Let us turn to Joel 2. Joel comes after Hosea and is before Amos. I am going to read the first eleven verses. Joel 2:1-11 says:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of JEHOVAH cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run. Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks: Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: And JEHOVAH shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of JEHOVAH is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
I will stop reading there.
We see pretty quickly that this chapter reminds us of Revelation 9. This description of the army of the Lord has several connections with Revelation 9 and the locusts, that great multitude of locusts that is seen devouring and bringing about the five months of torment that we read about in Revelation 9. This is because this is really referring to the same thing. The locusts are pointing to God’s people, the elect, and so, too, here in the book of Joel.
Some of the language here is kind of hard to understand, as far as how it could be speaking about the believers. It kind of stopped me for awhile. For instance, in Joel 2:9, which is speaking of this army of God’s people, it says:
They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.
I was wondering how true believers could be “like a thief,” especially when we think about what Christ says in John 10:1-2. He is speaking of a thief here and He says:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
So He is saying that anyone who does not come in through the door to the sheepfold is like a thief and a robber who climbs up some other way.
This is what they did here in Joel 2:9:
They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.
John 10 is referring to Satan and false gospels where Christ says, “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way.”
So in thinking about these two verses, I was kind of stopped in seeing how a thief could represent the true believers; but it does. The reason for why this does represent the true believers is because Christ is coming “as a thief.” He is coming “as a thief in the night,” which just means that at His coming, the world will be caught off guard. It will be caught by surprise.
How is this possible when the whole world is going to hear this? The world is hearing this. For example, just think about all of the tracts that are going out in the Philadelphia area, as well as all of the signs that are being displayed. There are yard signs and bumper stickers, as well as other things. Family Radio is also broadcast from Camden to that whole area, not to mention the Internet. All of this is going on, so how could anyone seeing or hearing any of these things be surprised? Well, they will be. They will be as shocked as if they had never heard this.
The reason for this is because they do not believe it. This is what will happen to those who do not believe this; and many do not, even though some do. Those who believe this unto salvation are those whom God is saving. He is working in their hearts and He is giving them eyes and ears to see and to understand. They believe this, but these are God’s remnant. These are His elect people.
The rest of the people are hearing this, but they do not believe it. They are really being reproved, and they are being reproved repeatedly. Some of them are being reproved on a daily basis that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day, and yet they dismiss this. It is like Robert likes to say, “It goes in one ear and out the other.” They do not take warning and they do not listen.
In this sense, they will be caught by surprise, like it says in Proverbs 29:1:
He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck…
It is a sad thing when people harden their necks or harden their hearts, which is another way of putting this. It is a sad thing when people harden their minds against this. They are hearing this, but they do not want to hear this; and so they just outright rebel against it.
This goes on in many places, maybe even here at this fellowship. Even here, maybe there are people who believe that they have to be here. They are here for one reason or another, and yet they do not want to be here. This typically causes them to gather together with others of a like mind and scoffing begins. This scoffing and mocking could definitely be going on here or anywhere, even in our homes. It can be going on anywhere and this is a sad thing to see.
Well, God says here in Proverbs 29:1:
He, that being often reproved…
Remember that the Word of God says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for…reproof.” “Reproof” is one of the things that it is profitable for.
So for someone who is hearing the Bible and its warnings, the Bible says:
He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
There will be “sudden destruction” for these people, just like it says in 1 Thessalonians 5. When Christ comes as “a thief in the night,” they are caught off guard. It says that there will be “sudden destruction” and that “they shall not escape”; none shall escape.
This does not mean that they did not hear with their physical ears. It does not mean this at all. It means that they just did not listen. They did not hearken. They did not respond in any kind of a way.
It is tragic that this is the case with the natural mind of man. He is not going to hear in the sense that his ears are deaf. They are shut and he just cannot respond and he will not respond.
So here in Joel 2, since Christ comes “as a thief” and He brings all of the saints with Him, then the saints are also thieves. When Jesus comes on May 21 and He comes with all of His saints, as it says in Jude 1:14:
And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
Christ is coming with His elect who have been in Heaven, those who were previously saved in history. He is coming with them to gather His people who are on the earth; and He is coming “as a thief.”
If you are in companionship with a thief, what does this make you? It makes you a thief also. Of course, this is great company to keep when we are with Christ! We are only thieves in the sense that He is called a thief, and He is called a thief because He is coming unexpectedly. No way, of course, is God a thief in any other way except that Jesus is coming to steal the treasure of those left behind. He is coming to take the earthly treasure that they have stored up here, whether it was what they stored in a bank or whether their treasure was in their home or in their life, whatever their treasure was that was not in Heaven.
Heaven is the only place where thieves cannot break in and steal. If it is here in any way, you will lose it. Because of this, Christ is a thief and God’s people are thieves. This is the big way in which God will bring judgment. When the elect are raptured and resurrected and taken up out of the world, this is what the Bible is referring to as the locusts. These are the ones who are in view in Joel 2. They are leaving the world. This will bring the horrible things that we are reading about in Joel 2 upon all of the unsaved who remain.
Let us go back to Joel 2:1 and look at this:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble…
This would be a good reaction. This would also be the proper reaction if you hear the trumpet blast.
If you had been in a village in Israel a few thousand years ago and you heard the trumpet blast from the watchman who was keeping watch for an enemy army approaching, you would have feared. You would have trembled and you would have grabbed your family and whatever valuables you could and you would have run as quickly as possible for safety.
Man does well with physical problems when he sees physical trouble coming, like a hurricane warning or like the trumpet of war; but when it comes to spiritual things, he does not do as well because he cannot see spiritual things. He can hear with his physical ears the warning of May 21st being Judgment Day, but he does not really get this or see it.
Over the last few weeks, we have talked about the trumpet blowing. We read about this in Ezekiel 33. It says in Ezekiel 33:2-5:
Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.
There are a lot of things that God is telling us here. One is that when a man is set as a watchman, and all of God’s people are really in this role of being a watchman, and when the watchman sees the sword coming, he has the responsibility of blowing the trumpet and warning the people.
The problem is in the churches that they have a watch. Jesus said several times in the Gospels, “Watch therefore.” Keep watch. “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.”
Why would you need to watch if you had always known when Judgment Day would be? You would have just circled that time many centuries into the future. It would not even affect many generations of people, and there would really be no need to watch if you knew the time. Because we did not know the day and hour before this time and we would not have known until God had opened the Scriptures, we were to keep watch. We were to keep watch in the Bible because it is in the Bible where we would see the sword coming.
Does anyone see the Angel of the Lord in the sky brandishing a sword right now? No; we cannot see this with our eyes.
In many ways, the world is like Balaam. The Angel of the Lord was in his path and drew His sword and was about to slay him. Balaam did not see the Angel of the Lord at all, but God gave spiritual sight to the donkey. The donkey saw what was down the road and the donkey warned Balaam about the danger.
So, too, no one can see the Angel of the Lord with His drawn sword, which is the wrath of God, as God will destroy the unsaved of the world. We cannot see it now. There is no way, but God’s people see this through the eyes of faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Look at Noah in Hebrews 11:7:
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark…
So Noah did not see the flood. He did not see it for 120 years. The waters were not visible by the naked eye; it was only seen through faith; and we are in the same situation today. Noah knew the year of judgment, and then God told him specifically the very day of judgment when God said, “Yet seven days,” even though he never saw the water until the very day.
So then the water began to fall. I do not even know what metaphor I could use, because there was so much water. It began to fall, the deluge began, and the world was destroyed, the world that was warned. They were warned by God through Noah, and they wrote it off. They wrote it off because they could not see it beforehand with their physical eyes. They looked up, but they did not see any clouds in the sky that would bring this kind of rain, and so they did not believe the warning of God. They did not take warning.
God tells us here that when a watchman sees the sword, he is to blow the trumpet and warn the people; then all responsibility falls on the listener. The responsibility of the child of God is just to blow the trumpet. Following this, all responsibility is on the listener. Will they take warning or will they not take warning? This is not the believer’s responsibility. This is not our job, and we cannot do this anyway. We cannot make anyone hearken. We cannot make anyone even hear the sound of the trumpet. It is only God who can do this.
This is why the Apostle Paul, after saying that he had brought “all the counsel of God,” said, “I am pure from the blood of all men.” He said this in a right way, not like Pilate who had made a similar statement. Paul said this because he had done his duty. He had performed what God had him to do in warning the people, as he said in Acts 20, “By the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”
We have all been warned and warned and warned and warned. It is now a matter of taking warning or of not taking warning.
So I just want to quickly define the trumpet again according to the Bible. When the watchman sees the sword, he is to blow the trumpet. What does this mean?
We read in Revelation 1:10-11:
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last…
This is referring to Jesus. It is His voice. He is really the trumpet. The Word of God is the trumpet that God uses. When believers sound the alarm and when we are sharing the Bible’s information concerning the Day of Judgment, we are blowing the trumpet, which is that we are just sharing what the Bible says.
Let us go to Jeremiah 4. I just want to look at some more verses that deal with the trumpet and the sound of the trumpet. We read in Jeremiah 4:19-22:
My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
Jeremiah is saying that he has heard the sound of the trumpet in his soul; but as far as we read in this last verse in relation to God’s people, they are not responding. They have no understanding, as God says in Jeremiah 8:7:
…but my people know not the judgment of JEHOVAH.
Let us turn to Jeremiah 6, which starts out in Jeremiah 6:1:
O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa…
A little further on, we read in Jeremiah 6:17:
Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken.
They are hearing it with their physical ears, but they are not responding. Actually, they are getting to the point of hardening their hearts. Their necks are being hardened. They are coming now with outright open rebellion. They are hearing this and they are saying that they are not going to do anything about it, “I will not hearken!”
Then we read in Jeremiah 6:18-19:
Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.
So God is saying that they are not hearkening to “the sound of the trumpet.” Then He is saying that they are not hearkening “unto my words,” because they are one and the same. They are synonyms.
We are hearing the sound of the trumpet. God has opened up the Scriptures because we are at the time of the end, and a big thing that He has revealed to His people, who in turn are carrying it as ambassadors or messengers out into all of the world, is that May 21st of 2011 is Judgment Day.
This is what God is saying, and this is blowing the trumpet very loudly. We are declaring what the Bible is teaching, and God says that He is revealing what is maybe going on in their hearts or maybe they are just outwardly saying, “I am not going to listen. I am not going to hearken!” God says this is because they are not hearkening to His Words, “You are not listening to My Words.”
There is a deeper problem than just not understanding or believing May 21st is Judgment Day, and this problem has been there all along. The deeper problem is actually an unsaved individual’s response to God Himself and His Word and the rebelliousness of their hearts. This is just something that God is using to bring this to the surface and to show people that they are not trusting God’s Word and that they are not believing God’s Word, the Bible.
Let us go back to Joel 2. We read in Joel 2:1-2:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of JEHOVAH cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
All of this is referring to May 21st.
Let us now go to Zephaniah 1. We find this language of “the day of Jehovah” in Zephaniah 1:7-8:
Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord JEHOVAH: for the day of JEHOVAH is at hand: for JEHOVAH hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the day of JEHOVAH’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.
Here God is indicating that He has given an invitation to come to His sacrifice.
This is very similar to a parable that we read in Matthew 22. I will start reading in verse 2. Matthew 22:2-14 says:
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.
We see many similarities here with what we are reading in Zephaniah, where we read that the Lord has a sacrifice. It says in Zephaniah 1:8:
And it shall come to pass in the day of JEHOVAH’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children…
This would be pointing to those who have an association with Christ. If you remember, He makes people “kings of the earth.” We are of royal blood. So those who profess to be Christian but who are left behind, this is the day in which God will punish them.
It continues:
…and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.
This is like the man who went to the wedding feast but who did not have on the proper attire. He did not have on the right garment.
Spiritually, what would this point to? Today, we would kind of think of it like the best man who is going to the wedding but he does not have on a tuxedo. But spiritually, what does this point to? This points to Christ’s covering, His righteousness.
God makes a point of stressing this in the Bible, even back in the very beginning in Genesis when Adam and Eve fell into sin. We read in Genesis 3:7:
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Practically the first thing that they did is they covered their nakedness. They covered their nakedness. They made the garment of fig leaves and covered themselves.
Of course, this was not even going to keep them warm; but God is not really trying to teach us anything practical. He is trying to teach us that sin is equated to nakedness, “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” God sees our hearts. He knows our sins. They are fully exposed. We cannot hide them from Him in any way. Because of this, there has to be a covering over sin. There must be.
Man, intuitively, has this understanding, and so people try to cover their sins by doing good works, by getting involved in other religions, or by developing a false gospel where they believe that they can just accept Christ and that this will take away and cover over their sins. This is what is all done on man’s part; this is his work.
Look at what happens a little later in Genesis 3. We read in Genesis 3:21:
Unto Adam also and to his wife did JEHOVAH God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
So God saw their aprons and they were not acceptable. They were not acceptable at all, and so He killed some animals, which was the only way that He would have gotten “coats of skins.” He shed blood and then He took those skins and He covered Adam and Eve, which pointed to God doing the work in salvation.
When it comes to our sin, we could never cover our own sins. It must be the work of Christ. Our faith does not save us. We are “justified by the faith of Christ.” This is the covering for sin, but the problem in the churches today is that they have devised their own gospels.
Turn to Isaiah 4. It says in Isaiah 4:1:
And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man…
These “seven women” are representative of the churches and the “one man” is Christ. It continues:
…saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
This is indicating that in the churches today, they want their own gospel. Christ is the “bread of life,” and yet they say, “We will eat our own bread. You do not have to tell me what the Bible says about election and predestination. You have your verses on election and I have my verses on freewill. We will never get anywhere, so we will just keep teaching what we are teaching.” A pastor actually said this to me.
So this is what is going on in the churches today. They have their own “bread,” their own gospel, their own ideas on salvation of how to get right with God, and they like this just fine; therefore, as a result, they have their own “apparel.” They have their own covering for sin, but it is not the covering that God lays out in His Word, the Bible. It is practically everything and anything else under the sun, but it is not His covering; and yet they continue to say:
…only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
They want to be referred to as a Christian organization. It makes you wonder what some of the churches out there believe. You wonder why they do not just call their organization Lutheranity or Baptistanity? Why do they call it Christianity?
It is not Christianity. It is not the doctrine of Christ that we see in the Bible. They have taken this and changed this into another Gospel, and yet they insist that they still want His name because they know that the Bible is the truth. I think that everybody in the world actually knows this. The Bible is what the world associates with God, and they are right in doing this.
So they do not want to completely go away to the point where they cannot be called a Christian, even though it would have been much preferable if they had. It would have been much preferable, since they are Christian in name only; and so here God speaks of those who want their “own apparel.”
Look at Revelation 19 where we also read about a marriage and a sacrifice, just like we see in Zephaniah 1 that speaks of the Lord’s sacrifice and then He speaks of a parable that clearly relates to Matthew 22 and the wedding feast. The only difference in Revelation 19 is that the believers are not pictured as guests or as those “bidden to the wedding.” In Revelation 19, the believers are the Bride. They are the ones whom God has saved. They have become the Bride of Christ, as we read in Revelation 19:7-8:
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted…
That is, it was given to her. It is a gift that we do not work for, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” It is given.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
This is referring to that pure, white, fine linen. This covering is spotless, which means that there is no sin at all. This is the righteousness of Christ, the robe of His righteousness, and He puts this on each and every one whom He saves. Because of this, God can then, at times, call an individual believer “righteous,” like He does Zacharias and Elisabeth. He says in Luke 1, “They were both righteous before God.”
Some people like this verse; for example, some of those in the Muslim religion. They like this verse because it seems to indicate that you can obtain your own righteousness, which is what it seems that God is saying about Zacharias and Elisabeth if you read what God says about them in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke.
So how can God call Zacharias and Elisabeth righteous? In what way can He do this? Well, Romans tells us, “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” It is Christ’s obedience. It is what He has done. He makes His people righteous. If God wants to, which also serves to be another snare for people who want to do something to get themselves saved, He can speak of one of His children and refer to them as “righteous.” They are because they have received the righteousness of Christ.
This is the interesting thing about the Bible and what God does. He does not give us all of the information in any one verse. This is what people do not realize. They read a verse and they think that it says a certain thing, but they are failing to check out whatever they think that it is saying everywhere else in the Bible to gather the necessary information.
This is how someone can come up with a wrong conclusion; for example, the conclusion that no man can know when Judgment Day will be. They just superficially skim the surface of the Bible. They find a verse that they think supports their conclusion, “Alright, do not tell me that Judgment Day is May 21, 2011. The Bible says that no man knows.”
Well, what about all of the other stuff that the Bible has to say concerning this? Have they checked this out? Have they gone into the Bible and examined it concerning how God has forewarned His people throughout all of Biblical history?
Is it true that no man can possibly know? This is what they are saying. It is true that no man knew in the past, and we would never know of ourselves. It is only when God opens our understanding and gives us this knowledge. Then we can know.
If it were true that we could never possibly know, then why has God given the historical example of the flood in relationship to the coming of Christ? Then when we check out this history, we find that God forewarned Noah.
If it were true that we could never possibly know, then why has God given the historical example of Sodom in relationship to the coming of Christ? These are the two main historical examples; and, once again, when we read the Bible, we find that God forewarned Lot and his family of the coming destruction.
Not only this, but why does God say, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets”? Why does He say that “a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment”? Why does He say in connection with the Word being sealed in Daniel 12, “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand”?
Again and again and again, all throughout the Bible, it is a Biblical pattern and it is a Biblical principle that God forewarns. Tell me some major event in the Bible when God did not forewarn?
How about the destruction of Jerusalem? Look at all of the warnings that they had through Jeremiah and some other prophets of God! God told them directly, “For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation.” He told them directly that He was going to raise up the Babylonians against them and that they would go into captivity. Yet they had prophets that said, “Not so! No way!” They mistreated Jeremiah for telling them the truth. He repeatedly warned them and told them that God had given them up and that they were going to go into captivity. Jeremiah was blowing the trumpet and they were not hearkening at all. This is exactly what we read in Jeremiah. Historically, they did not listen. They did not respond.
When we go through all of the Bible and we find all of these historical examples, and then someone comes along and cites Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only,” and then they say, “Alright; we can forget about this.” However, what about all of this other stuff?
Do they look at the very next verse in Matthew 24? Do they look at verse 37? After Jesus said, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man,” He mentions Noah. He says in Matthew 24:37-39:
But as the days of Noe [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not…
Why did they not know? They “knew not” because they did not listen. They heard, but they were not listening to what they heard. It continues:
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
The thing is that they have not checked this out. They have not checked this out if they are quickly and superficially standing on one verse that says that no man knows the day or hour. They have not checked out how God has worked in history. They also have failed to study Daniel where God said, “The words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” They have failed to look at passages, chapters, and whole books of the Bible that concern themselves with the topic of the end of the world. How then can they just dismiss this outright by quickly going to one verse?
By quickly going to one verse, we could prove that God wants all men to be saved. By quickly going to one verse, we could prove that God wants everyone to repent. But are these things true? No; they are not true. God does not want all men to be saved. If God wanted or willed all men to be saved, He would save all men; and so we know that we just cannot do this. We cannot do this. We will never actually come to truth if we just try to take the plain meaning of a single verse.
Let us go back to Joel 2:2 again:
A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness…
This is referring to May 21st and it does not sound good. It continues:
…as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
This is referring to the people of God whom God is going to use to bring about the torment for all of those left behind for the five-month period.
Let us go back to Zephaniah. It is Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, and then Zechariah. It is “H” and “Z” and “H” and “Z.” This is an easy way of remembering this. Zephaniah 1:14 says:
The great day of JEHOVAH is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly…
Wow! Is this not the truth? It is near!
Does anyone here not realize how near this is? How about the children? I know that when it was two or three years off, some children might not have been able to understand just how close this was; but now it is six months and a few days away. I think that we have 193 days today. We have 13 days away from 180 days, which would be an even six months.
Look at what is coming ahead. We are coming up to Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Then we will be into December, and people are so busy around Christmas. Then Christmas comes and the children will be off from school until after the new year. Before we know it, 2011 will be here. From this point, we will have January, February, which is not a leap year, then March, April and May, and not all of May, just 21 days in May.
Yes, there will be time after May 21, but May 21 is the end. We cannot be concerned with living out those five months, because those five months is all that you will have to look forward to. That will be all that you will have left to look forward to, a hope of possibly living out the last five months without dying from some type of repercussion from the great earthquake or from the plagues or from starvation. Plus, who knows what man will be doing to his fellowman. This will really not be anything to look forward to.
So May 21st is it. This is the Day of Judgment. I would not count on waiting to take God seriously. If you are thinking in your mind that you will wait until January 1st, “When we get to January 1st of the new year, then I am going to take this seriously,” well, you probably will not.
Maybe someone is even thinking that they want all of the fun that they can get and so they are thinking, “I will go to May 2011, and then I will take this seriously.” I am sure that many will do this. At that time, they will be running around, reading the Bible, praying, giving out all the tracts that they can, trying to fit what they should have been doing all along into a few short weeks.
But who knows? Maybe you will get a cold or the flu. You might be completely out of action for a week or ten days. You do not feel like reading the Bible when you have a stomach virus. When you are sick, you do not feel like doing anything. Actually, you are really being very presumptuous. You do not even know if you will be alive then. This is true, even though most of us will be, but today is the day of salvation. The Bible insists, “Now is the day of salvation.”
When Jesus would say, “Follow Me,” when He would tell people to take up their cross and to follow Him, they would give excuses. Someone said, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” Whatever it was, it was an excuse.
The problem is that man naturally does not want to do things God’s way; but today is the day, even if you do have this tendency, that you should be going to God and crying out to Him, “O Lord, give me a desire to go to You today and to read the Bible and to pray to You and to not put this off.”
So Zephaniah 1:14 continues:
…even the voice of the day of JEHOVAH: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.
Who is the “mighty man”? If we look at Revelation 6, it mentions “mighty men.” After the darkening of the sun and the moon becoming blood, it says in Revelation 6:14-17:
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
The sin problem that we have will be revealed on this day. This will be the day when God reveals the wheat and the tares. He will reveal who had the proper covering, because they are the ones who will be going up. He also will reveal who had their own apparel or those who just remained in outright nakedness. They are the ones who are left behind.
So there is a great cry because none will be able to stand the gaze of God upon their sins, and everyone will know that it is because of their sin that they are left behind, “God even forewarned me and told me in advance again and again and again, and I did not listen.” But now, they will be even crying to the rocks and mountains, “Cover me; cover me. I cannot stand this!” But there will be no place to hide. There will be no covering, and God lets us know this.
Let us also go to Genesis 27. Remember in Zephaniah in reference to the great day of the Lord’s wrath, he made reference to the “mighty man” crying bitterly; and we read in Genesis 27:34:
And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.
Esau cried “a great and exceeding bitter cry.” Why? Why was he crying? He was crying because he had just learned that he did not get the birthright. Esau just learned that he had not received the blessing. Actually, this is the point at which he learned that he was cursed. He had not cared about it before. If you remember, he sold his birthright for a bowl of pottage. He did not care about it. However, when the time came and it was revealed that his brother Jacob had supplanted him and received the birthright, it was then that he wanted it desperately and was crying.
We know that there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” They will be crying unto God because God will have made known who the Jacobs were and who the Esaus are, because they are left behind and all of the Jacobs went up.
This will be the day when God reveals to each human being what has really been in our hearts all along. We were either unsaved or we had received a new, resurrected soul, “a new heart and a new spirit.”
We will stop here.