BIRTH PANG NUMBER 22
May 22, 2010
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Chapter 24 – God Smites the Great Euphrates
November 9, 2001
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Isaiah 11:15,16 – And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over drys
hod. [16] And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.
Begin quote from Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
15. There shall be a second exodus, destined to eclipse even the former one from Egypt in its wonders. So the prophecies elsewhere (Ps 68:22; Ex 14:22; Zec 10:11). The same deliverance furnishes the imagery by which the return from Babylon is described (Isa 48:20, 21).
destroy-literally, “devote,” or “doom,” that is, dry up for what God dooms, perishes (Ps 106:9 Na 1:4).
As the Nile was not the obstruction to the exodus, it is rather the west tongue or Heroöpolite fork of the Red Sea.
with . mighty wind-such as the “strong east wind” (Ex 14:21), by which God made a way for Israel through the Red Sea.
The Hebrew for “mighty” means terrible. Maurer translates, “With the terror of His anger”; that is, His terrible anger.
in the seven streams-rather, “shall smite it (divide it by smiting) into seven (many) streams, so as to be easily crossed” [Lowth]. So Cyrus divided the river Gyndes, which retarded his march against Babylon, into three hundred sixty streams, so that even a woman could cross it [Herodotus, 1.189]. “The river” is the Euphrates, the obstruction to Israel’s return “from Assyria” (Isa 11:16), a type of all future impediments to the restoration of the Jews.
dry shod-Hebrew, “in shoes.” Even in sandals they should be able to pass over the once mighty river without being wet (Re 16:12).
Revelation 16:12 – And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
End quote from Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
In Birth Pang Number 21, Chapter 23, proof that “the river” of verse 15 is the great Euphrates River was fully exposited. We were advised that God will smite it and, as a result, it will be subdivided into seven smaller streams.
The question then arises as to the geographical location on the Euphrates that will be smitten by God. At what point will God strike the Euphrates to dry up the southern part, and turn the northern section into seven smaller streams? I call your attention to Figure 35 for the answer to this question.
The same God who inspired this Scripture has created a long zone of structural weakness in the crust of the earth – a weakness that extends northeast from the headwater tributary system of the Jordan River
across Syria, making contact with the Euphrates between Dayr az Zwar and Abu Kama.
This structural weakness consists of the an elongated area of major faults and folds in the earth’s known as the Palmyra belt. Please observe on Figure 35 that this belt of folds and faults links the northern Jordan and Euphrates Rivers together.
The Euphrates is one of the greatest carriers of topsoil silt on the face of the earth. It tears it from Turkish mountainsides and carries it through the Fertile Crescent of Syria and Iraq into the Persian Gulf. The land delta of the Persian Gulf is one of the fastest growing deltas on the earth.
This growth is produced by massive influxes of silt carried into the Persian Gulf by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Isaiah indicates that God will smite the Euphrates into seven sub-streams. This will occur in the zone of the earth that begins on the Euphrates in the vicinity of El Rashid, Syria, and then continues southwestward into extreme northern Israel near Dan. When the Arabah fault (See Figure 25) is ripped open from the Gulf of Aqabah to Lebanon, the fantastic shaking will cause the Palmyra fault zone to collapse, and the Euphrates River will be diverted across this crumbled
zone of rock and earth to link up with the northern headwaters of the Jordan.
Whenever a sediment-carrying river moves into a zone with more sediment than it can carry due to deceleration, then it invariably produces what geologists call “a braided river.” A braided river is the division of a single river into many streams. Isaiah counted seven.
Seven streamlets will weave their way southwestward through the newly formed cracks in the Palmyra
Weakness, and will eventually feed into the northern tributary system of the Jordan River. It will be what geologists refer to as “headwater piracy”—piracy by the Jordan upon the Euphrates.
The additional waters, fed into the Jordan River system, will add more water and topsoil than Israel can use during
the millennial reign of Christ.
Israel will become the breadbasket of the world.
We are advised by John in Revelation 16:12 as to the effects of this massive water diversion into the upper Jordan.
The section of the Euphrates to the east of Israel will go dry. It will then be possible for the kings of the east to wade in sandals any water lying before them on their way to Israel. Figure 36 shows the combined effects of the drying up of the Euphrates, and the Idumean opening of a Jordanian drainage through the Arabah desert into the Red Sea. (See Birth Pang Numbers 15 and 16)