The Lord Almighty has a day in store
….when he rises to shake the earth
-Isaiah 2.10-22
Next week I’ll begin the difficult follow up to The Message. This is a brief preface to that.
In 2014 God began to speak to me from Haggai about the shaking that was taking place in the earth. There’s a lot in that little book – God’s encouragement to his faithful to be strong, the rebuilding of a dwelling place for God, the separation of holy and unclean, and God’s promises for the future, among other things. I’ve touched on some of those previously, but I haven’t got time to deal with them in depth now. What is pertinent for the context of these letters to you is the constant refrain of the Lord saying, “I am”; “I did”; “I will….”
I blew away [your harvest]
I called for a drought
I am with you
I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land
I will shake all nations
I will fill this house with glory
I will grant peace
I struck all the work of you hands with blight, mildew, and hail, yet you did not return to me
I will bless you
I am going to shake the heavens and the earth
I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of the foreign kingdoms
I will overthrow
I will take you
I will make you
I have chosen you
-Haggai 1-3
Sixteen times in this short little book God says, “I”.
Everything here is God’s doing.
He is in control. And he’s coming to prove it.
Did you notice in the phrases above how words of comfort, blessing, and promise are placed side by side with words of calamity, destruction and overthrow? Keep that in mind.
At the time God was telling me this, the world was increasingly in turmoil and it felt to many people like it was racing out of control. But the thing that stood out to me the most was God saying that he was the one doing the shaking. Three times in two chapters he says “I will shake.”
Why is this important?
Firstly, for those who feel that the world has gone crazy, who feel that everything they’ve depended on or believed in, everything that seemed permanent, has in a short time been eroded or snatched from them, to those people God says through Haggai, THIS IS MY DOING. Christians in Western democracies that have been built on Judeo-Christian foundations, and Americans especially, are watching “democracy” destroying its own foundations, and they’re watching in horror and in fear. I understand the fear; I understand the knee-jerk reactions (and the well thought out ones, too). But in spite of all that, and as terrifying a prospect as it seems to many of them, this is God’s doing.
Secondly, it’s important because all of this shaking is the precursor to God returning to his people. Haggai hints at it, but his contemporary Zechariah has much more to say on the subject. I’m not going to go there just yet because God has shown me that his return isn’t good news for everyone. And at the moment he seems to be emphasizing the not so good bits. So I must go where I am led. At present I am led to the sword.
That brings me back to the point of God speaking comfort and blessing on the one hand, and calamity and destruction on the other. I believe these things will happen together.
Jerusalem staggers,
Judah is falling;
their words and deeds are against the Lord,
defying his glorious presence.
The look on their faces testifies against them;
they parade their sin like Sodom;
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
They have brought disaster upon themselves.
Tell the righteous it will be well with them,
for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds.
Woe to the wicked!
Disaster is upon them!
They will be paid back
for what their hands have done.
-Isaiah 3.8-11[1]
“Righteous” and “wicked” here are not synonyms for “Christian’ and “non-Christian”. God isn’t talking about the saved and the unsaved, or the Church and the World. He’s talking about people who claim to belong to him but whose lives are not an example of godliness – those to whom sin is not even upsetting anymore.
God is warning us to be ready, to have our hearts right with him and with our brothers and sisters – to leave nothing unresolved. To those who are fully committed to him, he will be like the eye of the storm. Peace.
But to all others he will be a whirlwind of terror.
“The Lord is with you when you are with him.
If you seek him, he will be found by you,
but if you forsake him, he will forsake you….
In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress.
But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded…..
For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
– 2 Chronicles 15.2-7; 16.9
-gb
[1] See also Acts 2.17-20 where strange signs in the heavens accompany the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Here, Peter is quoting Joel chapter 2, and the context of the quote is God’s blessing on his people, with the wider context being a call to repentance. And both the repentance and the blessing sit within the even larger context of what in scripture is called The Day of Yahweh. More on that later.
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