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Tyre—City Where Mammon Was GodThe Watchtower—1959 | May 15
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In 1697 Maundrell said of Tyre: “Its present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches harbouring themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly upon fishing, who seem to be preserved in this place by Divine Providence as a visible argument how God has fulfilled his word concerning Tyre, viz., That it should be as the top of a rock, a place for fishers to dry their nets on.”
In 1751 the Swedish naturalist Hasselquist visited Tyre and said: “Here are about ten inhabitants, Turks and Christians, who live by fishing.”
In 1838 Dr. Robinson visited Tyre and later wrote in his Biblical Researches: “I continued my walk along the whole western and northern shore of the peninsula, musing upon the pomp and glory, the pride and fall, of ancient Tyre. Here was the little isle once covered by her palaces and surrounded by her fleet. . . . But alas! . . . Tyre has indeed become ‘like the top of a rock, a place to spread nets upon!’ The sole remaining tokens of her more ancient splendour—columns of red and gray granite, sometimes forty or fifty heaped together, or marble pillars—lie broken and strewed beneath the waves in the midst of the sea; and the hovels that now nestle upon a portion of her site present no contradiction of the dread decree, ‘Thou shalt be built no more.’”
Today the inhabitants of Tyre are not many more than when Dr. Robinson made his visit. Called Es Sur (the old name in Arabic), Tyre is a mere village of about 5,000 people and is built around the north end of the former island. Alexander’s causeway is still there; and the ancient island, now a peninsula, is connected right with the mainland by a tongue of land almost half a mile broad. Once a center of world commerce, Tyre now carries on an insignificant trade in cotton and tobacco; and its fishermen have acres of desolate space to spread out their nets to dry.
The Bible reader looks upon Tyre with great interest, for few cities afford more striking evidence of the absolute certainty of Jehovah’s prophetic Word. “Who has been ruined like Tyre in the heart of the sea?” spoke God’s prophet when Tyre was market of the world and mistress of the seas. “Now you are wrecked in the seas, in the depths of the waters; your cargo and all your crew are sunk in the heart of you. . . . You have come to an awful end, and shall be no more forever.”—Ezek. 27:32, 36, AT.
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Confirmation of the BibleThe Watchtower—1959 | May 15
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Confirmation of the Bible
“It has been said that science is opposed to, and in conflict with revelation. But the history of the former shows that the greater its progress, and the more accurate its investigations and results, the more plainly it is seen not only not to clash with the latter, but in all things to confirm it. The very sciences from which objections have been brought against religion have, by their own progress, removed those objections, and in the end furnished full confirmation of the inspired Word of God.”—Tryon Edwards.
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