Isaiah’s Card
To Jesus Christ all men on earth must turn,
Or else, here or hereafter, they must burn.
If Almighty God were himself to send Christmas cards, what might he write in his about the coming of his own Son to be born on earth as a human child of his human Mother? In fact God wrote many things about the Messiah through the writers whom he directly inspired to put together the books of the Old Testament, and of course one of the best-known of these quotes comes from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter IX. In the preceding Chapter Isaiah has been prophesying the desolation and ruin that will come upon the Jews for their sins. In IX he turns to the glory of the Messianic age: a great light will light up Galilee – v. 1,2. (Jesus’ home province). Then joy as at harvest-time or after a military victory will come(v.3), after the defeat of the Assyrians, as after Gideon’s defeat of the Madianites (v.4), and the features of war will disappear (v.5). Isaiah continues with the “Christmas card” (glorified in the music of Handel’s Messiah):
6: For a CHILD IS BORN to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace. 7: His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace: he shall sit upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and for ever: the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
6: Thus the supreme reason for joy is the coming of the Messiah: to us, to redeem all of us will be born a royal child and son, who will take the weight of the world upon his shoulder (the Church Fathers take this weight to be the Cross), and with a series of epithets Isaiah tells who the child will be: Wonderful, Counsellor, more than able to counsel all nations for their true happiness and prosperity down to t he end of the world. God the Mighty – Talmudic Scripture scholars do their best to avoid admitting that Isaiah is saying that the Messiah will also be God (as Catholics know, Second Person of the Holy Trinity), but the definite article in the Hebrew and the meaning of the expression “God the Mighty” everywhere else in the Old Testament strongly indicate that Isaiah means exactly that. The Father of the world to come – the Messiah will be a true and tender Father for the messianic age, for ever and ever (cf. Mt. XI, 28).
7: His empire shall be multiplied – the Catholic Church will spread all over the world and there shall be no end of peace because the Messiah’s Church will generate peace wherever it is respected, until world’s end. He will be a royal descendant of David to sit upon the throne of David to which it was promised that it would last for ever (II Sam. VII), as Our Lord promised to his Church (Mt. XVI, 18; XXVIII, 20). But this kingdom will be a kingdom of the King of Hearts (Jn. XII, 32), strengthened with judgment and with justice, not a kingdom of the Knave of Clubs, established by force (Mt. XXVI, 52; Jn. XVIII, 36). All these marvels will come from the zeal of the Lord God, from his burning desire to bring souls to Heaven to share eternal and uninterrupted bliss with him, for ever and ever.
What makes it difficult for us today to appreciate Isaiah’s glorious vision of the messianic future is that it has turned into the masonic past. The fifth age of the Messiah’s Church, the Age of Apostasy, began 500 years ago when Luther broke up Christendom, so that when another 200 years later it was still not yet obvious for many men that the benefits of Christendom were well on the way to being undermined, Judeo-masons could begin to persuade men that Christendom, or Christ, was no longer necessary. And not even the horrors of another 200 years later of anti-Christian Communis m, let loose by the Russian Revolution and spreading worldwide, could persuade men that from the Incarnation onwards, the alternatives for any civilisation are Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church, or the Devil. But it is true.
Happy Christmas, readers!
Kyrie eleison.