"For You Have Done Wonderful Things"

In Isaiah 25, following the destruction of His enemies, God provides a marvelous feast for the whole earth—a wonderful world of plenty for those who are ruled by Jesus Christ. This is what is pictured each year by God's great fall festival, the Feast of Tabernacles (see Leviticus 23:33-43; Deuteronomy 16:13-15). As was mentioned in our highlights on Isaiah 4, the reign of Christ over all nations will be like one long, expanding Feast of Tabernacles—during which more and more people will submit their lives to God until the actual Feast of Tabernacles is observed by all peoples (see Zechariah 14:16).

God will remove the veil of spiritual blindness that now lies over all nations (verse 7). The apostle Paul mentions it in 2 Corinthians 4: "But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this world [Satan the devil] has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them" (verses 3-4). In the wonderful world that is coming, Satan, who "deceives the whole world" (Revelation 12:9), will be bound in prison (Revelation 20:1-3)—and all nations will finally see. Not immediately of course. While some people will recognize right away that Christ has liberated them, for others it will take longer. But eventually, through a program of education directed by Christ and the resurrected saints, the true knowledge of God will come to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).

Yet for the present age, the veil remains. Even now, though, God lifts the veil for each person whom He calls to be part of the firstfruits of salvation—His Church. Rending and opening the spiritual veil, allowing access to God and His spiritual knowledge, has been made possible through the rending of Christ's body and His resultant death, all of which was symbolized by God's tearing of the veil in the temple at the very moment He died (Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10:20).

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul discusses the subject of the resurrection and concludes that when we have received immortality, "then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory'" (verse 54). That saying is found here—in Isaiah 25:8.