History Repeating Itself

An Altar to the Lord in the Land of Egypt

Judah was going into captivity.  He would be threshed like wheat by Babylon.  He would experience divine punishment for gross contumacy and rebellion against his covenanted Lord.  But the prophet Isaiah, inspired by God Himself, looks forward beyond the captivity to predict with equal certainty the fall and destruction of Babylon in its turn. Then eventually, Babylon would turn to the Lord and worship Him. 

The prophet holds up Babylon's gods to mockery and ridicule. 

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops;
Their idols are on beasts and livestock;
These things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts.
They stoop; they bow down together;
They cannot save the burden,
But themselves go into captivity.
Isaiah 46: 1-2

Thus a perpetuating pattern is displayed.
  When men trust idol gods they eventually totter into the abyss in the same way their idols totter as they are paraded and carried abroad.   Those that carry them end up like weary beasts of burden, as things become hopeless and desperate.  The falsity and lies of the gods becomes too heavy to bear. 

Egypt is at such a pass.  It has had a recent pantheon of idols, ranging from the military's lust for power, to the secularists desire for a liberal western democracy; from those who crave economic stability and security to the Muslim Brotherhood who yearn for a fundamentalist Islamic republic ruled by Sharia law.  All these idol gods, apparently, would live together in harmony and peace under the overlord Democracy.  This idol was clung to by all parties and factions as  the One Force that would solve all the national problems. 

But democracy, without the restraint of a higher, biblical King, gives us nothing more than the tyranny of the fifty-one percent.  This was the Muslim Brotherhood's plan: be voted into power by a simple majority and their warrant would extend "lawfully" to oppressing any of the remaining forty-nine percent who stood in their way. 

The secularists wanted protection for fundamental human rights.  They naively thought that democracy would deliver this to them.  Democracy cannot do this: only a higher law defining a human being, freedom of religion, conscience, thought and speech--which constrains all forms of government and law and democracy itself--can begin to deliver such protections.  Moreover, even this too should fail as an empty shibboleth if the faith of the people is not grounded in the God of Creation and the redemption of His Son, Jesus Christ. 

This is the real Arab Spring.  Bel and Nebo tottering around on the backs of staggering oxen, weighed down with burdens which will break them.  Islam striking at itself and gnawing on its own limbs in the dark.    Weep for Egypt and pray for God's mercy upon it. 

It pleases God to break the idols before He breaks the stony heart. 

In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. . . . And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them.  And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.
Isaiah 19: 19-22

Egypt will  in time come to know God's mercy and grace.  The idols, however, must first be broken. It is not an easy time.  Not for Egypt.  Not for us.