While Isaiah predicts "sudden ruin such as you have not imagined" for the harlot Babylon who rules the nations (Isaiah 47:11; cf. Revelation 17:1-5), he predicts the same for God's people whose wickedness puts them in the same category as Babylon. But before the Day of Judgment arrives-before the heavens "vanish as by smoke" and the earth's inhabitants "die in the manner of vermin"-God gives the world a chance to repent: "The law shall go forth from me, and my precepts shall be a light to the peoples. Then, suddenly, I will act" (Isaiah 51:4, 6). Those who prove righteous participate in an exodus to Zion even as the wicked perish (Isaiah 51:7-12).
So inured do many of God's people become toward him, however, that they grow derelict in their duties: "You have heard the whole vision; how is it you do not proclaim it? Yet as of now, I announce to you new things, things withheld and unknown to you, things now coming into being, not hitherto, things you have not heard of before, lest you should say, 'Indeed I knew them!' You have not heard them, nor have you known them; before this your ears have not been open to them" (Isaiah 48:6-8). At that point, God "annuls the predictions of impostors and makes fools of diviners," he "turns wise men about and makes nonsense of their knowledge" (Isaiah 44:25).
See more here and here
Study more in-depth
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please post a comment!