Then look at Tyre: “Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Oh Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God, and it shall become a spoil to the nations.” Coffin, who was correspondent of the Boston Journal during the war, went round the world after the war was over in ’68. One night he came to the site of old Tyre, and he said the sun was just going down, and he got his dragoman to pitch his tent right over by the ruins, where the rocks were scraped bare, and he took out his Bible and read where it says, “It shall be a place for the spreading of nets.” He said the fishermen had done fishing and were just spreading their nets or the rocks of Tyre, precisely as it was prophesied hundreds and hundreds of years before. Now mark you! When they prophesied against these great cities, they were like London, Paris and New York in their glory, but their glory has gone.
JERUSALEM.
Now take the prophecy in regard to Jerusalem: “And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it saying, If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace: But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side.” Didn’t Titus do that? Didn’t the Roman Emperor do that very thing? “And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
I have read of two Rabbis going up to Jerusalem, and they saw a fox playing upon the wall; one began to weep when he thus looked at the desolation of Zion. The other smiled and rebuked him, saying that the spectacle was a proof that the Word of God was true, and that this was one of the prophecies which should be fulfilled—“Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.” It was also said that Jerusalem should be as a ploughed field. This prophecy has also been fulfilled. The modern city is so restricted that outside of the walls, where part of the old city stood, the plough has been used.
EGYPT.
Now take the prophecies regarding Egypt: “It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.” Now, mark you! Egypt was in its glory when this was prophesied. It was a great and mighty empire, but for centuries it has been the basest of all nations. They have not got a native prince or king to reign over them. The man that is reigning over them now is not an Egyptian, but he is some foreigner, and so it has been.
THE JEWS.
Then, again, the prophecy of Balaam with regard to the Jews has been already greatly fulfilled. “Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?” The Jews were not to be reckoned amongst the nations. There is something in this people’s looks and habits that God continues to perpetuate, just, as I believe, to make them witnesses in every land of the truth of the Bible.
The race has remained all these centuries separate and distinct from other nations. In America there are all kinds of nationalities. Take an Irishman, and in a generation he will have forgotten his nationality. So, too, with the Germans, Italians, and French; but the Jew is as much a Jew as he was when he came over one hundred years ago. See how the race has been persecuted, yet the Jews control the finances of the world and can not be kept down. Egypt, Edom, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, and all the leading nations of the earth have sought to crush out the Jews. Frederick the Great said, “Touch them not, for no one has done so and prospered.” The people are the same now as they were in the days of Pharaoh, when he tried to destroy all the male children. The prophecy is fulfilled—God has made the nation numerous and united. The time is coming when God will reinstate the Jew. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a King, and without a Prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim.” Are they not without a King, without a nation, and without a sacrifice? Are they not scattered among the nations of the earth, a separate and distinct people? and they do not bow down to idols. Their last King they crucified, and they will never have another until they restore Him. He was Jesus Christ, as inscribed upon His cross, “The King of the Jews.”