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39 illustrations
One seasoned traveler, having witnessed wonders across distant lands, told his friends: "There is something more wonderful than anything I have yet known, which I still have to experience." When pressed, he replied, "It is the first five minutes after...
"He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth" (Psalm 50:4).
The prophet employs visceral imagery: nations flung into the press like ripe grapes, their life-blood spattering upon His garments as He stands knee-deep in the vat, fiercely trampling them to ruin.
First, the *phobos* (fear) of preparation for judgment itself.
Pilate acted with limited knowledge; we possess the full light of Christian revelation streaming upon that Divine face across two millennia.
This divine severity serves two purposes: first, the wicked have increased "the number, weight, and measure of their sins" until judgment becomes inevitable; second, Yahweh respects the benefit of others who, witnessing sudden destruction, learn not to abuse His patience...
There is a time for the divine decree to be issued against a nation; a time when, though Noah, Job, and Daniel should stand before Him, yet He will not be entreated; though they cry early, cry aloud, cry with...
The prophet employs the phrase "men of strange lips" to underscore the *alien* nature of this divine communication.
2:13), where every meat-offering required salt as a preservative, Christ establishes a profound contrast between two destinies.
Their judgment surpasses that of Sodom, for they rejected not ignorance but revealed truth.
First, Yahweh operates through dual instruments: the judgments of God's mouth and the judgments of God's hand—the word and the work of God.
The people of Israel, mowed down and removed from their native soil, lay upon the threshing floor of captivity under tyrannical rule.
Exell's Victorian commentary identifies seven principles embedded in this moment.
Our Lord justifies His parabolic teaching method on the principle that immediate revelation is not always desirable.
The last king of David's line was captured on the very ground where Israel first entered its inheritance—at Jericho, where unarmed men trusting in Elohim watched the walls collapse.
Keil and Delitzsch note that moths destroy garments (Isaiah 51:8; Psalm 39:12), while worms corrupt both wood and flesh—figures of insidious decay working without announcement.
Exell, in *The Biblical Illustrator* (1887), grounded this doctrine in Scripture itself—Jude 14, Job 19:26, Psalm 9:7–8, Daniel 7:9–10, Matthew 25:31–46, and Revelation 20:11–13 all testify to a Day of Judgment.
He does not merely condemn; He first enumerates the favours which He had shown Israel, recalling the conditions of the covenant: no entangling alliances with the inhabitants, no tolerance for their idolatry.
All judgments which come upon men in the present are indicative of the final judgment which is to come, and are warnings of that awful event, so that we may not be unprepared to meet it.
Absalom's rebellion springs directly from David's disgraceful crime with Bathsheba, as surely as a poisoned root bears bitter fruit.
Blake notes this luminous title describes God Himself, not merely His attributes.
This man holds his candle at the door to inspect his neighbors while leaving his own room dark.
Yet Yahweh has opened a way of reconciliation for sinners who have grossly offended Him.
Isaiah 10:3 poses a devastating question: "What will ye do in the day of visitation?" Joseph Exell identifies three distinct types of divine visitation in 1887's *Biblical Illustrator*.