Say to the nations far and wide: “Get ready for war! Call out your best warriors. Let all your fighting men advance for the
attack. Hammer your plowshares into
swords and your pruning hooks into spears.
Train even your weaklings to be warriors. Come quickly, all you
nations everywhere. Gather together in
the valley.” And now, O Lord, call
out your warriors! “Let the nations be called to
arms. Let them march to the valley of Jehoshaphat. There I, the Lord, will sit to pronounce
judgment on them all. Swing the sickle, for the harvest
is ripe. Come, tread the grapes, for the
winepress is full. The storage vats are
overflowing with the wickedness of these people.” Thousands upon
thousands are waiting in the valley of decision. There the day of the Lord will soon
arrive. The sun and moon will grow dark, and
the stars will no longer shine. The Lord’s voice will roar
from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth will shake. But the Lord will be a refuge for
his people, a strong fortress for the people of Israel. Joel 3:9-16
Human beings cannot see the future. However, looking at the times in which we now
live, and measuring it carefully against what Holy Scripture’s prophetic books
paint as the picture of what end times will look like, we are living in the
prologue of Armageddon, the final battle between God and all the evil forces
Satan can muster, fought in what Joel called the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
What is happening in Ukraine (and other places around
the world, like North Korea’s nuclear testing) is the saber-rattling of nations
that will attack Israel in the final days.
It is the warm-up to
the earth-shattering clash between heaven and hell, marking the end of the
Prince of Darkness’ rule of terror and evil.
Of all the nations on earth that possess nuclear
warheads (USA, Great Britain, Russia, China, Israel, and others), Jerusalem
stands as the central point of what will be the final conflict, which will
happen just prior to the return of Christ to the earth. It marks the end of human-dominated rule and
the beginning of the thousand-year divine rule of Jesus as Lord. Christians everywhere pray for that day to
come, just as Christ instructed us to pray in the final verses of Scripture:
He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
Revelation 22:20
For You Today
Considering the
looming possibilities of wars, even nuclear catastrophes, there is a word from
God for us today upon which we must dwell; it is a strong message of hope and
strength for living in uncertain times:
Wait on
the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen
thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.
Psalm 27:14
That phrase, be
of good courage appears 17 times in the Old Testament, and marks
what waiting on the Lord builds in God’s people’s hearts,
during troubled days like these.
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
God's Challenge and Warrior Nations No Longer
[1] Images: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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