Isaiah 1:4-18
“The United States of America in the past fifty years has been dominated to a large extent by persons who do not understand the spiritual heritage bequeathed by their own ancestors.”
–Dr. Albert Hyma
“America is coasting downhill on a godly ancestry, and God pity America when we hit the bottom of the hill.”
–Dr. J. Gresham Machen
“Sixty years ago I told God if He would let me alone, I would let Him alone, and He has kept His word!”
–Aaron Burr
Philosophy says: Think your way out.
Indulgence says: Drink your way out.
Politics says: Spend your way out.
Science says: Invent your way out.
Industry says: Work your way out.
Communism says: Strike your way out.
Fascism says: Bluff your way out.
Militarism says: Fight your way out.
The Bible says: Pray your way out,
But Jesus Christ says: “I am the way (out)…”
–Author unknown
Isaiah 3
“America is coasting downhill on a godly ancestry, and God pity America when we hit the bottom of the hill.”
–Dr. J. Gresham Machen
Isaiah 5:25—6:2
Our Prayerless Sin
We have not wept for thy grief,
Israel, scattered, driven,
Shut up to darkened unbelief
While we have heaven.
We have not prayed for thy peace,
Jerusalem forsaken;
Thy root’s increase, by God’s great grace,
We age-long have partaken.
How trod thy street our Saviour’s feet;
How fell His tears for thee;
How, loving Him, can we forget,
Nor long thy joys to see.
Zion, thy God remembers thee
Though we so hard have been;
Zion, thy God remembers thee,
With blood-bought right to cleanse,
May He remove our prayerless sin.
–Author unknown
Isaiah 8
“I have learned that when you fear God, you have no man to fear.”
–Oliver Cromwell
Isaiah 10
“One with God is a majority.”
–Martin Luther
Isaiah 24:16—26:18
“My misery, my misery.”
–Dr. F. C. Jenkins’ translation of “My leanness, my leanness.”
Isaiah 29:5—31:9
“Carelessness in prayer dwarfs every other aspect of need in the Lord’s work. Our theology of prayer is flawless, but our practice is faulty. Our intentions are good, but prayer’s usually a last resort. We have committees, retreats, seminars, conferences, tapes and a flood of printed matter – but little prayer. Prayer meetings are the most poorly attended functions in our Bible-believing churches. Our fundamentalism has become sophisticated to the point where we give little more than lip service to the doctrine of prayer. Could it be that personal needs, financial limitations, ineffective ministry and unsolved personal problems are all related to our superficial approach to prayer?”
–Great Commission Prayer League’s Global Circle magazine
Isaiah 34—35
“Hasten, O Saviour, the time of Thy return. Delay not, lest the living give up their hope. Delay not, lest the earth shall grow like hell, and Thy church shall be crumbled to dust. O haste, that great resurrection day, when the graves that received by rottenness, and retain by dust, shall return Thee glorious stars and suns. Thy desolate Bride saith, Come. The whole creation saith, Come, even so come, Lord Jesus. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God.”
–Richard Baxter
Isaiah 36—37
“Divine history is never merely history, never simply a true account of past events.”
–F.C. Jennings, Studies in Isaiah
Isaiah 38—39
“‘Behold, I will cause the shadow of the steps to return, which is gone down on the steps of Ahaz with the sun, backward ten steps. And the sun returned ten steps by the steps which it had gone down.’ We can now transport ourselves in spirit to Hezekiah’s palace, and into his chamber. There lies the king, still prone on his couch, but with his face no longer turned to the wall, but joy and hope brightening his eye as he looks out the window to the gardens, in the midst of which, and in full view, stands an obelisk, or column, with a series of steps leading up to it, and at least ten of these are lying in the column’s shadow; for the sun has gone so far down as to throw the shadow over that number of steps. But look again, the once darkened steps are now in clearest sunlight—‘tis the sign for which the king had asked.”
–F.C. Jennings, Studies in Isaiah
Isaiah 53:1-6
“God created the universe without half trying.”
–Attributed to Dr. T. DeWitt Talmadge
Isaiah 53:5—54:17
Beneath the cross of Jesus
I fain would take my stand—
The shadow of a might Rock
Within a weary land;
A rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat,
And the burden of the day.
Upon the cross of Jesus
Mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One
Who suffered there for me:
And from my stricken heart with tears
Two wonders I confess—
The wonders of redeeming love
And my unworthiness.
–Elizabeth C. Clephane
Isaiah 55
“Let us listen then, as if we had never heard the melody of this tender and gracious invitation before. Who are the guests here invited? All who thirst! All that is needed to be welcome then, is—not to need (for that is true of all)—but to want what is offered. Am I utterly dissatisfied with myself? I thirst! Am I dissatisfied with all the world can offer me, and of which I have tasted? I thirst! Is my spirit altogether dissatisfied with all the formalism of religion? Then do I thirst! Blessed thirst! It is the only prerequisite to enjoyment!”
–F.C. Jennings, Studies in Isaiah
“Joy is the flag that is flown in the heart when the Master is in residence.”
–Motto in a preacher’s study in Salem, Oregon
“I suppose I am the most miserable devil on earth.”
–Jay Gould, dying American millionaire
“The worm, the canker, and the grief are mine alone.”
–Lord Byron, from “On My Thirty-sixth Year”
Isaiah 58:4—59:21
“It is not because God is great and I am small, it is not because He lives forever, and my life is but a hand-breadth, it is not because of the difference between His omniscience and my ignorance, His strength and my weakness, that I am parted from Him: ‘Your sins have separated between you and your God.’ And no man, build he Babels ever so high, can reach thither. There is one means by which the separation is at an end, and by which all objective hindrances to union, and all subjective hindrances, are alike swept away. Christ has come, and in Him the heavens have bended down to touch, and touching to bless this low earth, and man and God are at one once more.”
–Alexander MacLaren, The Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah
Isaiah 63
“Read your Bible; prevent truth decay!”
–from a listener in Vista, California
Isaiah 65:3—66:24
Dr. George Gill, when asked, “Who ever heard of a lion eating straw? Anyone knows that a lion never eats straw!” replied, “Young man, if you can make a lion, then I will make him eat straw. The One who created the lion will equip him to eat straw when He wants him to do it.”
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