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Everlasting Peace
Isaiah 2.1-5
Good News Translation (GNT)
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1 Here is the message which God gave to Isaiah
son of Amoz about Judah and Jerusalem:
2 In days to come
the mountain where the Temple stands
will be the highest one of all,
towering above all the hills.
Many nations will come streaming to it,
3 and their people will say,
"Let us go up the hill of the Lord, [a]
to the Temple of Israel's God.
He will teach us what he wants us to do;
we will walk in the paths he has chosen.
For the Lord's teaching comes from
Jerusalem;
from Zion he speaks to his people."
4 He will settle disputes among great
nations.
They will hammer their swords into
ploughs
and their spears into pruning knives.
Nations will never again go to war,
never prepare for battle again.
5 Now, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the
light which the Lord gives us!
Footnotes
Isaiah 2:3 Mount Zion, the hill in Jerusalem
which formed part of the area on which the
Temple was built.
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Taken from 'word-on-the-web' supplied by the
Scripture Union
Everlasting Peace
Isaiah 2.1-5
Claims are made today that the world is more peaceful than it has been
for many long years.
Yes, there is fighting in a number of countries, civil disturbances, insurgent
attacks and attempts to topple dictators, but not the wholesale killing of
World Wars or the ethnic cleansing of Rwanda or Eastern Europe.
However, we can hardly say that peace has broken out in the way
verse four pictures.
Is such peace only possible at the coming of Jesus,
when every eye will see him?
It certainly doesn't describe Jerusalem and the territories around it
at this present time.
How does Isaiah's hope help us to deal with reality in the meantime?
Fulfilment of his prophecy did not come in his day, or any day since.
And we, who believe that the physical temple of the old covenant
has been replaced by God reigning among his redeemed people,
do not have a precise image of the alternative.
The picture in Revelation (Revelation 21:2) of New Jerusalem
coming down to earth is of a church restored as a beautiful bride.
Here the spiritual meeting with God is symbolised by a temple
on the mount welcoming all believers, no matter what their
ethnic background.
Two wonderful overlapping pictures.
Christopher Wright retells a parable of a man who promised his young son
a horse when he came of age, but when the day came he gave him a car
instead because times had changed.
This fulfilled the intention of the promise - that of personal transport -
though not the letter.
On that day, it is God's presence and power that will matter to us most!
And when we see many around us, even family members, rejecting the Messiah,
the image of all peoples streaming towards the reign of Christ is comforting.
Ask God to open your eyes to see his future today.
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