EUPHRATES RIVER BEGINS TO DRY UP: ‘A PROPHECY OF JEREMIAH’
BY ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ | SEP 22, 2021 | BIBLICAL NEWS
“Be Dry; I Will Dry Up Your Rivers.” Isaiah 44:27 (The Israel BibleTM)
The Humanitarian Crisis Caused By The Decade-Long Civil War In Syria
Is Worsening As The Euphrates River, The Longest River Of Western Asia, Is Drying Up.
According To One Rabbi, This Is The Realization Of A Prophecy From The Book Of Jeremiah.
THE EUPHRATES RIVER
Originating In Turkey, The Euphrates Flows Through Syria And Iraq To Join The Tigris In The Shatt Al-Arab, Which Empties Into The Persian Gulf. This Year, Rainfall In Southern Turkey Where The Euphrates Begins Was The Lowest In 30 Years And For The Past Two Years, The Region Has Received Only 50-70 Percent Of Normal Rainfall. Syria Is Currently Facing Its Worst Drought In 70 Years.
The 1,700 Mile-Long Euphrates Is The Main Source Of Drinking Water As Well As Powering Three Hydroelectric Plants That Produce Electricity For About Three Million People In Syria. Two Dams In Northern Syria Face Imminent Closure Which Would Leave About Three Million People Without Any Access To Electricity. The Water Level At The Tishrin Dam, The First Into Which The River Falls Inside Syria, Has Dropped Five Meters And Is Currently About Ten Centimeters Above “Dead Level” When The Turbines Stop Producing Electricity.
The Sources Of The River Lie In Turkey And An Agreement Between The Two Countries In 1987 Allowed An Annual Average Of 500 Cubic Meters Per Second Of Water To Cross Into Syria. In Recent Months, That Amount Has Dropped To As Little As 200 Cubic Meters Per Second.
Some Experts Believe That Turkey Is Using The Water Crisis To Exert A Political Agenda. Much Of The Path Of The Euphrates Inside Syria Lies Inside The Northeastern Region Of The Country Which Is Controlled By The Semi-Independent Kurds Which Turkey Considers To Be A Terrorist Organization. Turkey Has Seized Land In Syria From The Kurds In Order To Decrease Their Influence On The Border Region. The Kurdish Authorities Are Accusing The Turkish Government Of Withholding Water For Political Purposes.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
The Euphrates Figures Prominently In The Bible With It Being Described As Bordering The Garden Of Eden.
The Name Of The Third River Is Tigris, The One That Flows East Of Assyria. And The Fourth River Is The Euphrates. Genesis 2:14
It Was Also Named As One Of The Borders Of The Land God Granted To Abraham’s Descendants.
On That Day Hashem Made A Covenant With Avram, Saying, “To Your Offspring
I Assign This Land, From The River Of Egypt To The Great River, The River Euphrates: Genesis 15:18
The Prophet Jeremiah Described How The Waters Of Babylon, The Region Currently Including Syria And Iraq, Would Dry Up As A Punishment For Their Idolatrous Practices, The Devastation Being So Complete As To Render The Region, Once Part Of The So-Called ‘Fertile Crescent’, Uninhabitable.
A Drought Against Its Waters, That They Be Dried Up! For It Is A Land Of Idols;
They Are Besotted By Their Dread Images. Assuredly, Wildcats And Hyenas Shall Dwell [There], And Ostriches Shall Dwell There; It Shall Never Be Settled Again, Nor Inhabited Throughout The Ages. Jeremiah 50:38-39
Rabbi Yosef Berger, The Rabbi Of King David’s Tomb On Mount Zion, Emphasized That It Is Precisely During The Holiday Of Sukkoth That The World Is Judged On How Much Rain It Will Receive In The Upcoming Year.
“It Is Clear That What Is Happening In Syria Is The Prophecy Of Jeremiah,” Rabbi Berger Said. “God Loves All Of Creation But Nations Are Judged On How They Relate To Israel. In This Case, Syria Has Much To Repent For. As We Are Seeing More And More Signs Of Geula (Redemption) Appearing Precisely As Prophesied, It Is Important To Remember The Prophecies And Not Get Distracted By Our Own Interpretations. People Are Focusing On The Pandemic And The Vaccine But Missing The Message Implicit In The Plague. People See The Drought But Miss The Meaning Which Could Actually Contain The Solution.”
“The Simple Message Is To Make Hashem One And His Name One,” Rabbi Berger Said.
It Is Interesting To Note That Jeremiah’s Syria Prophecy Is Appearing Just As An Art Exhibit In London’s Chisenhale Gallery Recreates A Colonnade From The Pagan Temple Of Palmyra, Syria. The Iranian-Born, Montreal-Based Artist Abbas Akhavan Came Up With The Idea Of This Colonnade When He Saw An Image Of Then-Mayor Of London Boris Johnson Unveiling A Replica Of The Palmyra Arch In London’s Trafalgar Square In 2016.
The Model Cited By The Artist Was A 28-Meter Tall 3-D Printed Model Created By The Institute For Digital Archeology Representing The Famous Arch Of The Original Temple Of Palmyra In Syria That Was Displayed In London As Part Of The UNESCO World Heritage Week. The Arch Was A Pagan Roman Structure That Stood In Front Of The Temple Of Ba’al 2,000 Years Ago To Honor The God Of Orgies And Child Sacrifice. The Temple And The Original Arch Were Destroyed By The Islamic State (ISIS) In 2015.
Though The Organizers Claimed The Event Was A Symbol Of Protest Against Religious Extremism, It Coincided With Beltane, The Major Festival For The Worship Of Ba’al.
Both Christian And Muslim Eschatology Include Prophecies Of The Drying Up Of The Euphrates Signaling The End-Of-Days.
In Islam, Some Of The Hadiths Suggest That The Euphrates Will Dry Up, Revealing Unknown Treasures That Will Be The Cause Of Strife And War. In The Christian Book
Of Revelation, It Is Prophesied That In The ” Near Future” The Potamos Euphrates Or “Breaking Forth Like Water” Of The Middle East Will Dry Up In Preparation For The Battle Of Armageddon.
The Euphrates River Is Drying Up – Part 1 Something Strange Is Happening. – YouTube
The Euphrates River Is Drying Up – Part 2. Something Strange Is Happening. – Bing Video
The Euphrates River Is Drying Up – Part 3 (The Prophecy Explained) – YouTube
Who Is The Serpent In Genesis, And Is It An Actual Snake? ⋆ Bnonn Tennant (The B Is Silent)
The Serpent Story God Is The Serpent – Search (Bing.Com)
Was The Serpent 100% Evil, Or Covert Christ?
Posted on November 12, 2020, by noncanonical Christianity
Most people have heard some version of the story with the serpent in the Garden of Eden described in Genesis 3, in which God commands Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the snake talks Eve (and, indirectly, Adam) into doing so. The story, as well as many other stories in Genesis, have inspired countless people throughout the ages– both those who take it literally and those who take it figuratively. For those who take it literally, however, there are some pretty challenging problems.
The depiction of God can be cruel (for example, turning Lot’s wife into salt), genocidal (with the Flood), and even… perhaps factually wrong. It’s this last one that helped inspire early Christian thinkers, like the author of the Testimony of Truth, to think differently about the story. In the Testimony of Truth, not only is the God depicted in the garden of Eden malicious, but the snake is not the devil– it’s Christ!
God Was… Not So Great?
The Testimony of Truth points out some really problematic behavior from God in Genesis 3. First off– God was either wrong, or lying. God commanded, “you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die”, but did that occur? It seems like an empty threat– neither Adam or Eve actually died upon touching or eating the fruit!
Another thing the text points out is that God’s motivations here seem really problematic. In Genesis 22, God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”. God’s motivation is that he doesn’t want man to have eternal life, and to be like him! That’s pretty concerning, right? Wasn’t Christ’s whole message that we should be like him and have eternal life?
The writer of the Testimony of Truth concluded that this being which Genesis calls “God” must not, in reality, be the true God– certainly not the god and father of Christ. His solution is to consider the god of Genesis (and, indeed, the Old Testament in general) to not really be the true God, but a demiurge, a lower deity. For background on the topic, I’d encourage you to read my article, The Demiurge, Intriguing Solution to Hard Old Testament Problems.
The Testimony of Truth certainly doesn’t shy away from the asking what we should make of this deity, The text argues:
What kind of a god is this?
First, he begrudged Adam’s eating from the tree of knowledge.
Second, he said, “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge; otherwise, wouldn’t he have known from the beginning?
He has certainly shown himself to be a malicious grudger. And what kind of a god is this?
This is clearly not a positive perspective on the god of the Old Testament!
If God Was A Demiurge… Who Was The Serpent?
According to The Testimony of Truth, it’s not God who told the truth in Genesis 3;
it’s the serpent! Genesis 3 tells us that, “the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
On a surface level, this seems to be true.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they did not die. Their eyes were opened, causing them to realize that they were naked. Finally, they were ashamed, indicating that they knew good and evil.
To take it another level, though, the text points out that what the snake was advocating for… actually sounds pretty good, right? Christ didn’t want us to die, right? Wasn’t a consistent activity in his miracles that he was opening eyes, restoring sight to the blind?
Finally, wouldn’t God want us to know good from evil?
The Testimony of Truth points out that serpents show up in other places in Genesis. For example: In Exodus 7, Moses and Aaron must perform a miracle before Pharaoh. Aaron throws down his staff, which becomes a snake. Pharaoh’s magicians do the same, but Aaron’s serpent is more powerful and consumes the serpents of the Pharaoh.
A much more powerful and relevant example for the author of the Testimony of Truth, however, comes from Numbers 21, in which, after the Israelites have been bitten by poisonous serpents:
And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
The Testimony of Truth proudly proclaims about this:
For this is Christ; [those who have] believed in him have [received life]. Those who did not believe [will die].
Indeed, the story found in Number 21 shows a metaphor that seems profoundly similar to the story of Christ’s crucifixion. Those who look to the crucified serpent survive, while those without the eyes to see perish. It’s a gripping image, isn’t it?
The Testimony of Truth argues that it’s revealing Christ as the serpent found in the story of Genesis. The image of the serpent is not diabolical, but rather the one of the power and truth of God. It consumes the false magic of Pharaoh’s magicians, and it brings salvation and life to those who are condemned but look upon it.
Concluding Thoughts
I find it an interesting puzzle. I do think it can be problematic to take a text like this literally– but, even if we take it figuratively, we’re still stuck with selecting what messages to take away. I certainly don’t see God as being described in many of the Genesis texts as being the kind of God that Christ seems to have worshiped and identified as his father.
On the other hand, I want to be very careful about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Taking too hard of a demiurgical approach can verge on anti-Semitic, depending on how you approach it. Jewish thinkers have been pondering these problems for centuries– longer than Christians have, certainly– and have found other ways to approach the problem.
The demiurgic strategy is interesting, and I think there’s value there for a modern context. I also think one needs to be very careful and intentional about how one presents the narrative, and one must take responsibility for the implications of that narrative and the effect it has on others.
What do you think? Are the arguments found in The Testimony of Truth persuasive?
Do you think that the god described in Genesis makes sense as the true God, the father of Christ?
Do you think it makes sense to see Christ as the serpent in the story?
Do you see value in the demiurgic approach to the story?
Was the Serpent 100% Evil, or Covert Christ? | Non-Canonical Christianity (noncanonicalchristianity.com)
Drought hits West Asia’s longest Euphrates river | 12 mn face water shortage in Syria, Iraq | News – YouTube
How Did Life Begin : Documentary on the Origins of Life on Earth (Full Documentary) – Bing video
The Story Of Earth And Life – Full Documentary- Blue Planet – Bing video
Who Was the Serpent? | Answers in Genesis