28th August 2023

I recently heard a reading from the Prophesy of Isaiah, chapter 40:

Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low;
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places plain.

Immediately I could hear these words being sung to Handel’s music in The Messiah!

Then it reminded me of something else. I am currently rereading Origins: How The Earth Made Us by Lewis Dartnell. He describes the coming and going of ice ages and the way the land masses have moved and rearranged themselves; mountains rising; valleys sinking; ice sheets smoothing out the terrain. It’s a process which continues, as evidenced by earthquakes and volcanoes.

Isaiah is seen as prophesying the coming of Christ – the next verse says:

And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

Some see the Old Testament prophets as foretelling, not the coming of Christ as recorded in the Gospels, but the ‘Second Coming’. Recently I was one of a number of recipients of an email from a well-known local Christian. He quoted a scientific (?) forecast that in a few weeks’ time the earth will suffer the effects of a giant solar storm and be hit by two large asteroids. These will lead to the destruction of much of our food resources as well as killing many (most?) of the earth’s human inhabitants. That will be the context for the Second Coming.

In Matthew’s gospel we read: No one knows about that day or hour. And there are similar teachings elsewhere in the gospels.

So, maybe we shall all celebrate the first coming at another Christmas!

David T Roberts