good end or a bad one in the hereafter. They were afraid the dead person would forget some of his lines, so these lines were put in his tomb, in the passageways for him to read. This way the dead person could refresh his memory as to what he was to say when examined.
In these pyramids, which go back to the second dynasty, the evidence is found of this rather elevated type of religion, which soon thereafter disappeared. Many authorities say the animal worship was established by 4300 B.C. to 4000 B.C.
A great deal of work has been done on Egyptian history by David Davidson, who wrote what I consider to be the only really authoritative account of the Great Pyramid. The interior passages of the Great Pyramid have been found to be prophetic. While indicating in only a vague general way, what the nature of the event will be, they do give very precise dates. These dates have been found to correspond with the most important dates in the Bible.
It was simple enough for Davidson, taking the three most official surveys of the Great Pyramid, to compute the dates represented by these different survey points. However, the question was, when you had found that it gave a date of 1486 B.C., the question actually was, what happened in this particular year? So Davidson had to unscramble ancient history. Today this is the year 1972 A.D. all over the world, but there was no corresponding system of dating among the ancients. In every country the only dating system they had was that their records would show that something happened on the eighth day of the fifth month of the twenty-second year of the reign of king so and so.
Then when this king died and another king succeeded him, they began with the first day of the first month of the first year of the reign of King Somebody Else. They had these different reigns of the different kings, of the different nations, starting at different times.
Fortunately there were two ways of tying these records together. The records of Assyria would show that in a certain year of the reign of King So and So of Assyria, the Assyrians were at war with Babylon. The Babylonian records would show that this same war occurred in such and such a year of the reign of a certain Babylonian king. Then, because of their superstition, practically all of them recorded eclipses, either of the sun or of the moon. While eclipses occur every year, there may be a great many years between two successive eclipses visible at the same place. Astronomers can compute, not only the day but to the hour, when a total eclipse of the sun was visible in Babylon. Since the historical records will give us an approximate time, we know we are not dealing with some other century.
When an event is recorded as being on the evening of the eleventh day of the fifth month of the twenty-second year of King So and So, we can pinpoint it exactly, right down to the day, by the eclipses.
Davidson worked all this out with astronomical mathematics, to pinpoint the days of the eclipses. He did this by checking up on the overlap of the records of the different kings’ reigns. Then, by using the works of the principal ancient historians, even though they didn’t agree with each other on everything, Davidson was able to work out a complete and pretty accurate scheme of the dates of ancient history. With this he could tell whether a particular pyramid date was really significant or not, because he could tell what happened on that particular date.
Davidson’s dating would indicate that the Great Pyramid was built somewhere in the period between 3500 B.C. and 2700 B.C.. There has been a legend, if we want to call it this, that nothing is credited with being history unless it is written by some left wing Jew at Harvard. The people who lived in the days when an event actually happened and knew what they were writing about, this is legend we are told. There has been a persistent legend that one of the men, who directed the building of the Great Pyramid, was the patriarch Enoch.
Enoch lived from 3382 B.C. to 3017 B. C., so this would be within the period when other indications show the Great Pyramid was built. Then there is another area on which there is the usual disagreement about the dates. There were a people who came out of Arabia into Egypt, who took over and ruled for a few hundred years. They were known as the Shepherd kings.
The Egyptian pagan priests were the historians and they had nothing good to say about these Shepherd kings. It seems that the Shepherd kings closed down all the pagan temples and insisted on the worship of just one god, which hurt the pagan priest’s revenues considerably.
These Shepherd kings ruled principally in the northern or lower Egypt, but were eventually driven out. The so-called experts have various dates. Some of them say the Shepherd kings were there as long as 500 years, give or take a few years. Others say they ruled Egypt for slightly over 100 years. The most accurate records, that we can get, would indicate these Shepherd kings were there about 350 years, from 1937 B.C. to 1587 B.C.
Joseph, one of the patriarchs of Israel, was sold into slavery in Egypt in 1729 B.C.. This, as you can see, was when these Shepherd kings were ruling. These Shepherd kings weren’t technically Israelites, but they were an Adamic people who were closely related to the Israelites.
The favour with which Joseph was received and then made first assistant, or prime minister to the pharaoh, is understandable when it happened within the reign of these Shepherd kings. This wouldn’t have been understandable in the reign of the ordinary, native Egyptian pharaohs.
Pharaoh Tuhtmes III, who reigned from 1744 B.C. to 1690 B.C., was evidently the pharaoh who promoted Joseph to the position of prime minister. His records, from the twenty-first to the forty-second years of his reign, show constant warfare. From the forty-third to the forty-ninth years, there is no record of any military adventures.
This was the seven year period of famine which the Bible records, which had been prophesied by Joseph. The pharaoh was very busy keeping his subjects contented enough, so they wouldn’t throw him out. The idea of running around elsewhere, to make military conquests, was out of the question.
In 1698 B.C., Tuhtmes III’s records show he ordered extensive dredging of the Nile River at the first cataract. The headwaters of the Nile begin way back in Ethiopia, perhaps a little to the west of Ethiopia. There are three principal rivers, which have their start in high, snow covered mountains and these literally join to form the Nile. The Nile flows from Ethiopia down through the Sudan, which in the ancient days was called Nubia. It goes down through Egypt and into the Mediterranean Sea.
The southern border of Egypt itself, at modern Aswan the first cataract of the Nile, was quite an important point. There is nothing but utterly barren desert, both to the east and the west of the narrow Nile valley. The only place an invasion could come was from the south. This would be along the Nile valley, because there is simply nothing to eat or drink on either side of it, very far away from the river.
From the very early days, the Egyptians had put heavy fortifications at the first cataract of the Nile. In the Bible it is spoken of a time or two as the tower of Syene, which was the first cataract Aswan.
We can still find, carved in the rocks there, the markings where the Egyptians kept records of how high the Nile river rose in flood times. The Nile goes down considerably during the year, so when the extensive snow fields, on the mountain ranges where the Nile began, were melting because of warmer weather, the river was raised to flood levels. Since the river was a matter of life or death to Egypt, the Egyptians kept a careful watch on it. In the years when the water was low, it was important to let every drop flow through. On those occasions the old Egyptian records show that the kings would order extensive dredging, so the channels wouldn’t be blocked where it could percolate out into the desert on either side. The Egyptian records entirely confirm what the Bible records about the seven years of famine that Joseph had prophesied and warned the pharaoh to prepare for.
The Shepherd kings were expelled in 1587 B.C.. The Bible records in Exodus 1:8, “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” This new king, as far as we can determine, was Ramessu II. The Egyptian form of the name is Ramessu, but we generally see it in the Grecian form of Rameses. We have been getting this information through Herodotus’ story of what Manetho told him.
It must have been one of the primary articles of faith of these Greek historians, that you must never, never, under any circumstances, when you describe one of these ancient kings, use his correct name or anything close enough to it to be recognized. There isn’t one of these Egyptian pharaohs, that Herodotus writes about, that he gives a name that bears the slightest resemblance to the man’s Egyptian name, that we find in the Egyptian records. This has caused no end of confusion, in trying to figure these records out.
Ramessu was the pharaoh of the oppression; the one in whose court Moses lived. Moses was born in 1566 B.C. and was eighty years old at the date of the exodus in 1486 B.C. Ramessu was dead at the time of the exodus. While Moses lived the life of an adopted member of the royal family of Egypt, he finally had to flee for his life. He fled way over into Cush in Babylonia, until the pharaoh died. The one on the throne, at the time of the exodus, was Menephtah. The Egyptian records confirm 1486 B.C. as being the year of the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt.
From early times, there was a great kingdom and a great empire in Egypt. During the first few dynasties the Egyptians were a peaceful people who stayed at home. They weren’t trying to go out and conquer their neighbours. They really developed an amazingly high civilization for their times, higher than any of the other empires of their day. Later they became like the other empires, they were governed by pharaohs whose vanity didn’t allow them to see any people anywhere they didn’t rule over. Thus they were like the other empires, embroiled in perpetual wars of conquest or defending themselves against some other nation’s war of conquest.
At various times they extended their empire as far as the Euphrates River. The city of Carchemish, on the Euphrates River, marked the eastern boundary of Egypt, most of the time. During this period, at least the ruling class, and as far as we know all of the Egyptians were as white a people as any that we can find any trace of, either in ancient times or now.
We think mostly of sculpture as being the great work of the Greeks. As a matter of fact, the Greeks left us very few portrait sculptures. The Greek sculptures that we have, were the artist’s idea of what a handsome person should look like, and weren’t a true likeness of any one person. It is well known that many of the Greek principal statues were made with one person serving as a model for the head, another for the chest and arms, and somebody else for the rest of the figure.
If you have seen pictures of many of the famous Greek sculptures, you will note that the face has a blank expression of total stupidity. There is no indication of the pupil of the eye, so there is a blank, unseeing stare. There is nothing corresponding to this among the Egyptians and for a good reason.
Starting with their monotheistic religion, in the early days, and carrying the idea down through their paganism, the Egyptians believed in resurrection. But, there had to be something to resurrect. This is why they mummified the corpses of their people, at least those who could afford it, so that there would still remain a body. They didn’t know how far in the future this day of resurrection would be, so they mummified bodies in the hope they could keep the bodies intact and ready to be resurrected when the time came.
The Egyptians realised that the best of their mummification processes wouldn’t keep the bodies intact forever. Not knowing how long the bodies would last, an Egyptian, who was wealthy enough to afford it, had a portrait sculpture placed in his tomb. It didn’t have to be life sized, but it was a portrait sculpture of him so that if the mummy disintegrated too badly, the soul could go into the statue and live there until the time of the resurrection.
There would be no use in putting a statue of somebody else in the tomb, this wouldn’t do the dead person any good, so the statue was in the image of the deceased. Probably there was no time in antiquity that ever produced such remarkably fine portrait sculptures, as in the early days in Egypt. If we met one of these people walking down the street, after we had seen that portrait sculpture, we would be able to recognize the person without any question or difficulty.
The Egyptians were such realists they also painted the statues, and where the statues have remained sealed in a tomb, so the weather couldn’t disintegrate the paint, the paint on the statutes was still in good condition. The men worked out in the fields, in the sun, so their complexions were darker than the women’s who stayed indoors out of the hot Egyptian sun.
The features of their faces, the narrow bridged noses, thin lips, and the general cast of their faces, show this was very definitely a white race of people. The complexions of the people, as indicated by the painting of the statues, also indicates they were white.
Egypt was located in Africa, but don’t ever think of it as Negroid. In that period of time there was the death penalty for any free Negro found north of the first cataract of the Nile river, within the boundaries of Egypt. The Egyptians did have a trading post established just slightly within the boundary of Egypt.
The Negroes were permitted to come there with their furs and other trade items. But down in Egypt proper, any Negro that wasn’t a slave in chains was summarily killed on sight. Don’t let anyone ever tell you Egypt is an indication of a high Negroid civilization, there never was one in the past and there still isn’t one now.
What today is called the Sudan, the area lying between Egypt and Ethiopia proper, in those days was called Nubia. In the early days, the Egyptian army repelled raids by the Nubian Negroes. Getting tired of this, the army went down, conquered Nubia, and took a lot of the Nubian Negroes as slaves. In the days when the Roman people made up the Roman army, Rome conquered most of the then known world. Then as the Romans began degenerating, they didn’t have the hardiness to serve in their own army, so they began getting mercenary troops from the so called barbarians. The barbarians finally got tired of defending a people who had degenerated, until they were no longer capable of defending themselves. Then the barbarians themselves began to plunder Rome.
The Egyptians began following the same pattern – they were becoming too civilized to serve in the army. Here were a lot of big husky Negroes down in Nubia, so the Egyptians began training them to be soldiers. As long as there were enough Egyptian officers among them, to keep control of the troops, these Negroes did serve a purpose.
In those days there were no complicated weapons that required intelligence to use. All they had were bows, arrows and spears. At least the Nubian Negroes knew what to do with a spear.
In all these ancient kingdoms, there was always a period of unrest and uncertainty when the reigning king died. Sometimes the eldest son was still young, or any usurper who could get the support of a substantial part of the army, might be able to move in and take over the throne. In Egypt, since this did happen on a few occasions, they developed a system.
During the last years of the reign of a pharaoh, from the time the eldest son was old enough to be trained in the administration of the kingdom, they had a joint rule, a co-regency. In this way the army, for some years, was accustomed to taking orders from the crown prince. He wasn’t a brand new ruler when his father died and the son succeeded to the throne and ordered any uprisings to be put down.
Somewhere around 775 B.C., when the reigning pharaoh died, the Egyptian governor of Nubia knew that as far as Egypt was concerned, there wasn’t much of an army there. In Nubia were the best trained troops in this part of the world. This Egyptian governor of Nubia swiftly marched his Nubian Negro army into Egypt and took over.
This was the twenty-fifth dynasty and for a period of about 75 or 80 years, these Nubian Negroes were ruling Egypt. This was the worst disaster possible, because you know what the Nubian Negro troops did with the Egyptian women. They were the military masters of the country. In that period Egypt became a mulatto nation and this was the end of the greatness of Egypt. As the Bible records, they became the basest of all the kingdoms and have been ever since that time. Egyptian architecture, art and everything else declined badly.
Remember the ten-tribed northern kingdom of Israel, was conquered by Assyria between 740 B.C. and 721 B.C., so you can see this was during the period when the Nubian Negro dynasty was in control of Egypt. The power of Assyria, back in the Tigris Euphrates valleys, had been rising during this period. The Assyrians never did have much ability at anything except conquering their neighbours. They were very similar to the Turks in later times. The Assyrians were a military people, perhaps even more so than the Romans. They conquered their neighbours, looted them and made slaves of many of them. There was a major problem, every little kingdom, if it only covered 200 or 300 square miles, had the idea it wanted to be an empire and conquer any smaller neighbouring kingdom that maybe only covered 120 square miles. Because of this, every kingdom was in constant peril of attack by its neighbours. Not only the northern kingdom of Israel, but the southern kingdom of Judah were also constantly in peril of efforts of the Syrian kingdom, to the north and north-east, to conquer them.
Whenever Israel and Judah retained their loyalty to Yahweh, they had no trouble from attacks by their neighbours. Most of the time they lived in peace, because when they were attacked, Israel inflicted such crushing defeats upon these other kingdoms, they weren’t in a hurry to come back and attack again. But when Israel and Judah lapsed into idolatry, as they did about once every generation, then they were subject to attacks by the Edomites on the south-east, and by the Syrians to the north and north-east. Under those circumstances, Israel having become idolaters, they didn’t seek help from Yahweh. Instead of Yahweh, Israel sought help in military alliances with their neighbours.
During this time when Egypt was ruled by these Nubian pharaohs, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel record the warnings. They warned Israel that against the threatening power of Assyria, it was stupid to try to gain help by alliances with Egypt. Egypt couldn’t be relied upon because the greatness of Egypt had passed, in every respect.
In this period we begin finding a number of prophecies, in the Bible, about disasters that were to come upon Egypt. Yahweh’s patience with Egypt had worn pretty thin by this time. Some of these prophecies refer to the conquest of Egypt by Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel chapters 29,30,31 ,& 32 contain these prophecies. Then we can find some other prophecies, which refer to conquests by Assyria and the Persians. Remember the order of conquests. The Assyrian empire was superseded by Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar and this empire was finally overthrown by the Medo-Persian empire. These prophecies, against Egypt, have to be studied in the light of ancient history, to know which empire they refer to. For example Ezekiel 29:10-11 warns, “Behold, I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.”
We know this didn’t happen to Egypt proper, and the description here isn’t that of Egypt proper. The tower of Syene is at Aswan, the southern border of Egypt itself, from there to Ethiopia. This is clearly the Sudan, as we call it today, or ancient Nubia.
It no doubt refers to conditions following the defeat of this twenty-fifth dynasty. This was either by the Assyrians under Esarhaddon, about 670 B.C., or possibly by the Persians under Cambyses in 525 B.C., or under Xerxes in 483 B.C. There are some other prophecies that refer to a later, greater event that has never been fulfilled. Isaiah chapter 19 is entirely devoted to this prophecy.
Everybody that I know, myself included, who has been a student of prophecy, has thought that the nineteenth chapter of Isaiah wasn’t going to come to pass until the final war that closed this age, the war described in Ezekiel chapter 38-39. But it has sneaked up on us and happened in a way that none of us anticipated. It isn’t from warfare at all, but from what was intended as a most peaceful happening.
The fact that the prophecies of the nineteenth chapter of Isaiah have actually been fulfilled in the greater part in the last few years, shows us just how close to the end of this age we are. This nineteenth chapter of Isaiah, like many other parts of the King James translation, has been garbled by the translators. I will use other translations as we go along, which I think are more correct. I will mainly use the King James Bible because this is what most of us are accustomed to reading.
“The burden of Egypt. Behold, Yahweh rideth upon a swift cloud and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. And I will set Egyptians against Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and everyone against his neighbour…”
The Egyptians have had periods of internal warfare like this in the past, between different people fighting for the throne. Apparently this isn’t what this passage is referring to here.
“And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord, and a fierce king shall rule over them, saithYahweh of hosts. And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up…”
This doesn’t make very much sense, because they would have to use up a lot of water, not to have it in the sea.
It is notable that the Septuagint translation, when the Old Testament was translated into Greek about 250 B.C., gives Isaiah 19:5 this way.
“The Egyptians drink water, even near the sea, but the river shall fail and be dried up…”
Then they would be reduced to using the brackish water close to the mouth of the river.
Then Isaiah 19:6 is also garbled in the King James translation as follows.
“And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reed and flags shall wither…”
this is meaningless translated this way. The Septuagint and Moffatt’s modern English translation, instead of saying the brooks of defence, say the canals. This makes a lot more sense because from ancient times, irrigation has been necessary in the Nile valley.
“The fishermen shall mourn, they that cast hook into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread their nets upon the waters shall languish.”
Way back, in the upper Sudan, there is a place where the Nile River flows through a rather shallow valley. It comes to a place where it has to cut its way through a great dike of a rock. This makes a place where the water is flowing through a narrow pass with rock cliffs on both sides.
A carload of explosives could blast down enough rocks from these cliffs, to make a dam in this narrow chasm and halt the flow there. If the water rose, not even very high in this shallow valley, it would overflow the low hills to the east of it and cut itself a new channel, heading eastward into the Red Sea.
Because of the Suez Canal, Egypt has been an important defence base of England. In World War II the allies were desperately worried when the German general Rommel almost captured Egypt and the canal. The Italians had taken Eritrea, the coastal portion of Ethiopia, between World Wars I and II, and had pretty much captured Ethiopia.
The Italians hadn’t been able to prevent guerrilla warfare in the jungle portions of Ethiopia, but they were occupying it and were in general command. There was quite a bit of nervousness, during World War II, that the Italians might go back and blast those cliffs down and block the Nile. This would have made Egypt uninhabitable and driven the British out. Isaiah 19:16 states,
“Moreover they that work and comb flax, and they that weave cotton, shall be ashamed: And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish…”
Here is another example of garbled translation in the King James Bible. This is about as ridiculous a statement as we can find anywhere. Whenever we find something that the translators have turned silly, we know it wasn’t this way in the original, and is a mistake in translation.
Among the many different translations I have in my library, I have a translation of the Old Testament put out by the Jews. It was printed by the Jewish Publication Society of America, located in Philadelphia. Oddly enough, they have a translation of this particular verse that makes more sense than any of the others.
This verse 10 is so garbled in the King James Bible, and most of the other translators haven’t been able to make any more sense out of it. Many of the modem English translators simply leave this verse out. They don’t even put in an asterisk to indicate something has been left out they just ignore it. The Jewish translation says,
“And her foundations shall be crushed; and they that make dams shall be grieved in soul. Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: How say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where are they? Where are thy wise men? and let them tell thee now, and let them know what Yahweh of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt.
The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also deceived Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof. Yahweh hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit. Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do.
In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because .of the shaking of the hand of Yahweh of hosts, which he shakes over it. And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt…”
Note the peculiar accuracy of this. It doesn’t say the people of Judah, because these Jews over there in Palestine are not from the tribe of Judah.
Until relatively recent times, not more than a century ago, the Nile valley was considered to have the most fertile soil in the world. This was because every year at flood season, the land was so low, the floodwaters spread over the banks of the river very easily, covering the farmlands. During the two or three months the land was flooded, all the salt and alkali which had been accumulating in the soil during the year, was leached out and washed away down to the sea.
In the Salt River valley in Arizona, where the city of Phoenix is located, about 800 years ago the Indians had a surprisingly high civilization there. They irrigated a great area with the waters of the Salt River. The present modern day irrigation system consists mostly of a deepening of the remains of the old Indian canals, they were that well engineered.
The water put upon the land through irrigation, dissolved any alkali or salt that was in the soil and brought it to the surface. In that hot, dry climate, there was no run off, the water simply came to the surface and evaporated into the air. The water was constantly dissolving and bringing alkali and salt to the surface and leaving it there. Over a period of time, the salt and alkali accumulated to the point where the people could no longer raise any crops. Because the fertility of the soil was destroyed, the Indians were starved out about 800 years ago.
The same process could happen anywhere else in the world except the Nile valley. Every year the floodwaters of the Nile flushed out any alkali and salt that had accumulated in the top part of the soil.
There are three principal rivers that are the source of the Nile. They are the Blue Nile, White Nile and one known as the Black Nile. The Black Nile is called black because it flows through an area in Ethiopia where there is a good deal of dark silty soil. The river picks up so much silt that the waters are practically black with it.
The flow of the Nile brings down the silt and in the three months that the Nile valley is covered with floodwaters, another layer of this fresh silt is deposited on the land. The soil was constantly being renewed and thus had the reputation of being the most fertile soil in the world. Then in the early 1900’s, the British built a low dam at Aswan, trying to improve on nature. This was to hold back the floodwaters so the people wouldn’t have to vacate their farms part of the year. Then the Egyptians, getting delusions of grandeur, said they wanted a higher dam at Aswan to store vast quantities of water. Then they reasoned, even in the driest years they would always have ample water to draw on.
Our own American government, eager to give away billions of dollars of our hard working citizens, volunteered to build it. Then when Egypt showed a dislike for having its territory taken over by the Jews, the American government reneged on its promise to build the Egyptians the higher dam. Then the Russians stepped in and offered to build the higher dam.
Egypt now has a great high dam at Aswan, holding back the waters of the Nile and they release the water in just the quantities they want. A river flowing along rapidly carries with it any silt that is picked up. When the waters are held behind a dam, the water comes to a halt and all the accumulated silt drops to the bottom. Then the silt starts building up behind the dam, and the bottom of the reservoir gets higher and higher. Guess what, then no silt gets beyond the dam.
For many years now, the farm fields of Egypt haven’t been covered by the annual floods. Very little of the annual waters that usually flooded the Nile, ever get past the Aswan dam. Now the consequences are showing up. The most important crop for the farmers in Egypt is the cotton. Egyptian cotton is prized because of its long fibre. Their cotton crop is failing badly, because the soil is becoming alkaline, for the soil never gets the flood waters to leach it out anymore. In the hot Egyptian climate, the water they irrigate with through the canals dissolves the alkali in the lower depths of the soil and brings it to the surface. Then the water evaporates and the alkali is left in the soil. The same thing is happening in Egypt that happened in the Salt River valley in Arizona 800 years ago. Let’s go back and read Isaiah 19:9 again.
“Moreover they that work and comb flax, and they that weave cotton shall be ashamed.”
Egypt does have some flax farming, but principally cotton and both crops are getting into difficulties.
Let’s turn our attention now to fish, as this was a staple of the Egyptian diet. You don’t start with whales and work down from them to the smaller fish. To begin with, you start with something called plankton, which includes tiny living things, so small they are almost like bacteria, but a little larger, up to things that are visible to the eye, if you look closely. The smallest minnows feed upon the plankton, and somewhat larger fish feed on the minnows, and the bigger fish feed on the minnows etc. There was quite a fishing industry in the lower reaches of the Nile and at the mouth of the Nile.
The start of the food cycle for the fish, the plankton, used to be washed down the river with the silt. Because of the dam, the plankton doesn’t come anymore so the start of the food chain has ceased to be. Guess what has happened to the larger fish! With no food chain, they aren’t there either, so the fishing industry has also gone bad. Remember, Egypt desperately needs anything she can get, to bring in any kind of income. The people no longer have a cheap source of protein either.
Remember Isaiah 19:8, “And the fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast hook into brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.”
This fulfilment of prophecy just crept up on us, only recently has it come to be understood.
The Egyptians are in desperate trouble and as the Jewish translation records, “All they that make dams shall be grieved in soul.” The dam builders have destroyed Egypt.
Bible students were all waiting for the next war, the final Armageddon war, to fulfil this prophecy. We expected the Nile to be turned way back into the Sudan, but this isn’t the way Yahweh planned it. It didn’t take a war to accomplish this. When we can see that prophecy is being fulfilled, it shows us that we are getting close to the time of the end of this age.
Egypt is really in difficulties. The tourist industry has been an important source of income. During the days of the fighting with the Jews, the war scared away most of the tourists, because the Jews were air raiding and shelling the cities. The hotels and the Stores that handled goods for the tourist trade, and the people who made the goods to be sold in those stores, are now out of work.
There is no love lost between the Egyptians and the Russians. The Egyptians first turned to us for help, but our politicians had sold us out to the Jews and also sold the Egyptians out to the Jews. We wouldn’t give Egypt help unless they agreed to surrender to the Jews and let the Jews take whatever they wanted. Naturally the Egyptians were not willing to agree to these terms. Then Russia came along offering help, with the idea of getting a foothold where she could take the Suez Canal and have a beachhead in Africa. It has been centuries since the Egyptians have had an army worth anything at all. But, at this time, they needed some military defence against Jewish aggression. Egypt asked us for weapons but we refused to provide them. At the same time, we were providing weapons to the Jews, for aggressive use against the Arabs. So Russia offered to provide weapons, and to a certain extent she did.
The mulatto Egyptians of today, are by no means a high type of people. The Russians claimed that when they trusted the Egyptians with any of the more complex modern weapons, the Egyptians weren’t able to learn how to operate them. Then by their clumsy stupidity, they soon put the weapons out of order. I don’t doubt in the least that this is true. This is what happens when you interbreed with an inferior race. Then the Russians gave the Egyptians only the simplest sort of weapons, after this happened and these weapons weren’t always in working order either. I have heard it said, on what I think is reliable authority, that the artillery in the tanks Russia provided, were quite all right, except in one respect – there weren’t any gun sights.
Remember now, Russia is completely ruled by the Jews. Russia wasn’t going to provide any really effective opposition to the Jews in Palestine; she was just making a show of it. Russia wanted to get the favour of the Egyptians, enough to get a foothold there but not doing anything that could actually hurt the Jews. The Russians have had thousands of military advisers and technicians in Egypt. They have treated the Egyptians with undisguised contempt, probably somewhat justified. The Egyptians have returned the contempt with interest. Tourists have reported that whenever a Russian walks down the Street there, in Cairo or Alexandria, any Egyptian he passes will usually spit, to show their contempt for the Russian.
The average Egyptian hates the Russians and wanted to be friends with America. Some of them would even like Britain to return, because they got along so much better when the British were running things.
This all fits into the same picture, in the Great Russian attack pictured in Ezekiel chapter 38-39. It has been generally assumed, by most people, that Egypt would be among the allies of Russia. Go back and read it again. It prophesies that Egypt is going to be overrun and lots of her people slaughtered. There will be fighting in Egypt, but it never lists Egypt among the allies of Russia.
Daniel 11:40-43 tells us, “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen, and with many ships; and shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon. He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape…”
This king of the north, as everybody has agreed for a few hundred years, is the ruler of Russia.
“The land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.”
Libya is on the North African coast, just west of Egypt. Ethiopia has, for several years, been the centre of Russian intrigue in Africa. Actually for diplomatic and consular purposes, a staff of ten people would be much more than Russia would need in this backward country. Russia actually has about 500 people there in their embassy. Soviet spies fan out from Ethiopia over all of Africa. Libya is also quite favourable to Russia.
Ezekiel chapter 30 says, “The word of Yahweh came again unto me saying, Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith Yahweh God; Howl ye, Woe worth the day! For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near, a day of clouds; it shall be the time of the heathen. And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down. Ethiopia, Put, and Lud, and all the Arabians, the Libyans, and the Kerethites with them, shall fall by the sword. Those who uphold Egypt shall fall, and her proud strength shall come down, from Migdol to Syene shall they fall by the sword, is the oracle of Yahweh.”
Migdol was a fortification practically on the Mediterranean coast, guarding the extreme north of Egypt from attack by sea, at the mouth of the Nile. Syene is Aswan, at the southern border of Egypt. Remember the prophecy, which said it, would be desolate and uninhabited for forty years, from Syene to the border of Ethiopia. That prophecy referred to the Sudan, this now refers to Egypt proper.
This Put might easily be a misprint in some of the ancient manuscripts for Punt. It appears in the Bible as Put, but Punt was the ancient name for the coast of Somaliland, on the east coast of Africa just below Ethiopia, it could be that. It could be Somaliland or possibly Eritrea, which is now part of Ethiopia.
Lud furnished mercenary soldiers for Egypt in the early days, which could possibly be the Berbers of Libya, or possibly even the Lydians on the shore of Asia Minor, because the loyalty of Turkey is becoming doubtful. Turkey was one of our strong allies till we began selling her out to Russia. Turkey, at the present time, appears to be looking to see which side will offer her the highest bid. The Kerethites were people of southern Philistia, on the Palestinian coast. This is the modern Gaza strip, which the Jews have occupied on the Palestinian coast, south of the border of Egypt.
Some of these events we looked for only as part of a war, are sneaking up on us now, with the fulfilment of this much of the prophecy. True, there is going to be a final war, and there is going to be fighting when Russia wants to occupy the Suez Canal and get a bridgehead onto the African continent, that much has yet to come. Note that the first part of this prophecy has happened in the last few decades. We are in that period. Take note that events are shaping up rapidly for the end times, and we may not have too long to wait
