The Covid-19 plague that is sweeping across the nations is causing many Christians to ask if this is the curtain-raiser to the Day of the Lord.
Sadly, very few churches do any biblical teaching on eschatology (the end times), so many Christians are quite ignorant of what the Bible says about the second coming of Christ. This leaves the field open for many wild theories and lots of deception. Clearly in one short article we can only offer some limited points, but we hope that what is said here will be helpful and stimulate people to study what the Bible says.
The Day of the Lord is used in a number of different ways in the Bible. Amos was the first of the great 8th-Century-BC prophets of Israel to warn that the Day of the Lord would be a day of darkness and not light (Amos 5:18). For the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Day of the Lord came in 722 BC when Sennacharib sacked Samaria, as Amos foretold in 7:17 and 9:8.
Isaiah was the first to perceive that God was planning a day when he would shake not only Israel but all nations. His opening statement was addressed to the people of Israel, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me” (Isa 1:2-3).
Then in the next chapter he foresees the day that we may be witnessing in our lifetime: “The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled)…The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day and the idols will totally disappear” (Isa 2:12-17).
Shaking All Nations
This prophecy and many similar ones, such as Haggai 2:6-7 and Hebrews 12:26f, foretelling the great shaking of all nations and of the whole natural Creation, are the background to the Book of Revelation given by Jesus to the Apostle John. This great shaking culminates in the fall of Babylon, described in Revelation chapter 18.
John sees an angel shouting with a loud voice, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries” (Rev 18:2-3).
There is a harmony between the prophets of Israel and the revelations given in the New Testament. The fall of Babylon is very similar to Isaiah’s prophecy of what happens when God “rises to shake the earth” (Isa 2:19). John sees a day coming when the wickedness and evil of human beings reaches such an overwhelming point, saturating all human activity, that God will intervene in the history of humanity to shake all nations.
John sees a day coming when the wickedness and evil of human beings reaches such an overwhelming point that God will intervene in the history of humanity to shake all nations.
It is wrong to think that John only had the Roman Empire in mind when he speaks about the fall of Babylon. He is looking much farther ahead and is using the term ‘Babylon’ to mean an entire world system of ungodly values and relationships that would come to drive the social, political and economic affairs of the nations.
The Day of the Lord envisaged in the Revelation of John and foreseen by the prophets of Israel ultimately concludes with the second coming of Jesus, when God will bring all nations before him for judgment (Matt 25:31). But it is not helpful to speculate upon where we are at this present point in time in relation to God’s ultimate timetable. In fact, it would be better to forget all the theories that have been invented trying to plot different dispensations of time, and simply concentrate on understanding what is happening today. As my colleague David Noakes says, “God is shouting a warning, for the great and terrible day of the Lord is not far off and the time to repent is short.”
Only the Beginning
The Covid-19 plague is causing millions of people to reassess their personal relationships – first within the family and secondly with their friends, neighbours and workmates. In order to safeguard the survival of humanity, as the plague gathers momentum, we are forced to stop all normal human interaction and stay in our own homes. Clearly, the development of the internet with all the modern means of communication is in the perfect timing of God who reveals the secrets of his Creation one by one, generation after generation. We think we have made some amazing new discovery, but God had put it there at the beginning of Creation to be discovered at the right time.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed everything – but it is just the first stage of a period of judgment that is evidently dawning across the world. The second stage will come when the world economy collapses in the not-too-distant future. God has sent warning after warning about the injustice and greed upon which the whole world economic system is based that sends millions of human beings to bed hungry every night, while some people earn millions of dollars from the sweat and toil of others. The revelation of truth given to the biblical prophets shows that God hates injustice and oppression (see Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon, chapter 7). A day of reckoning is surely coming upon the whole of our civilisation.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed everything – but it is just the first stage of a period of judgment that is evidently dawning across the world.
Gordon Brown has called for the setting up of a ‘one-world government’ to solve the economic crisis. This would be a step towards the scene envisaged in Revelation 13 with controls on those who can buy and sell in the market and the persecution of believers, which Jesus warned would happen in the days before his second coming (Matt 24:9).
But this is only the beginning. The great shaking of the nations will continue for a long time until human beings begin to recognise the fact that God is speaking to his Creation. We have ignored God for far too long! And we have allowed evil to dominate in the affairs of the nations, taking us farther and farther from God’s truth. The latest thing the British Government has done is to use the emergency legislation of Covid-19 to temporarily legalise home-based abortion so that any woman can kill the baby in her womb on demand. This will further pollute the land with the blood of the innocent, which is an abomination to God, as Lynda Rose writes in this week’s issue of Prophecy Today UK.
What Cannot Be Shaken
I have spent the last 30 years warning that the day would come when God would send a great shaking. Clearly all nations are now being shaken and we all need to go back to the Bible to see what God has declared. Read Hebrews 12:26-29, where it says that only things that cannot be shaken will remain. They are the God-given truths of the Kingdom of Heaven. The values of the Kingdom are love, truth, faithfulness, integrity and unselfish service of one another.
The great shaking should make us rediscover these values, so that we are not found wanting if Jesus comes in our lifetime. The Apostle Paul warns that before Jesus comes again there will be a great rebellion among human beings, with lawlessness “and every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess 2:10).
Jesus himself warned his disciples about deception. He said there would be wars, famines, plagues and earthquakes; but he also said that “The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world” (Matt 24:3-14). Those who know the truth must surely take this opportunity provided by the shaking of the nations to speak the good news of the Kingdom to everyone around them – family, friends and fellow workers. That will fulfil the vision given to the Prophet Haggai who prophesied the great shaking and foresaw it leading to multitudes coming into the Kingdom of God (Hag 2:7).