The Book Of Isaiah. Day 57, Chosen Israel, Part One

The book of Isaiah contains some dire prophecies against Israel and Judah as well as against other nations of that day. But it also contains some beautiful promises. Hardships are going to come upon the people of Israel and Judah but blessings are going to come upon them too. The Lord has not rejected them. He is disciplining them for a season but He is not casting them away.

"The Lord will have compassion on Jacob; once again He will choose Israel and will settle them in their own land. Foreigners will join them and unite with the descendants of Jacob." (Isaiah 14:1) When the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and carried most of the people captive to foreign lands and resettled Israel with other captives, it must have appeared to human reasoning as if all was lost. Likewise, when the same things happened to the kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, to human eyes it must have looked as if all was lost. But the Lord has already announced His intention to judge both Assyria and Babylon; when that happens the descendants of those who were carried away captive will be allowed to return. Not all of them will choose to return but remnants of every tribe will have the opportunity to do so.

They will be helped by the Gentile nations, which is why the Lord says, "Foreigners will join them." They were helped in antiquity by the Gentiles; for example, Cyrus the Great of Persia gave all the captives of Babylon permission to return to their native lands and rebuild. He did not worship the God of Israel but he believed in religious freedom and he viewed himself as a liberator to all those who had been forcibly removed from their own lands and prevented from practicing their own religions in Babylon. Cyrus did recognize the God of Israel as a god and believed he had been chosen by God (which indeed he was, as we'll be told later) to set the descendants of Jacob free.

Not only were the descendants of Jacob helped by the Gentiles in the distant past, they were helped by the Gentiles in the more recent past, such as when many Gentile nations recognized and supported Israel as a sovereign nation in 1948 and helped to establish Israel again. I believe this next segment has already been fulfilled in several stages and that only one stage remains in our time. "Nations will take them and bring them to their own place." (Isaiah 14:2a) When the Gentiles of ancient times allowed the descendants of Jacob to return and rebuild, that was a partial fulfillment of verse 2a. When Gentile nations recognized Israel as a sovereign nation in 1948, that was a partial fulfillment of verse 2a. The book of Revelation indicates that the largest ingathering of the descendants of Jacob will occur when the Messiah reigns from David's throne in Jerusalem, so that part of verse 2a is still in the future.

I personally don't believe the end times are very far in the future now. Technically, we've been in the last days ever since the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to the Father in heaven, but the last last days will soon come to pass, in my opinion. No prophecy of the Bible remains to be fulfilled in regard to the rapture of the church, when Jesus will call His bride out of the world. That could occur at any moment. And when it does, the last last days will be upon the earth. Those of us who have placed our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ are to be looking for Him, not anxiously casting about us for signs that the Great Tribulation is about to begin, and those who have not yet turned to Jesus for salvation still have time to do so and need to do so. It won't be impossible to be saved during the Great Tribulation, as we'll see when we arrive at the book of Revelation, but that is a time period no one has to endure or should want to endure. It will be far better to already belong to Christ prior to that time than to be on the earth during the darkest days the world has ever experienced.