Chapter 26
This chapter starts with a song that will be sung "in that day". A song of praise by those under God's protection at that time.
2024 - When is "in that day". We keep seeing this phrase, and so far it has seemed to signal a "jump" in time. So where were we in Chapter 25? In the Millennial we think, with Christ here and on the throne and ruling the whole world. This seems to be a celebratory song about life in the Millennial. The righteous favored, the unrighteous judged impartially, swiftly. Not so much a prophecy of the time to come as a celebration of what it will be like to live in that time.
An interesting principal. Possibly for FB.
If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals corruptly and does not see the majesty of the Lord .
Isaiah 26:10 ESV
Surely this is representative of how we are letting looters and rioters run rampant while telling them we won't prosecute them for their crimes. This ensures that what is happening will continue to happen.
2022 - Surely this anticipates the expansion of Title 9 protections - favor to the wicked - to homosexuals, transvestites, transgenders....all of those perversions, all of that wickedness not just tolerated, but given special protection under the law. This negates any possibility of such people turning to God and gives running room to the corruption of mind that got them to the state they are in. Goes to Romans 1, Proverbs 1. Their minds to not function correctly - and for that, they get favorable treatment under the law. Same thing with DA's not prosecuting shop lifting if they steal less than $150. Will that stop shoplifting or encourage it? No charges for rioters who burn down private property. Will that prevent rioting, or encourage it? We all understand this principle at a gut level. Here it is in Isaiah, stated concisely somewhere around 700 BC.
Possible FB post...if I haven't posted it before.
I have never noticed this before. Bodily resurrection, the rapture, talked about in the OT. Another for FB:
Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.
Isaiah 26:19 ESV
2022 - Barnes links this verse with vs 14: 14 They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise; to that end you have visited them with destruction and wiped out all remembrance of them. [Isa 26:14 ESV]. Barnes sees this verse about living again being about the "death" of the nation of Israel while they were in captivity, having no civil protections or rights, no self-government, no priests and no rulers of their own. The contrast is between the demise of the nation that subjugated Israel and the "resurrection" of the Jews at the homecoming from Babylon. Barnes says this is not about the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
And this one!!! What a reference to ultimate justice. The earth itself will testify.
For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain. FB also.
Vss 16-21 are just amazing. They speak of the time of blindness for Israel - I think that's what this is about. The Jews, for centuries have been abused, downtrodden, fodder for tyrants and murderers, despised by the world without cause, and so on. This is their state during the Age of the Gentiles. These verses say that they cry out to God for deliverance like a woman in labor - and yet they do not recognize that their Messiah has already come, that they are in the state they are in because of their OT rejection of God's ways and for their NT rejection of God's own son. They don't see this connection at all. But then in 19, as above, the dead will rise. The rapture will happen as a sign that the time has come to redeem Israel, to redeem the sons of Abraham, as promised so long ago. This will be the beginning, the sign that they will recognize.
2024 - Or...is this about the actual setting up of the Kingdom, when the OT saints, recipients of the promises, rise and come forward to live in peace in Israel under the Son of David? I know I have some notes about a possible resurrection of the OT saints, separate from the rapture, at this time. I will start a tag and see if I can get all these verses together. (No...looks like I already had that tag here.)
Vss 20 and 21 tell the Jews to wait, to be patient, to hold on, "For behold the Lord is coming out from his place..." vs 21. He WILL redeem them, He will unblind them, He will bring them back to Him. Isaiah saw all this in his day.
2021 - Reading this (Isa 26) now, I think I was onto something above, but did not take it far enough. Vss 16-18, I think, are about the age of the Gentiles. There are still Jews who worship God, who pray at the wailing wall for deliverance, who pray and pray for the promised Messiah. They prayed for deliverance from the Nazis, they prayed for relief from world-wide antisemitism. But all this is to no avail, as we see in vs 18:
[Isa 26:18 ESV] we were pregnant, we writhed, but we have given birth to wind. We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
For all their efforts, for all their prayers, they have nothing to show. They birthed only the wind. They are still - even in our day - oppressed, downtrodden, abused wherever and whenever possible. Not only that, but their oppressors remain in power, still control them, still prevent their freedom. Is this not still what is going on?
But look at 19. It switches from "we this and we that" to "Your dead..." I believe the "you" in this verse is God, though it might well be Christ. If we believe that at the rapture only the saved in Christ, only those indwelt with the Holy Spirit, only those from Pentecost on (I STILL need to find out why I think there is a division of the saved at the point of Pentecost! Where is the verse for that???), and we also decide that the rapture will be far from a secret event, an event that will be recognized worldwide, or at least will be recognized by the Jews, then the rapture is the "sign" that they have always awaited. It will not only be the rapture, but it will open the eyes of the Jews, ending the blindness imposed on them for their rebellion in the OT and their rejection of Jesus in the NT. This event will shock them into the reality that their own day of restoration and redemption is at hand. I had another note, recently, that the rapture and the selection of the 144,000 might be essentially simultaneous. (No, it wasn't another verse, it was speculation in the note titled "How many judgments", under the Matthew 25 heading, when I was thinking about who would be left on earth after the rapture, and noted that there wouldn't be a single saved person there...unless this was when the 144,000 are sealed. It still fits though, same idea. Perhaps these verses in Isa 26 are adding credibility to that speculation, and not the other way around.) And here is yet another passage that adds credibility to that idea. Their "dew is a dew of light", perhaps in the sense of the dawn of understanding. Dew comes only in the morning, at the beginning of the day, as darkness ends. OHHHH!!!! The rapture is the dew that signals the beginning of the Day of the Lord!!!!!!!
2021 - And then it goes on. Two VERY long verses, 20, 21. These may be addressed to the remnant, to the saved God keeps to preserve his promise. For them, there is only marking time. God's wrath against Israel must be spent, and no prayer - not even of Moses, Daniel, or Job - can turn it away. All they can do for now, during this Gentile Age, this church age, is hide. Lay low, try to stay out of sight, and wait for God's fury to pass. Then vs 21 speaks of the second advent I think. At the end of t/gt, a time when the Jews most certainly will need to stay hidden. Jesus will judge the inhabitants of the earth. Sheep and goats perhaps. I need to include these scriptures in my judgment study.
It all fits! The 144,000 are sealed at the beginning of Rev. 7.
[Rev 7:1 ESV] After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.
[Rev 7:2 ESV] Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea,
[Rev 7:3 ESV] saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads."
[Rev 7:4 ESV] And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
The four angels are held back, not allowed to begin their destruction until after the 144,000 are sealed. Look at vs 1, "After this...." After what? What happened at the end of Chapter 6?
[Rev 6:12 ESV] When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood,
[Rev 6:17 ESV] for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"
The wrath of God is come at the opening of the 6th seal. "Save from wrath and make me pure". I believe that the rapture will immediately precede this wrath. (But...when is the abomination of desolation? It has to come before the rapture also....???)
So, if I have this right, tribulation will start, and run through the first five seals with Christians still in place on the earth, and the Jews will be starting to understand what is going on. Then that sixth seal, and the rapture occurs, and the Jews the world over tie the disappearance of all these Christians - these "Jesus worshipers" - to the prophecy in Isa 26, and they realize that Jesus was the Christ! They become fertile soil for the preaching of the gospel, but there are no saved people left on earth to preach it. God provides, revealing the truth through the NT, and granting saving faith to 144,000 evangelists, who are immune to the attacks of the beast, and they begin the work of preaching, and sending the Jews home on the highways from Assyria and Egypt!
I am overwhelmed with all this. I am amazed at all this. It all rings like truth.