The Day of Unnatural Light Text: Zechariah 14:6-8
Introduction: Reading Prophecy with New Covenant Eyes
When modern Christians come to passages like this one in Zechariah, there is a strong temptation to read it like a newspaper headline from the future. We look for signs and portents, for literal fulfillment of what appear to be cosmic upheavals. We read about the luminaries dwindling and we imagine the sun sputtering out. We read about living waters flowing from Jerusalem and we picture a literal river carving a new canyon to the Mediterranean. But this is to read the prophets with a wooden literalism that their original audience would have found bewildering. And it is to read them without the lens that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to us on the road to Emmaus, the lens that brings all of Scripture into focus on Him.
The Old Testament prophets, and Zechariah is a prime example, used a standard, inspired vocabulary of apocalyptic imagery. When they spoke of the sun being darkened, the moon not giving its light, and the stars falling from heaven, they were not predicting the end of the space-time continuum. They were describing the collapse of a political order, the fall of a nation, the end of an age. This is the language God uses to describe the fall of Babylon in Isaiah 13, the judgment on Egypt in Ezekiel 32, and it is the very same language Jesus uses in Matthew 24 to describe the coming judgment on Jerusalem in 70 A.D. That event was the end of the world, that is, the end of the old covenant world. It was the great divorce of God from apostate Israel.
So when we come to Zechariah 14, we must understand that we are being shown a picture of the new covenant age, the age of the Messiah, which was inaugurated by the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and which was fully established with the destruction of the Temple, the final sign that the old order had passed away. This is not about some far-flung future tribulation; it is about the nature of the kingdom in which we now live. It is a description of the gospel age, this unique day known to Yahweh.
The Text
And it will be in that day, that there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. And it will be a unique day which is known to Yahweh, neither day nor night, but it will be that at evening time there will be light.
And it will be in that day, that living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter.
(Zechariah 14:6-8 LSB)
A Day of Dwindling Lights (v. 6)
We begin with the description of this peculiar day:
"And it will be in that day, that there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle." (Zechariah 14:6)
The phrase "in that day" throughout Zechariah points to the great climactic day of the Lord's intervention, the Messianic age. And the first thing we are told about this day is that the ordinary sources of light will fail. The sun, moon, and stars, the "luminaries," will shrink or congeal. As I've said, this is standard prophetic language for the collapse of an old world order. The ruling authorities, the established patterns of life, the cultural assumptions, all the things that give light and guidance to a civilization, are going to be overthrown.
This was fulfilled most pointedly in the destruction of Jerusalem. For the Jewish people, the entire cosmos was ordered around the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrificial system. That was their sun, their moon, their stars. When Christ came, He declared that system obsolete. And in 70 A.D., God, using the Roman armies as His instrument, brought that entire celestial system crashing down. The sun of the old covenant went dark. The moon of the Mosaic law ceased to reflect that light. The stars of the Levitical priesthood fell from their heavens. This was a de-creation of the old world to make way for the new.
But this is also a description of the entire gospel age. We live in a time when the world's lights are constantly dwindling. The wisdom of men, the glory of empires, the philosophies of the age, they all have a built-in obsolescence. They flicker and fade. The world relies on these created lights, but God says that in the day of His kingdom, those lights are not the story. They are not what you should be looking to for guidance. The true light has come, and it is a different kind of light altogether.
Neither Day Nor Night (v. 7)
This leads to the paradoxical description of this unique day.
"And it will be a unique day which is known to Yahweh, neither day nor night, but it will be that at evening time there will be light." (Zechariah 14:7 LSB)
This day, the age of the gospel, is a "unique day." There has never been another one like it. It is not a simple repetition of old patterns. It is known to Yahweh, which means it is His special project, unfolding according to His secret counsel. And its character is "neither day nor night."
What does this mean? It means that this present age is a time of mixture. It is not the total darkness that preceded the coming of Christ, but neither is it the perfect, unadulterated light of the final consummation. The kingdom of God has come, but not yet in its fullness. The light of the gospel is shining brightly, but it shines in a world that is still characterized by darkness. We have brilliant victories and shameful defeats, often on the same day. We have revival and apostasy, faith and doubt, righteousness and sin, all existing side-by-side in the church and in our own hearts. It is neither fully day nor fully night.
But then comes the glorious promise, the great postmillennial hope: "but it will be that at evening time there will be light." This is a complete reversal of the natural order. Normally, as evening comes, the light fades and darkness takes over. But in God's unique day, as history progresses toward its evening, the light will increase. When the world expects things to get darker and darker, when godless men predict the final twilight of civilization, God promises the opposite. At the very time when you would expect the lights to go out for good, there will be a great dawning.
This is the promise of the success of the Great Commission. It is the promise that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. As history unfolds, the kingdom of Jesus Christ will not dwindle and shrink into a tiny, beleaguered remnant. It will grow, and advance, and shine brighter and brighter until the very end. The evening of history will be a time of great light.
The Unceasing River of Grace (v. 8)
And what is the source of this ever-increasing light and life? The prophet tells us in the next verse.
"And it will be in that day, that living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter." (Zechariah 14:8 LSB)
Here we see the engine of the kingdom. "Living waters" in Scripture is a picture of the Holy Spirit, of the life-giving grace of God found in the gospel. And where do these waters flow from? They flow from Jerusalem. Not the old, earthly Jerusalem that was destroyed, but the New Jerusalem, the Church of Jesus Christ, which is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26).
This is the same vision Ezekiel saw, where a river flows from the threshold of the Temple, growing deeper and wider, bringing life wherever it goes (Ezekiel 47). Jesus picks up this theme when He stands in the Temple and cries out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water" (John 7:37-38). He was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given after He was glorified.
This river of life flows out from the Church to the whole world. It flows to the "eastern sea" (the Dead Sea) and the "western sea" (the Mediterranean). This is a poetic way of saying it flows to all nations, to every corner of the globe. The gospel is not a regional deity; He is Lord of all the earth. The living water of the Spirit is for every tribe, tongue, and nation.
And notice the final phrase: "it will be in summer as well as in winter." This is crucial. In the natural world, many rivers in that region, called wadis, would dry up in the heat of summer. They were seasonal, unreliable. But this river of God is not like that. It flows unceasingly, in every season. It flows in times of revival ("summer") and in times of persecution and hardship ("winter"). The work of the Spirit, the advance of the gospel, does not depend on favorable cultural conditions. It is a supernatural river, and its source is the throne of God and of the Lamb. Therefore, it can never run dry.
Conclusion: Living in the Unique Day
So what does this mean for us? It means we must learn to read the times through the lens of this prophecy. We are living in this unique day. We should not be surprised by the mixture of light and darkness. We should not be dismayed when the world's luminaries dwindle and its systems collapse, for this is what God told us would happen. The world is supposed to be running down.
But we are people of the light. We are not to be discouraged, because we know that at evening time, there will be light. Our task is not to curse the encroaching darkness, but to be channels of the living water. The Church, the New Jerusalem, is the source of the world's only hope. From us, the gospel is to flow out to our neighbors, our cities, and the nations.
And we must have a robust confidence in the power of this river. It does not matter if it is summer or winter in the culture. It does not matter if we are met with acceptance or hostility. The river flows anyway. It is the power of God for salvation. Our job is to be faithful in proclaiming the gospel, in living out the reality of the kingdom, and in trusting God's promise that as the evening of this age approaches, His light will not fail, but will shine with ever-increasing glory, until the whole earth is full of it.