Study 1: Introduction

Thanks bro. chairman and my dearly beloved brethren and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, and our dear young people.

We have before us this afternoon, one of the most dynamic prophecies in the entire scripture. And yet we tend to categorize the prophecy of Zephaniah as a minor prophet, a prophecy of doom and gloom and impending judgment, which of course, it is! But it’s much more than that, b&s, as we shall see as we proceed this afternoon, God willing.

This little prophecy of Zephaniah is extremely wide and comprehensive in its scope, it contains some of the most fundamental themes of the scripture; it’s a precursor to the Apocalypse, it has its roots and foundations in the book of Genesis, it brings not only some stark and unmistakable language of impending doom for the generation in which he wrote, but the same language is used of the generation in which we find ourselves. But more than that, b&s, as we proceed in our studies today, we’re going to find that in Zephaniah, of all the books of the bible in which it could be found, (it’s in many books of the bible), but of all the books of the bible in which Yahweh should couch for us, His determination to destroy the harlot system which has blinded the minds of men for so many centuries, it’s the book of Zephaniah in which He chose to do it! As I said, what we find here, is really a foundation for much of what we see in the Apocalypse, and the absolute determination of our God, to remove from this earth, every corrupting influence that has been brought to bear upon mankind by ancient and modern Babylon, the harlot system which is soon to disappear. Here it is in book the of Zephaniah; so by the time we finish our studies together today, I hope you will go away with a little bit more of a expansive understanding of what this book was designed to do. It certainly came as a surprise to me, b&s, when I came to study this book and saw it initially as a minor prophecy, designed for a specific purpose for a people that were in apostacy at the time, to find that it was much, much more than that indeed!

There are some of you who have had the opportunity to hear this study, at least an abridged version of it, when I was here two years ago, those of you who were in that situation will have some background. But we’ve got three sessions in front of us, and we’ll try and go through this in a very careful way, that we may see the way in which it builds up towards the climax in chapter 3, as we get to that crucial verse, Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 8, that really forms the structure around which the whole prophecy is built.

Let’s then have a look at the book as a whole. We need to analyse the prophecy of Zephaniah and to see how it’s structured. What we have as you have seen already from the handout that you’ve been given, the transparencies that I’ll be screening behind me here; what we’ve given you is a list of the basic information that we intend to use. I’d like you to try and concentrate, b&s, this is the reason that you’ve been given the information because we are going to make you work today! Maybe not in the first session so much, but certainly in the second session, we’re going to make you work, and therefore, it will be necessary for you, to very carefully follow the train of thought, hence you’ve been given some notes to save you the task of writing these things down, if you are so inclined to do. And so you might like to just add here or there, some extra information on the sheets that we’ve given you.

When you stand back from this prophecy of Zephaniah, it’s powerfully obvious that it’s leading theme is the great day of Yahweh is near. That is very much emphasized in this first chapter, so that in chapter 1 verse 1 through to chapter 2 verse 3, which Tim read for us a little while ago, we’ve got the first section of the book, HASTENING JUDGMENTS UPON JUDAH, but the scope of that section is not designed primarily for Judah alone. It has a much wider scope than that as we shall see, we are meant to cast our minds forward to the times in which we live, as the great day of Yahweh bears down upon us. So there are some warnings and some exhortations in this chapter for each one of us.

The second section of the book is from chapter 2 verse 4 through 15, in which we have the judgments upon the nations. So again the language is extremely interesting, not designed just for that day. Then we have a short section in chapter 3 from verses 1 to 7, in which the sins of Judah and Jerusalem are outlined, and the reasons are given as to why that city was to be taken away and the temple destroyed, as it was of course, in the year 586 by Nebuchadrezzar. And then in chapter 3 verses 8 to 20 we have the sequel to that work, the destruction of Jerusalem is to finally culminate in its restoration, and the restoration of its people. But this time, b&s, in an entirely changed environment, so we see in the 3rd chapter from verse 8 onwards, a remnant restored and redeemed in a completely changed environment. Now that’s where we’re going to end up hopefully as we proceed with our study.

We say at the base of that transparency, that the purpose of the prophecy was to encourage a faithful remnant in the face of rapidly approaching divine judgment; that undoubtedly, is its purpose, and you and I are amongst that remnant! And the roots of the prophecy as I said earlier, can be found in the book of Genesis from chapter 1 through to chapter 35, and the life of Jacob. The prophecy begins with the words of Genesis 1 and verse 6, it ends with the words of Genesis 32 to 35, and so we’re going to see, that that is where our mind really should be if we hope to ascertain the underlying theme, the sub-strata of this prophecy. But more of that a little bit later.

Let’s have a look at this character Zephaniah! Why was he chosen? who was he? and what was his purpose? Well, there’s a very interesting, in fact, it’s a very curious genealogy given concerning this man. It is the longest genealogy of any of the prophets; that in itself is unique; nowhere else will you find a genealogy like verse 1 in the prophets. That ‘the Word of Yahweh came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah’, why does it take him back four generations? Well, there’s a reason for that, b&s, because the Hizkiah of verse 1 is in fact, Hezekiah, the king of Judah, and so his genealogy is deliberately traced back to Hezekiah, that we might understand that Zephaniah had access to the palace and therefore, access to the young king, Josiah, who had come to power, at the incredibly young age of 8 and who ruled for 31 years, and who was, of course, one of the greatest and most dynamic of Judah’s kings. A man who set himself to cleanse that nation of idolatry, and even carried it further into the north, into Israel who had been into captivity, for something like 120 years. He was a man determined to destroy the Babylonish idolatry that his father and grandfather had introduced into that Land; he was determined to destroy it from that Land. That’s why I believe this prophecy is the one book of the bible where Yahweh had deliberately couched His purpose to remove from the earth, the corruption and apostacy  of Babylon the Great! because the roots of the problems that Josiah confronted were to be found back in the times of Nimrod and Cush, in Babylon. And you and I, of course, witness today the culmination of that apostacy in the earth. And it will be our task  as it was Josiah’s task, in the great day of Yahweh, to remove that apostacy from the earth, and to lift the veil from off the face of the nations, that they might see with clarity the truth, which had unfortunately being enveloped in apostacy in the times of Zephaniah and Josiah.

And there’s something else that’s curious about verse 1, and that’s the name of Zephaniah’s father! You see, it says there that his father’s name was Cushi, now b&s, I ask you, if you were a Hebrew, would you name one of your children, Cushi? Cush was the father of Nimrod, Cush was the statute maker, the ideologue,   the man who put together the ideas, that were developed by Nimrod; he was the father of Nimrod’s rebellion, he was really therefore, the father of the Roman Catholic church. He was the man, (and it’s a little bit like Micah 6 verse 16) ‘the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab’. Well, it was true of Cush and Nimrod, ‘the statutes of Cush were kept and all the works of the house of Nimrod’, because Cush whose name in ancient times was also ‘Bel’ was known as the ‘confounder’. He was the man who invented many of the mythologies which became the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church. He was the man who was the promoter of the rebellion, he therefore, became known as ‘Bel’ which means ‘the confounder’. His symbol was a club and you find him referred to in the book of Jeremiah, in chapter 50 and verse 23 it says, ‘How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken’, it’s a reference to Bel or Cush, the hammer or the club, which brought about the bursting and the division of peoples because of the confusion of their religion. And of course, Jeremiah 50 is about Babylon and Yahweh’s impending judgments upon Babylon, both then in the days of the prophet, and today. He’s also referred to in Jeremiah 50 verses 1 and 2 where the prophet aims at Babylon and says, ‘Bel is confounded’ there’s a play on his name; here he is the confounder, the confounder of the pure tongue, the pure religion of ancient times is confounded himself, and so his people were to be destroyed. But of course, they are still alive and well today in the Roman Catholic system, and that prophecy applies to that system as well!

So Bel or Cush, was the man responsible for much of the apostacy that we see, in that system and in its harlot daughters in the earth today. In Egypt he was also known as Mercury or Hermes, you know, the apostle Paul was almost called that name because he was the chief speaker. He was called the son of Ham, the great original prophet of idolatry in Egypt. He is also related to Nebo, one of the gods of Babylon; we all know Nebuchadnezzar, ‘Nebo defend the boundary’, Nebo was a god based upon Cush, because Cush of course, was seen as the very foundation of the religion of Babylon. He was also known as Molech, in Zephaniah chapter 1 at the end of verse 5 we read of another version of the name Molleck, Malcham, ‘them that sware by Malcham’ Malcham means ‘king’ but it’s just another way of putting Molech. That is a reference to Cush, and Cush gets 3 mentions in the prophecy of Zephaniah, that’s quite a lot for a small book. Once in each chapter, (now we’ll look at those 3 occurrences at least the other two, a little later on) but the point that I’m making, b&s, at the outset is this, that any Hebrew even a half witted one, would know that Cush was one of the favourite names of the original popes; you couldn’t miss that fact! It was one of the original names of the popes! and it would be like me having a son and calling him John Paul 111; now you just wouldn’t do it, would you? if you were a Christadelphian and knew where you were heading. So you see, when you read verse 1 of Zephaniah chapter 1, always bear in mind that there is in this verse, a couple of unusual things that need to be thought about; first there’s the length of the genealogy, then there’s the fact that Zephaniah, whose name by the way means ‘whom Yahweh hid’, is the son of Cushi.

And that man Cushi was born during the reign of Manasseh, and Manasseh was the man you’ll recall, in 2 Kings 21, who set out on a deliberate and determined campaign to corrupt the religion of Judah. And what he did was to borrow the religion of Babylon; he destroyed all the bibles, except the one that was buried in the rubble of the temple. He set about to destroy all the bible expositors and all the prophets; it is said, that he actually cut asunder the prophet Isaiah, who had hidden in a hollow log. He filled, the record says, he absolutely filled the streets of Jerusalem with blood, the blood of people who stood up against him, and who resisted the corruption of Judah’s pure religion by Babylonish teaching; he built altars to the sun god, he built all sorts of altars and images in Jerusalem, that the land was utterly defiled. Guess where he ended up, b&s? The Assyrians came down upon him, says the record of 2 Chronicles 33, and they took him away. You would think if the Assyrians came down they’d take him back to Nineveh or one of their cities, wouldn’t you? Oh, no, the Assyrians came down and they took him to Babylon, now, it’s a fact of history that the Assyrians and the Babylonians didn’t get on too well at that time. But Yahweh made sure that that man went to Babylon! the very home of the apostacy that he borrowed from them, and of course, he repented in Babylon, and he came back, and he tried to undo the dreadful apostacy that he introduced. But it was too late! and when he died, his son Amon went back to the old ways of his father. And when Josiah came to the throne, with a few faithful men behind him, they tried to undo that apostacy; it was hopeless, they were finished (we’ll say a bit more about that in a minute), they were utterly finished! because they were no better than the Roman Catholic church, the ecclesia had become the church. That was the background to Zephaniah’s prophecy, so you see, to name someone ‘Cush’ was really to indicate that that was your religion, the religion of Babylon!

So Cushi was the son of Gedaliah. Gedaliah means ‘whom Yah hath made great’, who was the son of Amariah, ‘whom Yah had spoken of’, who was the son of Hizkiah, the king of Judah, ‘strengthened of Yah’, and when you put those names together, and you see a bit of the background, you’ve got the underlying theme of this prophecy. For here, b&s, here with this little message given to the faithful remnant in Judah, Yahweh was saying that He would save that remnant, whom He would hide among the Cushites. The ecclesia was corrupt, it was the church, but He would hide among the Cushites, a little remnant, and that little remnant, b&s, would be made great through the One whom He promised way back in the days of Abraham; (and we’ll see the reason why I put that little comment in brackets a little later on), and strengthen for Himself the meaning of the name Hezekiah!  So just in that first verse, there’s a lot to be said about this little prophecy and where it heads off; we need just to keep that in mind, as we proceed here today.

Well then, let’s just emphasize what the character of the ecclesia was. As I said, Judah was steeped in idolatry and worldly practice; they were totally insensitive to the things of the truth after nearly 60 years of apostacy, and they were under irrevocable divine sentence of judgment. It might not hurt to have just a very quick look at 2 Kings 23 (keep your hand in Zephaniah) and verses 26 and 27, just to see how irrevocable this judgment was. It was as irrevocable, b&s, as the judgment that is impending upon the harlot system today, 2 Kings 23 from verse 26, this is after Josiah’s great Passover in his 18th year, the book of the Law has been found, he’s sent the delegation to Huldah the prophetess, and the message comes back, ‘it’s hopeless, you can’t do anything to convert this people’. It didn’t stop him trying but you can’t do anything, they’re finished, they’re gone, and I’m going to be merciful to you, Josiah, I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you, and He did, at the age of 39 he was dead, and within 30 years they were gone! This was the message, verse 26, ‘Notwithstanding Yahweh turned not from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal. And Yahweh said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there’. That was the end of Josiah’s life; you can see what it says in verse 28, ‘Now the rest of the acts of Josiah’ and then the record goes on to speak of his death. That was the end of it, it was finished!

Now Zephaniah came to prophesy in the early part of Josiah’s reign. Have a quick look at chapter 24 verses 2 to 4, ‘Yahweh sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians'(notice who’s first, bands of the Chaldees, they were the religious class of Babylon) and bands of the Moabites and so on, He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yahweh, which He spake by his servants the prophets. Surely at the commandment of Yahweh came this upon Judah, to remove them out of His sight‘ why? Well, for the sins of Manasseh, but didn’t he repent? Yes, he did repent, he might be in the kingdom, who knows! he did repent, he tried to undo what he’d done, but the effect upon his people was catastrophic; ‘for the sins of Manasseh according to all that he did, and also for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which Yahweh would not pardon‘. And there’s a system waiting, b&s, a system waiting for the vengeance of our God that down through the centuries had shed much innocent blood, the blood of your brethren and my brethren and if they could do it today, they would be doing it today; and you know we wouldn’t be in this place if the Roman Catholic system had the power that it had in past centuries, make no mistake about that! Our blood would be in the streets, and the judgment of God is impending upon that system, and He’s waiting to undo the work of Cush and Nimrod; that’s the subject matter of the prophecy of Zephaniah.

So if we go back to the book of Zephaniah, we see that only a small remnant surrounding Josiah remained faithful; men like Hilkiah the high priest, the father of Jeremiah the prophet. Jeremiah was one of the best friends of Josiah, they were of a similar age, Josiah came to power at 8, he began his reformation at age 20 and Jeremiah spoke of that very early in his prophecy, because Jeremiah began to prophecy when Josiah was 21. Zephaniah, a prince, a royal prince of the house of David had access to the king and when you read Zephaniah chapter 1, there’s no doubt that Josiah’s reformation in his 20th year was a reformation based upon the prophesying of Zephaniah; he got rid of the very problems that Zephaniah highlighted, or at least he attempted to do that.

But, of course, this small group of people, who surrounded the king were very small in number indeed; there was Hilkiah and Shaphan and some of Shaphan’s sons. There was Huldah the prophetess and her husband who was keeper of the wardrobe, there were a number of other people too, but they were a very small number, so small within the book of Jeremiah chapter 5, the prophet is told, ‘run ye through the streets of Jerusalem, go this way and that way and see if you can find Me, one man, just one man that keeps the truth! and I will pardon the sins of it’. He would have found a few in the palace but not in the streets of Jerusalem. They were all Catholics, I’m putting it in modern language; the truth had been lost! and for those brethren and sisters that thought may be that the time had come for reformation, even in them there was an attitude of lukewarmness and hypocrisy towards that reformation. As Jeremiah says in chapter 3 and verse 10 as Yahweh spoke through him, ‘Yet for all the treachery of Israel for which I took all away, He says, this people Judah hath not turned unto Me with their whole heart, but feignedly’ (it’s a sham) and Zephaniah puts his finger right on that in chapter 1 and verse 12, as we shall see. So here’s the background of this book!

Now we’ve spoken a little of the background of Zephaniah, I’ve said that he’s a descendant of Hezekiah of the house of David. Well, he prophesied in the years 630 to 621 BC during the early reign of Josiah. As I said he was contemporary with Jeremiah and he was responsible for Josiah’s early reforms. If you’d like to a look at the chart, you will get some idea, and it’s important that you see where these events are taking place, not just because it’s interesting but because it’s vital to the interpretation. Here’s a chart, it’s got two parts to it (top and bottom) in the bar that runs along you’ve got the long reign of Manasseh for 55 years in which the ecclesia was totally corrupted; you can see where Isaiah has been sawn asunder we believe, in the reign of Manasseh. Then you’ve got the short reign of king Amon his son, and then 31 years of Josiah. Now in the yellow you can see that Zephaniah the prophet, prophesied in the early part of Josiah’s reign, probably about 626, 627 BC. As he was prophesying, Jeremiah came on the scene; he was followed by Habakkuk and so on, right down then through the times of the sons of Josiah, Jehoiahaz, Jehoiachim and Zedekiah, until finally in 586, the temple is destroyed and Judah was taken away into captivity. Of course, it was in that time that Ezekiel prophesied as well as Jeremiah and so on, and so there is some idea of the situation in which we find ourselves, as we open up this little prophecy. There’s its background.

Now then, b&s, just let us remind ourselves once again, what the principle theme of this prophecy is; The great day of Yawheh is near, and this prophecy is given to warn of inevitable and impending judgments upon Judah, upon Jerusalem, and upon all the nations, hence its scope should not be confined to that time only, we should sweep into the future to our own day. It was to  hail salvation for a faithful remnant, and ultimate redemption for Israel, and indeed, all the nations! Let’s then have a closer look at some of the content of chapter 1. And the first thing you notice, b&s, when you come to chapter 1 is that the language of verse 2 and verse 3 is drawn from the book of Genesis; I’m not going to focus on this too much at this point, we’ll come back to this later on, but it’s necessary for us to understand from whence the foundations come. Here are the roots of this prophecy, in verse 2 the very first word spoken by Yahweh, ‘I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the land’ saith Yahweh. The first work He set His hand to do, was to create all things upon the face of the land, in six days of creative activity. Then He says in verse 3, ‘I will consume man and beast’ (I want you to notice the order of these, we’re going in the reverse order to the creation, ‘adam’ and behemah’ are the words). ‘I will consume man and beast, I will consume the fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea’ (see how it’s going in the reverse order to Genesis chapter 1) ‘and the stumbling blocks with the wicked, and I will cut off ‘adam’ (as the word is in the Hebrew) from off the face of the land’. You know that’s the language of Genesis 1 in reverse, but really it’s an allusion to Genesis chapter 6. You listen to the words of Genesis 6 and verse 7, ‘I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and the creeping thing; and the fowls of the air’, that’s the precise language of Genesis 6 and verse 7, in other words, b&s, Yahweh is taking our mind back to the beginning and especially to the judgment in the days of Noah. And when the doors of the ark were opened, they came forth, 3 families, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and it wasn’t too long before the Roman Catholic church was invented, in the line of Ham through Cush and Nimrod! We’re going to see that, that what God is doing in this prophecy is this, He’s saying, ‘Look, I cleaned the earth up by going in reverse to what I did in Genesis chapter 1, but when you opened the door of the ark, you corrupted the pure religion that I had created. You all came out of that ark with one voice, with one lip, you all spoke the same religion; you were all one family, but it didn’t take you long to corrupt what I did!’ And Cush the statute maker was at work, within 200 years or so of the flood, and there was a great rebellion by his son, Nimrod, who became the first god, the first god of the earth, and the first king of the kingdom of men. We’re going to see that, b&s, that’s where that language takes our minds back to Genesis chapter 6.

Where does it end, this prophecy? Well, at the end of the prophecy we read in verse 19 of chapter 3, ‘Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out’; that word ‘halteth’ there is only used 3 times in the Old Testament, its other occurrences are Genesis 32 verse 31 when Jacob halted upon his thigh and in an almost identical passage in Micah chapter 4 verses 6 and 7, where, b&s, Micah refers to saving her that ‘halteth’, in other words, saving the nation of Israel, the sons of Jacob, her that halteth; so you see, it’s only got 3 contexts and they’re all exactly the same. I don’t need to read anymore, do I? because it’s obvious that that’s drawn from the life of Jacob. So the roots of this prophecy from beginning to end, are back in the book of Genesis. Now if you have any doubts about that, just hang on, hold your horses, and you’ll see as we proceed that that’s exactly where our minds should be!

So then, let’s go to verse 4 of chapter 1. Let’s see who it was that these judgments were aimed against; there are 6 victims of divine judgment referred to in Zephaniah chapter 1 verses 4 to 6:

1. the first, of course, preeminently were the idols of Baal. The idols of Baal in Judah, these were the visible evidence of Babylon. ‘I will stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal’ (the word ‘remnant’ actually means ‘the name’ that’s how Rotherham translates it in his margin) ‘the name of Baal from this place; and,
2. the name of the Chemarim with the priests’. Now who were these ‘Chemarim’? Well, you’ve probably heard that they were black robed priests. The idea of blackness comes from just one of the senses of the word ‘chemar’ from which Chemarim comes; and it’s suggested from that that their trademark was a black robe, but that really isn’t the essential idea of that word ‘Chemarim’. But they wore strange apparel as evidenced from verse 8, He says, ‘I will cut off all that are clothed in strange apparel’, He doesn’t just mean strange clothing in the sense of strange everyday clothing; He’s talking about religious clothing, because you see in the earlier verses, He’s focusing upon priests, and the Chemarim were a class of priests, and guess where they got the design of their clothing from? It might well have been black you see, because that was the trademark of the Babylonian priests of Nimrod and Simeramas (?), she set up a class of priests; the preeminent priests were called ‘the hinge’ because they had access to the door, and they could control the door, hence in Latin the word for ‘hinge’ is ‘cardo’ from which you get ‘cardinal’ and their particular trademark was a red robe, they were the preeminent priests of Simeramas, the cardinals, but there were a lower form of priests too, and they are very low form, I can tell you!, and they use to wear black robes, and their job was to stoke the fires of the sacrifices of that religion, hence they wore black so they didn’t get dirty. You see, the black robe was the trademark of this kind of priest, but Chemarim, actually means, the root idea of the word means ‘to shrivel up’ and ‘to be deeply affected by passion’ someone who’s so deeply affected by passion that they won’t even eat, will shrivel up; so the word really is a reference to an Ascetic monk or an ecclesiastic, an excited one who led the people in pagan rites. He’d get so worked up by this that it’s almost as though he’s so full with passion that he withers up; he’s got only one purpose, and that’s to excite the people in the religion of Babylon! ‘I, He says, ‘I will cut off the name of Baal (or the idols) from this place’ and the next thing I’ll take aim at is the idolatrous priests, the Chemarim, the black-robed priests of Babylon that you’ve installed in My house’. And then He adds at the end of verse 4, ‘with the priests’ and by that phrase He means the Levitical priests, the Aaronic order of priests who were working side by side with the Chemarim; here were the Christadelphians, b&s, the responsible brethren in the truth, who had allied themselves to work side by side with the black-robed priests of the Papacy. Never happen would it? Well, unfortunately and tragically for us, b&s, the trend of events in the ecclesial world today, is right down that road in some places! It is, and here it was in Judah, they had joined together, the Chemarims and the Aaronic priests to promote the worship of Babylon.

Whose the next victim? #3, verse 5, ‘and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops‘, the ‘housetop’ was the place for ‘prayer’, they’re worshipping the stars with an astral worship upon the housetops, and #4, them that worship and swear by Yahweh'(that is those who’ve got a divided allegiance, they swear by Yahweh and they also swear by Molech’. Out of one side of their mouth they say they serve Yahweh and out of the other side, we serve Molech. Their allegiance is divided, they don’t know the truth from error, they’ve lost all that!

Who’s next? #5, verse 6, ‘And them that are turned back from Yahweh’ and the word ‘turned back’ in the Hebrew means ‘to flinch’ ‘to go back, to retreat’, it’s the word rendered ‘back-slider‘ in Proverbs chapter 14 verse 14, ‘the back-slider’ he who has turned back from Yahweh, in other words, he use to serve Him once, but now he’s gone back.

Who’s the next class? #6, ‘those that have not sought Yahweh’, the word ‘sought’ ‘baqash’ means ‘to search out or to strive after’ and the next word ‘inquired’ is ‘darash’ and it means to ‘seek diligently’, those who have not sought Yahweh Himself (as it should be rendered) nor sought diligently for Him’. So you see, here’s a class of people who have simply slipped into a Laodicean spirit; and you’ll notice there’s a gradation of culpability in the order of the seriousness of these crimes, from rank idolators at the start, idols and idolators and those who minister to those idols, down to the poor people, b&s, who are lead astray by those at the top! Those who had not sought Yahweh Himself, the article ‘eth’ is there before the divine Name, and it is well to remember that, because the essence of life in the truth, when you distill it all down, b&s, and sweep aside all other things, when you distill all things down to the essence of our life in the truth, and I emphasize ‘truth’, you’ve got to have that, it comes down to this, it comes down to your personal relationship with your God, and my personal relationship with my God! And here were a people who had not sought Yahweh Himself. There was no personal relationship between them and their God, why? because they didn’t really have truth! Their minds had been taken away from them; so there’s that gradation of culpability that runs down the line; here are our six victims of divine judgment and the day of judgment was impending.

Have a look at verse 7, ‘Hold thy peace at the presence of Adonai Yahweh’, Hush, be silent!…. He’d bid His guests, the nations were on their way, we read the list of them; there were the Chaldeans, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and finally b&s, the Babylonians and they were swept away and they became the victims of divine judgment and a great sacrifice to be consumed by the nations. That’s the exact language used of the harlot system in Ezekiel 39 and in Revelation chapter 19; the exact language, ‘that Yahweh will make a great sacrifice of that system, and the nations who have submitted to Christ will come and consume that sacrifice. Here they were, they were no better than the Roman Catholic church and their judgment was impending.

But here we meet a phrase that is used frequently now up to the end of verse 3 of chapter 2. It’s the phrase the day of Yahweh, in that form it occurs 7 times, you’ll pick it up in verse 8, in verse 14 twice, again in verse 18, in verse 2 of chapter 3 and at the end of verse 3 of chapter 2; 7 times you read the phrase, ‘the day of Yahweh’ and this day of Yahweh, b&s, is quite clearly the day of divine judgment. Now up to the end of verse 3 of chapter 2, the word ‘day’ occurs 18 times; that’s not infrequent is it? 18 times! It occurs by itself, just the word ‘day’ 11 times, 7 in the phrase ‘the day of Yahweh’, overall in the book there are 21 occurrences of that word ‘day’ which means in the rest of the book from verse 4 and onwards, there are only 3 occurrences. You want to have a look at them, because it tells you about the day, that He’s really talking about! Let’s just see if we can pick them up!

They’re all in chapter 3, chapter 3 verse 8, ‘therefore, wait ye upon Me, saith Yahweh, until the day that I rise up to the prey‘, in other words, it’s the day of Armageddon and beyond, the day of divine judgment. In that day there will be salvation for His people, Israel, that’s why it says in verse 11, ‘in that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings’, so Yahweh will save them and bring them to His holy mountain. Verse 16, ‘In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not; and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack’ so there’s the redemption of God’s people, Israel. In that day, so the day of Yahweh that Zephaniah’s talking about, oh yes, it referred primarily and initially to the day of judgment then impending upon them, but it wasn’t intended that it should only be understood in that way. We will see, b&s, in this day of Yahweh, a time yet future!

Now when you look at the structure of this prophecy against its background, this is what you see. We’ve got there the bar with the kings, Manasseh, Josiah and Zedekiah and so on, and the time of the captivity. Now Zephaniah’s prophecy begins in about the year 627, 626, exactly 40 years later (and that’s the length of the day of Yahweh) Zechariah 12:14, that’s the length of that day, Revelation 14:20, 40 years. Exactly 40 years later in the years 587, 586 Nebuchadnezzar came down and swept them away; but you see, they’d been subject to punishment right through those 40 years! It began with the bands of the Chaldeans, and the Ammonites and the Moabites and one after another they came and swept through that land, until finally, it was, of course, Nebuchadnezzar who took them away. 40 years of judgment, that’s very interesting you see, because we’re meant to project our minds forward to the great day of Yahweh in which we ourselves will be personally involved in the work of destroying the harlot system. As bro. Thomas says ’40 years of judgment are consumed in preparing the millennial reign of peace and righteousness’. In that 40 years, b&s, from Armageddon to the final subjugation of the nations, when the law goes forth from Zion, there will be many things happening; Gog will have been destroyed upon the mountains of Israel, Judah will have been cleansed, the land will be beautified, the Papal system will be destroyed 10 years after Armageddon, during the second exodus under Elijah will be undertaken, the temple will be being built, and finally, all nations will come to worship in that temple when they’ve been subjected to Christ after 40 years of divine judgment.

Now, of course, that’s very interesting to us, isn’t it? because we’re on the very verge of that day; it won’t be long and this day will be a reality to us! Now you have a look at the language, b&s, of verse 14 onwards. ‘The great day of Yahweh is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of Yahweh: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly’, the word ‘mighty’ is ‘gibbowr’ it’s a reference away back to Genesis chapter 10 and to a mighty man who we’ll have a lot more to say about this afternoon. Nimrod was a mighty hunter! ‘The mighty man shall cry there bitterly’, as the day of Yahweh, the overwhelming judgment sweeps over the head of this world; it won’t matter how great their systems are, how great their men are, how great their military forces are, b&s, ‘the mighty man shall cry there bitterly’ in hopelessness. ‘That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. A day of the trumpet’ and so on, and it goes on down to verse 18, ‘Neither shall their silver nor their gold be able to deliver them in the day of Yahweh’s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy: for He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the Land’. That day, b&s, is bearing down upon us like a steam train, like a storm coming from the north as Ezekiel saw it, it’s bearing down upon us as it was doing to Judah.

What did they have to do? Well, they needed to gather themselves! They needed to collect their thoughts, that’s what verse 1 of chapter 2’s about; ‘Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired’, the phrase there ‘gather yourselves’ would be better rendered ‘collect your thoughts’ as Rotherham has it; collect your thoughts together. ‘Collect your thoughts O nation that is without shame, before the decree bring forth and the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger come upon you, before the day of Yahweh’s anger come upon you’. Do it today, this is the day of opportunity before that day comes, collect your thoughts together! ‘Seek Yahweh, all ye meek of the earth, verse 3, which have wrought His judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness’; you see, b&s, there are 3 ‘befores’ in the Hebrew and there are 3 ‘seeks’ (I don’t mean ‘Sikhs’ from elsewhere, I mean ‘seeks’ as in ‘s-e-e-k’), and they match you see, there’s a balance here; Seek Yahweh, but in verse 6 of chapter 1, there were some not seeking Him; seek righteousness, seek to do the right, seek meekness, it may be that ye shall be hid in the day of Yahweh’s anger, and there, b&s, is a reference to Zephaniah’s name, ‘it may be that ye shall be hid’ his name means ‘whom Yahweh hid’; may it be, b&s, that you and I will be hid with him amongst the Cushites, in the day of Yahweh’s anger. And we will be if we do those things before that day comes. ‘Seek Yahweh ye meek of the earth, seek righteousness, seek meekness’!