A Day Like No Other Series

Intro

Our text today is entirely dependent of the passage we studied last week. Therefore, to get the context for today, we will read Zechariah 1-5.

“Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, And your spoil will be divided in your midst. 2 For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; The city shall be taken, The houses rifled, And the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, But the remnant of the people hall not be cut off from the city. 3 Then the Lord will go forth And fight against those nations, As He fights in the day of battle. 4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it toward the south. 5 Then you shall flee through My mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall flee As you fled from the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus the Lord my God will come, And all the saints with You.”i

The pivotal point in biblical prophecy is the Second Coming of Christ. The significance of the event is demonstrated by the cataclysmic phenomena that accompany Jesus’s return. When his feet stand on the place of his previous departure, the Mount of Olives splits, forming a huge valley running east and west between the northern half and the southern half. The immediate value of this change is to provide a way of escape for the Jewish remnant in Jerusalem.

But Christ’s return is verified by other cosmic signs as well. Four major changes in the world are recorded in verses 6-11. These not only announce the coming of Christ, but also transition the world from the current age as we know it to the glorious Millennium.

I. SHIFT IN ASTRONOMICAL CONDITIONS (vs 6-7)

The first change, documented in verses 6-7, is a change in the light coming from the sun, moon, and stars.

Verse 6 says, “It shall come to pass in that day That there will be no light; The lights will diminish.” The phrase “in that day” is the same as we encountered in verse 4 describing the arrival of Christ on the Mount of Olives. So, we know these manifestations occur at the Second Coming.

Darkness, the absence of light, is often associated with judgment. One of the judgments on Egypt was a “thick darkness” that could even be felt.ii When God’s wrath was poured out on Christ at the cross, there was darkness over all the land from noon to 3:00 pm.iii And here at the Second Coming, this darkness occurs as God judges the armies of Antichrist. We will see additional details of that in verses 12-15 of our text.

This failure of celestial light is attested to by other prophets as well.

Isaiah 13:9-10 warns, “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate; And He will destroy its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine.”

Joel 3:14-15 addresses the same event, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.15 The sun and moon will grow dark, And the stars will diminish their brightness.”

Matthew 24:29-31 helps us with the timing of this. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” This darkness alerts the world to Christ’s coming. It gets everyone’s attention.iv

The Hebrew word yekaroth is used in Zechariah 14:6 of ‘the resplendent heavenly bodies,’ i.e., the stars.”v The verb qapha’ means to “thicken, condense, congeal.vi It is used in Exodus 15:8 as a description of the hardening or congealing of the waters so the Hebrews could pass through. The idea is that the heavenly luminaries will lose their brilliance. The NKJV, based on the Masoretic Text accurately translates it, “The lights will diminish.” This is preferred over the Revised Standard Version follows the Septuagint and translates it, “there shall be neither cold nor frost.” The NIV approximates that.