Chapter 44 means China

Few people would have thought that China would be mentioned in this Western religious classic.China has a huge population. In today's world, one out of every five people is Chinese. If this prophecy book does not mention China at all, it seems unreasonable. So, is there any mention of China in the Bible? "Isaiah" chapter 1 verse 1 records that Isaiah is the son of Amos.Tradition holds that Isaiah was the author of the entire book of Isaiah.His period of service began in 720 BC and ended around 681 BC. A parchment scroll of Isaiah has been dated to be just 470 years old.These scrolls were recovered from the historical classic "Dead Sea Scrolls".Interestingly, there are actually some Chinese character cultural relics in these ancient scrolls.

In the records in the Book of Isaiah, the prophecy to China is also clearly mentioned. It is written in the book: "Look, these come from afar, these come from the north and west, and these come from Qin." The word in the original text is "sinim". "Qin Kingdom".Because the original text is Hebrew, if we interpret it from the root meaning, the word "China" in English now originated from "sinim". According to the research of historians, it can be found that Westerners' knowledge of China began in the Qin Dynasty.The Qin Dynasty appeared 500 years after Isaiah.The era in which Isaiah lived was only the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in China. At that time, Qin State was just a vassal state. It would be too arbitrary to use Qin State to represent China.In other words, if Isaiah were to refer to China, he would definitely use the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.

But on the other hand, Qin State was the starting point of the land Silk Road at that time. For Westerners, this was the key to open the door to China.Calculating according to this theory, it seems that there is nothing inappropriate to use Qin to refer to China. Jesus Christ himself said something like this: "I tell you again, from the east and from the west, many people will come and sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Obviously, "from the east and from the west "West" refers to Gentile believers.And when Isaiah used Qin as the synonym for China, did he already foresee its future prosperity, even enough to dominate the entire Central Plains?

In the "Bible", the demise of the ancient kingdom of Babylon was accurately mentioned, but in the prophecies about China—or Qin, it never mentioned turmoil or demise.Judging from today's Chinese territory, the territory of the Qin Dynasty is still basically retained.This can also be understood as one of the reasons why China is rarely mentioned in the prophecies of the Bible. After all, prophecies are accompanied by disasters in most cases. The answer to all this is left to history and the future to comment on.