The Sun and Moon Prophecies and Chain of Events, Part 10 continued
The movie version: the whole story played out in order, as if it is happening in real time.
Part 9 lined up every chain in this series side by side, all sixteen passages and all 143 events. Part 10 told the story straight through, from the beginning to the end. This post plays the same story out the way a movie plays, or the way a book sounds when it is read aloud and the listener is standing inside it while it happens. The latter days. Today's world. Each event in its place in the one chain, with who is in it, what happens, when it stands, where it happens, and why the passage itself gives. Where a passage gives no reason, the telling simply shows what happens and invents none.
Where more than one prophet tells the same event, it plays once, and 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
It begins before the day itself, in the last days, and it begins with people. All over the earth, in ordinary towns and cities, God pours out His Spirit on all flesh. Sons and daughters begin to prophesy. Young men see visions, and old men dream dreams. It does not stop with the respected or the well placed. Even on His male servants and female servants God pours out His Spirit in those days, and they prophesy too.
Then the wonders start, in the heavens above and on the earth below. Joel names them plain: blood and fire and columns of smoke. Peter, quoting him, calls them wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. And Peter puts the whole order of this story into one spoken line: "the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day." Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Before the day lands, the alarm sounds. In Zion, on God's holy mountain above Jerusalem, the trumpet is blown and the alarm goes out, and all the inhabitants of the land tremble, because the day of the Lord is coming.
The day of the Lord 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. Matthew and Mark both put the tribulation before the darkening, and Revelation 7 will look back at it from the far side. The trouble comes rolling in from the north. Disaster is declared from the north, and the lion, the destroyer of nations, has set out from his place. His work is stated plainly, so there is no guessing about his purpose: to make the land waste and its cities ruins without inhabitant.
The people are told to put on sackcloth and lament, because the fierce anger of the Lord has not turned back from them. Courage fails the king and the officials. The priests stand appalled, and the prophets are astounded.
A hot wind comes off the bare heights in the wilderness, and it is not a farmer's wind, not sent to winnow or to cleanse. Judgment is pronounced on Jerusalem while it blows, on the city where wicked thoughts lodge within her. A voice declares from Dan in the far north and proclaims trouble from Mount Ephraim, and the reason is spoken out loud again: besiegers from a distant land are keeping watch against the cities of Judah because Jerusalem has rebelled against her God. Then the sounds arrive: anguish, and the alarm of war. Crash follows hard on crash, and the whole land is laid waste.
In the middle of the ruin, Jerusalem dresses herself up in vain, to win back the lovers who now despise her. They seek her life instead. Her cry goes up over the streets like a woman in her first labor, hands stretched out, and the words themselves are heard across the city: "Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers."
Joel saw the same days as an army that cannot be stopped. It starts as a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, and then, like blackness spread upon the mountains, they come: a great and powerful people whose like has never been before and never will be again. Fire devours before them, and a flame burns behind them. The land in front of them is like the garden of Eden; the land behind them is a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them. They come on like horses, like war horses at the run, and the mountaintops ring with the rumbling of chariots. 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, 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 up into the houses and come in 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. The day of the Lord is great and very awesome. Who can endure it?
Before the judgment sits, the nations arm. The call goes out among them: consecrate for war, stir up the mighty men, 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 the exact words the text gives them: "I am a warrior." All the surrounding nations hurry and gather, and stir themselves up, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where God sits to judge all the surrounding nations. Joel gives the timing himself: it is when God restores the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem that He gathers all the nations down into that valley and enters into judgment with them there.
And John shows the ones who come out of it standing before the throne. A great multitude stands there 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 stand around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and 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."
Then one of the elders names who this crowd is: "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." They are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne shelters them with his presence. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more. And the sun, the same sun that was struck black over the world at noon, 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. This stands right after the great tribulation, and the wrath of the trumpets in Revelation 8 has not fallen yet.
The Sun Goes Down at Noon
Jesus gives the order himself. Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the darkening. And after the darkening, the Son of Man. Then, at the end of the tribulation, the heavens are struck, all of it at once.
The passages show how the darkness happens: the lights are struck. The blow lands in the heavens first, and the darkness follows it. The heavens are shaken, and the shaking reaches the lights themselves. Impacts tear across the sky. The stars of the sky fall to the earth, John says, the way a fig tree drops its winter fruit when a strong wind shakes it. Isaiah 34 saw the same fall: the whole host of heaven rots away and falls, like leaves falling from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree. Joel says it twice over, in two different passages: the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. Isaiah 13 says the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light.
Then the sun takes the strike. Isaiah 13 saw it dark at its rising. Isaiah 50 says God clothes the heavens with blackness and makes sackcloth their covering. John's word for it: the sun becomes black as sackcloth. Isaiah 24 says the sun is ashamed. And the moon goes with it. Isaiah 13 says the moon will not shed its light, and Isaiah 24 says the moon will be confounded, and then the darkness on the moon turns to color: Joel and Peter say the moon is turned to blood, and John saw the full moon become like blood.
At the third trumpet, a great star falls from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it lands on a third of the rivers and on a third of the springs of water. The star's name is Wormwood. A third of the waters become wormwood, made bitter, and many people die from the water. 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.
Then the sky itself is taken away. Only two passages say it, and they say it the same way, more than a thousand years apart. Isaiah 34: the skies roll up like a scroll. Revelation 6: the sky vanishes like a scroll that is being rolled up. And through all of it the heavens tremble. Isaiah 13 and Joel both say it, and Jesus says it in one line: the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The heavens are shaken, the lights are struck, and the dark is the result. The sun and the moon do not fade. They are hit, and they go out.
And the hiding starts early. Even before the earth itself takes the full blow, people are already running for the caves and the rocks and any shelter with a roof of stone, anywhere they think the falling sky cannot reach them.
The earth loses its footing under the same blow. 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. It staggers like a drunken man and sways like a hut, and it falls, and it will not rise again. The earth wobbles like a drunkard, and the sun goes down at noon. John saw the same shaking from inside the sixth seal. The Lamb opens the seal, and there is a great earthquake. Isaiah 13 says the earth is shaken out of its place. Jeremiah saw the mountains quaking and all the hills moving to and fro, and Joel says the earth quakes before the army and the heavens tremble with it. John says it last: every mountain and every island is removed from its place.
And in the middle of the shaking, in broad daylight, Amos's word comes. God makes the sun go down at noon and darkens the earth in broad daylight. The songs cut off and turn into lamentation. Sackcloth is on every waist and baldness on every head, and it is like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it is like a bitter day.
Luke shows what it looks like from the street. There are signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and down 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, anguish like a woman in labor, and faces aflame. Isaiah 24 calls it terror and the pit and the snare, set on everyone who lives on the earth.
Jeremiah shows the land under the dark. He looks at the earth, and it is without form and void, and the heavens have no light. There is no man in sight, and all the birds of the air have fled. The fruitful land is a desert, and all its cities lie in ruins. The whole land is a desolation, and yet not a full end. The earth mourns, and the heavens above are black. And John shows where the great ones of the earth run when the sky goes out. The kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, run for the caves and the rocks of the mountains, and they cry out to the rocks themselves: "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?"
Amos closes this movement with a hunger of a different kind. God sends a famine on the land, not a famine 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, running 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.
After the darkening, heaven shows a sign. Matthew says the sign of the Son of Man appears in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth mourn at the sight of it. Then they see him. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the same moment the same way: the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, coming in a cloud, with power and great glory.
And Luke speaks to one group of people in the middle of the terror. When these things begin to happen, his people are to straighten up and raise their heads, because their redemption is drawing near. For the world it is terror. For his own, it is the signal to stand up straight.
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 the same gathering 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, and among the survivors will be those whom the Lord calls.
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. Let all the peoples listen. The Lord is enraged against all the nations, and He has devoted them to destruction and slaughter. Their slain are cast out, and the mountains flow with their blood. Isaiah 13 says the same wrath in one line: the day of the Lord comes 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. People are made more rare than fine gold.
Then the charge is read, as a list of deeds. It is for what they did to His people and His heritage Israel. They scattered them among the nations. They divided up His land. They cast lots for His people. They traded a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine. Tyre and Sidon and all the regions of Philistia took God's silver and gold and carried His rich treasures into their own temples, and they sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, to move them far from their own border. God answers: He will return their payment on their own head, swiftly and speedily.
God 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 sickle goes in because the harvest is ripe, and the winepress is trodden because it is full, full because their evil is great. Multitudes, multitudes are in the valley of decision, and the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. Then the Lord speaks from Zion. He roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake at the sound, while He stands as a refuge and a stronghold to His people.
Isaiah 24 carries the judgment up above the earth as well. The Lord punishes the host of heaven, in heaven. And the kings of the earth are gathered together as prisoners in a pit, shut up in a prison, and after many days they are punished. Then Edom gets a named judgment of its own, at its stronghold at Bozrah. God's sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, and now it descends for judgment on Edom. There is a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Wild oxen and young bulls fall with the mighty, and their land drinks its fill of blood. The passage names why: it is the Lord's day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
And John's telling does not stop at the throne scene or the valley. After the multitude, the trumpet judgments begin to sound, and the striking in the sky is not finished. At the fourth trumpet, a third of the sun is struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so a third of their light is darkened. A third of the day is kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then, before any more trumpets sound, an eagle flies directly overhead, down the middle of heaven, crying with a loud voice: "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!"
How the Story Ends
These passages do not end with the woe. They end with what stands settled when the shaking stops. Edom's land burns, and it does not stop burning. Its streams are turned into pitch and its soil into sulfur, a burning pitch land, night and day not quenched, its smoke going up forever. From generation to generation it lies waste, and no one passes through it, ever again. Thorns grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses, and it becomes the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. The hawk and the porcupine possess it, the owl and the raven, the desert creatures, each one with her mate. And Isaiah closes the place with an instruction: seek and read from the book of the Lord and check. Not one of these is missing, for the mouth of the Lord has commanded. They possess it forever, from generation to generation.
Egypt becomes a desolation, and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the people of Judah. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations, and God will avenge their blood. Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers will never again pass through it. Judah's mountains will drip sweet wine, and its hills will flow with milk, and all its streambeds will flow with water, and a fountain will come forth from the house of the Lord. Isaiah 24 ends with the city. The moon is confounded and the sun is ashamed, because 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, played out in order. The Spirit poured out and the signs shown. The alarm and the call, and God answering for Himself. The tribulation and the armies. The multitude before the throne. The earth broken and reeling, the lights struck in the sky, the sun down at noon and the sky rolled up. The Son of Man coming. The elect gathered. The nations judged and Edom burned. 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.
This is the last part of the series. All ten parts together are the whole study: the passages read in full, the chains listed in order, the story told straight through, and now the story played out, from the beginning to the end.
