None of us can say for certain what will happen in our life. We can make plans, such as what we will study at the University, what career path we wish, where we want to live, etc. Often, though, those plans don’t come about. We cannot look down the path of the future. Sometimes we can make an educated guess as to what might happen, such as warning that if people keep acting in a specific way, this or that event will happen. But we can’t know for certain. However, the Lord God does know everything that will happen. Nothing takes Him by surprise. He is never caught off guard. God knows who will win my country’s next presidential election in a few weeks. He knows who will be ruling various countries in ten years, in a hundred years. In our Scripture passage today from the Book of Isaiah, God named a ruler several hundred years before he was even born. Let’s take a look.
Isaiah was a prophet from the southern kingdom of Judah. His prophetic ministry to the people was from approximately 740 BC to 681 BC. Many of the messages that God gave Isaiah were to admonish the people, exhorting them to repent and return to worshipping only Yahweh, and following His ways and Laws. Some other of his messages were prophetic in nature. Isaiah didn’t just make these predictions up. They came to him by inspiration from God, as God knows the future from the past. He has existed from all eternity, and will exist eternally into the future. He sees and knows all, and chose to reveal some future events to His prophets. God gave Isaiah the prediction of the fall of Jerusalem more than 100 years before it happened in 586 BC. He also revealed to His prophet the rebuilding of the Temple over 200 years before it happened.
In our Scripture passage today, Isaiah spoke God’s prophetic message which revealed the name of a ruler of a great world empire centuries in advance, an empire that didn’t even exist at the time. God called the name of Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great, the ruler of the great Persian Empire (vs. 44:28, 45:1). Isaiah made this prophecy over 150 years before the time of Cyrus. The main world power at the time of Isaiah was the Assyrian Empire. They would be superseded by the Babylonian Empire, which had yet to become a major power at this time. They, in turn, would be supplanted by the Persian Empire, which did not exist at the time of Isaiah. At over 2,000 miles across, the Persian Empire would become the largest empire the world had known by that time, but would later be supplanted by the Greek Empire. There is no way that Isaiah could have known any of this with his own knowledge. Yahweh knew this, though. He could call the very ruler by name who would give the royal decree that the Jewish people could return to their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem and Temple, hundreds of years before it would happen. Cyrus issued a decrease to rebuild the Temple in 538 BC, well over a hundred years after Isaiah would have died.
What makes this so special? Seeing this in Scripture can be reassuring to us that God knows the future. Nothing takes Him by surprise. He is always in control. Events that can cause us fear or anxiety can happen, but we can rest assured that Yahweh is still on His throne. God is Power over all powers. He anoints whom He chooses for His special tasks (vs. 1). He is omnipotent. Yahweh is in full control. Whatever He allows into our life is for a reason. God has a purpose for everything He does or permits (vs. 5-7). He is sovereign (Psalm 22:28). He is in absolute control of the universe, nature, and the political world, along with each of our individual lives. He is ruler over light and darkness, over prosperity and disaster. God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9).
God spoke this prophecy, not just for the Jewish people, letting them know what would happen with them, but also for Cyrus so he would know that Yahweh, the one and only true God, was giving him victorious conquests (vs. 3). Cyrus would know that the God of Israel was with him. These prophecies show the whole earth, letting them know that the Lord God, alone, is the true and only God (vs. 6).
In the world lately there have been pandemics, catastrophic storms and natural disasters, and political unrest, but we don’t have to panic or live in fear. God will take care of the situations that concern us. We don’t have to worry. He has the future in His hands.
Amen!!!
ReplyDelete