Zephaniah Chapter One, The Day Of The Lord

Zephaniah 1:7 Be silent in the presence of the Lord God; for the day of the Lord is at hand, for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; He has invited His guests.

God’s condemnation of this insidious conduct and thinking reaches crescendo. There is an abundance of discordant noise in God’s presence, but none of it genuinely or spiritually pleasing or meaningful to Him. Religious overtures do not compensate for a lack of personal accountability grounded in a relationship with Yahweh.

He commands silence, and He explains why. The Day of the Lord has come. The prophet Joel describes it as, “destruction from the Almighty,” Joel 1:15. Later in his letter, the prophet continues his discourse, saying, “Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshapat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations…for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision,” Joel 3:12, 14. In Zephaniah we are told that the Lord invited His guests; in Joel we learn that His guests are the nations, and those nations–or rather the armies of said nations–will fill the Valley of Jehoshaphat. This valley may refer to the place where the coalition of Moab, Ammon and Edom meant to plunder Judah and Jerusalem, but slew one another when God intervened, 2 Chronicles 20:22-26. This valley may be geographically near Megiddo, where the final battle between the army of the Antichrist and our returned Lord will take place.

Zechariah says of God’s retributive wrath, “Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for He is aroused from His holy habitation!” Zechariah 2:13. Man is the creature and God the Creator; Zechariah reminds his readership that one must give unto God the reverence due His name. Worse, this silence seems to stem from the moment that God determines to act in finality. Those who look mockingly for the promise of His coming, thinking a silent sky means an absence of God mistakes mercy for impotence. There will be no mistaking when at last the Lord determines to act. “For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts,” Haggai 2:6, 7. Haggai descriptively truncates the seven year tribulation period. It is defined as a period of catastrophic shaking; all created things will be shaken, including the nations of men. After this violent shaking, which showcases the presence and indisputable power of God, the nations will elect to come to Israel and Jerusalem to see the Lord, Zechariah 8:22, 23.

The Day of the Lord will be deliverance and liberty for Israel, Malachi 4:2. But destruction of the ungodly nations that comprise Satan’s world system, Malachi 4:1. Israel will grieve when they understand at last that they crucified their Messiah, Zechariah 12:10, Daniel 9:26. But then Christ will reign from David’s throne for a thousand years while Israel is at peace and the world is restored to a pre-Flood era, Isaiah 11:1-16, 65:20-25, Zephaniah 3:9-13, Zechariah 14:3-21.

God commands silence in His presence. We mistake many words for effective worship. We create formulas and rituals when none is needed, wanted, or accepted. Religion sterilizes faith and neuters the individual’s personal accountability toward the Savior. Religion brought Israel into the thrall of Baal, Milcom, and the host of heaven. They celebrated the worship of demons, and in numerous instances sacrificed their own children to them. Israel mistook having the Law of God for having the God of the Law. The Torah was a mirror that revealed how mankind’s horizontal relationship with his fellow man was meant to look like. The Law never offered mankind a means to reach Heaven by one’s own merit. If one looked at the Law from that perspective, then it brought nothing but hopeless condemnation because all men are sinners, and have broken it too many times to recount. The final answer for unrepentant sin is the Day of the Lord.

My own understanding of eschatology is that the Day of the Lord will commence with the Rapture, or the removal of the church from the earth, and in that respect the indwelling Holy Spirit who is called the restrainer by the Apostle Paul, 2 Thessalonians 2:7. The Antichrist will arrive shortly thereafter, 2 Thessalonians 2:8, who will first come in peace and broker a treaty with Israel which will persevere for 3 and one half years. He will then sit in the newly built temple and declare himself God, 2 Thessalonians 2:4. This ancient New Age confession is the root of many religions already, teaching that man is divine and just needs to acknowledge his inner divinity; this is the lie Satan told Eve, and continues to sell to the world, 2 Thessalonians 2:11, Genesis 3:4, 5. He will brutally persecute believers and Jews until the return of Christ in glory at the Mount of Olives, resulting in the battle at Megiddo or the battle of Armageddon, Jeremiah 30:7, Zechariah 14:4, Acts 1:11. The millennial reign of Jesus Christ will then begin on earth (Psalm 110:1-7, Daniel 2:44, 45) culminating in the Great White Throne judgment, when the current heaven (physical heavens or space) and earth are destroyed and replaced by a new, sinless creation, Isaiah 65:17, Daniel 2:44, 45. Daniel’s prophecy sees both the thousand years and the eternal kingdom, hence the descriptor of a neverending kingdom; it begins in time on the renewed earth and endures forever on the remade earth.