Zephaniah 1:15

The day of Jehovah would send up a cry from the gates of Jerusalem. He would search Jerusalem with candles and expose the folly of those who denied that He would step in, either for good or for evil. The prophet then states the terrors of the day of Jehovah in general but very forceful terms. The fire of His jealousy would devour the whole land.

In 1250 Thomas of Celano wrote his famous hymn about judgment. He took the words "Dies irae, dies illa" from the Latin translation of the first sentence of this verse. When that day comes the wicked will perish. Distress will be on everyone. They will walk like blind men, trying to find a way to escape but unable to find one. Nothing will be able to save them from the fury of that day. Neither silver nor gold will be of any use.

It was not only the openly violent. No one would escape, no class and no rank. They "say in their heart, Jehovah will not do good, nor will He do evil." It is the unbelief of the Sadducees before the Sadducees existed. "Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them." That is, they are struck at the very point of their unbelief.

But the Chaldean was not only a real person, but a representative one. In the prophets he points forward to coming and final judgments. His sword visited not only Judah and Jerusalem, but the surrounding nations. His was a day in which the God of all the earth was rising up, and the world had to keep silent. It was a miniature, or first instalment, of the judgment of all the nations. It was "the day of the Lord," in spirit or in principle.

But that day surely comes: "a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness." It is impossible to apply this to the Lord's coming to receive His saints, caught up to meet Him. Could anyone want a clearer example of the folly of treating the day of Jehovah, with its terrors for the earth, as the same thing as Christ's coming to take His own on high? Will His presence, which gathers us to Him above, be in any way "a day of gloom and thick clouds"? The confusion is an obvious blunder.

Judgment never closes the scene. In the ways of God, glory touches judgment. Judgment cleans out the vessel, and then glory fills it. It removes whatever stands in the way of the presence of the Lord. Then God sets up His kingdom and displays it, as Zephaniah and all the prophets show us.

It is very important that we hold and testify to "that day" — not only the coming of the Lord but His day. Where truth is high and practice is low, no one can testify honestly to the day of Jehovah. It then does not hold the place in our daily service that it holds in the word of God.