15 That day
is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and
desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick
darkness,
• Wrath: Fierce, overwhelming, complete and overflowing
divine anger and rage.
• Trouble: Tribulation and adversarial affliction and
anguish.
• Distress: Narrowness, in other words a spot between a rock
and a hard place.
• Wasteness: It means to rush over like a destructive flood.
• Desolation: Meaning nothing significant will be left.
• Darkness: It means the lines between truth and fiction,
reality and imagination will be blurred. It is said to be confused and left in
the dark in regards to knowledge of something. No one will know what will
happen next. It puts one on the brink of insanity.
• Gloominess: This describes the type of darkness which was a
plague in Egypt. A some sort of tangible darkness that can be sensed and felt.
• Clouds: It alludes to that all the descriptors above will
be so wide spread that there will be no place to hide from them.
• Thick Darkness: Meant to be a descriptor and intensifier of
“clouds.” Clouds and Thick Darkness can also has been used to describe God
during the Exodus and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and thus these
words are a connection to God’s Holiness in judgment.
16 A day of
the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.
This eludes to the last shofar blast:
1 Cor. 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1 Thess. 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and
the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 And I
will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they
have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and
their flesh as the dung.
Mankind will be in utter shock and awe; vainly seeking
shelter or even escape by death.
Luke 23:30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.
Rev 6:16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and
hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of
the Lamb:
This is also representory of sin. Haw sin blinds and binds.
How the religious elite will be in the same boat as the lay person with no advantage.
Matt. 15:14a They are blind guides leading the blind, and if
one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch. (NLT)
18 Neither
their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the
LORD's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy:
for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
No bribe or ransom can be made to save them. The offer for
protection and salvation has expired.
Prov. 11:4 Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but
righteousness delivereth from death.
Ezk. 7:19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and
their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to
deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their
souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their
iniquity.
Also as the Scriptures says that our God is a consuming fire:
Deut. 4:24 For the LORD thy God [is] a consuming fire, [even]
a jealous God.
Hebrews 12:29 For our God [is] a consuming fire.
Passages such as these in Zephaniah are the ones the
secularly, hedonistic, humanistic, agnostic use to say YHWH is a blood thirsty
barbaric and archaic god.
Exd 34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed,
The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth.
II Peter 3:9 The Lord is… not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
They fail to recall the time He gave Noah’s generation and
Jonah’s Nineveh to repent, some 100 years! He waited before the trash heap of
Sodom and Gomorrah overflowed its can before He burned the trash and look at
the decadence of today’s western world, Europe and Nordic countries and yet we
have yet to be visited by fire and brimstone from the sky.
The liberal and secular intelligencia has it all askew, there
is no blood thirsty God, only one of second chances and forced to execute last
resorts to maintain the integrity of His Holiness.
