Telescopic Predictions (Part B)

They were descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob. Esau was a man's man, but he just wasn't spiritual. Spiritual things did not move him.

They did move Jacob even though Jacob was a swindler. He was more sensitive to the spiritual realm. Surely God is in this place and I knew it not. Well, we never hear of the God of Esau.

We never hear of Esau calling on the Lord. It's an inaccurate portrayal and it's the spirit and attitude that God says, I hate the Lord. Well, this is how revelation or prophecy is supposed to come to us.

This is how it is imparted. The inspiration behind the revelation, of course, is God. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, for I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Paul said, I'm a believer too and I've received this from the Holy Spirit and I'm sharing these things that I have from him with you. And that's what Isaiah is saying here in verse 10. That which I have heard from Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you.

And again, how can he say this with such authority and these things are so far away because it was a genuine work of God in his life. Verse 11, the burden against Dumas, he calls me out to Sierra. Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?

And so he's continuing with this Watchman who is to see the trouble that is coming. Now he's talking about Edom. He's going back away from Babylon which is in the future and he's coming back to the time that he's living in Syria, the tyrant in that region. Their armies, of course, put dread into all the people there, the Edomites included. The Edomites lived by these fast food chains, that's why they called them the Edomites. Okay, they lived south of the Dead Sea. That's where their territory was and so you had the Edomites and going north, you had Moab and then Ammon. Today all of that is in modern Jordan, just across the Jordan River. And I don't know why they didn't call it the Israel, the Israeli River.

Why does Jordan get to name it? Okay, I'm digressing. Coming back to this, the dread that they were feeling in those days. Now he's going to personify Edom, asking it, you know, they're going to ask him, what hope do we have? And it's not like he was in actual dialogue with these people. He's preaching and he's writing these prophecies and it's for his readers to look at this and ask questions and to be moved, apparently, it was well done enough to keep it in circulation. They didn't just write his prophecies down and say, boy, this stuff is crazy, who can understand it?

And throw it away. They preserved it because they got it. Whether all the peoples believe it or not, of course, that's another matter, but the righteous, they knew that this was God's word to the prophet. And so this word Duma, it means silence. And as is the custom of Isaiah, he has wordplay all over the place. It would be nice if we all could speak the ancient Hebrew and read it that way.

We wouldn't have to, it would be right there in front of us. So he moves one letter from Adam or Edom and he moves it to Duma, which means silence. His creative way of saying, Edom will be silenced. Edom will be no more. And we know this is Edom because he mentions again, his reference to them indicates that using Duma is wordplay, a corruption of Edom, in that territory, Petra, that rock city exists, and also Aaron is believed to have been buried on Mount Hor, which is in the territory of Edom.

Though they're not sure where that mountain is, we do know it's in Edom's territory. Anyway, they were descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob, and Esau was a man's man, but he just wasn't spiritual. Spiritual things did not move him.

They did move Jacob even though Jacob was, you know, a swindler. He was more sensitive to the spiritual realm. Surely God is in this place and I knew it not. Well, we never hear of, you know, the God of Esau. We never hear of Esau calling on the Lord.

That's an accurate portrayal, and it's the spirit and attitude that God says, I hate that attitude. Anyhow, the Edomites were descendants of Esau, and Esau was nicknamed Edom, which means red. In that territory, the landscape is the mountains, the soil is redness to it, as I mentioned south of the Dead Sea. These people, they did not get along with the Jews. The psalmist writes about it, and it's in the history, but they would be conquered by the Assyrians, and after the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 70 AD, after Christ had ascended to heaven, we don't read of them anymore. Herod, the think he was so great, I mean, how do you say Herod the Great and the man was a monster?

You know, how do you, you need to revise that. Anyway, he was an Edomite, as were the Herods, and they pass off the scene. Verse 12, the watchman said, the morning comes, and also the night, if you will inquire, inquire, return, come back. And so there's an invitation here, he says, you know, ask, you know, return and come back, seek Yahweh, is what the watchman's message is to those who would hear.

Edom, of course, declines the invitation. They never turn to Yahweh, though the Herods thought they were friends of Yahweh, building the temple and the other things, but they were false the whole time. Verse 13, the burden against Arabia, in the forest, which is really the thicket in Arabia, you will lodge, oh you traveling companies of the Dedanites. Verse 14, oh inhabitants of the land of Timah, bring water to him who is thirsty with the bread they met him who fled. Verse 15, for they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the distress of war. Verse 16, thus Yahweh has said to me, within a year, according to the year of a hired man, all the glory of Kedar will fail.

Verse 17, and the remainder of the number of archers and the mighty men of the people of Kedar will be diminished for the Lord God, the Lord Yahweh of Israel has spoken it. So this is Arabia, and the Dedanites were the descendants of Abraham and Keturah. And you would think, you know, well they weren't from the chosen son, Isaac.

Abraham had no less than 12 sons with Keturah after Sarah had died. And these Arabians, the children of Keturah and Ishmael, another son of Abraham, are known to us as the Arabs today. And Isaiah, he saw that the day was going to come when the Arab caravans traveling these routes would be hiding from the Assyrians. And that the desert peoples from Temah, an oasis town, would bring relief to them. But they would eventually be driven, the Arabs, deeper into the desert. And the prophet says, within a year, the glory of these events, within a year, the glory of the Arabian tribes would be gone. And they were powerful in the desert, well respected, and that would all be gone. Again, to reference Lawrence of Arabia, the only way to unite the Turks that were in that part of the world during World War I was to unite the Arab tribes into a fighting force, because they fought each other so much that you couldn't do anything with them.

And he succeeded in doing that, and they were successful in driving the Turks out. Then the British ended up with Jerusalem. And that's how eventually the Jews got back into Jerusalem through the British. And they took all houses from the British that the British army built when they were occupying Israel before they turned it over to the Jews. So that history there is, there's fulfillment in this history. The Kidar, again, these Arabian tribes from Abraham.

So there's a difference here. We have the Dedonites, they're from Abraham and Keturah, but the ones from Keturah, they're from Israel. The Kidar are from Ishmael and Sarah. So these people are just, that's what happened to them. And if you, whatever happened to his family, well, that's what happened to them, and eventually the Arabs, they're still there.

In fact, the Jews today in Israel, many of them refer to the Arabs as their cousins. Verse 22, the burden against the valley of vision, what ails you now that you have all gone up to the housetops? He's now turning his attention to Jerusalem, where he says the burden against the valley of vision. What ails you? That part, what ails you, what ails you now?

It sounds like now what's the problem? But that's not what it, I think a better word is, you know, what's going on now? Maybe, not because the translators are wrong, but maybe how we perceive that, you know, what ails you now?

But it is not spoken in that sense. Anyway, Jerusalem, this is now the burden against the valley of vision. They're now going to refer to the Babylonian siege. Parts of it apply to the Assyrian siege also. The Assyrian siege Jerusalem, the angel of the Lord came, wiped out the Assyrian army, 185,000 in one night.

The Assyrians go away, but later come the Babylonians. So God wanted to spare his people of all of it. It was judgment upon them. So metaphorically, this valley of vision reminds us of Psalm 23, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

It's a sort of cryptic heading. It implies opportunity. The word vision implies opportunity to respond to God.

Knowledge of truth demands a greater accountability. And so it's appropriate that Isaiah would refer to Jerusalem as that valley of vision. Of course, it was like a cashew shape around the Temple Mount. There are two valleys, the Hinoim Valley and the Kidron Valley. Those valleys are very much part of Jerusalem and her history. David crossed over the Kidron Valley, leaving Jerusalem, fleeing Absalom with his head covered, with no shoes on, he was weeping. To the Jews, these things would mean a lot more than maybe what they mean to us.

If you lived maybe in the early 1800s, places like Lexington and Concord would mean a lot to you. That's where the British were beaten back. But now we're removed and to us there are exit signs on the exit signs. Well, same with the Jews.

These things meant something to them and they're supposed to mean something today. We need to see more rabbis give verse-by-verse exposition of their Old Testament and stop quoting the rabbis. I know there was one out there doing it for a while. I don't know whatever happened with that.

I don't follow it. But it would cause them to ask more questions. Maybe that's why, you know, Rome suppressed the scripture by, you know, you can't read it except in Latin when they knew the people didn't read the Latin because they didn't want them to get the knowledge. And, well, that's what this AI is all about. Is it not the suppression of knowledge, artificial intelligence? You do a Google search on, say, you know, how many murders in Richmond in 2022 and the data has been so swayed that it'll tell you, oh, five.

I'm just giving this an example. When maybe there's 105 and what happens is they shape how people think. They create a reality that is false and people act on that. And this is how they get re-elected. They stay in power with this misinformation, this false information, which is going to be on the moon when the church is raptured. On Earth, it's going to be just out of control.

The planet will be drunk with that. You know, Daniel calls him, says he spoke with pompous words. And I believe that's the media that he has under his control. He's just a big mouth.

And it would be limited if it was just his character. Boy, you know, it's like Mussolini, you know, he just walks around talking about stuff he can't do. No, it's going to be that he has control of what is said.

And it's going to be all lies. And those who were left here will be left here that those who have heard the gospel, they will be left here because they did not have the love of the truth. But they liked lies. And we have people like that today. You can convict somebody, man, of their sin and the solution and they just won't take the step towards salvation. And what is God supposed to do with someone like that? What should God do when there's two people and he has someone preach the gospel to one and he receives it, he repents, I'm a sinner, forgive me, I come to Christ, let him be my Lord. And then next to him is another person who gets to preach the same message and he doesn't want to hear it.

The two thieves on the cross. What's God supposed to do with that? Well, universalism teaches that, oh, they both end up in heaven.

No, they don't. That's universalism. That's also a lie. It's false teaching.

And it was written in hell. And it does come down to what a person believes. For us, when we are faced with these things, if the people are in close proximity to us in our lives, it's likely an indication that we are supposed to not be giving up on prayer on those people but fight that war on our knees, make our contribution there. For me, my contribution is trying to preach on things that God tells me to preach. But that's not all of it.

I pray for a lot of the people that I know are in Satan's grasp and I know that other Christians do the same. Anyway, he says in verse one that you have all gone up to the housetops. So what's happening here is there's judgment coming and the watchman is saying to the people of Jerusalem, judgment is coming.

And in this, he's depicting their attitude. Instead of lamentations, the housetop was the place where you would broadcast the bad news, where you would gather if there was bad news coming. Instead of lamentation, it was community joy.

They're having parties on the rooftops. When Jesus said, whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light and what you hear in the ear, preach it on the housetops. And that's the language that is coming from Isaiah. He is saying to the people, this is news that needs to be broadcast, that there's a judgment coming and it's coming on Jerusalem.

But you instead are throwing parties. Thus verse two, you are full of noise, a tumultuous city, a joyous city. Your slain men are not slain with the sword nor dead in battle. So he's telling them what's coming, what he's seeing.

This is a double application. Spiritually they're dead, not with the sword, but because of their apostasy. But also when the siege comes, it will bring famine. When the Babylonian siege comes, and that's what he's talking about, they're not going to die on the battlefield.

They're going to die in the city of a slow and awful death, that of starvation. And here they are in the land of milk and honey, never mind how they got there. They don't care that they were emancipated from Egypt, that they were once slaves and now they're free.

They don't care, they don't believe their own history. When I grew up in high school, they gave you European history. I learned my European history and American history from war movies. I didn't learn anything, I can't tell you one thing I learned in those classes.

Maybe that's where I first heard the name Picasso, I don't know. But why weren't they giving me my history? As a Jew, why aren't the Jews hungry for their history, which is, you can't get God out of it, you can't get Yahweh out of it. Well, that's the problem Isaiah had. He saw that the people would be dying and not on the battlefield. Isaiah alone sees where their escapism is leading them. Escapism, they didn't want to hear it, they wanted to have a party.

They didn't want to talk conviction. And he's saying, well, this is where it's going. Verse 3, all your rulers have fled together, they have captured by the archers. All who are found in you are bound together, they have fled from afar. Well, when Babylon took Jerusalem, the warriors and the king fled the city, left the besieged people in the city.

It was sort of, you know, let them, whatever happens, happens. And over a century away, he's telling them that there's going to be famine. Jeremiah writes about it in Lamentations 4. He talks about the coward leaders, which we read about in 2 Kings 25. And then he talks about, Isaiah does when we get further down, about the houses in Jerusalem that are going to be dismantled so that they can use the materials to fortify the city against a siege.

And it's all going to fail. Verse 4, therefore I said, look away from me, I will weep bitterly, do not labor to comfort me because of the plundering of my daughter, the daughter of my people. And now he's recording his own feelings concerning Jerusalem's doom, as he did with Babylon and earlier with Moab. This is amazing to me, that you have a man that is faced with wicked people like we are, the corrupt and evil politicians that infest the land and seem to be just increasing. And you just, you say to yourself, who is voting these people in to office?

Well the voting machines, the voting machines are voting them in. Anyway, the initial feeling, the surge is bitterness towards them, anger. And here we have a prophet that is faced with a people who are bringing judgment on themselves because of how they treat God. And he sees what's going to happen to them and he weeps bitterly.

It affects him, as the Babylonians who are going to bring the siege. He's a man in touch with God. It reflects the heart of God that God does not get satisfaction out of judging the wicked. Which is one reason why people who think that God does are so bitter towards God. And so he sees what they do not see, incompetence, the apostasy, death, defection and that they are captured.

How mature this man is at the carnage, the avoidable carnage that's not avoided. Verse 5, for it is a day of trouble, treading down and perplexity by the Lord Yahweh of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls and of crying to the mountain. Again, poetic type language, trying to keep the readers engaged, not doing a very good job with us.

But he did with them. Where it says for, and for it is a day, is further explanation. You know, just what do you do? The judgments are coming. The people, you know, the near judgments and the future judgments, they're coming.

Jesus brings this up. He says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you know its desolation is near. And of course, that is not a single verse that tells us, because Jerusalem has been surrounded by armies before and the end hasn't happened. It goes with other prophecies, you know, the temple being rebuilt, the Antichrist committing the abomination of desolation.

We know that there's another one coming. There was one in the days that Daniel prophesied, Antiochus, and that's past, and there's another one coming, Zechariah 12, and it shall happen in that day. I read this last session in Isaiah, that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all the peoples.

All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all the nations of the earth are gathered against it. Well, I don't know, I don't follow the news too much, but Jerusalem's not in the news too much these days. Not like it's been in the past, you know, the Arabs, and they're not Palestinians. There's no such thing as a Palestinian. These are Arab people, and when the Jews were coming, giving their land back, they gave the Arab people a chance to go to Jordan where they came from.

They came and took over Jerusalem when the Jews were put out, and they said, we're coming, the British are giving us a state of our own, and you can leave, and many of them opted to stay. And the Arab world was saying, oh, they're going to slaughter you, they're going to torture you, they're going to do all these horrible things to you, and none of that happened. And it is an act of Satan to say, well, these are Palestinian people, and that's their land, they've been there for, no, they were not. They're Arab peoples, they're not Canaanites, the Canaanites are gone. Suppression of the truth and a distortion of the truth. Israel's not in the news right now, but she will be again.

It's not going to stop, because the world wants to get rid of her. I see, though, I see in the news little things about anti-Semitism on the rise. Well, who can believe anything nowadays? I mean, I don't know. If you googled the color of your grass, would you trust the answer? I wouldn't. He's lying.

What color, what shade green? Anyway, verse 6, Elam bore the quiver with the chariots of men and the horsemen, and Ker uncovered the shield, so they're getting ready for war. Verse 7, it shall come to pass that your choicest valleys shall be full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array at the gate. Well, the watchmen in earlier verses, of course, saw the chariots with the donkeys, the camels, and the horses, and here we're back to this. This is likely Assyria.

He bounces back and forth. No wonder. Nobody can understand these things without hours of study, right?

Like, it would have been nice. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

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