Today's Favorite Verse: Nahum 2:3-4

Today's Favorite Verse: Nahum 2:3-4

"The shield of his mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet: the chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation, and the fir trees shall be terribly shaken.

The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings."

The day of his preparation. Nahum is prophesying of signs to recognize when that final preparation period is to begin, before the Savior's second coming. I know the description of chariots as flaming torches that rage in the streets, and justle against each other, is thought of as cars. I think it can go a little further back in history than that, to the first stream locomotive. I find the time frames interesting.

Nahum prophecy was written between 660-606 BC. Lehi and his family left Jerusalem in 600 BC so Nahum could have been a contemporary. The first steam locomotive was built in 1804. Joseph Smith, Jr. was born in 1805. It wasn't until 1830 that the first public railway was open in the United States. It was in 1830 that the church was first organized, and the Book of Mormon was published about Lehi's family. The steam locomotive with its smokestack looks very much like a flaming torch. To stand near while one passes the ground would terribly shake. Anyone riding a train would feel how the cars jostle against each other. The time frame for the final preparation began almost 200 years ago. We are at the end of our preparation. As President Nelson has said "We are in the last half of the ninth inning.”

Day 3061