The Sun and Moon Prophecies and Chain of Events, Part 10 of 10

Part 9 lined up every chain in this series side by side, all sixteen passages and all 143 events. This last part fits them together into one story, told straight through. It tells the day of the Lord from the beginning of the chain to the end, in the order the passages themselves give. Where more than one prophet tells the same event, the story tells it once and lets their words add to each other. Nothing is added that the passages do not say. No teachers, no doctrines from outside. Just the Bible, and the historical record.

Before the Day Comes

The story opens before the day itself, in the last days, when God pours out His Spirit on all flesh. It falls on everyone. Sons and daughters prophesy, young men see visions, old men dream dreams, and even His male and female servants receive it and prophesy. Then the wonders start: signs in the heavens above and on the earth below, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The order of it is stated before it happens, and Peter states it in Joel's words: the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And the promise stands in the middle of it, for anyone who will take it: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Then the alarm sounds. The trumpet is blown in Zion, out over God's holy mountain, and the inhabitants of the land tremble, because the day of the Lord is coming. It is near, and destruction from the Almighty comes with it.

The Great Tribulation

Jesus names the stretch of time that comes first: the great tribulation. It runs until Jesus returns and his people are removed. Matthew and Mark both put the tribulation before the darkening.

Jeremiah saw the trouble rolling in from the north. The trumpet is blown through the land, and the cry goes out: assemble, and let us go into the fortified cities. A standard is raised toward Zion: flee for safety, do not stay, for disaster comes from the north, and great destruction. The lion has come up from his thicket, the destroyer of nations, and he has set out from his place to make the land waste and its cities ruins, with no one living in them. Jerusalem is told to put on sackcloth, lament and wail, for the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned back. Courage fails the king and the officials, the priests are appalled, and the prophets are astounded. The sword has reached their very life. A hot wind comes from the bare heights in the wilderness toward the daughter of God's people; it does not come to winnow or to cleanse, for it is a wind too strong for that, and now God Himself speaks in judgment on them. He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind, his horses swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are ruined. Jerusalem is told to wash her heart from evil, that she may be saved, and asked how long her wicked thoughts will lodge within her. A voice declares from Dan and proclaims trouble from Mount Ephraim. The nations are warned that he is coming, and besiegers from a distant land shout against the cities of Judah and stand around Jerusalem like keepers of a field, because she has rebelled against God. Her own ways and her own deeds have brought this on her; it is her doom, and it is bitter, and it has reached her very heart. Jeremiah cries out in anguish, his heart beating wildly, because he hears the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Crash follows hard on crash, and the whole land is laid waste. His tents are laid waste suddenly, and his curtains in a moment. How long must the standard be seen and the sound of the trumpet heard? The people are foolish and do not know God; they are children with no understanding, skilled in doing evil, and they do not know how to do good. At the noise of horseman and archer every city takes to flight; they enter thickets and climb among the rocks; all the cities are forsaken, and no man dwells in them. Jerusalem dresses herself up in vain. She dresses in scarlet and adorns herself with ornaments of gold and enlarges her eyes with paint, trying to win back the lovers who now despise her, and they seek her life instead. Her cry goes up like a woman in labor, like one giving birth to her first child, the daughter of Zion gasping for breath, hands stretched out: "Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers."

Joel saw the same days as an army that cannot be stopped, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Like blackness spread over the mountains comes a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, and never will be again. Fire devours before them, and a flame burns behind them. The land before them is like the garden of Eden, and behind them it is a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them. They come on like horses, like war horses at a run. They leap on the tops of the mountains with the rumbling of chariots, like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle. Peoples are in anguish before them, and every face grows pale. Like warriors they charge and scale the wall, each one marching straight on his own way; they do not swerve and they do not jostle, they burst through the weapons, and they are not halted. They leap upon the city and run along the walls; they climb into the houses and come through the windows like a thief. And the army is the Lord's. Joel ends it with God Himself: the Lord utters His voice before His army, for His camp is exceedingly great, and He who executes His word is powerful. For the day of the Lord is great and very awesome; who can endure it?

And the nations are gathering too, in these same days, for the judgment that stands ahead of them. When God restores the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, He gathers all the nations and brings them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and there He enters into judgment with them. The call goes out among the nations: consecrate for war, stir up the mighty men, and let all the men of war draw near and come up. Plowshares are beaten into swords and pruning hooks into spears, and the weak say, I am a warrior. The nations hurry and gather and come up to the valley where God sits to judge all the surrounding nations. Bring down your warriors, O Lord. Multitudes, multitudes are in the valley of decision, and the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The Sun Goes Down at Noon

Then come the signs in the heavens, the ones John saw when the sixth seal was opened. The blow falls in the heavens themselves. Isaiah 13 and Joel both say the heavens tremble, and Jesus says the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The sun and the moon are struck, and that is why their light goes out.

Isaiah 34 says the whole host of heaven rots away and falls, like leaves falling from the vine and from the fig tree. John says the stars of the sky fell to the earth, the way a fig tree drops its winter fruit when a gale shakes it. Isaiah 13 says the sun will be dark at its rising. Joel says the sun and the moon are darkened, and Isaiah 50 says God clothes the heavens with blackness and makes sackcloth their covering. John's word for it: the sun became black as sackcloth. Isaiah 24 says the sun is ashamed, and the moon is confounded. The moon sheds no light, and then it goes further. Joel and Peter both say the moon is turned to blood, and John saw the full moon become like blood. The stars go out with them. Isaiah 13 says the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light, and Joel says twice that the stars withdraw their shining. And the sky itself is taken away in the same blow. Two passages say it the same way, Isaiah 34 and Revelation 6: the skies roll up like a scroll, and the sky vanishes like a scroll being rolled up.

Under the same blow, the earth itself loses its footing. Isaiah 24 says the windows of heaven are opened and the foundations of the earth tremble. The earth is utterly broken. The earth is split apart. The earth is violently shaken. John saw the same shaking from inside the sixth seal. When the seal was opened, there was a great earthquake, and Isaiah 13 says the earth is shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of His fierce anger. Jeremiah saw mountains quaking and all the hills moving to and fro, and Joel says the earth quakes before them. Revelation says every mountain and every island was removed from its place. It staggers like a drunken man and sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it, and it falls, and it will not rise again. The earth wobbles like a drunkard, and the sun goes down at noon.

And the hiding starts early. Even before the earth itself takes the full blow, people are already running for the caves and the rocks, anywhere they think the falling sky cannot reach them.

And John saw where the great ones run. The kings of the earth, the great ones and the generals, the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hide in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They call to the mountains and the rocks: "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

Luke adds what it looks like on the ground. There are signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and on the earth the nations are in distress and perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People faint with fear, dreading what is coming on the world. Isaiah 13 saw the same terror: every hand feeble, every heart melting. Pangs and agony seize them; they are in anguish like a woman in labor; they look aghast at one another, and their faces are aflame. Isaiah 24 calls it terror and the pit and the snare, set on everyone who lives on the earth. Whoever flees at the sound of the terror falls into the pit, and whoever climbs out of the pit is caught in the snare. Jeremiah saw what the land looks like under it. He looked, and the earth was without form and void, and the heavens had no light. There was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled. The fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities lay in ruins. The whole land is a desolation, yet not a full end. The earth mourns, and the heavens above are black. God has spoken and has purposed it; He has not relented, and He will not turn back.

Amos's word lands in the middle of it. God makes the sun go down at noon and darkens the earth in broad daylight. Feasts turn into mourning and every song turns into lamentation. Sackcloth is on every waist and baldness on every head. It is like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it is like a bitter day.

Amos closes his part of the chain with a hunger of a different kind. God sends a famine on the land, not of bread and not a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. They wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, and they do not find it.

The Son of Man Comes

Jesus states the manner of it himself: as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. The Matthew passage this series read was verses 29 to 31, and this line stands just before them, at verse 27, where Jesus states the manner of his coming.

Then heaven shows a sign. Matthew says the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. Then they see him. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell it the same way: the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, in a cloud, with power and great glory. For his own people, Luke says this: When these things begin to happen, they are to straighten up and raise their heads, because their redemption is drawing near.

The Gathering

The coming is followed by the gathering. He sends out his angels with a loud trumpet call. The angels gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Mark says it from the earth first: from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. Joel's promise lands in the same place. In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors will be those whom the Lord calls.

After this, John looks, and there is a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They are clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and they cry out with a loud voice: salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.

All the angels are standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fall on their faces before the throne and worship God, saying: Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

One of the elders speaks to John and asks him: Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come? John answers him: Sir, you know. And the elder tells him plainly. These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Therefore they are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They will hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat. The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and this stands right after the great tribulation, before the wrath of the trumpets in Revelation 8, which has not fallen yet.

The Trumpets Sound

At the third trumpet, a great star falls from heaven, blazing like a torch. It falls on a third of the rivers and on a third of the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters become wormwood, and many people die from the water, because it had been made bitter. This one was not stated in the earlier parts of this series. The Revelation 8 passage this series read was verses 12 and 13, and Wormwood stands just before them, at the third trumpet.

At the fourth trumpet, a third of the sun is struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars. A third of their light is darkened, and a third of the day is kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. An eagle flies directly overhead, crying with a loud voice: woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the trumpet blasts still to come from the three angels about to blow.

The Judgment of the Nations

The gathering of his own is not the only gathering in these passages. Isaiah 34 opens with every nation called in to hear: draw near, all you nations, and let all the peoples listen. The Lord is enraged against all the nations and furious against all their host; He has devoted them to destruction and given them over for slaughter. Their slain are cast out, and the stench of their corpses rises, and the mountains flow with their blood. Isaiah 13 says the same wrath in one line: the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and destroy its sinners from it. The world is punished for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and the pomp of the arrogant is put to an end, and the pompous pride of the ruthless is laid low. People are made more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir.

Joel 3 tells where the nations end up. The charge is what they did to His people and His heritage Israel. They scattered them among the nations and divided up His land, cast lots for His people, traded a boy for a prostitute, and sold a girl for wine and drunk it. Tyre and Sidon and all the regions of Philistia are named out loud. God asks them what they are to Him: are they paying Him back for something? If they are, He will return their payment on their own head swiftly and speedily. They took God's silver and gold, and carried His rich treasures into their temples, and sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, far from their own border. He stirs up the sold people from the place they were sold to, and the sellers' own sons and daughters are sold into the hand of the people of Judah, who sell them on to the Sabeans, a nation far away. The judgment is pictured as a harvest. The sickle goes in because the harvest is ripe, and the winepress is trodden, for it is full and the vats overflow, because their evil is great.

The Lord roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake, while He stands as a refuge and a stronghold for His people. Isaiah 24 carries the judgment up into heaven itself. The Lord punishes the host of heaven in heaven, and the kings of the earth are gathered together as prisoners in a pit and shut up in a prison, and after many days they are punished. Edom gets a named judgment of its own. God's sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; it is sated with blood and gorged with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats and the fat of the kidneys of rams. Then it comes down for judgment on Edom, on the sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Wild oxen and young steers fall with the mighty bulls, and the land drinks its fill of blood, and its soil is gorged with fat. It is the Lord's day of vengeance, a year of payback for the cause of Zion.

How the Story Ends

These passages do not end with the woe. It is what stands settled when the shaking stops. Edom's land burns and does not stop. Its streams are turned into pitch and its soil into sulfur, burning night and day, its smoke going up forever. From generation to generation it lies waste, and no one passes through it, ever. The hawk and the porcupine possess it, and the owl and the raven dwell in it. He stretches the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. Its nobles are gone; there is no one there to call it a kingdom, and all its princes are nothing. Thorns grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses, and it becomes a haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. Wild animals meet with hyenas there, and the wild goat cries to his fellow, and the night bird settles and finds a resting place. The owl nests there and lays and hatches and gathers her young in her shadow, and the hawks are gathered there, each one with her mate. Isaiah says to check it in the book of the Lord: not one of these is missing, and none is without her mate, for the mouth of the Lord has commanded it, and His Spirit has gathered them. He has cast the lot for them, and His hand has portioned it out to them with the line. It is theirs forever, from generation to generation.

Egypt becomes a desolation, and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the people of Judah, because they shed innocent blood in their land. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations, and God will avenge their blood. They will know that the Lord their God dwells in Zion, His holy mountain. Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers will never pass through it again. Judah's mountains will drip sweet wine and its hills flow with milk, and every streambed will run with water, and a fountain will come out of the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Shittim. Isaiah 24 ends with the city: the Lord reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and His glory stands before His elders.

That is the whole story as these sixteen passages tell it. The Spirit poured out and the signs shown, the tribulation and the armies, the sun down at noon and the sky rolled up, the Son of Man coming, the elect gathered and the multitude standing before the throne out of it, the star Wormwood fallen and the trumpets' woe, the nations judged, and Zion at rest at the end.

Every part of this series checked its chain against the historical record. Not one of these chains is in the record, and no year of history holds any of them. These events have not happened yet. They are still ahead.

And one plain fact stands under the whole story. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome in AD 70, and no temple has stood in the city since that day, and the temple of the last days has not been built yet.

Part 10 continued tells the same story once more, played out in order.