ISAIAH CHAPTER 2
ISAIAH CHAPTER 2
Ladies
and gentlemen, I am sad to announce that we have run out of Tuesdays. From now
on the week will only be 6 days long. The good news is that the work week has
now been reduced to only 4 days. The bad news is that you will reach 80 years
old much quicker. Just kidding.
Isaiah
chapter 2 starts out with good news for Israel. In fact it is describing the
millennial reign of Christ for it says concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
“In the
last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the
chief of the mountains and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations
will stream to it and many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to
the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob and He may teach us
concerning His ways, and that we may walk in His paths.” For the Law will go
forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He will judge
between nations and will render decisions for many peoples; and they will
hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation
will not lift up sword against nation and never again will they learn war.” Is.
2:1-4
This
description of the millennial reign of Christ corresponds to Zechariah 14. It
starts with the battle of Armageddon which Jesus Christ Himself will fight and
win. Then it says that the Lord will return with his saints and set foot on the
Mt. of Olives and the Mt. of Olives will be split and spread into a large
plain. And verse 10 says that Jerusalem will rise and there are other texts
that say that Mount Zion will become the chief of the mountains. Verse 9 says:
“And the Lord will be king over all the earth in that day, the Lord will be the
only one and His name the only one and the land will be changed.
Throughout
Old Testament Scriptures the prophets describe a time that is very different
from now. Sin has been judged and curtailed. The Law of God goes forth once
again. King Yeshua will reign over all the earth and there will be no other
gods. Revelation describes it as a time when Jesus rules the nations with a rod
of iron and his saints will rule with Him, but it is not eternity and it is not
sinless and the inhabitants, though many of them will live much longer (“ like
trees”) they have not yet become immortal. And it is these nations that will
come up against the camp of the saints at the end of the millennium when Satan
is released from his prison.
So
Isaiah chapter 2 is just one of hundreds of texts describing this very unique
time in history future. It is a time when people will hammer their swords into
pruning hooks and all war will come to an end. Zechariah chapter 14 from verse
6 onward also describes this millennial reign in great detail and again it says
that in that day the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord
will be the only one and His name the only one and the land will be changed and
Jerusalem will be lifted up.
Zech.
14:16 tells us that there will be survivors after the battle of Armageddon for
it says: “Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that
went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the
Lord of hosts and to celebrate the Feast of Booths.”
Isaiah,
chapter 2 goes on to describe the tribulation period that comes to judge
mankind just prior to the Lord’s return when the pride of men will be abased.
It describes a time that we are very familiar with, for it says:
“And
men will go into caves and the rocks and into holes of the ground before the
terror of the Lord and before the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to
make the earth tremble. And again Hebrews 12 talks about this same time when
once again God is going to shake not only the earth but the heavens as well.”
Revelation 6:15, 16 describes the same thing.
Now
concerning men hiding in holes in the ground, it is now fairly common knowledge
that part of the trillions of dollars that is our national debt has gone into
black budgets one of which is to build a labyrinth of underground cities funded
in part by the extremely wealthy and powerful to protect them from what is
coming upon the earth. They know that something horrendous is coming that is
going to shake the heavens and the earth. It is affecting our earth even now
with a violent increase in earthquakes and volcanoes, in a massive dying off of
animals, fish, birds and insects. There are changes taking place in our weather, in our sun and
moon, in our electromagnetic field, in earth’s core… and quakes and unusual
storms are not only happening on earth. NASA reports that quakes are happening
on the moon as well and the other planets in our solar system are acting up in
strange ways, in radical temperature changes and such.
NASA
now admits that there is something coming, something like a rogue planet with
an unusually long orbit so that it only passes by us once every couple of
thousand years. But when it comes by it causes major disturbances in the
planets, things like altering orbits and causing the planets to tilt and wobble
so as to nearly make life extinct on this world we live in.
We know
from Revelation that there are going to be at least 2 deep impacts that will
result in the deaths of 1/3 of earth’s population, one of them is described as
a fiery mountain that will plunge e into the sea destroying 1/3 of the oceans
and another that will rain some sort of radiation thus poisoning the earth’s
fresh water and that one is called “Wormwood.”
So even
as the nations reach a boiling point and globalists try to build a new global
kingdom in defiance of God, we are already watching the harbingers of the wrath
of God that will bring these kingdoms of the earth to an end.
So our
traditions have picked and chosen the pleasant things. We want Jesus to come
and take us to our golden mansions in heaven. We want to enter into eternal
rest with no particular purpose other than to sing and worship and play harps
and enjoy our golden mansions. But there is this other scenario that we don’t
want to think about. It is that 7th millennium on earth when Christ
will rule the nations with a rod of Iron and we with Him and perhaps this is
what is meant in Revelation chapter ten.
An
angel comes down and hands John a little book and tells him to eat it… but the
book is a good news, bad news book. It tastes sweet in the mouth but bitter in
the stomach and while it doesn’t tell us what the book says or what the 7 peals
of thunder say, we are left with a clue. The angel tells John that he must
prophecy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.” Could
it be that the book contains God’s millennial plans for the earth when Jesus
comes to restore all things?
We want
Jesus to come and whisk us all away to our golden reward while the rest of the
world goes through hell , so to speak and yet God’s seven day week is not yet
complete. Our week has only lasted 6000 years. But the seventh day will be a
time of restoration, when Jesus Christ comes to earth to restore all things and
to bring Satan’s kingdom to an end and to restore obedience and peace. He is going
to teach us how to live in eternal ways rather than our temporary selfish and
short-sighted ways and we will be returned to the original intents of Eden and
to the purposes for which God placed mankind in the Garden to begin with.
Satan
has put a speed bump in the road. He diverted mankind from God’s original
purpose. He plunged us into unthinkable sin and degradation and war and
perversion and hatred and murder.
So
during the upcoming millennium, the Sabbath millennium, Jesus Christ is going
to restore the world to peace and rest and the obedience that Adam and Eve
failed at. So now we are beginning to understand why Jerusalem is such a hot
spot. Jerusalem is the very location where the Garden of Eden was once located…
where Abraham was told to offer his son Isaac… where Solomon was told to build
the first temple…where oceans of blood were spilled in centuries of sacrifice…
Where Jesus, our second Adam… the faithful Adam, died on the cross… and where
Jesus will return to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords when He comes
back to establish His kingdom.
It all
happened on the same spot… Mankind’s failure and fall… Satan’s victory over
God’s creation and purposes… Jerusalem has been at the center of controversy
through all time in this seed war (Gen. 3:15) this battle between Christ and
Satan over the hearts and souls of men. Btu thank god we also know the rest of
the story. Jesus will destroy the works of the devil and He will return as
conquering King to restore all that has been lost through sin.
Dying
for our sins was the first part of Jesus’ plan. The second phase of His plan is
when He restores the earth and mankind to original purpose. And if we have
learned anything about salvation, it is that it doesn’t just happen with the
push of a button. It is a process of restoration even in our own lives as we
choose God’s ways over our own. It doesn’t just happen with the snap of a
finger… it is a learning process as we choose to live by the Spirit rather than
by the flesh… and it is we who have chosen to overcome in this way that will
reign with Jesus over the nations.
It may
come as a bitter disappointment to some that we won’t sit on clouds and play
harps, but in reality this coming reign with Christ will be infinitely more
interesting and full of meaning. We will of course have instant access to
heaven and we need to understand that heaven is not in some far galaxy. It
occupies the same space as earth only in a different dimension. It is on a
higher dimension than are we. Sin separated heaven and earth, but we see hints
of our oneness for there is a Mount Zion on earth and there is a corresponding
Mt. Zion in heaven… a tree of life… a river of life, a Garden… a paradise… they
are all parallel and they correspond to each other and when Jesus has restored
all things to their proper perspective, then Heaven and earth will become one
again. This is described when the New Jerusalem comes down from God out of
heaven… when earth will be lighted up with its glory so that we no longer need
the sun and the moon for light. Heaven and earth will become one again.
Whatever
Satan destroyed with His rebellion, Jesus is going to reverse and restore… not
with the push of a button, but as a divine process, for even though He created
the earth in 7 literal days, it is taking 7000 years to restore it and God is
doing it in such a way so that sin will never have occasion to rise again.
So why
does God allow suffering? It is so that you and I will know beyond the shadow
of a doubt that we don’t want sin to ever take over our planet again. Earth has
always been at the center of God’s plan. It has never been heaven. Jesus
prayed, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. No, we
are not ultimately going to join heaven, but heaven is going to join earth as
it was in the beginning. Yes, we will briefly go there for the marriage supper
of the Lamb for Jesus and His people must first be married and then He will
marry heaven and earth. But Revelation 19 and Zech. 14 and 1 Thess. 3:13 show
the saints returning with Christ and Revelation 20:4 shows us reigning on earth
for 1000 years. And 1 Thess. 4:14 tells us that Jesus will bring back with Him
those who have fallen asleep in Jesus so that the dead and the living will be
caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
But we
have a job to do as Revelation 10 tells us. We must reign with Christ and rule
the nations with a rod of iron until all of His enemies have been made a
footstool for His feet. Then God will become all in all… the great division
will be healed and the Tree of life restored to its rightful place and the
river of life and it will all be one again as it was in the beginning.
Friends,
we have allowed our fairytale traditions to drown out a huge part of God’s
plans in the restoration of all things. We gloss over huge portions of
scripture that describe these things since they don’t fit our present scope of
understanding. So the book may at first turn bitter in our stomachs but it will
be turned to joy when we understand and realize that a part of our reward for
overcoming by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony is to rule
and reign with Christ and we will do so as immortals… as dazzling beings of
light, who like Moses, will have to put a veil over our faces to minister to
the people in the millennium. For we will be a kingdom of priests.
This is
represented in the temple service in Jerusalem where the priests wore wool when
they ministered to the people, but linen when they went in to minister before
the Lord. Likewise it will be with us during the millennium. We will wear our “wool”
clothing as Jesus did after His resurrection, but in the presence of the Lord
we will wear our linen clothing and we will appear before God like Jesus in His
glorified state for we will be like Him. Wool represents flesh since it comes
from an animal while linen represents the Spirit. And we will have the ability
to change back and forth between veiled physical beings and unveiled spiritual
beings just as Jesus did, for we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He
is.
These
are all mysteries that we can look into and ponder and meditate about if we are
willing to see beyond the veil of our present experience. They are all in the
Bible for those who are willing to dig and to ask for the Holy Spirit’s
guidance. The problem is that our traditions often speak much louder than the
Holy Spirit speaks and so we remain in the boat with the other disciples and do
not step out of it by faith like Peter did. Still these things and much more
are there for us to ponder if we will allow them.
The
bottom line is that we are making huge strides in our understanding of prophecy
right now as we begin to comprehend the reasons why Jerusalem is such a cup of
trembling. It is at the heart of God’s original plan and purpose for the
physical universe and of course, Satan has done a good job of obscuring it and
making Jerusalem one of the sin capitals of the world, so that the book of
Revelation identifies it as Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified.
Rev. 11:8. Should we be taken aback by the fact that in this war between Christ
and Satan, that Satan would concentrate his efforts as well as to vie for the
position that rightfully belongs to Christ?
Would
it also make sense that Satan would divert the church’s attention away from
prophecy and from God’s eternal purposes for Jerusalem? Yes… of course… and so
we are forced to battle through a bunch of hatred and anti-Semitism and
blindness and false doctrine in order to discover the truth. This too is
Satan’s doing.
With
Jerusalem being at the center of both God’s plans and Satan’s plans, it should
be no surprise to us that players for both Christ and Satan are there and it
should also be of no surprise to us that Jerusalem also seems to be the center
for Satan’s coming global kingdom, with the three major religions of the world vying for the same
temple mount and the Pope holding secret coronation meetings in the tomb of
David, and Muslims maintaining control of the temple mount, even as Jews pray
for a third temple. And is not the rest of the world embroiled in controversy
over this, some vying for the Palestinians and some for the Jews and so on?
In a
way we simply have to look beyond what we see, to the eternal plans of God when
heaven and earth will be rejoined and heaven and earth will become our eternal
home.
I woke
this morning with this quirky little joke about running out of Tuesdays so that
the week is now one day shorter… but in a strange way it sort of fits the
topic. We have cut short God’s 7000 year plan for the restoration of the earth
to its original purpose as found in the Garden of Eden. We want to evacuate the
earth and leaven it empty and void for 1000 years while we play harps in
heaven. But this is not the plan and we need to get into the parts of the Bible
we have ignored and to learn what we can about this very important time yet
ahead of us.
Yes, we
will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and we will go to heaven for the
marriage supper of the Lamb, but we will also return with Jesus to restore all
things to the original plan. And so shall we always be with the Lord… but a
part of that being with Him will involve reigning with Him over the nations. Think
about it.
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