Godmindbody, Part 3, Chapter 3: Isaiah

The prophet Isaiah

Godmindbody: The Bible, Prophecy, Miracles and TMS Healing Explained

By Robert Ensor

Copyright © 2025 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.The author’s moral rights have been asserted.First Published September 2025.

All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible, which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist – merely a concerned layperson (!) – and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious and get proper care.

The full title is available free from this website. The book is available from amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ6MNZ2N. For part 1, see the link:

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Chapter 3: Isaiah

Isaiah was an 8^th century BC prophet, whose book was written during that time. He counselled the King of Judah during the Assyrian invasion. The name Isaiah literally means ‘Yahweh is salvation’. Very apt for a prophet whose mission was to proclaim in advance the Messiah, the saviour of humankind.[i] The Book of Isaiah is comprised of 66 chapters and over 25,000 words, spanning the old and new covenants, King Hezekiah’s crisis, prophecies of the Babylonian captivity, the End Times and both advents of the Messiah, in a spectacular microcosm of the Bible as a whole. Of all the Bible’s 66 books, Isaiah presents the toughest challenge for exegetes. It is a formidable non-chronological mixture of autobiography, songs of praise, social commentary, history and prophecy of events near and distant, that can only be properly comprehended in the light of subsequent Scripture, especially the Book of Revelation. Because Isaiah got so many predictions right, such as the exact name of Cyrus the Great, some scholars believe that later chapters of the book were written after the Babylonian captivity (which occurred in the 6^th century BC), and are therefore a history of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, but that is to vastly underestimate the power of prophecy, and miss the important eschatological content entirely.

Isaiah chapter 2 describes the Messianic kingdom and the ‘latter days’ (Isaiah 2:2). The latter days is another loose term for the eschatological period, often including the millennial kingdom and the tribulation, or a part thereof. Therefore, the prophecies here have not been fulfilled yet, as they lie in the future. This fact quickly becomes even more obvious. The ‘mountain of Yahweh’s house’ will be ‘established on top of the mountains’ and ‘above the hills’ (Isaiah 2:2). This will be Mount ‘Zion’ (Isaiah 2:3), the ‘holy mountain’ (Isaiah 11:9) from whence ‘the law will go out’ (Isaiah 2:3). The location of Mount Zion has shifted over the centuries. Initially, it was the City of David, which is now outside the old city walls of Jerusalem, just south of the Temple Mount (2 Samuel 5:7). This is the place the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah knew as Mount Zion. Later, the Temple Mount was called Zion. Nowadays, Mount Zion is understood to be the Western Hill, south of the old city’s Armenian Quarter (see the Maps and Images section). Zion can also mean Jerusalem or Israel generally. The holy mountain Isaiah refers to in this passage is an approximately 50 square mile plateau (Ezekiel 48) that will encompass all three places called Zion, the entire present city of Jerusalem, and much more land besides. In corroboration of Isaiah, the Prophet Ezekiel also foretold that a temple will be built on this mountain and that the millennial Jerusalem will be located on the south side of the plateau (Ezekiel 40:2).[ii]  ‘Yahweh’s house’ is the temple on the plateau (for more on the temple see Chapter 6: Daniel). It is unlikely that Zion will be the highest mountain on earth, taller than Everest, but it will be higher than the other surrounding hills, probably due to the earthquake that will cleave the Mount of Olives in two, as described in Zechariah 14. This height is symbolic of the authority of God’s mountain. Messianic law will be laid down on the holy mountain, as Moses received the Ten Commandments on Sinai. The Lord Jesus will live in the temple on the mountain and all the nations, including Gentiles, will journey to the mountain to worship God there, supplicate him, make offerings, and receive instruction.

‘He will judge between the nations’ (Isaiah 2:4); God will peacefully arbitrate disputes between peoples on this mountain. There won’t be any war until the very end of the millennium, when Gog of Magog and his allies will attack the Holy Land (Revelation 20:8; Ezekiel 38). Consequently, all weapons will be turned into farm equipment – ‘turn your swords into ploughshares’ – and there won’t be any more armies or military training (Isaiah 2:4). Isaiah went on to rebuke humanity for their idolatry and pride and foretell a day when they will be humbled and terrified, while Yahweh will be exalted. People are rebuked for trusting in ‘man’, rather than God (Isaiah 2:22). Indeed, a consistent message of the Bible is: ‘be sceptical of the world, and trust in God.’ Trusting in quack remedies over God is in itself a form of idolatry, as exhibited by the ritualistic behaviour associated with many so-called ‘healing’ modalities, and the deleterious effects of the often intense and dogmatic misplaced faith.

Isaiah 3 begins with a prophecy of doom: Yahweh will take away from Jerusalem all supplies of bread and water, and children shall be allowed to rule. The righteous will be okay (Isaiah 3:10), but ‘woe to the wicked!’ (Isaiah 3:11). The ‘peoples’ and the leadership of ‘his people’ will be judged by Yahweh when he comes (Isaiah 3:14). This tallies with Christ’s judgement of the kings of the earth when he returns in Revelation 19.

Isaiah also foretold that the ‘daughters of Zion’ (Isaiah 3:16) will be made bald and forced to wear sackcloth because of their pride. God’s judgement against the women of Zion included reducing the male population through war and other means to a ratio of one man for every seven women (Isaiah 4:1), indicating that the women won’t be the only sex punished, since more men than women will actually die. The women of Israel or Jerusalem (Zion can mean either) have not suffered mass baldness before. Therefore, this prophecy pertains to the future. Isaiah anticipates that the women will then beg God to take away their reproach (Isaiah 4:1), possibly as part of the broader national repentance prophesied by Moses. To many anglophone Christians, to repent means to feel guilty about some wrongdoing. But the Hebrew word teshuva, translated into English as ‘repent’, actually means a conscious decision to return to God and act accordingly.[iii]

Isaiah 4 refers to the Messiah as ‘Yahweh’s branch’ (Isaiah 4:2), i.e. a divine king who is an offshoot of God. This is Jesus, God’s Son. There will be Israeli survivors of the tribulation. All those who are left in Jerusalem and Zion will be holy and their names will be written in the book of life (Isaiah 4:3). The concept of the book of life is tied to the Feast of Trumpets, introduced during the Mosaic period. Every year, at the beginning of the ten-day window of divine judgement bookended by the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), three books are opened in heaven. The book of life contains the names of all those who are completely righteous, the book of death is for the completely sinful, and a third book contains the majority of Jews, who like most humans in general fall somewhere between these extremes.[iv] Therefore, the surviving Jewish ‘remnant’ (Micah 2:12) will be spiritually as well as physically saved. Isaiah then describes the glory of God’s visible manifestation over Mount Zion, ‘a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night’ (Isaiah 4:5), which is reminiscent of how the divine presence – the Shekinah glory – was described in previous books of the Bible, especially Exodus 13:21–22 and 2 Chronicles 7.

Isaiah chapter 6 begins with the prophet seeing a vision of God in the temple. Isaiah thinks he’s done for, because he has ‘unclean’ (Isaiah 6:5) lips and is terrified of God, but an angel comes along and touches a smouldering coal to his mouth, which purifies Isaiah and is symbolic of his sins being forgiven (Isaiah 6:7). Then God asks, ‘who shall I send?’ (Isaiah 6:8). In a spirit of obedience, Isaiah volunteers to be a prophet. What happens to Isaiah in this episode is a microcosm of what will occur to the surviving remnant of Israel, and Gentiles around the world, during the tribulation; an experience of holy terror leading to repentance, divine forgiveness and a commitment to serving God. This part of Isaiah is further evidence that such eschatological prophecies are applicable to individuals as well as collectives, though the primary literal meaning of the text is about global, regional and national scale events. Unfortunately, most people do not want to learn the truth and serve God unless they are forced to appeal to him by suffering and extreme circumstances, as I did during my illness. God then describes the coming judgement of Israel, with cities laid waste and only the holy remaining as a ‘stump’ (Isaiah 6:3), that will grow again. This period of divine judgement is known as the Great Tribulation.

Those who believe prophecy is impossible or purely symbolic are referred to Isaiah 7:14, ‘the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the Virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,’ which correctly predicted the miraculous conception of Jesus, centuries before it came to pass (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel means ‘God is with us’, an accurate description of Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, and one of his names. Jesus is the English (by way of Greek and Latin) form of the Hebrew name Yeshua, which appropriately enough means salvation, salvation from God, or God saves.[v] It really couldn’t be more obvious. Scholars have argued that the Hebrew word almah means a young woman of marriageable age, not necessarily a virgin, and that the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy as a whole was about King Hezekiah. But in that society the word almah was used to mean a virgin. The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible written long before the birth of Jesus,[vi] translated almah as parthenos, which generally means virgin.[vii] Moreover, the article ha used before the word almah means ‘the virgin’, distinguishing her from other virgins,[viii] in the same way that Mary is The Virgin, the archetype of female purity. Furthermore, the virgin passage is immediately preceded by ‘the Lord himself will give you a sign’: the pregnancy of a young woman who is not a virgin is not a miracle or divine portent of great events, but a virgin birth certainly is. That fact alone ought to settle the argument. But if further evidence is needed, the prophecy was addressed to the ‘house of David’ (Isaiah 7:13), to which Mary, Joseph and Jesus belonged by descent (Matthew 1:2–17).

The consummation of this prophecy is found in Luke 1, when the angel came to Mary and announced that, though a virgin, the Holy Spirit would come to her, and she would give birth to a son, and call him Jesus, who would be known as the Son of God, and be given the throne of David, and an endless kingdom. Mary assented, saying, ‘let it be done according to your word.’ (Luke 1:38). When Mary was found to be pregnant before she and Joseph had been together, Joseph wanted to end the betrothal secretly, so as not to shame her (Matthew 1:18–19). But then an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to yourself Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20). And it was explained that this was the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the virgin birth. (Matthew 1:21–23). Joseph awoke and took Mary to wife, and didn’t know her sexually until after Jesus was born (Matthew 1:25). The virgin birth was also the consummation of the prophecy ‘Yahweh has sworn to David in truth’, ‘“I will set the fruit of your body on your throne.’” (Psalm 132:11). The original Hebrew word בִטְנְךָ translated ‘body’ in the WEB, can also mean belly, stomach or womb.[ix] This word was used instead of, ‘the fruit of your loins’, to signify that the eternal king would be conceived by a virgin woman, without a human father.[x]

‘He shall eat butter and honey when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good’ (Isaiah 7:15), because it concerns the aforementioned Messiah born of a virgin, is further evidence that Jesus’ abilities and wisdom developed over time and that his baptism in the Holy Spirit by the honey eating John (Mark 1:6) was a crucial event, marking the beginning of his public ministry as the Messiah, though he may have previously performed some miracles in private, and as the Word all prior miracles went through him. Isaiah 7:15 is also consonant with Jesus’ ministry beginning in his forties (more on this later), because it implies a gestation period. Choosing the good over the evil is a reference back to Jesus’ past life as Adam, who ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genes 2:17).In chapter 9, Isaiah foretold a Jewish boy who is destined to be a Messianic king: ‘the government will be on his shoulders’ (Isaiah 9:6). He is given the names, ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.’ (Isaiah 9:6). He will sit on the Davidic throne, in fulfilment of the Davidic covenant, and is therefore a descendant of David (Isaiah 9:7). Later in the chapter, God promised to send Syrians (Isaiah 9:12) against Israel and ‘burn’ the land for the people’s sins (Isaiah 9:19). This is a reference to the Syrians who conquered Israel and besieged Jerusalem in Isaiah’s day (the 8^th century BC), and a latter-day invasion of Israel.

In Isaiah 10 God again promised to send Assyrians against Israel, and to humble the King of Syria in his turn. ‘It will come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel and those who have escaped from the house of Jacob’ (Isaiah 10:20) will rely no more on hostile nations but will put their faith and trust in God. The phrase ‘in that day’ places the prophecy mainly in the Day of the Lord, also translated the day of Yahweh, a term for the coming of the Messiah, that may be meant as the literal 24 hour window in which Jesus reappears and in a looser sense as the entire eschatological period, or parts thereof, as shall be demonstrated throughout this book. This is due to the ambiguity of the Hebrew word ‘yom’, which can mean either 24 hours, daylight hours or a more general timeframe, depending on the context.[xi] However, the most common meaning of yom is a 24-hour day or daylight hours. In the above cited instance, Isaiah was referring to the specific moment on the day when the Israeli remnant will call upon God for help. There may however be a secondary, broader sense of yom in 10:20 because for the 1,000-year Messianic kingdom on earth Israel will not need to rely on hostile nations, and they won’t even have enemies. The hostile nations Isaiah had in view are probably the land of Edom in which the remnant will seek refuge (Micah 2:12; Isaiah 63:2) and the Antichrist’s alliance in relation to his false ‘covenant’ (Daniel 9:27) promise of protection. It may also be an allusion to Israel’s unreliable political allies in the 8^th century BC.

Isaiah 11 described the Messiah as a descendant of Jesse, David’s father, ‘a branch out of his roots’ (Isaiah 11:1). Jesse was the ancestor of Jesus (Matthew 1; Luke 3:32). ‘Yahweh’s spirit will rest on him’ (Isaiah 11:2) described Jesus’ reception of the Holy Spirit, that was associated with his baptism in the River Jordan (Matthew 3). This was his ‘anointing’ in spirit, rather than oil, though he was later anointed with ointment (Luke 7), and with perfume for burial (John 12:1–8). The Messiah is described as being just, not judging things by appearances but by their true worth (Isaiah 11:3), a fitting description of Jesus, who had as much or even more time and respect for fishermen, little children, lepers, known sinners, outcast tax collectors and the poor as he did for the powerful magnates of that time. Anyone who is tired of being judged or underestimated by the superficial standards of the world should know that their true worth is seen by Christ, one of his many qualifications for the position of humanity’s judge. Another qualification is that as ‘the Son of Man’, he experienced the human form and was himself judged by humans prior to the Crucifixion. He will fully understand the meaning and weight of the sentences he will pass.

Even animals will be peaceful with one another in the Messianic kingdom, due to the removal of demonic influence – ‘the wolf will live with the lamb’ (Isaiah 11:6) – and snakes will no longer be dangerous (Isaiah 11:8). The latter is symbolic of the curtailment of Satanic influence for the millennium (Revelation 20). ‘The earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea’ means that hidden divine knowledge will be publicly revealed and ubiquitous in the Kingdom of God (Isaiah 11:9). Teaching this knowledge will be the primary duty of the new priesthood.

The Gentiles will journey to see the ‘root of Jesse’ (Jesus) in person (Isaiah 11:10). God will also gather Israel to him ‘the second time’ from ‘Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros’ ‘Elam’, ‘Shinar’, ‘Hamath’ and ‘the islands of the sea’ (Isaiah 11:11). Pathros denotes Upper Egypt.[xii] Elam was an ancient state located in the west of modern-day Iran.[xiii] Shinar was in what is today Iraqi territory, including the site of ancient Babylon.[xiv] Hamath was an ancient name for the city of Hama, currently situated in Syria. The islands of the sea probably means the Aegean islands, the Americas, the United Kingdom and other continents and islands across the sea from Israel where Jewish people have resided and will reside. These locations are significant for several reasons. Firstly, the prophet was not writing of the return of the Judeans[xv] from their Babylonian captivity in the 6^th century BC, because that was not a worldwide restoration. Historically, Jews have only been regathered from all of the locations listed above once before, in the 20th century, especially after the foundation of Israel in 1948, which constitutes the fulfilment of the first part of the Isaiah 11:11 prophecy. Therefore, the description of the regathering in Isaiah as the ‘second’ worldwide one allows us to securely place this event in the future End Times. Some Christians see the return of the Jews to Israel in the 20^th century as a regathering without belief[xvi] – polls reveal that significant percentages of Israelis are secular and non-Christian[xvii] – ahead of the Great Tribulation, that will lead to another ‘dispersion’ at the behest of the Antichrist and a second global homecoming[xviii]. Pathros, Elam, Shinar and Hamath are places the Jews will leave during the final regathering, and though that does not necessarily mean they will be members of the Antichrist’s alliance, elsewhere in Scripture (Isaiah 19; Isaiah 30; Isaiah 48; Daniel 11; Ezekiel 38:5) they are catalogued as being under the Antichrist – some of them involuntarily – potentially enabling us to glimpse the makeup of that empire. This second worldwide regathering forecasted by Isaiah will be the fulfilment of the many prophecies, starting with Moses’, of a final return of the Jews.

There will be harmony between Israel and Judah, which was not always the case following the split into two kingdoms after Solomon’s death in the 10^th century BC. Together, Isaiah wrote, they will ‘extend their power’ over Edom, Moab, the Philistines and Ammon (Isaiah 11:14). Edom,[xix] Moab[xx] and Ammon were ancient nations whose ancestral lands were in the south and west of what is now Jordan.

The ‘tongue of the Egyptian sea’, i.e., the Gulf of Suez, will be dried up (Isaiah 11:15), and the Nile will be reduced to seven streams that can be crossed on foot. This is highly reminiscent of Yahweh parting the Red Sea for the Israelites in Exodus 14. A ‘highway for the remnant’ will be established for the surviving Jews to journey back to Jerusalem from Assyria (Isaiah 11:16).

In Isaiah 12, Israel sang a song of praise for their deliverance by God, indicating their new millennial role as a nation of priests who proclaim God’s goodness to the nations: ‘let this be known in all the earth’ (Isaiah 12:5). People will draw water out of the ‘wells of salvation’ (Isaiah 12:3), which is the same as the ‘living water’ of Jesus; in other words, the Spirit of God.

Isaiah goes on to describe an army of ‘consecrated ones’ and nations being mustered for battle (Isaiah 13:3). Angels were always sacred, but the word consecration usually applies to something that was once not sacred, but has been made holy (like all Christian converts and church property). This must therefore be the saints, who are part of the heavenly host after the angels gather them together ‘from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other’ (Matthew 24:31) for that very purpose. The elect, a group of 144,000 eschatological Christians from the 12 tribes of Israel (Revelation 7), are generally synonymous with these saints. Not that God needs any help, but to have the opportunity to participate in the Campaign of Armageddon (Jesus’ war against the Antichrist on the day of his return)[xxi] is one of the reasons why the chosen will be raptured, only to descend again shortly thereafter; the rapture is a gathering together of a division of the heavenly army, in their newly acquired immortal bodies. Therefore, the final battle will not be dangerous for them. Rather, it will be an opportunity for them to cathartically vent their righteous indignation against the Antichrist. The army ‘comes from a far country, from the uppermost part of heaven, even Yahweh’ (Isaiah 13:5), further indicating that at least part of this army is the heavenly host, including angels and the Son of Man, descending from heaven to do battle. Although in a sense all of the elect will be from God, too. But the elect will not come against the city, Babylon; we know from elsewhere in Scripture that they will fight alongside Jesus against the Antichrist, the leader of eschatological Babylon (Revelation 17), at Jerusalem (Zechariah 14). The two routs may be mixed in this chapter because both involve the destruction of people from Babylon, and the burden of Babylon is not restricted to that city.

The war in Isaiah 13 does not sound like any historical destruction of Babylon. Indeed, it sounds like there will be a coalition of heavenly and earthly forces arrayed against Babylon, the kingdom of the Antichrist, as God said to Isaiah: ‘I will stir up the Medes against them’ (Isaiah 13:17). The Medo-Persian Empire defeated Babylon under Cyrus the Great in the 6^th century BC, but that was mainly Persia’s doing, since they were dominant at that time, and Cyrus was Persian. Media and Persia were sometimes used interchangeably due to their geographical proximity and merged empire, but when Cyrus took Babylon, there was not the mass slaughter described in the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah. On the contrary, the city was taken without a fight. In conjunction with the references to an unprecedented army of angels and holy ones intervening in earthly affairs, we must therefore conclude that a future, eschatological war is in view here, not a historical one. In Revelation (17), the Antichrist and his subordinate kings together sack Babylon. These ‘Medes’, then, may be part of the Antichrist’s alliance or an external force attacking that alliance.

The troops of God’s enemy will be so terrified that the battle will be as good as over before it has begun. ‘Therefore all hands will be feeble and everyone’s heart will melt.’ (Isaiah 13:7). This is all part of the ‘day of Yahweh’, ‘the day of his fierce anger’ and ‘wrath’ (Isaiah 13:13). The stars will not give their light, and the sun and moon will be darkened (Isaiah 13:10), a part of the prophecy echoed by Daniel 7:12, Zechariah 14:6–7 and Jesus in his Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30); the Day of the Lord is generally described as a day of darkness and clouds. In Revelation 19, shortly after this reappearance, Jesus defeats the Antichrist. This leads me to believe that in the context of Isaiah 13, the Day of the Lord and God’s wrath denote the actual 24-hour day on which Jesus reappears. After all, it seems unlikely that the whole seven year tribulation period will be so dark, but a day or a few days of darkness is entirely plausible.

Isaiah prophesied that the ‘whole land’ will be destroyed (Isaiah 13:5). This may mean the Antichrist’s kingdom of Babylon, since the context of the chapter is ‘the burden of Babylon’ (Isaiah 13:1) and we know from elsewhere in the Bible that Babylon is the Antichrist’s capital (Revelation 17;18; Isaiah 14:4; Ezekiel 30:24), and that it is doomed (Revelation 18:2). But the Hebrew word āres or erets can denote land, earth, a region, country, territory or the entire planet, and HaAretz usually means the land of Israel;[xxii] these nuances are not conveyed by the English words ‘the earth’. Please bear this potential translational issue in mind whenever you see ‘the earth’ in the Old Testament.

There are numerous theories about Babylon’s location, with Rome, Babylon and Jerusalem suggested as candidates by exegetes. In Isaiah 13 the literal Babylon on the Euphrates is in view, since it is described as ‘the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride’ (Isaiah 13:9). The Chaldeans were the ancient Babylonians, who were prouder of their own capital city than Jerusalem, and had never even heard of Rome. After this outpouring of divine wrath, people will become rarer than ‘fine gold.’ (Isaiah 13:12). They will flee back to their own countries in an effort to escape the slaughter. This flight from Babylon evokes Revelation 18:4, also pertaining to a city named Babylon the great: ‘“Come out of her, my people, that you have no participation in her sins, and that you don’t receive her plagues’ (Revelation 18:4) and recalls the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1–10, the centre of an early, unified empire ruled by King Nimrod. God, seeing their pride, and power, gave them different languages, so they could no longer understand each other, and the peoples were scattered across the earth. Like the capital of the Babylonian Empire, the Babel in Genesis was located in the Mesopotamian region of Shinar.[xxiii]

After this violent sacking, Babylon ‘will never be inhabited’ and will be an abode of wild animals, including goats (Isaiah 13:20). The Hebrew seirim means he-goat, but in some contexts may be interpreted as a satyr-like demonic goat.[xxiv] Revelation also predicts that Babylon will become a residence of ‘unclean spirits’ and unclean birds (Revelation 18:2). Babylon currently is a series of archaeological ruins south of Baghdad; nobody lives there permanently anymore, and there are wild animals in the surrounding desert, so this prophecy has had its near fulfilment (Isaiah definitely wrote centuries before the historical desolation of Babylon), but awaits the final fulfilment in the eschatological Babylon, which must be rebuilt in order to be repeatedly described as a great city. But it is no easy thing to build or rebuild a city from scratch; it usually takes decades. In a world racked by tribulation catastrophes, one would presume that Babylon would be even harder to build. Isaiah 13 concludes with the prophet promising that ‘her days will not be prolonged.’ (Isaiah 13:22). It will be a rapid destruction, as one would expect with the heavenly host, the Son of Man and earthly armies coming in force with all the fierce and awesome wrath of God.

Isaiah 14 tells of Israel being restored to their land. ‘The peoples will take them and bring them to their place’ (Isaiah 14:2) means that Gentile survivors will help the Israeli remnant return to the Promised Land one last time, presumably by providing aid, food, water, protection, transport and directions. If these Jewish people need help from Gentiles, then they are almost certainly not in immortal, glorified bodies at that point. Ergo, not all of the Jewish remnant will be raptured, but they will be saved. Furthermore, it also implies that some Gentile countries will be in good enough condition to provide foreign aid to the remnant. The text describes the Gentiles as being Israel’s ‘servants’ in the Messianic kingdom (Isaiah 14:2). Isaiah prophesied that the Israelis will take captive and rule over those Gentile nations ‘whose captives they were’ (Isaiah 14:2) in the tribulation period. In the aftermath of any conflict, one would expect war criminals from the losing side to be imprisoned and/or given some form of community service, as was the case after World War Two. But that doesn’t mean all Gentiles will be the captives of Israel. Babylon is referred to as ‘the golden city’, which has ceased (Isaiah 14:4). This is further evidentiary support for the idea that the eschatological Babylon is Babylon, not somewhere else, because ancient Babylon was famously covered in gold. Isaiah wrote that the ‘staff of the wicked’ (Isaiah 14:5) is broken – possibly the inspiration for Gandalf telling Saruman, ‘your staff is broken’ in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – and the authority of the corrupt rulers is destroyed after their unrestrained, angry persecution of Israel and ‘the peoples’, implying that the Gentiles under the ‘king of Babylon’ (Isaiah 14:4) will also be discontent with his tyranny. Although certain nations and territories are listed as belonging to the Antichrist’s alliance in this book, that doesn’t mean that all or even most of the people in those lands will support him voluntarily; in fact, the Bible suggests otherwise on several occasions, and Isaiah 14:4 is one of them.

The souls of the rulers of Babylon will be condemned to Sheol (Isaiah 14:9;11), the ancient Hebrew word for the underworld, the realm of the dead. The Hebrew concept of Sheol did not necessarily imply a place of punishment like the Christian idea of Hell, a later theological invention that blurred the line between the underworld and Revelation’s (19) lake of fire. The ‘lake of fire’ (Revelation 20:14) is a physical location – Gehenna – that will become a literal lake of fire through geographical changes in the course of the tribulation. Being thrown in the fire means nothing less than the ‘second death’ (Revelation 20:14), complete destruction of the soul and the resurrected body. This is distinct from the underworld or Sheol, which is simply a temporary holding cell for the deceased souls of the unsaved. If souls remain in the underworld until Judgement Day, they will be cast in the fire. To avoid confusion, when I use the words Hades or Hell in this book, I generally mean Sheol, the underworld. Isaiah 14:9 is similar to the prophecy (Revelation 19:20–21) that the ‘beast’ – the Antichrist – and the False Prophet will be thrown into the lake of fire, and ‘the rest were killed’ shortly after Christ’s return in glory with the heavenly host. So whilst the Antichrist and False Prophet will be totally annihilated, the other rulers and their underlings will be executed and sent to Hell to await the Last Judgement.

Isaiah 14:12 describes one ‘son of the dawn’ who fell from heaven, wanted to make himself like the most high God, and made boastful, blasphemous remarks, but was instead brought down to the depths of Sheol. This is the dragon of Revelation (12:9), Satan. We know this because one of Satan’s names is ‘the morning star’ and he is a fallen angel. People wonder at this being, asking ‘is this the man who made the earth to tremble, who shook kingdoms’ (Isaiah 14:6). The confusing mixture of this figure’s demonic and human characteristics can be reconciled if we understand that Satan will incarnate in the person of the Antichrist, and both will be judged.

Returning to Isaiah 14, the people stare at the corpse of either the Antichrist or another evil ruler under him, which will not receive a burial because, ‘you destroyed your land’ and ‘your people.’ (Isaiah 14:20). Again, this implies that the Antichrist will not only be a menace to the Jews, but will attack his own people, which may explain why the ‘beast’ – a term for the Antichrist – and his kings are prophesied to turn on the personification of Babylon (Revelation 17:16); the Antichrist will sack his own capital. Everyone marvels that one so powerful is a rotting corpse, because at one point he was powerful and many mistakenly believed him to be divine. This passage describes the condition of the Antichrist’s corpse – he will be killed ‘by the manifestation’ (2 Thessalonians 2:8) of Christ’s coming. The way to make sense of these passages is that the Antichrist was killed quickly in the battle against the Messiah and his body will be resurrected to be cast alive into the lake of fire, as a punishment. In Isaiah 14:21 the children of Babylon, or the children of the rulers of Babylon, are then killed, lest they rise up seeking vengeance in the future, an instance of the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons.

In Isaiah chapters 15 and 16, a judgement is pronounced against Moab. The Moabites are exhorted not to betray ‘the fugitive!’ and to ‘be a hiding place for him from the face of the destroyer!’ (Isaiah 16:4). It is thus implied that the remnant of Israel will seek refuge or safe passage in Moab.

In Isaiah chapter 19, the prophet announced the judgement of Egypt: there will be civil war and the Egyptians will be given into the hand of a ‘cruel lord.’ (Isaiah 19:4). Egypt has endured civil wars and cruel kings many times in its history, notably in the period leading up to the Roman conquest of Egypt, but Isaiah wrote that the waters of Egypt’s rivers will become foul and ‘the river’ will dry up (Isaiah 19:5). The fouling of the waters of Egypt by divine judgement is reminiscent of the first plague of Egypt which turned the Nile to blood (Exodus 7:20). In the Egyptian context, ‘the river’ probably means the Nile, the biggest and most famous river in Egypt, and the source of much of that country’s agricultural and economic activity. Though the river is presently in decline, the Nile has never dried up in recorded history, indicating a future, last days fulfilment. The ‘cruel lord’ is therefore the Antichrist or one of his underlings. Again, this verse (19:4) implies that many in Egypt will not want to be ruled by the Antichrist. The reference to the rivers turning foul is echoed in Revelation 8:11, when the star Wormwood crashes into earth and contaminates a third of the world’s waters, and Revelation 16, which describes rivers and springs being turned to blood. John referred back to Isaiah 19 because he was describing the same episode as his predecessor. The Hebrew prophet went on to predict that Egypt will eventually appeal to God because of oppression (probably by the ‘cruel lord’ who is the Antichrist), and God will send them a ‘saviour’ (Isaiah 19:20). There will also be a highway connecting Egypt, Israel and Assyria in a kind of shared economic zone (Isaiah 19:23–24). Historically, the highway linking these lands was the Via Maris, which ceased to connect them in 1948.

Isaiah then takes the perspective of a watchman who declares, ‘fallen, fallen is Babylon’ (Isaiah 21:9). This is chiefly significant because the line is echoed in Revelation 18:2: ‘fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.’ By this repetition, John clearly intended to establish the identity of Isaiah’s Babylon with ‘Babylon the Great’ in his book. Although the cities share the same name, John/Jesus foresaw potential future confusion about the identity of Revelation’s Babylon, and inserted clues for attentive readers. And since Isaiah’s Babylon is the Babylon on the Euphrates, this strengthens the case for a literal reading of Revelation’s Babylon.

In 21:11, God announced via Isaiah that in Dumah, there will be night even in the morning, a recurring theme associated with the Day of the Lord in Scripture. Now, there have been solar eclipses, but they generally only last for a maximum of a few minutes. There have also been volcanic eruptions that darkened the sun for lengthy periods in the Middle East, like the one in 536 AD,[xxv] but I have not found anyone who seriously believes that Isaiah was prophesying about that event. These descriptions of a ‘day of darkness’ are therefore a further clue that the events Isaiah outlined in chapter 21 still lie in the future.

There is some confusion about where exactly Isaiah meant by Dumah. It may be in Judah, modern Saudia Arabia or the Seir region of Jordan.[xxvi] In support of the site within Saudia Arabia, the next verses of Isaiah describe ‘the burden on Arabia’ (Isaiah 21:13). Regardless of the precise location, all of the specific places that Isaiah wrote about as facing God’s judgements in the form of natural catastrophes are in the Middle East. Taken together with geographical indicators in other books of the Bible, this suggests pretty strongly that the End Times judgements, though global in impact, will be concentrated on the Middle East, partly because that is where the Antichrist’s empire will be located.

God then announced that ‘in that day’ – a phrase typically indicating the End Times or the day of the Messiah’s appearance – he will commit the government into the hand of Eliakim son of Hilkiah (Isaiah 22:20), who will be a father to the Jerusalemites and the house of Judah (Isaiah 22:21). Eliakim was the prime minister of King Hezekiah of Judah, so that was a near-fulfilment. The implication may be that Eliakim will be reincarnated for the eschaton, possibly prior to Jesus’ coming, since after the Parousia Jesus will be head of the government. Alternatively, Eliakim could be the leader of Judah’s allotment or Ezekiel’s ‘prince’ under King Jesus, who will co-rule the entire Promised Land and the whole world. Eliakim was prophesied to be given the ‘key to David’s house’, the power to open and shut the doors (Isaiah 22:22). To determine whether someone can enter David’s house is to determine whether they can be given the blood of David’s descendant, Jesus, and thereby belong to that house through him. Peter was given a similar authority in relation to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:9); the future Eliakim could be Pope, Zechariah’s (6:13) ‘priest’.

In chapter 24:2, Isaiah foretells a destruction and emptiness affecting all social classes and trades in the ‘earth’. The ‘world’ will languish and fade away, and the ‘earth’ will be ‘polluted’, because ‘the earth’ broke God’s ‘everlasting covenant’ (Isaiah 24:4–5). Again, the Hebrew ha-aretz translated as ‘the earth’ in Isaiah 24 does not necessarily mean the whole earth; in fact, it usually denotes the land of Israel. ‘The world’ on the other hand, is a translation from the Hebrew תֵּבֵל (teval or tebel),[xxvii] which means the ordered, habitable world, implying that while Israel will receive the brunt of the tribulation, it will in fact be global. Unlike Israel, the Gentile world was never bound by the covenant of Moses, but Jesus’ New Covenant (Luke 22:30) was preached to the whole world, it is everlasting in that it leads to eternal life, and it is unobserved by the majority of humanity today. The world was also bound by the Noachin Covenant, in which God promised not to destroy all flesh by another flood, but man was expected to be fruitful and multiply, avoid consuming blood and punish murder by death (Genesis 9). Humanity obviously broke this covenant by drinking blood and abolishing capital punishment in some places, but while the Noachin covenant has been in effect for millennia, unlike the covenant of Jesus’ blood, it is technically not ‘everlasting’, as it will be outmoded in the new earth when there is no marriage (Matthew 22:30) and therefore no childbirth, as well as no death and therefore no capital punishment.

‘The inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left’ (Isaiah 24:6). ‘The confused city’, possibly Babylon or Jerusalem, comes in for a hard time (Isaiah 24:10). Houses are shut up, so that no one can come in. ‘The earth is utterly broken.’ (Isaiah 24:19). ‘The earth will stagger like a drunken man.’ (Isaiah 24:20). This sounds a lot like the massive earthquake in the bowl judgements of Revelation 16:18 and Jerusalem as the ‘cup of reeling’ to the ‘surrounding peoples’ in Zechariah 12:2. ‘It will happen in that day’ that God will ‘punish the armies of the high ones on high’ – which must be Satan’s fallen angels – and ‘the kings of the earth on earth.’ (Isaiah 24:21). The kings of the earth are the Antichrist and his ten subordinate kings mentioned in Daniel 7:24 and Revelation 17. The use of ‘in that day’ by Isaiah in the above context refers to the 24-hour day of Christ’s reappearance and/or the period of judgement after Christ’s descent, before the kingdom is officially inaugurated and open for entry. Again, Isaiah distinguishes between two categories of beings who will be judged after the end of the tribulation: the mortal and the demonic. Both groups will be imprisoned in the pit – Hell – and after ‘many days they will be visited.’ (Isaiah 24:22). The demonic fallen angels are not exempt from punishment because they exert a negative influence on humanity, tempting them to sin and causing suffering. They dominate the minds of most humans without them even knowing it and, although that is no excuse for humanity’s misdeeds, the fallen ones will also be held accountable for their shenanigans. The ‘many days’ are the thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20:4 during which the Messiah will reign. At the end of this millennium, Satan and the minions of the Antichrist other than the False Prophet (who by then will have already been destroyed) will face the ‘great white throne’ judgement and be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11).

In chapter 25, the surviving people of Israel praise God for delivering them during the tribulation and destroying the Antichrist’s city. God throws a giant feast on his holy mountain for the homecoming survivors, probably on one of the feast days of the Jewish calendar, as we know that the Feast of Booths[xxviii] will be mandatory for the nations that attacked Jerusalem during the millennium (Zechariah 14:16). This feast could well be the ‘marriage supper of the Lamb’ written of in Revelation 19:9 and Matthew 25:10. The people at the feast praise God for destroying the ‘covering that covers all peoples’ and the ‘veil that is spread’ over all the nations (Isaiah 25:7). My favoured interpretation: this is the veil that prevented the world from seeing the truth, removed with the imprisonment or destruction of the deceiver. Alternatively, the veil and covering could be symbols for sorrow and indeed for death, in light of what comes next…

‘He has swallowed up death forever!’ (Isaiah 25:8). Here we have the inception of the ‘victory over sin and death’ idea spoken of by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:56–57. Given the proclamation that death is gone ‘forever’, and the lack of any delimitation of death’s disappearance, Isaiah 25:8 is about the point in time after which nobody will die, when the Last Judgement is finished, and Death and Hades have been cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14). It follows that Isaiah must be writing about the eternal state, the New Jerusalem on the new earth, although a dual prophecy encompassing feasting in the millennial kingdom is possible. God then promises to take the ‘reproach’ away from ‘his people’ (Isaiah 25:8): Israel. In other words, the Mosaic Covenant curses, that Moses predicted would be invoked by his people, will be lifted from Israel following the remnant’s collective turning to God, which is forecasted to occur at or near the end of the tribulation period, suggesting that the millennial kingdom and the eternal kingdom of the New Jerusalem are being blurred together in these passages of Isaiah, since both are similarly idyllic. The inclusion of the millennial kingdom and the end of the tribulation within the scope of this chapter is further corroborated by ‘it shall be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God! We have waited for him, and he will save us!”’ (Isaiah 25:9). Israel is prophesied to be physically and spiritually saved coterminous with the appearance of the Messiah just before the millenium.

Isaiah 26 is the song of salvation. It describes righteous people who kept ‘faith’ (Isaiah 26:2) – presumably during the tribulation – being allowed into Jerusalem. By contrast the lofty city has been brought low, trodden down by the poor and the needy (Isaiah 26:5). It is unclear where exactly the lofty city is. Maybe ‘lofty’ indicates the arrogance of future Babylon, rather than its topography, because Babylon is not very high above sea level. Although, historical Babylon did have high ziggurats, especially Etemananki, which was believed to be approximately 91 metres tall.[xxix] The underlying purpose of the tribulation is given in verse 9: ‘when your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants learn righteousness.’ The divine judgements – the earthquakes, wars, famines – will create such fear that the people of the earth will turn to God for protection. One of God’s objectives with the tribulation is to bring an end to sin.[xxx] Even so, the wicked still don’t ‘learn righteousness’ (Isaiah 26:9); in fact, some people will turn against God because of the tribulation, as Revelation 16:21 makes plain. During that time, atheism will no longer be as popular as it is now. Instead, the world will be split into those who worship the Antichrist, and those who take the judgements for what they are: as a signal to repent and seek refuge in God. Verse 15 praises God for expanding Israel’s borders (the land promised to Abraham is significantly larger than the current State of Israel). But if the borders of ‘the nation’ have increased, there must have been a nation before the increase, and that nation is the present State of Israel. ‘They poured out a prayer when your chastening was on them’ (Isaiah 26:16) means that the surviving Israelis prayed to God for deliverance during the tribulation. The result of this prayer will be the physical and spiritual salvation of the remnant of the nation. The suffering of Israel in the tribulation is likened to the birth pangs of a pregnant woman that resulted only in ‘wind’ (Isaiah 26:18), until the Day of the Lord, which is the delivery, and the deliverance. This is an early biblical comparison of the tribulation to ‘birth pains’, a metaphor later used by Jesus in his Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:8). The intensity and frequency of birth pains increase over time during a pregnancy.

‘Your dead shall live; their dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust.’ (Isaiah 26:19). This is an early reference to the mass resurrection of the dead described by Paul (1 Thessalonians 4), Daniel (12:2) and John (Revelation 20:5).

Isaiah enjoins people to ‘enter into your rooms and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourself for a little moment, until the indignation is past.’ (Isaiah 26:20). The above verse is an allusion to a short period of time immediately prior to the Lord’s coming, during which Jesus told believers not to ‘go out’ (Matthew 24:26). This episode may be the ‘three days of darkness’ spoken of by Catholic mystics and saints, who implored people not to go out of their houses or look outside until God’s wrath – in the form of earthquakes and pestilence – is past and Jesus returns on the third day.[xxxi] Three days or one day would better fit with ‘a little while’ than the three and a half years the woman symbolising Israel must hide from the dragon in Revelation 12. This eschatological interpretation is reminiscent of the first Passover, in which the Israelites were told to hide in their houses, while the Lord was abroad slaughtering the firstborns of all in Egypt who were not protected by the blood of sacrificial lambs on their door posts and lintels (Exodus 12).

‘In that day, Yahweh will…punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, and Leviathan, the twisting serpent; and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.’ (Isaiah 27:1). Leviathan is associated with Satan in Judeo-Christian theology. Similarly, John referred to Satan as ‘the dragon’ in Revelation 12 and the Antichrist as ‘the beast coming up out of the sea’ (Revelation 13:1), indicating that Isaiah was writing about the destruction not only of Satan in 27:1, but of his puppet, too.

The vineyard of Israel will be fruitful under the Lord’s management (Isaiah 27:2–5). ‘It will happen in that day that a great trumpet will be blown’ (Isaiah 27:12) and then the Jews will return from Assyria and Egypt to meet Yahweh on his holy mountain. Indeed, the arrival of the Lord on earth is often described as occurring with the sounding of a trumpet (e.g. Exodus 19:16;1 Thessalonians 4:16). References to ‘trumpet’, therefore, indicate the precise time of God’s appearance. The Jews being gathered to Zion from Assyria and Egypt has two meanings: the elect, who in some way belong to the 12 tribes (Revelation 7), will be raptured to meet Yahweh; and the non-elect Jewish survivors will be gathered from Assyria and Egypt by more conventional means after the Second Coming.

Isaiah 28:15 presents Israel’s covenant with death and Sheol, which some have taken to mean their future ‘covenant’ (Daniel 9:27) or peace treaty with the Antichrist out of a desire for security from the ‘overwhelming scourge’. God foretold that their ‘covenant with death’ will not stand (Isaiah 28:18). This is a message that a remnant of Israel will be given eternal life, in breach of the covenant with death signed by Adam and Eve, and that whatever Danielic ‘covenant’ Israel may enter into with the Antichrist will be voided. It is also worth noting that in Isaiah’s day, Israel sought safety from the Assyrians in an alliance with Egypt, that did not protect them. It may be an exaggeration to present ancient Egypt as death, however. Whatever this covenant is, it will backfire, and the overflowing scourge will enter in anyway, indicating an invasion of Israel, that will be compounded by divine judgements.

Then God makes the point that ploughing eventually comes to an end and is followed by sowing (Isaiah 28:24). The ploughing is the tribulation, in which the earth is upended, and the sowing is the millennial kingdom that follows, for it is a kingdom age in which the word of God will be sewn freely in fertile ground. God will not allow human error and suffering to continue forever. There is only so many times he can watch people making the same mistakes across multiple lifetimes before he just calls time and brings the show to an end. There will come a point when anyone who was ever going to learn, has learned, and anyone who has not learned, will never learn.

Isaiah 29 begins with the proclamation, ‘Woe to Ariel! Ariel, the city where David encamped.’ This is Jerusalem. The Hebrew word ariel means ‘lion of God’.[xxxii] The lion was a symbol of Judah, which contained Jerusalem, the city where David set up his throne. Ariel was also a name for the altar, which was in the temple. God promises to besiege Jerusalem with ‘posted troops’ (Isaiah 29:3). This prophecy has had numerous near fulfilments, including the Babylonian and Roman sieges of the Holy City, but a distant, eschatological consummation is in view. Jerusalem will be ‘brought down’ (Isaiah 29:4) but so will the city’s multinational foes, who are compared to chaff that blows away (Isaiah 29:5). All of this is to happen suddenly.

‘She will be visited by Yahweh of Armies with earthquake, great noise, with whirlwind and storm, and the flame of devouring fire’ (Isaiah 29:6). This is the same Battle for Jerusalem described at length in Zechariah 14, right down to the earthquake.

In Isaiah 30 the prophet warned against the alliance with the Egyptians, writing that they would not come to the Jews’ aid. King Hezekiah of Judah ignored Isaiah’s advice, to his woe. It could be that a future Israeli alliance will prove similarly ineffective. God, through Isaiah, described false prophets encouraged by people who wanted to hear only ‘pleasant things’ and ‘deceits’ (Isaiah 30:9). This is a timeless warning that is very applicable to End Times prophecy and eschatological theology. ‘Men believe what they want to believe’, as Julius Caesar observed. Many just don’t want to believe that they or their children will suffer through the tribulation, so they choose to interpret prophecy in such a way that they do not have to live in dread. It’s understandable, and on a human level I sympathise with the unconscious motivation (most wishful commentators do not deliberately distort Scripture), but it’s not accurate exegesis. The true prophets are those who prophesy even that which people do not want to hear, when it is given to them to do so. As a rule, most people do not want to hear the truth, hence the proliferation of false doctrines throughout history.

When Israel prays to God, he will be merciful and return them to Zion: ‘when he hears you, he will answer you’ (Isaiah 30:19). This is a prayer that will be fulfilled very quickly, because it accords with God’s will to keep his covenant promises and demonstrate to the nations that he is the true God. God promises that after this appeal for divine aid, Israel will be given new, better teachers whom they will be able to see and understand (Isaiah 30:20–21). These teachers are the elect of Revelation, a special group chosen and glorified by God in the last days for this very purpose. Israel’s instruction will be very clear and detailed from without, and will also be given from within, by the voice of the spirit (Isaiah 30:21), whom Jesus described as the ‘Counselor’ (John 14:26). Israel will then receive blessings. The moon will be as bright as the sun and the sun will be ‘seven times brighter’ (Isaiah 30:26). These verses are not about King Hezekiah, since the sun’s brightness did not increase sevenfold in his day. It is about the final restoration of the nation after the tribulation; while sunlight will increase in the millennial kingdom following the Day of the Lord, often described as a ‘day of darkness’ (Joel 2:2), there will be no need for sunlight in the eternal kingdom of the new earth (Revelation 22:5).

Yahweh will come with devouring fire, hailstones and a storm (Isaiah 30:30). ‘The Assyrian’ (Isaiah 30:31), a title some have applied to the Antichrist, will be dismayed at this. Then Isaiah prophesied that Yahweh will strike the Assyrian with his rod and will fight in battles, ‘brandishing weapons’ (Isaiah 30:32). This is Jesus personally fighting to save the remnant on the Day of the Lord. The burning place of this Assyrian ‘has long been ready. Yes, it is prepared for the king.’ (Isaiah 30:33). Now, Isaiah was not writing about King Sennacherib of Assyria, who besieged Jerusalem in the 8^th century BC, because although God turned him away from Jerusalem by a sudden plague that killed 185,000 of his men (Isaiah 37:36), he was not killed in battle by Yahweh personally, nor was he burned to death. He was slain later, by the swords of his sons. Rather, this one who is burned in Isaiah 30 is an eschatological figure, the Antichrist, who is scheduled to perish in the lake of fire by burning, shortly after his defeat in battle by Jesus (Revelation 19:20). He is most likely the aforementioned ‘Assyrian’. However, the Antichrist is described as coming ‘from the sea’ (Revelation 13), and belonging to the people who Daniel (9:26) prophesied would destroy the sanctuary (Romans), which would conversely indicate a trans-Mediterranean origin. But lest you conclude that the Antichrist will be Syrian, the ancient Neo-Assyrian empire was actually centred on Mesopotamia, which corresponds to Iraq, and later expanded into what is now north-eastern Syria, parts of Turkey, Egypt and Iran.[xxxiii] In any case, let’s not go around demonising Syrians, Iraqis or any other nationality on account of these verses. There are many criteria an individual must fulfil to be considered the Antichrist.

Isaiah 32:1 anticipates that the Messianic king will be righteous, and his princes, just. Interestingly, this establishes that there will be more than one prince in the millennial kingdom. The rulers of each of the 12 tribes and their allotments under Christ will be called princes in the millennial kingdom. Men are likened to places of refuge (Isaiah 32:2). If this applies to all people, then that will be a major shift in the millennium; so much anxiety, depression and sin results from an inability to trust others. For example, the development of atomic weapons was frequently justified by the reasoning, ‘what if the enemy builds it first?’ Even to have truly righteous leadership will be a sea change for the planet. Clearly, this is a very different era where the power of sin is vastly diminished.

It is however not immediately apparent from Isaiah if the miraculous millennial changes described in that book will affect everyone on the planet, or only the Promised Land. Because exclusion from the kingdom is consistently presented as a punishment (Matthew 8:12; Matthew 25), many Gentiles will want to emigrate there (Isaiah 14:1), and the last revolt against God comes from outside the Promised Land (Revelation 20:8), it is implied that conditions will not be so good beyond the borders of that land, although at several junctures (Daniel 2:44; 7:27; Isaiah 2:2–4) it is stated that God’s kingdom will encompass the entire earth. When Satan is bound (Revelation 20:1), that must affect everyone on the planet to some extent, because he is a universal psychological archetype. What we are looking at during the millennium is a core territory in the Promised Land, ruling over a planet divided into provinces or protectorate nations, the subordinate nature of which is demonstrated by their giving tribute (Isaiah 60:1–6), being punished by God for failure to observe festal days (Zechariah 14:6), and embarking on pilgrimages to learn from God on the holy mountain (Isaiah 2:3). Immigration to the Promised Land will be regulated based on spiritual and ethical factors.

‘The eyes of those who see will not be dim and the ears of those who hear will listen’ (Isaiah 32:3) means that people’s spiritual hearing will be vastly improved in this kingdom, a consequence of the binding of the deceiver. ‘The tongue of the stammerers will be ready to speak plainly’ (Isaiah 32:4). In other words, the truth will be taught clearly, and well understood. ‘The fool will no longer be called noble, nor the scoundrel be highly respected’ (Isaiah 32:5) means that humanity’s perverse tendency to overvalue the unworthy – e.g. certain sportspersons, billionaires, actors and ‘celebrities’ – whilst underestimating the wise and the righteous, will finally be turned on its head. This is another meaning of, ‘Many who are first will be last and the last will be first.’ (Matthew 19:30). A true meritocracy necessitates such a reversal of attitudes.

Isaiah then proceeded to reprimand ‘careless women’ (Isaiah 32:9), foretold a time when the harvest won’t come and the palaces and cities will be deserted, until ‘the spirit is poured on us from on high’ (Isaiah 32:15) – i.e. souls are saved on a mass scale around the time of Jesus’ reappearance. Then there will be justice, peace, abundance and fruitful fields, as a result of the salvation (Isaiah 32:16–20).

Isaiah 33:16 is notable for prophesying that the righteous will be given a place of refuge in the mountains, where there will be literal bread and water, but the Body of Christ and the Spirit of God are called the bread of life and living water, and they will also be consumed by the remnant in their mountain fastness. The aforementioned place will be a defensible ‘fortress of rocks’ (Isaiah 33:16). This is the location Jesus told those who are in Judea to flee to when they see the abomination of desolation (Matthew 24:16). Other prophecies in Daniel (11:33) and Revelation (13:10; 20:4) clarify that some eschatological ‘saints’ will be martyred.

Isaiah 34 begins with God proclaiming his anger against ‘all the nations’ and announcing that he has ‘utterly destroyed them’ (Isaiah 34:2). Isaiah 34:4 states ‘all of the army of the sky will be dissolved’. Again, this means that the spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenly places will be annihilated. It may also be a prediction of modern air forces, too. ‘The sky will be rolled up like a scroll’ (Isaiah 34:4) is an interesting verse, echoed in the last seal judgement of Revelation 6:14. It may denote a massive hurricane or storm, or something more obviously supernatural.

A great slaughter is announced in Edom and Bozrah (Isaiah 34:6). Elsewhere in the Bible, Bozrah is given as the place where the Israeli remnant will flee for safety (Micah 2:12), and where Jesus will reappear to do battle (Isaiah 63). Isaiah proceeds to describe the desolation caused by God in certain places, probably the aforementioned Edom and Bozrah. Isaiah 34:16 states: ‘the kites will be gathered there; every one with her mate’. On a literal level, this means that kites, instead of people, will live in desolate Edom. But there is another level of analysis. Jesus was alluding to Isaiah 34:16, when he prophesied, ‘where the corpse is, there the vultures gather’ (Matthew 24:28). Much more will be written on this subject later, in the Olivet Discourse chapter.

Returning to Isaiah…‘Search in the book of Yahweh and read: not one of these will be missing’ (Isaiah 34:16) may be a promise that all the prophecies in the Bible will be fulfilled, and so prophecies not yet fulfilled will be in the future,[xxxiv] which is correct, but I understand the above passage to be a reference to all the elect whose names are written in the book of life at the time of Christ’s appearance in glory, and who will be raptured at that moment. The elect who are in the book of Yahweh are the aforementioned ‘kites’, as will be made plain. ‘His Spirit has gathered them’ was echoed and elucidated by Jesus when he spoke of the chosen ones being gathered from the four winds of the sky when the Son of Man comes with the clouds (Matthew 24:31). This reading is corroborated by the following verses, which conclude with statements about the Promised Land: ‘they shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they shall dwell in it’ (Isaiah 34:17). The elect shall possess the land forever because they are immortal.

In Isaiah 35:1, it becomes clear that the land in the future kingdom will change dramatically: ‘the desert will…blossom like a rose.’ God promises that people will be healed: ‘the eyes of the blind will be opened’ and ‘the lame man will leap like a deer’ (Isaiah 35:5–6). Indeed, Jesus and his elect priesthood will perform many healing miracles in that time, and there will be many in need of healing after the tribulation. A highway will be formed, called ‘The Holy Way’, for ‘those who walk in the way’, which God’s people will use to return to Zion (Isaiah 35:8).

Books 36–39 of Isaiah are concerned with the Assyrian invasion of Israel during the reign of King Hezekiah. As such, these verses are a history of events that have already occurred, in the 8^th century BC. Basically, the Assyrians conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel and besieged Jerusalem, and King Hezekiah appealed to God for help. God answered his prayer. The death of Sennacherib’s men, his departure from Jerusalem and murder have already been outlined. After the crisis, as King Hezekiah lay dying, he asked God to remember all he had done. God added 15 years to his life. Hezekiah then unwisely showed off all his treasures to a Babylonian emissary. When Isaiah found out, he conveyed a stern message from God that the Babylonians would carry away all of Hezekiah’s treasures and make his sons eunuchs. The prophecy was fulfilled in the 6^th century BC, when Babylon conquered Jerusalem. This history is juxtaposed with End Times prophecies because the two sections have shared themes of trusting in God over and above human alliances, the Jewish people calling upon God in a time of national besiegement and being delivered from the jaws of the enemy by divine intervention. The Assyrian invasion of Judah is thus typological of Jesus’ eschatological salvation of the Holy City.

Isaiah 40:1 contains the statement that Jerusalem has ‘received double for all her sins’, meaning that God has punished his city twice as much as he has other cities, because ‘those whom I love, I reprove and chasten’ (Revelation 3:19). Because Jerusalem is called God’s bride, received law from God at an earlier date than other cities, was the dwelling place of God for centuries and will be again in the future, the Lord holds its inhabitants to a higher standard. Then there is the famous verse ‘prepare the way of Yahweh in the wilderness, make a level highway in the desert for our God’ (Isaiah 40:3) which was in one sense a prophecy of John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness who announced the first coming of the Messiah, and is scheduled to presage the Second Coming. Also, at some point people will have to actually construct or repair a literal highway for the return of the Jewish diaspora, the aforementioned ‘Holy Way’.

The chapter culminates in a promise that ‘those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary’ (Isaiah 40:31). This promise, reminiscent of Jesus’ ‘whoever comes to me will not be hungry’ (John 6:35), is of the immortal body in which the ascension is to take place, made to those chosen ones who endure to the end. In this body, the elect will fly to Jesus in the rapture, hence the eagle/kite/vulture imagery of Isaiah and the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. Some will struggle to believe this, but the fact is, normal physical laws apply to normal physical bodies, not glorified bodies. God made those laws so he can flout them at will.

Isaiah 41 reaffirms that the Jews are God’s people, and that therefore they have nothing to fear, for he will help them and destroy their enemies (Isaiah 41:10). This chapter also contains a promise from God that he will miraculously create water in response to prayer (Isaiah 41:17), probably for the surviving remnant of Israel that flee to the wilderness, in a latter-day repetition of the Exodus miracle, when Moses struck the Horeb rock and water flowed from it (Exodus 17). Again, in both instances the rock spouting water is a sign of Jesus the stone (Psalm 118:22) who gives people living water (John 4:14).

Some later chapters of Isaiah refer to the Messiah as a suffering ‘servant’ filled with God’s ‘spirit’ (Isaiah 42:1). Again, Jesus received the Holy Spirit after his baptism in the River Jordan. Isaiah goes on to say of the Messiah, that he will be ‘rejected by men, a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease’ (Isaiah 53:3) who ‘has borne our sickness and carried our suffering’ (Isaiah 53:4). Jesus miraculously healed many sick people, as the gospels attest. These verses also imply that, in addition to healing others, Jesus himself was sick sometime in the ‘lost years’ that are scarcely covered by the gospels, the years before his ministry began. The best doctor is one who has healed himself. Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would be ‘pierced for our transgressions’ (Isaiah 55:5). Jesus was pierced by the crucifixion nails, and the spear of the Roman Longinus, who stabbed his side to see if he was dead (John 19:34). Isaiah also wrote of the Messiah that he ‘poured out his soul to death’ (Isaiah 53:12), evoking the moment on the cross when Jesus committed his spirit to God (Luke 23:46), and tallying with the prophecy in Daniel 9:26 that after 7 and 62 weeks the Messiah will be ‘cut off’. ‘They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence’ (Isaiah 53:9) was a prophecy that Jesus would be executed alongside criminals, though he had done nothing wrong, and that he would be buried in the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, as the gospels confirm (Matthew 27:57–60; John 19:38–42). It clearly meant that the Messiah would die, and be revived to come again in power and glory, so that the Day of the Lord prophecies will be fulfilled. For the Messiah to die, and come with the clouds to rule forever, presupposes two conditions: that the death comes before his eternal kingship, precisely because that dominion is described as everlasting, and that the Messiah must be resurrected after his death and before his glorious reign. First a suffering servant, then a conquering king. That is precisely what we see in the earthly life and prophecies of Jesus. Aside from the logical necessity for a resurrected Messiah to fulfil the scriptures, King David (who also authored the Crucifixion psalm) wrote, ‘I laid myself down and slept. I awakened, for Yahweh sustains me’ (Psalm 3:5). This is a description of a resurrection; waking from a regular sleep does not require the kind of special intervention from Yahweh that is implicit in Psalm 3:5, but a resurrection does. Moreover, the language of death and resurrection in the Bible is often one of sleeping and waking (e.g. Daniel 12:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14).

How else could the Messiah die, and then conquer the armies of the Antichrist and rule from a throne forever, as is foretold elsewhere in Scripture, other than by means of a resurrection? After the Crucifixion of Jesus and the destruction of the Second Temple, Jewish tradition invented the notion of two separate Messiahs in an effort to resolve this conundrum: Messiah ben-Yosef the sufferer and Messiah ben-David the triumphant king.[xxxv] But Jewish Scripture never states that there will be two distinct Messiahs, and most Jews do not believe that either one of these Messiahs has come yet, whereas Christians can point to Jesus as a concrete historical figure who fulfilled many Messianic prophecies. The ‘two Messiahs’ hypothesis is further undercut by Zechariah 12:10, which states, ‘they will look to me whom they have pierced’ in the context of the Messiah’s coming as a military leader to save Jerusalem, meaning that the one who was ‘pierced’ (Isaiah 53:5) as a suffering servant is the same figure who comes in all power and glory to deliver the nation, and the world.

Elsewhere in Isaiah, the Messiah’s ‘portion with the great’ is portrayed as a reward for his suffering (Isaiah 53:12). The Messiah had to come twice as a logical necessity: the First Advent sowed the seeds and enabled salvation through great sacrifice, while the Second Advent will be to gather the harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12). A field, no matter how fertile it may be, cannot grow wheat if it did not first receive the seed.

Isaiah wrote that the soul of this saviour figure was made ‘an offering for sin’ (Isaiah 53:10) and ‘Yahweh laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (Isaiah 53:6); Jesus paid the blood price for humanity’s sins, so that they can be saved and forgiven by proxy through simply drinking the blood of his spiritual body. If you merge with one who has atoned in full you also atone. ‘The punishment that bought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed’ (Isaiah 53:5) obviously refers to the popular Christian idea that Jesus suffered and died for our sins, effectively taking our place on the cross.

The Messiah is also compared to a ‘lamb’ (Isaiah 53:7) led to the slaughter. The synoptic gospels note that Jesus was crucified on the day of Passover (e.g. Matthew 26), Nisan 15 on the Hebrew calendar.[xxxvi] John wrote that he was killed in the afternoon of the day before Passover (John 19:14), Nisan 14,[xxxvii] the approximate date and time that the paschal lamb was traditionally slaughtered (Exodus 12:6). In either case, the connection between Jesus’ sacrificial death and the Passover lamb is clear, making the lamb a type of Jesus. John also wrote that his legs were not broken, as was required of the Passover lamb, to fulfil the Scripture: ‘a bone of him will not be broken’ (John 19:31–36). Moreover, the paschal lamb had to be ‘without blemish’ and ‘male’ according to Exodus 12:5; Jesus is without sin and male. The sacrifice of something pure was required on behalf of the impure.

The Jewish festival of First Fruits entails an offering of the initial harvest of wheat to God. The rest of the harvest comes later. Many believe that Jesus was resurrected on the day of First Fruits – most likely, Nisan 17, which would fit with John’s timeline as the ‘third day’ (Luke 24:7) – since he was the first immortal man with an eternal body, and ‘the bread of life’ (John 6). For this reason, Saint Paul called Christ the ‘first fruits’ of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). If John’s timeline is correct, and I believe it is because of the festal symbolism, and the fact he was the only one of the four evangelists who was actually present at the Crucifixion (John 19:26), then Jesus was killed on April 3^rd AD 33, at about 3 p.m.[xxxviii] The numerology is also apt; in addition to the two aspects of the trinity, 33 represents the fulfilment of God’s covenantal promises, and indeed, Jesus’ sacrificial death fulfilled the promise of a new covenant made by Jeremiah (31:31). Yes, the Julian Calendar differs from the Hebrew one, but God knows all calendars and timekeeping systems. Matthew (27:45), Mark (15:33) and Luke (23) mention darkness on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, there was a lunar eclipse on that day, and prophecies of the Messiah often involve the sun and moon ceasing to give light, particularly Amos 8:9–10.[xxxix]

But although Isaiah lived some 700 years before Christ, he was not the first to prophesy that the Messiah would be crucified. In addition to the prophecy in Genesis about Eve’s offspring having his heel bruised, Psalm 22, written by King David, is a prophecy of the Crucifixion from the Messiah’s perspective. He wrote the words subsequently uttered by Jesus on the cross, ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). In that Psalm, the Messiah laments that he is ‘a reproach of men, and despised by people. All those who see me mock me. They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying, “He trusts in Yahweh, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, since he delights in him.”’ (Psalm 22:6–8). That is exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross. The crowd jeered and insulted him, and at least one of the thieves he was crucified alongside mocked him and suggested that he save himself, if he was the Messiah (Luke 23:39). David wrote: ‘my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth’ (Psalm 22:15); Jesus complained of ‘thirst’ on the cross (John 19:28), a common feature of crucifixion, especially when undertaken in hot, arid regions such as Judea. ‘They have pierced my hands and feet’ (Psalm 22:16) and ‘All my bones are out of joint’ (Psalm 22:14) are accurate descriptions of crucifixion, centuries before crucifixion was invented as a mode of execution; King David lived sometime around the 10^th century BC, and crucifixion was not popularised until the 6^th century BC. ‘They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots’ (Psalm 22:18), is a prophecy of the Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus’ clothing, as related in John 19:23–24.

The World English Bible translates Psalm 22:20 as: ‘Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.’ But if we go back to the original Hebrew, we discover that ‘precious life’ is a translation of the Hebrew word yechidati, which means ‘only one’ or ‘unique one’.[xl] Yechidah can mean only child[xli] and is used as such in The Book of Judges 11:34.[xlii] The Septuagint translates it as monogenēs, which means ‘one of a kind, one and only’ and can also signify an only child.[xliii] The ‘only-begotten’ and ‘only one’ in this context is taken by Christians as an allusion to Christ, the Son of God, but in Psalm 22 it is actually the crucified figure (Jesus) who is asking God to deliver his only begotten: Jesus’ only child.

Who was this only begotten? John the Evangelist, who was there at the cross, alongside Mary Magdalene[xliv] and The Virgin Mary (John 19:26). In Psalm 22:20, Jesus prayed to the Father that his only child be spared the martyrdom he was suffering. The prayer was granted: John was the only apostle not to be martyred. He was also the only apostle allowed to witness the Crucifixion because he was Christ’s biological son. This explains why when Jesus saw the ‘disciple whom he loved’ (John 19:26), generally understood to be John,[xlv] the Lord said to his mother ‘Woman, behold your son!’ (John 19:26) and to the disciple ‘behold, your mother!’ (John 19: 27). As previously alluded to, in ancient Judea, descendants, not only biological sons, were referred to as ‘sons’ of their ancestor, and their ancestors were frequently called ‘fathers’ (1 Kings 2:10), hence the Messiah was widely understood to be ‘the Son of David’, though he was many generations removed from King David. Therefore, John was Mary’s grandson, and she his grandmother. John’s status as Jesus’ son helps us to understand why John was called the disciple Jesus loved, and why John rested against Jesus during the Last Supper (John 13:23). It also explains why Jesus called John and James ‘Sons of Thunder’ (Mark 3:17); in addition to the fact he literally called John ‘son’, the true significance of which has escaped many, Yahweh is associated with thunder in the Bible (Psalm 29:3; Psalm 18; Exodus 19), and Jesus is Yahweh. The fiery tempers of John and James being used as justification for the nickname Boanerges concealed a deeper truth. John’s true parentage was concealed to protect him; even at that time, Jesus was regarded by some as the King of the Jews, the rightful heir to David, and after Jesus’ death and ascension, John may have been construed as the legitimate heir to the throne (although there is no such thing as a successor to Jesus, because he is immortal), which would have painted a huge target on his back with the Roman authorities, an even bigger target than he had as one of the leaders of the fledgling Jesus movement.

Psalm 22 ends with a prophecy that God will rule the world (22:28), clearly establishing the Messianic context of this Crucifixion prophecy.

Whatever you think of the Resurrection, and John’s status as Christ’s son, the descriptions in Isaiah and Psalm 22 are so clear that few people with even a basic knowledge of Jesus’ story could read those passages without thinking of him. This ought to be food for thought, not only for religious Jews, who believe in their holy Scripture, but for everyone, for the following reason. The prophecies listed above, regardless of how you want to date them,[xlvi] were indisputably written well before Jesus’ birth and they foretold numerous details of the Messiah, that were historically fulfilled in the life of Jesus. These fulfilments are therefore confirmation of the supernatural origin of those prophecies, Isaiah’s status as a genuine prophet of God, and the legitimacy of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. The historical confirmation of the First Advent prophecies, and other near fulfilments about Babylon were partly intended to prove Isaiah’s trustworthiness, so that people would believe his prophecies about the still-future ‘Day of the Lord.’

But Isaiah goes deeper than that. The allusions to this unfairly maligned servant seeing ‘his offspring’ (Isaiah 53:10) and the statement that he ‘will justify many by the knowledge of himself’ (Isaiah 53:11), demonstrates an advanced understanding of the hidden meaning of the gospels, and Jesus’ provision of revelatory experiences, that few believers possess even today – and this, from the depths of the 8^th century BC! It is details like these that led the early church to dub the Book of Isaiah the ‘fifth gospel.’

Isaiah 44 contains God’s promise to pour his spirit on the descendants (Isaiah 44:3) of Jacob and a remarkable prediction that ‘Cyrus’ will be his shepherd and will command Jerusalem and the temple to be rebuilt (Isaiah 44:28). Indeed, Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, freed the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, allowing them to return to their homeland, and issued an edict in 539 BC to rebuild the temple. Scholars believe that this latter part of Isaiah must have been written after 539 BC, because they do not believe in the power of prophecy. The entire book was written by Isaiah in the 8^th century BC, as per the traditional attribution. The ancients believed so, and I’m not sure why certain modern academics feel they know better than those who were more than 2,200 years closer to Isaiah than we are.

In Isaiah 45, the prophet declares that God will strengthen Israel ‘that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is no one besides me.’ (Isaiah 45:6). This prophecy was partially fulfilled with the spread of the gospel to countries as far afield as America and Japan, but awaits completion in the millennial kingdom via the Parousia; currently, most people on the planet are not Christians. Isaiah goes on to prophesy that every knee will bow before Yahweh (Isaiah 45:23), another statement of the worldwide nature of Jesus’ dominion. ‘I will grant salvation to Zion, my glory to Israel’ (Isaiah 46:13) suggests that the remnant in Jerusalem, when they call upon God to save them, will be spiritually saved, and ultimately glorified in their immortal bodies for the Last Judgement. ‘I declare the end from the beginning’ (Isaiah 46:10) also makes it plain that Isaiah’s book is chiefly eschatological, and he wished it to be understood as such, contrary to the opinions of modern interpreters.

Isaiah 47 contains a warning, somewhat similar to the ‘prostitute of Babylon’ passages in Revelation 17, that the ‘virgin daughter of Babylon’ (Isaiah 47:1) will be stripped naked and deprived of her throne. Further corroboration that Revelation’s Babylon is Isaiah’s Babylon is provided by references in Isaiah 47 to Chaldea, another name for the Mesopotamian Babylon, and the enchantments, stargazing and sorcery of Babylon, which was indeed a centre of ancient learning, astrology and astronomy (Isaiah 47:12–13). God promises to ‘suddenly’ (Isaiah 47:11) make her a widow for her wickedness against Israel; indeed, Babylon conquered Judah and was conquered in her turn by Cyrus the Great and his Persians, so this prophecy has in one sense been fulfilled, but in light of Isaiah 47 and earlier chapters, it also awaits an End Times consummation. This is made apparent when God promises Babylon sudden ‘desolation’ (Isaiah 47:11), for although Cyrus conquered Babylon suddenly, his conquest was relatively bloodless, and he did not destroy the city utterly or leave it a wasteland.

Isaiah 49 is notable for its prediction that the same suffering servant, ‘called from the womb’ (i.e. born of a woman and holy from conception) who was rejected by Israel in earlier chapters is to be tasked with gathering ‘Israel to him’ (Isaiah 49:5). God said to the Messiah that he will not only be a light to Israel and restore their preserved, but a light to the whole world and give ‘salvation to the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah 49:6), a very accurate outline of Christianity’s subsequent mission and success, as well as the victories to come in the millennium. ‘I will preserve you and give you for a covenant of the people’ (Isaiah 49:8) is a reference to Jesus himself being a covenant. Jeremiah had more to say about this new covenant.

In Isaiah 51:6, the prophet foretells the passing away of heaven and earth: ‘for the heavens will vanish away like smoke and the earth will wear out like a garment. Its inhabitants will die in the same way, but my salvation will be forever.’ This event is elaborated upon in Revelation 21–22. ‘Awake as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times’ (Isaiah 51:9) is a prophecy of the resurrection of the long dead so that they will return to Zion. Given the parable of the vineyard workers, which indicates that many of those who come to the faith last will be paid in full first, the context of heaven and earth passing away, and the Scripture that those who were killed by the Antichrist and didn’t receive the mark of the beast will participate in the first resurrection (Revelation 20:4), I believe that these verses in Isaiah 51 probably denote the second and general resurrection of the dead to face the Last Judgement.

Isaiah describes how God has punished Jerusalem severely. In this chapter, Isaiah also writes about ‘the bowl of the cup of wrath’ (51:22), taken away by God’s mercy, a theme that John develops in Revelation 16:1 and 14:10, furnishing further evidence that Isaiah 51 is indeed eschatological, and not concerned with events that took place before John wrote Revelation. Isaiah 51:22 may establish an equivalency between God’s wrath and the bowl judgements at the end of Revelation’s tribulation period, though of course the term ‘wrath’ can also be used for God’s punitive anger in general, at any time, as it is used throughout the Bible in differing contexts. For example, in Ephesians 2:3, Paul writes that all humans are naturally born ‘children of wrath’. In Romans 1:18, Paul states that the wrath of God is revealed against all ‘unrighteousness of men’. It is important to establish that this word ‘wrath’ can sometimes be used in different contexts, as prewrath rapturists situate ‘wrath’ somewhere amidst the final 3.5 years of the tribulation, and pretribulation rapturists believe that the word ‘wrath’ denotes the entire 7-year tribulation.

Isaiah 52 revealed more information about the suffering servant, whilst proclaiming the regeneration of Jerusalem during the millennial kingdom. ‘Just as many were astonished at you – his appearance was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men – so he will cleanse many nations.’ (Isaiah 52:14–15). Again, Jesus was physically marred by the beatings, flogging (Mark 15:15) and Crucifixion he endured, and many were astonished at him during the First Advent. By the end of his ordeal, the Lord was heavily lacerated, pierced and covered in blood. ‘Kings will shut their mouth at him, for they will see that which had not been told them and they will understand that which they had not heard.’ (Isaiah 52:15). This is a prophecy that those who didn’t ‘get’ Jesus after his First Advent will understand him better the second time around. An education of the unsaved under ideal conditions is the purpose of the millennial kingdom. Then there is a prophecy that God’s servant will deal wisely, be exalted and ‘lifted up’ (Isaiah 52:13); a foretelling of Jesus’ ascension. The very fact he was severely marred but will be exalted and praised by kings also implies a Second Advent of a different kind to the first.

‘For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife’ (Isaiah 54:1) was explained by Paul in Galatians 4:22–28: ‘for it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the servant, and one by the free woman. However, the son by the servant was born according to the flesh, but the son by the free woman was born through promise. These things contain an allegory, for these are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to the Jerusalem that exists now, for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all.’ Paul then proceeded to reference Isaiah 54:1.[xlvii]

In other words, the children of the married wife are the Jews (though a servant, Hagar was married to Abraham), bound to a covenant made at Sinai, and the children of the desolate who are more than the children of Hagar are the Christians, because the offspring of this new covenant are represented by the son of Sarah, who was elderly and hitherto infertile at the time of her miraculous conception of Isaac, and Christians are obviously more numerous than Jews. Moreover, Christians are heirs to Abraham through the blood of Christ, himself a descendant of Abraham via Isaac’s line. The ‘offspring’ of the desolate will ‘spread out on the right hand and the left’ and ‘possess the nations’ (Isaiah 54:3). The emphasis on the Jews as ‘children of the married wife’ is apt because God married Israel – ‘For your maker is your husband; Yahweh of armies is his name’ (Isaiah 54:5) – here pictured as a wife ‘forsaken’ and ‘cast off’ (54:6) to be regathered to her husband with ‘great mercies’ (54:7).

In another sense, Israel is the ‘desolate’ woman – after all, Sarah, Abraham and Isaac were the progenitors of the Jewish people – who gave birth only to ‘wind’ in Isaiah 27, but will become suddenly fecund after the restoration of her marriage with God, with the result of many being born naturally, and born children of God. On a biological level, it means that there will be many who will still be mortal in God’s kingdom, since there’s no marriage in the resurrection (and therefore probably no reproduction). On a spiritual level, the ‘baby boom’ of the millennial kingdom can be accounted for by the need for many hitherto unsaved but basically decent souls to reincarnate as children of the kingdom, to give them the best possible opportunity for salvation. God goes on to tell how the gates of the Jewish people will be made of ‘sparkling jewels’ (Isaiah 54:12), a foretaste of John’s description of the New Jerusalem and its massive bejewelled walls in Revelation 22.

In Isaiah 55:1, God promises free wine, milk, bread and water to all who want it, presaging Jesus’ offer of free living water (John 4:10), the bread of life (John 6) and the wine that is his blood (Matthew 26:27–29). On a more literal level, it raises the interesting question of whether or not there will be currency in the millennial kingdom, with the above verse indicating that there may not be, and that state welfare policies will be generous, to say the least.

God then promises ‘I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.’ (Isaiah 55:3). This everlasting covenant is the new covenant established through Jesus. The Jesus covenant is everlasting because it endows one who accepts it with eternal life. The certain mercies of an everlasting kingdom that God showed to David have been offered to the whole world through the person, and the blood, of Jesus. The Christian covenant will be modified for the millennium, since we know from Zechariah (14:16) and Ezekiel (43) that the Feast of Booths and temple sacrifice will be observed in the kingdom. However, animal sacrifice will not occur in the subsequent New Jerusalem, because death will be abolished in that state.

God assures the Gentiles that they too will be able to make offerings in his temple and receive the benefits of that practice in Isaiah 56. The Messianic Fourth Temple will be a house of prayer for all nations. Isaiah 59 succinctly explains human suffering as a result of humanity’s sin, which is the ultimate reason for the self-destructive tendencies of the human race: ‘Your iniquities have separated you and your God’ (Isaiah 59:2).Isaiah (60:1–2) foresees thick darkness covering the earth, followed by the manifestation of Yahweh’s glory. ‘Who are these who fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?’ (Isaiah 60:8) is a description of the elect rising to meet the Lord in the air upon his return. Their being likened to doves anticipates the description of the Holy Spirit as a dove in Luke’s (3:22) gospel, since all those participating in the rapture will have the Holy Spirit. Foreigners will build up the walls of Jerusalem after God strikes the city (Isaiah 60:10). The gates of the new city will be open day and night to receive ‘the wealth of nations’ (Isaiah 60:11), a hint of tribute from client states, and/or the delivery of the Antichrist’s plunder to Jerusalem for sorting and redistribution, just as the Allies had to index and organise the Nazis’ plundered art and gold after the Second World War. ‘The sons of those who afflicted you will come bowing to you’ (Isaiah 60:14); in other words, the offspring of those who attacked Jerusalem will honour the new Holy City as the capital of God’s kingdom in the millennium. This Jerusalem sounds very prosperous, but the descriptions of tribute from the nations, punishments for failure to pay, and abundant material wealth make it clear that it is a city in our current physical world, during the thousand-year kingdom, not the completely idyllic eternal state on the new earth.

From verse 19 onwards, however, we are in very unfamiliar territory. There will be no more sun and moon, but God will be the everlasting light. There will be no more violence, and the days of mourning will end. ‘Then your people will be all righteous.’ (Isaiah 60:21). This is the eternal, deathless New Jerusalem described by John in Revelation 22, for which the millennial Jerusalem described in earlier verses of Isaiah 60 was merely the preparation. The reason everyone is righteous in this eternal city is because the unrighteous were all removed beforehand at the Last Judgement.

Verses 1–3 of Isaiah 61 are about the purpose of Jesus’ first coming: ‘The Lord Yahweh’s spirit is on me, because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favour and the day of vengeance of our Lord, to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give to them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified’. They form a very accurate precis of Jesus’ messages, centuries before his incarnation. Indeed, it is recorded in Luke how Jesus entered the Synagogue at Nazareth, read out Isaiah 61:1–2 and announced, ‘“Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”’ (Luke 4:20).

From verse 4 on, Isaiah was concerned with the reconstruction of the world and its cities after the Day of the Lord, presumably during the millennium. Israel will be called Yahweh’s priests (Isaiah 61:6). Jews will be held in high esteem among the nations, indicating that antisemitism will be all but eradicated in the millennial kingdom (Isaiah 61:9). The prophet foretold that Israel will receive a double blessing where once the nation received double the normal punishment for sin (Isaiah 61:7). The Messianic Jerusalem is described in Isaiah 62 as a place of bright light and righteousness. The city will receive a new name, which Ezekiel later gave.

In chapter 63, Isaiah perceives a glorious figure coming from Edom, wearing ‘dyed garments from Bozrah’ (Isaiah 63:1). These clothes are red, for they are stained with blood. When asked who he is, he identifies himself: ‘“It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save”’ (Isaiah 63:1), a clear indication of his Messianic status. The English ‘to save’ is a translation from the Hebrew lehoshi’a, a word very similar to Yeshua, Jesus’ Hebrew name. This is the Second Coming of Jesus, whom Isaiah came frighteningly close to identifying by name, centuries before his incarnation; the description of him being covered in blood agrees with Revelation 19:13, where he is described as wearing a bloody robe. Jesus is bloody in this chapter because he has trodden the winepress alone in his ‘wrath’ (Isaiah 63:3) in Edom, from whence he came.

The use of ‘wrath’ here indicates one of the senses of wrath, namely, the outpouring of Jesus’ anger during the Campaign of Armageddon, shortly following his reappearance with the clouds. This sense of wrath would have been known to Paul, a former Pharisee familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, when he wrote his letter to the Thessalonian Christians promising them that ‘God did not appoint us to wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him’ (1 Thessalonians 5:9). It was this Messianic campaign to rescue the Israeli remnant and the Holy City from the forces of the Antichrist, as well as the ensuing judgements, that Paul meant by ‘wrath’ in the above passage. In any case, he did not solely equate wrath with the entire seven-year tribulation period, which pretribulation rapturists maintain as a pillar[xlviii] of their argument that the Church will be raptured off the world before the tribulation begins.

‘Their lifeblood is sprinkled on my garments.’ (Isaiah 63:3). The fact the Messiah has slaughtered people in Edom is an indication that he will appear there. Jesus is described as fighting alongside the heavenly host in the Battle for Jerusalem (Zechariah 14), but at Edom, no one was there to help him, so he fought alone (Isaiah 63:3). Jesus is alone at Edom because he engaged the enemy before the elect were gathered to him, which means Edom will be the place he will first emerge. Edom (Teman) is associated with the Messiah’s coming in Habbakuk (3:3), too. The reason for this is given by the Messiah: he is there ‘to save’. But who is he saving? The Jewish remnant who were taking refuge in Bozrah (Micah 2:12), Edom, before proceeding to Jerusalem, which is being trampled by the nations of the Antichrist’s alliance when the Lord comes to relieve her (Zechariah 12). More is written about Bozrah and its precise location in later chapters of this book.

Indeed, some people may perceive a contradiction between the loving meekness of Jesus’ First Advent and the ‘fire and brimstone’ associated with his Second Advent, but in reality, none exists. The purposes of the two advents are different; in the first Jesus had to be the sacrificial lamb and set an example for us to follow, while the Second Advent is about military leadership, defeating evil, dispensing justice, and governing the earth. A truly loving God must be a just God who punishes sinners, because suffering is the only way people learn and find salvation, and without chastisement and tribulation more souls would eventually perish in the lake of fire.[xlix] Moreover, if there was no punishment for transgressors, that would be unfair on good people, and lead to their continued suffering at the hands of the transgressors.

There is a prayer for God to return towards the end of Isaiah 63 (verse 17), a theme that is taken up in the following chapter, in which Isaiah asks God to deliver Jerusalem from its adversaries, confessing their sins and asking forgiveness. Jerusalem, at this future juncture, has been desolated and the temple burned: ‘Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised you is burned with fire.’ (Isaiah 64:10–11). In these verses, Isaiah was anticipating the eschatological repentance of Israel, forecasted by Moses in his outline of the covenant, in addition to the Babylonian burning of the First Temple (587 BC), the Roman burning of the Second Temple (70 AD), and possibly a future burning of the Third Temple, given the Bible’s numerous references to an ‘abomination of desolation’ in the temple and ‘desolations’ after the latest historical desolation committed by the Romans (Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; Daniel 9:27).

Isaiah 65:1, ‘I am found by those who did not seek me’ was a prediction that God would be found chiefly (though not exclusively) by the Gentiles during the Christian era; a prophecy that has been largely fulfilled, though it will extend into the millennium. God promises not to destroy everyone; he will spare his ‘servants’ and those of his people who seek him (Isaiah 65:8–9). They will inherit the holy mountain (Isaiah 65:9), that is, Zion. But those who forsake him are prophesied to face ‘slaughter’ (Isaiah 65:11–12). ‘Behold, my servants will eat, but you will be hungry’ (Isaiah 65:12) typifies God’s attitudes towards these two groups. This ‘winnowing’ (Matthew 3:12) or sifting process is how God will ensure that the survivors of all nations will be mostly or solely righteous. God’s judgements in the form of natural disasters, wars, sickness and famine will focus on those who rejected him, not his servants, although some of the latter will unfortunately become collateral damage in the cataclysms, and fall prey to the Antichrist’s depredations.

‘For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth’ (Isaiah 65:17) is the first explicit mention of the new earth in Scripture, and it is mentioned in connection with God creating ‘Jerusalem to be a delight’ (Isaiah 65:18). This is the deathless new earth containing the New Jerusalem, which comes after the millennium and the Last Judgement.

The millennial kingdom nonetheless sounds extremely paradisaical by current standards. Infants will not die prematurely, and people will live much longer (Isaiah 65:20). Those who die at 100 years old will be considered children (Isaiah 65:20). The idea that these verses refer to conditions in the New Jerusalem on the new earth is invalidated by John’s observation that death will perish in the lake of fire after the millennium (Revelation 20:14); following that, there will be no more death, yet the people in Isaiah 65:22 are clearly mortal, because they still die. Normally in the millennium, people will live as long as trees (Isaiah 65:22). We can try to get a better idea of life expectancy in the kingdom, by looking at the average lifespan of the most common tree species in ancient Israel. Olive trees typically live for about 500 years, oak trees normally last between 150 and 250 years, while the date palm and the Aleppo pine usually persist for 100–150 years. All of which suggests that humanity will return to the longer lifespans enjoyed by the biblical patriarchs.[l] That being said, some trees can live to over a thousand years old, the entire duration of the millennial phase of God’s kingdom. Indeed, the elect will be in immortal bodies for the entire millennium and continue on into the new earth.

Exploitation will end, as will fruitless work (Isaiah 65:23). God will respond promptly to all prayers (Isaiah 65:24). Even the animals will be at peace with one another (Isaiah 65:25). There will be much building, rebuilding, farming and planting in the kingdom. It is generally characterised as a fruitful period, a good harvest. Irenaeus related a tradition from John the Apostle, who said Jesus told him that in the millennium, a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand ears, and every ear, ten thousand grains.[li]

Isaiah 66 is about the temple, as indicated by God’s question at the outset of the chapter: ‘what kind of house will you build for me?’ The fact this temple will have to be built means 66:1 does not pertain to the Solomonic Temple that Isaiah visited, as that had already been constructed at the time of the prophecies. On the contrary, it suggests that this is a future, eschatological temple. God revealed a low opinion of temple sacrifices when he said, ‘he who kills an ox is as he who kills a man’ and likened burning frankincense to worshipping idols (Isaiah 66:3). There are several verses like this in the Bible (Hebrews 10:5–10; Psalm 40:6–8; Jeremiah 6:20), and they are signals that the animal sacrifices of the Mosaic Covenant were never considered to be ideal, and that God always planned to introduce a new covenant.

Isaiah goes on. The people who engage in these sacrifices do not ‘listen’ to God, so he will give them ‘delusions’ and ‘bring their fears on them’ (Isaiah 66:4). At first glance, you may think this a condemnation of the temple priesthood of Isaiah’s day – and Isaiah himself was a priest – but they did not suffer grievously. King Hezekiah is considered a pretty good, pious king. Jerusalem was not sacked in his day; King Sennacherib of Assyria was turned around by God. Moreover, Solomon’s Temple was explicitly sanctioned by God, and so was the Second Temple built by Zerubbabel. The millennial temple described by Ezekiel will be built by Jesus, so naturally that one will be sanctioned. So which priests, and which temple, is God referring to in these passages of Isaiah, chapter 66? God here is talking to those who build and worship in a yet to be built Third Temple of Jerusalem, one constructed without his divine sanction, that sees the reinstatement of temple sacrifices and rituals in the last days. The delusion spoken of by Isaiah is the same ‘powerful delusion’ that God will send upon some people, ‘that they should believe a lie, that they might be judged who didn’t believe the truth’ (2 Thessalonians 2:11). The fears of these priests coming on them is, at least in part, the abomination of desolation: the Antichrist desecrating that unsanctioned temple. He will be permitted to do so because, although necessary for the fulfilment of prophecy, the Third Temple will not have God’s blessing.[lii] In our age, God wants people to obtain eternal life through his much-prophesied Son, not build another temple; hence these future priests won’t be listening to God. The proper, auspicious time for divinely sanctioned temple construction is after the arrival of the Messiah (an opinion currently shared by many Jews), when the old Jewish temple rituals will be modified in a Fourth Temple with Jesus’ blessing. So this third, unsanctioned temple will not be the temple of Ezekiel, the one Jesus will live in. I will discuss the prophecies of the Third Temple, and the surrounding religio-political complexities, at greater length in Chapter 6. Again, just because something is prophesied to occur, does not mean that God will necessarily be pleased about it. The disapproving tone of Isaiah 66 is testament to that.

The Book of Isaiah concludes with a description of the regathering of the Jews and the pilgrimage of the nations to worship God at the holy mountain, looking upon the corpses of those who transgressed against God (Isaiah 66:24). These are probably the corpses of those defeated in the Campaign of Armageddon, though the fact ‘their worm will not die’ (Isaiah 66:24) and the preceding reference to ‘new heavens and new earth’ (Isaiah 66:22) could be taken to indicate that these are the dead bodies of those who didn’t pass the Last Judgement. Against the latter interpretation is the fact that sinners are prophesied to be thrown into the lake of fire, i.e. completely destroyed, following the great white throne judgement in Revelation 20:11, and new moons are mentioned in Isaiah 66:23, but there will be no sun or moon in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:23), the state following the Last Judgement. In conclusion, then, Isaiah 66 skips backwards and forwards in time, and the corpses of the transgressors are those strewn across the landscape after the Campaign of Armageddon.

When King Hezekiah’s son Manasseh seized the throne, he gave way to idolatry (2 Kings 21). Isaiah reprimanded the king for his sins. Manasseh pursued him. The aged prophet hid himself inside a tree, which Manasseh ordered sewn in half.[liii] Isaiah was killed when the blade cut into his head, starting with the mouth that was purified in the temple, and uttered so many amazing prophecies. The tree is a symbol of the cross (itself typological of the tree of life), which was obviously made of wood, so by his death the prophet prefigured Christ’s sacrifice, and the splitting of the house of Israel, and the world, into two factions: those who follow Christ, and those who reject him. Isaiah died as he lived: by foretelling the Messiah.

 Read the next chapter: https://www.robertensor.com/post/godmindbody-part-3-chapter-4-jeremiah

[i]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah#:~:text=Isaiah%20(UK:%20/a%C9%AA%CB%88,separated%20by%20approximately%2015%20years.

[ii] Ezekiel 40:2. ‘In the visions of God he brought me into the land of Israel and set me down on a very high mountain, on which was something like the frame of a city to the south.’

[iii] Wieja Estera. 2021. Start Learning Hebrew With These Important Words. Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries. https://firmisrael.org/learn/start-learning-hebrew-with-these-important-words/

[iv] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[v]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshua#:~:text=Yeshua%20(Hebrew:%20%D7%99%D6%B5%D7%A9%D7%81%D7%95%D6%BC%D7%A2%D6%B7%2C%20romanized,ayin%20of%20the%20Hebrew%20alphabet.

[vi] The traditional story of the origin of the Septuagint goes as follows. Ptolemy II (308–246 BC), wanting to include the Hebrew Bible in his Library of Alexandria, received 72 Hebrew translators to translate the Tanakh into Greek. To prevent concealment of the truth, he isolated the translators, but each one produced the exact same translation, a miracle which deeply impressed Ptolemy. This tradition is found in numerous ancient sources, including the Letter of Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, Irenaeus’ Against Heresies and Saint Augustine’s City of God, although modern academics have raised questions about the veracity of this account.

[vii] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] https://doitinhebrew.com/Translate/default.aspx?kb=IL+Hebrew+Phonetic

[x] Irenaeus. Against Heresies.

[xi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom

[xii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathros#:~:text=Pathros%20(Hebrew:%20%D7%A4%D6%B7%D6%BC%D7%AA%D6%B0%D7%A8%D7%95%D6%B9%D7%A1;%20Pa%E1%B9%AFr%C5%8Ds,north%20no%20further%20than%20Abydos.

[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam

[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinar

[xv] Judea is a Hellenization of the Hebrew word Yehuda, anglicized as Judah. The two terms denote the same territory in what is today part of southern Israel and parts of the West Bank, including Jerusalem as the ancient capital.

[xvi] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xvii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel

[xviii] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom

[xx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab

[xxi] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel#:~:text=Neither%20of%20the%20terms%20%22Promised,and%20to%20their%20descendants%20after

[xxiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinar

[xxiv] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536

[xxvi]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumah_(son_of_Ishmael)#:~:text=Some%20scholars%20identify%20Dumah%20with%20the%20ancient%20city%20of%20Duma%20in%20modern%20Saudi%20Arabia.&text=Known%20today%20as%20Al%2DJawf%2C%20in%20ancient%20times,desert%22%2C%20that%20was%20destroyed%20by%20Sennacherib's%20forces.

[xxvii]Parallel Hebrew Old Testament. Link: https://www.hebrewoldtestament.com/B23C024.htm#:~:text=24:4%20'aBLH%20NBLH%20H'aUrTSh%20'aMLLH%20NBLH%20ThBL%20'aMLLV%20MUrVM%20'yM%2DH'aUrTSh.&text=24:4%20The%20earth%20mourned%2C%20and%20faded%20away%2C,the%20people%20of%20the%20earth%20is%20weakened.

[xxviii] The Feast of Booths also known as Tabernacles and Sukkot, is a Torah-commanded Jewish holiday that lasts for seven days in autumn, during which the ancient Israelites were instructed to make a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem, to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt.

[xxix]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etemenanki#:~:text=The%20Etemenanki%20is%20described%20in,connected%20it%20with%20the%20Esagila.

[xxx] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxxi] Prophecy of the Saints. https://catholicmystics.blogspot.com/p/prophetic-warnings-phrophetic-warning.html

[xxxii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_(name)#:~:text=Ariel%20is%20a%20given%20name,used%20as%20a%20male%20name.

[xxxiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Assyrian_Empire#:~:text=The%20Neo%2DAssyrian%20Empire%20was,modern%2Dday%20Iran%20and%20Armenia.

[xxxiv] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxxv]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_in_Judaism#:~:text=The%20Jewish%20tradition%20of%20the%20late%20or,role%2C%20namely%20ben%20Yosef%20and%20ben%20David.&text=Maimonides%2C%20citing%20a%20reference%20in%20the%20Talmud,Messiah%2C%20excepting%20only%20the%20subjugation%20of%20kingdoms.%22

[xxxvi] In the Torah, the slaughter of the paschal lamb is commanded on 14 Nisan, at evening (Numbers 9:1–5; Exodus 12:1–8). But Hebrew calendar days end at sunset and begin at twilight, which is why Passover is traditionally celebrated on 15 Nisan.

[xxxvii]The Death of Jesus: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/calendar/jesus.html#:~:text=In%20the%20Synoptic%20Gospels%20(Matthew,Passover%20day%20(Nisan%2015).

[xxxviii] Ibid.

[xxxix] Ibid.

[xl] https://biblehub.com/lexicon/psalms/22-20.htm

[xli] https://www.bibleref.com/Psalms/22/Psalm-22-20.html

[xlii]Rabbi Reuven Klein. 2020. The Chayah and Yechidah, https://ohr.edu/8914#:~:text=Although%20the%20word%20Yechidah%20in,that%20is%20unique%20and%20unparalleled.

[xliii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogen%C4%93s

[xliv] There are rumours that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child with her. If they are true it doesn’t diminish the figure of Jesus, although the evidence for this thesis is limited and tenuous, being based largely on Gnostic texts written much later. Unless the Magdalene was John’s mother, which I do not believe, my reading of Psalm 22 casts further doubt on this theory, although it would explain her presence at the cross beside Jesus and I suppose the two viewpoints could be reconciled if this hypothetical child by the Magdalene was a girl, as is alleged, making John the only son. Source: Lincoln, Leigh, Baigent. 2013. The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Cornerstone Digital; New e edition.

[xlv] Mainly because the beloved disciple who was described as being present at the Crucifixion is identified in the text as he who wrote the Gospel of John (21:20–24). The Church fathers Polycrates, Eusebius and Augustine also believed that John was the beloved disciple. Moreover, the beloved disciple’s presence at the Last Supper means he was an apostle.

[xlvi] Some scholars quibble over the dating of the latter chapters of Isaiah, but nobody believes that they were written before Jesus’ birth, not least because the Great Isaiah Scroll has been found at Qumran and dated to 125 BC.

[xlvii] The identification of Hagar with Sinai is reinforced by the fact she was Egyptian.

[xlviii] The other is their definition of ‘the Day of the Lord’ as a period beginning with the rapture of Christians and extending through a seven-year tribulation period culminating in Christ’s return to defeat the Antichrist and establish his millennial kingdom. In reality, ‘the day of the Lord’ is a quite general, loose term with multiple meanings – one being the 24-hour day on which Jesus lands – that I will continue to elucidate as we move through these OT precursor prophetic texts, in which the eschatological vocabulary was formed. Source: Hultberg, Alan. Blasing, Craig, Moo, Douglas. 2018. Three Views on The Rapture: Pretribulation, Prewrath or Posttribulation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Zondervan Academic; Second edition.

[xlix] Saint Irenaeus. Against Heresies.

[l] The millennium may be paralleled with the antediluvian period, before the corruption, while the New Jerusalem is comparable to Eden, in that there was death in neither. Thus our difficult intermediate period is bookended by eras of longevity and immortality.

[li] Saint Irenaeus. Against Heresies.

[lii] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[liii]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah#:~:text=The%20remaining%20years%20of%20Hezekiah's,under%20the%20orders%20of%20Manasseh.