SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/5/2016 11:34 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The Coming of the Day of the Lord”
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 14:3
Message of the verse: “3 Then the LORD will go forth and fight
against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle.”
Well we
left the nation of Israel in a pretty bad place as the nations of the world
have surrounded them in the city of Jerusalem and also the surroundings of
Jerusalem especially in the valley of Megiddo where this last battle will be
fought. During this battle the people of
the world were actually taking the spoils of war in the city of Jerusalem as
the looted the people and rapped the women, but now we come to verse three and
we see that the LORD is going to begin to fight for Israel against those
nations. Now at this point there are
only about half of the people of Israel left after this battle, and yet the
Lord will fight for them as stated in this verse. God will not allow the nations to destroy the
true remnant of Israel for there would be no Jews to enter into their promised
Kingdom if that happened. The Jews that
are left are kind of like the Jews who came out to see John the Baptist to get
ready for the coming Messiah and thus when Messiah comes they will be ready to
put their trust in Him for salvation and for protection against their enemies.
John
MacArthur summarizes these first three verses when he writes “So, what do we
have then in the first three verses? We
have the nations assembled to war against Palestine; the city has been taken
and plundered. The spoil is being
divided in the city. Half of the people
remain. And all of a sudden the Lord
arrives to fight. And let’s go to verse
four and see where He arrives.
“4 In that
day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem
on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to
west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the
north and the other half toward the south (Zech. 14:4).”
It has been
a very long time since I have gone over this verse as I remember in my early
Christian life, soon after I was saved that I had studied this verse and I will
try and remember some of the things that I learned. I do remember that Jesus left planet earth as
seen in the first chapter of Acts from this very Mount of Olives and so He will
return to this very spot, only when He returns there will be a war going on as
we have been talking about, and also when His foot touches down the mountain
will split and I remember that I learned from a long time ago that those
remaining remnant of Israel will go down into the valley He makes when He
touches down to be protected. I believe
it is in the 24th or 25th chapter of Matthew that Jesus
tells His disciples that if He did not return at the time He does there would
be no one living, but He goes on to say that because of the elect He will
return. I remember one more thing I
learned from that has to do with this verse and that is that when geologist
were looking for oil around this very section they discovered that there was a
large fault there which they said could cause an earthquake at any moment, only
it is waiting for the foot of our Lord to touch down as He returns from heaven.
Zechariah
is not the only book in the Bible that speaks of the return of Christ as I have
already mentioned Matthew and also the book of Revelation speaks of this in the
19th chapter too. There are
other books from the Bible that also speak of Jesus returning to planet earth
as they speak of Him setting up His kingdom.
MacArthur
adds “Now you’ve got a worldwide cataclysm generated by some kind of a
supernatural cosmic earthquake when the feet of Jesus Christ hit the Mount of
Olives. Not exactly like the baby born
in the manger the first time He came. He
comes in worldwide power and immediately the world is going to know He
arrived. In fact, many of them are going
to scream for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them to hide them from His
face because they know He comes in judgment.”
There is more to look at from this section and we will look
at it in our next SD.
11/6/2016 12:00 AM
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