The shaking of the nations

The verb shake in the text connotes the idea of undulation. It connotes the idea of causing to rise and fall, as if on waves. It means to cause to move backward and forward, up and down. “I will shake all nations”: They will rise and fall, as if on waves; they will move backward and forward, and they will move up and down. And all the nations will be doing it, and they will be doing it simultaneously.

The context fixes the time in which this catastrophic shaking will take place. It will take place in the closing days of this age. This is clearly indicated by the ninth verse of the second chapter of Haggai: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.” One result of the shaking of the nations will be a “latter house” (temple) whose glory will be greater than the original temple built by Solomon. The rebuilt temple was not this “latter house,” for the “cloud” of God’s glory never re-appeared in that temple. And the same thing is to be said of Herod’s Temple. This “latter house” is the temple described in the closing chapters of the Book of Ezekiel.

And so, in the closing days of this age, “I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come.”

I don’t have to remind anybody who watched last night’s television, who listened to this morning’s radio, who read this morning’s papers, that we are today living in the midst of a universal shaking of the nations. During the brief lifetime of most of us here today, we have seen the nations of the earth moving backward and forward, moving up and down, and rising and falling as the waves of the sea.

We have seen them move backward from the arrogant, evolutionary optimism of Herbert Spencer to the blood and gore and crater fields of the First World War; and forward from that to the “Big Four” (Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando) at Versailles; then backward to Hitler and the Nazi gas chambers; then forward to the United Nations; then backward to the scarlet mud of Korea, to Hungary, to the shaggy, bloody Communist Bear prowling the frozen wastes of the Soviet slaveland.

The supreme fact is that today these nations, like so many ships being moved backward and foward and up and down on the wrathful waters of the sea, have become dreadfully aware that a strange and powerful undercurrent of historical forces is carrying them into the Middle East.

The nations are returning to the Middle East. They are not returning there because they ever intended to return there, or because they desire to return there. They are being borne there, against their wills, by a deep and strange undercurrent of historical forces which they do not understand.

Last week Mr. William L. Ryan, the foreign news editor of the Associated Press, writing from Beirut, expressed the feelings of frustration and impending disaster which characterizes the nations. He wrote, “It is as if this part of the world waits hopelessly for a stream of senseless events to explode in a fury of suicidal insanity. Plot moves against counterplot until the distinction between friend and enemy is blurred. … Sinister forces work in the shadows. Moslem against Christian, Arab against Arab, all of them professed enemies to the death of Israel.”

The television, the radio, and the newspapers and magazines are constantly bombarding us with facts concerning the turmoil of the nations, with facts concerning the Middle East. The question I pose here this afternoon is, What is the essence beneath this supreme fact of the nations, Jew and Gentile, being gathered back into the Middle East?

Anybody who knows anything about the Bible does not hesitate to turn to the Bible for the authoritative answer. In the first place, history is flowing through the channels the Bible said it would flow; it is not flowing through the channels the wisdom of this world said it would flow. For example, the two small books of Joel and Haggai, written more than 2,500 years ago, will give you more information about the essence of this question of the nations going back to the Middle East than all the newspapers and magazines published. If you want facts on what is going on among the nations and in the Middle East, watch the television, listen to the radio, and read the newspapers. If you want the essence of the facts, read your Bible.

This Divine shaking of these nations — which really began with Alexander the Great — is to culminate in a day of wrath such as Dante ever could believe would be visited upon this earth.

And now, finally, beyond the fire and sword and earthquake and shaking heavens of the Middle East, lie the purple and gold of the millennial days. Bless God, when I see the nations being gathered into the Middle East, I know that judgment is coming upon this earth; and I know more than that: I know that we are nearer the Golden Age than the world has ever been before.

These are the essences, these are the realities lying beneath the tremendous facts of the nations and the Middle East.