The Day of the Lord, the last forty-five days of God's wrath, closes with the seventh vial. Six plagues have been seen. The seventh brings the mightiest earthquake the world has known, and after it the Lord himself comes down to the earth.
The Greatest Earthquake
When the seventh angel pours out his vial into the air, a great voice from the throne in heaven's temple says that it is done.
And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
— Revelation 16:18
No earthquake like it has happened since Adam was made. The great city is split into three parts, the cities of the nations fall, and great Babylon is remembered before God. Every island flees away and the mountains are not found.
Hail falls from heaven, each stone weighing about forty kilograms, and men blaspheme God because of the plague. Stones of that size could smash roofs and walls, even concrete ones, as cannonballs once broke fortress walls. They fall only where the cold is, and only God knows where.
How It May Unfold
Earlier sessions traced how this may come about. A large body, bigger and faster than a comet, may pass close to the earth. At the start of the forty-five days it may pass between the earth and the sun, so that the sun looks black and the moon, getting no light, shows a dim red. Rocks from its trail fall as meteors, which older language called stars falling.
The jolt may bring the earth a little nearer the sun, so that the sky seems to shake and the earth reels like a drunkard. The side facing the sun is scorched, while the far side turns bitterly cold, and vapour in the air freezes and falls as hail.
The seas, about seventy-one per cent of the earth, heat up, turn to vapour and gradually dry away. Then the moon's pull, which now raises the tides, falls on the land itself. The old sea floor is drawn upward, mountains sink, islands shift and the great plates that make up the land move, until the earth is level.
Revelation 21:1 says that on the new earth there is no more sea. It is the same earth made new, its map redrawn, with only rivers, streams and lakes left.
The Same Day in Other Scriptures
- The sixth seal (Revelation 6:12–17). The sun turns black, the moon like blood, and mountains and islands are moved from their places. Kings, the rich and the mighty hide in caves and ask the mountains to fall on them. The opening lines belong to the start of the Day of the Lord; the earthquake and the hiding belong to the seventh vial.
- Isaiah 24. The foundations of the earth shake. Whoever flees one danger falls into another, until the earth is emptied and few men are left.
- Micah 1 and Amos 8–9. Mountains melt like wax and flow down, burying villages. The ground itself rises and falls like the Nile in flood, in waves of earth, not water. People who would run to high ground find the high ground sliding.
- Luke 21:25–28. Men give up their lives for fear; some die of sheer terror.
- Isaiah 2. Men throw their gold and silver idols to the bats and run to the rocks.
- Zechariah 14:12. The flesh, eyes and tongues of those who fought against Jerusalem waste away as they stand, leaving them alive but unable to see, speak or move. It may fall on the nations that come against Jerusalem, perhaps the Arab nations of the Middle East. How God will do it we can only guess.
- Jeremiah 25:31–33. The slain lie from one end of the earth to the other, with no one to bury them.
The Few Who Survive
Very few remain. Those who see the end of the 1,335 days are called blessed. They include the woman, Israel, who flees for 1,260 days; the two witnesses tell her people where to go, a place the earthquakes, waves and hail do not reach and where the Antichrist cannot seize them.
A few others survive by running from one danger to the next. After the earthquake they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, and the word to them is to look up and lift up their heads (Luke 21:27–28).
The Lord Comes Down
By the end of the forty-five days the earth has been cleansed of the wicked and has settled, though not yet fully. Then the Lord descends.
And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley…
— Zechariah 14:4
He enters Jerusalem, sits on his throne and rules the world from there. He took the kingdom at the start of the forty-five days, after the thirty days of the ten kings and the Antichrist, and used the seven plagues to clear the earth, not of rubbish but of the people he does not want.
The good he keeps alive, and he will rule over them. They are very few, and not all of them please him, so he will separate even these.
Takeaway
We are to take the seriousness of these events to heart and make a sincere effort to be ready when the Lord comes: to walk by his Spirit and in his truth, and to hold firm in faith, so that we are people who please him at his coming.