The Book Of Isaiah. Day 117, The Ingathering

This final passage of Isaiah 27 is believed by many mainstream scholars to be about the collapse of the world system of the end times and about the ingathering of Israel and about Israel's eternal security. At that time the things of this world will have proven futile and impermanent, whereas the things of God will have proven firm and everlasting.

The Coffman commentary on the Bible interprets our next segment of Scripture like this: "This is a reference to that time period mentioned in Revelation 16, near the close of the dispensation of the grace of God, when the cities of the nations shall fall. This will occur at a time when Adam's race shall have almost run its course, and when, due to rampant wickedness, God will have no moral choice available except to destroy the sinful world." Revelation 16 has to do with the pouring out of the Lord's wrath upon the earth during the Great Tribulation. 

Of the downfall of the final corrupt system of the world, before the Messiah comes to reign over a restored earth forever, Isaiah says: "The fortified city stands desolate, forsaken like the wilderness; there the calves graze, there they lie down; they strip its branches bare. When its twigs are dry, they are broken off and women come and make fires with them. For this is a people without understanding; so their Maker has no compassion on them, and their Creator shows them no favor." (Isaiah 27:10-11)

Wickedness will be at an all-time high in the last days. Rejection of the Lord will be at an all-time high leading up to the final judgment. (2 Timothy 3:1-9) The world system will be at its most corrupt in that era and we will be taking an in-depth look at that world system when we arrive at the book of Revelation and study the "kingdom" of the Antichrist. 

This is the era the prophet Daniel foresaw when he spoke of the final kingdom on earth that would be crushed when the King of kings comes to establish His kingdom forever. (See Daniel 7 for an overview of the world kingdoms that would rise and fall between Daniel's day and the day when the Messiah takes the throne.) Because wickedness will abound as never before, and because so many people on the earth in those days will repudiate and curse the Lord to their dying breath, and because the Lord knows who will reject Him right up to the end, He can say that He will have no compassion or favor upon them. This does not mean that He doesn't offer mercy to everyone, but it means that He knows who will accept or reject His mercy. And about those who reject His mercy up to the point where they have no more opportunities left, He can say that no compassion or favor is given because they wanted no compassion or favor from Him.

In the day when He has put all of His enemies under His feet, and when He has put all the enemies of the Jews and the Christians under His feet, He will gather in the descendants of Jacob from every corner of the earth. No tribe of Israel is lost to the Lord. An ingathering of sorts has happened in several stages already; for example, when Jews returned from the places their enemies took them captive, such as when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and told them they could go home. But an ingathering will occur on a massive worldwide scale when it is time for the Messiah to take His throne at Jerusalem.

"In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered one by one. And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem." (Isaiah 27:12-13) Many Jews fled to Egypt from the northern kingdom of Israel when it appeared that a fall to the Assyrian army was imminent. Many more were captured and taken captive by Assyria. A great number of them and their descendants never returned to the land of Israel but they will in the future. There will be more Jews in Israel in that day than there ever have been since the nation was first founded in the Old Testament. 

When we arrive at the book of Revelation we will talk more about this massive ingathering. But for now we will close by keeping in mind that the Lord knows the location of every single descendant of Jacob. It doesn't matter how many were dispersed in antiquity or in more modern times; not one of them is lost to the Lord. We may refer to some of the tribes as being "lost" because we don't know where everyone was dispersed but the Lord knows exactly who they are and He knows exactly where they are.