At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD Almighty – from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers—the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the LORD Almighty. – Isaiah 18:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 10, 2017): Isaiah 18

Cush is the name of the region that is dominated today by Ethiopia. It has always been militarily strong, and it has derived some prestige by being the only African nation to defeat a European power and maintain sovereignty over its land and culture during the 19^th century “Scramble for Africa” which prompted various European nations to attempt to stake a claim to the countries of Africa. It is an area of firsts. For my Starbucks and Tim Horton’s readers, this is the area that first developed and harvested the coffee bean. It is widely considered to be the place where human life first emerged – however you may interpret that phenomenon. The land of Cush often interacted with Judah and Israel in the Middle East.

What they were not was worshippers of the God of Israel. Ethiopia had its own religions and its belief systems, as all of the people outside (and sometimes inside) of Judah and Israel possessed. The worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was provincial in nature. Every nation worshiped the gods of their country or area. In this, Israel was no different from the rest of the world - which is why the words spoken by Isaiah would have originally been very shocking in nature. The people of Ethiopia were going to leave the worship of their gods and come to worship the God of Jerusalem – and in Jerusalem. They would bring their gifts to Jerusalem and worship him in that city.

It is likely that Isaiah had some local phenomenon in mind as he spoke his prophecy, but there was to be an even greater fulfillment of his words. In Acts 8, we are told of the baptism into the Christian Church of the Ethiopian eunuch – most likely a prominent Ethiopian official. But the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through his son Jesus Christ, did not stop there. It spread through the region. While Ethiopia has traditionally maintained close ties with all three of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), The Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia was the first nation to accept Christianity and become a Christian nation.

Today, almost 63% of Ethiopians claim to be Christian while 34% of Ethiopians are Muslim. The prophecy of Isaiah remains shockingly correct as the people of the nation continue to worship the God of Israel in one form or another. And Ethiopians continue to make their pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship God in that Holy City.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 19 & 20