“However, the Day of the Lord, or Day of Judgement, is an essential part of Biblical doctrine.”
And if you look at all of those “Day of the Lord” passages, you will notice at least two things about them:
1. There was more than one “day of the Lord” in ancient history, according to the OT, because every “day of the Lord” was associated with God’s judgment on a nation. Further, IN EVERY CASE BUT ONE, God used human agents to execute His judgments: the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and - finally - the Romans. The only exception to this was Noah’s Flood, where God used nature to destroy all but a few people and animals.
2. Virtually all of the prophets foretelling of God’s judgment used the same apocalyptic, hyperbolic, language intended to impress upon their hearers/readers what a frightful fate it was to be judged by God. Suns darkening, stars falling, mountains moving are all images intended to convey social, economic, and cultural upheavals that would attend such judgment events.
If the stars are literally going to “fall from the sky”, which way will they fall? Will the sun supernova before it goes dark?
This inability to understand such language as symbolic is why those in the church are commonly referred to as “hicks”, “Bible-thumpers”, “anti-science” and “anti-reason.” Between mainline denominations that teach a literal interpretation of these signs, and dangerous cults that build entire movements around them, there’s little wonder that people on the outside looking in at the church just keep walking by.
So you are using fleshly reason here?
It’s possible to over-analyze scripture and it will get you into an anxious dither every single time.
Scripture is nothing if it is not a book of introductions to the Lord. whereupon now the Lord comes as a spirit of explanation to the bible. Taking it at the level of Ye Olde Mysticke Booke does not cut it.
No, the failure to appeal to the flesh is not a reason to mutate an immutable gospel.