It is first of all necessary to learn what the Bible has to say about that brief period of time known in Scripture as "the day of the Lord"; then, to be able to discern when it is (relative to other epochs described in the Bible,) that the day of the Lord shall appear: in order, finally, to be able to rightly understand the eternal consequences to this present generation, concerning our response to our present opportunity of receiving God's Salvation. Or in other words, we must rightly understand the real nature of what the Bible calls, the day of the Lord, in order to correctly answer the all-important question, namely: Is there coming a great soul-saving Revival during the Tribulation -- as so many so-called teachers of Bible prophecy are saying that shall be the case?
I will tell you in one emphatic word the answer to that question is, NO!
But don't just take my word for it. Let's see what the Bible itself has to say about the day of the Lord:
"Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.... For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty.... And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." (Isaiah 2:10-19)
"Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: and they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity...." (Isaiah 13:6-11)
"Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.... [L]et all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is night at hand; a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness...." (Joel 1:15; 2:1-2)
"Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.... Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:18-20)
"The great day of the LORD is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm.... And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung." (Zephaniah 1:14-17)
"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10)
How dare they -- so many so-called Bible prophecy teachers! -- say, that there is coming a great Revival during the day of the LORD?! How dare they manipulate and deceive the people, by so great and damnable a lie as that?! Not only how little do they understand the plain meaning of Scripture; but how more wrongly, how more grotesquely, could they possibly distort its message? as to claim -- as the late Jack van Impe, for but one example among many which can be given, did, when he said, and I quote: "The greatest Revival in the history of time is going to occur during the Tribulation!"
Today, that idea burns like wild fire, at least amongst the majority of churches that still believe in a pre-Tribulation Rapture. Which must consist of no small number of churches and their congregations -- as evidenced by the phenomenal success of that long-running series of books and major motion pictures titled, "Left Behind". Which focused and thus capitalized upon the idea, that those who will not be received by Christ at the Rapture of the Church, shall nevertheless be given a second chance to be saved during the Tribulation!
But it should be abundantly clear -- to anyone with half a mind to think, that the Bible's description of the day of the LORD does not in any conceivable way agree with the suggestion that the day of the LORD shall be a time of God's mercy and love poured out in some great Revival. Unless....
Unless, it may be supposed that the day of the LORD is something different from the Tribulation. But is it different? Or is what the Bible calls the day of the Lord actually the same time period, and the same thing, as what is most often in popular culture referred to as the Tribulation? The answer is not hard to find.
Most everyone having any knowledge of the Bible recognizes the phrase, The Tribulation, or The Great Tribulation, stands for a very troublesome albeit brief period of time, marking the transition between the end of this present Age and the beginning of a new one known as the Millennial Kingdom Age. Fantastic and scary images associated with "The Tribulation" have even become popularized in secular culture, by means of many books, movies, videos, etc.. Whereas, "the day of the Lord" is not nearly so well known, and is even less well understood.
In fact, "the day of the Lord" is one and the same as what is most often called, The Tribulation. A number of proofs of which follow.
We are now, and for that past two-thousand years have been, living in what has alternatively been called, the Church Age, or the Age of Grace, or the Gospel Dispensation. This present Age may briefly be characterized by the following passage of Scripture, which declares that: "[God] is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).
How very different is that gracious attitude of God towards mankind, however, from what is written in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, which states that: "[T]hey received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (vv 10-12).
Note, it does not say they never heard the truth. In fact, they must have heard it: for, God's complaint, in that passage of Scripture, is, that they did not "receive the love of" the truth. Though they heard the truth, yet they did not receive the love of the truth they heard. It is for that reason, God said, that He Himself would then "send them strong delusion" -- not so they might be saved, no! -- but, rather, in order that those who rejected the truth of Christ would then believe a lie and so they A-L-L "might be damned".
Importantly, the context in which that warning is found in 2 Thessalonians, coincides with the same time that Antichrist will be revealed. As most everyone knows, the appearing of the Antichrist is, for all practical purposes, synonymous with the time of The Tribulation.
What a stark contrast there is shown in Scripture, with respect to God's merciful dealings with unbelievers during this present Age of Grace, and God's vengeful dealings with those same unbelievers during The Tribulation! At what other time in the history of the world -- reaching from Christ's first Coming all the way thru unto the end of the Millennial Kingdom Age, can we find that God will thus deal with unbelievers? The Tribulation period shall not be a time of God's mercy extended to them but, rather, a time of God's wrath and fury poured out upon them! Note, too, the nature of that judgment is to deceive those who have rejected the offer of Christ, in order to their ultimate damnation. Though it is not the Final Judgment whereat those same souls shall appear before God, and then be cast into the Lake of Fire.
Likewise, the day of the Lord is not a picture of God dealing mercifully with unbelievers. Both what the Bible calls "the day of the Lord", as well as what men have called "The Tribulation", are one and the same time period, as they are the very same thing in fact.
Still there is more proof that they are the same thing. Two prophets in the Bible, namely, Isaiah and Joel, both revealed in their respective writings, that the beginning of the "day of the Lord" shall be marked by a specific set of cosmic disruptions profoundly affecting the sun, moon, and stars. Here are the relevant texts:
"Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity...." (Isaiah 13:9-11)
"The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, BEFORE the great and the terrible day of the LORD come." (Joel 2:31)
We find those same cosmic disruptions are identified, in the book of The Revelation, as occurring just prior to the start of The Tribulation:
"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth.... 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 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 [Christ]: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" (Revelation 6:12-17)
There is not going to be any Revival during the day of the Lord, the Tribulation. Those who are teaching otherwise -- and doing so in the Name of the Lord, are teaching a damnable lie. TODAY is the day of salvation, the Bible says. Those who do not take God seriously during this present Age of Grace, if they even live to see the Tribulation, they are in grave danger of finding themselves on the receiving end not of God's grace but of powerful deception that God Himself will send to damn their soul.
The Tribulation is a time of God's judgment, whereat God has purposed at that time to rid the earth of rebels, in preparation to the commencement of that grand epoch of Christ's thousand-year reign upon the earth.
Before leaving off this important study, I want to point out still another great and important truth that has been revealed in the course of this discussion. Which is, that evidence has been provided in the context of the foregoing Scriptures to prove that the opening of the "seals", in the book of The Revelation, does not occur during the Tribulation -- as that has almost universally albeit wrongly been taught; but, rather, the opening of the seven seals occurs before the onset of the Tribulation. Suffer me to remind you that Isaiah and Joel both wrote that the cosmic signs they described -- and which same cosmic signs are clearly connected with the opening of the sixth seal in the Revelation, Isaiah and Joel both wrote, I say, that those cosmic signs shall occur "BEFORE the great and terrible day of the Lord come". In other words, even the opening of the sixth seal must occur "BEFORE the...day of the Lord come". The prophesied events associated with the seven seals in the book of the Revelation, are ALL pre-Tribulational.
Which, that important truth, shall be the next subject I intend to address.....
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