22) The Little Apocalypse (III)
Isaiah 26, 27
At first sight there is little in Isaiah 26 to
justify its inclusion in any apocalypse, yet it begins with the familiar phrase:
“in that day,” which is such a favourite of both Isaiah and
Zechariah when their inspiration ranges forward to the Day of the Lord. Here it
recurs five times (25: 9; 26: 1; 27: 1, 2, 12, 13), as though to emphasize that
these chapters are not to be separated from chapter 24, the most ominous of them
all. Chapter 26: 13-21 is the section especially relevant to the present
study.
“Lord, thy hand is lifted up (as when Moses
lifted up the rod of God over Egypt and over the Red Sea), yet they see not: but
they shall see thy zeal for the people (Israel), and be ashamed; yea, fire shall
devour thine adversaries. Lord, thou wilt ordain (literally: judge) peace for
us” (26: 11, 12) — it is a peace which can come only through
judgement on ungodly nations — “for thou hast also wrought all our
works for us.” There can be salvation for Israel from their enemies only
when they come to this admission before God that they are unable to save
themselves. All through their history and in every aspect of life they have
believed in salvation through their own works. What a change of heart is
pictured here!” “Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they have
poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them.” This is the
repentance of Israel as they turn to the God of their fathers in a time when no
other door of hope is open to them. “Like as a woman with child, that
draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs;
so have we been in thy sight” (LXX: for the Beloved — ‘David
my servant who is to be their prince for ever’).
THE RESURRECTION
Because of this spiritual re-birth there comes a
flood of blessing: “Thou hast increased the nation (the Hebrew text
strongly tempts one to see here another Messianic allusion: Thou hast provided
Joseph for the nation); thou art glorified: thou hast enlarged all the borders
of the land” (v. 15).
The nation is increased yet further by another
accession of strength — the resurrection to glorious immortality of all
the finest and most saintly characters it has produced throughout its history:
“Thy dead shall live; dead bodies shall
arise.[27]
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust: for thy dew is as the dew of lights
(does this intensive plural refer to the dawn of the Great Day of God?), and the
earth shall cast forth the dead.”
As Paul insists in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 that
“we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not
precede them which are asleep,” so it is in Isaiah (perhaps this is the
Scripture from which he learned it!): “Come, my people (it is an
exhortation addressed to a community), “enter thou into thy
chambers (the pronouns indicate individual response to this call), and shut thy
doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment until the indignation be
overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the
inhabitants of the earth (or, perhaps, the dwellers in the Land?) for their
iniquity.”
The historical background to this prophecy is
impressive. Devout king Hezekiah had called the people of Israel from north and
south to come and keep Passover in Jerusalem. As it turned out, by this act of
faith those who responded provided for their own protection and safety, for then
the land was ravaged from end to end by the merciless armies of Sennacherib, and
only Jerusalem remained undevastated. There, as at the first Passover, twelve
legions of angels hovered in protection over the faithful (Isaiah 31:5), as they
had done over the homes of the twelve tribes in Egypt at the first of all
Passovers. And, as the destroying angel had gone through the homes of all
families not protected by the blood of the lamb, so also in Hezekiah’s day
“the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the
Assyrians.” Thus in Isaiah’s own time, the faithful had their
Passover refuge when divine judgement wrought deliverance.
SAFETY
This prophecy assures the true Israel of God in
the twentieth century of a similar protection in the day of wrath. As it was in
the days of Noah, when the Lord said: “Come thou and all thy house into
the ark ... and the Lord shut him in.”
How will protection be provided for the
Lord’s people in that day, and where? The idea that the saints will be
taken away to Sinai or some other remote deserted place has little support in
Scripture. Noah found safety in the ark, which he had prepared “by
faith.” And it was “by faith” that the people of Israel kept
the Passover in their own homes, made safe there by the blood of the lamb. Here
Isaiah’s pointed instruction is: “Enter thou into thy
chambers, and shut thy doors about thee.” This echoes the
action of Elisha, when “he went in, and shut the door upon them
twain, and prayed unto the Lord” (2 Kings 4:33); and in turn Jesus
quotes Isaiah in the familiar words: “But thou, when thou prayest,
enter into thine inner chamber, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to
thy Father” (Matthew 6: 6).
From these words it would seem that the
saints’ place of safety in the last great crisis is the place of faith and
prayer—which might be anywhere! Can any more specific conclusion, as to
locality, be drawn from this Scripture? By reasoning from the parallel
deliverance in Hezekiah’s day (to which this passage originally referred),
it may be argued with fair confidence that the place of safety will be
Jerusalem, to which those who respond immediately (Luke 12: 36) to the angelic
summons (Matthew 24: 31 and 25: 6) will be taken; for, at the time of the
resurrection and gathering of the saints, the Lord will already be established
as king in Jerusalem (Matthew 25:
31)[28]
when the days of its warfare are accomplished and it is become truly a city of
peace.
THE ADVERSARIES
“In that day,” Isaiah 27 continues,
“the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword (note the triple
emphasis) shall punish
leviathan the swift serpent, and
leviathan the (crooked) winding serpent, and
he shall slay the dragon that is in the
sea.”
Here, easily identifiable, are the great
political adversaries of God’s people. In Isaiah’s day the
identification of them would be simplicity itself. Nineveh of Assyria is
pictured as a great beast in the waters of the swift-flowing Tigris. Babylon is
a similar monster in the waters of the slow meandering Euphrates, whilst Egypt
is a crocodile in the vast expanse of the Nile (the word “Sea” is
used in this sense in Isaiah 19: 5 and Nahum 3: 8). Any Jew of Isaiah’s
own day would readily recognize the allusions.
In the Last Days their counterparts may be sought
in the implacable enemies of Israel who desolate the Holy Land for the last
time. Or is it possible that these should be equated with the three great beasts
of Revelation?
Yet another picture of this momentous time is the
final gathering of Israel: “In that day the Lord shall beat off his fruit
from the channel of the River (Euphrates) unto the stream of Egypt (now referred
to as ‘brook,’ RV, because its power is dwindled away), and ye shall
be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel” (27: 12). If this reading
correctly interprets the figure of speech, then the picture is that of the few
isolated olives being knocked off their remote branches by blows from long
sticks. If, however, the RV margin be accepted: “shall beat out his
corn,” then the figure is that of threshing and winnowing, and should be
equated with the vision in Revelation 14: 15 of the crowned Son of man reaping
the harvest of the earth with his sharp sickle.
Either way, the emphasis is on the selectivity of
this final re-gathering: “Ye shall be gathered one by one.” The word
“channel” in this passage emphasizes the same truth, for it is the
familiar word “shibboleth” (which also means “corn”) of
Judges 12: 6. Just as, in that famous incident of Jephthah’s campaign,
“shibboleth” divided infallibly between friend and foe, so now in
prophecy it becomes a token of a separation between those who are Israel indeed
and those who are only nominal members of the nation: “And I will take you
one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion”
(Jeremiah 3: 14. Compare also Amos 9: 8, 9).
“In that day a great trumpet shall be
blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria,
and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt (compare here the exposition of
Isaiah 19: 18-20 suggested in chapter 7), and shall worship the Lord in the holy
mount of Jerusalem.” It is the trumpet of Jubilee, which is sounded,
carrying the news of final release from bondage. It is the great trumpet because
with the seventh and last (Revelation 11: 15), the Messiah takes to him his
Great power and reigns; it is “the time of the dead that they should be
judged, the time to give their reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the
saints, and to them that fear thy name, small and great.”
[27]
“together with my dead body shall they arise” springs from an
attempt to make sense of the solecism in the Hebrew text. The reading given here
calls for only the slightest emendation.
[28] “The
Last Days” chapter 11.
