Day 50: Isaiah 41-53

Guess what is back? That's right more poetry.

So... I'm just going to get right into it today. Isaiah 53 is perhaps the most famous book of Isaiah. It's up there with Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 40 (and possibly Isaiah 7 can be included).

But, as I think about Isaiah 53, I doubt it was very famous until about 34 AD. You see, this chapter is a prophecy of the life, death, and burial of Jesus Christ.

I cannot imagine myself being a BCE Jew. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live waiting for the Messiah to arrive (oh wait... yes I can).

I don't think that most Jews would understand Isaiah 53 at all. In fact, I am pretty sure that they didn't.

You see it over and over again in the gospels of how the Jewish leaders and even the disciples do not understand at all how Jesus MUST die as a sacrifice.

Then, we look at the Old Testament and see how it is prophesied over and over and over that Jesus is coming to die. But, nobody understands it.

And I guess for me, the question it brings up is... what does this mean for His second coming?

Whether you are pre-trib, post-trib, amillenial, post-millenial, pre-millenial... none of us know for sure what is coming.

We have passages in Scripture that we base our opinions and doctrines around, but we don't know for sure what will happen.

I mean if you look at Jews for thousands of years... they read the same OT that we read and their expectation of the Messiah was completely wrong.

They expected an emperor to lead Israel to be the rulers of the world like a Caesar or Alexander the Great. But Jesus came as a humble sacrifice to save the world from sin... not from "evil empires."

So, the question I have is... what are we missing for the second coming?

We have a small advantage... we have Revelation. We have God revealing some of His future plans. We know the "end" of the story.

But with our extreme obsession with End Times, do we ever stop to realize that WE KNOW ALMOST NOTHING?

I mean seriously... let's make a list of what we KNOW.
- 7 years of tribulation
- God wins
- Satan losses
- Jesus is going to reign for 1000 years

Other than that, we don't really know a whole lot. We speculate on whether Christians will be here or not during the tribulation. We have Bible passages that we use to make our points, but there are just as valid Bible passages to make the opposite points.

To be fair, I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. But I am by no means going to argue with someone who believes in post-trib... because we don't KNOW.

We speculate on when Christ's 1000 year. When it will happen. Whether it will be a literal 1000 years with Him sitting on David's throne in Jerusalem. Who will be on earth at this point.

There is so much we don't know... and yet, we will probably be sitting in eternity someday looking at the Bible saying "duh." Look at all these prophecies throughout the entire Bible.

It is just like the Christians looking back at the Old Testament seeing tons of prophecies about Jesus death on the cross. Even though the Jewish experts read the same passages 1000s of times and never saw these as prophetic.

I guess the whole point of this post is that I don't know what is going to happen. You don't know what is going to happen. That pastor on TV doesn't know what is going to happen. The author of that book doesn't know what is going to happen.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with being excited about eternity. I am just as excited as the next person.

I think where we go wrong is when we "know" what is going to happen, and when we "know" the day that Jesus will return.

We don't KNOW much. All I KNOW is that God wins in the end, so I want to be on God's team.

And in the end, there are only two things that matter:
1. Does God KNOW you?
2. Who did you bring with you?