I find Isaiah to be the Bible’s preeminent book concerning the Day of the LORD. From its very beginning God explains why that Day must come.

²Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the LORD has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
³The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”

⁴Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the LORD,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.

Notice to whom God speaks here. Like almost everywhere else in Scripture, he does not speak to unbelievers. He speaks to believers, he is speaking to his children, to Israel. Ancient Israel was that nation God called out of earth’s other nations. First God called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees and later renamed him Abraham. He brought Abram to the land of Canaan and promised him and his descendants all of that land. Abraham bore Isaac who in turn bore Esau and Jacob. Jacob inherited the birthright from Isaac and when God had transformed his character into that of an overcomer God renamed him Israel, which means “God rules.” Jacob Israel had twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel when God established the nation of Israel in about 1400 B.C. The nation itself was established after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. We can read all about this history in the books of Genesis and Exodus. The main point I want to make here, though, is that God himself established Israel in the earth as his particular and peculiar nation. He intended that they represent him in the world of men. History, however, clearly shows that the nation Israel failed to obey God.

Isaiah wrote before either Israel or Judah was destroyed by invading armies. He considered both nations his people; both had descended from Jacob Israel. God speaks through his prophet and begins by commanding the entire universe, both heaven and earth, to bear witness to his proclamation. He calls Israel his very children. He raised them and provided for them, he says, but they rebelled against him. They forsook God and turned to sin and evil. They became consumed by idolatry and sin and actually became as bad or worse than the nations they came from and dispossessed when they settled their land. For this reason God sent prophets, including Isaiah, who announced God’s coming judgment upon them. The prophets called the coming time of judgment “the Day of the LORD.” And, when judgment finally did fall upon the northern kingdom of Israel, when thousands died and thousands more were deported to far-off lands, it was “the Day of the LORD” for them. Similarly, when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and took captive the remaining thousands to Shinar this was also “the Day of the LORD” to them. 

A careful reading of the prophetic literature, however, convinced me that the Day of the LORD is not limited to the time of God’s judgment upon Israel and Judah. That Day speaks prophetically to the time we now live in. Paul, when preaching the Gospel, said,

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That you be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come the falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition …. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3)

I suggest to you that both of these conditions have been fulfilled, 1) the falling away, the great apostasy, has occurred, and 2) the man of sin has been revealed. And this is exactly why the the Day of the LORD must now come, in fact, why it has already begun. (To be continued)