I Just Can’t Believe It!
Jerusalem lay in ruins—the walls destroyed, the temple razed, and the palace demolished. The Israelites who had not been carried off to Babylon suffered greatly. The suffering in Jerusalem was so great that mothers ate their own children for food: “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people” (Lam 4:10).
Jerusalem had once been a prosperous and beautiful city. Solomon had built a beautiful palace and the splendid temple of the LORD; when the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem and heard the king’s wisdom and saw all the glory and splendor of his house, “there was no more breath in her” (1 Ki 10:5). Generations later, Babylonian envoys came to visit Hezekiah after the king’s serious illness; Hezekiah took them on a tour of all the splendor he possessed as king.
No one could believe a great, prosperous, and powerful city like Jerusalem could ever fall; such an idea was beyond belief: “The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem” (Lam 4:12). Jerusalem’s fall seemed like an idle tale to the great kings of the earth. However, God’s people continued in sin, rejected the word of the LORD through his prophets, and sacrificed to idols. God, therefore, judged his people and completely overthrew the great and marvelous city of Jerusalem. When God arose to judge his people, the “impossibility” of Jerusalem’s fall didn’t matter—what mattered was God’s righteous judgment in great power.
Many today simply cannot picture a great judgment; they live how they choose, completely oblivious to the judgment which will consume the world.
Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (2 Pet 3:3-7)
One day, Jesus will burst through the sky in glory and call all the nations before his throne in judgment. Don’t say judgment could never happen, for one day it will.
This article was originally written by Dr. Justin Imel, Sr., for the weekly newsletter at Church of Christ Deer Park in Deer Park, Texas.