Latest / truthunedited / ISAIAH Described JESUS 700 Years Before His Birth With Details No Other Prophet Gave
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: There is a chapter in the Old Testament that describes
- 0:02Speaker 1: a death. With details so precise, it reads like an
- 0:06Speaker 1: eyewitness account. It names the wounds using Hebrew words that
- 0:11Speaker 1: describe a fatal thrust through the body. It describes the
- 0:15Speaker 1: courtroom silence, a man who could have spoken and chose
- 0:20Speaker 1: not to. It describes the burial with criminals and then,
- 0:25Speaker 1: in the same verse, with a rich man. an impossibility
- 0:29Speaker 1: inside a single line. Micah named the birthplace. Zechariah saw
- 0:35Speaker 1: the piercing. Daniel saw the timeline. But no prophet painted
- 0:39Speaker 1: the full portrait, birth, identity, ministry, trial, death, burial, and resurrection,
- 0:47Speaker 1: except one. His name is Isaiah. And what he described
- 0:52Speaker 1: 700 years before it happened will change the way you
- 0:55Speaker 1: read every prophecy about Jesus. The year is approximately 740 B.C.
- 1:02Speaker 1: King Uzziah of Judah is dead. The earthly throne is empty.
- 1:08Speaker 1: And in the year that throne stood vacant, a man
- 1:11Speaker 1: named Isaiah saw the other throne. He saw the Lord,
- 1:15Speaker 1: high and exalted, seated on a throne so immense that
- 1:19Speaker 1: the train of his robe filled the entire temple. Above
- 1:23Speaker 1: that throne, Seraphim hovered. SIX WINGED BEINGS OF LIVING FIRE.
- 1:29Speaker 1: TWO WINGS COVERING THE FACE, BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT LOOK
- 1:32Speaker 1: AT GOD. TWO WINGS COVERING THE FEET, REVERENCE SO DEEP
- 1:37Speaker 1: THAT EVEN CELESTIAL BEINGS CONCEALED THEMSELVES. TWO WINGS FOR FLYING.
- 1:43Speaker 1: AND THE SOUND THAT FILLED THAT ROOM WAS NOT A SONG.
- 1:46Speaker 1: IT WAS A CRY, FROM ONE SERAPH TO ANOTHER. HOLY, HOLY,
- 1:51Speaker 1: HOLY IS THE LORD ALMIGHTY. The whole earth is full
- 1:55Speaker 1: of His glory. The doorposts and the thresholds shook at
- 1:59Speaker 1: the sound. The temple filled with smoke. And here is
- 2:03Speaker 1: something the average reader never stops to notice. In the
- 2:07Speaker 1: entire Hebrew Bible, no attribute of God is repeated three
- 2:11Speaker 1: times except this one. Not love, not mercy, not power. Kedosh, Kedosh, Kedosh. Holy, holy, holy.
- 2:22Speaker 1: the only divine attribute that heaven itself repeats with a
- 2:25Speaker 1: triple cry. Isaiah's response was immediate. He did not worship.
- 2:30Speaker 1: He did not celebrate. He collapsed. Woe to me, I
- 2:34Speaker 1: am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips,
- 2:38Speaker 1: and I live among a people of unclean lips, and
- 2:41Speaker 1: my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. Then
- 2:46Speaker 1: one of the seraphim flew to the altar. It took
- 2:49Speaker 1: a burning coal with tongs, and pressed it to Isaiah's mouth.
- 2:54Speaker 1: The coal touched his lips. See, this has touched your lips.
- 2:59Speaker 1: Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.
- 3:02Speaker 1: One coal, one man, one cleansing, the guilt of one prophet,
- 3:07Speaker 1: removed by fire. It was the smallest possible atonement, one mouth,
- 3:12Speaker 1: one moment, one man made clean. Then God spoke, not
- 3:17Speaker 1: to the seraphim, not to the heavens. Into the silence
- 3:21Speaker 1: after the fire he asked a question, Whom shall I send,
- 3:25Speaker 1: and who will go for us? And the man whose
- 3:28Speaker 1: lips had just been burned clean, the man who moments
- 3:32Speaker 1: earlier had declared himself ruined, answered, Here am I, send me.
- 3:39Speaker 1: Isaiah was given a voice that day, a mission. He
- 3:42Speaker 1: became God's mouthpiece to kings and nations, the man who
- 3:47Speaker 1: spoke when others were silent. His full name was Yeshayahu,
- 3:52Speaker 1: and it means Yahweh is salvation. His name is the
- 3:56Speaker 1: thesis of his entire book. He was not a wilderness
- 4:00Speaker 1: hermit or a wandering preacher. Isaiah was a court prophet,
- 4:04Speaker 1: a man with direct access to the throne room of Judah.
- 4:08Speaker 1: He confronted King Ahaz during the Syro-Ephraimite crisis. He counseled
- 4:13Speaker 1: King Hezekiah when the Assyrian army surrounded Jerusalem. He prophesied,
- 4:19Speaker 1: during the most volatile century in Judah's history. The fall
- 4:23Speaker 1: of the northern kingdom in 722 BC, the Assyrian siege,
- 4:28Speaker 1: the growing shadow of Babylon. His wife was called the Prophetess.
- 4:34Speaker 1: His sons were given prophetic sign names, Shir Jashub, meaning,
- 4:39Speaker 1: a remnant shall return, and Maher Shalal Hashbaz, meaning, quick
- 4:45Speaker 1: to the plunder. Even his children were walking prophecies, and
- 4:49Speaker 1: the words God gave him were committed to a fragile medium,
- 4:53Speaker 1: ink on animal skin, a scroll sealed among his disciples,
- 4:59Speaker 1: words that would need to survive conquest, exile, and empire
- 5:03Speaker 1: to reach the future. Isaiah had seen the throne of God.
- 5:07Speaker 1: He had been given a voice and a mission. He
- 5:10Speaker 1: was a court prophet, a man who advised kings. But
- 5:15Speaker 1: the visions God gave him were not about any king
- 5:18Speaker 1: who sat on the throne in his lifetime. They were
- 5:20Speaker 1: about a king who would arrive 700 years later, and
- 5:24Speaker 1: the first thing Isaiah described about him was not a throne.
- 5:28Speaker 1: It was a birth. King Ahaz of Judah is terrified.
- 5:33Speaker 1: Two armies are marching toward Jerusalem, Syria from the north
- 5:37Speaker 1: and the northern kingdom of Israel alongside it. The year
- 5:40Speaker 1: is 735 B.C. Ahaz is already planning to call the
- 5:45Speaker 1: Assyrian Empire for help, selling Judah's independence for short-term survival.
- 5:51Speaker 1: God tells Ahaz, through Isaiah, Ask for a sign, any sign,
- 5:57Speaker 1: as deep as the grave or as high as the heavens.
- 6:01Speaker 1: Ahaz refuses. He wraps his cowardice in false piety. I
- 6:06Speaker 1: will not put the Lord to the test. He has
- 6:09Speaker 1: already made his decision. He does not want a sign
- 6:13Speaker 1: from God because he does not want to be obligated
- 6:16Speaker 1: to God. Isaiah responds, not with patience, but with force.
- 6:22Speaker 1: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. The
- 6:25Speaker 1: Alma will conceive and give birth to a son, and
- 6:28Speaker 1: will call him Immanuel. The Hebrew word Isaiah uses is Alma,
- 6:34Speaker 1: and this word unlocks something remarkable. In every occurrence of
- 6:39Speaker 1: Alma in the Old Testament, It refers to a young
- 6:42Speaker 1: unmarried woman of marriageable age whose purity is intact. Rebecca
- 6:48Speaker 1: is called an Alma in Genesis. Miriam is called an
- 6:51Speaker 1: Alma in Exodus. And here is the evidence that illuminates
- 6:56Speaker 1: the prophet's meaning. Between the third and second centuries BC,
- 7:00Speaker 1: well before Jesus was born, Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated
- 7:05Speaker 1: the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. They were not Christians. They
- 7:10Speaker 1: had no New Testament. And when they reached Alma in
- 7:13Speaker 1: Isaiah 7.14, they chose the Greek word parthenos, which unambiguously
- 7:19Speaker 1: means virgin. Jewish scholars, centuries before Christ, chose virgin. The
- 7:26Speaker 1: Greek translation confirms what the Hebrew word had always carried.
- 7:30Speaker 1: The child's name, Immanuel, is itself a theological claim. Hebrew Immanuel,
- 7:38Speaker 1: God with us, Not God helps us. Not God watches
- 7:42Speaker 1: over us. With us. Present. Embodied. The name carries the
- 7:47Speaker 1: weight of the incarnation before the incarnation has a word
- 7:51Speaker 1: for itself. That was the first brush stroke on the portrait.
- 7:55Speaker 1: The outline, a birth. But after the birth came the identity.
- 8:01Speaker 1: And the identity is where the portrait becomes something no
- 8:05Speaker 1: other prophet dared to paint. For to us a child
- 8:08Speaker 1: is born... To us a son is given, and the
- 8:11Speaker 1: government will be on his shoulders, and he will be
- 8:14Speaker 1: called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
- 8:21Speaker 1: Isaiah gives the child four throne names, and of the four,
- 8:25Speaker 1: one is a theological earthquake that has never stopped shaking.
- 8:29Speaker 1: El Gibor, Mighty God. El means God. Gibor means mighty, powerful, heroic.
- 8:37Speaker 1: And in Isaiah chapter 10 verse 21, one chapter later,
- 8:41Speaker 1: this exact phrase, El Gibor, is used for YHWH himself.
- 8:47Speaker 1: A remnant will return to the mighty God. The same
- 8:51Speaker 1: divine title, the same two Hebrew words, used for the
- 8:55Speaker 1: creator of the universe in one chapter, and applied to
- 8:58Speaker 1: a child in the chapter before it. A baby is
- 9:01Speaker 1: given the name that belongs to God. No other prophet
- 9:05Speaker 1: described this. No other prophet gave the Messiah a divine name,
- 9:10Speaker 1: the same title used for YHWH himself. Isaiah did, 700
- 9:16Speaker 1: years before it happened. The government is placed on his shoulders,
- 9:21Speaker 1: a throne, a kingdom, an eternal reign. The portrait so
- 9:25Speaker 1: far looks like royalty, a king with a divine name,
- 9:29Speaker 1: born to rule. Then Isaiah added a third brushstroke, and
- 9:34Speaker 1: it was quieter, stranger, and more devastating than the first two.
- 9:39Speaker 1: A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.
- 9:42Speaker 1: From his roots, a branch will bear fruit. Not the
- 9:46Speaker 1: tree of David. The stump. The dynasty will be cut down.
- 9:51Speaker 1: It will look dead. Nothing left but a rotting stump
- 9:54Speaker 1: in dry ground. But from that dead wood, new life.
- 9:59Speaker 1: A shoot. The Messiah does not come from David's glory.
- 10:03Speaker 1: He comes from David's ruin, life from death, a kingdom
- 10:07Speaker 1: from a graveyard. Every other prophet gave a fragment. Isaiah
- 10:12Speaker 1: gave the painting. Starting in chapter 42, a new figure
- 10:16Speaker 1: appears in Isaiah's visions. Not a king, not a warrior,
- 10:21Speaker 1: a servant, Ebed Yo-H-W-H, the servant of the Lord. And
- 10:26Speaker 1: across four distinct passages, chapters 42, 49, 50, and 52
- 10:32Speaker 1: through 53, Isaiah describes this servant in increasingly specific detail.
- 10:38Speaker 1: Scholars have long debated whether these later chapters were written
- 10:42Speaker 1: by the same Isaiah or by a later author writing
- 10:45Speaker 1: during the Babylonian exile. The debate is genuine, and the
- 10:50Speaker 1: stylistic evidence is real. But here is what matters for
- 10:54Speaker 1: what we are about to see. Every passage we are
- 10:57Speaker 1: about to examine existed in written form long before Jesus
- 11:02Speaker 1: was born. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which we will see shortly,
- 11:07Speaker 1: are the physical proof. The first thing Isaiah describes about
- 11:11Speaker 1: the servant is his temperament. Here is my servant, whom
- 11:16Speaker 1: I uphold. my chosen one in whom I delight. A
- 11:20Speaker 1: bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick
- 11:24Speaker 1: he will not snuff out. This is not a conquering king.
- 11:28Speaker 1: This is a man who handles broken things with tenderness.
- 11:32Speaker 1: The bruised reed, a cracked, worthless stem that any farmer
- 11:36Speaker 1: would snap and discard, he does not break. The smoldering wick,
- 11:42Speaker 1: a lamp guttering on its last breath of oil, he
- 11:45Speaker 1: does not extinguish. His power is expressed not in force,
- 11:50Speaker 1: but in restraint. His strength is measured by what he
- 11:53Speaker 1: refuses to destroy. But the servant's reach was not national,
- 11:58Speaker 1: it was global. It is too small a thing for
- 12:02Speaker 1: you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob.
- 12:06Speaker 1: I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
- 12:10Speaker 1: that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
- 12:14Speaker 1: Too small a thing, Saving Israel alone does not exhaust
- 12:18Speaker 1: the servant's purpose. The portrait is no longer a Jewish
- 12:22Speaker 1: king for a Jewish kingdom. It is a figure for
- 12:25Speaker 1: the entire world. This means that if you are watching
- 12:29Speaker 1: this from anywhere outside the borders of ancient Israel, Isaiah
- 12:34Speaker 1: 49 is the moment where you entered the story. 700
- 12:38Speaker 1: years before Christ, the prophet announced that the servant was
- 12:41Speaker 1: coming for you. For a thousand years, Jewish commentators have
- 12:45Speaker 1: read these servant passages as describing Israel itself, the suffering nation,
- 12:51Speaker 1: persecuted among the Gentiles. The interpretation has deep roots and
- 12:56Speaker 1: genuine scholarship behind it. But there is a textual distinction
- 13:00Speaker 1: the text itself makes. In Isaiah 49, verse 5, the
- 13:05Speaker 1: servant's task is to bring Jacob back to God. The
- 13:09Speaker 1: servant saves Israel. Therefore, the servant cannot be Israel. He
- 13:14Speaker 1: is distinct from the nation he is sent to restore.
- 13:18Speaker 1: Then the portrait darkened. I offered my back to those
- 13:22Speaker 1: who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out
- 13:26Speaker 1: my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking
- 13:29Speaker 1: and spitting. The court prophet, the man who advised kings
- 13:34Speaker 1: in marble halls, is now describing someone who is beaten,
- 13:38Speaker 1: whose beard is ripped from his face, who is spat on.
- 13:42Speaker 1: and the servant does not resist. He set his face
- 13:46Speaker 1: like flint. Not helplessness, not weakness, resolve. He chose to endure.
- 13:54Speaker 1: The portrait had shifted. It started with a divine name
- 13:57Speaker 1: and a throne. Now it showed a beaten face, a
- 14:02Speaker 1: torn beard, spit running down the cheeks of the one
- 14:05Speaker 1: called Mighty God. The court prophet was painting someone who
- 14:09Speaker 1: looked nothing like a king. The identity was was revealed.
- 14:14Speaker 1: But the mission remained. And it is the mission that
- 14:17Speaker 1: changes everything. Everything Isaiah has written has been building to this.
- 14:23Speaker 1: Every servant song, every prophecy, every vision, they all converge here.
- 14:30Speaker 1: In what scholars call the fourth servant song, Isaiah writes
- 14:34Speaker 1: the most detailed description of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
- 14:38Speaker 1: 700 years before crucifixion was invented, as a method of execution.
- 14:43Speaker 1: It is called the Suffering Servant, and it reads like
- 14:47Speaker 1: it was written by someone who was standing at the
- 14:49Speaker 1: foot of the cross. See, my servant will act wisely.
- 14:54Speaker 1: He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
- 14:58Speaker 1: Just as there were many who were appalled at him,
- 15:01Speaker 1: his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being,
- 15:05Speaker 1: and his form marred beyond human likeness. So he will
- 15:09Speaker 1: sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because
- 15:14Speaker 1: of him. Isaiah 52, verses 13 through 15. Exaltation and
- 15:20Speaker 1: disfigurement in the same breath. Raised high and marred beyond
- 15:25Speaker 1: recognition in the same stanza. The servant's ark is compressed
- 15:29Speaker 1: into three verses. Glory through destruction. Triumph through suffering. And
- 15:35Speaker 1: the ones who rule the world, kings, shut their mouths.
- 15:40Speaker 1: the powerful are silenced by what they see. He grew
- 15:44Speaker 1: up before him like a tender shoot, and like a
- 15:47Speaker 1: root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or
- 15:50Speaker 1: majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance
- 15:54Speaker 1: that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected
- 15:58Speaker 1: by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.
- 16:03Speaker 1: No beauty, no majesty, a man whose companion was pain,
- 16:09Speaker 1: not as a visitor but as a daily acquaintance. Isaiah
- 16:13Speaker 1: does not describe someone the world embraced and then betrayed.
- 16:16Speaker 1: He describes someone the world never wanted in the first place, despised, rejected,
- 16:23Speaker 1: not after the trial, before it. The rejection was not
- 16:27Speaker 1: a plot twist. It was the opening condition. The portrait
- 16:31Speaker 1: is not of a hero riding into glory. It is
- 16:35Speaker 1: of a man the world looked at and looked away from.
- 16:39Speaker 1: Then Isaiah wrote the verses that changed the history of theology.
- 16:43Speaker 1: Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
- 16:47Speaker 1: yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him,
- 16:51Speaker 1: and afflicted. The Hebrew word is nasa, to bear, to
- 16:56Speaker 1: carry away. It is the language of Leviticus 16, the
- 17:00Speaker 1: Day of Atonement, the scapegoat driven into the wilderness, carrying
- 17:05Speaker 1: the sins of the people on its back. The servant
- 17:08Speaker 1: does not suffer for his own failures. He carries what
- 17:11Speaker 1: belongs to others. But he was pierced for our transgressions.
- 17:16Speaker 1: He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought
- 17:20Speaker 1: us peace was on him, and by his wounds we
- 17:24Speaker 1: are healed. Go inside the Hebrew. The word translated pierced
- 17:30Speaker 1: is chalal. It does not describe a scratch or a
- 17:34Speaker 1: surface wound. It describes a fatal, violent thrust through the body,
- 17:39Speaker 1: the same intensity as Dakar in Zechariah, a killing blow.
- 17:44Speaker 1: The word translated crushed is daka. It is the strongest
- 17:49Speaker 1: possible Hebrew word for destruction, not injured, not hurt, pulverized,
- 17:55Speaker 1: shattered beyond repair. And the text is explicit. God did
- 17:59Speaker 1: this deliberately. The punishment is transferred. It belongs to us.
- 18:05Speaker 1: It lands on Him. This is substitution stated in the
- 18:09Speaker 1: plainest possible language, seven centuries before the cross. And the
- 18:14Speaker 1: wounds are not accidental. They are medicinal. By His wounds
- 18:19Speaker 1: we are healed. The injuries produce healing. The death produces life.
- 18:25Speaker 1: We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us
- 18:29Speaker 1: has turned to our own way, and the Lord has
- 18:32Speaker 1: laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Remember the coal,
- 18:36Speaker 1: one coal, one man's lips, one prophet cleansed. The burning
- 18:41Speaker 1: coal atoned for the guilt of one person standing in
- 18:44Speaker 1: one room. Now the Lord has laid on him the
- 18:48Speaker 1: iniquity of us all, not one man's guilt, all of it,
- 18:53Speaker 1: every wandering sheep, every turned back, every straying path. The
- 18:59Speaker 1: coal that cleansed Isaiah's lips was a miniature of what
- 19:03Speaker 1: the servant would do for the world. The micro-atonement foreshadowed
- 19:07Speaker 1: the macro-atonement. And the word for what the servant's life becomes,
- 19:13Speaker 1: a sham, in verse 10, is a Levitical technical term,
- 19:17Speaker 1: a guilt offering, a trespass offering. Isaiah is not using
- 19:23Speaker 1: the language of tragedy. He is using the language of
- 19:26Speaker 1: temple sacrifice. The servant's death is not an accident. It
- 19:31Speaker 1: is an offering. He was oppressed and afflicted. yet he
- 19:35Speaker 1: did not open his mouth. He was led like a
- 19:38Speaker 1: lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its
- 19:41Speaker 1: shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Silence.
- 19:46Speaker 1: Isaiah is the prophet who was given a voice. Here
- 19:50Speaker 1: am I, send me. He volunteered to speak. He became
- 19:55Speaker 1: God's mouthpiece. He confronted kings. He challenged empires. And now,
- 20:01Speaker 1: the person he describes, the one carrying the sins of
- 20:05Speaker 1: the world, the one being led to his death, has
- 20:08Speaker 1: a voice. He could speak. He could mount a defense.
- 20:12Speaker 1: He could call down fire. And he chooses silence. The
- 20:17Speaker 1: scene is recorded in Matthew chapter 27. Jesus stands before
- 20:22Speaker 1: Pontius Pilate. The chief priests pile accusation upon accusation. Pilate
- 20:28Speaker 1: waits for a response. Any response. Jesus says nothing. He
- 20:34Speaker 1: gave no answer, not even to a single charge. to
- 20:38Speaker 1: the great amazement of the governor. The most powerful judge
- 20:42Speaker 1: in the province is amazed because the man on trial
- 20:45Speaker 1: will not speak. Anyone can predict that a righteous person
- 20:50Speaker 1: will suffer. But to predict that the sufferer will choose
- 20:54Speaker 1: not to defend himself before the most powerful legal system
- 20:58Speaker 1: in the ancient world is a level of specificity that
- 21:02Speaker 1: moves beyond generic prophecy into portrait paintings. No other prophet
- 21:08Speaker 1: described the silence. Isaiah did 700 years before it happened.
- 21:15Speaker 1: He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with
- 21:18Speaker 1: the rich in his death. This is an impossibility within
- 21:22Speaker 1: a single verse. In the ancient world, executed criminals were
- 21:26Speaker 1: thrown into common burial pits, dishonored graves for the dishonored dead.
- 21:32Speaker 1: Rich men were buried in carved-out tombs with spices and
- 21:36Speaker 1: linen and mourning. One person cannot receive both. Grave with
- 21:42Speaker 1: the wicked and with the rich. In the same death. How?
- 21:47Speaker 1: Luke chapter 23, verse 33. Jesus is crucified between two criminals.
- 21:53Speaker 1: That is the grave with the wicked. Matthew chapter 27,
- 21:57Speaker 1: verses 57 through 60. Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man,
- 22:03Speaker 1: takes the body and places it in his own new tomb,
- 22:07Speaker 1: cut from solid rock. That is the rich in his death.
- 22:12Speaker 1: One death in human history fulfilled both halves of an
- 22:16Speaker 1: apparent contradiction, written 700 years before the death occurred. No
- 22:22Speaker 1: other prophet described the burial this way. The wicked and
- 22:26Speaker 1: the rich in the same verse. an impossibility resolved by
- 22:30Speaker 1: one death. Isaiah did, 700 years before it happened. Yet
- 22:37Speaker 1: it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause
- 22:39Speaker 1: him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life
- 22:43Speaker 1: an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and
- 22:46Speaker 1: prolong his days. After death, he will see offspring. After death,
- 22:52Speaker 1: his days are prolonged. A dead man cannot see offspring.
- 22:57Speaker 1: A dead man's days do not continue unless the dead
- 23:00Speaker 1: man does not stay dead. After he has suffered, he
- 23:05Speaker 1: will see the light of life and be satisfied. The
- 23:09Speaker 1: phrase light of life appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls
- 23:13Speaker 1: version of this verse, present in the oldest surviving manuscript,
- 23:17Speaker 1: but absent in some later copies. The oldest text we
- 23:21Speaker 1: possess strengthens the resurrection readings. The servant does not end
- 23:26Speaker 1: in the grave. He sees light. He is satisfied. The
- 23:30Speaker 1: portrait does not stop at death. Every other prophet gave
- 23:35Speaker 1: a fragment. Isaiah gave the painting, and the painting did
- 23:39Speaker 1: not end at the grave. Isaiah described the birth, the identity,
- 23:45Speaker 1: the mission, the trial, the silence, the death, the burial,
- 23:50Speaker 1: and the life after death. of a person who would
- 23:53Speaker 1: not exist for 700 years. The portrait was complete. But
- 23:59Speaker 1: one question remained. How do we know these words are ancient?
- 24:04Speaker 1: How do we know they were not written after the
- 24:06Speaker 1: events they describe? The answer is physical. It is made
- 24:11Speaker 1: of leather and ink, and it was hidden in a
- 24:14Speaker 1: cave for 2,000 years. In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd named
- 24:16Speaker 1: Muhammad Adib threw a stone into a cave in the
- 24:24Speaker 1: cliffs above the Dead Sea. He heard something break, the
- 24:28Speaker 1: sound of shattering pottery. Inside the cave he found clay jars,
- 24:33Speaker 1: sealed shut, untouched for more than 2,000 years. And inside
- 24:38Speaker 1: the jars, scrolls. Among those scrolls was one that would
- 24:43Speaker 1: change biblical scholarship forever. The Great Isaiah Scroll Designation 1Q
- 24:51Speaker 1: Isa A. It is 24 feet long, 7 1⁄3 meters
- 24:56Speaker 1: of continuous writing, 66 columns of text. It has been
- 25:01Speaker 1: carbon dated to approximately 125 B.C., more than a century
- 25:06Speaker 1: before the crucifixion of Jesus. It is the oldest complete
- 25:10Speaker 1: copy of any biblical book in existence. Not a fragment.
- 25:15Speaker 1: Not a scrap. The entire book, all 66 chapters, on
- 25:20Speaker 1: a single continuous scroll. And Isaiah chapter 53, every verse
- 25:26Speaker 1: we just examined, every Hebrew word, every line about the
- 25:30Speaker 1: piercing and the crushing and the silence and the burial,
- 25:33Speaker 1: is fully present, complete, intact. The textual differences between this
- 25:39Speaker 1: scroll and the medieval Masoretic text used in modern Bibles
- 25:43Speaker 1: are minimal, over 95% identical, across more than a thousand
- 25:48Speaker 1: years of copying. The 5% that differs is almost entirely
- 25:53Speaker 1: spelling variations, not content. The scroll shows no major division
- 25:59Speaker 1: between chapters 39 and 40, only standard paragraph spacing. By
- 26:05Speaker 1: 125 BC, Jewish readers treated the text as one unified work.
- 26:12Speaker 1: The words Isaiah committed to animal skin survived the Babylonian conquest.
- 26:17Speaker 1: They survived the Persian Empire. They survived Alexander the Great,
- 26:22Speaker 1: the Ptolemies, and the Seleucids. They survived 21 centuries of war, weather,
- 26:29Speaker 1: and the slow decay of everything ink touches. They survived,
- 26:34Speaker 1: and the portrait they contain can be examined by anyone,
- 26:37Speaker 1: in any museum, in any photograph, today. Whether one prophet
- 26:42Speaker 1: wrote all 66 chapters, or whether later hands contributed over
- 26:47Speaker 1: the centuries, every passage we have examined existed in its
- 26:51Speaker 1: current form at least 125 years before the crucifixion. This
- 26:57Speaker 1: is not a theological claim. It is a carbon-dated fact.
- 27:02Speaker 1: But the scroll is only half of this act. The
- 27:05Speaker 1: scroll proves the portrait is ancient. What happens next proves
- 27:10Speaker 1: someone claimed it. Nazareth. A Sabbath morning. Jesus enters the synagogue,
- 27:19Speaker 1: the same synagogue he grew up attending. He has been
- 27:21Speaker 1: here since childhood. He knows the scrolls. He knows the readings.
- 27:26Speaker 1: He stands up to read. The attendant hands him the
- 27:30Speaker 1: scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolls it. He finds
- 27:34Speaker 1: chapter 61, and he reads, The Spirit of the Lord
- 27:38Speaker 1: is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim
- 27:42Speaker 1: good news to the poor. He has sent me to
- 27:45Speaker 1: proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for
- 27:49Speaker 1: the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the
- 27:53Speaker 1: year of the Lord's favor. Then he stops. He does
- 27:58Speaker 1: not read the next line, the day of vengeance of
- 28:01Speaker 1: our God. He stops at favor. He rolls up the scroll.
- 28:06Speaker 1: He hands it back to the attendant. He sits down.
- 28:09Speaker 1: Every eye in the synagogue is fixed on him, and
- 28:12Speaker 1: he says seven words. Today this scripture is fulfilled in
- 28:17Speaker 1: your hearing. He does not say, I am the Messiah.
- 28:21Speaker 1: He does not argue theology. He does not present evidence
- 28:24Speaker 1: or debate interpretations. He reads the servant's job description, anointed
- 28:30Speaker 1: to preach, sent to heal, commissioned to liberate, and he
- 28:34Speaker 1: claims it as his own. The portrait had a name,
- 28:38Speaker 1: The child was given throne names, the government on his shoulders.
- 28:43Speaker 1: The portrait showed royalty. But the path to the throne
- 28:47Speaker 1: passed through the beating, the silence, the piercing, and the grave.
- 28:53Speaker 1: The throne was reached, not through a crown, but through
- 28:57Speaker 1: a cross. His hometown's reaction to his claim? They drove
- 29:02Speaker 1: him to the edge of a cliff and tried to
- 29:04Speaker 1: throw him off. Isaiah painted a portrait. the most detailed
- 29:09Speaker 1: messianic portrait in the Old Testament. Seven hundred years after
- 29:13Speaker 1: the paint dried, a man in a synagogue picked up
- 29:17Speaker 1: the scroll, read the description, and said, This is me.
- 29:22Speaker 1: Look at the full arc of what one prophet saw.
- 29:25Speaker 1: A child called God with us. A son named Mighty God.
- 29:29Speaker 1: A shoot from a dead stump. Gentle hands that would
- 29:33Speaker 1: not break a bruised reed. A mission to the ends
- 29:36Speaker 1: of the earth. a beaten face, a silent trial. a
- 29:40Speaker 1: fatal piercing, a grave with criminals, and a tomb cut
- 29:44Speaker 1: from rock. And after the death, light, life, offspring, satisfaction,
- 29:50Speaker 1: one prophet saw all of it. Micah named the birthplace,
- 29:54Speaker 1: one verse, one detail. Zechariah saw the piercing, the donkeys,
- 30:00Speaker 1: the thirty pieces of silver, and the return to the
- 30:03Speaker 1: Mount of Olives. Daniel gave the timeline and the Son
- 30:06Speaker 1: of Man on the clouds. David, in the Psalms, cried
- 30:10Speaker 1: out words that matched the experience of the cross. But
- 30:13Speaker 1: none of them, not one, painted the complete portrait. Birth
- 30:18Speaker 1: to resurrection, identity to burial, the silence and the wounds
- 30:23Speaker 1: and the grave with the rich. Isaiah did, 700 years
- 30:28Speaker 1: before the subject existed. Isaiah is quoted in the New
- 30:32Speaker 1: Testament more than any other Old Testament prophet. More than
- 30:36Speaker 1: 50 direct quotations, hundreds of allusions. The entire theological framework
- 30:43Speaker 1: for why the Messiah had to die, the substitution, the
- 30:47Speaker 1: guilt offering, the carrying of sin, the healing through wounds,
- 30:52Speaker 1: comes from Isaiah. The New Testament did not invent the
- 30:56Speaker 1: suffering Messiah. Isaiah painted him seven centuries earlier. They call
- 31:01Speaker 1: him a major prophet. Major in length, certainly, 66 chapters,
- 31:06Speaker 1: the longest prophetic book in the Bible. But what makes
- 31:09Speaker 1: him major is not the length, it is the detail.
- 31:14Speaker 1: The portrait he painted is the most complete, most specific,
- 31:18Speaker 1: most forensically precise description of any person in the Old Testament.
- 31:23Speaker 1: And he painted it from a world that had never
- 31:26Speaker 1: seen the person he described. Isaiah saw the throne of God, Seraphim,
- 31:32Speaker 1: blinding light, the thrice holy voice that shook the foundations.
- 31:38Speaker 1: He was a court prophet, a man who walked into
- 31:41Speaker 1: the palaces of kings, who shaped the fate of nations
- 31:44Speaker 1: with his words. But the greatest king Isaiah ever described
- 31:49Speaker 1: had no palace. The most powerful person he ever painted
- 31:53Speaker 1: carried no sword The one given the title Mighty God
- 31:57Speaker 1: was led like a lamb. The one born to rule
- 32:01Speaker 1: chose not to speak at his own trial. Isaiah saw
- 32:05Speaker 1: two things, the throne and the cross. And the portrait
- 32:10Speaker 1: he painted revealed that they were the same destination. The
- 32:14Speaker 1: throne was reached through the cross. The crown was earned
- 32:18Speaker 1: through the wounds. Every other prophet gave a fragment. Isaiah
- 32:23Speaker 1: gave the painting... of a king who looked nothing like
- 32:26Speaker 1: a king, until you understood what a king was for.
- 32:31Speaker 1: If this video has blessed you, drop your thoughts in
- 32:34Speaker 1: the comments. Like this video and subscribe to this channel
- 32:39Speaker 1: so you get the full update on everything we put out.
- 32:42Speaker 1: And if you want to see how Isaiah's suffering servant
- 32:45Speaker 1: connects to the prophecies of the return, we have a
- 32:49Speaker 1: documentary on Zechariah that walks through what happens when the
- 32:52Speaker 1: pierced one comes back and his feet touched the Mount
- 32:56Speaker 1: of Olives. We will leave the link for you. Share
- 32:59Speaker 1: this with someone who needs to hear it. God bless you,
- 33:03Speaker 1: and we will see you in the next one.