Swanning Around

“While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

The day of the Lord will catch the world by surprise. I used to find this strange. I don’t anymore.

The vast majority of human beings are instinctively uniformitarian in their outlook. They don’t read history, and even if they do, they don’t imagine the sort of catastrophes that occurred in other times and places could possibly happen during their lifetimes, let alone a once-in-human-history event like the day of the Lord. In one of the earliest books of the New Testament, Paul writes that the day of the Lord will come like a thief. In one of the last books, Peter says exactly the same thing. Few on earth will see it coming.

Mining the Minors: Zechariah (21)

You will not find the expression “day of the Lord” in the Old Testament prior to the books of the prophets. Joel turns the phrase more frequently than anyone else, but Isaiah also uses it, as do Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Malachi and, of course, the prophet we are currently studying, where it appears exactly once, introducing the final chapter.

Naturally, that’s not all the Bible has to say about the day of the Lord. Not by a long shot.

Mining the Minors: Amos (23)

Who would eagerly anticipate and call for God to act in judgment? You might be surprised.

When injustice is rampant in society, those who are hurting tend to identify the beneficiaries of their perceived oppression and blame everyone in that targeted group regardless of personal involvement. In Germany it was the Jews. In Mao’s China it was the wealthy landowners. In Western society it is the “patriarchy”. In the Israel of Amos’s day, it was the rich.

So then, up goes the cry for judgment: If only God would deal with this fellow over here, or that group over there, everything would be fine.

Flyover Country: 2 Thessalonians

The day of the Lord remains a touchy subject among Christians. Some believers (I among them) look for its fulfillment at a future date. Others insist it occurred in A.D. 70 at the destruction of Jerusalem.

The book of 2 Thessalonians is part of this ongoing discussion, though not directly. Because it was written prior to A.D. 70, it cannot possibly settle the matter beyond dispute. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, both purported “fulfillments” were still future.

And yet, even well before A.D. 70, some Christians were claiming the day of the Lord had already come. That is the error Paul’s second letter was written to refute.