Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (60 page)

Zechariah uses the phrase only once in the initial oracle in Chapter 9. Then, as he starts to recapitulate the initial oracle, he uses “that day” a surprising seventeen times (this is after the key-personality section). The book builds to a crescendo in the recapitulating oracle of the final three chapters. At the beginning of the book, Zechariah concentrates on the sixth-century-B.C. historical setting. In the second half, he focuses on the Messiah’s coming and the New People He will choose for Himself during “the day of the Lord.” These are the recipients of the blessings bestowed during Daniel’s final week of covenantal transition.

So what does Zechariah tell us about the “day of the Lord”? The scope of this book does not allow for an in-depth treatment. But simply following this phrase through the book will reveal much.

The first section, Chapters 1 through 8, contains the historical setting of Zechariah’s time and eight visions that are designed to encourage the Jews of the sixth century B.C. Those Jews were in peril as they returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity. They are promised that Jerusalem and its Temple will once again prosper and be the center of God’s activity on earth. There are two references to “that day,” pointing to the climax of the restoration of Jerusalem that unfolds during Christ’s first advent.

The phrase first occurs in 2:11. We learn that the gentile nations will convert and “join themselves to” the true God of Israel. This is a prediction of the mystery of the gospel, which came to fruition in St. Paul’s ministry. The mystery of the gospel is a major theme of the entire first vision of The Apocalypse, so we will return to that topic.

At that time, God will literally “dwell in the midst” of His holy people, a reference to the Eucharist. The Apocalypse is an extremely eucharistic book, but even here in the Old Testament we can detect hints of the Mass.

Further, God’s people will understand that He has been “sent” in “that day.” The phraseology whereby God is being “sent” by God is difficult to decipher without knowledge of the Incarnation. When else was God sent by God?

The prophecy continues by predicting that the Lord will “again” choose Jerusalem. When put into the context of what we find later in Zechariah, this is best understood as the choosing of Christ’s
ekklesia
; the New Jerusalem described in the Gospels and The Apocalypse. We will see this theme expanded in the key-personality section, in which Zechariah acts out the drama of Daniel’s seventieth week.

The phrase occurs a second time in 3:10. “In that day,” guilt will be removed “in a single day.” This is reminiscent of Daniel’s description of the seventieth week, when atonement was accomplished in a single day, Good Friday. We also learn that a generous love for one’s fellowman will be the outgrowth of God’s forgiveness.

The third time we see this “day” mentioned is at the end of this section. “In those days” the Gentiles will flock to God through the Jews. If Zechariah’s vision is to be taken seriously, the Jews would be quickly outnumbered in the Church: “Ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew” (8:23).

The first section is primarily focused on the events of the sixth century B.C., so this is all we learn about the first advent. Yet we already see the general theme of the New Covenant that was established during Daniel’s last week.

The second section encompasses slightly more than the next two chapters. This is the first of two major oracles that focus primarily on Daniel’s seventieth week. The message boils down to this: the countries surrounding Jerusalem are strong and hostile, but when the Messiah arrives, He will establish His everlasting dominion. The New Jerusalem will eventually be victorious throughout the earth.

Unlike earlier in the book, “that day” now becomes the major theme of the visions. Zechariah obviously understands “the day of the Lord” in the context of the first advent, as is evidenced in 9:9: “Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is He, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.”

This coming of the King results in “peace to the nations.” This is the famous peace of the New Covenant that Ezekiel proclaims: “I will make a
covenant of peace
with them” (37:26). This peace is built on the generous love of the earlier vision. That love was a result of the forgiveness obtained on “a single day,” Good Friday.

The Messiah’s “dominion shall be from sea to sea.” Rapturists who deny the establishment of God’s Kingdom during Christ’s first advent must explain these verses some other way. But Catholics can take them for what they obviously mean. When Christ came the first time, He rode into Jerusalem on a colt. As a result of what happened during Holy Week (and throughout the rest of Daniel’s week), He was recognized as the victorious King with an established Church that stretches into every corner of the world. The Church is the physical representation on earth of the Kingdom of God in Heaven. The Kingdom is essentially ecclesiastical.

“That day” reappears in 9:16. Salvation will come from God at this time. “Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!” (9:17). This exclamation reminds us of the “joy of our salvation” that we sometimes take so much for granted. Would anyone really want to be unregenerate again? It is a privilege to share in the benefits of “the day of the Lord.”

Zechariah 11:4–17 contains an interlude between the two major oracles of the second half of the book. Zechariah is the only key personality examined. His experiences as a shepherd become a living parable of the Messiah during “the day of the Lord” (GR3).

As a true and compassionate shepherd, Zechariah replaces a group of evil shepherds. It becomes crystal clear that these evil shepherds are the crux of the problem, not the sheep themselves. Jesus had harsh words for the chief priests and the scribes. Do you hear an echo of those words here in Zechariah? “My anger is hot against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders” (10:3).

Zechariah cares for the sheep: “So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slain for those who trafficked in the sheep” (11:7). Here we see the love of Christ for His sheep. This love of God was the motivating factor in the Passion. Jesus, too, was “doomed to be slain” by His intense love.

But people are not satisfied with Zechariah as the shepherd. He is bought off with thirty shekels of silver: “They weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. Then the Lord said to me, ‘Cast it into the treasury’—the lordly price at which I was paid off by them” (11:12–13). It does not take much experience in reading prophecy to see these experiences of Zechariah as pointing to the Messiah (GR3). The connection to the betrayal of Christ by Judas for thirty pieces of silver is striking.

Now the most important event in Zechariah’s living parable occurs. Zechariah breaks his two staffs, “Grace” and “Union”: “I took my staff Grace, and I broke it, annulling the covenant which I had made with all the peoples” (11:10). How much clearer must Zechariah be? This symbolizes the annulling of the covenant between God and Judah. During Daniel’s seventieth week, the Old Covenant was annulled and a New Covenant, a strong, everlasting one of peace, was established.

“Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel” (11:14). Judah was the believing remnant of the holy bloodline of Israel. Israel was the unbelieving majority. This symbolizes the breaking of any tie of unity between the believing and unbelieving remnant of God’s people. No longer would God concern Himself with a holy bloodline. The New Covenant will be primarily spiritual rather than physical. As Christ Himself stated, from this point on, His family will be those who hear and obey His commandments.

This is a crucial vision for any consistent understanding of Christ’s work during Daniel’s final week. The annulment of the Old Covenant when it was superseded by the New Covenant is clearly predicted. Zechariah is clear that the Good Shepherd will annul the Old Covenant with Israel and break the staffs, “Grace” and “Union.”

Rapturists (along with many modernists) like to claim that there is no basis for our belief that the New Covenant superseded the Old Covenant. They like to claim that we are anti-Semitic for believing that God annulled His Old Covenant in favor of the Church. But the split within Judaism caused by Christ was foreseen in the Old Testament.

Not only is the annulment of the Old Covenant clear here in Zechariah; prophecies of its demise are sprinkled liberally all throughout the Old Testament. For example, in the very next minor prophet, Malachi, we read, “I [God] will put you [the Levitical priesthood] out of my presence.… You have corrupted the covenant of Levi.… The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His Temple.… Then I will draw near to you for judgment.… Then those who feared the Lord … I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.… Behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.” We know that Malachi uses “the day” as does Zechariah, because he tells us that God “will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal. 2:3, 8; 3:1, 5, 16–17; 4:1).

In opposition to the clear prophecies of the minor prophets, rapturists believe that during the Great Tribulation and the Millennium, God will reinstate the Old Covenant, along with its ceremonial blood sacrifices. But this does not take into account what Zechariah taught in the drama of the Good Shepherd. Zechariah predicted that the Good Shepherd would annul the Old Covenant during His first advent. This annulling is intimately associated with the death of the Shepherd, sold for thirty pieces of silver. How much more proof do rapturists require?

Zechariah’s second oracle (chs. 12–14) clearly recapitulates the first oracle, the events of Daniel’s last week. This oracle can seem like a puzzle unless we remain mindful that this vision comes after the shepherd story of Zechariah. In that object lesson, it becomes clear that God will be “annulling the covenant which [He] had made”; so the second oracle will concentrate on the New Covenant made with the New Jerusalem, otherwise known as the “strong” covenant of Daniel’s seventy weeks. The Church as the New Jerusalem comes into sharp focus only after Zechariah envisions the Good Shepherd breaking the two staffs, “Grace” and “Union.”

“That day” is liberally sprinkled throughout the second oracle because the seven decades of covenantal transition have taken front stage in Zechariah. We discover that at this time “all the nations of the earth will come together against” Jerusalem (12:3). This certainly happened when Titus invaded. His army was made up of soldiers from each of the ten provinces of the empire and even contained mercenaries from outside the empire.

As we noted in Daniel, the Jewish people believed to the bitter end that the Lord would deliver Jerusalem yet one more time. Zechariah also predicts this delusion. They wrongly believed that “the inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through … their God” (12:5). Zechariah predicts that they will believe this even after the rest of Judah has been defeated. In fact, the strategy of Titus was to defeat Judah first, “while Jerusalem shall still be inhabited” (12:6). Only when the surroundings of Judea were subdued did the Roman army turn its attention to Jerusalem. The decision of Titus might very well have been based on the devastating retreat of Cestius a few years earlier, but Zechariah had predicted it.

Zechariah now turns his attention to the New Jerusalem, created when the staffs “Grace” and “Union” were broken. “The Lord will put a shield” around His People. And in fact, as Eusebius records, not a single Christian died when Jerusalem fell. After earthly Jerusalem’s defeat, God will not abandon His New Jerusalem. We see in 12:9 that God will take vengeance on all those who come against His people.

The worship of the New Jerusalem will center on “the feast of booths” (14:16–19). This is the only festival mentioned during “the day of the Lord.” One unique feature of this feast was the holy day it observed. Normally, the Old Testament Jews kept the seventh day of the week, Saturday, as the Sabbath. But the day of rest during the feast of booths was the
first
day of the week, Sunday (Lev. 23:33–36).

This is an amazing truth hidden in Zechariah. Rarely is Zechariah 14 used to help Seventh Day Adventists (this group of Christians worships on Saturday) understand why the Church worships on Sunday, the first day of the week. Of course, that is the day Christ rose (Easter) and the Church was born (Pentecost). But the institution of Sunday for “holy convocation” in the New Jerusalem is foretold all the way back in Zechariah.

As if that were not enough, the feast of booths commemorated the exodus of God’s people from the slavery of Egypt. This theme of the New Covenant exodus has already appeared in the first oracle: “They shall pass through the sea of Egypt” (10:11). The Apocalypse expands on the connection between the Old Covenant exodus celebrated in the festival of booths, and the New Covenant exodus from spiritual Egypt in 70 A.D.

During “that day,” “the inhabitants of Jerusalem … when they look on Him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him” (12:10). Rapturists believe this must happen at the end of the Great Tribulation, but the early Church understood this prophecy as being fulfilled during the fall of Jerusalem to Rome. For example, Lactantius, who lived in the second half of the third century, lists a long series of Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in the first advent: “Also Zechariah says:
‘And they shall look on me whom they pierced.’
Amos thus speaks of the obscuring of the sun: ‘In that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall go down at noon, and the clear day shall be dark.’ Jeremiah also speaks of the city of Jerusalem, in which He suffered: ‘Her sun is gone down while it was yet day; she hath been confounded and reviled, and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword.’
Nor were these things spoken in vain. For after a short time the Emperor Vespasian
subdued the Jews, and laid waste their lands with the sword and fire, besieged and reduced them by famine, overthrew Jerusalem” (
TED
, 46).