58. What is The Day of the Lord?
There are literally hundreds of references to in the Old and New testament to ..."The Day of the Lord" ... That Day ..."The Day" ..."the Day of vengeance" and ... "The Time of Jacob's Trouble"....troublesome times which are all omminous warnings of a day of God's wrath or indignation and judgment or vengeance coming upon Israel at the end of the age...the age of the Law in which they lived at Jesus time. Please note that these scriptures in the main warn of judgment not on the UNSAVED Gentile nations...but on ISRAEL for rejecting her unique covenant with Yahweh.
Deut 28:45 "Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. 46 And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. NKJV
(There are scriptures which referred to 'the day of the Lord' being 'at hand' in relation to judgments which were to come upon heathen nations ... eg Babylon in Isaiah 13:6. This scripture was fulfilled within 15 years BY the Assyrians and shows us that the phrase 'at hand' cannot be taken to refer to events a thousand or more years ahead!
But the scripures which Jesus and the prophets and apostles focussed on concerning the 'last days' or 'end time' were ALL targetted against ISRAEL. They do not refer to a judgment comming on Rome or the papacy....or even America or other godless nations today... and certainly not on the church.
Peter confirms this emphatically in Acts 2:17 to 21 an Acts 3:18-24.)
Jesus refers to the abomination of desolation (Mat 24:15)... specifically referring readers to Daniel about this time
Dan 9:27
And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate,
Even until the consummation, which is determined,
Is poured out on the desolate." NKJV
BUT notice the context is set in vs 24
Dan 9:24 "Seventy weeks are determined
For your people and for your holy city... NKJV
(And some believers today want to think we as believers today are also Israelites and under the Law?...thanks but no thanks)
It is important to note that the first mention of a time or day of judgment comes AFTER the Law of Moses was given....the prophecy of judgment and destruction is awesome in its accuracy. Read Josephus and War of the Jews for some incredible insights.
Deut 28:47 "Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. 49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. 51 And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.
52 "They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. 53 You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you. NKJV
Most of the prophets in their time then also warned of this coming day ... a day of judgment of ISRAEL when God would come on clouds.
Here it becomes important to understand that Hebrews used prophetic imagery when it came to 'apocalyptic' events. Clouds brethren are symbolic of a judgment FROM HEAVEN. Look at Is 19vs 1 ...'Behold the Lord rides on a swift cloud' refering to the judgment of Egypt. BUT when we look at the event we see that God actually used the Assyrian army to do the destruction....the point being that GOD was behind the judgment and NOT that He was to be seen visibly surfing on the clouds. In the same way God used Cyrus as His servant to mete out judgment on the Babylonian empire (Isaiah 45:1)....and would use the Roman armies in AD70 to judge Israel.
Isa 2:12-19
12 For the day of the LORD of hosts
Shall come upon everything proud and lofty,
Upon everything lifted up —
And it shall be brought low —
13 Upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up,
And upon all the oaks of Bashan;
14 Upon all the high mountains,
And upon all the hills that are lifted up;
15 Upon every high tower,
And upon every fortified wall;
16 Upon all the ships of Tarshish,
And upon all the beautiful sloops.
17 The loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
The LORD alone will be exalted in that day,
18 But the idols He shall utterly abolish.
19 They shall go into the holes of the rocks,
And into the caves of the earth,
From the terror of the LORD
And the glory of His majesty,
When He arises to shake the earth mightily. NKJV
Ezek 30:2-3
"Wail, 'Woe to the day!'
3 For the day is near,
Even the day of the LORD is near;
It will be a day of clouds, the time of the Gentiles. NKJV
Joel 2:1-3
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
And sound an alarm in My holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
For the day of the LORD is coming,
For it is at hand:
2 A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
A people come, great and strong,
The like of whom has never been;
Nor will there ever be any such after them,
Even for many successive generations.
3 A fire devours before them,
And behind them a flame burns;
The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,
And behind them a desolate wilderness;
Surely nothing shall escape them. NKJV
Mal 4:1
"For behold, the day is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,"
Says the LORD of hosts,
"That will leave them neither root nor branch. NKJV
The Day of the Lord is also linked closely to the TRIBULATION
Dan 12:1
"At that time Michael shall stand up,
The great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people;
And there shall be a time of trouble,
Such as never was since there was a nation,
Even to that time. NKJV
These passages regarding the DAY OF THE LORD or time of tribulation are the same as those which Jesus quotes from and often links this event with the other associated events such as resurrection, judgment and tribulation ie by quoting the next couple of verses from Daniel 12:2-3
This is the same day that Jesus and the apostles spoke of as being IMMINENT..along with His second coming.
Matt 24:36-44 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. ...... 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. NKJV
Jesus again conclusively links THAT Day (of the Lord) to the Coming of the Son of Man also in vs 29-30 of this chapter saying this would happen immediately after it.
Matt 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. NKJV
So do the apostles ...Paul first
2 Thess 1: 9 These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, 10 when He comes, in that Day NKJV
... and then Peter in response to scoffers of approx AD65 who asked .. "Where is the promise of His coming?"
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. NKJV
Please note that Peter here has not come up with a 'new revelation' about what the day of the Lord was to be like....he was simply quoting from Isaiah 34:4 from the Old Testament!
And then as a FINAL warning to Jewish believers in the seven churches (specifically those who were 'falling away')... and to apostate Israel... we have the prophetic vision contained in the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Please note that there are approx 550 references to the OLD Testament (Law and prophets) in the book of Revelations. These references are all about the judgment that was to come on ISRAEL for disobedience and apostacy.
Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants — things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.
......
7 Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. 8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation NKJV
Brethren, please recognise that this IS apocalytic prophetic language.....ie clouds. So how on earth can we then believe that 'every eye will see Him' must suddenly be literal and physical? How can we possibly believe that Jews who pierced Jesus in AD 33 who are now dead are in future to see the same thing as other nations all over the christian world today are expecting to see? But when this event played out in AD70 the effect was certainly that the whole world of that day knew that Jesus was not just a man... and the Jewish world of that time knew without doubt that the wrath of God had visted their nation as promised. Please believe me that this is not speaking of a future world-wide televised event. ...because even today the whole world does not have televisions or I-phones to view any such event on.
Brethren the Book of Revelations was addressed to the 7 early churches...who were EXPERIENCING TRIBULATION ...and it was about the other things SHORTLY TO TAKE PLACE....THAT WERE NEAR...BECAUSE JESUS WAS COMING on clouds to pour out God's wrath on ISRAEL! He came first as a man ...and was rejected and killed. He was (then in AD67) about to return as GOD in judgment. This what the second coming of Dan 7:13-14 is about.
To read the book of Revelations as something that is still to occurr 2000 years later to people it is not adressed to is not far short of lunacy.
We as the church post AD70 are redeemed, blood washed as saved from the wrath of God by the sacrificial death of Christ (Rom 5:9)
God's wrath in AD70 was very specifically targetted on THOSE JEWS who rejected and killed Jesus...what purpose could there be to pour it out again after 2000 or so years on future peoples who had NOTHING to do with this crime against God?
Rev 6:15 And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, 16 and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" NKJV
Rev 14:8 And another angel followed, saying,"Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." NKJV
God told apostate Israel and Judah that they were like HARLOTS (Hos 4:12-15)
Rev 11:8 ...the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. NKJV
The wrath was to be centred on JERUSALEM...not Rome or literal Babylon ...or even Los Angeles
Rev 16:1 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth." NKJV
The word earth in Greek is the same word as is used for the (Promised) Land of Israel.
Brethren there is no 'Day of the Lord' prophecied about or taught in the scriptures for the Gentiles after Israel's judgment. God's wrath was directed at those who killed His Son..... today we live in the Age of Grace
Rev 15:2 Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels having the seven last plagues,
for in them the wrath of God is complete. NKJV
ALL these prophecies about WRATH refer SPECIFICALLY to apostate Israel and Judah under the Law and were fulfilled in AD70.
Acts 3:22 For Moses truly said to the fathers, 'The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you. 23 And it shall be that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.' 24 Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. NKJV
Please note that all those who believed in and followed Jesus, remembered his words about fleeing when they saw armies surrounding Jerusalem. Eusebius records that they had been given a prophetic warning by Jesus ....and fled the city of Jerusalem to Pella....and they were ALL saved. They however did not hang aroud to watch the events unfold. This is how the early church understood the so-called "rapture" which Jesus promised in Luke 21:21. There were no Jewish survivors other than those who were sold as slaves all around the world totally flooding the slave market throughout the Roman Empire at that time.
To all those who say that the books of Ezekiel and Zechariah and other prophets contain 'yet unfulfilled prophecies applicable to the future' please note that you are saying that Peter in Acts 3:24 is WRONG in his assertion that they were speaking of the period from AD33-AD70! ...and Jesus too in Luke 22:22 and Mat 24:34.
Luke 21:20 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies , then know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. 22 For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. NKJV
Jesus in Luke 14:18-21 in previously announcing the GOOD NEWS of the gospel stopped short in His quote of Isaiah 61:1-2. The Jews however knew from the context of this passage that those who rejected the gospel would then face "the day of vengeance of our God".
(All of the many references to 'the day of the Lord..or That Day .... made by the prophets of Old many which Jesus and the apostles quoted from and referred to...were fulfilled in AD70). Jesus himself confirms Peters assertion...'that ALL THINGS which are written' would be fulfilled!
The early church KNEW that the Day of The Lord had come in AD70...as did the Jews who had rejected Jesus as their Messiah!
(The Jews of that day certainly did not go around saying 'Jesus got the timing wrong'...and neither did the early church...nor did the rest of the civilised world. ALL knew that the wrath of God had been poured out on Jerusalem and Judah as promised in their scriptures)
There were no 'newspapers' in those days but word of mouth and letters would have been running hot. And historians certainly recorded these events for posterity.
The early church all knew what the book of Revelations was about....it was their NEWS. They saw and felt the impact and heard from eye witnesses. Jesus was revealed as Yahweh who had been rejected by Israel...and in return rejected them. Yahweh was NOW available to and reaching out to save those who would seek Him from the whole world.