Hello! and happy holy and family day to all of us, GUYS. Our first-thing-first this Sunday:
THE GOOD NEWS (21 August 2016)
"Now I AM going to gather the nations of every tongue, and they will witness MY glory, for I will perform a wonderful thing among them. Then I will send some of their survivors to the nations - Tarshish, Put, Lud, Moscheck, Rosh, Tubal, and Javan - to the distant islands where no one has ever heard of ME or seen MY glory. They will proclaim MY glory among the nations. They will bring your brothers from all the nations as an offering to YAHWEH on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, on camels to MY holy mountain in Jerusalem, says YAHWEH, just as the Israelites bring oblations in clean vessels to the house of YAHWEH. Then I will choose priests and Levites even from them, says YAHWEH." - Isaiah 66:18-21
(This announces the day when YAHWEH will conquer the pagan nations united against HIM, and that HE will then save them by gathering them. Few passages of the Bible express such a universal view of GOD's salvation given "to all the families of the earth." HE had promised it to Abraham, but people had been so obsessed with resentment and hatred among themselves, among villages and religions, that they hardly paid attention.
Be careful to understand the expression "I AM going to gather." We already saw in Isaiah 6:9 how the Jews spoke about GOD because they were convinced that GOD rules everything. When someone undertook something they would say that GOD had moved him to do it, and when someone was doing something evil that GOD would later use for his own ends, they would say that GOD had driven him. Here, "I AM going to gather" means "they will gather but I will use this to achieve the salvation of MY people."
The nations unite against Jerusalem as in the days of Sennacherib [see Isaiah 31:4-9] and they are defeated in a miraculous way: but this time, the survivors, witnesses of the miracle, will reveal the true GOD everywhere. They will be admitted to GOD's people and they will share the privileges of the Jews ["from among them I will take priests and Levites"].)
No comments:
Post a Comment