The Day of the LORD refers to an event in which judgment and blessing are put into motion as one might understand the last scene in the last act of a play. The Day of the LORD is not a reference to a day as we understand a 24-hour period of time. I wonder if this same hope grounds modern believers, as we oftentimes face similar struggles in desolate places.
This hope kept and sustained Israel through slavery, mockery, defeat, and waywardness. Israel’s hope was infused with the promise that one day God would write the last chapter of this story with the climax ushering in, not the end of the story, but the true beginning. “The LORD, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him… And the LORD will be king over all the earth in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one” ( Zechariah 14:5,9). The prophets Joel, Amos, and Zechariah are just a few of the voices that proclaimed with great resolve the promise that God would one day act in the context of human history. The belief that our God will one day come is not some new contemporary teaching created by a hopeless people but rather an ancient one as old as the story of redemption itself. The way in which this future hope was spoken of is by the phrase, “The Day of LORD.” When Israel and Israel’s prophets used this phrase, they were invoking the hope that was first brought to life in the garden by a sovereign God.
Signs of the End Times and the Day of the Lord For the LORD of hosts has a day against all that are proud and lofty. And if that is not enough to indicate a radical future hope, Isaiah speaks with greater clarity in the following paragraph when he says, “The haughty looks of man shall be brought low and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day. The prophet Isaiah would proclaim, “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest mountain and shall be lifted up above the hills” ( Isaiah 2:2, ESV). Before the dust from man’s mutiny settles, the divine announcement reverberated through the celestial air assuring us that it won’t always be this way.įrom the earliest days of Israel’s history, the people of God clung to the hope that a day of reckoning would come, which would bring judgment and wrath for God’s enemies and blessings and renewal for God’s chosen. When we look to the Bible to inform us of our end times’ perspectives, what we discover is that from the very earliest of times, the Bible fuels our hope that a day will come when the Creator will culminate His own purpose to make right all that sin has broken and destroyed.Īnd there it is. Of course, no one would ever admit to such a perspective, but truthfully, many people think of the events of the last days in such terms. If you’re like me and you have any working knowledge of the Bible and the end times, it is possible that your mind is filled with images of death, destruction, and hopelessness that result when God and his archenemy, the devil, finally get together to duke it out in a “winner-takes-all” brawl. What images come to your mind when you think of the end times? Do you envision fire raining from the heavens, airplanes falling from the sky, chaos ruling in every corner, and life as we know it coming to an end?
If you are a follower of Christ, and you consider yourself to be an orthodox Christian who faithfully holds to the teaching of scriptures regarding all matters pertaining to life and death, then you are part of the untold number of Christians in every language and culture who believes that one day Jesus will come again to bring redemptive history and the world as we know it to one ultimate conclusion.ĭespite the belief that Christ will come, there are great differences regarding the nature of his return and what is often referred to as the end times.
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