The whole of both books · September 1 – October 30, 2026
Providence Community Church · Chris
Revelation quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than to any other book. Not as decoration — its throne room, its Lamb, its Babylon, its winepress, its jewelled city and its new heavens and new earth are all built out of Isaiah's vocabulary. Reading them apart means meeting the same images twice without recognising them.
So Isaiah runs straight through, chapter by chapter, and Revelation is placed against it — not evenly, but wherever the two texts are actually doing the same work. Days marked ★ are the strongest of those pairings.
It ends the day before Isaiah begins. October 30 is also the last day of your fall listening plan. You finish reading both books complete the night before the preaching series starts.
Revelation goes quiet for seven days. October 15–21 is Isaiah alone, so that chapter 53 arrives without anything beside it. That silence is the one piece of design in this plan you would notice if it were missing.
Isaiah opens by putting Judah on trial; Revelation opens by putting seven churches on trial. Read the first week as one long arraignment.
| Tue Sep 1 | Isaiah 1·Revelation 1 Both books open by telling you who is speaking before they tell you what is wrong. Isaiah summons heaven and earth as witnesses against a people who no longer know their owner; John turns to see the voice and falls down as though dead. Neither book will let you treat its complaint as ordinary. |
| Wed Sep 2 | Isaiah 2·Isaiah alone The mountain of the LORD's house raised above the hills, and the nations streaming to it. Hold this image — it is the same city that comes down out of heaven on the last day of this plan. |
| Thu Sep 3 | Isaiah 3·Revelation 2 Isaiah strips Jerusalem of her finery ornament by ornament; Christ walks among the lampstands naming what each church has lost. The indictment is specific in both, which is what makes it merciful. |
| Fri Sep 4 | Isaiah 4·Isaiah alone Four verses of pure promise dropped into the middle of the indictment — the branch of the LORD, the cloud and the fire, a canopy over Zion. Isaiah does this repeatedly: judgment, then a door left open. |
| Sat Sep 5 | Isaiah 5·Revelation 3 The vineyard song, and the six woes that follow it. Read it beside the letter to Laodicea — a vineyard that yields wild grapes and a church that thinks itself rich are the same failure described twice. |
The throne room and the shoot from Jesse. Two of the plan's strongest pairings land in this stretch.
| Sun Sep 6 | Isaiah 6·Revelation 4 The pairing the whole plan is built around. Isaiah sees the LORD high and lifted up, the seraphim calling holy, holy, holy, the house filling with smoke; John sees a throne, and four living creatures who never cease saying holy, holy, holy. Revelation 4 is not alluding to Isaiah 6 — it is standing in the same room. |
| Mon Sep 7 | Isaiah 7·Isaiah alone Ahaz will not ask for a sign, so he is given one anyway: a virgin shall conceive. The refusal is the point — unbelief does not stop God from acting, it only stops you from participating. |
| Tue Sep 8 | Isaiah 8·Isaiah alone The sanctuary and the stone of stumbling are the same stone. Isaiah's children carry the sermon in their names, and the prophet binds up the testimony among his disciples to wait. |
| Wed Sep 9 | Isaiah 9·Isaiah alone The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light — and then four stanzas ending "for all this his anger has not turned away." Isaiah will not let the promise cancel the judgment; both stand. |
| Thu Sep 10 | Isaiah 10·Isaiah alone Assyria is the rod of God's anger and is judged for swinging it. This is one of the hardest ideas in the book, and it is the engine underneath everything Revelation says about empires. |
| Fri Sep 11 | Isaiah 11·Revelation 5 A shoot from the stump of Jesse, the root standing as a signal to the peoples. In Revelation the elder says weep no more, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered — and John turns and sees a Lamb standing as though slain. The title comes from this chapter; the appearance does not. |
| Sat Sep 12 | Isaiah 12·Isaiah alone Two short songs closing the first movement. Behold, God is my salvation. Worth reading aloud. |
Eleven chapters of judgment on named empires, one per day with Moab and the two short oracles doubled up. Revelation's seals and trumpets run underneath.
| Sun Sep 13 | Isaiah 13·Revelation 6 The oracle against Babylon: the day of the LORD, the stars withholding their light, sun darkened, moon turned to blood. Revelation's sixth seal is assembled almost entirely from this vocabulary. Note also Isaiah 2:19 — men hiding in the rocks from the terror of the LORD — which Revelation 6:15–16 quotes nearly word for word. |
| Mon Sep 14 | Isaiah 14·Isaiah alone How you are fallen from heaven, Day Star, son of Dawn. Whatever the taunt originally meant about a Babylonian king, Revelation hears it as the fall of something older and reads it into the dragon thrown down. |
| Tue Sep 15 | Isaiah 15–16·Isaiah alone Moab, in one oracle across two chapters. Note the tone — my heart cries out for Moab. Isaiah does not gloat over the nations he condemns, and neither does the Lamb. |
| Wed Sep 16 | Isaiah 17·Revelation 7 Damascus and Ephraim. Set against the sealed multitude no one could number — Isaiah is watching kingdoms shrink to gleanings while John counts a harvest out of every nation. The same arithmetic run in opposite directions. |
| Thu Sep 17 | Isaiah 18·Isaiah alone Cush, and gifts brought to Mount Zion from a people tall and smooth. The nations arriving with tribute is a thread you will pick up again in chapter 60. |
| Fri Sep 18 | Isaiah 19·Isaiah alone The oracle that ends with Egypt and Assyria worshipping alongside Israel — blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands. Isaiah's most startling reversal, and easy to miss. |
| Sat Sep 19 | Isaiah 20–21·Revelation 8 Isaiah walks naked and barefoot three years as a sign, then the watchman reports: fallen, fallen is Babylon. That line is quoted twice in Revelation, at 14:8 and 18:2 — you will meet it again in three weeks. |
| Sun Sep 20 | Isaiah 22·Isaiah alone The key of the house of David, laid on Eliakim's shoulder — he shall open and none shall shut, he shall shut and none shall open. Revelation 3:7 hands that key to Christ. You read the letter to Philadelphia on September 5; this is where its central image comes from. |
| Mon Sep 21 | Isaiah 23·Isaiah alone Tyre, the merchant city whose traders were princes. Hold the commercial detail — Revelation 18 mourns the fall of Babylon almost entirely through the grief of merchants who can no longer sell their cargo. |
Four chapters that stop addressing nations and start addressing the earth. The nearest thing to Revelation anywhere in the prophets.
| Tue Sep 22 | Isaiah 24·Revelation 9 The beginning of what gets called Isaiah's apocalypse. The earth is utterly broken because its inhabitants have transgressed the everlasting covenant — the whole earth, not one nation. Revelation's trumpets work at the same scale. |
| Wed Sep 23 | Isaiah 25·Isaiah alone He will swallow up death forever, and wipe away tears from all faces. Revelation 21:4 is this verse. The last vision of the Bible was written down first here, in the middle of a judgment oracle. |
| Thu Sep 24 | Isaiah 26·Revelation 10 Come, my people, enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you until the fury has passed. A note of shelter inside the storm, which is also what the little scroll and the sealed thunder are doing. |
| Fri Sep 25 | Isaiah 27·Isaiah alone Leviathan the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent, punished with a hard sword. Revelation 12:9 names the dragon that ancient serpent — the identification is already being made here. |
Six woes, then the vengeance chapter, then the desert blooming. Isaiah's characteristic sequence, at full length.
| Sat Sep 26 | Isaiah 28·Revelation 11 Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone. Also the drunkards of Ephraim and the covenant with death — the chapter moves fast and the tonal shifts are deliberate. |
| Sun Sep 27 | Isaiah 29·Isaiah alone This people draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me. Jesus quotes it at the Pharisees. It is the definitive Isaianic diagnosis of religion that still works. |
| Mon Sep 28 | Isaiah 30·Isaiah alone In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength — and you were unwilling. Then Topheth, prepared of old, its pyre made deep and wide. Isaiah's lake of fire. |
| Tue Sep 29 | Isaiah 31·Revelation 12 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and do not look to the Holy One of Israel. Set against the woman fleeing into the wilderness, where she is nourished — the contrast is between refuge sought and refuge given. |
| Wed Sep 30 | Isaiah 32·Isaiah alone A king will reign in righteousness, and each will be like a hiding place from the wind. Then the effect of righteousness: quietness and trust forever. |
| Thu Oct 1 | Isaiah 33·Isaiah alone Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar. The question of the chapter — who among us can dwell with the consuming fire — is answered, which is not what you expect. |
| Fri Oct 2 | Isaiah 34·Revelation 13 The skies rolled up like a scroll and all their host falling like leaves from the vine. Revelation 6:14 borrows the image directly. Read alongside the two beasts — Isaiah 34 is the day of vengeance the beasts are counting down to. |
| Sat Oct 3 | Isaiah 35·Isaiah alone The desert blossoms, the ransomed of the LORD return with singing, everlasting joy upon their heads. Deliberately placed after the vengeance chapter. Isaiah does this on purpose and it always lands. |
The only sustained narrative in the book, and the hinge the second half turns on. Four chapters across two days.
| Sun Oct 4 | Isaiah 36–37·Revelation 14 Sennacherib's field commander taunting the walls of Jerusalem in Hebrew so the people can hear, and Hezekiah spreading the letter before the LORD. Beside it, an angel announcing fallen, fallen is Babylon the great — the line the watchman first said in chapter 21. Empires talk exactly like this right up until they don't. |
| Mon Oct 5 | Isaiah 38–39·Isaiah alone Hezekiah's illness and recovery, and then the Babylonian envoys he could not resist showing the treasury. The hinge of the whole book: everything from chapter 40 on is addressed to the exile this chapter sets in motion. |
Comfort my people, the idol-maker satire, Cyrus by name — and the two Babylon chapters, which land on the two days Revelation is also in Babylon.
| Tue Oct 6 | Isaiah 40·Isaiah alone Comfort, comfort my people. The voice crying in the wilderness, the grass withering, the shepherd gathering lambs in his arms, and those who wait on the LORD renewing their strength. Read it slowly; it carries the next twenty-seven chapters. |
| Wed Oct 7 | Isaiah 41·Revelation 15 The court scene — the LORD summoning the nations to argue and the idols failing to say anything about the future. Set beside the song of Moses and of the Lamb, which is the answer to the question Isaiah keeps asking: who else has done this? |
| Thu Oct 8 | Isaiah 42·Isaiah alone Behold my servant, whom I uphold. A bruised reed he will not break, a faintly burning wick he will not quench. The first Servant Song, and the gentleness of it is the surprise. |
| Fri Oct 9 | Isaiah 43·Revelation 16 When you pass through the waters I will be with you. Also: I am the LORD, and besides me there is no saviour. Against the bowls poured out — the same God, and Isaiah insists you not split him into two. |
| Sat Oct 10 | Isaiah 44·Isaiah alone The idol-maker satire — he plants a tree, burns half for warmth, roasts meat over it, and worships the rest. Also I am the first and I am the last, which Revelation 1:17 and 22:13 put in Christ's mouth. |
| Sun Oct 11 | Isaiah 45·Isaiah alone Cyrus named as the LORD's anointed a century and a half early, and I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. The hardest sentence in the book. Do not soften it in the margin. |
| Mon Oct 12 | Isaiah 46·Isaiah alone Bel bows down, Nebo stoops — the idols have to be carried out on beasts, a burden to weary animals. Against which: I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save. The whole argument in one image. |
| Tue Oct 13 | Isaiah 47·Revelation 17 Babylon as a queen who says in her heart, I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children. Revelation 18:7 puts almost that exact sentence in Babylon's mouth again. This is the closest thing in Revelation to a direct citation of Isaiah, and today you read both. |
| Wed Oct 14 | Isaiah 48·Revelation 18 Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea — and in Revelation, come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins. The command is the same command. Isaiah means a city you can walk out of; John means a way of living you cannot. |
Seven days of Isaiah alone. Revelation is deliberately silent here so that chapter 53 arrives without company.
| Thu Oct 15 | Isaiah 49·Isaiah alone He made my mouth like a sharp sword — the image Revelation gives the risen Christ in chapter 1 and the rider in chapter 19. Also they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, which Revelation 7:16 quotes for the sealed multitude. |
| Fri Oct 16 | Isaiah 50·Isaiah alone I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. The third Servant Song, and the first place the suffering is described rather than implied. |
| Sat Oct 17 | Isaiah 51·Isaiah alone Look to the rock from which you were hewn. Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD — the prophet calling on God with the same word God uses to call his people. |
| Sun Oct 18 | Isaiah 52·Isaiah alone How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. Then depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing — the second of the two exodus commands Revelation 18:4 gathers up. |
| Mon Oct 19 | Isaiah 53·Isaiah alone No Revelation today, deliberately. Read it alone. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearers is silent — this is where the Lamb of Revelation 5 comes from, the one who was standing as though slain. You read that chapter on September 11; this is its source, and it is worth the six weeks it took to get here. |
| Tue Oct 20 | Isaiah 54·Isaiah alone Sing, O barren one — and the covenant of peace that shall not be removed, though the mountains depart. Also the foundations of the city laid in antimony, with pinnacles of agate and gates of carbuncles. The jewelled city is already being built. |
| Wed Oct 21 | Isaiah 55·Isaiah alone Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Revelation's last invitation — let the one who is thirsty come — closes the Bible with this sentence. |
Both books finish together on October 30, on the new heavens and the new earth.
| Thu Oct 22 | Isaiah 56–57·Isaiah alone Foreigners and eunuchs brought to the holy mountain, given a name better than sons and daughters. Then the long indictment of chapter 57, and the promise to the contrite and lowly. The turn from chapter 56's welcome to chapter 57's charge is abrupt on purpose. |
| Fri Oct 23 | Isaiah 58·Revelation 19 Is not this the fast that I choose — to loose the bonds of wickedness, to share your bread with the hungry. Set beside the marriage supper of the Lamb: both chapters are about who gets fed and by whom. |
| Sat Oct 24 | Isaiah 59·Isaiah alone He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing. Paul takes this armour and gives it to the church; Revelation keeps it on the rider. |
| Sun Oct 25 | Isaiah 60·Isaiah alone Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut. The sun shall be no more your light, for the LORD will be your everlasting light. Both sentences appear again in Revelation 21 — you will read them there in four days. |
| Mon Oct 26 | Isaiah 61·Revelation 20 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because he has anointed me — the passage Jesus read in Nazareth and stopped mid-sentence, before the day of vengeance. Beside the great white throne, you can see what he was declining to announce yet. |
| Tue Oct 27 | Isaiah 62·Isaiah alone You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Revelation 21:2 has the bride adorned for her husband; this is where she was promised. |
| Wed Oct 28 | Isaiah 63–64·Isaiah alone Who is this that comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments — I have trodden the winepress alone. Revelation 19:13 and 19:15 take the blood-stained robe and the winepress from these six verses. Then chapter 64: oh that you would rend the heavens and come down. |
| Thu Oct 29 | Isaiah 65·Revelation 21 Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered. And John: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also Isaiah 65:19 — no more weeping — which Revelation 21:4 completes with the tears wiped away that Isaiah 25:8 first promised. |
| Fri Oct 30 | Isaiah 66·Revelation 22 The new heavens and the new earth that remain, and all flesh coming to worship before me from new moon to new moon and Sabbath to Sabbath. Revelation closes with the tree of life bearing fruit every month and the leaves for the healing of the nations. Two books that started with an indictment of one city end with every nation walking into another one. Finished. |