ISAIAH’S END-TIME TIMELINE

Isaiah’s End-time Timeline Chapters 29-30

WOE TO JERUSALEM

Verses: Daniel 12:2-4; Isaiah 10:12, Matthew 15:8; Zechariah 13:8-9; John 9:39

An overview: Israel/ Jacob continues to show trust in power adverse to God, that will not profit them. Ignoring the words of the prophets, they are darkened in their spiritual understanding. God’s declared judgment was “…a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land.” [Isaiah 10:23] God will use their enemies to judge them. Having neither His purposes or heart in view would utterly destroy them, but God promises to judge their enemies and leave a Jewish Remnant.

The Spirit of all prophecy is the Testimony of Jesus Christ. Almost all of Isaiah’s (and for that matter, all Prophets’) unfulfilled prophecies are about: Jesus Christ the Messiah’s Return or 2nd Coming, the then state of the Church (that includes Israel), and the World and events surrounding it, and the following Millennial reign.

THE OVERALL THEME, possibly not so widely seen is: GOD RESTORING HIS KINGDOM. And that culminating in the new heavens and earth, which includes the Atoning Work of purging Israel and the nations, and consigning His enemies, including the faithless, to Tophet. That is to say, the Lake of Fire.

There are two cities in type representative and instrumental in Scripture in showing forth God restoring His Kingdom in the new heavens and earth. Jerusalem and Babylon: the anti-types being the New Jerusalem descending from the Heaven [Revelation 21:11] and Babylon the final residing place of God’s enemies. There then are two Spirits in the earth working towards two contrary Kingdoms; the Spirit of Jesus Christ and the spirit of satan/anti-Christ. All prophecy reveals these Works of Restoration of all things in the Kingdom of God through His Christ. So it should not be troublesome or hard to receive the numerous references and warnings to His redeemed of the spirit, now fully engaged in the deceiving opposing work which is here again typed in these two chapters of Isaiah. Pointing to and having in view the final days, and even more specifically, in the manifestation of the anti-Christ in the last 3 ½ years just before Jesus Christ’s power filled Return.

OUR OBJECTIVE in the study of unfulfilled Scripture in Isaiah and to overlay them on the Book of Revelation, we will here continue down those lines. AS WE LOOK AT CHAPTERS 29 &30, each verse could be assigned a specific time of fulfillment in the last days’ prophecies of John. For an example in the first part of Verse 1 of chapter 29: “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt!” The woe of Ariel, being in the final and most significant application, the last days Jerusalem on which God is bringing His judgment to bear by the “…..terrible one…” This judgment can be placed primarily in the last 3 ½ years of the Tribulation spoken by John in the Book of Revelation. With the worst of that woe coming at the end of that period.

In the 2nd part of that same first verse: “…..add ye (or gather the fruits year to year), let them kill sacrifices…”. This is in reference to the idea that although you have the Word with you and can gather its fruits and follow in it building in you line upon line, and little by little enlightenment, but on the other hand, by your refusal of your heart to take it to yourself, then after a time, what you do will become sleepy rote ritual. As you accept the precepts of your darkened teachers, you become drunken, but not with wine.

As it relates to the Jews, this rejection of His Word, although they had the look of a ripe fig they were unfit and rejected. That culminated in Jesus Christ’s First Coming and their rejection of Him. And then their being laid waste and low as a nation by the Romans, accordingly, is seen in verses 3 & 4. But in the second and fuller application of these verses and the enlightening verses 5-16 following, are the days after Titus laying Jerusalem low, and after the laying low again in 135 AD. As prophetic Scripture reveals the reconstituting and the re-inhabiting of the nation Israel by the Jews, prior to the end time. But in their gathering, they trusted in man with an ancient lingering spirit of darkness and trust in their adverse ways. That leads up to the prophetic end times, Jacob’s Trouble, their great day of Tribulation Judgment, here in Isaiah seen in type again, of which the Lord spoke of in Matthew 24. Also fulfilled in John’s Book of Revelation in the confederacy of the nations who gather against Jerusalem in the last of the 3 ½ years just before the 2nd Coming of The Lord.

ISRAEL IN THE LAST 7 YEARS, ACCORDING TO DANIEL, PLACES THESE EVENTS FOR US IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION.

Daniel 12:1 speaks of 3 different circumstances that speak to these last 7 years events being accomplished:

  1. Michael stands up
  2. a time of trouble such as never was (Jeremiah 30 and Matthew 24)
  3. the people of Israel shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the Book.

The anti-Christ in unparalleled power rules and wars and persecutes, satan personified if you will. As God has his Son in the flesh, so satan now has his. And he exerts himself as god, as he is “like” Christ. One with his god in that he may call himself god. Daniel 11:38,39 reveals that although he declares himself god, he worships another in secret.

The Remnant of Israel will be saved according to the election of Grace. [Romans 11, Zechariah 13:8,9, Isaiah 27:6 with Ezekiel 20] And the Remnant out of other nations. They will know His redemption, the fountain of the Spirit prepared for them, so as to be blessed and a blessing in the earth. Daniel 12:2 also speaks of the heavenly host blessing. “And many from among the sleepers of the dust of the earth shall awake; there shall be unto everlasting life; but those (the rest of the sleepers) shall be unto everlasting shame and everlasting contempt.” Compare Revelation 20:4-6 to Isaiah 26:19. It is at the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ that Israel is delivered. And the first resurrection is just prior to His manifesting on the earth as His Saints come with Him.

“Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake (many, not most or all. When is this? It is after the tribulation period says Daniel. Were they in heaven? No, but in the earth, in Hades. (Not the Lake of Fire, but the intermediate place of the dead.) They have not previously been raised out from among the dead at Christ’s Resurrection but now at His 2nd Coming…”the time of the end”.

“And they which be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament …….as the stars for ever and ever.” This is reference to the heavenly resurrected host, those who are glorified and sit on the Throne with Christ in his heavenly Kingdom just above the earth in the first heaven. Then the question in Daniel 12 of: When will these things occur? “For a time, times and a half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people all these things shall be finished.” When all God’s purposes of chastening Israel (and the nations) shall have been accomplished… “It shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mt. Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the stout heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his high looks.” Isaiah 12 & here again in 29:20 “…for the terrible one is brought to nought.”

So we see in Isaiah 29 that the 3 circumstances of the end times brought out in Daniel 12:1 are seen here also in more defined detail.

As the Jews refusing the fruit of the Word at the time of their visitation, choosing the precepts of men, that are dark, childish milk, and in fainted maturity are often absurd. Even unto the accusing of God in the way they were made, putting any defect in them at the feet of God as the Creator. [Isaiah 29:16, Romans 9:20] Although they were rejected by God, Paul and Isaiah tell us that in their rejection comes the mercy extended to us, the Gentiles, and after which He will again raise Israel from the “dead” and give her life. And she will flourish in the earth and rule over the Gentiles and bring them into the saving knowledge of God.

Daniel 12:10 is in line with the darkness brought out in the nation of Israel (or the World) “….none of the wicked shall understand.” The truth of God is perceived in the right heart of a man. Many shall be surprised as their hearts have refused the truth. Both ancient and present day Israel and ancient and present day Christians, having loved the precepts of man more than the God’s plain truths, As man’s precepts appeal to their flesh. In the case of the Jews, their refusing the light of Jesus Christ as the Messiah of the Old Covenant. And as it relates to Christians, their refusal for the sanctifying part of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Both leading into a darkness that will equal the lack of understanding in the wicked. Which equates on the one hand to those living as having to suffer the end time judgments here proclaimed. And to those already dead in this condition, the staying where they now are, being ashamed having missed the resurrection out from among the dead, will remain in Hades until the 2nd resurrection.

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