Surprised By the Day of The Lord
“But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.”
— Luke 12:45,46
What is so surprising about the Day of the Lord to hypocrites (Isaiah 33:14)? What is so alarming to the unaware backslidden church members of the earth (Zeph. 1:14-17)? What will utterly stun to speechless astonishment the sleeping virgins of the 21st Century Gentile Church Age (Ezek. 4:16; 12:19; 23:33)?
When speaking of the 2nd Advent of Christ, there is much to mystify the minds of the modern-day saint. “Why is the season well known, but the day and hour is unknown?” Or, “If the exact number of days (even 1,260) is set forth as the duration of the Man of sin's reign of terror, until the time of Babylon's judgment, then why is this coming of the Son of man so surprising?”
To the uninformed, or misinformed, churchgoer, the coming news that the Lord Jesus has come will be a startling surprise, and NOT because there was a sudden rapture, and they have all been “left behind”, as the heresy goes… Be not deceived! There is something much more dreadful than the fancies of carnally-minded Christians, you can be sure of that.
To this terrible message which is soon to seize the entire attention of the general masses of professors of religion worldwide, and utterly envelope their minds and bodies with overwhelming, and exquisite terror (far beyond the fleeting pangs common to a horror film experience), the prophet Habakkuk says: UNBELIEVABLE! “Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you” (Hab. 1:5).
Yet, again, what is so unbelievable about this work the Lord is soon to do?! It is because there is something MYSTERIOUS about the Day of the Lord...
Dear reader, do you care to know what this is?
Have you never seen how that a vast doctrine, established in the scriptures of the Old Testament, by means of divinely inspired ancient testimonies, forging biblical eschatology, building one single "spirit of prophecy", which is none other than "the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 19:10), all bear record to an ulterior work of the Lord, denominated as THE DAY OF THE LORD, antecedant to THE DAY OF THE LORD in the 2nd ADVENT OF CHRIST?
This is that which Paul spoke of in I Thessalonians 5, when he declared the Day of the Lord to be as “sudden”, and impossible to “escape”, as a “thief in the night”, or unexpected as “travail upon a woman with child” (v. 1-3)! That is, for those who saints who are legally in “darkness”, and thus “asleep”, and drunken, even as “children of the night" (v. 4,5,7)! But for "the children of the day", and "of the light", who are not "asleep as others", but are "sober" and "watchful" (v.5-8), this DAY comes not as a thief upon them, but, so much the rather, they are fully aware of the "times and seasons" of this (v. 1), even as watchmen, who love the appearing of the one whom their eyes wait to behold (Matt. 25:6; I Thess. 1:10; Tit. 2:13; II Tim. 4:8; Heb. 9:28; etc.)!
This is not the Day of the Lord in the 2nd Advent of Christ, which was spoken of in the previous chapter (I Thess. 4:13-18), this is another work, also called THE DAY OF THE LORD, but necessarily preceding the Coming of the Lord... It is THE DAY OF THE LORD THROUGH BABYLON.
Now consider, the cause of Babylon (as discovered through almost an entire 1/3 of Old Testament scripture) is none other than that the Church of Jesus Christ has all but wholesale made shipwreck of “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and “the salt of the earth" (i.e. the Church) has “lost his savor”, and is henceforth “good for nothing, but to be cast out, and trodden under the foot of men” (Matt. 5:13). Therefore, the Lord's PLAN: "B" (for "Babylon"), revealed through ancient biblical prophecy comes into action for the judgment of the Church, and afterwards the judgment of the world, "For", as it is written, "... judgment MUST begin at the house of God" (I Pet. 4:17)!
Reader, if you have failed to fully perceive the import, and impact of these most dreadful realities of biblical prophecy, which have hitherto fueled the redemptive judgments of many centuries and millennia of God's people, then I solemnly declare to you that you are prepared (even this moment!) to be one of these sleeping virgins suddenly wakened in the midnight hour of Babylon's NIGHT, with a good chance (from a biblical perspective) of perishing in your ignorance of those things which all along belonged to your peace!
God help your poor soul while it is yet day!
If you desire a much more comprehensive treatment of these subjects in particular, please, I implore you, read further...