It’s Christmas time! And you know what that means!? We must ponder God’s promises to Egypt!

Every Christmas we are compelled by The Holy Spirit to imaginatively immerse ourselves in the scene where Joseph & Mary receive wealthy astrologically-obsessed guests, who have traveled for months to worship their toddler. These wealthy Eastern Astrologers lavish extravagant resources upon Jesus, which (in addition to being an authentic expression of their adoration and awe of Jesus as God in the flesh) practically serve to provide Joseph & Mary with means to escape to, and live as exiles in, Egypt for a few years. One of the most explicit prophecies about Jesus is, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

Which begs the question, how does God feel about Egypt? God and Egypt have an extremely dramatic history. Egypt harbored & nourished God’s people in the days of Joseph (son of Jacob). But then Egypt abused and oppressed God’s children for 430 years; and God was very angry about this. So God turned the Egyptian’s water supply into blood; and He plagued them with frogs, gnats, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness; and He killed all of the firstborn sons of Egypt in an instant.

So you might be SHOCKED to find out that God LOVES Egypt. Of course, God adamantly refuses to endorse the unhealthy choices of any individual, or group of, human being(s) [such as Egypt’s decision to enslave the Israelites for 430 years]. But that doesn’t change the fact that God LOVES TO LAVISH HIS SCANDALOUS MERCY ON SINNERS (Matthew 9:13; Romans 9:16; 11:32).

God’s promise to Egypt is as follows:

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. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, He will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them. 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.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.”

ISAIAH 19:19-25

So ‘Eid Milad Majid’ (عيد ميلاد مجيد) which is Arabic for “Glorious Birth Feast” [a.k.a. Merry Christmas]!