Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Isaiah 23:10

Copyright Ó 2014 J. Neely
Isaiah 23:10

10 Pass [`abar] through thy land ['erets] as a river [ya`or], O daughter [bath] of Tarshish [Tarshiysh]: there is no more strength [maziyach].   KJV-Interlinear

10 Cross over your land like the Nile, O daughter of Tarshish; there is no restraint anymore.   ESV

The daughter is the offspring of a parent.  Tarshish is the parent being referred to here.  And since the center of trade is through Tyre, and Tarshish refers to the many islands and distant ports to and from which trade was conducted, then the daughter would refer to the subsequent trade or offshoots of this vast trading activity.

The collapse extends to, and reaches the entire world.

The word for strength, ‘maziyach,’ is a reference to a girdle or a restraint, or a boundary that holds something together, or in place.

After the destruction of Tyre, or as we have been studying, the collapse of the worlds economy, then we now have a reference to the vast and extensive magnitude of the collapse.

No more structure, no more boundaries, nothing of a trading economy will remain or exist.  This means that the farms, the freight, the manufacturing, even the monetary systems will be in a shambles, and not only in a shambles, they will simply not exist anymore, and if anything does exist, like paper money, it will be virtually worthless, assuming that any one has any.

And then we have the river being referred to as it flows unhindered.  The word for river, ‘yaor,’ typically refers to the Nile, but it also refers to a river that flows undisturbed, which means no dams, no barriers, nothing being diverted, no traffic.

And so while the world has collapsed, the various components of the world, such as a river, or the weather and so forth, will continue on as they have in the past and will continue on currently and will continue in the future without interruption.

Mans life, or lack of it, will have no effect on time or the many natural and normal elements of life all around us.

Look out your window and see the clouds as they move, without regard to you.  Or the rivers and creeks and such as they continue on their course without any regard to you, or the winds, or the grass or anything outside of the human element.  These things continue day and night regardless of you or your life.

Whether you are happy or sad, angry or mad, time and life move on in spite of you, just as Gods plan moves on, just as grace continues uninterrupted, without hindrance, without interruption.

You can either wake up and smell the realities of life around you, from Gods perspective, or you can continue on clinging to your stubbornness, and your failing ways, figuring out how to either ignore God or blame God or someone else, for everything, when He and they really had nothing to do with anything bad in this world or in your life.

It is your negative attitude, your unbelieving nature, your unyielding thinking, which by the way, God grants you to pursue, that has set into motion all of the negatives of this world. So why would you blame God for allowing you to make your own decisions, regardless if they are right or wrong?

God does give full disclosure, and warns everyone of the repercussions of their anti-God attitudes.  So there is no one but yourself to blame, and certainly not God.

Just saw the movie, ‘Left Behind.’  A pretty good description of what life may be like when the Rapture does occur. The clothing part is derived from the clothes left behind by Jesus when He was resurrected and the clothes remained in the tomb.  But His body was dead and wrapped in burial wraps, not clothes, so that aspect may or may not be accurate.  We simply do not know what the specifics will be. But the Rapture when it does occur, will take everyone by surprise and it will be instantaneous.  That much we do know for certain.

And of those that remain, there will be an unleashing of crime and sin natures that will no longer be restrained.  Attitudes will be anti-God and certainly anti-truth, and a whole lot of blaming God, along with initial confusion, the magnitude of which we cannot know, plus all of the theories and ideas and explanations of what actually happened.

But then it won’t take long before the confusion of the Rapture will turn into the ever growing confusion of the Tribulation.  Remember that in the first there-and-a-half years following the Rapture, literally half of the worlds population will die from famine, starvation, disease, crime, war and from the many atrocities that will occur.

We have been studying the collapse of the worlds economies.  These things will not occur in one night but throughout the entire period of the Tribulation.   And mans attempts to fix things, with laws, regulations, identity numbering and such, will only make things worse and worse and worse, until it all crashes.

It is all definitely a period of history in which you do not want to be living.  But alas, most folks don’t seem to be interested in the Bible or Gods mandates, or Gods warnings, or their roles that God has assigned them in life.

Sooo…?