The Return of Christ

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Lesson from Isaiah #8

The Return of Mercy - Isa. 4:2-6

Prophecies of the last days of man’s reign on earth, from Revelation and Zechariah mainly, tell of an attack on Israel and Jerusalem by the man called “the Beast” in Revelation. In the eyes of the Beast, there is nothing on earth as despicable as the Jewish people. His chief desire is to eradicate their race from the planet. By the power given to him by Satan, the Beast compels the nations of the earth to join him in his quest to erase Israel from the map and put an end to their race. The armies of the Beast, attacking Israel in concert, are victorious at first, easily over-running the entire land of Israel, slaughtering untold thousands of Jews and devastating their cities and villages as they march on toward the great prize: Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem is no more a match for the Beast than was the rest of Israel. Jewish blood runs through the streets of Jerusalem, and there seems to be no hope for the Jews. Men, women, and children are butchered; homes and buildings are plundered and torched; screams of the dying fall on deaf ears; and by all appearances, the end of the Jewish race has finally come. Satan, at last, seems to have accomplished his furious vengeance against the Jews for being the people that God chose to bring the Messiah into the world.

However, the devil has a problem. Long before this war against the Jews began, God promised that His mercy will return to the Jews. If Satan kills them all, then God’s promise will have failed.

In complete desperation, during the bloody rampage of the Beast, the surviving Jews in Jerusalem, knowing they are dead without a miracle from God, cry out in utter terror for help from heaven. And to their great surprise, above the smoke that rises from the burning city, they see an amazing sight: a man on a white horse appears in the sky, as if from nowhere. And with him, they then see a massive army, also on white horses. Is this another battalion from the Beast, sent to finish the bloody job completely? They do not know, but his presence does seem to have a different feeling with it.

Down from heaven they come, and his feet touch down on the Mount of Olives. The strange man is so full of wrath that when his feet touch the mount, it splits apart, making a great valley running east and west from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. Then, with a word, he speaks immediate death to the massive armies of the Beast. Their flesh disintegrates from their bodies before they can even fall to the ground, and from their obliterated bodies there runs a river of blood that accumulates to a depth of five feet, running two hundred miles through the valleys of Israel. For months, even years, body parts from the blast will be found scattered over the land. The Beast himself, and his right hand man, the “false prophet”, are seized by an angel of the Lord and cast alive into the Lake of Fire. Satan is also taken, bound with a large chain, and cast into the Bottomless Pit for one thousand years, preserved for God’s use at another time.

The man on the white horse now comes walking through the bloody ashes of the beast’s army, into the ruined city of Jerusalem. Two out of three Jews living in Israel have been slain. Now, the few survivors meekly bow to this new Conqueror, not knowing if he will replace the Beast with his own form of cruelty or if he will be kind to them. When he enters the city, the Jews bow and express their gratefulness for being rescued, and then they notice something that astonishes them. He has proved himself to have power such as no one has ever known, power even to conquer the Beast, which no one had ever been able to do, and yet, he has wounds in his hands.

Someone from among the Jews asks him, “What are these wounds in your hands?”

He replies kindly, “These are wounds I received in the house of my friends.”

Then they realize the truth. It is Jesus, whom they had been taught to hate from childhood. Sorrow overwhelms them, not only because they have been so very mistaken but also for the misery their race has suffered for thousands of years because of the rejection of Jesus. They mourn for him with such depth of regret, Zechariah said, that it is like the grief of a mother who has lost her only son. Their sincere repentance is accepted, and the holy Ghost is poured out in a flood upon them from on high. Sin and uncleanness are swept away, and the Jews are born again.

Thus, Jesus begins his thousand year reign on earth. The mercy of God has come again to Israel, just as Isaiah said: “And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.”

God promised that He would do it, and all the armies of earth, armed with all of Satan’s craft and power, were helpless to prevent Him from accomplishing His word.