The Burden against Egypt
Isaiah 19:1 – 25 “This is the burden against Egypt: Behold, the LORD rides on a swift cloud; He is coming to Egypt.
The idols of Egypt will tremble before Him, and the hearts of the Egyptians will melt within them. “So I will incite Egyptian against Egyptian; brother will fight against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be emptied out from among them, and I will frustrate their plans, so that they will resort to idols and spirits of the dead, to mediums and spiritists.
I will deliver the Egyptians into the hands of harsh masters, and a fierce king will rule over them,” declares the Lord GOD of Hosts. The waters of the Nile will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and empty. The canals will stink; the streams of Egypt will trickle and dry up; the reeds and rushes will wither. The bulrushes by the Nile,
by the mouth of the river, and all the fields sown along the Nile, will wither, blow away, and be no more.
Then the fishermen will mourn, all who cast a hook into the Nile will lament, and those who spread nets on the waters will pine away. The workers in flax will be dismayed, and the weavers of fine linen will turn pale.
The workers in cloth will be dejected, and all the wage earners will be sick at heart.
The princes of Zoan are mere fools; Pharaoh’s wise counselors give senseless advice. How can you say to Pharaoh,
“I am one of the wise, a son of eastern kings”? Where are your wise men now? Let them tell you and reveal
what the LORD of Hosts has planned against Egypt. The princes of Zoan have become fools; the princes of Memphis are deceived. The cornerstones of her tribes have led Egypt astray.
The LORD has poured into her a spirit of confusion. Egypt has been led astray in all she does, as a drunkard staggers through his own vomit. There is nothing Egypt can do—head or tail, palm or reed.
A Blessing upon the Earth
In that day the Egyptians will be like women. They will tremble with fear beneath the uplifted hand of the LORD of Hosts, when He brandishes it against them. The land of Judah will bring terror to Egypt; whenever Judah is mentioned, Egypt will tremble over what the LORD of Hosts has planned against it. In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of Hosts. One of them will be called the City of the Sun.
In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD near her border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of Hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, He will send them a savior and defender to rescue them. The LORD will make Himself known to Egypt, and on that day Egypt will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and fulfill them.
And the LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; He will strike them but heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and He will hear their prayers and heal them. In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing upon the earth. The LORD of Hosts will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”
There are times when prophecy can leave us scratching our heads. We want to see everything come true right now before our eyes. Who cares about the distant future? Fortunately, Isaiah has been obedient when God has given him these promises, but Isaiah is probably confused!
Egypt thrown into such turmoil that the Egyptians are fighting one another. The Egyptians are going to become so desperate that they resort to the occult, but the occult fails them utterly. Not only will the Egyptians suffer under a harsh ruler, but the mighty Nile River, the source of much of the water and wealth in Egypt, will dry up, leaving the fish and vegetation to die and rot and stink. All the industries depending on the Nile will fail completely. Sounds horrible? But wait!
Somewhere in the midst of this disaster, the Egyptians will turn their hearts to the God of Israel and worship him. An altar will be built in the center of Egypt and there will be a memorial pillar dedicated to the Lord at the Egyptian border. Even though Egypt will be struck with a plague, when God heals the Egyptians, they will worship him and even form a three-way alliance with the Jews and the Assyrians (Iraq/Iran).
While many of Isaiah’s prophecies have already come true, this one is yet to be fulfilled. Before the Nile can dry up, all the sources of the Nile must first fail. The Nile receives much of its water from the mountains of Ethiopia; rainfall here must fail before the Nile can fail. These verses indicate a major drought across the Horn of Africa and Egypt. The Egyptians will be so confounded by this disaster that they will turn to the God of Israel and will form an alliance with Israel and the nations that make up the former kingdom of Assyria. God will bless this alliance.
APPLICATION: At first, these prophesies appear ludicrous; however, recent current events indicate that they might yet be fulfilled. That fulfillment will require several miracles, including not only a climate disaster, but also the willingness of the Jews to forgive the Egyptians and other countries who have been attacking Israel.
When the prophet Jeremiah was in prison and God sent his relative to sell Jeremiah land, Jeremiah was distraught, believing that Judah was about to be wiped out for good, rendering such a land deal useless. But God had other ideas. “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27)
One of our close pastor friends who is now with Jesus used to say that we were all in advertising and only God was in management. Why would God even entertain such the ideas that this prophecy portrays? It is God’s will to draw all nations to Himself. Only God knows what it will take for a given nation to repent and to turn away from those things on which it has been relying. And God is willing to go to extremes to draw individuals and nations.
How about us? Has God been engineering crises in our lives so that we would recognize our need for Him? Have we attempted to trust in our professions, our savings, our investments, our political connections, or our families? God loves each one of us to such a degree that He will lovingly strip away everything on which we have relied until the day we turn and rely totally on Him.
At one point, the Egyptian empire was one of the richest in the world; yet, when the Assyrians came, they stripped it of much of its wealth. During World War II, the Germans looted art treasures and hid them; even now, new discoveries are still coming to light. The owners of these items trusted in their wealth, but in the end, they lost everything.
Victor Frankl was a distinguished Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who suffered greatly under the Nazis. In 1942, just nine months after his marriage, Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His father died there of starvation and pneumonia. In 1944, Frankl and the surviving members of his family were transported to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His wife died later of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years in four concentration camps.
In the midst of this suffering, Frankl triumphed spiritually. Later, Frankl would say, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
How can we change ourselves? The best thing we can do is to allow God to change us. As we enter this new year, let us beg God for His perfect Will for our lives and then let us follow His leading!
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, help us to stop and listen for Your voice so that we may know Your perfect will for our lives. Help us to follow hard after You all the days of our lives. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
Burunche's Blog 
Leave a comment