Covenanter Witness Vol. 53 - Rparchives.org

might, for that he is strong in power; not one fail-"Thus saith God the Lord, he that created theheavens and stretched them is the repeated apeth."out"me."pass."gold"sake."wanting,"ye not heard ? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? To what will ye liken God? Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, andmeted out heaven with the span, and comprehendedthe dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed themountains in scales, and the hills in a balance ? Whohath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or who was Hiscounsellor? Who taught Him judgment? Who taughtHim knowledge ? Who shewed Him the way of understanding. Behold the nations are as a drop in thebucket, and are accounted as the small dust of thebalance; behold he taketh up the isles as a verylittle thing. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of theearth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain andspreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in Lift upyour eyes on high, and behold who hath created thesethings, that bringeth out their host by number: hecalleth them all by names by the greatness of hispeal of Isaiah. How he must have meditated on thepowers of nature, and it gave him confidence in God ;and it is a privilege we can all enjoy.But it was not just God's power to do things,but his power to bring to pass the things He saysHe will do. We must keep in mind that Isaiah wastalking to the people of his own time who weresaturated with idolatry. To persuade them of thevanity of their heathen gods he challenged them toproduce a single instance where their idols had foretold anything that ever came to pass. "Who hathdeclared this from ancient time? Have not I theLord ? And there is no God else beside (45 :21b) "Remember the former things of old: for I amGod and there is none else; I am God and there isnone like me, declaring the end from the beginningand from ancient times the things that are notyet done, saying my counsel shall stand, and I willdo all my pleasureYea, I have spoken it, Iwill also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I willalso do it." (46:9-11). Isaiah boasts in his God butit is not idle boasting. The predicting God is a predictable God, because He has almighty Sovereignpower. When He says He will set judgment in theearth, it will come to pass.Isaiah's prediction He shall not fail was based on God's direct revelation to him. "For prophecycame not in old time by the will of man, but holymen of God spake as they were moved by the HolySpirit"(2 Pet. 1:21) But it was confirmed by hisobservation of God's power in creation, by God'scharacter that would not permit Him to lie, and alsoby personal experience.Prophecy Concerning AssyriaIn the days of Hezekiah Assyria was the Russiaof his day. For forty years Isaiah had been warningJudah that unless they repented Assyria would comeagainst them. Assyria had been growing in powerfor more than a thousand years. Their kings hadtaken over that modest title, "King of the Four-Quarters of the World." In 701 Senecharib came intopower and undertook to make good that title. Hehad crippled Babylon sufficiently that he could nowmove on Egypt and all the intervening countries.When he was ready to close in on Jerusalem hehad a very imposing group of notches on his gun,July 21, 1954Hamath, Arpad, Sephervaim, Hena, Ivah, Samaria,and just about all of Judah except Jerusalem itself,and his Rabshakeh was right outside the wall, breaking down the morale by boasting in the Jew's ownlanguage how many gods Sennacherib had subdued."And don't let Hezekiah deceive you, telling you totrust in Jehovah. Have any of the gods of othernations been able to deliver their nations ? I will giveyou 2000 horses if you can set riders on them. Howthen can you turn back the weakest company of ourarmy? Where are the gods of Hena and Iva andApad and Samaria? Sennacharib has them all in hisbag, and he will get your god too, for he is strongerthan God." There was enough truth in all his boasting propaganda to strike terror to every heart, andKing Hezekiah, like Abraham Lincoln, was driven tohis knees because there was no place else to go. Heshowed God the ultimatum, then sent it to Isaiah.The answer comes back: "Thus saith the Lord, theGod of Israel concerning Sennacherib, He shall notcome into the city, nor shoot an arrow there. Bythe way that he came, by the same shall he return.For I will defend this city for mine own sake andfor David's If Sennacherib's ultimatum wassarcastic, just listen to the answer: "The virgindaughter of Zion hath despised thee and laughedthee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hathshaken her head behind thy back. Whom hast thoudefied and blasphemed? against whom hast thouexalted thy voice and lifted up thine eyes on high?Against the Holy One of Israel. I declared all thesethings in ancient times, and now I have brought it toThen God moved one of his little pawns andSennacherib withdrew to fight Libnah: then Godmoved a knight, Tirhakah of Ethiopia, and Rabshakeh withdrew to fight him though it was only arumor, but shouting that he would be back. ThenGod moved His castle, and 185,000 Assyrians diedfrom a mysterious cause in a single night. And thecheck-mated king returned to his god Nishroch withshame, and was eventually slain by his own sons.That was the last time that Assyria ever botheredIsrael. Israel had sinned but God did not fail in Hiscovenant.Prophecy Concerning CyrusNow Isaiah looks down the vista of one hundredand fifty years. Assyria's star of empire has sunkin the west. Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar, "the headofas Daniel called him, became the aggressornation that subdued the kingdoms of the world, andcarried Judah into captivity along with the others.In the night of Belshazzar's cocktail party, the fingers of a hand wrote on the wall, "Thou art weighedand foundand the army of the Medesmoved in through the river channel and took possession. Historians disagree as to whether the Medeswere conquered by Cyrus the Persian, or whetherthe citizens of Babylon met this very popular generalwith a royal welcome, or whether the Medes werejust the spearhead of the Medo-Persian army thatentered and took Babylon, holding it until Cyrusarrived later. Cyrus was himself a miracle. Herose from being an obscure prince of a small stateto be ruler of Asia Minor and the Medes and Persiansand Babylon, and was universally satisfactory, andthe international hero of the Greeks, a just andmagnanimous ruler. Xenophon and Herodotus praisethis foreign conqueror for his character, but hedidn't measure up to the Hebrew standard. To Isaiah37