Isaiah 25:8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces… And this prevision of immortality does not seem to have been a mere inspiration, a secret revealed to them by the Spirit of all wisdom and knowledge. Apparently, it was also the result of a logical process, an inference from moral facts with which they were familiar. For all the prophets held that the Messiah would come to redeem men — first the Jew, but also the Gentile — from their sins, to establish them in the service and to draw them into the family of God. But death is simply the wage and fruit of sin. To redeem from sin is, therefore, to abolish death, to pluck it up by the root, to cut it off at the fountainhead. This appears, so far as we can trace it, to have been the foundation of their hope in the Christ as the Conqueror of death. And hence, in proportion as they were sure that He would save men from their sins, they were the more fully persuaded that, in overcoming sin, He would also overcome and annihilate death. No one of the goodly fellowship has given a nobler utterance to this animating and sustaining hope than the prophet Isaiah in the words, "And He shall destroy in this mountain," etc. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. |
    |