Gov’mt of the Promised Son, Pt 2 (Isaiah 11:1-9) :: By Dr. Donald Whitchard

“THERE shall come forth a Root from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of its roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. His delight is in the fear of the LORD, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears. But with righteousness He shall judge the poor and decide with equity the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth. And with the breath of His lips, He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, and faithfulness the belt of His waist.

“THE wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear will graze; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:1-9, NKJV).

Isaiah lived during the time when there were two kingdoms claiming descent from God. There was the northern kingdom of Israel, which had abandoned the worship of the true God in order to serve idols and fall further into a state of apostasy. No king of Israel pointed the people to the true God, and the situation grew worse under the rule of the despicable king Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Together they transformed Israel into a center of worship to the Phoenician deity and “god” of fertility named Ba’al.

The priests of Ba’al had come against the prophet Elijah, who had challenged them to see who the true God was (1 Kings 18:20-40). God proved Himself to be true, and Elijah ordered the priests of Ba’al to be put to death for their idol worship and abominable practices of child sacrifice. It would not be too far in the future when both Ahab and Jezebel met gruesome deaths for their murders and idolatry.

Most of the kings of Israel succeeded to the throne not by lineage but by murder and intrigue. It was in decline by the time Isaiah appeared on the scene, and by 722 B.C., the northern kingdom had been conquered by the brutal Assyrian Empire. The southern kingdom of Judah still had the lineage of David, and there was a continual line of rulers who had ascended to the throne due to bloodline. However, Judah had a mix of both godly and ungodly kings who would lead the people into idolatry and the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem that had been built by Solomon.

The king who had accomplished much for Judah was Uzziah, who had died when Isaiah began his ministry. Uzziah was a king who feared and served God, ruling for over fifty years (2 Kings 15:1-7; 2 Chronicles 26:22-23).

He was followed by his son Jotham, who was devoted to God, as was his father (2 Kings 15:32-38; 2 Chronicles 27:1-9), but did not do much in strengthening the faith of the nation.

He was followed by Ahaz (2 Kings 16:1-20), who was a wicked ruler, even going so far as offering his son as a sacrifice to the perverse idol Molech. He also formed unreliable alliances with other pagan nations instead of coming before the LORD for counsel.

After Ahaz, Judah had a godly ruler named Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-20; 2 Chronicles 29:1-32:33). He brought the people back to God and witnessed the defeat of the invading Assyrian armies through a supernatural act of the LORD (2 Kings 18:13-19:34; 2 Chronicles 32:1-23; Isaiah 36:1-22).

God spared Hezekiah’s life when he was sick to the point of death and gave him an additional fifteen years of life. It was also during those fifteen additional years that he became the father of Judah’s worst and ungodliest rulers, the wicked and perverse Manasseh, who, according to tradition, put Isaiah to death by having him sawn in half. Toward the end of his life, Manasseh sincerely repented of his wickedness and turned to the LORD (2 Chronicles 33:10-20), but by that time, the damage had been done. God was going to punish the nation for their disobedience and refusal to repent, even when they had heard the voice of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others who warned of coming judgment and exile.

Judah was given one last godly king, named Josiah, whose reign is covered in 2 Kings 22:1-23 and 2 Chronicles 34:1-35:7. He initiated major reforms and was wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD. After his death, Judah went through a succession of ungodly kings, eventually conquered by the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 B.C., who drove them into a period of exile for seventy years. Israel has not had a king since that time.

Verse 1 of Chapter 11 describes a root from out of the stump of Jesse, symbolizing that the kingdom of David was finished with seemingly no chance of being resurrected – a stump is what is left of a tree or bush that had been fruitful and productive. Now, there is nothing. However, God is not through with it.

Verses 2-5 tell us that a Branch shall grow out of the root, which represents the rule of the Promised Messiah to come. The Spirit of the LORD shall be upon the Branch, and He will be given wisdom, knowledge, and the ability to bring forth sound counsel. He will not allow His emotions to be the deciding factor in hearing cases but instead will judge all things with fairness and with the compassion of the LORD.

When we examine these verses, there should be no doubt whatsoever that this is a reference to the work and person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Like a stump, He grew up and worked in a place of anonymity without any sign of noteworthy heritage or wealth. He was reared in an obscure village off the beaten path in the hills of Galilee. Yet when His time came, He would draw people to the love of God and demonstrate His deity through miracles, extraordinary teachings, compassion, and confrontation with the religious officials who had sold out their piety for worldly prestige.

He was cut down as one would cut down a stump to be forgotten by the world. Instead, He rose from the dead and paid our sin debt in full, so we are no longer bound by the sting of death and hell (John 19:30; Acts 4:12). When He returns one day to the earth, He will transform it back to the condition it was in Eden (Romans 8:20-22;1 Corinthians 2:8-9; Revelation 19:11-21, 21:1-7). Verses 6-9 give us a description of the restored Eden.

The animal kingdom will be at peace with one another, and animosity will be a thing of the past. Children will be able to play with creatures that, in this present world, would kill them. Animals that tore each other apart for food now lie peacefully side by side, eating straw and the plants of the field. All hatred, strife, pain, and evil will be gone, and the Branch (King Jesus) will rule with justice, tranquility, and love forever in righteousness. This is a promise given to us by the LORD, and it will come to pass, as He says in the Bible.

This is to be a reality that we can all be a part of if we will humble ourselves before God now, ask Him to forgive us of our sins, and come to Jesus Christ in faith for salvation, mercy, grace, and peace that the world can never offer. The Lord Jesus can come back at any time, and we need to be ready when it happens (Luke 21:28).

Every prophecy about Jesus has come or will come to pass. They are accurate and reliable. He is ready to welcome you into His kingdom. Be a part of the new world that is coming soon. It will be the greatest decision you will ever make (Romans 10:9-10, 13).

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Life in the Millennium :: By Terry James

[Authors note:  Due to my need to concentrate on other matters as I prepare for speaking at the Colorado Springs Prophecy Watchers Conference, my commentaries this week will be selections I’ve written in the recent past. This segment appeared in Jonathan Brentner’s and my recent book “HEREAFTER: It’s Far Better Than You Imagine.”]

Life in the Millennium :: By Terry James

New world order architects today claim to want to make life on Planet Earth much better than mankind has thus far managed to construct. The slogan for those who preach they want to create the equivalent of Utopia is “Build Back Better!” They give this construction project the name The Great Reset.

In making their grandiose plans, they make the same deliberate, monumental mistake the antediluvians made. It is the same egregious error Nimrod and his minions made in their construction catastrophe on the plains of Shinar when they built the Tower intended to reach to Heaven.

These earlier one-world would-be masters of Planet Earth, like their father Lucifer, determined to usurp the Throne of God. They desired to be like the most high –to take the place of the Creator. They fell for Satan’s lie that they could be as God.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was certainly on the mark with the line: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)The present-day globalist elite, like those earlier rebels, are infected by the reprobate mind forewarned by the Apostle Paul.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28).

Their insane drive, through their sin-infected upside-down thinking, will eventuate in God judging their rebellious wickedness. He will, like in destroying the antediluvian world order and in decimating the Tower of Babel construction, completely erase the final effort to build a world order in the image of mankind. Daniel chapter 2 tells of the great stone from Heaven that will strike this final, evil world order, with the winds of God’s Eternal Kingdom sweeping away all vestiges of fallen man’s rebellion. That great stone is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all kings.

We are witnessing today the build-up toward implementation of the final form of worldwide wickedness the globalist elite are planning. For a time, their efforts will seem to be successful. As a matter of fact, those efforts are obviously making tremendous strides at the moment of this writing.

The effort seems led at this moment in time by the minions of the World Economic Forum (WEF). However, this anti-God organization is but the nucleus –the center of a rapidly expanding range of concentric circles spreading the devil’s doctrine of Building Back Babel Better.

If we only consider all of the above we’ve mentioned here, we have every reason to sense being plunged into the deepest abyss of depression. There would seem no hope whatsoever for being able to climb out of that abyss of Ephesians 6:12 evil.

But, as the renowned broadcaster Paul Harvey used to tell us, this isn’t the end of the matter. Here is the rest of the story.

Just as the powers and principalities of Ephesians 6:12 are about to reestablish their long-sought Tower of Babel, creating – especially through a transformed worldwide economy (monetary system), Satan’s desired one-world order – God will say, “Enough!” We believe that exclamation by the God of Heaven is forecast in the following words of the Lord Jesus.

“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).   

The Lord Jesus will remove God’s children from Earth, just as He removed Lot (whom He saw as just –that is, righteous – because of Lot’s belief for Salvation) from the wicked city of Sodom.

Here is how that removal will happen according to God’s Holy Word.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thes 4:16-18).

With all believers of the Church Age (Age of Grace) removed to safety, as promised according to Revelation 3:10, God’s dealing in judgment and wrath with the anti-God neo-Babel builders will begin. That dealing will eventuate in Heavenly Action, as described by the Prophet Daniel’s foretelling while interpreting Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:31-35). 

This prophecy says that God will forever do away with the Babylonian system of earth’s rebels –a system that was, since antiquity, fomented, instigated and put into effect by the master architect of all rebellion against the Almighty.

Again… here is the rest of the story. And it is a Glorious story to be sure!

The Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all kings, is that stone of Daniel’s prophecy. He will descend to strike that rebellious system and cause it to crumble, as given here.

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:11-15).

We pick up this Return of King Jesus, who will smite that Babylonian system and cause it to crumble and blow away in the winds of eternity. The Prophet Zechariah describes it:

“Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south” (Zech 14:3-4).

At that moment, the topography of Jerusalem, and of the entire world, will change. Earth will begin transforming into the pristine world that was Planet Earth before the fall in Eden’s Garden.

Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, will lift high into the sky to overlook the earth, and King Jesus will proceed down through the great valley just created. He will ascend the mountain to take up residence in the gloriously constructed Holy Temple where the third temple, desecrated by Antichrist, had previously set during Daniel’s seventieth week (the Tribulation).

And this is where you will commute to and from each and every moment of the Millennial Kingdom – the one-thousand-year Reign of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

As supernatural beings, having become so at the Rapture, you will be with King Jesus, or have access to Him, at every moment of the thousand years He Reigns. Not only will you be priests, prophets, and kings over all the earth, but you will, as a child of God, have the same inheritance that belongs to Jesus Himself. Everything that is His, God, our Father, gives to us now upon becoming His child. We then come fully into that indescribably magnificent inheritance in the Hereafter – the time which begins upon cessation of physical life of the believer, or at the moment when Jesus shouts, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4: 1-2).

God’s Great Plan was to have a family that would love Him unconditionally, just as He Loves unconditionally. We are and will be that family that will be the joy of our Heavenly Father throughout Eternity.

Imagine… No. you nor I can’t even begin to imagine in our finite minds what it means to be considered the same as the Father’s only begotten Son in terms of Eternity, or even for a second of time. We accept it by simple faith in the Father’s promises, and that is what makes us accepted in the beloved – the Holy, Eternal family of the Heavenly Father.

That’s what it means to be as one with the Heavenly Father and with His Beloved Son Jesus. Jesus‘ words about our Heavenly family relationship to His Father in the moments before His dying for the sins of the world confirm absolutely our co-equal status in God’s family.

 Hallelujah!

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21-25).

This Oneness we who are in Christ now enjoy for all eternity means we have great, God-Commissioned responsibility. While we are in this human flesh, we are, of course, directed to go forth and witness the Gospel to the whole world, making disciples of all people and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But that is only the beginning of that great responsibility.

Our Commission during the thousand years of the Millennial Kingdom will be beyond anything we can fully grasp at the present moment while having only finite thinking capability.

By the time we follow the Lord Jesus to Planet Earth, accompanying Him while He returns as God has promised to Planet Earth, we will each have gone before the BEMA (Judgment Seat of Christ). 

Each child of God will stand before that Holy Bench of Judgment for rewards and crowns earned during life while on Earth. There will be no condemnation –no judgment for sin. All sin was paid for through Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus paid it all for our sins, past, present, and future. Each of us will, however, be rewarded with different levels of attainment, depending on the faithfulness we have demonstrated in using properly the gifts and talents we were given for living life on Earth. Depending on how we honored the Lord’s desires for how we lived our lives will determine the level of responsibilities we will be given for ruling and reigning with Jesus during the Millennial Kingdom.

There will be no competitors, no envies, no jealousies in all this Hereafter activity. We will have the Minds of Christ – that is, our thinking will be like our Blessed Lord and Savior’s thinking. All we will be concerned with is doing His Holy Will. Our goals and desires will be precisely the same as His goals and desires. Our love will be not for ourselves, but for our Brothers, Sisters, and especially for our Big Brother Jesus –the King of all kings.  

Here is scriptural Truth our friend Daymond Duck researched and writes that frames what we will do during the Millennial Kingdom and throughout the HEREAFTER forever.

1) Worship (Revelation 4:9-10).

2) Keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14:16-19).

3) Visit Jerusalem to learn (Isa. 2:2-3; I Corinthians 13:11-12).

4) Fellowship (Revelation 19:9).

5) Serve Jesus (Psa. 72:11; Revelation 22:3).

6) Judge fallen angels (I Corinthians 6:3).

7) Reign on the earth (Luke 19:11-27; Rev. 5:10; II Tim. 2:12).

These things will be more than enough to keep us busy. – Daymond Duck, Prophecy Plus Ministries