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Poetical or Political?

Isaiah 11:6

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.

One renowned, unbelieving scholar claimed that Isaiah 11 isn’t a picture of some Edenic paradise but merely a description of a society where men no longer war. Well, my suggestion to him is to take a trip to the zoo, stand in front of the lion enclosure, look through the fence that keeps them in and us out, and see if the space between is only a few feet or an infinite chasm. Seriously, could a perfect political system stop a fox from killing our hens or a hurricane from flooding our homes or a virus from infecting our families? Of course not. So how could God’s redemptive vision of a peaceful world where lions and lambs rest together and where children play without fear signify merely transient, political harmony? No—Isaiah 11 is a plunge into the deeper depths of Redemption’s well. The vision is so vast that we can’t begin to wrap our imaginations around it, much less our jurisdictions.

So Christian, be grateful that God, the Author of nature, is the One writing your story today and not some visionless political theorist.