SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/5/2016 12:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Coming Day of the Lord”
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 14:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Behold, a day is coming for the LORD when
the spoil taken from you will be divided among you. 2 For I will gather all the nations against
Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the
women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not
be cut off from the city.”
We ended
our last SD on this section of verses by talking about the first reason that
God has gathered the nations to this place, stating God is going to use them as
an agency to purge out the rebels among His people.
The second
reason why He gathers the nations there is in order to ultimately punish them,
that is the nations because of what they are doing to Israel. Verse two speaks of this. Now as we look at the situation that is in
the world today this does not seem as farfetched as it did say 50 years
ago.
Let us look
at Revelation 16:13-14 “13 And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and
out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three
unclean spirits like frogs; 14 for they are spirits of demons, performing
signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together for the war of the great
day of God, the Almighty.”
MacArthur
adds some more information from the end of Zechariah 14:2 “Now let's go on in
verse 2, "And the city shall be taken and the houses rifled and the women
raped and half the city shall go forth into captivity." Now do you
remember ever reading Jeremiah chapter 30? If you did, you read about a period
of time called "the time of Jacob's...what?...trouble." Jeremiah 30
verses 5 to 7 talks about the time of Jacob's trouble. Now this is the apex of
the time of Jacob's trouble. Jacob is in more trouble now than Jacob has ever
been. This is it.
“And four
things occur. Number one, the city is taken. Number two, the houses are
plundered. Number three, the women are raped. Number four, half the city is
taken POW...prisoners of war. It looks very bad. They're so smug, they're there
dividing their spoil. Then we come to the next part of the verse, "And the
residue, or the remnant, or the remainder, or the rest...either one in the
Hebrew...of the people shall not be cut off from the city." Half are going
to be spared. Now I tend
to feel and I'm not dogmatic about this, but I tend to feel that the
judgment part of it is going to be against the half or that's not...you don't
have to mean exactly half, but approximately a half of the Jewish people
apparently at that time are going to fall under the judgment of God whereas the
other half are going to be spared because most likely they are the believing
remnant. They are the believing remnant. Earlier Zechariah had told us in
chapter 12 that two out of three would die of the whole nation. Two out of
every three throughout the whole nation would perish. Here, half out of the
city of Jerusalem. And I believe that for the most part, although we wouldn't
be dogmatic and say that only the unregenerate would die and only the
regenerate would be spared at this point, I do feel that that's probably close
to what occurs...that in judgment, the ungodly perish and the remnant is spared
so that they can enter into God's Kingdom. And although I say I can't be
dogmatic about it, I really do feel the conviction in my heart that it is the
remnant that is spared so that God will populate His Kingdom with His believing
people.”
Now we are
not done with this section as in our next SD we will be looking at verse three
and make some comments on that verse.
11/5/2016 12:18 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment