THOUGHTS FROM ISAIAH 45

THOUGHTS FROM ISAIAH 45

“This is what The Lord says to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut: I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I Am The Lord, The God of Israel, Who summons you by name. For the sake of Jacob My servant, of Israel My chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge Me. I Am The Lord, and there is no other; apart from Me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged Me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Me. I Am The Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, The Lord, do all these things. You heavens above, rain down righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness grow with it; I The Lord have created it. Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the Potter, ‘What are You making?’ Does YOUR work, (oh mankind), say ‘he has no hands’? Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What have you begotten?’ or to his mother, ‘What have you brought to birth?’ This is what The Lord says—The Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Concerning things to come, do you question Me about My children, or give Me orders about the work of My hands? It is I Who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My Own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. I will raise up Cyrus in My righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild My city and set My exiles free, but not for a price or reward, says The Lord Almighty. This is what The Lord says: The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, and those tall Sabeans—they will come over to you and will be yours; they will trudge behind you, coming over to you in chains. They will bow down before you and plead with you, saying, ‘Surely God is with you, and there is no other; there is no other God.’ Truly you are a God Who hides Himself, O God and Savior of Israel. All the makers of idols will be put to shame and disgraced; they will go off into disgrace together. But Israel will be saved by The Lord with an everlasting salvation; you will never be put to shame and disgraced, to ages everlasting. For this is what The Lord says—He Who created the heavens, He Is God; He Who fashioned and made the earth, He founded it; He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited—He says: I Am The Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek Me! in vain.’ I, The Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right. Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save. Declare what is to be, present it—let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago? Who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, The Lord? AND THERE IS NO GOD APART FROM ME, A RIGHTEOUS GOD AND A SAVIOR, THERE IS NONE BUT ME. TURN TO ME AND BE SAVED, ALL YOU ENDS OF THE EARTH; FOR I AM GOD AND THERE IS NO OTHER! By Myself I have sworn, My mouth has uttered in all integrity a Word that will not be revoked: Before Me every knee will bow; by Me every tongue will swear. They will say of Me, ‘In The Lord alone are Righteousness and Strength.’ All who have raged against Him will come to Him and be put to shame. But in The Lord all the descendants of Israel will be found righteous and will exult.”(NIV)

Those of you who are unfamiliar with Bible prophecy need to understand that every Word that God speaks is true. In fact, it is impossible for God to lie—even one time. His Perfection is on display all around us, and as you come to know Him through the Bible and His Holy Spirit, you will realize that without Him this world and universe would not exist. Isaiah is a prophet who is referring to events which had not yet taken place, including the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon and their enslavement of the Jews, the conquering of Babylon by the pagan Persian king Cyrus, the freedom which Cyrus granted to all the Jews in Babylon who were willing to return to Jerusalem, his provisions for their safe return and protection and the rebuilding of their temple. From this introduction, God and Isaiah go on to explain that God makes use of whichever kings and kingdoms He desires to do His Will. It is important that the Jews understand that if they are unwilling to obey God, that God uses others who are not a part of the Jewish nation to do His Will. He says that even though Cyrus doesn’t acknowledge God, that he will do His Will “for the sake of Jacob, My servant.” God and Isaiah speaking for Him go on to say that another outside group, the Sabians will testify to the Jews that there is no other God besides the Lord. He further clarifies His position by reminding the Jews that He has not commanded them to seek Him without reason, and that He alone is able to speak the truth and do what is right. God and Isaiah finish by saying that before God every knee will bow and by Him every tongue will swear that in the Lord alone are Righteousness and Strength. This passage is especially meaningful when we consider how many still do not acknowledge The Lord and His sovereignty over His creation. God tells us that now and in times to come we have no right to question Him about His children or about the work of His hands. He reminds us that He created the earth and created mankind upon it. Furthermore, He says that He decreed these things from the distant past. He planned everything and had His prophets declare future events, so that we would acknowledge His Wisdom, Creation, Omniscience, Power, Authority and Perfection when we see these events take place in precisely the way that He said they would. It has been said that the probability of God’s numerous prophecies all coming true is the equivalent of having an explosion in a fireworks factory result in the creation of New York City. But did you know that not one of God’s prophecies or prophets has ever been wrong? And yet there are those who believe that creation itself is a myth—some fabrication of philosophy and religion which rejects the possibility of a self-created universe. When created beings declare themselves to be the result of coincidental and evolutionary processes, they see no need for a Creator and reject astronomical odds which authenticate God’s existence. When they refuse to communicate with God’s Holy Spirit and continually reject His influence in their lives, they are in danger of being excluded from God’s Kingdom. Thanks be to God for His patience and loving kindness which strives with mankind’s spirit in order to draw us into His Kingdom. Psalm 53 says: “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’,” and there was a time that I was such a fool. Although I was raised in a family that believed in God and I attended church and Sunday school regularly until I got out of high school, except for a “brief campfire-dedication” at Bible camp when I was fifteen, I had not committed my heart to God. When I was seventeen, I was having trouble deciding whether to attend trade school or college, so I asked my Mom what she thought I should do. She said that when she was my age she began asking God to open the door that she should enter and to leave the other doors closed. With that in mind, I began praying every night in a half-hearted way, since I had no real relationship with God. After about a month, I heard a voice in my head say, “You’re talking to yourself.” I assumed incorrectly that the voice I heard was my own thoughts, and once that seed had been planted, I began to question everything I had been taught in church and Sunday school. By the time I was twenty, I was a full-blown atheist, had read everything by Ayn Rand, and embarked on a philosophical life without God. My father was a Lutheran pastor and I was a junior at a Lutheran college in the Midwest, so I kept my thoughts to myself until I dropped out of school for a semester before my senior year. I called my folks one night and told them I was an atheist. I felt bad after telling them, and communication with my parents suffered a temporary setback—at least regarding my lack-of belief in God. I was a private atheist, generally preferring to keep my thoughts to myself, and very few besides my parents knew the extent of my unbelief. Soon after graduation, I went to Alaska with one of my college roommates in order to find work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline project. I was successful, and along with 15,000 other workers, I worked from start-to-finish building the pipeline. There were a couple of carpenters that I worked with, and one day while eating lunch, we discovered that one of us was a Christian, I was an atheist, and the third guy was an agnostic. I remember that the agnostic said that we sounded so sure of ourselves and seemed so convinced of our beliefs, while the best he could come up with was, “I don’t know.” I remember thinking, “Now THERE is an honest man.” I began to realize that I had no way of proving that there was NO God, anymore than my friend the Christian could prove that there WAS a God. I was about 24 by now, and after the pipeline finished when I was 27, I headed for Europe and then on to California to try my luck in the sun. I continued working in construction for awhile, and I remember coming home every night and hearing on the news about this guy called “the dumpster murderer” who was torturing and killing little kids and disposing of them in dumpsters. It just seemed to go on and on and I believe he had killed 24 kids by the time they caught up with him. That really got to me with my agnostic philosophy, because I realized that there were some things that I did know, and I became convinced that this was no mere sociological deprivation and that there must be such a thing as evil, because this guy certainly was evil. Then I realized that if there were such a thing as evil, there probably was such a thing as good, and I had lots of evidence in the people I had known which substantiated that view. This launched me on a quest which eventually led me into the New Age Movement that was flourishing at that time. I used to read anything I could get my hands on related to spiritual things, had a crystal hanging from my rearview mirror, and I especially hung out at a new age bookstore close to my home. After spending about 10 years working through my agnostic philosophy, one day in July of 1984, I was over on the right-hand side of the store looking through some material on Eckankar, when I saw a book with a cover that reminded me of Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ which I had read in college. I read through it briefly, and soon realized that it was a book on Satan worship. The words stood out on the page: “If you would like to summon Satan into your life, repeat these words….” I never finished the sentence, closed the book, put it back on the shelf and walked out of the store. As I stood there, I felt an electric shock go from my tailbone to the top of my head, and I felt fearful. I asked myself why, because I had always been pretty fearless and willing to explore new possibilities. I pondered this experience and avoided the new age bookstore in the meantime. One month later I returned and headed to the left-hand side of the store and was surprised to see a copy of a King James Bible on the shelf. I asked the proprietor about it and she told me that once in a while they sold Bibles too. I paid $17 for it, took it home, brought it with me everywhere I went and read it from cover to cover in one month. At the Lutheran college I attended, I had taken four semesters of religion, so I wasn’t a complete stranger to the Bible. I had done my lessons and was familiar with the stories, but they had been nothing more than assignments to me. This time as I read the Bible, I eagerly looked forward to the next time, and the reading came alive for me. At the time, I lived on the west side of the Van Nuys airport in the San Fernando Valley. By this time it was September, during fire season in California, with Hercules planes being loaded with red powder at the Van Nuys airport, besides the usual jet and helicopter traffic of a busy municipal airport, and I remember thinking how unusually loud it was that day, as I was beginning to read the Gospel of John. For those of you who are not yet familiar, that Book begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bare witness of Him, and cried, saying, This was He of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for He was before me. And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.(KJV) I was alone there in my home with my thoughts, reading and enduring unusually loud sounds coming from the airport, and as I began to read the first verse of this passage, and continuing on through about the 18^th verse, I remember thinking “these are the most beautiful words I have read in my life.” As I spoke these words to myself, I realized that I was crying and feeling joyful and going stone deaf all at the same time. As I sat there experiencing a silence so still that I could have heard a pin drop, I heard a voice say, “EVERY WORD YOU ARE READING IS TRUE. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DOUBT ANY MORE. AND JUST LIKE YOU WERE AFRAID, (and the Voice caused me to remember my experience reading in the Satanic book two months before), BECAUSE ‘IT’ WAS REAL, I AM ALSO REAL” And with that, I sat there in stunned silence, with tears running down my face and full of joy, slowly recovering my hearing and becoming aware of my surroundings again. I realized then and now, as I recall the experience, “that God is a Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” All of the doubts that I had experienced from age 17 until 34 faded away and were replaced by the faith that only The Holy Spirit can provide. I went from doubt and fear to certainty and hope, which the intervening years have only served to increase. My former doubts about the truth of the Bible and the existence of God were changed in an instant, as faith entered as a free gift from God. Now when a particular passage isn’t clear to me, instead of experiencing doubt, I ask The Holy Spirit to provide the interpretation for Me and to reveal the Truth of that passage. I have not doubted the Truth of God’s Word in Scripture since that day in September of 1984. My life changed from uncertainty about the past and present to faith that God will provide whatever is necessary for my life. My years of doubt and searching for 17 restless and sinful years have now been replaced by more than 24 years of faith and hope. During this time of Christian growth, my wife and I have raised 5 children and experienced many of the joys and sorrows which family life brings. Our lives have not always been easy, but God has never left us alone or without hope. When we need Him, His Holy Spirit is right there with us during our problems, helping us to realize that “this too will pass.” I am reminded daily of my own inadequacies, and that helps to keep me humble and away from a path of hypocrisy. One of my favorite verses is “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13) I encourage you to put your trust in God, get to know Him through daily Bible reading and prayer time, and daily seek to know His Will for your life. God is always looking for you, so make sure that you are always looking for Him too! Life is a journey which continues on into eternity. Be sure that you have your priorities straight and follow hard after God. His Holy Spirit will make sure that you continue on the right path that leads to life everlasting. May God shower you with His Love and grant you blessings, now and for evermore!

Mark Overt Skilbred