ROLLED TOGETHER AS A SCROLL

The idea of future judgement is foreign to the world-view of our contemporaries. They have accepted Satan’s lie that every­thing will continue as it has from the beginning, 2 Pet. 3. 4. Such thinking can even subtly affect us as Christians. Today’s passage emphasizes the unpalatable reality that God will inter­vene in our world as the Judge of all the earth. Isaiah issues a summons to all nations to hear the Lord’s sentence. The prophet declares God’s burning wrath. The Sovereign of the universe will not tolerate human rebellion forever. One day, He will wield His terrible sword against His foes. He will fully requite His enemies for their sins and fully recompense His people for their sufferings.

Our text shows that God’s judgement will have dramatic effects on the physical universe. By simile, it pictures Him rolling up the heavens ‘like a book that has been read through’, DELITZSCH. God has decided that the story is over and the book must be closed. Another passage pictures Him folding up the heavens like a man folding away his clothes, Ps. 102. 26. In the end times, God will shake both heaven and earth, Hag. 2. 6. Indeed, the prophecy of our text is repeated exactly in John’s vision of the opening of the sixth seal, Rev. 6. 13, 14. The Lord Jesus predicted that His glorious advent will be pre­ceded by convulsions in the sun, moon and stars, Matt. 24. 29. Such dreadful events will usher in the reign of Christ on earth in righteousness and peace.

The Lord Jesus is the only Deliverer from the coming wrath of God, 1 Thess. 1. 10. At the beginning of His public ministry, He literally rolled up the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth, Luke 4. 20. How significant that He did so after read­ing the prediction that He was the One who proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour and before coming to the reference to the day of vengeance of our God, Isa. 61. 2. The glorious era of grace which He inaugurated still continues today. In mercy and long- suffering, God delays the dawn of His awful day of vengeance, 2 Pet. 3. 9. In that day, the heavens and not the scroll of the prophet will be rolled up.