The Apostle Paul spoke of the end times "Babylon" like this: "There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God---having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3:1-5a)
There have been people in every era of time who have had the attitudes listed above by the Apostle Paul, but these attitudes will abound more and more in the last days. We can already see this happening. I'm fifty-four years old and I have never before seen such a lack of regard for others as I'm seeing in today's world. This will only grow worse as time goes on. We need not be amazed or alarmed by it because the Lord has foretold it and, as children of God, a different fate is in store for us than that which is in store for the wicked.
Because wickedness will abound as never before, the Lord's wrath will be poured out in the last days. Isaiah foretells: "See, the day of the Lord is coming---a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger---to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it." (Isaiah 13:9) The "day of the Lord" is a day only the wicked ("sinners"---those who have rejected the Lord and His precepts) need to fear.
Next Isaiah predicts the dreadful signs and wonders that will appear in the heavens and on the earth in those days. "The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light." (Isaiah 13:10) I believe verse 10 is to be taken literally. I believe literal darkness will fall upon the earth because the people preferred darkness to light and the Lord is going to give them darkness. Just as the Lord caused a deep darkness to fall over Egypt in the days preceding the exodus, in the end times He's going to cause a deep darkness, only on a much larger scale.
In my opinion, He will bring this about by allowing a large asteroid to strike the earth which will, in turn, cause the skies to be darkened by debris for quite some time. The Apostle John describes a large object striking the earth in the book of Revelation and an enormous asteroid, such as may have occurred in the distant past that wiped out the dinosaurs, would cause huge dust clouds to be thrown up into the atmosphere. It would cause violent earthquakes and eruptions of volcanoes. In ancient history when large volcanoes have erupted there was so much ash in the atmosphere that the skies appeared darkened for quite some time afterward and at night the ash caused the moon to look as red as blood. I believe that's what's being described here in the book of Isaiah and in the book of Revelation and in other passages of Scripture.
We can count on the words of Isaiah's prophecy to come true. The Lord Jesus quoted from the book of Isaiah, saying, "Immediately after the distress of those days, 'The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'" (Matthew 24:29) The Apostle John was given a vision of the end times that included the very things the prophet Isaiah and the Lord Jesus Christ predicted: "I watched as He opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken in a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place." (Revelation 6:12-14)
There are very strong and compelling reasons for believing that those who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus will have been removed from the earth before these things take place, and we will discuss those reasons when we arrive at the book of Revelation, so we need to keep in mind that this is a prophecy of judgment against the wicked. Just as Isaiah's prophecy was about ancient Babylon in all of its wickedness, his prophecy and the words of other prophets and of the Lord Jesus are also about the wickedness of the "Babylon" of the end times. The Lord would not refer to His children as "Babylon" or pronounce judgment against them; therefore, we must conclude that these woes will fall only upon those who have rejected Him---and in rejecting Him, have rejected His mercy.
No comments:
Post a Comment