By David Ettinger
Dark and Light
Regarding the end of this age, Bible teacher and founder of Zion’s Hope, Marv Rosenthal, taught: “Things are going to get terribly bad before they get wonderfully good.”
How true it is, and I believe we are seeing the first part of this insightful statement coming to fruition. And if you read the prophetic portions of the Bible, you know that things are going to get terribly bad before the return of Jesus Christ.
However, following His return and judgment of all Earth’s evil, He will establish his Millennial (1,000-year) Kingdom on Planet Earth, His headquarters (or capital) situated in Jerusalem (Isaiah 4:2-6, 11:1-10; Micah 4:1-8; Revelation 20:1-6). And when that day comes, things will be wonderfully, wonderfully good.
Prophetic Scripture is filled with these two extremes, often in the same chapters and portions of the Bible, that is, dark forebodings of great wrath followed by the great light of the reality which will follow the Lord’s purging of Earth.
Our Glorious Future
One place where this is evident is in what is known as the “Apocryphal Chapters of the Book of Isaiah,” chapters 24-27. Chapter 24 begins this way:
Behold, the Lord lays the earth waste, devastates it, distorts its surface and scatters
its inhabitants. … The earth will be completely laid waste and completely despoiled,
for the Lord has spoken this word. The earth mourns and withers, the world fades
and withers, the exalted of the people of the earth fade away (vv. 1, 3-4).
But as if God wants to make clear that this is not where the story ends for His people, He gives us this glorious great light:
The Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this
mountain [Zion]; A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow,
And refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the
covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over
all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord God will
wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His
people from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in
that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might
save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation” (Isaiah 25:6-9).
God’s Great Light
This passage needs no explanation, no examination of its hidden truths. There are no hidden truths as God puts on full display the incomprehensible promises with which He will bless all those who call Jesus Christ “Lord.”
This is God’s great light. In the midst of our current darkness, God tells those who are His: “Don’t despair, a glorious future awaits you. I am a God of light and not darkness, and those who love Me will walk in my light.”
So, whenever the gloom and dreariness of this mad world begins to get too difficult for you to bear, open your Bible to Isaiah Chapter 25 verses 6-9 and let the peace of His great light wash over you and lift your aching soul!
David Ettinger is a writer/editor at Zion’s Hope, Inc., and has written for Zion’s Fire magazine since its inception in 1990.
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