eschatology, Blessings of the Millennium (Is.30-32)

Again, some of these verses have two-fold prophecies, but I will focus on the verses regarding the end times.  At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus will come again for the battle of Armageddon, then He will separate the sinners from the believers...

 (Isaiah 30:27-28)  Behold, the name of the Lord comes from a remote place;  burning is His anger and dense is His smoke;  His lips are filled with indignation and His tongue is like a consuming fire;
28 His breath is like an overflowing torrent, which reaches to the neck, to shake the nations back and forth in a sieve,  and to put in the jaws of the peoples the bridle which leads to ruin.

30 (Isaiah 30:30-33)  And the Lord will cause His voice of authority to be heard, and the descending of His arm to be seen in fierce anger, and in the flame of a consuming fire in cloudburst, downpour and hailstones.
31 For at the voice of the Lord Assyria will be terrified, when He strikes with the rod.
32 And every blow of the rod of punishment, which the Lord will lay on him, will be with the music of tambourines and lyres;  and in battles, brandishing weapons, He will fight them.
33 For Topheth has long been ready, indeed, it has been prepared for the king.  He has made it deep and large, a pyre of fire with plenty of wood;  the breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone, sets it afire.

(Isaiah 31:1-4)  Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord!
2 Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words, but will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity.
3 Now the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit;  so the Lord will stretch out His hand, and he who helps will stumble and he who is helped will fall, and all of them will come to an end together.

4 For thus says the Lord to me,

“As the lion or the young lion growls over his prey, against which a band of shepherds is called out, and he will not be terrified at their voice nor disturbed at their noise, so will the Lord of hosts come down to wage war on Mount Zion and on its hill.”

(Isaiah 31:6-9)  Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel.  7 For in that day every man will cast away his silver idols and his gold idols, which your sinful hands have made for you as a sin.

8 And the Assyrian will fall by a sword not of man, and a sword not of man will devour him.  So he will not escape the sword, and his young men will become forced laborers.
9 “His rock will pass away because of panic, and his princes will be terrified at the standard,” declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

The people who become believers during the Tribulation will enter the Millennium, where Jesus will be King, and there will be blessings...

(Isaiah 31:5)  Like flying birds so the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem.  He will protect and deliver it; He will pass over and rescue it.

(Isaiah 30:18-26)  Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.  For the Lord is a God of justice;  how blessed are all those who long for Him.

O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer.  He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. 20 Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. 21 Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left.  22 And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, “Be gone!”

23 Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous; on that day your livestock will graze in a roomy pasture.  24 Also the oxen and the donkeys which work the ground will eat salted fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. 25 On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 26 The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted...

29 (Isaiah 30:29)  You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, and gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel.

(Isaiah 32:1-8)  Behold, a king will reign righteously and princes will rule justly.
2 Each will be like a refuge from the wind and a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry country, like the shade of a huge rock in a parched land.
3 Then the eyes of those who see will not be blinded, and the ears of those who hear will listen.
4 The mind of the hasty will discern the truth, and the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak clearly.
5 No longer will the fool be called noble, or the rogue be spoken of as generous.
6 For a fool speaks nonsense, and his heart inclines toward wickedness:  to practice ungodliness and to speak error against the Lord, to keep the hungry person unsatisfied and to withhold drink from the thirsty.
7 As for a rogue, his weapons are evil; he devises wicked schemes to destroy the afflicted with slander, even though the needy one speaks what is right.
8 But the noble man devises noble plans; and by noble plans he stands.

15 (Isaiah 32:15-18)  ...the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field is considered as a forest.
16 Then justice will dwell in the wilderness and righteousness will abide in the fertile field.  
17 And the work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.
18 Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation, and in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places;

 (Isaiah 32:20)  How blessed will you be, you who sow beside all waters, who let out freely the ox and the donkey.

Today's takeaway:  we like to depend on our own strength, thinking that we then have more control over our lives;  but we are deceiving ourselves when we think that.  As it says in Isaiah 31:1 - "Woe to those... who rely on horses..." This was one of the big sins that David had committed (in 2 Samuel 24) when he counted his army (and later he confessed this sin).  First of all, God never asked David to do that, but most importantly, David fell into that mindset, thinking he had strength and power, even without God.   Sure, we have been given a certain amount of physical strength, health, talents and wisdom - but these are nothing in comparison with God!  And these things that God has given to us - can be so much greater when we allow God to work through us.  There are things which are way beyond our control in this fallen world in which we live;  but God is all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere-present... and He loves us.  Why would we not rest and trust in Him?  As the apostle Paul experienced and explained...

(2 Corinthians 12:7-10)  Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! 8 Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. 9 And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.