Isaiah 16:9
9 Therefore I will bewail [bakah] with the weeping [Bakiy] of
Jazer [Ya`azeyr] the vine [gephen] of Sibmah [Sabam]: I will
water [ravah] thee with my tears [dim`ah], O Heshbon [Cheshbown], and
Elealeh ['El`ale']: for the shouting [heydad] for thy summer fruits [qayits] and for thy harvest [qatsiyr] is fallen [naphal]. KJV-Interlinear
9 Therefore I will weep bitterly
for Jazer, for the vine of Sibmah; I will drench you with my tears, O Heshbon
and Elealeh; For the shouting over your summer fruits and your harvest has
fallen away. NASB
In that future day, the
destruction of Moab will be so great, the sorrow so deep, that even God will
cry great tears, if it were possible for God to cry.
This is language of accommodation
such that we can understand the vastness of the destruction and sorrow that
will come upon Moab and the world, during and toward the end of the Tribulation.
God cannot cry or feel
sorrow because He is perfect and perfectly contented with truth and life. But the point here is, that of the tremendous
pain and suffering that the world will experience in those final days of
history.
This distinguishes
those days from all other times in history since Adam.
History has seen many
terrible events, but none will come anywhere near the terribleness of those
future days of destruction.
This is intended help
us begin to understand that the Tribulation will be terrible beyond
imagination. No one should want even his
worst enemy to live in those days.
No one should want themselves
to be living during the Tribulation.
Where there was once the
celebration after a fabulous harvest, will be replaced with grieving beyond
words, beyond expression, beyond imagination, even such terrible times that God
Himself could be brought to tears, so to speak, if that were possible.
And as we are in our
current dispensation, then everyone has the opportunity to believe in Christ
and thus be assured that they will not be a part of the Tribulation. For one day, a day of which we do not know
the schedule, there will be a Rapture which will end our dispensation and begin
the Tribulation. Once the Rapture
occurs, and if someone has not believed in Christ, then they have simply missed
out on the opportunity to avoid the Tribulation.
They of course have the
opportunity to believe and be saved, but they will face some terrible times
during those next seven years, if they survive them at all. For during those seven years of the
Tribulation, over ninty-nine percent of the population of the entire world will
die, and not pleasantly. Very few will
survive to the Second Advent and they that do survive will be believers in Christ
only. No unbelievers will survive, none.
