Zechariah 14:5

"And ye shall flee by the valley of my mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azel; yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah; and Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with thee."

"And ye shall flee ..." Here is the secret of how "the residue of the people were not cut off" (Zechariah 14:2). They would escape through flight, a possibility envisioned here as being opened up by the mighty earthquake and the splitting of the mountain. Did it happen? Indeed so. Josephus recounts the amazing, unnecessary, and incredible withdrawal of Cestius Gallus in the siege of Jerusalem, stating that, "Upon his besieging Jerusalem, he retreated from the city without any just occasion in the world."[12] Of course, it was during that interval that every Christian, having heeded Jesus' warning, had opportunity to escape and flee. It was indeed an earthquake that opened up a way of escape. In this there is also a pledge that in the great holocaust that shall conclude our age, not a single Christian shall be lost.

"Earthquake... in the days of Uzziah ..." The exact date of this earthquake is not known; but it is mentioned in Amos 1:1; and Josephus describes it as a supernatural occurrence that interrupted Uzziah's presumptuous usurpation of the priestly function by going into the sanctuary to offer incense:

"A great earthquake shook the ground ... a rent was made in the temple ... leprosy seized upon the king immediately ... Before the city at a place called Eroge, half the mountain broke off from the rest on the west, and rolled itself four furlongs and stood still at the east mountain. The roads, as well as the king's gardens, were spoiled by the obstruction."[13]

As Whiston declared, "There seems to have been some considerable resemblance between these historical and prophetic earthquakes."[14]

That this earthquake is identifiable with the final judgment appears in the fact of that earthquake in Uzziah's day having been a judgment upon him for presumptuous sin; and Zechariah immediately made that clear by the words:

"And Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with thee ..." Significantly Jesus Christ himself in the Matthew parallel made certain reference to the final judgment:

"Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matthew 24:30,31)."

"And all the holy ones with thee ..." "The holy ones are the angels."[15] Many New Testament passages associate the "holy ones" or angels with the Second Coming of Christ, as in Matthew 13:41,49, and 2 Thessalonians 1:7.

"With thee ..." The change to the second person here is no problem. It is simply the manner in which the prophets wrote. See under Zechariah 14:3, above.

To make the connection between this passage and Matthew 24 even more certain, it should be recalled that when Jesus spoke the remarkable words recorded in Matthew 24, that he did so sitting upon the mount of Olives, the very mountain so prominent in this passage (Matthew 24:3); add that to the fact of this passage in Zechariah's being one of only two places where the mountain is mentioned in the Old Testament (the other being Ezekiel 11:23), and named only in this place. From all this, it is clear enough that Jesus interpreted this passage as teaching the same thing that he taught in Matthew 24.