DAY 199 Read Isaiah 43 through 46.
Today's reading: God, through the prophet Isaiah, continues to challenge the false gods for a showdown. God insists over and over that He alone is God.
Memory gem: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:22).
Thought for today:
In the apostle Paul's great sermon to the intelligent pagans of Lystra, he declared that God has "left not himself without witness" (Acts 14:17). For God's existence, God's work, God's presence in the world, He has seen to it that there are witnesses--in nature and in history, which is crystallized human experience, as well as in the Sacred Scriptures.
In fact, God challenges the skeptic of all historic times to consider evidence, even coercive evidence. Show us the former things, He challenges. Bring forth the records of the past and bear witness to any failure of divine prophecy. But if history proves the absolute truth and foreknowledge of prophecy, then you become My witness, God says.
Remember this, friends: the Bible stakes everything on its ability to foretell the future. If its claim to make genuine predictions is true, it is a miracle of foresight beyond human ability, and it is absolute proof of supernatural knowledge in the prophet.
God claims to be the only one able to foretell the future absolutely, to write history in advance. And remember, many of these Bible prophecies pointed forward for centuries and even millenniums to the time of fulfillment. There could be no collusion between prophet and the fulfiller of it.
God challenges the heathen gods to do the same, to produce real prophecy--which of course they never could, and never did, because they didn't exist except in the minds of their worshipers.
God calls for "strong reasons," in other words, coercive reasons.
NOTE: In Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1, Cyrus is called by name. Chapter 45 is addressed to this "shepherd," this "anointed" one, who was to accomplish God's purpose more than 150 years later.
Today's reading: God, through the prophet Isaiah, continues to challenge the false gods for a showdown. God insists over and over that He alone is God.
Memory gem: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Isaiah 45:22).
Thought for today:
In the apostle Paul's great sermon to the intelligent pagans of Lystra, he declared that God has "left not himself without witness" (Acts 14:17). For God's existence, God's work, God's presence in the world, He has seen to it that there are witnesses--in nature and in history, which is crystallized human experience, as well as in the Sacred Scriptures.
In fact, God challenges the skeptic of all historic times to consider evidence, even coercive evidence. Show us the former things, He challenges. Bring forth the records of the past and bear witness to any failure of divine prophecy. But if history proves the absolute truth and foreknowledge of prophecy, then you become My witness, God says.
Remember this, friends: the Bible stakes everything on its ability to foretell the future. If its claim to make genuine predictions is true, it is a miracle of foresight beyond human ability, and it is absolute proof of supernatural knowledge in the prophet.
God claims to be the only one able to foretell the future absolutely, to write history in advance. And remember, many of these Bible prophecies pointed forward for centuries and even millenniums to the time of fulfillment. There could be no collusion between prophet and the fulfiller of it.
God challenges the heathen gods to do the same, to produce real prophecy--which of course they never could, and never did, because they didn't exist except in the minds of their worshipers.
God calls for "strong reasons," in other words, coercive reasons.
NOTE: In Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1, Cyrus is called by name. Chapter 45 is addressed to this "shepherd," this "anointed" one, who was to accomplish God's purpose more than 150 years later.
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