Isaiah 34:4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling
fig from the fig tree.
Let’s look at that in context: “Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold,
it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, my judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it … and thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls …”
Do you really think this was speaking of the physical destruction of the whole cosmos? Or was this the same apocalyptic language about the curse of the Law executed against the people of the Law in the last days of the Old Covenant?
Why is Idumea used to signify the kingdom that would be thus judged and destroyed? Because in New Testament times Israel was ruled over by the Idumean King Herod and his sons. What did Herod and Idumea have to do with all this? The name Idumea was the name of the kingdom of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, the one over whom Isaac prophesied saying: “And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother (Jacob who became Israel); and
it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion (become king over the kingdom),
that thou shalt break his (Israel’s)
yoke from off thy neck.”
Remember Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, which was a shadow of how the nation of Israel sold their birthright to God’s heavenly kingdom for an earthly perishable land that satisfied the flesh. Only a remnant of Jews were saved, but that remnant of faithful Jews, from both Old and New Testament times, those are who God counts as the Israel of God. The rest were cast out and destroyed.
And that’s what Isaiah was prophesying, not the end of the world, obviously because it talks about the land being desolate and the habitation of owls and dragons. This was apocalyptic language, again, that spoke of the judgment and destruction of the nation of Israel.
We will not comprise New Jerusalem until we are literally resurrected and all believers are together.
“But
ye are come (present tense) unto mount Zion, and
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall we not escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.” (Hebrews 12:22-25)
If you have been saved, your name is already written in heaven, you have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Living God. It is a spiritual city, in a spiritual kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, and if you have been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life then you are already a living stone that is part of that city God is creating, the New Jerusalem of the new creation, spiritual first, and afterward that which is physical.
Just because some jots and tittles have been fulfilled, it doesn't mean they have passed away. Even sacrifices can be viewed as still remaining and are currently being fulfilled by Yeshua. Will they be offered again during the Millennium? Ezekiel’s temple and other prophetic passages seem to suggest they will.
Ouch! So how many times does Jesus have to die before he is finished “fulfilling” the sacrifices? And why on earth would God go back to temple shadows and sacrifice shadows when the whole point of them was to by a type and figure to foretell and teach about the sacrificial death of Jesus?
Ezekiel saw what Jesus’ once-for-all-forever sacrifice fulfilled, not a return to the blood of bulls and goats as though the blood of Jesus isn’t enough to completely atone for sin and forever reconcile men with God.
Saying that God has ordained a future return to animal sacrifices is to say the blood of Jesus Christ is not enough.
This is a very interesting observation, but there are several flaws which rule it out as being the fulfillment of the shadow of Shavuot.
Shavuot concerns the firstfruits of the WHEAT harvest. Old Testament Jews are not wheat, but barley as was Yeshua (
Leviticus 23:9-14). New Testament believers are spoken of as wheat (
Matthew 13:24-30).
Actually New Testament believers (Jew and Gentile) are not spoken of anywhere as any particular type of grain, including in the passage you cited. The first souls saved and gathered into God’s household in the harvest of the Gospel were the Jews, ergo they are identified as the “firstfruits” in the Revelation, whether it is the firstfruits of the barley or of the wheat. This would include all those of both the Old and New Testaments. That’s why the Scripture says the Gospel was to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile.
And the 40 years from the institution of the New Covenant to the final judgment and end of the Old Covenant was the period of time God allowed for the harvest of the nation of Israel, which is why Jesus instructed the disciples to preach the Gospel beginning in Jerusalem, and then in Judea, and then Samaria and then to the nations. And that is how the Gospel did in fact spread and for the first 10 years all the converts to Christ were Jews.
So I don’t think the idea that Gentiles were “firstfruits” is a correct interpretation of these things, the harvest of the Gospel among the Gentiles was after the nation of Israel had been reaped.
But there was one final harvest of Israel that didn’t take place until the end of that generation, and that was the vintage at the end of the year.
While the field were ready to harvest in Yeshua’s day, they will not be harvested until the resurrection in our future (
Matthew 13:38-40).
Again, not everything in the Bible is talking about physical things. It does talk a lot about spiritual things. And certainly it speaks of the preaching of the Gospel and the salvation of souls as sowing seeds and reaping a harvest. Do you truly not believe that?
This implies to me that earth and heaven fled away from Yeshua in the past, not at the time the throne is seen. The earth and the heaven fled away at Yeshua’s second coming. That is when the old heaven and earth (old rulership over the earth) fled and the new heaven and new earth began (a new rulership over the earth).
You’re kidding right? After all your insistence that everything be understood literally as physical things now when we talk about the actual end of the world after the millennium you are saying this is spiritual rather than physical?
No, the old heavens and earth that Jesus and Moses walked is still here. The stars that Abraham gazed on when God promised his descendants would be as numerous are still burning brightly in the heavens … well, a few have died and others have been born but.
The Revelation says that it will be
after the 1000 years expire that there will be a great white throne where Jesus will sit and from whose face the earth and the heavens will flee away (Revelation 20:11) so no, this fleeing away of the cosmos did not happen in the past, and it most definitely occurs at the time of the great white throne judgment.
And yes, this is talking about the end of the physical world. And it’s also talking about the physical resurrection.
Yes, Yeshua was unleavened bread, but we are his body. As such, we are to be unleavened as well.
But we are not what the unleavened bread of the Passover Feast foreshadowed. That foreshadowed the body of Christ, part of that sacrificial Passover meal. Our body is not part of the Festival sacrifice nor does anyone eat it.
In Christ,
Pilgrimer