Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- Isaiah

The 66th chapter of Isaiah puzzled me- on the surface, it seems a stream of interconnected, but not in order, prophecies, that I was having a hard time seeing an overall message.  But I talked out the story with Laurie, and I came to realize it is a mini- version of everything Jesus taught in the Gospels!

Isa 66:1  Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?

Matt 8  ²⁰ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

 Isa 66:2  All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
Matt 9 ¹³ But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’^[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

 Isa 66:4  I also will choose harsh treatment for them and bring their fears upon them, because when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen; but they did what was evil in my eyes and chose that in which I did not delight."
2 Thess 2: ¹⁰ and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. ¹¹ And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, ¹² that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

 Isa 66:5  Hear the word of the LORD, you who tremble at his word: "Your brothers who hate you and cast you out for my name's sake have said, 'Let the LORD be glorified, that we may see your joy'; but it is they who shall be put to shame.
John 16 :1“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. ² They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. ³ And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.

And on and on.  From this point here, though, after a discussion on who is worshiping properly and who is not, the prophecy does a couple of u-turns:  First it goes into how the Jews will be re-established in the New Jerusalem after the Second Coming (vv 6-14), then it backtracks to the destruction of the final battle (vv15-17).  Then it returns to the gathering of Jew and Gentile in the New Jerusalem (vv18-20).  And from then to the end, there were 3 points that made me stop and consider.

First one, Isa 66:19  and I will set a sign among them.  This sign, the commentators struggled with IMHO.    K&D thought it to be the sign of the Lord's Wrath, come upon the evil ones just as the Plagues were a sign to Pharaoh.  But I'm thinking something else here.

Zech 12: ¹⁰ “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. ¹¹ On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

It will be the sign by which the people of Israel will finally see Christ as Messiah.

Second thing:  Isa 66:21  And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the LORD. 

God is going to be setting up a new priesthood in those days- one not by family, but by obedience.



Third thing- and another you'll remember Jesus hitting in the Gospels:




Isa 66:24  "And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh." 

Mark 9:47  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸ ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ ⁴⁹ For everyone will be salted with fire.

Are these survivors of the last war, the residents of the New Jerusalem, going to have a mini-picture of hell right in their back yards?  I recall the debate we had in Daniel over the gap in 'days':

 Dan 12:11  And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days.
Dan 12:12  Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. 


Which itself is a gap from the 'time, times, and half a time' of 1,260 days the Angel first gave.  And I had wondered if this was the time for the burial of the slain of Armageddon- but it didn't match another prophecy- that of Ezekiel:

 Ezek 39:11“On that day I will give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers, east of the sea. It will block the travelers, for there Gog and all his multitude will be buried. It will be called the Valley of Hamon-gog.^{[a] 12} For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them, in order to cleanse the land. ¹³ All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renown on the day that I show my glory, declares the Lord God. ¹⁴ They will set apart men to travel through the land regularly and bury those travelers remaining on the face of the land, so as to cleanse it. At^[b] the end of seven months they will make their search. ¹⁵ And when these travel through the land and anyone sees a human bone, then he shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon-gog. ¹⁶ (Hamonah^[c] is also the name of the city.) Thus shall they cleanse the land.  

And now it sounds like they'll be there until the final judgment, 1,000 years hence.  Either way, it seems that they will have not only the scars of Jesus to look on that day, but the scars of sinful humanity as well.