By H. A. Ironside
Taken from Grace and Truth Magazine
When once the break in the prophetic plan is seen as set forth in Daniel 9, one recognizes the fact that provision is made for this in prophetic interpretation throughout the entire Word of God. Prophecy has to do first with events connected with the nations in contact with Israel before and up to the coming of and rejection of the Messiah. Then there is a long interval during which, we learn from the New Testament, God is doing a work never mentioned in Old Testament times. Following this we have prophecies relating to the coming judgments at the time of the end and the Second Advent in power and glory of our Lord as He takes possession of the kingdom so long predicted. A very striking instance is that of Isaiah 61; of which a portion was read and commented on by our Saviour at His first return visit to Nazareth, where he had been reared, after His baptism by John and the temptation in the wilderness. We are told by Luke that when He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, and stood up to read, there was delivered unto Him the book of the Prophet Esaias, and when He had opened the book, He found the place where it is written :
In the opening words of the next verse we read: "And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down." There is something here that is very significant. By turning back to Isaiah 61, we find that He finished reading at a comma, for there in verse 2 we read:
The remainder of the chapter speaks of the wonderful blessing which will come to the land of Palestine and the people of Israel in the last days, Now when our Lord ceased reading in the middle of verse 2, He evidently had a very definite reason for it, and that reason is closely linked with what we have already been considering in our study of the great prophesy of the seventy weeks. One might suppose, if he had never considered the matter before, that the entire prophecy of Isaiah 61 would be continuous. There is nothing in the Old Testament passage to indicate otherwise; but by closing the book when He did, our Lord distinguished very definitely between His ministry connected with His first coming and that which is to take place when He conies the second time. He ceased reading as He uttered the word, "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." This introduced the Gospel Era. He did not read further because the day of vengeance of our God was not due to begin at that time, and in fact, it has not yet begun. In other words, our Lord put the entire dispensation of the grace of God in which we live into a comma. That comma represents a period of nearly two thousand years, at least. How much more, we cannot say. Not one other part of the prophecy has been fulfilled since the Lord closed the book. When DaniePs last seventieth week begins, then the fulfillment of the rest of the prophecy will start, and soon every promise to the people of Israel will be confirmed. The Lord Jesus came in lowly grace, preaching good tidings unto the meek. He came binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to captives and the opening of prison to those who were bound. He preached the acceptable year of the Lord, but Israel rejected Him. They did not recognize in the lowly Nazarene the the King whom they were expecting, and so they fulfilled other Scriptures in rejecting Him. This left God free (if I may put it that way), to open up secrets that had been in His heart from before the foundation of the world, and so we have the glorious age of grace in which we live, the calling out of the Church from Jew and Gentile to be the body and bride of Christ, and to share His throne with Him in the coming age. During all this time Israel nationally is rejected. It is folly to maintain, as some do, that the British nation and kindred peoples are really Israel and that a distinction is now to be made between Israel and the Jews. Before the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, God made this distinction, but since that time we find the term "Jew" and "Israelite" used interchangeably. This will be seen clearly when we come to consider the great parenthetical portion of the Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9 to 11. During all this time Israel nationally is set to one side. They are "lost," as it were, among the Gentiles. Individual Israelites may be saved by grace in the same way as individual Gentiles, but God is not dealing with the chosen nation as such. When this age comes to an end and the Church of God has been caught away to be with the Lord, then will follow the awful period of judgment so frequently referred to in the prophetic Scriptures, "the day of vengeance of our God." It will be the day when God will deal in judgment with apostate Christendom and apostate Judaism, when the vials of his wrath will be poured out upon the guilty nations who have rejected His Word, rejected His Son, and blasphemed His Holy Spirit. That day of vengeance is referred to again and again in the Scriptures under various names. It is called "the great and dreadful day of the Lord," "the time of Jacob's trouble," "the great tribulation," "the coming hour of temptation," and various other terms are also applied to it. It has nothing to do with the trials and tribulations through which the Church of God is now passing. For the Church, the entire period of her testimony here on earth is one of tribulation, even as our Lord said: "In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace." And the Apostle Paul tells us: "Ye must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God." But this is to be distinguished from what is emphatically called the Great Tribulation, which takes place after the Rapture of the Church and is the time when God will deal in wrath with the guilty nations of the world. However, following this day of vengeance comes the time when the Lord will comfort all that mourn. He will return in power to Israel, and the remainder of the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah will have its glorious fulfillment. Note what is predicted in verses 3 to 7. In that day Zion's mourning will be turned to joy; for the ashes of her blighted hopes will be given the beauty of acceptance with God. She will exchange the spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise, and restored Israel will be called "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord," and all this that He might be glorified. Then will come the blessing of the land, when God's promise to Abraham that the land should be his and in possession of his seed forever, will be literally fulfilled. "And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, they shall repair the waste cities, and the desolations of many generations shall come to an end." Israel will no longer be despised and hated by the nations. The Jew will not be looked upon with contempt and disapproval. Strangers from among the Gentiles, sons of the alien, will delight to serve God's ancient people who themselves will be named the priests of the Lord, and will be recognized as the ministers of our God. Because of all the anguish and wretchedness they have endured throughout the centuries, they will receive in return the riches of the Gentiles, and will grow in the favor God shall put upon them. Verse 7 is very significant. God will make up to them in a marvelous way for all that they have endured throughout the years of their wanderings, and this in their own land, where everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. It will be at that time that the promise given through Jeremiah will be fulfilled. In the thirty-first chapter of his prophecy, we have a corroborative passage that is linked definitely with this passage in Isaiah.
Then the new covenant will be confirmed with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah according to the promise of verses 31 through 34.
This is the covenant referred to in the eighth verse of Isaiah 61, where God says: "I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them." The closing verses of the chapter set forth the delight that God will have in His people in that day:
Let us suppose that we were living in Old Testament times before the first coming of our Lord Jesus to the earth, and that we were earnest students of the prophetic Word. Imagine, for instance, that we were puzzling over this wonderful portion of Isaiah's prophecy. Could we, by any possibility, realize through reading it that there was a great parenthesis between the two clauses, "the acceptable year of our Lord," and "the day of vengeance of our God?" Daniel 9 is the key that unlocks the truth here as elsewhere, but this was not known at the time that Isaiah wrote. Therefore, we are told in the First Epistle of Peter, chapter 1, that the Old Testament prophets wrote of the coming of Christ, but were utterly unable to understand the times and the seasons connected with this glorious truth. Peter writes:
In other words, these Old Testament prophets wrote as they were borne along by the Spirit of God, and then, after putting pen to papyrus, they sat down and studied their own writings, pondering them thoughtfully, wondering just what all these marvelous promises could mean, and when they would be fulfilled. They wrote, as Peter again tells us, of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, but of the interval between the two they knew nothing. The strange thing is that many Christians ignore it today, and failing to recognize the importance of this Great Parenthesis, they are in continual perplexity as to the time when prophecy is to be fulfilled.
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