Haggai 2:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The book of Haggai closes with this fourth crowning prophecy about the removal of every obstacle that stands in the way of setting up of the Messianic kingdom and Christ taking the place of pre-eminence. The prophet returns to speak of how Christ will not only come, but Haggai shows that at the end – and all the prophets tend to compress the two comings of Christ together; they don't distinguish between them as we are now able to do – Christ and his church will be everything when the kingdoms of this world finally fall, and will outlive them all. Zerubbabel is now addressed without Joshua. Zerubbabel is in the royal line, and from him the Messiah will come, fulfilling the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to David. He is then a fitting type of Christ, and although there are literal aspects of this prophecy addressed to him, there are also aspects which transcend the literal Zerubbabel, governor of Judah.God will shake the heavens and the earth. He will shake them in a far more profound way than he did when he spoke from earth at the giving of the law and shook Sinai with an earthquake. He will speak from heaven with a message which will ‘[cast] down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God’ (2 Corinthians 10:5). As we have seen, all world empires will topple, one after another, to make way for him ‘whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him’ (Daniel 7:27). This was to begin in the lifetimes of some of those who were alive in those days, but it would not stop there.