SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/13/2024 7:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Scene in the Heavens”
My Worship Time Reference: Matthew 24:29b
Message of the verse: “THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS
LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will
be shaken,”
I promised to put another section from Isaiah as I
begin this SD, and it comes also from the thirteenth verse of Isaiah, but first
I will quote from John MacArthur’s commentary in order to lead into the
verses: “Isaiah continues to depict
events that could in no way describe the reality mild and confined judgment on
Babylon by the Medo-Persians (v. 17).”
13 Therefore I will make the
heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the
LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger. 14 And it will be that like a
hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each
turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land. 15 Anyone who is
found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the
sword. 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes;
Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
It
is important to understand that this series of catastrophes is clearly
worldwide, affecting all nations and all people.
Now
we want to move to Isaiah 34:1-5 as he later presents still further details of
ent-time destruction.
1 Draw near, O nations, to hear; and listen, O
peoples! Let the earth and all it contains hear, and the world and all that
springs from it. 2 For the LORD’S indignation is against all the nations, And His
wrath against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them
over to slaughter. 3 So their slain will be thrown out, And their corpses will
give off their stench, And the mountains will be drenched with their blood. 4 And
all the host of heaven will wear away, And the sky will be rolled up like a
scroll; All their hosts will also wither away As a leaf withers from the vine,
Or as one withers from the fig tree. 5 For My sword is satiated in heaven,
Behold it shall descend for judgment upon Edom And upon the people whom I have
devoted to destruction.
MacArthur writes “It is from those passages in Isaiah
that Jesus’ teaching and John’s vision were drawn. Edom is the southernmost region to which the
great battle of Armageddon will extend.
The total area involved will be two hundred miles long (Rev. 14:20) stretching
from Bozrah, the capital of Edom in the south (see Isa. 34:6) to the hills of
Lebanon, just north of the Valley of Armageddon.”
The
prophet Joel about one hundred years before Isaiah wrote about a vast,
incredibly devastating locust plague that would foreshadow the disasters of the
end time, the coming “day of the Lord” (Joel 2:1).
2 A day of
darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread
over the mountains, So there is a great and mighty people; There has
never been anything like it, Nor will there be again after it To the
years of many generations. 3 A fire consumes before them And behind them a
flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them But a desolate
wilderness behind them, And nothing at all escapes them. 4 Their appearance is
like the appearance of horses; And like war horses, so they run. 5 With a noise
as of chariots They leap on the tops of the mountains, Like the crackling of a
flame of fire consuming the stubble, Like a mighty people arranged for battle. 6
Before them the people are in anguish;
All faces turn pale. 7 They run like mighty men, They climb the wall like
soldiers; And they each march in line, Nor do they deviate from their paths. 8 They
do not crowd each other, They march everyone in his path; When they burst
through the defenses, They do not break ranks. 9 They rush on the city, They
run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter through the windows
like a thief. 10 Before
them the earth quakes, The heavens tremble, The sun and the moon grow dark And
the stars lose their brightness. 11 The LORD utters His voice before His army;
Surely His camp is very great, For strong is he who carries out His word. The
day of the LORD is indeed great and very awesome, And who can endure it?” (Joel 2:2-11)
MacArthur
writes “The blotting out of natural light by those billions of insects
illustrates the vastly greater darkening of the heavens by the direct
intervention of God in the end time. ‘And
I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth,’ the Lord continued to
declare through Joel; ‘and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome
day of the Lord comes (vv. 30-31; cf. Rev. 6:12-13).
There are a couple of more verses that I need to
post onto the SD, and the first one is from the prophet Haggai who wrote “For
thus says the Lord of hosts, Once more in a little while, I am going to shake
the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. And I will shake all the nations; and they
will come with the wealth of all nations; and I will fill this house with glory”
(Hag. 2:6-7). Now we move to the book of
Romans where Paul says, that the cursed universe is anxiously awaiting. “19 For the anxious longing of the creation
waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not
willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation
itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of
the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans
and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now (Rom. 8:19-22).
1/13/2024 8:05 AM
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