So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate.

And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees.

And the Lord said to the woman,

I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

Then to Adam He said,

Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you saying, you shall not eat of it:

Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust shall you return.

Then the Lord God sent man out of the garden of Eden. (See Genesis, chapters 1-3 for this story.)

The casting out of the garden testifies to the excellence of the garden.

“For by grace are you saved through faith.” Faith is not expressed toward God when He agrees with you; when things go as you like. There was nothing in the garden which would enable people living there to disagree with God- the Creator of the Garden and those who lived in it. The Garden was an expression of the gentle love God had toward those He had created.

Faith toward God is only expressed when He disagrees with you. Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

The perfection of the garden left no opportunity for the expression of that faith which activates grace and purifies the soul. The sentence pronounced by God over the guilty pair which declared that it was going to be by difficulties that they would proceed through their lives was not motivated by the anger of God, but that sentence came from His love; His desire for their continued companionship.

Opportunities for the expression of faith must be created; an environment with a lack of perfection was an absolute necessity for the salvation of the soul to be possible; the salvation of the soul is a co-operative work- God making the potential, creating the opportunities for the expression of doubt by His children- people responding by faith; that faith which activates grace and brings it into the soul-temple as the restorative element provided by God for the restoration of the souls of those of His children who choose to be part of the kingdom which He is setting up for those who choose the service of others over the service of the self.

In this choice they choose the life pattern of love; love for the neighbor- the one who is near; the one to whom they have the opportunity to reveal what God is like. This love seeks not its own good, but the good of those by whom it is surrounded.

Love is both the gift of God and the developed result of the choices made by the one choosing to follow the pattern of other-people-centeredness.

The Lord desires to be loved by His children. The quality of love which He desires is the quality of love which is the outgrowth of an appreciation of His character. This love can only be returned after a personal knowledge of that toward which it is expressed is acquired.

Those events which occur in our lives, and which by occurring acquaint us with the God who loves us, are per-destined. See Ephesians 2:10. Before the foundations of the world were laid, God planned for us. See Ephesians 1:4.

The salvation of the soul is a co-operative work. The co-operation which brings about the salvation of souls is not only required on the part of man, who must express that faith which attaches to grace and brings it into the life, but it is also required on the part of God.

“I will send someone to help you,” is His promise. Someone will come- to enlighten and act as a guide to choosing those choices which will bring grace to the soul to restore the soul from the damage occurring in connection with the events in the garden of Eden, and our own mis-choices; someone who, by coming, will bring grace within the reach of everyone; every grace-remade soul then being a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. See Ephesians 2:22

What would such a sent-person be like? Male or female? When would they come? How would any one know that the sent person was the sent person?

There are so many questions that immediately come to mind when one hears about Adam and Eve being created by God, made in His image, on a just-finished earth, provided with a garden home and then expelled from their new house only to be promised One to bring assistance!

Questions like, what kind of assistance was the coming One bringing? What would it do? Whereas the One expelling them from their home was the same One sending the assistance and help- what could they expect the future to look like?

There is of course no obvious end to the questions that one might want to ask about this story, so let just start someplace, anyplace, in no real order, and look at a few of the prediction-descriptions of the coming One appearing in the Old Testament. This is a great study! The word pictures are fascinating. (Sometime you must read through all of them all!)

Promises, Predictions, and Self-portraits

The One Given and Sent

Isaiah 9:6

Note: There are perhaps 50 passages in the Old Testament that speak directly about the coming Sent-One.

As you probably already know, the Old Testament differs from the New Testament in that the Old Testament points to the future as the time of the Coming One, while the New Testament points to the Coming One either as a present reality, or as having already come and given the Self-portrait of what the Heavenly Father is like. The New Testament also points to the future as a time when the having-come One will come again.

The Old Testament also has passages dealing with the fact that the Coming One would come twice- but those passages are not always as vivid and clear as the portrayals of the return of the having-come sent-One are, when we find them in the New Testament.

Isaiah 9:6 says,

For unto us a Child is born,

Unto us a Son is given;

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

The proper way to study any verse is to start at the first phrase and follow through it logically, but there is an element in this verse that is so exciting that it almost forces us to start with it!

That element is in the phrase,

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

The exciting part of this phrase is from the Hebrew. The Hebrew verb form translated into English as “will be” is a verb form technically designated as a wow conversive. The literal translation of this verb form makes the phrase read, “And the government has been upon His shoulder.”

The child who has been born to us, the Son who has been given to us is One who has already had the government upon His shoulder! This is no gift of an ordinary baby!

The sent One is the One who, at His birth, has already had the government of Heaven upon His shoulder from eternity. This One is the One who Proverbs 8 refers to as One being having been brought up with the Father (v.30-Hebrew, minion; variously translated- as One brought up with Him; as His architect; designer).

The One to come as a fulfillment of the promise made by the Creator to His in-trouble children is the One who, at the time of the making of the promise, already has the government of Heaven on His shoulder. The One willing to come for the rescue of the children of God is, in this verse, designated Mighty God.

The Creator of the children of God on this earth did not look for some one to rescue them- He willed to come Himself.

Notice again the descriptive titles- Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Wonderful, Counselor.

The Son given unto us is the child born; the coming One, carries the title, Prince of Peace; the baby to be born, our gift, is Everlasting Father. The Creator of all must have a great love for His children- seen as what they could become, if rescued.

It could be argued that He could have sent someone else, but that would not show He loved us. The love of Heaven is seen in Heaven’s gift of the paying of that which could not be paid by God’s self-pawned children; paid by their Father.

But when the Prince of Peace, the wonderful counselor, the Given and Sent One, has left his home to bring the Redemption for His children, what is He bringing? What is He coming to do for those in need? What does that which He is bringing do for them? When He has done what it is that He does, what does the observer see? Does that which is seen reveal that the doer is the Sent-one?

Notice the following:

Isaiah 35: 3-9.

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are fearful-hearted, be strong, do not fear!

Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God;

He will come and save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.

The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water;

In the habitation of jackals, where each lay, there shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for others.

Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray.

No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it; it shall not be found there.

But the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing,

with everlasting joy on their heads.

They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

The Commission of the Sent-One

Isaiah 61:1-3

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives; and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn,

To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

That they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified

Faces of the Ever-Present

In the Mirror which is our lives we see reflected the many faces of the Ever-present One; He who is the Architect of the Father draws many lines in His own face. When we look for Him in our lives we face a world of many faces.

When my daughter was little she had some toys called transformers; one never knew what they would be configured as the next time they were present in her play. Their visible form changed as the story line being imagined changed. But of course there was a limit to the changes that could be arranged by the moving of their parts.

In this review of some of the drawings by the prophets appearing in the Old Testament depicting the One bringing the redemption for His created children, we have observed that the ability to change, to be the Transformer, has only that limit which equals the needs of those the Given One seeks to help.

This Transformer differs from the toys my daughter had for play, not only in the unlimited varieties of the self-revelation form, but in the unlimited forms of change that can be made in the essential nature of the objects for whom the wide variety of self-revelations are made.

Once upon a time, the way that all good stories start, there was a little boy who loved to do the same things that his father did.

Each day ashes father would start off to work this little boy would express the wish to got work with his dad, and each day his father would tell him that he could not go because he was too little.

But time went on and one day the father said to his son, as he was leaving for work, ask your mother to fix you a lunch for tomorrow, and then you can go to work with me.

The next day father and son went to the father’s work together.

The day went by quickly for the little boy. When the working men were all starting to go home the father came to the boy and told him that he had to go down by the creek and then he would be ready to go home; he told his son to wait there where he was.

The little boy waited for his dad, but his dad did not return. It began to get dark and the little boy started to get cold so he crawled into a small hut nearby and soon was sound asleep.

He woke up hearing the sounds of men talking quietly. When he opened his eyes he saw men walking around outside the hut where he was sleeping, looking at the ground. When they saw that he was awake they asked him if any thing strange had happened. He said no; that his father had told him to wait there- that he would come right back, but that he had not returned- that during the night he had started to get cold, but that his dog had come and kept him warm; but that he had left earlier.

That was no dog, the men said to the little boy; that was a panther.

The many faces of God

when His children are in need. Him “whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2.

The Many Places of the Given One

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Isaiah 53:1.

One of our professors had a degree in comparative religions and another degree in anthropology; so the Government of New Guinea hired him to do a study of the people living in an unmapped area of their country.

To do this study required him to walk through the jungles, making trails where there were none. So carriers and trackers were hired and their journey was begun.

This professor was of Dutch nationality, very white skinned, and would sometimes be burned so dark that his wife would not recognize him immediately when he returned from a survey trip.

One day they had been traveling until the professor said to the carriers that he was so tired that he could walk no farther. Everyone stopped and started to prepare for the night, except for the exhausted professor who immediately crawled into a small hut some earlier traveler had left there and was just as immediately fast asleep.

He awoke to the sound the natives make when something is wrong. Recognizing the warning sound he opened his eyes but did not move. There, hanging out of the brush making the roof for the little hut he was sleeping in was a very deadly snake; it was swinging back and forth over his face. Without moving he tensed every one of his muscles as tight as he could and suddenly sprang out of the little sleeping hut.

The natives killed the snake. But there was a problem.

The snake which had been hanging over the professor was the snake which seduced the woman in the Garden, in the culture of the people who were traveling with the professor as he surveyed the people of the region.

Every culture has a form of the three stories that start the story of the Bible- the story of Creation of the world and man, the entrance of sickness and suffering in connection with the snake and the woman in the Garden, and the story of the Flood.

In the story of the fall of man in the culture of the people the professor was traveling with, the husband had come home to find that his wife had run off with the snake. God said to him, when you catch up to them you are to kill the snake.

So the husband started tracking them, but when he caught up to them he got so mad that instead of killing the snake he began to beat his wife and the snake got away. Therefore when those snakes are all caught and killed there will no longer be hunger, or sickness.

The next morning the carriers refused to continue the journey because it would not be safe; the devil was on their track. The only thing to do was to return to their starting point and start over again. But the group had traveled a large distance, so the professor tried to reason with the carriers, but it did no good until one of them said that if the group were to cut a new wandering trail, the devils would get lost and they could safely continue their travel. So they all started on their trip again, cutting a new trail- some thing which they would continue to do for three days, and then the devils would have become lost.

The people of this region never wear shoes and the bottoms of their feet are as tough as leather.

Suddenly as the group was cutting a section of new trail the lead men fell down in pain- their feet bleeding. Someone had hidden large thorns in the ground.

And then arrows started to fly! Fortunately peace was made and the group was taken to meet the chief of the area. Everything went quite normally, except that the professor estimated that there were several times as many huts for people to live in as there were people to live in them.

When he questioned the people about the huts they said that someone came to the mountain to teach them every evening; that one of the things they had learned was that the dead were going to live again- so they had built the huts so they- the resurrected ones- would have a place to live.

The Self-portrait

here is a moving picture of the whole of creation, with the presence of God shadowing every frame.

Guilty and Innocent

Isaiah 53:4

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

In Leviticus 14 we have a fascinating third cousin to the passage just quoted from Isaiah. This chapter in Numbers is not a directly messianic passage in the opinion of this writer, but it is tied to a portrait of the Coming One we might miss without the insights it brings to us.

The problem being dealt with is leprosy. In Old Testament times the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to become infected with the disease of leprosy. This was because not only was the disease a progressive wasting away of the body of the victim until the disease struck some vital part and the suffering victim died, but it was also the most dreaded because of the way that the victims of this disease were treated by the society in which they lived. They were allowed no contact with any other human being than those who were their fellow-sufferers. This isolation was made the more unpleasant by the prevailing opinion that the onset of leprosy was the result of the direct curse of God.

In Leviticus 14 is described the rituals to be followed by some one who had been healed from leprosy. The rituals were a portrayal of both the objective and the subjective atonement, including the resurrection from the dead. The person healed of leprosy had to go through the prescribed ritual before they could again be a part of their community, and return to their family and friends.

The connection between Leviticus 14and our study of portraits of the One sent to help is found in a story appearing in the Babylonian Talmud.

In this story two are talking and the one asks the other one when the Messiah will come. The reply is that He has already come. The questioner asks where He can be found. The answer is that he is among the lepers at the gate. The questioner then asks how he, the seeker for the messiah, would know him from the rest of the lepers. In response to this question the answerer says that the lepers unbind all their sores, and then bind them up again; but the Messiah unbinds one and then rebinds it, saying, lest I should be called and I would not be ready. This story is footnoted to Isaiah 53:4.

When King Uzziah refused to listen to the priests, and offered a sacrifice on the alter in the temple, something that the Lord had said that only the priests were to do, the Lord immediately struck him with leprosy, and he went out of the temple white as snow, and, in spite of being the king, lived in a special house until the day of his death.

In Isaiah 53:4, which we quoted above, we read of the Messiah,

“we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God.”

The word smitten is a translation of the Hebrew word Negah. This word is the word which appears in the smiting of King Uzziah when the Lord punished him with leprosy.

The story we can now find in Isaiah53:4 is the account of the Sent-One being struck with leprosy by God because of His sins! EXCEPT that the very next words in Isaiah 53 are,

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53: 5-6.

This Self-portrait

is of us looking in a mirror that gives back only a purified reflection. This picture reveals that the mirror is itself a portrait of God.

Coming as King

There are some fascinating passages in the Old Testament that leave us wondering what the properly understood message is. The words of these texts are in themselves obviously capable of being carriers of a packet of information about the central person in the Old Testament- the Promised being-Sent One. But the context surrounding those texts is often not what is readily understood as being a portrayal of the Coming One, or of events associated with the appearing and life of the Messiah- the anointed One, or the Given One, in other passages in Scripture clearly dealing with the future Redeemer.

Therefore it is to the great delight of the Bible student that sometimes writers of Biblical materials, writing after the time of the author who presents the material with the fascinating word clusters lacking a clear context, comment on the texts, giving them a specific setting.

An illustration of this kind of material is found in association with the story of

Isaiah, chapter 7.

In this chapter the prophet Isaiah is sent to give a message to the king of Judah. It is a time of war. Two of Judah’s enemies have decided to join their forces and attack Judah, again. There has been war between these groups in the past, but the enemies were then not strong enough to win the battle with Judah; but now Judah’s king believes that they have the ability to win in a battle with his nation. He is very afraid.

The Lord, knowing how afraid the king of Judah is, sends the prophet Isaiah with a message assuring the king that the nations which he fears are not going to win if there is a battle.

Then the prophet gives the king a sign- a child is going to be born, a boy child, and before the child is old enough to choose between good and evil the 2 nations which are so fearful to the king will be no longer!

The exact words of the message are,

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and you shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

The translators have capitalized the words son and his, making the passage a reference to the promised Sent-One. This act emphasizes the central question presented to the reader of this text-is the predicted child who is to be born, and who is to be called Immanuel, the promised Savior?

One thing is clear immediately, the name Immanuel means God with us. The question is, does the name attached to the to-be-born son express an expression of faith, God is with us, or is it expressing a fact; this one is God? If the significance of the name is to be found in its being a statement of fact, the name should be translated God with us.

When the time of this war and the time for the coming of the promised Given One are compared, it is clear that this child can not be the promised Redemption-bringer. The time for the appearing of the promised One is clearly presented to Bible students in the book of Daniel, and the time Isaiah spoke to the king was not the designated time.

But what about the words, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son? If this verse is not to be seen as a direct prophecy of the coming One, is this verse not then a prophecy for some child to be born, the result of a virgin birth, in the time of Isaiah?

There are 2 words for young women in the Hebrew of the Old Testament; one is the word bethulah, which means virgin. The second word is almah, which appears only 8 or 9 times, and because of the changing contexts in which it appears, cannot be said to carry a particular and exact meaning, other than that it designates a young woman of marriageable age.

The Hebrew word translated virgin in Isaiah 7:14, the verse we are looking at, is the word almah. Therefore the prediction in Isaiah tells the king that a young woman, not identified for us, perhaps present with the king as the Prophet Isaiah talks to him, is to bear a son and have the name which is the assurance of the care of God for the frightened king and his nation. The name of the child, Immanuel, when said, reminds all those who hear the name pronounced that God is with them.

The prophet Isaiah’s own children carried this same kind of statement, as did the children of Hosea. Through the prophets the Lord tried many different ways of assuring the people of the nation He had a special role for, of His continuing good will toward them. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil.” Jeremiah 29:11. “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15.

So what does this passage have to do with our study of texts about the coming Promised One?!

I suspect you already know- Matthew, the writer of the first book of the New Testament, quotes this text, originally written in Hebrew, when he writes his Greek language record of the acts and deeds of Jesus done while Jesus was living in Palestine, and uses the Greek word for a virgin to translate the Hebrew word almah, young woman.

Matthew wrote,

so all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying:

Behold the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, God with us. Matthew 1: 22-23.

As an inspired writer of a book of the Bible Matthew points out to us the otherwise uncertain application of the words appearing in Isaiah’s assurance of the Lord’s good will toward Israel.

Jesus, the coming Promised One was to be born of a virgin. (For the story of the birth of the One bringing Redemption, see Matthew 1: 18-2:23, or Luke, chapters 1and 2.)

Another great picture

of the coming One that is only seen clearly with the help of a later Bible-writer, is the material found in

Zechariah 9:9.

This material paints a brilliant portrait of an event in the life of the coming-Promised One which it must have been fascinating for Bible students in Old Testament times to conjecture about; a portrayal of a triumphal entry set in the context of the overthrow of ancient enemies.

The noticeable element that is lacking, in addition to the timing of this triumphant scene, is the absence of a supporting cast! No king has a triumphal entry alone- yet in this scene from the life of the Christ He is alone. It is also of interest to notice that no response to the invitation appearing in this verse is part of the picture that appears in Zechariah’s book.

This verse reads,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation,

Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.

This material appears in a passage promising protection to God’s people in Old Testament times, while promising trouble to those who oppose God’s plans and people.

Matthew picks up this verse and gives it a context of time, tying it to the Messiah. He writes the story of this triumphant act, however, after it has happened, in his Gospel in what is in our Bibles chapter 21, verses 1-11. Notice what happened when Zechariah’s verse became reality.

Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples,

saying to them,” go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to me.

And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord has need of them’, and immediately he will send them.

All this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet, saying:

Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.

So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them.

They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set him on them.

And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?”

So the multitudes said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee”.

Matthew has seen the triumphal entry before he understands that that act is the fulfilling of the verse in Zechariah we are studying. In fact the death of Jesus has occurred before any of the disciples tied the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, by Jesus,

to the picture in Zechariah. Notice the comment of the apostle John;

“His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him and that they had done these things unto Him.” John 12:16.

John also writes that

“the people who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness.” John 12:17.

If this bearing witness occurred before the triumphal entry ride by Jesus, there may have been a very large multitude of people who went out to see Jesus ride into the city in the fashion of a conquering King, because Lazarus had not only been raised from the dead, but he had been in the tomb for four days! Other stories of the raising of the dead had been doubted by some, but this act nobody could cast doubt on.

It has been estimated that the people in and about Jerusalem when it was destroyed numbered about one million. If there were that many in Jerusalem when the story of the raising of Lazarus was reported, the crowd who went out to see Jesus enter the city would have really seemed like the whole world.

It is therefore no wonder that the Pharisees, who were actively opposing the work of Jesus because He and His works were more popular than they were said,

“You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!” John12: 18-19.

The element these texts together add to our portraits of the Messiah appearing in Old Testament portrayals of the coming Helper is found in the fact that all these fascinating historical happenings were hiding in a text that even the disciples did not notice as being of particular import to the life of the Coming One, until they were enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

The Self-portrait

of God here is of the Member of the Godhead who reveals that which we would not see without His enlightenment. This portrait is of One pointing away from Himself.

Our last picture to assemble is a mosaic- a composite picture made of

Snap Shots of the Future,

a future being offered by the One bringing help for those who couple themselves to Him:

For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.

Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come,

It will not tarry. Habakkuk 2:3.

Your eyes will seethe King in His beauty; They will see the land that is very far off. Isaiah 33:17.

And it will be said in that day: “Behold, this is our God; We have waited for Him, and He will save us.

This is the Lord; We have waited for Him; We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” Isaiah 25:9.

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former shall not be remembered or come into mind. Isaiah 65:17.

Your dead shall live; Together with My dead body they shall arise.

Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust; For your dew is like the dew of herbs,

And the earth shall cast out the dead. Isaiah 26:19

Therefore prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves..” Ezekiel 37:12.

“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, The lion shall eat straw like the ox, And dust shall be the serpent’s food.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,” Says the Lord. Isaiah 65:25.

Drawings by the Prophets as Mirrors

In this study we found many Old Testament Prophecies acting as mirrors, reflecting pieces of the future.

The Self-portrait is of One whose reflections always reveal another.

 Self Portrait of God | Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7