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It’s 40 days after Jesus left His laundry folded in an empty tomb, just over a month since James and John counted fish while the Lord restored a broken Peter. It’s before flames would appear above every disciple’s head on the Shavuot that would become Pentecost, but not long. History is moving in that direction, already foretold by the prophets, but the existing Body needed further clarity to serve the part of the timeline they were born into. And so, moments before His Ascension, Jesus commissioned His disciples with intentionally specific words in this conversation:
After He had suffered, He also presented Himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God. While He was with them, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise. “Which,” He said, “you have heard Me speak about; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.”
So when they had come together, they asked Him, “Lord, are You restoring the Kingdom to Israel at this time?”
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
After He had said this, He was taken up as they were watching, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. While He was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into Heaven? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen Him going into Heaven.”[1]
This incredible farewell marked the apostles, and we would do well to consider their foremost question and expectation after spending forty days (!) listening to a resurrected Jesus teach them explicitly about the Kingdom.
“Lord, are You now restoring the Kingdom to Israel at this time?”[2]
Is this the moment we’ve been waiting for since Abraham?
Too many of us have heard academic pulpits dismiss this question, as if the apostles were just too short-sighted on the soil to see the eternal purposes of God come to fruition in front of them—“the Kingdom is inside us, see.” But they had every biblical reason to fully expect a literal Kingdom with a literal throne literally restored to literally Jerusalem and Israel. This promise is all over the prophetic texts and writings of Moses.[3] Abraham literally spent his life “looking for” it.[4] Why wouldn’t his children?
Why haven’t we?
If we are to obey the Great Commission (and we must; “commission” is a poor, misleading term. It is a command), we must adhere to the same “Good News” of the Kingdom preached by the apostles, the same one Jesus specifically said must and will be preached to all nations as a witness, “and then the end will come.”[5] Then He will return. Then He will rule, reign, resurrect the dead, and restore all things.[6] This is the apostolic expectation. This is our “blessed hope.”[7] And this is the hope that will sweep the nations before the Lord returns.
Every single one of the disciples would’ve heard recognized Jesus’ language here; “the ends of the earth” were woven throughout the psalms and prophets. David sang about them.[8] Isaiah spoke at length about them; that’s where we’ll spend a bit of our time today. If anyone standing on the Mount called Olivet with Jesus that day took Him literally (and they did), they would’ve begun a journey in Jerusalem that would have them pushed them out of Jerusalem to the furthermost reaches of the globe—and, because the earth is round, once they reached its “end,” one more step would’ve begun their journey home. This is what we see in Isaiah’s texts; a “new song” would erupt from the City of the Great King[9] and move like a wave across the nations of the earth, all the way to the very ends of the earth, and then move with mighty momentum, all the way back:
They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;
over the majesty of the Lord they shout from the west.
Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord;
in the coastlands of the sea,
give glory to the name of the Lord,
the God of Israel.
From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,
of glory to the Righteous One.[10]
Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise from the end of the earth,
you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it,
the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice,
the villages that Kedar inhabits;
let the habitants of Sela sing for joy,
let them shout from the top of the mountains.
Let them give glory to the Lord,
and declare His praise in the coastlands.
The Lord goes out like a mighty Man,
like a man of war He stirs up His zeal;
He cries out, He shouts aloud,
He shows Himself mighty against His foes.
For a long time I have held My peace;
I have kept still and restrained Myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labor;
I will gasp and pant.
I will lay waste mountains and hills,
and dry up all their vegetation;
I will turn the rivers into islands,
and dry up the pools.
And I will lead the blind
in a way that they do not know,
in paths that they have not known
I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I do,
and I do not forsake them.[11]
There are a couple of things that make me marvel at these passages. For one thing, Isaiah had no idea that if you did actually travel to the furthest inhabited geographical locations from Jerusalem you would, in fact, hit a string of South Pacific islands in the bottom of the Ring of Fire: Tonga, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand). The very “ends of the earth” truly are exactly what the prophet saw: eastern shores on the International Date Line where dawn first strikes the globe. The Gospel of the Kingdom is to go all the way to the ends of the earth—and then back again. And (secondly), that’s exactly what we’re seeing now. “Kedar” and “Sela” refer to the Arab world, both broadly and in immediate proximity to Israel and Jerusalem. Meaning this: before the Son of David sits on His immutable throne, Saudi knees will bow to the Jewish Messiah. Jordanian knees will bow.
Consider that right now, the fastest-growing church in the world today is under the fist of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The second-fastest growing church in the world today is in Afghanistan, now the seat of the re-established Taliban government. Significantly, Isaiah notes the song sweeping these nations: “Glory to the Righteous One,” magnifying the “God of Israel.” This passage is squarely in the middle of Isaiah 24, the prophet’s declaration of the Day of the LORD. These voices in the ends of the earth are singing in the throes of the “time of tribulation, such as never has been nor will be again,”[12] the “time of Jacob’s trouble”[13] that will bear upon the whole world. The prophet tells us the globe itself will buckle under the weight of iniquity such that the very earth will “totter like a drunkard on its axis.”[14] The degree of calamity in that day will cause legitimate confusion and sincere fear—but these voices in the ends of the earth are not confused, nor are they offended.
This “new song” Isaiah heard from the ends of the earth, the one moving through the Islamic world (transforming Israel’s enemies into servant-hearted allies), is the revelation of the Holy One of Israel to the Gentiles. It is the lovesick cry for the Messiah to “rend the heavens and come down.”[15] It is the “Even so, come!”[16] of the sober-minded battalion.[17] It is the agreement between the Holy Spirit (our Helper) and the Bride of the Lamb: “Come!”[18] It is the mark of maturity: Maranatha.[19] He came once to break the power of sin and death, and He is coming again to rule, reign, and restore all things.
Jesus’ last statement to Jerusalem were these ominous words:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”[20]
When Isaiah told us the “new song” from the ends of the earth would erupt and move through the Middle East, this glorious chorus—“Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus!”—abruptly ends because “the Lord goes out like a mighty Man” and “cries out like a woman in labor.” Through the inspiration and illumination of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah’s prophecy could weave in with Zechariah, Jesus, and even Isaiah’s closing texts. Consider these cross-references:
Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when He fights on a day of battle. On that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with Him.
On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost. And there shall be a unique day, which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light. On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be One and His name One.[21]
“Before she was in labor
she gave birth;
before her pain came upon her
she delivered a Son.
Who has heard such a thing?
Who has seen such things?
Shall a land be born in one day?
Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment?
For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children.
Shall I bring to the point of birth and not cause to bring forth?”says the Lord;
“shall I, who cause to bring forth, shut the womb?” says your God.[22]
We are living in-between the Cross and the Crown, in a window of mercy opened for the fullness of the Gentiles to enter into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.[23] This is the moment in eternity with the declaration of the Son of Man, “Maranatha,” sweeps across the nations of the earth that, truly, all might be blessed through the promises made to Abraham.[24] And these days, as any, are numbered.[25] This window of mercy will close—because He has promises to keep to Jerusalem, and when the new song reaches her city of origin again, this “present evil age”[25] will finally end. To close with the words of the apostle Paul, Israel’s rejection meant the reconciliation of the world. But her acceptance—her acceptance will be but “life from the dead,”[26] the long-awaited birth and restoration of all things. Eden again.
Let us leverage our lives, our gifts, skillsets, and mediums to bear beautiful witness through beautiful means to the Better Beautiful—the Man Christ Jesus—and His soon return.
Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Acts 1:3-11, NKJV
[2] Acts 1:6
[3] Genesis 3:15; 49:10; 2 Samuel 7:11-16; Isaiah 2:12-19; Daniel 7:13-14; Zechariah 12:1-3; 9-10; 14:1-9
[4] Hebrews 11:8-10
[5] Matthew 24:14
[6] Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26; John 19:36-37; 2 Timothy 4:1, 18; 2 Peter 4:3-13
[7] Titus 2:13
[8] Psalm 2:5b-9; 110:1-7
[9] Matthew 5:35; c.f. Psalm 48:2
[10] Isaiah 24:14-16a, NKJV
[11] Isaiah 42:10-16, ESV
[12] Matthew 24:21
[13] Jeremiah 30:7
[14] Isaiah 24:20
[15] Isaiah 64:1
[16] Revelation 22:20
[17] 2 Thessalonians 5:4-11; 2 Timothy 2:3-4
[18] Revelation 22:17
[19] 1 Corinthians 16:22; “MARANATHA” is an Aramaic phrase and word-play; depending how you pronounce it, you either declare “The Lord has come,” or “The Lord is coming.” It is the confident boast in the age-ending Day of the LORD.
[20] Matthew 23:37-39, quoting Psalm 118:26
[21] Zechariah 14:1-9
[22] Isaiah 66:7-9, ESV
[23] Colossians 1:13
[24] Genesis 18:18; 22:18
[25] Galatians 1:4
[26] Romans 11:15
