Lesson 8, February 13-19
Sabbath Afternoon
Memory Text: “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; Lift it up, be not afraid; Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!” Isaiah 40:9
World War II ended in 1945 while a Japanese soldier named Shoichi Yokoi was hiding out in the jungle on the island of Guam. Leaflets dropped from U.S. planes proclaimed peace, but Yokoi thought it a trick. A loyal, patriotic soldier of the emperor, he had vowed never to surrender. Because he had no contact with civilization, he lived on what he could find in the jungle, a sparse, hard existence indeed.
In 1972, 27 years after the end of World War II, hunters came across Yokoi while he was fishing, and he only then learned that the message of peace had been true. While the rest of his people had been enjoying peace for decades, Yokoi had been enduring decades of privation and stress.—Roy Gane, Altar Call (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Diadem, 1999), p. 304, adapted.
Many centuries earlier, through the prophet Isaiah, God announced that the time of His people’s stress and suffering was really over: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, That her warfare is accomplished, That her iniquity is pardoned: For she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1, 2).
Let’s take a look at what this means.
