Immediately after the tribulation of those days
the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give
its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the
powers of the heavens will be shaken.(Matthew 24:29)
At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus said, the
universe will collapse: the light of the sun and the
moon will be extinguished, the stars will fall, the
powers of the heavens will be shaken. The basis for
this symbolism is in Genesis 1:14-16, where the sun,
moon, and stars (�the powers of the heavens�) are
spoken of as �signs� which �govern� the world. Later
in Scripture, these heavenly lights are used to speak
of earthly authorities and governors; and when God
threatens to come against them in judgment, the same
collapsing-universe terminology is used to describe
it. Prophesying the fall of Babylon to the Medes in
539 B. C., Isaiah wrote:
Behold, the Day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with
fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation;
And He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the
stars of heaven and their constellations Will not
flash forth with their light; The sun will be dark
when it rises, And the moon will not shed its light
(Isaiah 13:9-10).
Significantly, Isaiah later prophesied the fall of
Edom in terms of de-creation:
And all the host of heaven will wear away, And the sky
will be rolled up like a scroll; All their hosts will
also wither away As a leaf withers from the vine, Or
as one withers from the fig tree (Isaiah 34:4),
Isaiah�s contemporary, the prophet Amos, foretold
the doom of Samaria (722 B.C.) in much the same way:
�And it will come about in that day,� Declares the
Lord GOD, �That I shall make the sun go down at noon
And make the earth dark in broad daylight� (Amos 8:9).
Another example is from the prophet Ezekiel, who
predicted the destruction of Egypt. God said this
through Ezekiel:
�And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens,
and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a
cloud, And the moon shall not give its light. All the
shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you
And will set darkness on your land,� Declares the Lord
GOD (Ezekiel 32:7-8).
It must be stressed that none of these events
literally took place. God did not intend anyone to
place a literalist construction on these statements.
Poetically, however, all these things did happen: as
far as these wicked nations were concerned, "the
lights went out." This is simply figurative language,
which would not surprise us at all if we were more
familiar with the Bible and appreciative of its
literary character.
What Jesus is saying in Matthew 24, therefore, in
prophetic terminology immediately recognizable by his
disciples, is that the light of Israel is going to be
extinguished; the covenant nation will cease to exist.
When the Tribulation is over, old Israel will be gone.
-David Chilton "The Great Tribulation"
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