Short answer:
The
Day of the LORD is the grand finale in humankind’s history. “At the end of the world,” as the armies
of the world powers and their allies advance to do battle in Israel, the “sun will become black as sackcloth of hair, the
moon will become as blood, the stars will fall from heaven.”
Christ
will appear in the sky on a white horse, followed by the “armies in heaven on white horses.” The angels “shall gather together his elect from the four
winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
The
“beast, and the kings of the earth, and
their armies” will be “gathered
together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.” Two
hundred million destroying angels will kill one-third of the people in the
world. The “beast” (end-time
empire) and the “false prophet” (counterfeit
religion) will be crushed, then thrown into the lake of fire. Satan and his
fallen angels will be chained and locked up in the bottomless pit for 1,000 years.
Huge meteors, some as big
as mountains, will crash on earth. The planet will
be shaken and derailed from its orbit. Earth will “turn upside down, and scatter the inhabitants thereof.”
Earth will catch fire,
becoming one giant fireball! The
“heavens shall pass away with a great
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth shall be burned
up.” “Therefore
the
inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.”
A
few faithful believers will be hidden and protected through Armageddon and the overturning
of the earth; and then taken up before the earth is engulfed in flames.
Thus will there be “a
new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth” will
have passed away.
Detailed explanation:
The
Day of the LORD: the grand finale in humankind’s history – will it be the so-called
“end of the world”? Will it be a usual 24-hour day, or is it a mere figure of
speech for an unspecified longer period? What things are in store for the world
on that “day”?
Armageddon shapes up.
“And
at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of
the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with
horsemen, and with many ships; and he
shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over” (Dan 11:40). Identified through
Bible studies: “king of the south”
(Iran); “him” (the “vile person” [Dan 11:21] / Assyrian [Isa
10:24; Mic 5:5] / Iraqi leader). “He
shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown…”
(Dan 11:41a); “glorious land” (Israel).
Gog to invade Israel.
Gog,
of the land of Magog (Russia)
will assemble a great invasion force with many of his long-time, as well as
former, allies (Ezek 38:1-6). “Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to
cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee” (Ezek
38:8-9). The objective: wrest control of Israel’s recently discovered abundant
natural resources (Ezek 38:10-12).
The West and friends
intervene. Gog
and his allies will be confronted by “Sheba,
and Dedan, (Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries)and the merchants of Tarshish (UK, EU), with all the young lions thereof” (US,
Canada, Australia, et al.), (Ezek
38:13).
Signs in heaven and earth. “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in
the moon, and in the stars… the powers of heaven shall be shaken” (Luke
21:25-26). Armageddon will coincide with mind-blowing phenomena at the
unfolding Day of the LORD: “…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… “ (Rev 6:12-13; Matt 24:29; Mark
13:24-24; Luke 21:25-26; Isa
13:9-10; Joel 2:31; Zeph 1:15).
One single probable cause.
“And when I shall put thee out, I will cover
the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud,
and the moon shall not give her light” (Ezek 32:7-8). Just one single cosmic phenomenon,
discussed recently in scientific circles, can account for all the
heart-stopping events that will transpire on the Day of the LORD.
Comets. Comets are like dirty snowballs,
made up of a mixture of gaseous ice and dust. When the ice thaws during a close
approach to the sun, large amounts of dust can be released to form a belt
girdling the solar system – and if the Earth passes through such a dust belt,
the dust acts as a sunshield.
Clouds of comet remnants. Way out in space, the frozen
comets have no tails, but as they approach the sun, the solar wind begins to
thaw and blow away their components, forming the comets’ “tails.” The tails are
usually well-formed by the time comets reach the vicinity of the orbit of Mars.
After perihelion (point of orbit nearest the sun), the tails begin to
disintegrate on the comets’ way out of the solar system, leaving behind trails
of dust, gases, and debris. Over billions of years that countless comets have
circled the sun, clouds of comet remnants – of varying densities – have formed in
various parts of the solar system.
Meteor showers. Whenever planet Earth passes by
the remains of comet tails, a meteor shower takes place.
Changes in Earth’s
orbit. Earth does
not always orbit the sun at the same plane and distance. The Earth’s orbit
gradually changes its shape from elliptical to circular and back, varying the
distance between the Earth and the Sun. Precession (caused by the wobble in the
Earth’s axis) alters the times of the year when the Earth is closest and
farthest from the sun.
Halley’s Comet. In 1881, it was discovered that the
tails comets leave behind contain a deadly gas called cyanogen. In 1910, the New York Times and other newspapers
reported that the Earth would pass through the debris left by Halley's Comet on
May 19 that year. Fearful people bought “comet pills” and bottled air for
survival. However, as scientists had said, the cyanogen gas was too dispersed to
cause any harm.
Comet Hale-Bopp. In mid-1995, a gigantic comet
was spotted in distant outer space. Comet Hale-Bopp had a vast cloud that
stretched around 2.5 million kilometers across. The shell of material it
carried into the inner solar system filled a volume of space bigger than the
sun!
6,000th
year from Adam.
Giant Comet Hale-Bopp became visible to the naked eye in March 1997. To Bible
prophecy watchers, the year 1997 was highly significant – it marked the 6,000th
year from the creation of Adam in 4004 B.C. They call the seventh thousand years from the creation of man the
“Great Sabbath,” based on a latent prophecy in God’s commandment for man to
rest on the seventh day after six days of labor. They say the 1,000-years of rest (the Millennium) will begin shortly after the
cataclysmic cleansing of the earth on the Day of the LORD.
Sign of the Flood? According to orbital calculations
by astronomers, Hale-Bopp passed through the inner solar system once before –
about 4210 years ago” Other estimates put it at 4,200-4,400 years in the past.
Based on those very long periods, the comet was last seen on earth around the
time of Noah’s Flood, which destroyed the world in 2348 B.C., roughly 4,350
years ago.
Omen of destruction?
The Jewish sages noted
that no comet had ever entered the constellation Orion. The Talmud records the
oral tradition of the Jews (Berachoth 58b) which says that when a comet passes
through the constellation Orion, the world would be destroyed. Hale-Bopp
entered the section of the sky occupied by Orion on April 22, 1997, and exited
on June 11, 1997.
Israel invaded in darkness.
As darkness
gathers, invaders will have entered the land of Israel. “Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before
your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he
turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness” (Jer 13:16).
Moon becomes
blood-red. “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). Should planet Earth
pass through a cometary cloud containing particulates of hydrated ferric oxide
[rust], the moon would be seen through the dark haze as a fuzzy reddish orb
with blurred edges, much like a bloodstain on cloth. Some comets passed very
close to the sun in 1882 and displayed evidence of sodium and even iron vapor,
Comet debris crash
on earth. “And the stars of heaven fell unto
the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of
a mighty wind” (Rev
6:13). The debris in the clouds of comet remnants – from as small as specks of
dust and grains of sand to as big as boulders and mountains – will be pulled in
by Earth’s gravity. A global rain of meteors will result. In darkness, it will
look as though the stars are falling from heaven.
Earth will shake. The “the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:” (Matt 24:29d). The
impact of huge
meteors crashing on earth will cause the planet to shudder and shake. From the ground, it would look like the sky
is shaking, not the other way around. The shaking will occur during the
invasion of Israel. “And it shall come to
pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the
Lord GOD, that my fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the
fire of my wrath have I spoken, “Surely in that day there shall be a great
shaking in the land of Israel” (Ezek 38:18-20).
200 million destroying angels. “And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice
from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the
sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the
great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for
an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand:
and I heard the number of them” (Revelation 9:13-16; Joel 2:1-10). Two hundred
million angels will arrive to destroy one-third (33%) of the people in the
world.
“Kings of the east”
join invasion. “And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the
great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
kings of the east might be prepared” (Rev 16:12). The “kings
of the east” (from China, Indochina, the Indian subcontinent, the Koreas,
Japan, and other nations in East Asia?) and the other forces: south (Iran and
allies), West (US and allies), and north (Russia and allies) will all converge
at Armageddon.
Vile
person’s stronghold. The “vile person” will deploy his forces on a strategically favored high
ground in Israel. “And he shall plant the
tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain…” (Dan
11:45); “glorious holy mountain” (Jerusalem).
Jerusalem ravaged. The holy city will become a
battle zone.“For I will gather all
nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the
houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into
captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city” (Zech
14:2).
The Second Coming. “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white
horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in
righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and
on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but
he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is
called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon
white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean… And he hath on his
vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Rev 19:11-14, 16).
First resurrection “And he shall
send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together
his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt
24:31;. Mark 13:27). Who are the elect? “For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel
mine elect…” (Isa 45:4a). Israel is
God’s elect.
The 144,000. “And
I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred
forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads… (Rev 14:1). “…an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the
children of Israel” (Rev 7:4b). Not all of the 144,000 elect will literally
be Israelites. Gentiles will be part of the elite group (Col 3:11-12; Rom 11:17;
Eph 2:12, 19, etc.). The
true Jew is no longer one in the physical or racial sense, but a member of the
“Israel of God” (Gal 6:16) – “spiritual Israel”.
Righteous dead
first. “In a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For
this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality” (1 Cor 15:52-53). “For
this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and
remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For
the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1
Thess 4:15-17).
Last and greatest
battle ever. “And I saw the beast, and the kings of the
earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on
the horse, and against his army” (Rev 19:19). “These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them:
for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are
called, and chosen, and faithful” (Rev 17:14; Matt 22:14). “Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight
against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet
shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on
the east…” (Zech 14:3-4a).
Invaders kill each other. “And
it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be
among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and
his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour” (Zech 14:13; Ezek 38:21-22).
The voice of God. “And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice
to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation
of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and
tempest, and hailstones. For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian
be beaten down, which smote with a rod…” (Isa 30:30-31). “And this shall be the plague wherewith the
LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh
shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall
consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their
mouth” (Zech 14:12).
Assyrian / “vile person” crushed. “That I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread
him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart
from off their shoulders” (Isa 14:25). “Then
shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not
of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from the sword, and his
young men shall be discomfited” (Isa 31:8).
Gog falls. “Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and
Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee… And I
will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall
out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and
all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the
ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured” (Ezek
39:1b-2a, 3-4). “And the remnant were
slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out
of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh” (Rev
19:17-18, 21).
“Beast”
and “false prophet” burned. “And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought
miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of
the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into
a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Rev 19:20). The “beast” refers to the end-time empire,
not to its ruler (the Assyrian / “vile
person”; the “man of sin” / “son of perdition” – 2 Thess 2:3). No
human being will be thrown into the lake of fire until after the Last Judgment,
when “the books were opened: and another
book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books… and they were judged every man
according to their works” (Rev 20:11-15). The “false prophet” is probably not the “second beast” as some end-time watchers teach. Is it Islam? Its founder
is usually called “the last prophet of God” by its followers. Or is it the
Vatican (the Papacy)? Its seat is on Rome’s Vatican Hill (Latin root-word vates means “prophet”).
Satan and demons locked up. “I saw an
angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great
chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is
the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the
bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should
deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and
after that he must be loosed a little season” (Rev 20:1-3). “In
that day the LORD will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on
the earth below. They will be herded together like prisoners bound in a
dungeon; they will be shut up in prison and be punished after many days” (Isa
24:21-22, NIV); “powers in the heavens”
(rebel angels).
Mountain-sized meteor. A “great mountain burning with fire
was cast into the sea” (Rev
8:8b). A
massive piece of comet remnant will crash on earth:
Greatest earthquake ever. “And
there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great
earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an
earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and
the cities of the nations fell” (Rev
16:18-19a).
Earth derailed from
orbit. “Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth
shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the
day of his fierce anger” (Isa 13:13).
“The earth shall reel to and fro
like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression
thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again” (Isa 24:20). Author Immanuel Velikovsky (Worlds in Collision, 1950), noted that
the force holding Earth in its orbit around the sun is so delicate that even
the very faint gravitation of a smaller celestial body, such as a comet or
asteroid passing close to the planet, could alter Earth’s orbit.
Earth overturns! “Behold,
the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside
down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof” (Isa
24:1). In a study done in the early 1980s, author Peter Warlow (The Reversing Earth, 1982) demonstrated
that a rotating sphere was quite unstable and quite easy to overturn. More so
with Earth, as it is not perfectly spherical, but slightly pear-shaped, a force
applied to its heavier end could tip it over.
People scattered. “I will scatter a third part into
all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them” (Ezek 5:2b). “And the heaven departed as a scroll when it
is rolled together…” (Rev 6:14a). “Then was the iron, the clay,
the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like
the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that
no place was found for them…” (Dan 2:35a). If the Earth overturns, inertia
will fling people and objects not affixed to the ground far and wide,
Mountains and
islands disappear! “…every mountain and island were moved out of
their places” (Rev 6:14b); “And every island fled away, and the
mountains were not found” (Rev 16:20). The force of inertia
will cause the oceans to wash
over the continents, emptying seas and oceans. Result: what used to be mountain
peaks will become islands. On the other hand, islands will be left high and
dry, becoming mountaintops.
Greatest hailstorm
ever. “And there fell upon men a great hail out of
heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God
because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great” (Rev 16:21). “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?
or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, Which I have reserved against the
time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?” (Job 38:22-23).
Earth incinerated! “And the
angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into
the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an
earthquake” (Rev 8:5). “The mountains quake at him, and the
hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all
that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in
the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks
are thrown down by him” (Nahum 1:5-6). “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
Pet 3:10). The clouds of gases
left behind by comets contain many flammable elements and compounds, such as
hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, methane, sulfur. As cometary meteors plummeting
through the Earth’s atmosphere are heated up like red-hot coals by friction,
the flammable gases can suddenly burst into flames, turning the planet into one
gargantuan fireball.
Divinely protected
few. God will
protect a blessed few (the elect). Ezekiel said in a veiled prophecy: “Thou shalt also take thereof a few in
number, and bind them in thy skirts” (Ezek
5:3). Those few will be hidden and protected through the nuclear war / World
War III, Great Tribulation, Armageddon, and overturning of the earth. They will
be taken up in the nick of time. “Likewise
also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they
sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom
it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all” (Luke
17:28-29). In this prophecy of types, Lot is a type of the elect, both
righteous dead and faithful living believers, who, before fire engulfs the
earth, will have been caught up to Christ in the clouds at the first
resurrection.
Some left behind. Sadly, not all of those who will
have been protected earlier will be taken up. Some will be left behind and go
through the final affliction, refining by fire. “Then take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and
burn them in the fire; for thereof shall a fire come forth into all the house
of Israel” (Ezek 5:4).
God’s Name saves. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as
silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my
name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say,
The LORD is my God” (Zech
13:8-9). Spiritually saved, though left behind, believers who will call
on the true name of the LORD will be physically delivered.
“Few men left.” “Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein
are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men
left” (Isa 24:6). “I will
make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir”
(Isa 13:12). The people left alive will be so few, it will be easier
to find gold than a living human being.
“New heaven and
earth”. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for
the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Rev 21:1). “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former
shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa 65:17). Barnabas, Paul’s
missionary companion, wrote: “His
Son shall come, and abolish the season of the wicked one, and judge the
ungodly; and shall change the sun and the moon, and the stars.”
(“Epistle of Barnabus,” Ante-Nicene
Fathers, 1987, pp. 146-147). If
the Earth overturns, the positions of the sun, moon, and stars will all be
changed. The sun and the moon will rise in the west and set in the
east. Polaris, almost directly above the North Pole, will no longer be the
polestar. And “there was no more sea” (Rev 21:1b). The world’s oceans,
including smaller bodies of water, will have evaporated in the global blanket
of fire.
Will
you be spiritually ready on the Day of the LORD? So may it be!
Excerpted
from the booklet The Day of the LORD and
the book End Time Decoded by M.M.
Tauson. Printed copies available at Amazon.com – For free pdf copies of our
e-booklets, click the Booklets and/or Google Drive tabs on the menu bar.
Bible quotations are from the King James Version (KJV) unless otherwise indicated.
