Having considered the Biblical meaning of Israel in the last post in this series, today I want to focus on the prophetic meaning of the word “mountain.” First let’s look at Isaiah’s profound last days’ prophecy.
Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the mountain of the Lord’s house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
And rebuke many people;
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:2-4 ESV)
From this passage (which is also prophesied in the same words in Micah 4:1-3) we see that God uses the word mountain to represent governments. Isaiah and Micah prophesy that one day God’s government will rule over every human government. We call this the manifested Kingdom of God. When I attended Bible college almost forty years ago my professors would say, “The Kingdom of God is already and not yet.” They meant that some aspect of God’s rule already appears in earth in very limited form through his people, but that the manifest power of his ruling kingdom is “not yet” seen among men. The New Testament writers all agreed that Satan in their day ruled this world, even after Jesus defeated him at the cross. As I write this in March and April 2015 Satan still rules the governments of men. During the last hundred or so years God has even allowed Satan expanded authority to deceive the children of men. This explains why today we see such rampant evil prevail on every level of society and government. Television media networks regularly broadcast overt satanic rituals as part of their major events, like the annual football Superbowl. Isaiah and Micah both proclaim, thus confirming God’s word by a double witness, that Satan’s control of men’s governments will one day fail. The mountain of God’s house, his government, will be established on top of all other mountains. His government will rule over all other governments of men.
Now consider that governments consist of people. A government is not some “thing” out there that exists apart from the people who comprise it. So, since people make up every type of government, let us think of the mountain of the Lord’s house as a mountain made out of people. Now we have to discover who these people will be. The particular prophecy we are considering also calls God’s mountain “the house of the God of Jacob,” “Zion,” and “Jerusalem.” Because of this many Christians believe that God will establish his earthly kingdom in the ancient land of Israel in the Middle East. They can point to other Scriptures as well which, in the natural, appear to predict that God will once again restore earthly dominion to the ancient Israelite people in the ancient land of Israel. But, is that interpretation really true? Think about this in light of the first post of this series which shows that the word Israel refers only to those over whom God rules, those whom God calls overcomers. Applying simple logic we now see that “the mountain of the Lord’s house” refers to these people. Therefore when the Bible speaks of the Mountains of Israel we need to stop thinking of natural, physical mountains and begin to think in terms of people, specific people, the people who have “wrestled” with God and have overcome just as our father Jacob did. These are the people who comprise “the house of the God Jacob.” These are the one who make up the “mountain of the LORD’s house.”
In the next post of this series we will examine specific Bible verses relating to these mountains, the mountains of Israel.
