AboutBibleProphecy.comIsaiah said God would preserve the people of Israel
Prophet: Isaiah Written: Between 701-681 BC Many writers have commented on the perseverance of the Jewish people, but few have done so as succinctly as Charles Krauthammer, a controversial, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist: "This is the only country on earth that speaks the same language, worships the same God and inhabits the same land that it did 3,000 years ago." - Charles Krauthammer, writing a commentary that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on July 6, 1998. Contrast the preservation of Israel with the fate of neighboring countries: • Egypt, one of the world's most powerful and influential societies during ancient times, has lost many aspects of its ancient culture to antiquity. The Coptic language, for example, which is a direct descendant of the even more ancient language reflected in Egyptian hieroglyphic, is limited today as a liturgical language for Egyptian Christians. The official language of Egypt is now Arabic. • Lebanon endured a similar fate as Egypt. While it, too, has retained its geographical identity since antiquity, much of what is present today in terms of language, culture and religion would be unrecognizable to someone who had lived there more than a few thousand years ago. Even so, Egypt and Lebanon actually have fared better than other countries in the midst of Israel. • The Kingdom of Moab occupied a stretch of land east of the Dead Sea. Moabite sovereignty came to an end during ancient times and the land today is part of the country of Jordan, a nation that didn't exist until the 20th Century. The Moabite language, culture and religion have been washed out of the daily fabric of life, and the lore of their chief god, Chemosh, lives on only in fragmentary archaeological records. • Perhaps Moab did better than Ammon, which also covered a land east of the Jordan River. So little is known about the Ammonites that even the boundaries of their kingdom, and the language that they spoke, are matters of speculation today. • Similar fates have befallen other nations that existed near the land of Israel, including Edom, various Phoenician states and Philistine city-states, and the Kingdom of Aram-Damascus. - Research and commentary by George and Raymond Konig of www.AboutBibleProphecy.com Copyright ©2001-2008 George Konig and AboutBibleProphecy.com. All rights reserved. Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Email us at: abpquestions@yahoo.com |
Bible prophecies |