Isaiah Foretold…?

WED., JAN. 3, 1996, 8:30 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

The ladies with whom you breakfasted did not answer your question or questions concerning prophesies by Isaiah. Will I do any better? Well, it will be a longer answer, if it is an answer. I should be able to offer you a clear explanation, but, as you shall see, there is a certain danger in honesty. Yes, I did say that!

These statements by Isaiah were made over 2,600 years ago, quite a span of time given the present length of earth lives. I was speaking through him, and I wanted those kinds of prophesies and proclamations to come to My people, the Jews. Yes, they were My favorite people at that time. I alternately blessed and coddled them… and railed against and punished them. Was that the best way to have them respond faithfully and lovingly to Me? If I did it, it was the best, by definition. That doesn’t mean it is the best for every time, circumstance, and people.

In general, I know now, from My long experience with humans, that a few will be faithful to Me all of the time and under all circumstances… that a few will never be true to Me and will reject the very nature of Me… and most will vacillate from faithfulness and repentance to doubt to faith in self and human capacities and strengths. You’re right. Punishing a whole people for the ingratitude of a few isn’t fair. Yet sometimes that seems the best way. A very rough analogy would be My allowing a fully loaded airliner to crash, killing all. Some deserved to die, because of relations with Me. A few were truly deprived of a good, faithful, and productive life. Most were somewhere between. But none has any further earth life. Am I unfair?

But back to Isaiah: He proclaimed, as you interpret what you are reading, that Israel would be the powerful force in the world, because I was their God and I wanted this to be. As you see the world 2,600 years or so, later this prophesy has never been fulfilled and never will be. Without support from Western, nominally Christian nations (including your own), there probably would be no Israel… or it would not have the strength it has. You are forcing, as part of the peace pact, Israel to return lands it captured in a previous war to Palestinians, so she becomes smaller rather than larger. Is this something I have willed, or just allowed? Am I using you to punish them or is this just “natural” redistribution?

You are not comfortable with the analogy I want to give you, but you know you must hear it. I have created, or allowed to be created, a great diversity of human kind, with a wide range in appearance, size, cultural patterns, and ways of acknowledging, or not acknowledging, Me. I love each of these groups, as well as individuals within the groups. Yet the Scriptures suggest that the Jews were My favorite chosen people. Further, I chose some over others… Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Moses over Aaron, David over his brothers, Solomon over his brothers, and… You had five sons, a goodly number for your culture but a puny number compared to My “children”. You didn’t want to have a favorite, but you did. Yet that one moved to a form of Christian faith that does not include you and does not recognize the reality of what you and I do together. Another son does… and he has become the favorite. You have not rejected the original favorite, and he has not rejected you. But he has been supplanted.

In a similar way My favorite religion is you Christians, even as I do not reject this original favorite, the Jews. They just followed too closely an interpretation of Isaiah and didn’t respond to My active presence among them, for a time. Despite one Scriptural affirmation, I do not have to be the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I can change, and I do. I have the power to control any aspect of earth life that I wish to, but I use this sparingly. Much more commonly I adapt to what humans do, fitting such actions to My Will.