The terrors of the day of the Lord.
Every visitation of man by God is typical of his coming to judgment. "That day" is, in its deepest and truest sense, the day whereon Christ shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. Of "that day and that hour knoweth no man" (Matthew 24:36); and the terror is increased by the mystery. The prophet sees God descend to judge Israel. The particular features are local; but through them may be discerned without much difficulty the characteristics which are recurrent, and which belong especially to the last and great day, viz.—
I. ABASEMENT OF THE PROUD. Earthly distinctions come to naught when the earth itself comes to an end. Rank, titles, dignities, fail. The "mean man" and the "great man" (Isaiah 2:9), the highest and the lowest in earthly rank, are upon a par, when all have to appear before their Judge. And spiritual pride is equally brought low. None but must then feel himself a miserable sinner, a suppliant for mercy at God's feet, with hope only through the merits and intercession of the incarnate Son. "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day" (Isaiah 2:17).
II. DESTRUCTION OF THE GRANDEST OF HUMAN WORKS. Towers, walls, palaces, are shattered and overturned at the great seasons of national judgments, and will fall with a crash everywhere at the final judgment-day. The great navies of the world will perish in the "fervent heat;" the works of art, the "pleasant pictures," and all the "delightful works of imagery," will shrivel like parchment scrolls. The accumulated civilization of millennia will be brought to naught. Egypt's pyramids and temples, Persia's palaces, Greece's lovely fades, Rome's amphitheatres, Christendom's magnificent cathedrals,—all will totter to their base and be overthrown. Nothing will stand that human skill, contrivance, energy, has constructed; all will disappear, and—
"Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind."
III. DESTRUCTION OF GRAND OBJECTS IN NATURE. The taint of man's sin has passed upon nature itself. Pride and vanity have employed natural products for self-glorification; the precious metals have been prostituted to sinful uses; selfishness has turned natural beauties into private property, and either made a gain of them, or jealously secluded them from the intrusion of ordinary humanity. Therefore Nature, as she now is, has become unfit for the habitation of man in his regenerate condition; and "the first earth" has to "pass away," and to be succeeded by the "new heaven and new earth" of the Apocalyptic vision (Revelation 21:1). What the exact amount of change will be, we do not know. Many features of the existing earth may remain—pure snowy summits that the foot of man has never trod; blue glacier caves that have escaped his prying eyes; deep forest glades preserved from the desecration of his presence by thorny jungle or impenetrable wealth of undergrowth; but much of that with which man is most familiar will disappear—perhaps all that could recall acts or thoughts of sin—and the "new heaven and new earth," that God will create, will to such an extent supersede the old, that "the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind" (Isaiah 65:17).
IV. GENERAL ALARM, ESPECIALLY OF THE SINNER AND THE WORLDLY. They of Israel fled into "the holes of the rocks, and the caves of the earth, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty" (Isaiah 2:19). At the last day, "men shall say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us" (Luke 23:30);" Hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:16). The brightness of his presence will be intolerable to those who have "loved darkness rather than light; 'and they will desire, at any rate, to flee from it. Alas! flight will be impossible, concealment will be impossible; no rocks will offer hiding-places to the ungodly from the presence of God. One only refuge is possible that to that men must have fled before, with the heartfelt, earnest cry-
"Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!"