Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 6-22-22: Isaiah 1 Prophecy & America

When we read the entire Bible in context, it’s easy to see the journey that Israel took which brought her so far from God.  Having spent 400 years in captivity in Egypt exposed to the pantheon of their gods, it’s understandable how little the Israelites knew of Yahweh despite the witness of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  As a result, God had to patiently teach Israel what it meant to see Him as the One true God, who loved them and demanded their obedience in order to rain down His blessings upon them.  Of course, we know how that went.  A generation would turn to the Lord and the next turn away until it cried out for mercy.  As a holy people, Israel had an amazingly short memory.

But America is no different.  We were founded by men and women who desired to worship God without constant pressure and backlash.  From their faithfulness and those who followed, the Lord enabled this nation to rise up as a beacon, a shining city on a hill.  However, due to the human condition with our sinful nature and little recollection of what previously transpired when God’s people turned from Him, we have reached a point of no return.

Life has been too good for us in the West.  Inevitably, when a people become complacent, they think they’re good in their own nature.  They see no need for God, because . . . well . . .  “I’ve pulled myself up by my own bootstraps without God in my life.  Why would I give up everything and repent?  Repent of what?”

A nation full of such people is destined for destruction.

Today I want to approach this Prophecy Update a little differently.  I’ll take the text that God gave the prophet in Isaiah 1 and draw comparison between Israel and America.  I think you’ll see that we’re no different from that Jewish nation thousands of years ago.  Mankind has an innate problem in remaining faithful to God.  That will only change when He completes the final change of our hearts and the fleshly vessels in which we live.  Only then – once we are transformed with our glorified bodies and Jesus sits on His throne in Jerusalem – only then, will there be righteousness in the earth.

Transcript:

When we read the entire Bible in context, it’s easy to see the journey that Israel took which brought her so far from God.  Having spent 400 years in captivity in Egypt exposed to the pantheon of their gods, it’s understandable how little the Israelites knew of Yahweh despite the witness of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  As a result, God had to patiently teach Israel what it meant to see Him as the One true God, who loved them and demanded their obedience in order to rain down His blessings upon them.  Of course, we know how that went.  A generation would turn to the Lord and the next turn away until it cried out for mercy.  As a holy people, Israel had an amazingly short memory.

But America is no different.  We were founded by men and women who desired to worship God without constant pressure and backlash.  From their faithfulness and those who followed, the Lord enabled this nation to rise up as a beacon, a shining city on a hill.  However, due to the human condition with our sinful nature and little recollection of what previously transpired when God’s people turned from Him, we have reached a point of no return.

Life has been too good for us in the West.  Inevitably, when a people become complacent, they think they’re good in their own nature.  They see no need for God, because . . . well . . .  “I’ve pulled myself up by my own bootstraps without God in my life.  Why would I give up everything and repent?  Repent of what?”

A nation full of such people is destined for destruction.

Today I want to approach this Prophecy Update a little differently.  I’ll take the text that God gave the prophet in Isaiah 1 and draw comparison between Israel and America.  I think you’ll see that we’re no different from that Jewish nation thousands of years ago.  Mankind has an innate problem in remaining faithful to God.  That will only change when He completes the final change of our hearts and the fleshly vessels in which we live.  Only then – once we are transformed with our glorified bodies and Jesus sits on His throne in Jerusalem – only then, will there be righteousness in the earth.

We’ll see what this looks like after we pray and read a couple other verses from Isaiah.

<PRAY>

Scripture

Isaiah 30:15,18

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
“In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
But you were unwilling,

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.

Isaiah 1 Prophecy & America

¹ The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

This was a prophecy specifically for the Southern Kingdom of Judah.  The Northern Kingdom of Israel was probably on the verge of complete destruction by the Assyrians when this Word came, or it in fact, could have already been consumed by its enemies.

Also, Babylon may have already been at the door when Isaiah declared God’s intent for Judah.  Elsewhere, He had compared the two kingdoms that had split and even stated that Judah was worse than her older sister in the north.

We generally don’t have legitimate prophets today since we have the entire Word of God at our disposal.  We have many who say they are but prove otherwise by their false prophecies and supposed new revelations.  However, just as the Jews of old ignored or dismissed God’s messengers the prophets, we likewise have disregarded and scorned His love letter to us.  We’ve neglected to read the Bible and we’ve intentionally distorted what it says by not heeding its warnings.  Is our Lord only a God of love?  No!  He is also a God of vengeance.  For too long in our nation we’ve done what Israel did: we disposed of the Ten Commandments and justified our actions in the unrighteous love of ourselves.

² Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
    for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
³ The ox knows its owner,
    and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
    my people do not understand.”

Comparing the people of Israel with dumb and stubborn beasts of burden, God says that even such animals understand that there is a hand which feeds them.  Israel in her rebellion hasn’t been able to figure that out: all good things come from the Lord, even today.

What have we done in America?  We’ve turned our backs on the amazing deeds of those who came before us.  They fought for liberty and justice.  They crafted a nation that was the envy of the world because of the very fact that we gave God a prominent place in our lives.

But we made the determination that Biblical values were antithetical to a just society.  We figured we could make things equitable for all by making our own laws apart from what God said.

⁴ Ah, sinful nation,
    a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
    children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
    they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
    they are utterly estranged.

The people during Isaiah’s time were no different from those during the era of the Judges.  They may have had kings like they wanted to rule over them, but they didn’t acknowledge the One true King.  They did what was right in their own eyes.  They followed their deceitful hearts and fell far away from the Lord.

Over the years, many Bible scholars downplayed the supernatural that Scripture clearly conveys.  They sought to de-mythologize the Bible.  Jesus became simply a righteous man, but certainly not God.  Biblical text couldn’t be inspired by a divine hand and thus must have come from the minds of men.  As a result, what it said could be picked and chosen from as to what to believe or not.

Seminaries allowed themselves to be infiltrated with profane thinking.  That became the norm as teachers and their pastor students believed the lies.  These heretics spread their false gospel to the masses.  America has become a nation of unbelievers no different than Israel of old.

⁵ Why will you still be struck down?
    Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick,
    and the whole heart faint.
⁶ From the sole of the foot even to the head,
    there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
    and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
    or softened with oil.

God’s question of Israel is one that resonates for us today.  He tells His people they are afflicted; they are ill with sin caused by their rebellion.  Is there anything He can do to change their minds?  The entire body is sick and the evidence is plain as day.

In a similar manner our nation is in total distress from top to bottom.  The Washington elites think they’re wise in their proclamations and in their governance, but the results demonstrate that they’re fools.  The common man looks to government as his authority and perishes because of it.  Our rebellion is soul deep.  We have turned from God and believe that self-reliance is the answer.  Nothing that anyone does is sound any longer.  The affliction consuming our nation will result in destruction.

⁷ Your country lies desolate;
    your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence
    foreigners devour your land;
    it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.
⁸ And the daughter of Zion is left
    like a booth in a vineyard,
like a lodge in a cucumber field,
    like a besieged city.

Israel’s disobedience of God resulted in rot from within and invasion from without.  Those who hated Israel saw their opportunity because of the weakness of a divided people and kings that sought after their own glory rather than the good of the nation.  What was left was defenseless and without recourse against their enemies.

Because our leaders in America are lawless and follow foreign gods, they have allowed lawlessness to spread like plague.  Those who desired to burn and pillage like the thugs of Antifa and BLM were given free rein and continue untouched by the laws of the land.  We didn’t awaken to the necessity of freedom for the oppressed; the opposite happened.  Brainwashed youth from our failed schools learned to despise all that was good and to take vengeance upon people seen as their oppressors.  With our southern borders wide open, our nation has determined that those who seek our demise are to be welcomed in so we can Build Back Better.  We are being consumed from within.

⁹ If the Lord of hosts
    had not left us a few survivors,
we should have been like Sodom,
    and become like Gomorrah.

God completely annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah, leaving nothing but burnt salt flats.  The cities were real-life examples of something that had lost its saltiness and was good-for-nothing.  Unlike in these wicked cities, despite the evil of most of the Israelites in Judah, God retained a remnant of the people who were faithful to him.

Who is the remnant in America?  Is there anyone remaining who can rightly be named as one who follows the Lord God?  Jesus – of course – called it correctly when He declared that the way is narrow into the Kingdom of God.  The road to destruction is wide and those who travel it are plenteous.  Many who call themselves Christians are deceived by false teaching and shepherds who are wolves in disguise.  Because so few take the responsibility to seek out God through His Word, they are lost sheep who will be devoured.

¹⁰ Hear the word of the Lord,
    you rulers of Sodom!
Give ear to the teaching of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
    says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
    and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
    or of lambs, or of goats.

God had had enough of His people.  They had sickened Him with their false piety.  As far as He was concerned, they were no better nor different than the immoral citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.  God couldn’t find five righteous people in their midst.  What else had they earned for their debauchery other than condemnation and punishment?  The rulers and teachers of Israel had led their flocks into the very same depraved condition of those two cities worthy of nothing less than the same fate.  Actually, it was even worse in Israel.  In Jeremiah 5:1 God says:

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
    look and take note!
Search her squares to see
    if you can find a man,
one who does justice
    and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her.

They continued going through the motions of praise and worship of God, yet their hearts were far from Him and He knew that without a doubt.

Over the years we have allowed Satan to have his way up and down in every institution of our nation.  The worst sin of all has been our allowing our churches to become corrupted and approving of the iniquity proclaimed and perpetrated in them.  We go through the motions each week as if we’re still a Christian nation.  Yet what do the people in the pews take away from this hour out of their busy week?  They learn that they can improve their lives by embracing the world while patting themselves on the back.  Others learn that society is systemically against them – the only recourse being condemnation of their fellow man while lifting up their own lives as righteous.  God sees and hates all this pretense.

¹² “When you come to appear before me,
    who has required of you
    this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Bring no more vain offerings;
    incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—
    I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
¹⁴ Your new moons and your appointed feasts
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
¹⁶ Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
¹⁷ learn to do good;
seek justice,
    correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
    plead the widow’s cause.

The religiosity of Israel reached such a peak that God declared He couldn’t stand it any longer.  Everything the people did in supposedly honoring Him was a sham.  They continued to go through the motions of the Law as set before Moses, but there was nothing in the people’s hearts that indicated any sort of reverence for Yahweh.  It was so egregious to Him that their prayers were worthless – He wouldn’t listen.  There was no repentance among them and the blood they shed had reached such a level that it overshadowed every other thought or action they had about Him.  God gave them counsel as to what they should do to return to Him.  It was the same as what He said in Micah 6:8:

He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Yet, in giving this advice for returning to Him, God knew that they would not.  Knowing their hardheartedness, the Lord’s Words were almost as though He was saying, “I told you so, but I know better.  You won’t do what I’ve said.”

Is any of this any different from the condition of our churches today?  Haven’t we had the Bible as the guidebook for our relationship with God, yet gone through the motions?  Haven’t our minds been on anything but the Lord, even while theoretically worshiping Him on Sundays?  We’ve reached the point where we think that by simply showing up somewhere called a House of God that this makes everything perfect in our lives.  We’ve checked the box for an hour every week and we go about our lives invested in the world, while God is left with His hand outstretched saying, “I’m here if you would only respond.”  The way we seek justice is according to the world’s standards – not God’s.  In fact, the justice we attempt is completely contrary to God and His Word.

¹⁸ “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
    they shall become like wool.
¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,
    you shall eat the good of the land;
²⁰ but if you refuse and rebel,
    you shall be eaten by the sword;
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The opportunities that God gave His people Israel for them to repent and turn from their evil ways were numerous.  God’s abundant love shone through time and again; His mercy was incredible given the way the Israelites treated Him.  He tried to reason and bring logic to their situation by illustrating their sinful ways.  He told them the consequences of their actions.  In fact, God typically gave Israel an if-then scenario of blessings and curses: IF Israel repented, THEN God would stay His hand of judgment.  However, IF Israel didn’t refrain from worshiping false gods and the resultant immoral acts, THEN He would bring great tragedy upon them.  They would face the sword, pestilence, plagues, wild beasts, and eventually be uprooted from the land.  God warned them.

In America we seem to resist the idea that God warns through natural disasters.  No doubt you’ve heard of a high-profile pastor saying that a hurricane or series of tornadoes, even riots or significant increases in homicides, came from God judging our nation.  Inevitably that person is criticized and mocked.  God would never do such a thing.  That’s not how He operates.  You need to apologize for scaring people with such nonsense!  Regardless of what these people say against the possibility that God might indeed work in such a manner, all we need to do is read the Old Testament for credible evidence that this is exactly what He does.  In times past, He also sent His prophets to bring warning of impending calamity.

Today, we don’t necessarily have legitimate prophets.  We do have individuals with dreams and visions per Joel’s prophecy.  More importantly, we have God’s Word in the form of the Bible.  That is our primary prophetic reference for today.  Because hardly anyone reads it, nobody knows that God has spoken already and that the natural disasters are simply Him doing the same thing He’s done in the past.  He is sovereign and controls the elements.  When He decides to bring disaster, He can and will do it any number of ways.  Flooding, drought, famine, and many other catastrophic events are all part of His toolkit to wake people up so that they might turn to Him.

²¹ How the faithful city
    has become a whore,
    she who was full of justice!
Righteousness lodged in her,
    but now murderers.
²² Your silver has become dross,
    your best wine mixed with water.
²³ Your princes are rebels
    and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
    and runs after gifts.
They do not bring justice to the fatherless,
    and the widow’s cause does not come to them.

What a picture of corruption with unbridled lawlessness!  Israel – Jerusalem – a nation and a city that was specially chosen by God to be His people for blessings and abundance, and to be a light to the rest of the world, had become a cesspool.  The mercy of God which was supposed to reside in this place had been turned upside down.  People profited from God’s mercy and exploited others for their own purposes.  This description shows how far from grace the Israelites had fallen.

Upon America’s founding we had people who loved and honored God.  Were there those who didn’t?  Of course!  But the general heart of those early inhabitants of our land was toward the God who had brought them to the place of great abundance where they could worship Him in freedom.  The early pioneers in America were generally faithful to the Lord.  They read their Bibles and heeded His Word.  They did what He commanded.  Over time, because men’s hearts were full of sin, more people slipped away from a Biblical worldview.  We allowed that perspective to grow and to infiltrate our institutions.  From adulterated schools we began turning out poisoned adults who believed in anything but the God of the Bible.  We allowed seminaries to be infiltrated by Marxists and slowly our government became filled with unelected bureaucrats who likewise were enamored by socialist/communist ideologies.  Those who were elected and appointed to high and responsible positions had little in the way of Godliness within them and our nation began rotting at the core.

²⁴ Therefore the Lord declares,
    the Lord of hosts,
    the Mighty One of Israel:
“Ah, I will get relief from my enemies
    and avenge myself on my foes.
²⁵ I will turn my hand against you
    and will smelt away your dross as with lye
    and remove all your alloy.
²⁶ And I will restore your judges as at the first,
    and your counselors as at the beginning.
Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,
    the faithful city.”

Israel’s apostasy was so blatant and offensive to God that in His eyes she became His enemy.  As the great and sovereign Judge, He had the right to bring vengeance upon all who opposed Him.  Lye is an extremely harsh and caustic solution used for extreme cleansing purposes.  God’s analogy is that He would strip Israel of everything that required purging so that the end result would be something new and pure.  Indeed, following this treatment, God promised that all Israel’s iniquity would be removed.  Despite all the transgressions the Israelites had committed against the Lord, He would restore them through this process.

Why should we in America think ourselves immune and above such a corrosive purging by God?  What is it about our psyche that makes us believe that we’re different from and superior to Israel in this regard?  Are we any different from Israel during its time of Judges?  She rejected God; He restored her; she turned and fell; He brought her back into His good graces; and on and on.  We’ve had multiple moves of God over our history.  I chronicled several of them in my recent Prophecy Update titled: Will There be Another Great Awakening?

Why – in the wake of 70 million abortions – the shedding of absolutely innocent blood, do we think that we’ll escape the God of Justice?  Add to that the gross depravity and utter lack of any recognition of Him by the vast majority of Americans.  Should we truly think we’ll skate out of the corner in which we’ve painted ourselves?  Such hubris!  Our pride is unbounded by the belief that we can overcome spiritual darkness with tools and instruments of war in the physical realm.  Have we learned nothing from the Lord?  Yet, a time is coming for those faithful to God through His Son Jesus Christ that we will shine like the sun – first for 1,000 years, and then for the rest of eternity.  We shall indeed inhabit the city of righteousness!

²⁷ Zion shall be redeemed by justice,
    and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
²⁸ But rebels and sinners shall be broken together,
    and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.

The days are coming for Israel when God will act mightily in that land.  It will be a time of darkness and light when Jerusalem becomes a cup of trembling for the entire world.  It will be so bad in Israel that – even as Zachariah foretells – 2/3 of the Jews will perish, but 1/3 will come to know their Messiah.

In the same manner, we who know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord will be redeemed from this world before it descends into total anarchy.  God’s Word declares that Jesus will come for us in the clouds and bring us to His Father’s house as a place of safety, just as the bridegroom comes for his bride and sweeps her into the place he has prepared for her while the world continues outside those doors.  The world will be consumed.  We who have been Raptured will remain hidden away in the presence of God Himself.

²⁹ For they shall be ashamed of the oaks
    that you desired;
and you shall blush for the gardens
    that you have chosen.
³⁰ For you shall be like an oak
    whose leaf withers,
    and like a garden without water.
³¹ And the strong shall become tinder,
    and his work a spark,
and both of them shall burn together,
    with none to quench them.

Israel sought other gods and worshiped them in secret places – in the forests and the hills, among stately trees and beautiful green pastures.  Honoring these false gods and their idols, the Israelites forsook the Lord whom they couldn’t see for representations of deities they made with their own hands.  God declared that regardless of how weak or strong a person was who followed this path of apostasy far from Him, they earned nothing but His contempt and an unquenchable fire for eternity.  Their reward for despising the God of their creation who loved them more than life itself was a promise of torment in a place originally reserved for Satan and his angels.

Inhabitants of this once great nation have no excuse, just as the Israelites had none.  God made Himself known among us in many ways, but we chose to ignore and disdain Him.  We decided that the god of Self was more attractive and faithful than a God of mercy, peace, grace, justice, and love.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Israel’s sins were no different than ours.  Her fate was the loss of nationhood, dispersion of the people, and a blindness that will only be overcome through even more persecution than what she’s already suffered.  But after this, Israel will be restored and Jesus will sit on His throne in Jerusalem.

Where does all this lead?  The simple answer is: Destruction.  America has no such promise as Israel for her restoration.  I think that 1 Thessalonians 5:3 applies very much to us just as it does to the rest of the world:

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

People – many Christians included – think that God will ignore our transgressions and allow our nation to continue as it has since its founding.  That’s a fatal error if we’re to look at Scripture and draw any conclusions from it.  In fact, if Jesus isn’t a liar – which of course He is not – then what He said about the signs of the times in Matthew 16:1-4 are relevant to us:

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.

Thus, the Lord Himself has told us that given all we see, His return is very near.

America may or may not be among the weak and insignificant nations that are required to come yearly to pay homage to Christ on His throne.  Thankfully, true believers who love the Lord and who look for our redemption in Jesus will experience His glory in all its fullness.  Difficult times are coming to our land and this world because God must and will judge in righteousness.  But God is faithful.  Those who are destined to receive punishment will; we who love the One who died for us will be rewarded.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.”