Joel is continuing to tell how the Lord's coming will look to Israel and her surrounding nations. This gives us a little more information to add to what Jesus said in Matthew 24 and what He told John in Revelation 14: 9-20 and 19: 11-21.
(9) Proclaim this among the nations:
This is to the nations who surround the nation of Israel, who hate her.
Prepare a war; rouse the mighty men!
Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up!
The Lord says to prepare the armies, gather all the soldiers for battle.
(10) Beat your plowshares into swords
and your pruning hooks into spears;
They are to put their economies onto a war footing, and re-calibrate their machine-making from agricultural to military implements.
Let the weak say, "I am a mighty man."
Let every able-bodied person enlist, even if they physically aren't quite up to military standards.
(11) Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations,
And gather yourselves there.
God will gather all the armies of all the nations who oppose Israel.
Bring down, O Lord, Your mighty ones.
Our Lord God will gather all the earthly armies, then He will break through the clouds into the atmosphere of our Earth with all His holy ones, His angels and saints.
(12) Let the nations be aroused
And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat,
For there I will sit to judge
All the surrounding nations.
This valley of Jehoshaphat is not a word that signifies a geographical location, but we know from other scriptures that it will be the Valley of Armageddon.
King Jesus will battle them; the word Joel uses for "sit" to judge, is a primitive root word, yashab, which refers to every kind of settling down or setting up; so He will "sit in judgment" on them by slaughtering them with His Word (the "sword that comes out of His mouth"! (Revelation 19: 15).
(13) Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
This is referenced in Matthew 13: 36-43 in Jesus' explanation to His disciples of the parable of the Sower and the Seed. He said, "The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His Kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (vs. 41-42).
Come, tread, for the wine press is full;
The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.
Here is another picture of the judgment upon the wicked, that they are the grapes in the Lord's wine press, to pour out the blood "up to the horses' bridles, for a distance of two hundred miles" (Revelation 14: 19-20).
(14) Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
Yes, it will be thousands upon thousands of soldiers from all over the world that have gathered against God's people and find themselves facing the Lord God Almighty! And He will judge them all with true judgment, immediate and complete.
(15) For the sun and moon grow dark
And the stars lose their brightness.
It is at this time that the sun and moon will stop, to make that Day like no other day in the history of the Earth, when Zechariah 14: 4-7 says that:
In that Day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him! In that Day there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique Day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light.God gave the whole story, and when we look in the different places for all the different parts of it, we can put it together in a tentative time line. We won't know the exact way everything will actually work out until it happens (hind-sight is always 20-20).
(16) The Lord roars from Zion
And utters His voice from Jerusalem,
And the heavens and the Earth tremble.
All this happening will cause earthquakes and the whole Universe that we can see to tremble and shake. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
But the Lord is a refuge for His people
And a stronghold to the sons of Israel.
All this destruction and violence will be happening all over the world, but God's people who are still on the Earth will be spared and protected, because this is the wrath of God falling on everything that is not perfect. The people of God are His because His blood shed at Calvary has washed us perfectly clean, and because Jesus took upon Himself the wrath that is due us.
These are the people who will enter into His Kingdom on Earth in their flesh, to repopulate the Earth as He reigns as the sovereign King of the World.
When I look at the End Times and the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation, and the Rapture and the Second Coming of the Lord, and all that will transpire, I sometimes feel overwhelmed with the immensity of the information God has given us, and the seriousness and intensity of God's love and justice.
O my Father, You are so good, and You love us so much. You want us to know what will happen, very soon now, and You want us to know and be prepared to face it. And to trust You to carry us through whatever we will have to face, wherever we find ourselves on Your timeline.
My Father, You have told us what looks like a complete account of everything that will take place until the end of this Earth itself, but I know that You really haven't told us everything. But we can know a tremendous amount of what to expect, so we should be able to recognize when it comes to pass. Please open our eyes to see and to recognize when these End Time events come. Then we will lift up our eyes, for our Salvation is at hand!
O Father, until then, send out Your children into all the world, so that every living person will hear and understand clearly enough to make a fully informed choice to accept or reject Your most gracious and generous gift.
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is our Christ, our Lord God Almighty, sovereign King over all Creation; to the everlasting glory of Almighty God the Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come swiftly, Lord Jesus!
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