No doubt you have read that, until recent times, relatively (go back not more than a century), until recent times, the valley of the Nile was considered to have the most fertile soil in the world because, every year at the flood season, the land was so low, was so little above the normal level of the river at the flood season, water overflowed the farm lands. During the two or three months that the lands was flooded, all the slat and alkali that had been accumulating in the soil was leached out of it and washed away, down to the sea.
In the Salt River valley in Arizona (the city of Phoenix is in that valley), about 800 years ago the Indians had a surprisingly high civilization there. They irrigated a great area with the waters of the Salt River. As a matter of fact, the modern irrigation system consists mostly of just a deepening of the remains of the old Indian canals; they were that well engineered. But what happened was this: the water put upon the land dissolved any alkali or salt that was in the soil, and brought it to the surface; and in that hot, dry climate, there was no run-off; the water simply came to the surface and evaporated into the air. So the water was constantly dissolving and bringing to the surface the alkali and slat, and then leaving it there. And 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, and the Indians were starved out about 800 years ago.
The same thing could happen any place else in the world, but it couldn�t happen in the Nile valley because, every year, the flood waters of the Nile flushed out any alkali or salt that had accumulated in the upper part of the soil.
There are three principal rivers that are the source of the Nile: the Blue Nile; the White Nile; and one which is know as the Black Nile because, flowing through an area in Ethiopia where there is a good deal of silty soil, it picks up so much silt that the waters are practically black with it. The flow of the Nile brings down this silt, and in those three months that the Nile valley in Egypt is covered with the flood waters, another layer of this fresh silt is deposited on the land. The soil is constantly being replenished, so it had the reputation of being the most fertile soil in the world.
A few years ago the British built for them a low dam at Aswan. You know we are always trying to improve on what God created, that we call nature. This was to hold back the flood waters, so the people wouldn�t have to vacate their farm lands part of the year. Then the Egyptians, getting delusions of grandeur, said, �We want a great high dam at Aswan, to store vast quantities of water, so that even in the driest years we will always have ample water there to draw on.�
Our own government, eager to give away billions of dollars of the American taxpayers� money, volunteered to do it. Then when Egypt showed a dislike for having her territory taken away by the Jews, the American government reneged on its promise to build for the Egyptians the high dam. So the Russians stepped in, and offered to go through with it, and the Russians agreed to build that high dam.
So now there was a great high dam Aswan holding back the waters of the Nile, and they release it in just the quantities they want. All right. A river flowing along rapidly carries with it an silt that is picked up, and when you hold it behind a dam, and the water comes to a halt, all that silt drops to the bottom. So, for one thing, it starts silting up the reservoir behind the dam; you are constantly building up the bottom of it, higher and higher, with the silt that is dropped there. And secondly, so silt gets down below that dam. So far some years now, the farm fields of Egypt have not been covered by the annual flood, for the annual flood water never gets by the high Aswan dam. And now the consequences have begun to show up.
The most important crop in Egypt is the cotton crop, and their cotton crop, by the way, is pledged to Russia for several years yet to come, in payment for the poor grade of Russian military equipment that was foisted on them. Their cotton crop is falling off badly, because the soil is becoming alkaline, for it never gets the flood waters to leach it out anymore. And in that hot Egyptian climate, the water they put on it, by irrigation through the canals, of course dissolves the alkali in the lower depths of the soil and brings it to the surface, where the water evaporates, but the alkali is left in the soil. The same thing is happening there that happened in our Salt River valley of Arizona 800 years ago.
Let us go back and look at Isaiah again. �Moreover they that work and comb flax, and they that weave cotton, shall be shamed.� (Isaiah 19:9) They do of course have some flax or linen farming, but principally cotton, and both of them are getting into difficulties.
Another thing: when it comes to fish, you don�t start with whales and work from them, down to the smaller things you start, to begin with, with what is called plankton, p-l-a-n-k-t-o-n, which includes tiny little living things, so small as to be bacteria, and a bit larger, up t things that are visible to the eye if you look closely. The smallest little minnows feed upon the plankton, and somewhat larger fish feed on the minnows, and the bigger fish feed on those, and so on. Now they have had 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 fish, the plankton, used to be washed down with the silt, but it doesn�t come any more, for they have cut off the food chain right at the start of it. As there are no little minnows to feed the larger fish, the larger fish aren�t there either, so their fishing industry has also gone bad. Remember, Egypt desperately needs anything she can get, to bring in any kind of income.
�The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast hook into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.� (Isaiah 19:8) Can there be any doubt that this has sneaked up on us; only just recently has it come to light.
A man stationed in Europe for several years, returned to this country and on the way back he stopped over a few days in Egypt. He wanted to see the Great Pyramid, and so on, and while he was there he found out that the Egyptians are n desperate trouble and, as the Jewish translation says, �all they that make dams shall be grieved in soul.� In other words, they have destroyed Egypt.
We were all waiting for the next war, the final Armageddon war, to bring this about, through turning the river away, way back in the Sudan, but that isn�t the way Yahweh had planned it. It didn�t take a war to do it. When we can see that prophecy being fulfilled, it shows us that we are getting close to the time of the end.
Egypt really is in difficulties. The tourist industry had been an important one. During the days of fighting with the Jews, of course the war scared away mot of the tourists, because the Jews were doing some air-raiding and bombardment. So the hotels and the stores that handled goods for the tourist trade, and all who made goods to be sold in those stores, are now out of work.
Another thing that he noticed was that there was not love lost between the Egyptians and the Russian. Now the Egyptians turned to us first, for help, but our politicians had sold us out to the Jews, and so of course they also sold the Egyptians out to the Jews. We would not give them help, unless they agreed to surrender to the Jews and let the Jews take whatever they wanted, which naturally the Arabs were not willing to do. Then Russia came along and, with the idea of getting a foothold where she could take the Suez Canal and have a beachhead in Africa, Russia offered to help.
Of course it has been centuries since the Egyptians have had an army worth anything at all, but at this time they needed some military defense against Jewish aggression. They asked us for weapons and we refused to provide them, while at the same time we were providing weapons to the Jews for use in aggression against the Arabs. So Russia offered to provide weapons, and to a certain extent she did so.
The mulatto Egyptians of today are by no means a high type. The Russians, say, and undoubtedly truthfully, that when they trusted the Egyptians with any of the more complex weapons, the Egyptians didn�t know how to operate them and by their clumsy stupidity soon put them out of order; and there is no doubt in the least that that is true. So the Russians gave them only the simplest sort of weapons after that, and not always in working order either. It has been said, on what appears to be reliable authority, that the artillery in the tanks, that the Russian provided the Egyptians, were quite alright, except in one respect: there weren�t any gun sight for them.
Remember now, Russia is completely ruled by the Jews and Russia wasn�t going to provide any really effective opposition to the Jews in Palestine; she was just making a show of it, to get the favor of the Egyptians, enough to get a good foothold there, but not doing anything that could actually hurt the Jews.
The have had thousands of military advisers and technicians, and so on, in Egypt, and they have treated the Egyptians with undisguised contempt and the Egyptians have returned the contempt with interest. It has been reported that where ever a Russian walks down the street there, in Cairo or Alexandria, the Egyptians he passes on the street will usually spit, to show their contempt for the Russian.
The ordinary Egyptians say �If America would only help us: we want to be friends with America,� and some of them even said, �If the British would only come back: we got along so much better when they were running things here.�
This all fits into the same picture, in the great Russian attack pictured in the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters of Ezekiel. It has been generally assumed by most people that Egypt would be among the allies of Russia. Now go back and read it again. It says that Egypt is going to be overrun and lots of her people slaughtered, there will be fighting in Egypt, but it never lists Egypt with the allies of Russia.
Daniel 11:40-43: �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 (The United States), 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...� Now this king of the north, as everybody has agreed for a couple of hundred years, is the ruler of Ruaai. �...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 center of Russian intrigue in Africa. Actually, for diplomatic and consular purposes, a staff of ten people would be heavily over-staffed, but they have had about t00 there. In other words, Soviet spies fan out from Ethiopia over all of Africa; with Lybia one of the favorites of Russia.
In Ezekiel 38:6 we find: �and many people with thee.� Which many today believe is the invasion of the Mexicans and other people from Mexico, and all around the world. They are coming from all direction, from Mexico, from Canada, from the west coast, from the east coast and from the Gulf of Mexico.
In the thirtieth chapter of Ezekiel is 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 here 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 God.�
Now Migdol was a fortification on the Mediterranean coast, guarding the extreme north of Egypt from attack by sea, at the mouth of the Nile , and Syene of course s Aswan at the southern border of Egypt. You remember, I read you another prophecy here, which said it would be desolate and uninhabited for forty years, from Syene to the border of Ethiopia. So that referred to the Sudan, but this now refers to Egypt proper.
This �Put� might easily be a misprint in some of the ancient manuscripts for Punt. It appears in your Bible as P-u-t, but P-u-n-t was the ancient name for the coast of Somaliland, on the east cost of Africa, just below Ethiopia; it could be that. So it could be Somaliland or possibly Eritrea, which is now part of Ethiopia.
Lud, spelled L-u-d, furnished mercenary soldiers for Egypt in the early days, which could be possibly be the Berbers of Libya, or possibly even the Lydians on the shore of Asia Minor, because the position of Turkey is becoming doubtful. Turkey was one of our strong allies till we began selling her out to Russia, and 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; that is the modern Gaza strip which the Jews have occupied, on the Palestinian coast, south of the border of Egypt.
So some of these things, that we looked for only as part of a war, are sneaking up on us now, with the fulfillment of this much of the prophecy. True, there is going to be the final war, and there is going to be fighting when Russia wants to occupy the Suez Canal and get her bridgehead onto the African continent, that much yet has to come. But note that the first part of this prophecy has happened in less than the last fifty years; we are in that period. So take note that things are shaping up rapidly for the end, and you may not have to wait long. (Taken, in part, from a study by Bertrand L. Comparet, Your Heritage, P.O. Box 81466, San Diego, CA 92138)