Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon.

I'm Tanya Wilma. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now we are in our Christmas

series. We're exploring the stories around Jesus's birth and the prophecies pointing forward to it.

Do you fear that foreign invaders will conquer your state, your city,

burn down your house, take your family and friends off with them to a different country,

liquidate your savings and investments and leave off with them to a different country, liquidate your savings and

investment and leave you with nothing? Well if you're an American probably not and

that means that you are in the historical minority. Throughout history

foreign conquest was an expected reality of life,

especially if you lived in a highly contested region like Israel. Israel was incredibly

contested. It was the only viable land bridge between Egypt to the south and

Mesopotamia to the northeast. And that meant that it was a valuable commodity. If you had

military force or you were an imperial superpower, you wanted to control this highway so that you could control the way in and out of the ancient world.

The prophet Isaiah watched as the northern reaches of Israel, the lands of Zeppelin and Naphyli, they fell under the shadow of one of those superpowers, Assyria.

Twenty years later, after Naphyli and Zebulan, these northern places after they fall, the king of

Assyria owned almost the entirety of ancient Israel.

When he conquered that land, he sapped every bit of wealth that they had and he exiled their entire population to the outskirts of his own empire and the goal was to culturally assimilate all of the Israelites, make them into Assyrians.

So just try to imagine what it was like during that time period.

Your friends, your family, they're all scattered.

They're all exiled to different countries with different languages.

Every worldly possession that they have

...