The Day of the Lord will be Dreadful Darkness

Amos 5:18-20: "Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness not light . . . pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?"



It is perplexing to think of people who are engrossed in sin, longing for the Day of the Lord (i.e. the Day when Jesus Christ returns to judge the reprobate and pardon the surrendered). On that Day, He will gather His redeemed to shine "like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matthew 13:43); however, Christ also will send out His angels to collect those who determined themselves in their earthly lives to be their own lords. These are the ones who lived their lives for themselves and did not seek God as their Master and Savior. These are the ones not unlike those described Amos 5 & 6:



1. They turned justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground (5:7).


2. They despised those who told the truth (5:10).


3. They "trampled" the poor, forcing them to give their meager reserves of grain (5:11).


4. They were great at ritual worship, but their hearts were far from truly worshipping God (5:21-27).


5. They were complacent as they enjoyed their lives of luxury on ornate couches and beds inlaid with ivory. They drank wine by the bowlful in their celebrated feasts, as they paid homage to themselves and their alleged attainments (6:1-7).



When God brought His earthly judgment upon these wicked people through the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, they would cry out for the end of the world (i.e. the Day of the Lord). God's earthly wrath was so severe in the eyes of the wicked, that they could not imagine that anything worse could befall them. The people "wailed in the streets . . . at every public square" (5:16); they wanted their lives to end so that they might find relief from their painful, earthly misery.



What the wicked then and now do not understand is that the Day of the Lord will only amplify the intensity of God's wrath upon them. When Christ appears in the sky, all of the "nations of the earth will mourn" (Matthew 24:30). Both kings and paupers will flee to caves among the rocks of the mountains and will cry out for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them to save them from the face of God and His wrath (Revelation 6:15-16). But their requests will be to no avail, for they will see for a brief instance the Son of Man coming "with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30). Then, as the elect are gathered to be in the glorious light of God in Heaven (Matthew 13:43), the reprobate will experience the horror of total darkness. The sun, moon, and stars will stop giving forth light (Matthew 25:29), leaving the unsaved in "pitch-darkness, without a ray of brightness." (Amos 5:26). This "Day of the Lord" will be a day of terror, permanent darkness, and unending torment as God unleashes the full fury of His Holy wrath upon those who did not receive Him as Lord through faith in His glorious grace. For those who think that times are tough on the earth, they will not know until the Day of the Lord just how merciful and patient the Lord has been in holding back His judgment upon the unregenerate.

The illustrative comparison of meeting a bear in his den and then being bitten by a snake seems to reinforce the doubly impressive fierceness and intensity of God's wrath upon the wicked. Whereas the wicked presumably believe themselves to have escaped from the proverbial "lion" (i.e. the earthly experience) by entering into the eternal realm, they now find themselves trapped in the cave of the bear and cannot escape. This analogy reinforces that God's eternal judgment is final . . . there will be no escape from His Righteous wrath! The "Bear" is ready to maul and devour the wicked in everlasting judgment.

This prophetic revelation should be a warning to all of humanity of the coming "Day of the Lord" when every person will stand before the Lord in judgment. Those who have yielded themselves to the Lordship of Christ through surrender and faith in His solely sufficient gift of His death for the atonement of sins will be eternally blessed in the presence of the Lord; for those who obstinately refused surrender to the Lord cannot imagine the dreadful fate that awaits them. Jesus said it well of Himself in Matthew 10:28: "Be afraid of the One (Christ) who can destroy both soul and body in hell." If you still have breath in your lungs, then today is the day of your salvation. Repent, submit to the Lord, and receive His gift of eternal life for the forgiveness of your sins, and this Day will never become reality in your life.