Zephaniah 1:7-16 - by Don Neuendorf
The great day of the Lord is near - near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there. That day will be a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom...
...Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth. Neither their silver nor their gold willbe able to save them on the day of the Lord's wrath...
So - can you see why we don't read further than verse 16 when we use this text in church? Not very cheerful, is it? Why does the Bible contain things like this??? Isn't this too gruesome to be God's Word? Well... maybe you should think of it this way...
If you could go back to German in the 1920s, and if you knew what would happen to the Jewish people of Europe in just a few years hence, what would you say to them? Would you just tell them in vague terms that "bad things would happen" and they might want to think about emigrating to another country?
People don't abandon their homes and businesses for "bad things." They also won't change long held habits and customs. They won't reform their religion or change their immoral (but perfectly legal) business practices. The short term pain is too much more vivid than the long term gain.
Now imagine that you've been warning about the rise of a certain paper hanger from Austria for several years. The time is getting short. You can see the disaster coming. Now would your warnings begin to get sharper? More dire? More specific?
Who would believe you if you said that people would be rounded up and stuffed into cattle cars - that they'd be kept in camps and starved, experimented upon, gassed? Who would believe you that all of Europe would be swallowed up in this conflict and several nations sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives in order to end it, and still millions of people would be killed?
The slaughter that was approaching Judah from Babylon would be worse in some ways than what took place during World War II. The numbers of people may have been somewhat smaller. (not sure) But the brutality of warfare was certainly no less - and the bitterness of the seige of Jerusalem - and the cruelty of transportation of the exiles was very great - and the number of years they would be held in a far country very much longer.
If you believed that someone you knew was at risk of suffering such a fate, do you think you might use even harsher language?
That's not a theoretical question, since everyone you know who does not have a relationship of faith in Jesus Christ is at risk of a far, far more disastrous fate. We may not describe to them the torments of Hell, and what it means to be separated from God forever. But won't we at least be moved to speak?