“Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.” Joel 1.

The day of the Lord is one of the strongest themes in the Bible as a whole. It is often called judgment day. It is the day that all that is wrong gets judged in the earth, and all that is right gets demonstrated as secure and sure in the judgement.

I fear for my North American friends that we may believe we are immune to the day of the Lord, to judgment day. As though our countries cannot be shaken. Rather, Scripture promises that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken will remain.

And so as judgment looms on the horizon for our way of life, our selfish, me first way of life, not kingdom first way of life (speaking of Christianity) I fear that our belief in our infallibility is setting us up for the hard hard fall. There is a storm promised to every believer, and there is a storm promised in the day of the Lord which is for all flesh. No one shall escape it. How can we act like our nations are secure and we are secure when every sign in scripture and life points otherwise? This is willful blindness, and we are wise to ask God for leadership physically.

Spiritually we carry on with our schedules, rhythms, leisurely God-focused energy and act as though all will continue as it has forever. As though the shaking promised will certainly not shake me. Would that we would endure our shaking now, early, and before we need it. Would that we would beg God to sift us as wheat, as Peter was sifted. For God to separate what is Seed and what is flesh in us before the greater winnowing occurs on the earth. Now is the final times of peaceful growth and learning. The trial by fire will require learning while drowning. We are better off to learn to float without fighting waves.

Everything will be salted with fire, Jesus promised. How the church has taken the very words and promises of the Bible and ignored them in doctrines that protect our indolence and insolence. Hear this: any doctrine that I hide my _self_ behind is demonic. It’s just that simple. Rather, Jesus is light, fire, and judge. And the day of the Lord is finally his day to shine, shake, and separate. Our presumption in this is not a good sign for our endurance of it.

The first preaching of the kingdom of heaven was accompanied by calls to repent. Will the second coming be any less?