The End of the World (2)
In the Old Testament there are many references to the ‘Day of the Lord’ or other synonymous phrases; we don’t have time to go into all of these thoroughly, but they all have broadly similar themes. In order to cover as much as possible I will look at the general themes over the next articles. These are:
The day of God’s wrath and vengeance;
The day of God’s glory and majesty;
The restoration of God’s people.
Wherever scripture is quoted I shall be using the NRSV, but I will provide references for general use.
Part 1: The day of God’s wrath and vengeance.
Jeremiah 46:10: “That day is the day of the Lord GOD of hosts, a day of retribution, to gain vindication from his foes.”
This sounds like a very frightening concept; and indeed it is. When the creator God who put the stars in their places and created life itself returns to his wayward creation, who could expect his wrath to be anything other than terrifying? Yet, as we shall see, there is hope for us to be found here in the midst of the anger and destruction.
The first question to answer is ‘why vengeance and wrath?’ What is the reason for God’s righteous anger? And an issue closely related to these, ‘at whom is this anger directed?’
Isaiah 14:3-8 is a clear example of answers to both of these questions; God is to punish the King of Babylon for his treatment and persecution of his chosen people. The passage which follows this (verses 19 to 21) is a well-rehearsed description of God’s treatment of Satan, the ‘morning star’, who tried to make himself equal to and even greater than God. Finally, we can answer this question with Amos 5:12; God sees the sins of mankind and will punish them at the place Joel 3:14 refers to as ‘the valley of decision (or judgment)’. God will punish his ‘foes’, i.e. everyone that does not call on the name of the Lord (Joel 2:32) is God’s enemy. So God will punish sinners and those that stand against him.
So what exactly is it that God wants from his ‘Day’? The first word that springs to mind is ‘purge’, he will restore the earth after his day (a concept we will return to), but first it must be purged of all that is not of God, i.e. sin; Malachi uses the analogy of a ‘refining fire’ in chapter 3:2. In Isaiah 2:18 we learn that idols and false Gods will be destroyed, just as we learn in verses 6 to 9 that the people of God who have participated in the worship of these idols will be punished; let us not forget that the practise of worshipping anything other than our God is symbolically referred to throughout the Old Testament as ‘prostitution’ of our souls. Amos 5:12 shows that nothing can be hidden from God; he knows the sins of the world better than we ourselves do, these are the subject of his anger. Later on in verse 18 we are even told that people who were looking for this day to come with eagerness will be hounded, for these were the people who had misunderstood the purpose of the ‘Day’, it is they, and their sin that will be punished.
From this starting point comes a light of hope for us, in that God does not say that this vengeance will fall on everyone; in fact he explicitly states in Joel 3:16 that he is his people’s ‘refuge’ and ‘stronghold’, he will not deal with them as he did those who were his enemies. The Day of the Lord is described both as ‘wonderful’ and ‘terrible’ throughout the many passages that refer to it. We should not expect it to be any other than it is, as we see in Isaiah 2:9 God cannot allow people who are in sin to be ‘raised up’, or in other words we should not expect God to ignore sin; if he did what would the value of our salvation be?
So having identified the purpose of God’s wrath, we can try to understand what will happen. To be clear about this, nothing we find out here should be a surprise to us. We talk on a daily basis about salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is important to understand exactly what he has saved us from. We know that we are spared judgement, which we also know to be a terrible thing, so we should read these passages with this in mind; God is not going to punish us in this way because of Jesus. But if we don’t understand that from which we have been saved, how can we understand the true value of that salvation?
A good starting point is Isaiah 2. A theme throughout this passage is the levelling of high places such as mountains and fortresses; this is summarised by the inclusion of human pride that God will also destroy, a concept linked back throughout history to the fall of man in Genesis 3, after which man has tried to become like God, it is one of our main sins. The description of what the ‘Day’ will be is presented differently at different stages in the Old Testament: Jeremiah refers, as we have seen, to vengeance, Ezekiel refers to judgment (Ezekiel 7 – against Israel, and 30 – against the nations). We ourselves feature within Isaiah’s description of the final days; in 2:3 he has people from all nations gathering to worship God, as we are already doing. Moving on through Isaiah, we find in chapter 24 the statement that God is going to completely destroy the earth. These passages that discuss total destruction have some interesting common features. Many times the concept of a ‘cup of wrath’ is mentioned; the idea of darkness covering the earth is also a common one, see for example Psalm 97. We find many times talk of people wailing and also plagues and swords.
We can also look further on to the descriptions of the end times given by Jesus himself in the gospels, and see that everything we find in them relating to the ‘Day’ is given by the prophets. His teachings will be looked at on their own later in this series. Usually the best summary of the Bible is found within the Bible itself so I recommend that for a summary of the Old Testament view of what will happen you read Jesus teachings ‘signs of the end of the age’ in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21. Once again, we must be very careful in reading these not to either underestimate the language used or indeed to overstate it. Much of the language is undoubtedly symbolic, but this should not dumb down our reading of it. The talk of destruction of earth and of peoples is a very literal concept; on the last day God will be able to say to mankind that he gave us the chance to repent; he gave us his Son. He will bring justice to the earth; which in its fullest sense means that those who he must justly punish will be punished.
So what will happen? Psalm 97 gives a good indication of how things will look on that day. From the point of view of those who will be the subjects of God’s wrath it will be very much more terrible; in Isaiah 24 we see the image of sinners and indeed the entire earth staggering like either a blind man or a drunk man under the fierce anger of God. Isaiah 13:6 has people screaming in terror at this. Finally we learn in Jeremiah 25:31 that the ‘wicked’ will be killed and left lying on the ground from one end of the earth to another. And in Ezekiel 7:15-16 we learn that plagues will devour cities, and that anyone who escapes either will be left moaning because of their sins in the mountains. In Zephaniah 3 we also learn that their “blood shall be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung.” Daniel talks in chapter 12 of Michael arising, and of a time of great distress, leading to judgement when those whose names are not written in the ‘book’ will be subject to eternal shame and contempt (both the concepts of Michael and a book are found in Revelation in more detail). This is probably a good summary of what judgement will involve for those who will not call on God as their Lord.
So at this stage we have conducted what is, admittedly, a surface scratching tour of what judgement means and what God’s anger will be like. I am guessing that many, if not all of you, are wondering if I am going out of my way to emphasise this aspect. The answer is not at all, and I don’t want anyone who reads this to get in any way perturbed or worried by this. On the other hand I don’t want us to forget this. For those who are feeling that this is terrible and horrific, I agree with you. While you are feeling that, to apply this in the here and now, turn to Jesus and imagine him there upon the cross (Numbers 21:4-9 in the light of John 3:14); now imagine him as he is (see Revelation 1) and realise exactly what both of these things mean personally for you and me; none of these things need apply to us if we call on the Lord. It is my hope that from this part of the series we have learnt the true meaning of our salvation, by learning from what we have been saved. In the next part we shall move on to images of God’s glory in the Old Testament.
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