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Isaiah, Prophet of Salvation, Book 6, part 23

Just as the clay cannot disagree with the Potter, so also a baby cannot decide whether to be a boy or a girl or if the child should have red hair, black hair, or no hair at all. Isaiah 45:10 says,

¹⁰ Woe to him who says to a father, “What are you begetting?” Or to a woman, “To what are you giving birth?”

In the context of the sovereignty of God, a baby is conceived without his or her consent and born into a nation, race, or culture apart from his or her will. In the case of Jacob and Esau, Paul tells us in Romans 9:11 that God chose Jacob and rejected Esau while the twins were yet in the womb, “so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls.”

In other words, God chooses people purely by His own will, not merely because He knows ahead of time who will be good and who will be evil. Men’s deeds—even future deeds—do not influence God’s choices; God’s choice determines the behavior of those He chooses. He is the One who forms the children even as a Potter forms the clay.

A baby is not devoid of a will, but his will is not consulted for at least a few years. All of the circumstances of his birth, along with parental nurturing and teaching, shape his personality and influence his religious views and moral behavior in life.

For this reason, it would be unjust for God to burn people in hell forever just because they were unfortunate enough to be born in a country that never heard the name of Jesus. In fact, the main purpose of resurrection at the Great White Throne is to reveal His glory (love) to them, so that they too may bow their knees and profess Him as Lord to the glory of God the Father. Such is the justice of God toward the vast majority of men throughout history who lacked opportunity to know the love of God.

The same justice and mercy will be shown to those that God blinded during their lifetime. At the resurrection, their blindness will be healed and the veil will be lifted from their eyes. They will then see the true nature of God and know His love, so that they may be birthed into the Kingdom and trained by the overcomers as they grow to spiritual maturity in the age to come. In the end, all will be mature and will have the mind of Christ at the Creation Jubilee.

The Presumption of Commanding God

In Isaiah 45:11 God questions those who try to tell Him how to run the universe. Unfortunately, many translations fail to see this as a question, because they do not understand the reason God asks the question. The Concordant Version gets it right:

¹¹ Thus says Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, and its Former, “Of the things arriving, ask Me; yet concerning My children and concerning the deeds of My hands, shall you instruct Me?”

In other words, you are welcome to ask Me about “things arriving” (i.e., the future); but you are “My children,” and children do not have the right to question their parents: “I should have been born in a different country!” “You should have chosen me to hear of Jesus!” “I had no opportunity to be saved. You were quite incompetent!” “Why was I born to a Hindu family in India a thousand years before Christ, where I would never hear of His love?”

Those who would question God’s choices and methods are trying to tell God how to run the universe. Those who believe that God’s New Covenant vows will fail in the case of 98 percent of humanity simply do not understand the power of His sovereignty. They fail to understand how He is driven by the passion of His love for creation. Not knowing that He will save all mankind and reconcile the entire creation, they question the wisdom of His plan.

God’s rebuke is found in the next verse. Isaiah 45:12 says,

¹² “It is I who made the earth and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands, and I ordained all their host.”

“Who do you think you are?” God asks. “Who are you that you should command me? Could you come up with a better plan? Would your plan actually succeed in saving the world? I am the One with the power to create the heavens and the earth and all men. Get back in line and stop showing your stupidity. My plan will work just fine.”

God’s Plan for the Messiah

Isaiah 45:13 says,

¹³ “I have aroused him [the messiah] in righteousness, and I will make all his ways smooth. He will build My city and will let My exiles go free without any payment or reward, says the Lord of hosts.”

This applied first to Cyrus, the prophetic type of messiah, and later in a greater way to Jesus Christ, the only true Messiah. Cyrus was “aroused” (raised up) by God, who made his path “smooth.” That is, God removed the hindrances and blockages so that Cyrus would not fail in his divine calling to “build My city” and “let My exiles go free.”

So history tells us that Cyrus did not require any of the captives to pay a ransom for their freedom, nor did He demand any “reward” (i.e., bribe) to issue the Edict of Cyrus. In this small way, the Persian king was like Jesus Christ, who freely gave His life to ransom sinners in bondage to sin. No one bribed Jesus to go to the cross.

Even as Cyrus was called to “build My city” (earthly Jerusalem), so also was Jesus called to build the heavenly city that Abraham had sought during his sojourn in Canaan (Hebrews 11:16). Further, Cyrus set free only a few of the exiles of Judah. Only 49,000 of them actually returned to the old land (Ezra 2), leaving Babylon as the main center of Judaism for centuries to come.

Meanwhile, the Israelites in Assyria did not return, for God had put up a “hedge” and a “wall” to prevent their return (Hosea 2:6). Neither could they return lawfully, because God had divorced Israel and had sent her out of His house (Jeremiah 3:8). The remarriage under the New Covenant could not take place prior to Christ’s death on the cross.

The Salvation of the Nations

Isaiah 45:14 says,

¹⁴ Thus says the Lord, “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush and the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours; they will walk behind you, they will come over in chains and will bow down to you; they will make supplication to you: ‘Surely, God is with you, and there is none else, no other God’.”

Carnally-minded men, who remain veiled by the Old Covenant, usually interpret this verse to mean that these other nations will be enslaved by Israel. But the New Covenant shows clearly that the work of the Messiah was to bless all nations. The Apostle Paul himself was the apostle to the nations, and he was quick to chide the Jews (and Peter himself) for thinking that non-Jewish converts to Christ were still second-class citizens of the Kingdom.

Paul fought this many times on behalf of non-Jewish believers, telling us in Ephesians 2:14-16,

¹⁴ For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, ¹⁵ by abolishing in His flesh, the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances [men’s traditions, which had caused the Jews to build a dividing wall in the court of the temple to separate Jewish men from women and from non-Jewish converts], so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, ¹⁶ and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.

The dividing wall was not commanded by God anywhere in Scripture. Jesus broke down that wall in order to make all ethnic groups equal in “one body” without divisions. Faith is the evidence of being begotten by God, and all true believers have the same heavenly Father. To be a son of God is to give up one’s identity from Adam, Abraham, Israel, and any tribe of Israel in favor of a new identity of the “new man” (Ephesians 4:24 KJV) or “new self” (NASB).

Therefore, when we approach Isaiah 45:14 with the veil removed from our eyes, we should interpret this to mean that the various nations “will be yours,” not to be oppressed as slaves but to be responsible to teach them the ways of God and bring them to spiritual maturity. This is how God views slavery.

It is the same slavery that Paul asserted when he called himself “a bond-servant of Christ Jesus” (Romans 1:1). To be a bond-servant of Christ is not to be oppressed, but to be set “free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8:2). His is our great Example, showing us how to exercise authority in the way that God intended. Authority is not a permanent part of life; it was instituted so that the few would have the authority to bless the many. Authority was to be exercised in love, serving others, not with self-interest or carnal indulgence to benefit one’s self.

The Shame of Idolatry

When the idolatrous nations see the folly of following man-made gods, they will turn to the God of Israel. Then they will require teaching and training in the ways of God, so that they can get to know Jesus in the same way that we do. Isaiah 45:15, 16 reads in The Concordant Version,

¹⁵ “Surely You are El, concealing Yourself, O Elohim of Israel, Saviour. ¹⁶ They are ashamed [buwsh] and also mortified [kalam, “humiliated, shamed, hurt, injured”], all of them together, and they walk in mortification [buwsh], these craftsmen of forms.”

El and Elohim means “God,” in this case, the God of Israel, who saves. The prophet seems to complain that the God of Israel has hidden Himself so that few can find Him. But the day is coming when God will reveal Himself in a greater way so that the nations will want to know Him. Recall Isaiah 2:3, which says,

³ And many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us concerning His ways and that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

When God reveals Himself to idolaters, they will then understand the folly of their ways and be ashamed at their ignorance and foolishness. The Concordant Version in verse 16 above says that they will be “mortified.” The translators use this word to convey two ideas at once. First, to be mortified means that they will be ashamed or embarrassed at their former ignorance. Second, to be mortified means they will feel “hurt” or “injured.” Kalam literally means “to wound.”

“Mortification” is an English word that conveys both concepts in a single word. More than that, to mortify also means “to die.” This suggests the great principle of justification, which is about putting to death the old man so that we might be raised in newness of life. So the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 6:7 (The Emphatic Diaglott),

⁷ for he who died has been justified from sin.

Hence, mortification is the key element in our justification. The nations in Isaiah 45:14 are a sampling of those who are to be justified through the mortification of the flesh after repenting of their idolatry. Further, Isaiah 45:17 says,

¹⁷ Israel has been saved by the Lord with an everlasting [olam, “hidden”] salvation; you will not be put to shame or humiliated to all eternity [olam].

God’s way of salvation was hidden to most people, especially to those blinded by the veil of the Old Covenant (2 Corinthians 3:14, 15). Most of the Israelites were thus blinded, and for this reason they were sent into exile. But the true Israelites, the remnant of grace, were not blinded, as Paul says in Romans 11:7 KJV, for they had faith in the promise of God and not in their own promises to God.

These overcomers, the true Israelites, “will not be put to shame or humiliated to all eternity.” The prophet uses a play on words here. The salvation plan was “hidden” to the world at large and revealed only to the overcomers, so that they would not be “humiliated to all eternity” (“mortified for future eons,” CV).

All who repent are “mortified,” for they have died to the flesh for their justification. Thus, they are not required to undergo the second death after the Great White Throne judgment, which is called “a river of fire” (Daniel 7:10) and “the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14, 15).