There comes a time in the world when God says “enough” and rises in judgment against its inhabitants for the violence and depravity they knowingly perpetrate. When wickedness reaches saturation point, God intervenes to punish unrepentant sinners, starting with own his people.
Wealth, power, and fame avail nothing as the world’s high and mighty are made low when subjected to God’s justice. A situation unlike any the world has ever seen engulfs humanity when people’s actions for good or evil bring about their inevitable consequence of life or death.
Isaiah 24:4–6The earth shall pine away,
the world miserably perish;
the elite of the earth shall be made wretched.
The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants:
they have transgressed the laws,
changed the ordinances,
set at naught the ancient covenant.The curse devours the earth,
for those who dwell on it have incurred guilt;
because of it the population of the earth
shall be diminished
and little of mankind remain.
Isaiah 10:3–4What will you do in the day of reckoning
when the holocaust overtakes you from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
Where will you leave your wealth?
There shall nothing remain
but to kneel among the captives
or fall among the slain.
Isaiah 2:12Jehovah of Hosts has a day in store
for all the proud and arrogant
and for all who are exalted,
that they may be brought low.
God’s Day of Judgment, which involves all of humanity, leaves no place to hide. Electronic aids, human schemes, and cunningly contrived contingency plans prove worthless in the new reality God brings upon the world that displaces lawlessness and man’s culture of corruption.
Isaiah 24:17–20Terrors and pitfalls and traps await you,
O inhabitants of the earth:
those who flee at the sound of terror
shall fall into a pit,
and those who get up from the pit
shall be caught in a trap.
For when the windows on high are opened,
the earth shall shake to its foundations.The earth shall be crushed and rent;
the earth shall break up and cave in;
the earth shall convulse and lurch.
The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard,
sway back and forth like a shanty;
its transgressions weigh it down,
and when it collapses it shall rise no more.
Isaiah 2:20–21In that day men will throw away
to the moles and to the bats
their idols of silver and gods of gold
which they have made for themselves to adore.
Men will go into crevices in the rocks
and fissures in the cliffs,
from the awesome presence of Jehovah
and from the brightness of his glory,
when he arises and strikes terror on earth.
Party time is over for pleasure-seekers, gamblers, and lovers of entertainment. In their abandon to sensual gratification, they forgot God and his eternal purpose in their lives. Accounted as dross, they and their kind are banished from the earth to make room for a people of God.
Isaiah 24:7–9The new wine withers on languishing vines,
making all the lighthearted lament.
The rhythm of drums ceases,
the revelers’ din stops;
the pulsating of lyres comes to an end.
Men no longer drink wine amid song;
liquor has turned bitter to drinkers.
Isaiah 65:11–12As for you who forsake Jehovah
and forget my holy mountain,
who spread tables for Luck
and pour mixed wines for Fortune,
I will destine you to the sword;
all of you shall succumb to the slaughter.
God empowers the Assyrian alliance of nations against his errant people and all nations. As his instrument for cleansing the world of wickedness, they decimate its population. Their tyrannical king embodies the attributes of “anger” and “wrath” as they reduce the earth to chaos.
Isaiah 13:4–10Hark! A tumult on the mountains,
as of a vast multitude.
Hark! An uproar among kingdoms,
as of nations assembling:
Jehovah of Hosts is marshaling an army for war
They come from a distant land beyond the horizon—
Jehovah and the instruments of his wrath—
to cause destruction throughout the earth.Lament, for the Day of Jehovah is near;
it shall come as a violent blow from the Almighty.
Then shall every hand grow weak
and the hearts of all men melt.
They shall be terrified, in throes of agony,
seized with trembling like a woman in labor.
Men will look at one another aghast,
their faces set aflame.The Day of Jehovah shall come
as a cruel outburst of anger and wrath
to make the earth a desolation,
that sinners may be annihilated from it.
The stars and constellations of the heavens
will not shine.
When the sun rises, it shall be obscured;
nor will the moon give its light.
An unquenchable fire burns up humanity’s “briers” and “thorns” and lays waste their jungle-like cities. For the godless, it is every man for himself as people’s base natures succumb to animal instincts that compound their godlessness until at last the world’s evildoers become extinct.
Isaiah 9:18–20Wickedness shall be set ablaze like a fire,
and briers and thorns shall it consume;
it shall ignite the jungle forests,
and they shall billow upward
in mushrooming clouds of smoke.
At the wrath of Jehovah of Hosts
the earth is scorched,
and people are but fuel for the fire.Men will have no compassion for one another.
They will snatch on the right, yet remain hungry;
they will devour on the left, but not be satisfied:
men will eat the flesh of their own offspring.
Isaiah 33:12Whole nations have been burned as with lime,
mown down like thorns and set ablaze.
While an apocalyptic doomsday overtakes the world’s oppressors, those who repent of evil and return to their Maker experience a very different result. Because the destruction of the wicked portends the deliverance of the righteous, their grief and pain turn into joy and rejoicing.
Isaiah 24:13–16Then shall it happen in the earth among the nations
as when an olive tree is beaten,
or as grapes are gleaned when the vintage is ended.
Then will these lift up their voice and shout for joy,
and [those] from across the sea
exult at Jehovah’s ingenuity.
Because of it they will give glory to Jehovah
in the regions of sunrise,
and in the isles of the sea
to the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel.From a sector of the earth we hear singing:
Glorious are the righteous!
Whereas I thought, I am wasting away;
I am weakening:
woe is me; the traitors have been treacherous,
the turncoats have deceitfully betrayed!
Two end-time locations on the earth shelter those whom God watches over. As he did anciently at Israel’s wandering in the wilderness, he protects them by his cloud of glory. Representing humanity’s righteous remnants, those who keep faith with him are saved from destruction.
Isaiah 25:4–5You were a refuge for the poor,
a shelter for the needy in distress,
a covert from the downpour
and shade from the heat.
When the blasts of tyrants beat down
like torrents against a wall,
or like scorching heat in the desert,
you quelled the onslaughts of the heathen:
as burning heat by the shade of a cloud,
you subdued the power of tyrants.
Isaiah 25:9In that day you will say, This is our God,
whom we expected would save us.
This is Jehovah for whom we have waited;
let us joyfully celebrate his salvation!
The war to end all wars that characterizes God’s end-time Day of Judgment also signifies the beginning of a paradisiacal age. Human civilization assumes a higher spiritual and physical existence as God re-creates the heavens and the earth and regenerates his elect people.
Isaiah 2:4He will judge between the nations
and arbitrate for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares,
their spears into pruning hooks:
nation will not lift the sword against nation,
nor will they learn warfare any more.
Isaiah 65:17–18See, I create new heavens and a new earth;
former events shall not be remembered
or recalled to mind.
Rejoice, then, and be glad forever in what I create.
See, I create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
