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We left off last time in Isaiah 40, and we shall return there shortly, but first, let us examine a passage in John, chapter 7.
John 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
The Holy Spirit would not come until Christ had been crucified, buried and resurrected. And, to be sure, Jesus remained only 40 days here on earth in His glorified body after the resurrection and then He ascended into heaven.
But on the high mountain (most likely, Mt. Hermon), His glory, the glory of God manifested in the flesh, the divine glory had been revealed to the three apostles. Let’s back up a page or two to John 6. Here we will find still another indicator of the divinity of Christ.
John 6:43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves.
44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Think about what Jesus is claiming here! Who but the Creator-God Himself could have the power to raise millions upon millions of people from the dead, though they may have been dead for thousands of years?!
Jesus calmly states that He will do exactly that. In reality, therefore, either He is a raving lunatic, or He is what He says He is: He is God in the flesh! But there is more; let’s go on.
45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
Taught by whom? By God. And then Jesus goes on to say: Therefore, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me! How does the Father teach us? He teaches us through His appearance in the flesh, as Jesus!
And of course, we are taught through the entire Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, mediated through the Holy Spirit. Now back to Isaiah 40.
Isaiah 40:6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
7 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD [YHWH] bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
9 O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
That is a prophecy, my friends! After Peter, James and John had come down from the high mountain, they shortly thereafter witnessed the death and resurrection of the Savior.
And after His ascension into the heavenly realm, the apostles fulfilled this prophecy. They went first to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah and proclaimed Christ as the Messiah. They proclaimed to the people of Judah: Behold your God! They were obviously referring to Jesus!
Isaiah 40:10 Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
Who is the subject of this sentence? The Lord GOD. In this case, the word “GOD” is in all caps and so it should read, the Lord Yahweh. It says that Yahweh will come with a strong hand, etc. …and His reward is with Him, and His work before Him.
Still keeping your bookmark here, let us go all the way to the end of the Bible, Revelation 22, where we will find this is fulfilled in and applied to Jesus. The prophecy is that God will rule with a strong hand.
Did Jesus come the first time and rule with a strong hand? Not at all. He came as a lamb going meekly to the slaughter. I would suggest that only in the context of the overall sovereignty of God can we say that the past two millennia have seen God ruling with a strong hand.
It is clear that this verse is a prophecy of God ruling and reigning after the second coming of our Lord, when He will rule the nations as King of kings and Lord of lords. It is Jesus speaking here in verse 12.
Revelation 22:12 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
You see the connection there, don’t you? It is yet another proof of our Lord’s deity because Isaiah prophesied that God would come with a strong hand and His reward would be with Him, and Revelation tells us that Jesus will come, and His reward will be with Him.
Once again, the prophecy of God in the Old Testament is fulfilled by Jesus in the New Testament. As long as we are here, let us read the next verse, because it also connects back to Isaiah.
13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
He, Christ, is the first and the last. Back to Isaiah, but to chapter 41, where we read in …
Isaiah 41:4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD [YHWH], the first, and with the last; I am he.
Again, Yahweh God in the Old Testament becomes Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Now back to chapter 40, and we left off in verse 11.
Isaiah 40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
Here it says that Yahweh is the shepherd who will feed the lambs and sheep. We discussed this earlier in this series, so we won’t elaborate on the shepherd connection any further.
Isaiah 40:12 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
Here is a reference to the creation—a work that only the Almighty and eternal God can do and again we showed in the earlier posts in this series that Christ as the Word is the Creator and by the Word of God all things consist. In other words, by Christ, all things are upheld and kept in existence.
Unless you have been living in the Arctic for the past twenty years, you are aware of the continuing battle between secular science with their god called evolution and the biblical assertion of a Creator-God.
In recent years, the term “Intelligent Design” has been dusted off and used by some Christian scientists in order to try to allow secular scientists to come to a midway position where they can at least admit that there just had to have been some kind of Intelligent Design behind all creation, without their having to admit that that Intelligent Designer was the God of the Christian Bible.
Naturally, such an attempt was doomed to failure, because secular scientists easily saw through the tactic and they heaped much scorn upon it in their journals. What would you expect?
The fact is that God says you don’t have to prove He exists. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that He exists and that He is the Creator. But they keep rejecting the divine knowledge that is available through the Word of God, don’t they?
Allow me to demonstrate from their own words what the Christ-deniers, the antichrists, think about creation. I am quoting from a monthly newsletter from The Institute for Creation Research.
QUOTE: [T]wo distinguished authors of the article on “The Evolution of the Earth” are quite certain that it originated by accretion or rock fragments bumping into each other.
They also give a nod to the Gaia hypothesis (though not to God), suggesting that the earth and life may have cooperated with each other in furthering their own evolution.
One of the top researchers on the naturalistic origin of life is Dr. Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute, who writes on “The Origin of Life on the Earth.” He reviews the many unsuccessful speculations of the past and then makes quite a number of his own. He does recognize, however, that:
“…at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.” …
Dr. Steven Weisberg, in the first article of the symposium, discussed ‘Life in the Universe,’ surveying the various theories of cosmic origins and the origin and nature of life. Although he did not know the answer to these problems, he is sure we don’t need God.
“The experience of the past 150 years has shown that life is subject to the same laws of nature as is inanimate matter. Nor is there any evidence of a grand design in the origin or evolution of life.”
That icon of the evolutionary establishment, Dr. Carl Sagan, has discussed one of his favorite subjects in “The Search for Extra-terrestrial Life.”
“While no one yet has found living organisms beyond the earth, there are reasons to be encouraged.”
His encouragement centers on the hope that other solar systems like ours will someday be discovered, and the fact that organic molecules have been found in space. He is evidently not easily discouraged!
Dr. Sagan’s chief rival for icon-hood in the evolutionary temple is Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould, who has written an article entitled “The Evolution of Life on the Earth.” He stresses the almost complete randomness of evolutionary history.
“Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternate pathway that would not have led to consciousness.”
There is neither design nor progress evident in Gould’s evolutionary scenario, let alone any evidence of God. …To a creationist it is humorous to read the speculations of evolutionists grasping at straws, as it were, in their almost paranoid attempts to get away from their own Maker.
If they really wish to know how the universe originated, for example, God has told them. “By the Word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. (Psalm 33:6). END QUOTE
Of course, there are literally thousands of articles and books by highly-respected (respected by whom? By themselves.) secular scientists in all disciplines who echo and spout their own silly and foolish nonsense denying the existence of their Maker.
It reminds me of the famous verse found in…
Psalm 14:1 [a] A Psalm of David.> [b] The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. [c] They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Our present focus is on part b. Christians everywhere point to this as proof that atheists are fools. Well, perhaps that is true—in a sense. However, in addition to what is noted above, about everyone knowing in their heart of hearts that God exists, we have this sure word:
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
We could then seriously ask: are there really any true atheists? Notice in Psalm 14b, that the words “There is” are in italics, which indicates that the KJ and other translators have supplied them as necessary for a proper understanding.
But sometimes we find that it is a mistake for translators to supply them. Our dear brother, Minnesota Ron, pointed this out to us decades ago. That when we omit the italicized words, we are left with this (And since the punctuation in whatever version has always been added by translators, we would punctuate it to read thus):
“No, God!” or to perhaps really get the clear meaning: “NO!! God.” Can you hear this fool screaming at God? In other words, there are no atheists, and this fool also knows that, but he is rejecting the idea that Someone higher than himself exists (and thus is shrieking at Him) and, since He exists, even the fool knows that we all therefore owe fealty to our sovereign creator.
And thus we find the “respected” scientists, who claim to be atheists, publishing paper after paper in their rejection of God, but in actuality proving the Bible correct that they are fools. They’re not really denying the existence of God, for God told us everyone knows He exists, but they scream and shriek in rejection of Him: NO!
Fortunately for them, God will one day, in their resurrection to judgment, change their hearts and they will join those of us who even now—by His sovereign Plan—give praise, honor, glory and thanksgiving to the Lamb who sits upon the throne! Amen and hallelu-Yah!
(To be continued.)
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