The Great Ribulation

Blood, fire, and pillars of smoke.
The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and awesome Day of the LORD
comes.
And it will come about that wlioever calls on
the name of the Lom
Will be deliver@;
For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
There will be those who escape,
As the LORD has said,
Even among the survivors whom the LORD calls
(Joel 2:28-31).
As we will see in a later chapter, St. Peter’s inspired
interpretation of this text in Acts 2 determines
the fact that Joel is speakiig of the period fmm the initial
outpouring of the Spirit to the destruction of
Jerusalem, fmm Pentecost to Holocaust. It is enough
for us to note here that the same language of judgment
is used in this passage. The common dime-store
interpretation that the “pillars of smoke” are mushroom
clouds from nuclear explosions is a radical
twisting of the text, and a complete misunderstanding
of Biblical prophetic language. It would make just as
much sense to say that the pillar of fire and smoke
during the Exodus was the result of an atomic blast.
The Clouds of Heaven
That, appropriately, brings us to the next element
in Jesus’ prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction:
“and then all the tribes of the land will mourn, and