Note on Isaiah 61:4‑6

"They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former‑desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves." (Isa.61:4‑6).

From Isaiah’s 40th chapter onward the prophet develops the theme of what has been called the "suffering servant." The whole burden of those magnificent prophecies is that God is developing a people for his purpose of world conversion in the next Age. This people are accepted for its future work because of its utter and complete consecration to God and his service, thus becoming his "servant." It is qualified for that future work by its willing acceptance of hardship and suffering now, thus earning the title "suffering servant" although that precise expression does not occur in Isaiah. What is made very plain as one studies these chapters is that "Israel after the flesh," the natural descendants of Abraham, are to have an important place in this work of administering the new Kingdom and bringing Divine blessings to the nations, so that in some measure they may be regarded as part of the "servant," although in its primary sense the title belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is described from this viewpoint in the celebrated 53rd chapter. The essential principle is that the people described in Isaiah 61 are wholly consecrated to God and qualified by reason of past suffering and hardship endured in his Name to take up the glorious work described in that chapter. That cannot be said either of the nation now gathered into Israel nor yet of any considerable party among them. They do not manifest one single element of the characteristics which must mark out the earthly Seed of Abraham, the holy people of God, in the Last Days. They are organised as one of the "kingdoms of this world," with civil administration, army, navy and air force, and everything else, modelled after the pattern of the world around them. As such, that nation as now organised would share in the ruin that will come upon all the kingdoms of the world when our Lord takes to himself his great power and commences his reign.

What do present events indicate, then, in prophecy? Certainly, they indicate that the land is being prepared in a physical sense for the returned people and others that may return. The foretold prosperity is on the way and the territory is being reclaimed from the grasp of the nations and developed for the habitation of that holy people that shall eventually inherit it. Very possibly many of those now living there will experience a change of heart by reason of some great happening that we cannot as yet foresee, and Israel’s blindness begin to be turned away. (Rom.11:25‑26) But the fact must be stressed that the people who will hail the coming of the Kingdom in that land, and who will be in control when the Word of the Lord begins to go forth from Jerusalem, will be composed of individuals prepared beforehand for their mission and will come to the scene ready for the work. Chief among them will be the "Ancient Worthies," (Heb.11) the faithful prophets and other mighty men of God of past ages, restored from the grave to take control of affairs in the new world.

The verse "Ye shall be called the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the ministers of our God" need not be taken in too "theological" a sense. Isaiah was not necessarily thinking either of the Melchisedek or the Aaronic priesthoods when he spoke those words. His point was that the mission of the holy people in the Holy Land in the Millennial Age will be to act as priests to humanity—dispensers of Divine favour. People will look upon them as their ministers, the ones to explain to them the things of God. The Aaronic Priesthood will have passed away for ever, that priesthood belonged to the Age of Sacrifice, and in the Millennium sacrifice of that kind will find no place. The true sacrifice for sin, our Lord’s death, will be fully efficacious for "every man that cometh into the world." The figure of the Melchisedek Priesthood is fulfilled in the rulership of Christ and his Church over the world, ruling as kings and priests, like Melchisedek himself in the days of Canaan. There is no Scriptural suggestion that the earthly people in the Holy Land are pictured in the symbol of the Melchisedek priesthood. But so far as humanity in general are concerned they will be the visible representatives of that priesthood, and men will acknowledge them as such.

AOH