700 years before Christ, the prophet Isaiah wrote astounding prophetic details about the Messiah to come. He wrote about Jesus and his sacrifice to save mankind from the wrath of God. Seven centuries later, Jesus reads aloud to the Jews about himself from Isaiah’s book:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, ^{Isaiah 61:1} To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. ^{Isaiah 61:2} And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. ^{Luke 4:18-21}

Isaiah 61:1 speaks of the Messiah (the one anointed, or chosen, by the Holy Spirit of God) and that he is to deliver the good news (the gospel) of salvation to the spiritually bankrupt. He has come to give hope to the hopeless, to bring the light of God’s truth to those who live in the darkness of ignorance (the blind), and to free those who are captive to sin and crushed by the world.

In Isaiah 61:2, the “acceptable year of the Lord” is the age when salvation is offered to mankind. The Messiah has arrived, and through his substitutional atonement for our sins and by faith in him, man can be deemed righteous and reconciled to God. Jesus stuns the congregation when he tells them he has fulfilled this prophecy! They were so joyous that the long-awaited Messiah had arrived with the news of salvation and eternal life that they tried to kill him. Not much later, they would succeed in nailing him to a cross, an act of murder that unwittingly achieved God’s plan for salvation.

What Jesus did not read was the next part of Isaiah’s 2^nd verse, which says to proclaim “the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus stopped short because it was not yet time for vengeance. For now, Jesus has come to save the world, not to condemn it. ^{John 3:17} Be thankful that we live in this time when the grace of God is extended to all who believe, and we can accept his gift of salvation, but the day of vengeance is near and will arrive when least expected, like a thief in the night. ^{1st Thessalonians 5:1-7}

Humanity Under Judgement

The Acceptable Year of the Lord has been a very long year. Two thousand calendar years and counting, but as we witness the accelerating deterioration of humanity’s morality, we know that time must be short. It seems God has left the building, and the guard rails of Judeo-Christian values, ethics, and principles are falling away. It feels that way because it is true. God abandons those who reject him. Paul tells us in Romans that God deals with unbelief by giving man over to himself.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient (improper – unrighteous); ^{Romans 1:28}

A reprobate mind is morally corrupt, foreordained to damnation, rejected as worthless, and not withstanding a test. The blooming depravity in our world, a product of reprobate minds, is evident. Unthinkable things are now common headlines; it seems we are becoming like Sodom, and that it is as it was in the days of Noah; both biblical references to the societal condition that brought the complete and absolute destruction by the wrath of God. ^{2 Peter 2:6 & Matthew 24:37}

Proof of our societal decay is not hard to find. We see sexual perversion promoted and normalized, along with the insidious indoctrination of children into vile ideologies. Violent acts of evil are carried out against the helpless, sometimes by sacrificing the unborn to the god of convenience, sometimes by demonic youth slaughtering their classmates. We see corrupt and profane politicians who lust for power and money, pandering to a depraved and immoral constituency. We see mass insanity, where people do not know if they are girls or boys, mutilating themselves to be what they are not. We live in an apostate society where a preponderance of the population has proudly and decisively rejected God. The wholesome righteousness of Christianity is often mocked and shunned, and disciples of Christ are made out to be fools. There is no fear of God, and it is undoubtedly late December in the Acceptable Year of the Lord.

This is God’s judgment: that pagan man is abandoned and left to his own devices. When God leaves, you can count on man going off the rails – immorality, depravity, and malevolence will reign. At some point, this will go too far. The divine scales will tip, God will end the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance will dawn.

 The Day of Vengeance of Our God

The day of vengeance is the final cataclysmic judgment by God on unrepentant sinners who have rejected Jesus Christ. The wrath of God that will be poured out on the unbelieving world is almost incomprehensible. Look to the book of Revelation for a taste of the suffering and horror that will engulf the Earth.

It begins with Christians being taken off the Earth. ^{1st Thessalonians 4:16-18} About 2.3 billion people follow some form of Christianity today. Assume that three-quarters of those are not really Christians but, instead, a sad facsimile headed to eternal damnation. ^{Matthew 7:13-14 & Matthew 7:21-23} So, if ¼ of professing Christians have actually made Jesus their Lord, then 600 million people will instantaneously disappear off the face of the Earth. This will surely plunge the world into chaos! Along with the Christians will go the values and ethics of a people devoted to God. What had been a bulwark against the tide of the evil inherent in man and the demonic desires of our old friend Satan will be gone.

The world will be ripe for conquest, which will happen by godless, malevolent men. They will control the world’s affairs while, for seven terrible years, God will unleash his wrath in dramatic natural catastrophic events to torment and crush a wicked world. The magnitude of suffering will be astounding. Many, including the nation of Israel, will turn to Christ in this time of torment. The culmination will be the return of Jesus Christ to Earth, not this time as the suffering servant pleading people to believe, but as God Almighty with a heavy hand to judge and make war with all who oppose him. Armageddon, the grand finale, will be known as the 2-second battle as Jesus will kill them all simply by his word. ^{Revelation 19:21}

For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. ^{Romans 14:11}

Now, back to today, we are still in the acceptable day of the Lord. As John the Baptist said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” ^{Matthew 3:2} The disciples of Jesus Christ will not endure the day of vengeance. So please wake up, take heed, and believe. The coming storm is obvious to those who live in the Word of God.