Days
Commentator
The Day of the Lord
Days
If you read the prophets of the Old Testament, you keep seeing this same vision, predicting these events, throughout the entire 1000 years of writings. The prophets all differed according to their times and the concerns of those times, but they agreed on one item; the Day of the Lord was coming!
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis 1:5
So what was that? The evening is the sun going down, the evening watch was 6-9pm, then you have the night watch 9-12pm, then you have the midnight watch 12pm-3am, then you have the morning watch 3-6am, the morning is when the sun comes up.
The day of the Lord begins with the setting sun. This was the end of the Age of Law, which Jesus ended when he nailed the ordinances to the cross. All through the Age of Law, the prophets kept the testimony of the Lord shining bright; the presence of the Lord was upon the prophets and concealed in the holy of holies, hiding in the Ark of the testament; finally, these two were combined with Jesus, who was both the embodiment of God and the messiah; the anointed presence of his power. The Jews in Judah should have recognized Jesus from the scriptures, he was a continuation of the testimony of the Law, fulfilling it to the letter and shining it to the Gentiles. Jesus was the sunset of that day and age. But his appearing was also the beginning of the Day of the Lord.
Then came the night; the darkness; the Church Age. Just as the prophets testified against the priests and kings of the old testament, Jesus kept the faithful of the flock upon the watch tower of the church and they testified against the beast in Rome; that most the world recognized as his church, but Jesus called it Babylon and a whore and anti-Christ. Before the dawn of the reformation, Jesus gave us a morning star, and his ministry led to the dawn of the new day...
John Wycliffe (1330-1384), called the Morning Star of the Reformation, spent most of his life teaching at Oxford University and was recognized by John of Guant (The Duke of Lancaster) as extraordinarily gifted in theology. He translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English and placed it in the hands of the people. (Link)
Okay, so see this vision the same way the prophets delivered it to us; the entire Church Age (which runs from Jesus 1st coming to Jesus 2nd coming) is the time of his anointing; the personal work of his ministry; that anointing was the work of the prophets all through the days of the law under Moses, but now in these last days, it is all the work of the resurrected messiah; it is his anointing resting on the entire body of Christ; hence, the entire Age is all one work; this is his time; this is the day of his anointing; the Day of the Lord.
So, let's look back at the construction of the Day of the Lord as revealed by the Apocalypse of John, and let's align the time periods with the evening watch, night watch, midnight watch and morning watch... I'll put the watches in red to the right of the scrolls/letters.
Okay, so see the dispensation with me. A letter is written, which means an ambassador (angel) is sent out, the performance of the letter builds the church in that letter. In heaven there's the testimony of the holy spirit before the throne, the lamp of fire, which is the angel of the letter (the author and ambassador is the holy spirit), and there's also the church that is built up, the lampstand of testimony, which is the performance of the holy spirit in the saints. Since we are practically to the end of this prophecy/vision, we can map out the time line....
A door is opened and John is caught up into heaven, he is shown - in a vision - what will happen next on earth. Specifically, he is shown what God is going to do on earth, so he is shown the intentions of the holy spirit for the church Age. He is shown the building of the church - which is already in progress in 96 AD - followed by the Day of the Lord, the central theme of prophecy in the old testament. It is a progression, the same as a sun rising in the sky, first comes the night, then the new day, the 7 letters are the night, the seven seals are the new day.
This is pretty much how the years panned out...
first coming ........ 27-30 ............................... sunset
1st Letter ............. 30-96 ............................... evening watch (dusk)
2nd Letter ........... 96-225 ............................. night watch
3rd Letter ............ 225-600 .......................... night watch
4th Letter ............ 600-1390 ........................ midnight watch
5th Letter ............ 1390-1500 ....................... morning watch
6th Letter ............ 1500-1611 ........................ morning watch
7th Letter ............ 1611-1850 ........................ morning watch
1st Seal ................ 1850-1900 ....................... dawn
2nd Seal .............. 1900-1950 ....................... dawn
3rd Seal ............... 1950-2000 ...................... dawn
4th Seal ............... 2000-2016 ...................... dawn
5th Seal ............... 2016-2028 ...................... dawn
6th Seal ............... 2028 ............................... sunrise
7th Seal ................ 2028-2032 .................... 2nd coming
As revealed in the prophets; the Day of the Lord is the entire Church age, which is simply the evening, night, and morning; with the presence of the Lord depicted as the shining sun. Notice the 6th seal is the sign of the son of man; which is the tip of the sun rising above the horizon, while the 3 ½ year ministry of the first coming is depicted as the setting sun and the 3 ½ year ministry of the 2nd coming is depicted as the rising sun.