Many years ago, whilst having lunch on the eleventh floor of a tower block where I worked in Swansea, having just put my plate on a table, it suddenly shot across said table, the whole building shook, lights flickered and went out and everyone rushed down the stairs as fast as possible. We had experienced an earthquake. It was terrifying, but a really small one, with thankfully no after effects. It cannot be compared with the awful earthquakes that have caused such a dreadful loss of life and devastation in Turkey and Syria recently. But earthquakes can occur anywhere and anytime (there was one in South Wales a couple of days ago), and they are one of the signs given to us in the Bible that the return of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent.
Several earthquakes are mentioned in the Bible but we will look at two. The first in Matthew 27 v 50-54 records the last breath of the Lord Jesus as He hung on a cross, unjustly killed by cruel, evil men who thought that they would achieve their own selfish ends by killing the Son of God. How wrong they were! An earthquake struck at the very second that Jesus breathed His last. Verse 51 records “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent”. In v 54 the centurion and others who witnessed these most horrible events were so frightened that they testified “Truly this was the Son of God”.
The second earthquake that we will look at is in Zechariah 14 v 4-11
V 4 “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; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south”.
Continue reading v 5, where it records that they would flee as they did during a previous earthquake. This prophecy shows that when the Lord Jesus’ feet shall stand on the earth again on the mount of Olives (the exact spot from which He was taken up into heaven – see Acts 1 v 9-12) there will be another enormous earthquake the result of which will be the most glorious time that we Christadelphians long for. Verse 9 reads
“And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one”.
So you see, however confident we are that we are safe, unmoveable, built on firm foundations, both literally and spiritually, the above proves that nothing is stable, nothing is sure now in this life and NOTHING will stand in the way of the Lord Jesus’ return. Our appeal to you is to please start reading the Bible today before it is too late.
