Can a country be
brought forth in one day? Can a nation be born in a single moment? –
Isaiah 66:8b (NET)
The answer to this
question, posed by the prophet Isaiah, is yes. A country can be brought
forth in one day, and indeed, a nation can be born in a single moment. This is especially so if that day and that
moment is the Resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, from the grave,
with the birth of a nation (a kingdom, an empire) without borders, encompassing
the entire globe. In his proleptic vision of a world in which Israel’s
God rules without challenge (though certainly post-Christ-event observers read
messianic events back into the text), Isaiah writes, “Yet as soon as Zion goes
into labor she gives birth to sons!” (66:8c) Zion, in popular prophetic
language, is the Lord’s mountain, often serving as the purported location of
the New Jerusalem, of which it is said, “Be happy for Jerusalem and rejoice
with her, all you who love her!” (66:10a)
With what appears to
be a nod to the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah, the author of the letter to the
Hebrews pens, “But you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly and congregation
of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven” (12:22-23a). Let it be said
that the language of “Zion,” while also standing in for a physical location, is
the language of the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven that will be
enlarged by the Gospel proclamation that Jesus is Lord of all, is that which
was inaugurated and unleashed upon the earth as a kingdom without end at the
Resurrection of Jesus.
In the book of
Revelation, which possesses its own vision of the presence of the kingdom of
heaven and which rests upon the same over-arching Scriptural narrative on which
rests Isaiah and the letter to the Hebrews, the heavenly Jerusalem comes to
earth. One recognizes the influence of
the Isaianic vision there as well, as the believing community continued to draw
from the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures in their attempt to understand the
work of the Christ and its implications, in the Creator God’s declaration that
“just as the new heavens and the new earth I am about to make will remain standing
before Me…so your descendants and your name will remain”(66:22). That new
heavens and new earth seem to be tied to the birth of this new nation, which is
an eternal nation that is populated by descendants that share in eternal life
in a renewed creation---at the intersection of heaven and earth.
Tying the birth of a
nation to the Resurrection of Jesus and the labor and birthing of sons of Zion,
it can be said that yes, as soon as Zion goes into labor---as soon as the
kingdom of heaven begins to be manifest on earth by the power of the Resurrection,
the preaching of the Resurrection, and the power of the preaching of Gospel of
Jesus (He is Lord) and the consequent belief in these things---Zion does indeed
give birth to sons. Those sons are indeed sons of the kingdom of
heaven. Those sons are the manifestation and the revelation of the sons
of God (a name given to the covenant people), brothers in the union of belief
with the risen Christ, for whom the creation has been eagerly awaiting (Romans
8:19).
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