Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
The verse is a prayer asking the Lord to bow the heavens and come down in power, so that the mountains smoke at His touch. In its immediate setting with the following verse, the coming down includes lightning that scatters and destroys His enemies. The verse belongs to praise of the Lord that rebukes failure to praise Him and calls for awakening to a realizing sense of His mercies and unbounded goodness, leading to testimony of His goodness. These displays of divine power are meant to make people and nations tremble before God, silence proud defiance, and lead them to acknowledge His sovereignty.
The prayer will be fulfilled at and shortly before the second advent of Christ in greater earthly wonders and manifestations more terrible than the world has ever yet beheld. The bowing of the heavens is the literal descent of Christ. The bowing and coming down take place when God sends lightning from heaven that unites with fire held in reserve in the bowels of the earth, the same water and fire concealed in the earth that He has used to destroy wicked cities since the flood.
The touching of the mountains means God causes them to smoke and burn like a furnace, quaking and melting at His presence, and to pour forth streams of lava, along with rocks and heated mud. The burning mountains will pour forth terrific streams of lava overwhelming gardens and fields, villages and cities, seething molten masses thrown into rivers will make the waters boil, rivers will be dried up, and the earth will be convulsed with dreadful earthquakes and eruptions and other convulsions. The coming down is in wrath as God's destructive judgments for the final destruction of the sinful race and the wicked inhabitants of the earth. In that destruction God will preserve the saints as He preserved Noah in the flood.
The verse is a prayer asking the Lord to bow the heavens and come down in power, so that the mountains smoke at His touch. In its immediate setting with the following verse, the coming down includes lightning that scatters and destroys His enemies. The verse belongs to praise of the Lord that rebukes failure to praise Him and calls for awakening to a realizing sense of His mercies and unbounded goodness, leading to testimony of His goodness. These displays of divine power are meant to make people and nations tremble before God, silence proud defiance, and lead them to acknowledge His sovereignty.
The prayer will be fulfilled at and shortly before the second advent of Christ in greater earthly wonders and manifestations more terrible than the world has ever yet beheld. The bowing of the heavens is the literal descent of Christ. The bowing and coming down take place when God sends lightning from heaven that unites with fire held in reserve in the bowels of the earth, the same water and fire concealed in the earth that He has used to destroy wicked cities since the flood.
The touching of the mountains means God causes them to smoke and burn like a furnace, quaking and melting at His presence, and to pour forth streams of lava, along with rocks and heated mud. The burning mountains will pour forth terrific streams of lava overwhelming gardens and fields, villages and cities, seething molten masses thrown into rivers will make the waters boil, rivers will be dried up, and the earth will be convulsed with dreadful earthquakes and eruptions and other convulsions. The coming down is in wrath as God's destructive judgments for the final destruction of the sinful race and the wicked inhabitants of the earth. In that destruction God will preserve the saints as He preserved Noah in the flood.