Cyrus

Isaiah 44:28 states:

who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd
   and will accomplish all that I please;
   he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,”
   and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.”’ 

The mention of Cyrus piqued my interest, and I'll get slightly ahead of the narrative at this point. As soon as I read this, I went straight for my NIV Study Bible and was surprised that this isn't even the first time Cyrus was referenced. Isaiah 41:2 states:

“Who has stirred up one from the east,
   calling him in righteousness to his service?
He hands nations over to him
   and subdues kings before him.
He turns them to dust with his sword,
   to windblown chaff with his bow. 

Cyrus is the "one from the east," but I missed it. This is the part where I'll jump ahead--Judah will be taken into Babylonian captivity in approximately 586 BC, and will spend approximately 50 years in the captivity. In around 540 BC, Cyrus (also known as Cyrus the Great) would overrun Babylon from his home base of Persia (modern-day Iran) and enable the events that will be chronicled in Ezra and Nehemiah, which is the return of the people to Judah and the restoration of the temple.

Pretty straightforward stuff, and we'll spend more time on it as we move forward. My point is a simple one--Cyrus was born around 600 BC (there's no definitive date), and Isaiah gave this prophecy approximately 100 years before the birth of the man who will release the Israelites from a captivity that occurred for 100 years in the future. It's one thing to make a non-specific and vague prophecy, it's entirely another to specifically name names as Isaiah did here. My point is that Christ isn't the only thing that Isaiah predicted that came true--we have the total 20/20 hindsight benefit of seeing just how specific Isaiah was in his prophecy and how successful he was. As we continue to read through the rest of the Old Testament, some of that prophecy won't sound like anything to look forward to, but we're in a section of Isaiah that will paint a vivid picture of what our eventual salvation and reunification with the Lord will look like. The restoration that Isaiah prophesies for the people of Judah will be just the same when we're released from the captivity of sin. Isaiah has been spot-on in his prophecies, which should give us all the hope we need for the prophecies yet to be fulfilled.

Scott