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"In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians shall
come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the
Assyrians" (Isa. 19: 23).
Here intercommunication will be established, fear of invasion and harm shall be
removed, and both nations, once Israel's oppressors, shall serve the Lord together. If this
were all, it would be a state of affairs that would be wonderful to behold. But this is not
all by any means.
"In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in
the midst of the land (or earth)" (Isa. 19: 24).
This unheard of exhibition of grace and mercy is followed by the words that close this
chapter as a great "Amen".
"Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying
Blessed be EGYPT MY PEOPLE, and
ASSYRIA the WORK OF MY HANDS, and
ISRAEL MINE INHERITANCE."
No word that we can add to such superlative grace can do anything but spoil this
gracious witness. Let us leave it to shine in all its unsullied glory, while we remember
that when we, too, were enemies Christ died for us (Rom. 5: 6-10).
Another prophecy concerning Egypt is found in Dan. 11: Before examining this
chapter we quote from Daniel's Great Prophecy by Nathaniel West, D.D., and let it be
noted the following words were written in 1897, and not in December, 1956, when the
problem of Suez and the Middle East is in everyone's mind:
"It is the `Eastern Question' that is here, a question not limited or local, but
ubiquitous, affecting today the deepest interests of Russia, England, France, Austria,
Germany, Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Palestine, in their relations to each other, to India,
China and Japan, and to Africa, affecting the whole world; an age-long contention
between conflicting civilizations, with creeds and forms of government, and prejudices of
race and traditions diverse and opposed as the poles; that `mache athanatos' of Plato, the
`immortal conflict' between truth and error, right and wrong, which endures until a `new
cycle' of time shall bring its close. What statesman in any cabinet or chamber of modern
legislation has ever lifted his voice to tell the world that as in Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Zephaniah and Zechariah, so here Daniel has exhibited, in chapters 8: and 11: the
`Eastern Question' in terms impossible to be misunderstood, or that the waters of the
Hellespont, the Ęgean and Mediterranean seas, with the isles of Greece and Asia Minor,
and the mainlands washed by them--the storm-centre of the Eastern question in every
age--form for the prophet the geographical theatre of his vision of the `Warfare Great'?
or that here the fleets of the nations must meet to sink and sail no more, in that final crisis
when `heaven, earth, sea, dry land, and all nations' are `shaken'? It is the light of
prophecy that enables us to see and understand the immense significance of the recent
acts of the `Powers' in reference to Crete, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, and what the parallel
Jewish movements forebode. In the words of a great and deep writer in our day, internal
politics, the world over, are resolvable into some form of the Eastern Question. It haunts
the history of civilized mankind."