could not help breaking out with the question, “How long, O Jehovah?” Jehovah God foreknew, and his foreknowledge as revealed to Isaiah would make certain the kind of message that the prophet Isaiah would have to deliver against his own people. O, then, how long will they go on?

28. What did Jehovah say in answer to Isaiah’s question?

²⁸ Isaiah’s exclamation of alarmed protest served as a leading question for Jehovah God. So in answer to Isaiah he continued with his statement, as Isaiah next tells us: “Then he said, ‘Until the cities actually crash in ruins, to be without an inhabitant, and the houses be without earthling man, and the ground itself is ruined into a desolation; and Jehovah actually removes earthling men far away, and the deserted condition does become very extensive in the midst of the land.’”—Isa. 6:11, 12.

29. (a) According to this, how far was the spiritual decline of the people to continue? (b) What message was Isaiah therefore obligated to declare, and why did he prove a faithful witness?

²⁹ Alas, the spiritual decline of Isaiah’s people was thus bound to continue until the terrible consequences of their ungodly conduct came upon them according to what Jehovah God, in his own written covenant with the nation of Israel, foretold would come upon the stubborn covenant breakers. (Lev. 26:22-41; Deut. 28:49-68) Isaiah would therefore be obliged to declare a message of coming ruin, desolation and deportation to his own people. And this he actually did. He could not escape doing so, for this was a correct prediction of the future. It was Jehovah’s message to “this people,” and the prophet Isaiah had offered himself and had asked to be sent, saying: “Here I am! Send me.” He did not back down from this offer and request. He did not choose to do so, no matter how hard the message from Jehovah would be against his people. Accordingly, he proved to be a faithful witness of Jehovah.

30. (a) Did Isaiah keep going with Jehovah’s prophetic message till the houses were without man? (b) Did his obediently going prove to be in vain?

³⁰ Isaiah kept prophesying until into the righteous reign of Hezekiah, the great-grandson of King Uzziah, or from about 775 to about 732 B.C.E., or about forty-three years. So he himself did not preach until Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by Babylonian armies in 607 B.C.E. and the whole land of Judah was left desolate, the houses without earthling man, and there was a removing of the surviving Jews from the land of Judah to the distant land of Babylonia, to languish there as exiles. A small number of low-ranking Jews was left in the land, but they were frightened off by fear of the vengeance of Babylon and fled down to Egypt, to die there. Thus, although Isaiah finished his prophetic work about 125 years before this national disaster, the hard message that Jehovah sent him to proclaim to his own people proved to be most painfully true. He had not been sent in vain. He had not gone obediently in vain.—2 Chron. 36:15-21; 2 Ki. 25:1-26.

A “HOLY SEED” LIKE A TREE STUMP

31. What did Jehovah add that made the message entrusted to Isaiah not a completely hopeless one?

³¹ However, the message that was entrusted to Isaiah at the temple of Jehovah was not completely hopeless, for Jehovah added these final words: “And there will still be in it a tenth, and it must again become something for burning down, like a big tree and like a massive tree in which, when there is a cutting down of them, there is a stump; a holy seed will be the stump of it.” (Isa. 6:13) This comforted Isaiah with the assurance that there would be found a holy remnant in among “this people.” Although the nation of Israel would have a repeated burning, like a big tree or a massive tree that has been cut down for fuel, there would remain a vital stump of the symbolic tree of Israel. At the scent of water this stump would sprout again and there would be a regrowth of the tree. This remnant or stump still rooted in the ground would be a seed or offspring that was holy to Jehovah.

32. (a) How did this consoling part of Isaiah’s message prove to be true? (b) What did this make possible concerning that same temple prophecy, and how did it also affect our day?

³² This consoling part of the message that Jehovah sent Isaiah to deliver also proved to be true. After seventy years of utter desolation of the land of Judah, a repentant God-fearing remnant of Jews did return from exile in Babylon in 537 B.C.E. They rebuilt Jehovah’s temple, at the same time rebuilding their city of Jerusalem. In this way the “holy seed” was used to restore the pure worship of Jehovah God in the land of Judah. (2 Chron. 36:20-23; Ezra 1:1 to 6:22) This restoring of the Jews to their God-given homeland made it possible for the second fulfillment of Jehovah’s prophecy as given to Isaiah at the temple to take place, and this in connection with a Greater Isaiah. Both of these historical fulfillments upon the people of natural Israel provided a prophetic picture of a third fulfillment of Isaiah’s temple prophecy in our own modern times. This let us now see.

Have You Said: “Here I Am! Send Me”?

1. When did the second fulfillment of the prophecy given to Isaiah at the temple take place, and how may the one be designated whom Jehovah raised up in that connection?

NUMEROUS prophecies of the Holy Bible have been found to have a triple fulfillment, this third and final fulfillment coming in our own twentieth century. This makes such prophecies of most vital concern to us, such as this prophecy given during Isaiah’s vision of Jehovah God at his holy temple. (Isa. 6:1-13) The second fulfillment of this highly important prophecy took place nineteen centuries ago, when Jehovah God raised up a second Isaiah, a Greater Isaiah. Who was this Greater Isaiah? We find out in Heb chapter two of the