(Haggai 2:6-7a) “For this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations.”
On July 2nd this year a Magnitude 6.0 earthquake affected the countries of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Afghanistan 33 km from the Bandar e Khamir, Hormozgan Province in Iran. This month flooding and landslides triggered by torrential rain have now killed at least 106 people in north-eastern Brazil. The force of the landslides ripped apart houses in neighbourhoods. A string of devastating floods in Brazil have killed hundreds of people in recent months. In America two significant winter fires occurred in Colorado and California, along with dozens of smaller fires.
As 2022 began earlier this year there were other wildfires in the United States including: Arkansas, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. There have been 940 preliminary filtered reported tornadoes in the United States in 2022, of which 722 have been confirmed. Millions of people across India and Bangladesh have been affected by raging floods and landslides that left more than 100 people dead and entire communities devastated.
The South Asian nations, home to more than 1.3 billion people, have been particularly badly hit by the rains, prompting some of the worst flooding in the region in years, as extreme weather events become increasingly frequent. As many as 4 million people, including 1.6 million children, have been stranded by the flash floods, according to UNICEF. In Sydney Australia hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australia’s largest city in a flood emergency that was impacting 50,000 people.
Emergency response teams made 100 rescues in one night of people trapped in cars on flooded roads or in inundated homes in the Sydney area. Days of torrential rain have caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks, bringing a fourth flood emergency in 16 months to parts of the city of 5 million people. As of 5 June 2022 overall, 47 volcanoes occurred around the globe.
While these natural disasters have always been with us it seems that they are on the increase in their intensity and becoming more frequent and devastating. Earthquakes are also increasing around the world. No nation on earth is being spared from these disasters.
In the prophet Isaiah we are told that; “The earth is utterly broken apart, the earth is split open, the earth is shaken violently. The earth staggers like a drunkard and sways like a shack in the wind. Earth’s rebellion weighs it down, and it falls, never to rise again. In that day the LORD will punish the host of heaven above and the kings of the earth below” (Isaiah 24:18b-20).
The context of the whole of Isaiah Chapter 24 is set in the last days leading up to the Second Coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus. There will be a shaking from God that will devastate the planet because of the lawlessness and rebellion of the nations and their leaders against the Lord and His anointed Messiah our Lord Jesus (Psalm 2). It will be a violent splitting and shaking that will make the inhabitants of the world stagger like drunken men with the earth metaphorically swaying in the wind of prevailing judgement. The prophet Isaiah also writes about “that day of great slaughter when the towers fall” (Isaiah 30:25). Prophetically this day Isaiah mentions points to our time when we see skyscrapers in every major city around the world collapsing.
God will be crushing the rebellion of man arrayed against Him as the Triune God who created them. This shaking of the planet will affect the religious world, the domestic world and the business world. Every institution of man that God has not established will be thrown down (Isaiah 24:1-3).
Those who have exulted themselves on earth among the nations will languish and because the people of the world have defiled themselves by violating the statutes and commandments of God and by rejecting the everlasting blood covenant God provided for their salvation through His one and only begotten Son the Lord Jesus (Isaiah 24:4-5).
We are also told in the same chapter that a curse will consume the earth and that only a few will escape the fire of God’s wrath that will consume the bulk of mankind who have not been saved. The partying will cease and the merrymakers will groan. The loud music will cease. The revelry of their unbridled passions and pursuits of entertainment and the bright lights of the city and the pleasures and pastimes that feed the fallen human senses of the flesh will be terminated. Political empires and enclaves will be toppled. Fleshly pleasure will be nowhere to be found.
Cities will lie ruined and the doors of people’s houses barred to stop intruders. The streets will be filled with homeless people who once lived in luxury and at ease who can no longer feed their fleshly appetites and desires. Because those things will be taken away their joy will cease to be and their gaiety turned to gloom. The places they frequented to slate their lustful pleasures, the brothels, the nightclubs, the gambling establishments and the pubs and the rock concerts and other places of entertainment will be ruined and their entrances destroyed, their businesses ruined and finances gone. Scarcity and want will be a global phenomenon (Isaiah 24:6-13).
These judgements from the Lord are to get the unsaved to praise and worship Him who created them but they continue on their rebellious way ultimately destined for the pit and if they remain alive still snared and trapped in sin. When the rod of God’s wrath, released by the word of His mouth strikes the earth, the floodgates of the heavens will be opened unleashing such judgements that even the very foundations of the earth itself will shake almost causing its very axis to shift (Isaiah 24:14-20).
At this time of shaking we are also told that the Lord will punish the powers in the heavens, being the fallen spirit entities and principalities operating in the unseen spiritual realm and the kings on earth who have vaunted themselves to challenge God. They will be herded up and cast into the pit of hell and kept there until the great white throne judgement where they will appear before God’s law court to be sentenced to the lake of fire forever where there will be conscious torment and no reprieve (Isaiah 24:21-22). Also see (Revelation 20:11-14; 21:8).
Finally, as the constellations in the heavens are changed in their appearance, having also been affected by the shaking, and immediately after the tribulation of those days, the Lord Jesus will return to rescue the Jewish remnant, restore Israel, rapture and resurrect His elect saints, destroy all opposition and after the dust of battle has settled inaugurate His Messianic reign on earth for a thousand years (Matthew 24:29-32) (Revelation 20:1-6).
In that day the Lord Almighty in the Messiah Himself will reign on the original site of Mount Zion in the millennial temple at Jerusalem and before its elders, gloriously and we who have been redeemed by His blood will co-reign with Him on earth!!! (Isaiah 2:1-5) (Micah 4:1-5) (Revelation 5:10).
