JOSEPH CHARLES PHILPOT (1802-1869)
Preached at Eden Street Chapel, Hampstead Road, London, on Tuesday Evening, August 2, 1853.
"I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by name, am the God of Israel."- Isa 45:2,3
To whom were these words spoken? To Cyrus. And who was Cyrus? King of Persia. But how came Cyrus to be introduced into the Word of God; and how did it happen that the Lord gave such promises to a heathen monarch? Cyrus, though a heathen prince, was an instrument chosen of God to do an appointed work, which was to overthrow the great Chaldean empire, take the city of Babylon, and restore the children of Israel to their own land; and therefore one hundred and seventy years before he executed the office thus assigned to him he was expressly pointed out and personally addressed by name in the record of inspired prophecy. What a proof is this of the inspiration of God’s Word, and that all events are under His appointment and control!
Not only, however, was he thus called by name, but the very work which he had to do was expressly declared long before the necessity arose for its being accomplished. The work for which he was raised up and divinely appointed, was to rescue from captivity the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which, as a punishment for their sins, were to be carried into captivity to Babylon, where they were to continue for a definite period, the space, namely, of seventy years. To rescue them, then, from this Babylonish captivity, when the seventy years were expired, and to enable them to return, was the work that Cyrus, in the appointment of God, had to perform.
This was a very great work for him to execute, a work so great that he could not have performed it unless he had been specially aided by God. For he had to take a city whose walls were fifty cubits thick and two hundred feet high, surrounded by a wide ditch full of water, and defended with one hundred gates of brass. The city was also well manned and well provisioned, and altogether so strong and powerful as to defy every mode of attack then known. If the Lord, therefore, in the words of the text, had not "gone before him;" if He had not "broken to pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron," Cyrus could never have taken that mighty city, but must have been utterly defeated in the attempt.
