Tonight we’re coming to the end of our Bible study on the prophets and, predictably enough, we’re going to be looking at a couple of prophecies about “the end.” There’s a sense out there that when the Bible talks about “the end” it’s ominous - a warning or a threat. We think of the end times as a time when all sorts of bad things are going to happen. But we miss the point of the entire biblical story - the entire course of God’s relationship with humanity - when we think that way about what we call “the end.” The course of history isn’t a straight line going from Point A to Point C, where Point A is paradise, Point B is the flow of history, and Point C is a horrific end to everything. Instead, the course of history is more like a circle that has Point A - paradise, followed by Point B (the flow of history), followed by Point C (some devastating cataclysm) - which is then followed by Point D, which is where the circle closes, because Point D is back at Point A. So the purpose of God’s interactions with humanity is to return us to the beginning. Genesis began with a creation story that speaks of humanity living in paradise in perfect peace; history is God’s way of getting us back to a place where we can live in perfect peace. The two readings tonight speak about the culmination of history - the return to paradise, and they come from Micah and Isaiah - Third Isaiah to be precise. These are both prophets who are well known to Christians, and these particular prophecies are pretty well known to Christians. So, what are they telling us? What do we learn from them? How have these Jewish prophecies influenced our Christian understanding of “the end”?
I want to start with Micah, if only because we haven’t actually looked at any prophecies from Micah during this study. Micah’s name is quite familiar to Christians. We often hear from the prophet Micah around Christmas, because Micah is the prophet who spoke of the Messiah who would be born in Bethlehem. So, who was Micah? At the beginning of his prophecy he’s called “Micah of Moresheth.” Moresheth was in the southwest part of the kingdom of Judah, southwest of Jerusalem, toward the Mediterranean coast. So Micah is a Judean prophet. The prophecy doesn’t identify him with reference to his father (so he’s not “son of …”) which probably means he came from a family of humble origins and that his father’s name wouldn’t have helped identify him. He’s said to have prophesied “in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah …” which would make him a contemporary of the author of First Isaiah, so he’s prophesying during Judah’s later days before the exile to Babylon, which makes sense because his prophecy does speak about the destruction of Jerusalem. He also seems to have a particular antipathy for the wealthy, and large parts of his prophecy are directed against them, which adds to the speculation that his own family was not among the wealthy or powerful.
The passage I asked you to read for this week was Micah 4:1-5. Micah’s prophecy has a very strange structure to it. I’ve mentioned before that prophets don’t particularly predict the future, which is true enough - but Micah’s prophecy isn’t even chronological in terms of the events it looks ahead to. Micah 4 begins by saying that what he's about to describe will happen “in the last days.” That wording would make you think it’s where the prophecy should end, but instead it’s put kind of in the middle, and soon after this passage we’re reading Micah goes back to prophesying against Israel (remember that he’s from Judah - so he’s prophesying against Judah’s rival Jewish kingdom.) I can’t really explain that. It’s almost as if the prophecy we’re looking at is an interruption in the flow of Micah’s thinking. It’s like someone saying, “I’M REALLY MAD! But I’ll get over it. BUT RIGHT NOW I’M REALLY MAD!”
Remember that with prophecy, context is always everything - so, again, in historical context this prophecy is written just before Judah falls and goes into exile. Once again - we’ve heard this many times - the Babylonians are advancing, Judah has no hope, Jerusalem is doomed. The first three chapters were judgments against Jerusalem and the descendants of Jacob (or Israel) - so apparently against both Israel and Judah at that point - also remember that Judah’s more “pure” (for lack of a better word) form of Judaism had been corrupted by the influx of refugees from Israel, so even though he’s from Judah, Micah prophesies against Jerusalem and - significantly in Chapter 3 - against the leaders and the prophets of the people. So he opposes those in charge basically; the big-wigs, you might say. They are responsible for the actions that have led God’s people to the brink of disaster. They were responsible for the division of David’s kingdom; they were responsible for the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Judah; they’re now responsible for this hopeless war against Babylon. There is a translation issue with verse 1. The NRSV translates this as “In days to come.” Other Bibles translate it as “in the last days.” A literal translation from Hebrew says something like “in the latter days.” So even though in the version I’ve suggested you read the verse opens with “in days to come” I think that “in the last days” is probably closer to the meaning of the Hebrew. This isn’t just pointing to the near future, or to the end of the exile - it’s pointing way ahead to the very end; to the very last days. So, after all the condemnations of the first 3 chapters, Micah suddenly jumps to these “latter days.” “In days to come, the mountains of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.” Micah is from Judah - all those who have let Judah down follow something other than the God of Jacob. Babylon has its own gods; Israel had a warped and corrupted understanding of God; Judah had allowed that corrupted view of God to infiltrate their own religious practices; the prophets and the powerful and the wealthy had turned aside to God in favour of their own status. (Do remember that many prophets came from significant families, unlike Micah.) And these other gods seem to have triumphed over the God of Jacob. Except … Micah understands that no one can triumph over the God of Jacob. Eventually, the God of Jacob will win! God’s “house” being on “the highest of the mountains” is to say that whatever the present circumstances might suggest, the God of Jacob is more powerful than any other god. The God of Jacob lives on “the highest of the mountains,” literally towering over all other gods. And, Micah says, eventually the world will recognize this. “Peoples” shall stream to this mountain. The plural (“peoples”) is important. Ultimately not only will the descendants of Jacob (the people of God) stream to God; “peoples” will do so. All peoples. Eventually the world will recognize that the God of Jacob stands above all other gods; that the God of Jacob is the God of all the world. And if that’s so, and if it’s nations or people choosing to follow all these other “gods” that have caused all the trouble and all the strife and all the violence and all the warfare that exists, then once the world recognizes the God of Jacob as the true God, and understands that there are no other gods, what will be the result? Perfect peace!
So, when you get to verse 3, you discover that God - the God of Jacob - is suddenly in charge; arbitrating all disputes between nations. And since this God of Jacob is also a God of justice, there’s suddenly no need for war or violence anymore - all is decided to everyone’s satisfaction, because how can anyone be truly dissatisfied with completely just arbitration by God? So swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. And, presumably the same with guns and missiles and bombs and tanks and all the modern weapons of warfare, because war no longer has meaning or purpose in a world truly governed by God. This is God’s coming Kingdom - a Kingdom in which God will reign; in which God’s will will be done; in which the corruption of people won’t subvert the will of God. This is Micah’s ultimate vision, even though it occurs not much more than halfway through the prophecy, after which Micah will go back to judgement against the people. We see that transition start to appear in verse 5, when Micah - after painting this wonderful picture - suddenly once again notes that all peoples walk in the name of their own god. So the vision he’s painted isn’t a reality yet; it’s nowhere near completion - but it is the ultimate end of human history: perfect peace.
The Isaiah passage is a good partner piece for this one. It’s located near the end of the prophecy. It’s a part of Third Isaiah - meaning it was written after the exile was over. So there is hope once again; the people are rebuilding as best they can. They’re looking forward to what’s to come, so it’s probably a good time for them to be considering what God’s plan is - God’s plan for them and God’s plan for the world. And the basic point is made right from the start of this prophecy. “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” That imagery had a major effect on Christianity. Although he doesn’t use the exact same imagery, Jesus often spoke of what seemed to be a new world to come when God’s Kingdom would come upon the earth. And that imagery gets explicitly used by John in the Book of Revelation, when he writes in Revelation 21 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” I doubt that the use of the same imagery was a coincidence, so John seems to be linking his own prophecy or vision to that of Isaiah centuries before. There’s something very appealing about the idea of a new heaven and a new earth; about the idea of everything being recreated. We’ve seen the problems of the current creation; we’ve seen its corruption; its violence; its greed; basically, its sinfulness. In order to deal with these things, even God has to go to the extreme of completely re-creating creation, if that makes any sense. Perhaps there are even echoes of this passage in Paul’s words that “the old has gone, the new has come.” Paul was speaking of individual redemption, but individuals are a part of the creation that has to be completely remade. That idea gets explicitly stated by Isaiah.
It seems a little strange in v.18 to read that God is going to “create Jerusalem as a joy” since Jerusalem already exists, but remember that the entire creation is going to be re-created; Jerusalem along with it. It’s important that Jerusalem will be re-created “as a joy.” You have to consider the history. Jerusalem hadn’t been a joy for some time. Since before the civil war that led to the divided kingdom and even before that Jerusalem had been beset by many problems - religious problems; political problems; social problems. In that regard you could say that not much has changed! And more recently rather than being a source of joy, Jerusalem had simply been a source of despair as it was destroyed by the conquering Babylonians. So Jerusalem, too, will be re-created in a way that will allow it to reflect God. God will rejoice in this new Jerusalem and in his “people.” It’s hard to say whether Isaiah was saying this in a universalistic sense (as in - my people are all people) or in a specific sense (as in - my people are Israel.) But the concept is definitely universalized again in the Book of Revelation. There, John, in the same passage as I referred to above, says that he sees “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” and it’s clear in that context that the vision is meant for all humanity, who will, at that point, have also been re-created and redeemed. It’s abundantly clear that this re-creation of heaven, earth and Jerusalem had great significance to the Christians living in an Empire where they were persecuted. Christians saw in the experience of Israel’s exile and from the witness of Israel’s prophets hope for their own deliverance.
Verse 20 isn’t a promise of eternal life specifically, but it certainly seems to be leaning in that direction. “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.” This passage doesn’t say that there will be no more death, but it does make the point that the years by which we measure lifespans now will have no meaning in this new creation God will bring about - again, reflected in Revelation, which says that in the new creation “there shall be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain - for the old order of things has passed away.” I keep coming back to the end of Revelation because I want to make sure that you see how significant these words from Isaiah were to the early Christians. This was a very meaningful passage to a people who were facing hostility and persecution from their earthly rulers. Isaiah offers his own contrast between the new creation to come and the current state of the world in verses 21& 22: “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat …” Even though the people by this point had been liberated from their exile, the memory of what had happened must surely still have been raw, and the fear that it could happen again must have still been hanging over them. These verses are a promise that what had happened in the past would not and could not happen again in the new creation that God would establish. No one would take what was theirs ever again once the new creation was a reality. So Isaiah’s assurance could be summed up as: “Never again!”
Finally, as this passage form Third Isaiah comes to an end we come to one of the most beloved passages in all of prophecy: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent - its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” Are we supposed to take this literally? Will carnivores like wolves and lions become herbivores like lambs and oxen, and so pose no threat to animals that would normally be their prey? Will serpents suddenly be harmless? There’s a question that has occurred from time to time to anyone who’s ever had a pet that they loved: do animals go to heaven? Traditionally the Christian answer has been “No.” Because animals weren’t created in the image of God like humans, and so only humans have a soul, and that means only humans go to heaven. There’s a lot to unpack there. It’s both a simplistic question and a simplistic answer - but it basically reflects on whether animals have a place in eternity, as people of faith believe that humans do. This verse offers a picture of the new creation - and mentions animals, which makes it a very beloved passage. I don’t think, however, that it’s meant to be taken literally. It’s meant to make a point about the nature of God’s new creation: those who have traditionally been enemies; those who have been at each other’s throats - they will be somehow reconciled in the new creation by God. Babylon and Israel - enemies nor more. Nazis and Jews - enemies no more. Moslems and Jews - enemies no more. Ukrainians and Russians - enemies no more. You get the point. In this new creation, “‘They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,’ says the Lord.” It’s a return to paradise; a return to Eden where there was no killing even among the animals. It’s the circle I spoke about at the start being closed. It reminds me of another phrase from the Book of Revelation - “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Somehow in God, beginning and end hold together. The circle of time closes in God and becomes eternity.
But if you’re interested in the question of whether animals go to heaven, I leave you tonight with a story I heard a long time ago.” A minister tried to comfort a little boy whose dog had just died. The boy was in tears and asked the minister “will I see my doggy again in heaven?” All the minister’s theological training said “No. Animals have no soul. Animals don’t go to heaven.” But the minister looked at the crying boy and found himself saying “Heaven is a perfect place, and if your best friend wasn’t there, how could it be perfect?” Who could argue with that?
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