Isaiah: the End

Can you imagine writing a script that ends with this most beautiful scene where everyone is at peace and enters eternal bliss, with a new heaven and a new earth, but in the very last sentence of the play you add:

 

"And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh."

 

Those who would be sitting enjoying the play would turn to one another and say, "What an odd way to end a play." Others might say, "Why in the world would it end like that?" The crowd would leave with a sense of uncertainty, confusion and discomfort.

 

If you read the last chapter in Isaiah that is exactly what the prophet does. It is so out of place. You have this beautiful ending and then he adds this side note in the very last breath that people are going to suffer in fire, fully aware, for eternity. Why? For us! There is going to be eternal peace and satisfaction for the believer, but there is just as certain, going to be eternal suffering for the vast majority of everyone else.  And because of this truth, God doesn't want us to forget his last commandment: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel!" Time is running out and people, friends, and loved ones are going to hell.

 

Isaiah's ending is such a master piece of literary work. Some are so uncomfortable with the ending that they write it off and say that it was not a part of the original manuscript. So many today are counting on, in the end, to write their script. For my theological friends who would like to dismantle the ending in terms of the eternal state verses the thousand year millennial age, is to perhaps miss the greater emphasis. God loves to give us surprise endings! The book of Jonah for example ends with "And there are many cows."  The book of Jeremiah ends with a completely out of context twist where a king who had been in prison for thirty-seven years is not only released but is given an allowance from his captor, able to sit at the foreign kings' table for dinner, given a royal change of clothes, and is placed above all of the other kings of the land. Now that is a surprise and odd ending to that play. In the more modern unrefined vernacular, one might say, "Whats up?"  

 

"Whats up," is that Isaiah has written a masterpiece that result in the reader or listener to have the following indelible marks etched upon his conscience:

1.      That there is eternal life and eternal suffering.

2.      We need to get busy about bringing the good news to others and leading them the rest of the way into the presence of God. (Too often we fail to complete the mission—see Isaiah 66:20…and yes I realize this is OT and during the last days…but the application is the same for us today.)

3.      Even though God/Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, "the end," for most of life is always a surprise!

 

I can't help think of how my dad came to know the savior just a few months before the Lord took him home after reading some of our Lamplighter books, particularly Christies Old Organ and Buried in the Snow. But it was the Basket of Flowers that melted his heart to see God in ways he had never seen him before. What a surprise ending for our entire family. And what hope we have today as a family that we will see him again. And then on my dad's death bed, my mom asked Jesus to be her savior and today she is growing like a true disciple of Christ. "If you abide in my Word, then you are my disciple indeed." In fact, she called me yesterday and asked me to read several passages of Scripture that she thought I needed to hear! J What a surprise ending; what an amazing, unpredictable God!

 

And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the LORD, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the LORD.

And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the LORD.

"For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the LORD, so shall your offspring and your name remain.

From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD.

"And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh."

 

 Isaiah, The End.