This time we begin a very descriptive four chapter passage devoted to the destruction coming upon the Earth at the End of The Age. Before we’re finished we’ll see the Earth judged, Babylon destroyed, the Messiah revealed, the Church Raptured, Satan judged, Israel restored, and we’ll even get a glimpse of Eternity.

Isaiah 24, The Lord’s Devastation Of The Earth
LORD is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it; he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants-

it will be the same for priest as for people, for master as for servant, for mistress as for maid, for seller as for buyer, for borrower as for lender, for debtor as for creditor. (Isaiah 24:1-2)

No one will escape this coming judgment.  It will be world wide and will impact everyone.  In Jeremiah 30:11 we learn that one of the Lord’s objectives in the Great Tribulation will be to completely destroy all the nations among which His people have been scattered.

The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The LORD has spoken this word.    The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the exalted of the earth languish.  The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. (Isaiah 24:3-5)

The cause of this judgment is the disobedience of the people of Earth. The everlasting covenant is the agreement whereby the Son (Jesus) agreed to die for our sins and in exchange the Father (God) agreed to forgive us.  Mankind is not party to this agreement, we are only its beneficiaries. The Hebrew word translated broken here means to frustrate the intent of the agreement.  The Father and the Son have done their part and kept their word, but the people of Earth refused to accept its provisions and be saved.  It’s this disobedience that will ultimately bring God’s judgment, because He offers no other provision for their escape.

Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left. The new wine dries up and the vine withers; all the merrymakers groan. The gaiety of the tambourines is stilled, the noise of the revelers has stopped, the joyful harp is silent.  No longer do they drink wine with a song; the beer is bitter to its drinkers.

The ruined city lies desolate; the entrance to every house is barred.  In the streets they cry out for wine; all joy turns to gloom, all gaiety is banished from the earth.  The city is left in ruins, its gate is battered to pieces.  So will it be on the earth and among the nations, as when an olive tree is beaten, or as when gleanings are left after the grape harvest.  (Isaiah 24:6-13)

We’ll see a reference to Babylon in a few verses.  I think these verses speak of  a typical city on Earth.  Throughout the age of man, cities have always been more corrupt than the small towns of the country side. It makes sense that they would all be totally destroyed.

They raise their voices, they shout for joy; from the west they acclaim the LORD’s majesty. Therefore in the east give glory to the LORD; exalt the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, in the islands of the sea.  From the ends of the earth we hear singing: “Glory to the Righteous One.”  (Isaiah 24:14-16a)

Tribulation believers will be the only ones on Earth who understand what’s going on.  They will see God’s righteousness in these judgments and will praise Him for them.

But I said, “I waste away, I waste away! Woe to me! The treacherous betray! With treachery the treacherous betray!”

Terror and pit and snare await you, O people of the earth. Whoever flees at the sound of terror will fall into a pit; whoever climbs out of the pit will be caught in a snare.  The floodgates of the heavens are opened, the foundations of the earth shake.  The earth is broken up, the earth is split asunder, the earth is thoroughly shaken.  The earth reels like a drunkard, it sways like a hut in the wind; so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls—never to rise again. (Isaiah 24:16b- 20)

Jesus said that the judgments of the Great Tribulation will exceed anything the world has ever seen or will see again.(Matt. 24:21) That means Isaiah’s use of language reminiscent of the Great Flood is actually an understatement.  When it’s over, no building will be left standing, every mountain will have fallen. Earthquakes will open up huge gaps in the surface of the Earth.

I believe that one purpose of the Great Tribulation will be to prepare Earth to be made new, to be put back into the condition it was in when Adam arrived. That means everything that man has done to defile and pollute the planet will have to be reversed.  I believe it will also have to be straightened on its axis, brought back onto a 360 day rotation around the Sun and have its world wide sub-tropical climate restored as well.

In that day the LORD will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below.  They will be herded together like prisoners bound in a dungeon; they will be shut up in prison and be punished after many days. The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed; for the LORD Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously. (Isaiah 24:21-23)

This summary statement of the End Times judgments says it all.  The powers in the Heavens refers to Satan and his horde.  The Kings on the Earth below are those leaders who lined up with Satan against God. (Can you name one who hasn’t?) As we saw in Isaiah 14 they’ll all wind up in hell together, while the Almighty God will finally take possession of that which is His, and will rule in glory among the elders of  Israel.

The glory of the LORD entered the temple through the gate facing east. Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. He said: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. (Ezekiel 43:4-5,7)

Isaiah 25, Praise to the LORD
O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago.  You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners’ stronghold a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.  Therefore strong peoples will honor you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you. (Isaiah 25:1-3)

By his description we can tell that the city Isaiah is referring  to here is Babylon.  Tribulation survivors who enter the Millennium will remember what a powerful city it was and how totally it was destroyed. They and their children will honor the Lord if for no other reason than knowing he could easily do the same to them.

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall and like the heat of the desert. You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled. (Isaiah 25:4-5)

The Psalmist said that the Lord is a shield for us, (Psalm 3:3) our refuge and our fortress. (Psalm 91:2) The Lord’s protective power will keep the ruthless at bay during His 1000 year reign, and at the end of it He will destroy them like He destroyed Babylon.

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.  On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God;  we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”(Isaiah 25:6-9)

In Isaiah 65:17-25 the prophet made it clear that the people of Earth will not be immortal during the Millennium, although average lifespans will increase dramatically.  Here Isaiah is pointing to the end of the Millennium when God will grant all His people the same blessing of immortality that He will have granted the Church at the Rapture.  And the first order of business to celebrate this blessing will be a great feast of rich foods, choice meats, and fine wines.

This may be the only real glimpse into eternity in the Bible.  How fitting that it should involve gourmet food and drink.  It shows that we’ll be physical beings enjoying some of the same interests and desires that we have here, but without the negative after effects.  Imagine sitting down to a huge feast with the entire family of man, prepared and hosted by the Creator Himself. We’ll intuitively know each other, with everyone expressing the perfect love that the closest brothers and sisters have for one another. As the Church we’ll have experienced this sort of thing before, and we’ll take special delight in knowing that now the entire human race will finally be of one accord forever. Watching the amazement of our newly perfected brothers and sisters from the Millennium will remind us of the days just after the Rapture, now over 1000 years in the past, when we first felt that way.

In verse 9 the Hebrew word for God is Elohim, His creator name, by which our earliest ancestors knew Him. The word for LORD is the tetragrammaton, JHWH. These are the four initials that stand for God’s Old Covenant name, spoken reverently and fearfully by Israel. And the word for His salvation is Yeshua, the name of Jesus, mediator of the New Covenant, the name above all names. From the first man to the last, We’ll shout the names of God in praise and thanksgiving.

The hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain;but Moab will be trampled under him as straw is trampled down in the manure. They will spread out their hands in it, as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim. God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands.  He will bring down your high fortified walls and lay them low; he will bring them down to the ground, to the very dust. (Isaiah 25:10-12)

Since the nation called Moab disappeared from Earth when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it in the 6th Century BC, commentators view this reference to Moab as being symbolic of the Lord’s enemies at the end of the Millennium. Before He can lead mankind into his eternal destiny, the Lord has to destroy all of  His enemies. Speaking of the Lord’s responsibilities at the End of Time, Paul wrote, For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15:25-26)

Once He has put down the final rebellion at the end of the Millennium, death will be the only enemy left. Rev. 20:14 says that death and Hades will be thrown into the Lake of Fire after the Great White Throne judgment.  When that happens mankind can be made immortal, and eternity can begin. This tells us that Millennium believers will receive perfected bodies at that time, because no one possessing a sin nature can be made immortal.

Next week we’ll take chapters 26 and 27 and see the Rapture of the Church, Satan’s defeat, and Israels’ deliverance.

This installment of the End Times According to Isaiah takes us to Isaiah 17 and the never fulfilled prophecy of the destruction of Damascus.

 

What’s New?

In the past couple of years it has become even clearer that Isaiah’s prophecy of the destruction of Damascus may soon come to fulfillment.  If so, it would explain why Syria is not included among the coalition of Moslem nations who will gather against Israel in the Battle of Ezekiel 38.

Emboldened by the outcome of the 2006 Hezbollah Israel war, Syria has become ever more bellicose in it’s behavior toward Israel. Aggressive acts have included moving large military forces onto the Golan, opening the crossing that gives Syrians access to Israel for the first time since 1973, forming and training a Syrian terrorist force to infiltrate Northern Israel, and demanding that the Golan be returned at once or else this force would begin committing terrorist acts inside Israel.

It’s been known for some time that Syria has one of the world’s most advanced chemical weapons programs, even though such things are illegal, and probably inherited the bulk of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs that the MSM (main stream media) delights in telling you never existed.  They’ve mobilized reserves, set up alternate communication centers, and moved all official historical and legal documents out of Damascus. They did this because they believe that Israel will respond to a chemical attack by destroying Damascus with nuclear weaponry. They’ve recalled all their citizens living in Lebanon. They’ve purchased Russian arms and defensive systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to protect Damascus.

Going Nuclear
In July 2007, a chemical warhead exploded at a Syrian missile facility while being fitted to a Scud missile, killing dozens of Iranian and Syrian technicians. The only likely target within range of the missile is Tel Aviv.  Then, just 2 months later, the Israeli bombing of a secret Syrian facility deep inside the country made headlines and demonstrated Israel’s ability to render the Russian state-of-the-art anti-air defenses ineffective. These systems were sold to both Syria and Iran to protect against US or Israeli attacks by air.  The presence of nuclear materials at the Syrian base has been confirmed, so it might have been the location of at least a dirty bomb assembly plant and perhaps even a clandestine nuclear weapons facility.  The North Koreans were heavily involved in this, and are suspected of still helping Syria to develop some kind of nuclear weapons capability.

Most recently, Israel’s Gaza incursion has opened a rift between Israel and Turkey, causing Turkey to suspend its role as the mediator in Syria-Israel peace talks, breaking one of the few lines of communication between the two countries.

While some of this is more than the MSM has been willing to share with you, it is a matter of public record.   My guess is that there’s a lot more going on that we don’t know about, making matters even more urgent.  So let’s take another look at Isaiah 17, An Oracle Against Damascus, while it’s still prophecy.

An Oracle Concerning Damascus:
“See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted and left to flocks, which will lie down, with no one to make them afraid. (Isaiah 17:1-2)

Because of the language of these verses, many scholars believe that this prophecy was only partially fulfilled when the Assyrians defeated the Arameans and overran their capital, Damascus, in 732 BC. To this day Damascus is thought to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city with a 5000-year history and a population close to 2 million, yet Isaiah 17:1 indicates that it will one day cease to exist.

Some believe the phrase “cities of Aroer” refers to Aramean territory east of the Jordan River around the Arnon River, which flows into the Dead Sea in southern Jordan.  However, the Jewish Encyclopedia claims that this phrase in Isaiah 17:2 is probably translated incorrectly  because the geographical distance from Damascus is too great.  While they say it’s possible that there may have been another Aroer near Damascus, it is more likely that the passage should be rendered “the cities thereof shall be forsaken.” If that’s the correct translation, it would include the Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, which was part of Aramean territory in Isaiah’s time, and is in a direct line between Beirut and Damascus.

The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, and royal power from Damascus; the remnant of Aram will be like the glory of the Israelites,” declares the LORD Almighty. “In that day the glory of Jacob will fade; the fat of his body will waste away. It will be as when a reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the grain with his arm- as when a man gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim. (Isaiah 17:3-5)

This segment speaks of the defeat of Damascus in 732BC and the destruction of Samaria 10 years later (722 BC).  Damascus continued to exist as part of the Assyrian Empire and is still here today, but the ruins of Samaria are just now being excavated out of the sandy soil of Israel.  The systematic relocation of the ruling classes to the far reaches of the Assyrian Empire is also in view. This was standard Assyrian policy to reduce the likelihood of subsequent rebellion among their conquered peoples.   Jacob and Ephraim are alternate names for the Northern Kingdom, and Samaria was its capital.

Yet some gleanings will remain, as when an olive tree is beaten, leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches, four or five on the fruitful boughs,” declares the LORD, the God of Israel. (Isaiah 17:6)

Not all the people were dispersed.  Farmers were left behind to tend the crops and protect the harvest. They were joined by refugees from other parts of Assyria and their descendants were known as the Samaritans in the time of Jesus.  (A quick reading of 2 Chronicles 11:16 shows that all the faithful from the 10 northern tribes moved south at the time of the civil war that divided the nation after King Solomon’s death 150 years earlier.  From then on, all 12 tribes were represented in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, so the 10 tribes from the North weren’t totally lost.  The Lord has always preserved a believing remnant from all the Tribes of Israel.)

In that day men will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel. They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands, and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles and the incense altars their fingers have made. In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation. (Isaiah 17:7-9)

This is another passage that’s problematic for those who try to consign the whole prophecy to history. There is simply no reason to believe that the Assyrians turned to God following their conquest of Aram and Israel. And far from abandoning their cities because of the Israelites, it was the Israelites who were defeated and dispersed. The yet future Jewish attack on Damascus causing the destruction and abandonment of Syrian cities, and the eventual return of the survivors to their God is a much more likely fulfillment. And it could happen soon.

You have forgotten God your Savior; you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress. Therefore, though you set out the finest plants and plant imported vines, though on the day you set them out, you make them grow, and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud, yet the harvest will be as nothing in the day of disease and incurable pain. (Isaiah 17:10-11)

Asshur, father of the Assyrians, and Aram, father of the Arameans were both sons of Shem. Aram’s son Uz is the traditional founder of Damascus. (The setting for the Book of Job is the Land of Uz.) The knowledge of God in the memories of these patriarchs cannot be questioned. It wasn’t that they never knew Him, but that they had forgotten Him, abandoned Him in favor of the Canaanite gods of the region, Baal and his consort Ashtoreth (aka Asherah, Astarte, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus.) Currently Syria is almost totally Moslem.   Until they return to their Maker and Savior none of their plans and schemes will prosper in the long run, no matter how promising they seem at the beginning.

Oh, the raging of many nations- they rage like the raging sea! Oh, the uproar of the peoples- they roar like the roaring of great waters! Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters, when he rebukes them they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweed before a gale. In the evening, sudden terror! Before the morning, they are gone! This is the portion of those who loot us, the lot of those who plunder us. (Isaiah 17:12-14)

Having conquered most of the Middle East including the Arameans and the Northern Kingdom,  the Assyrians set their sights on the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Assyria’s King Sennacherib brought his armies almost literally to the gates of Jerusalem, so close his commanders were within speaking distance of the Jewish defenders. On the night before they were to attack, the Lord sent His angel into the Assyrian camp on Mt. Scopus to slaughter 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Before dawn they had packed up and fled, ending 44 years of conquest. (Isaiah 37:36-38) This time in Israel’s history so parallels the Jewish view of the End Times that Sennacherib is seen by them as a type of the anti-christ, while Judah’s King Hezekiah models the Messiah.

But notice that Isaiah speaks of many nations raging against God’s people, not just Assyria, leading us once again to consider Sennacherib’s defeat as a partial fulfillment of Isaiah’s prohecy.

Today many nations are stirred up against Israel. The various Mid-East “peace” conferences have left Israel standing alone against all but irresistible pressure to negotiate away its very existence. Syria and Iran are dead certain that Israel will attack soon, and are preparing accordingly.  Israel’s other next-door neighbors are also preparing for war, and indeed many nations are taking sides.

Israel is not blind to these mounting threats, but until lately the current government seems to have been ignoring them.  That’s about to stop.  Israeli Prime Minister candidate Benyamin Netanyahu, who’s almost certain to be elected, has warned Hamas that if the rocket attacks continue after he takes office he will wipe out their leadership in both Gaza and Syria, even if it results in a confrontation with the Syrians.   We can easily envision a scenario that includes the final fulfillment of Isaiah 17, the destruction of Damascus.  Sudden terror in the evening, and before morning they and the surrounding cities are gone.

The phrase “rushing of many waters” is often used to describe a loud voice. Such a thing would certainly cause an incredible uproar among the nations, and many loud voices.  If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah.