THE SECOND COMING

Jesus had just preached a pre-funeral sermon in Matt. 23. Judaism, as a religion representing the will of God in the world, was about to die, and Jesus was giving it the last rights, but it was not a very pleasant experience. Funerals, of course, never are, but pastors unusually try to find some good word to say of the deceased.

When Calamity Jane died at 51, but looking like 70 because of her wild life of prostitution and drunkenness, Dr. C. B. Clark, the Methodist pastor who preached the service, concentrated on the small pox plague of 1878. Jane, though a prostitute, bought drugs with her own money, and she nursed the sick back to health. The man who lowered her coffin into the grave was C. H. Robinson, who was nursed back to health by Jane. She lived an awful life, but there was that one redeeming time of selfless caring, and that was the focus at her funeral.

Jesus was not so kind in His pre-funeral sermon on the Jewish leaders of His day. Matt. 23 is a sermon of 7 woes in which Jesus does not just blast them with both barrels, but with a gattling gun of condemnation. We don't want to immerse ourselves in this river of verbal blood-letting, but we need to wade into it a little to get a feel for the context. Jesus left temple is the way chapter 24 begins, but you have to look back to chapter 23 to see that it was the last time he would set foot in the temple. He was not just leaving the temple, but he was forsaking it. He was leaving it behind as a place no longer to be the house of God. In fact, He says in 23:38, "Look, your house is left to you desolate." It's your house now, said Jesus, and no longer is it what Jesus called it in 23:13, "My house will be called a house of prayer."

What was God's house was now their house, for the rightful owner was walking away, and leaving it empty of the presence of God. It was their house now, and they could do as they please, for God was gone. His efforts to reform the Jewish leaders had failed. They refused to repent, and so Jesus lays on them the heaviest prophecy in all the Bible. It was a weight so heavy that there is none to compare. To compare the burden that was going to come on them with any other would be like comparing the Rock of Gibraltar to a pebble.

Listen to these words of Jesus in Matt. 23:35-36. "And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berakiah, whom your murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation." Why was Jesus picking on that generation to suffer the wrath of God for all the murder of just men from the first to the latest? That sounds unfair to hold them accountable for the whole history of unjust murder.

What we see here is the principle that the more light people have, the greater the accountability. They were the only generation in history who had the light of the world in their very mist, and yet they refused to see. Others had some excuse, for they did not see clearly the light of God's will. They had some basis for their folly and rationalizing their actions. But not this generation. They had the light shining full force in their eyes, and still they refused to see. Such flagrant rejection of the truth led them to top off the sins of all history by the ultimate sin of killing their own Messiah-the Son of God. That was the last straw, and so upon that generation God was going to pour out His wrath.

Having prophesied such doom on Israel, Jesus walks out of the temple never to return. It was their house now and not His, and it would become their tomb as well in 70A.D. The Jewish leaders just dismissed all this as the ravings of a mad man. It was preposterous to think such a judgment would fall on them. They looked on Jesus as if He were a chicken little yelling that sky was falling. It was hard to believe, and so we see that even His disciples tried to get Him to cool off and modify His radical words of judgment.

This, after all, was the temple. It was the place of God's dwelling, and the pride of all Israel. They tried to get Jesus to reexamine His strong language in the light of the beauty of the temple. In Mark 13:1, the parallel passage to Matthew, one of the disciples said, "Master, behold what manner of stones and what manner of buildings." Luke 21:5 is Dr. Luke's parallel passage, and he has some of them speaking of how it was adorned with goodly stones and offerings. Some of the disciples may have never been to the big city, and they could be seeing the temple for the first time. They were deeply impressed by it. The Jewish Talmud said, "He that never saw the temple of Herod, never saw a fine building." It was started in 20 B. C., and was not completed until 64 A. D., only 6 years before it was destroyed.

It was a marvelous piece of architecture made of white marble and much gold. It was surrounded by great porches with solid marble pillars 37 and one half feet high, and so thick that it took three men with arms linked to reach around them. Some of the cornerstones have been found, and they weigh more than 100 tons. It was like the Rock of Gibraltar, and so awesome that the disciples, by their admiration, questioned the wisdom of Jesus in abandoning the temple. They were so impressed, but Jesus was not impressed with anything that did not promote the will of God, and so He pours water on their enthusiasm.

He says in verse 2 that this whole impressive structure will be so totally demolished that there will not be one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. This stone masterpiece will be a stone dump, and its destruction will be as awesome as its construction. They were trying to get Jesus to be a more positive thinker. Maybe something can be worked out, and the temple can be saved for the glory of God. These guys would have joined a save the temple campaign in a moment. It was the essence of their heritage as Jews. It was to them what Washington D. C. is to us. To talk about the total destruction of the temple was like telling us Washington D. C. will be wiped off the map. But that is the center of our heritage, and the American way of life. You can't destroy that! And that is how the disciples felt about the temple.

Jesus is not pleased with this disastrous elimination Himself, but He had done all He could to prevent it. That was His lament in 23:37, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." You could only be a positive thinker so long in a setting of persistent rejection. There comes a point where the only alternative left is judgment, and that is where Jesus is. Jesus is saying that, yes it is a great building, but great will be the fall of it as well.

The disciples were impressed at the massive physical stones, but even these do not provide security from judgment. There is only one Stone that can give that security, and that is the very Stone Israel was rejecting-namely Jesus. Jesus told the chief priests and the Pharisees a parable about the tenants who would not pay the landowner his rent. He sent servants and they beat them. He sent his son and they killed him, and so he had to come in judgment on them. Then in the context Jesus says in Matt. 21:42, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone."

Peter before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:11 says of Jesus, "He is the stone you builders rejected which has become the cornerstone." Peter in his first Epistle makes a major point of Jesus being the Stone-the solid rock on which we stand. In 1:4 he writes, "As you come to Him the living stone-rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him." Then Peter goes on to make clear that Jesus is the cornerstone of a new temple, and that Christians are now the new priesthood in this temple. In 2:5-6 he writes, "You also like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame."

The point of all this is, the physical temple was to be destroyed, but God would still have His temple. It would be a living temple, not of stones, but of people. Jesus is more impressed with people than with stones. These dead stones would be replaced by living stones, and he would be the cornerstone of this greater structure yet, and He will be a stone that will never fall and never perish. You can build on Him for eternity.

This prophecy of not one stone being left upon another was literally fulfilled in 70 A. D., but Jesus did not wait until then to build His new temple. On Easter morning, when Jesus rose from the dead, the new temple rose as well. It took decades to build this temple of stone, but it only took three days to build the temple that would be forever. It was one of the most offensive things Jesus ever said when He said, "I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days." This was the major charge against Him before the Sanhedrin. It got Stephen, the first Christian martyr, killed as well, for the charge against him before the Sanhedrin, we see in Acts 6:14, was that he taught that Jesus would destroy the temple. This sort of thing really angered the Jewish leaders, and we hear people just passing by when Jesus was on the cross and they were hurling insults at Him, and Matt. 27:40 says they were saying, "You who were going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross!"

It was the biggest joke in Israel that a man would claim He could destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. But each of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John record this, and John gives it in greatest detail in John 2:18-21." Then the Jews demanded of Him, what miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. The Jews replied, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days? But the temple He had spoken of was His body."

The point is, when Jesus raised His body it was the new temple of God, and the old one was obsolete. Jesus only literally destroyed it in 70 A. D., but it was no longer God's temple on Easter morning. The Shikinah glory of God left that place of stone, and dwelt forever after in the Living Stone-the Risen Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead.

Now the disciples come to grasp all of this later, and it all made sense after the resurrection, but at this stage of their education it was a mystery, and they came to Jesus loaded with questions. They wanted to know what sign to look for to tell them when all of this would happen. Their question takes us into a study of the signs. Richard Jefferies, the naturalist, explains how a robin can pounce upon a caterpillar when it is concealed among the grass and impossible to see. It is all a matter of reading the signs. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures in moving among the grass cause a slight agitation of the grass blades as they crawl under them. The bird has a trained eye, and knows when grass is moved by the wind, for broad patches swing simultaneously. But when a single blade of grass moves ever so slightly, that is a sign of-dinner is served.

All of nature operates on signs and signals, and we have learned to read many of them. There are signs of the seasons, and signs of bad weather we can all read. We also learn to read signs of our mates moods, or those of our friends, or boss, and these signs can guide our behavior. We live in a universe where messages are coming at us from all directions, and we are constantly decoding the signs. Words themselves are signs, and actions and gestures often speak louder than words.

God, by sign language, shouted to the world the meaning of the cross when He rent the veil of the temple from top to bottom. What a sign of His new open door policy to sinners to come into His presence by the blood of Christ. Nature, man, and God all speak to us by means of signs. And old Jewish legend says that when Joseph was Prime Minister to Pharaoh during the great 7 year famine, he emptied the chaff of his graineries into the Nile. And as it floated far down the river people along the banks of the Nile saw it and knew there was hope, for the chaff was a sign that somewhere up the river there was food, and that sign kept them going.

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire, saw a cross in the sky, and the words, "By this sign conquer," and he was motivated on to victory. Columbus with a ship load of near mutinous sailors finally saw some leaves in the water, and that was a sign of land ahead, and they were cheered to press on. We could go on and on, for signs are a vital part of life and history. Anybody who has traveled knows that life on the road would be a nightmare without signs. So it is not surprising that the Bible would have almost 200 references to signs. Nor is it surprising that people have a strong interest in signs of the times, and especially in signs of the end.

The disciples were no different than most of us. They were curious about the future, and about when Jesus would come again, and so they ask Him what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? If it was not for the disciples curiosity, and their asking this question, we would not have one of the most fascinating chapters in all the Bible. Matt. 24 is next to the longest sermon Jesus ever preached, and since both Mark and Luke recorded also, it takes up more the New Testament revelation than any other subject Jesus ever dealt with. It is called the Olivet Discourse.

It is loaded with signs and teaching about signs, and they are not all easy to decipher, but it is exciting to try, for decoding the signs lets us get a peak into the prophetic future from the perspective of the Lord of all history. But before we start a serious search to make since of these signs of our Savior, we need to see just how Jesus felt about our being sign searchers. Matthew's Gospel has 11 uses of the Greek word for sign, which is semeion. That is more than any of the other Gospels, but what is surprising is that 6 of these 11 are negatives. By that I mean they are denounced by Jesus, and they are tools of the forces of evil. Matthew wakes us up to the fact that there are two sides to this sign searching business, and one of them is a bad side.

You do not get a sainthood metal just because you have a craving and a curiosity about the signs of the times. It could be a vice, and could develop in you a spirit that makes Jesus angry at you, just like He was angry at the sign seeking Pharisees. In Matt. 12:38 we read that they came to Him and said, "Teacher we want to see a miraculous sign." They were saying that He should do something spectacular and force them to believe that He really was the Messiah. Jesus was not pleased with their request, but responded in verse 39, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."

This whole scene is repeated in Matt. 16 where they again come to test Jesus and ask for a sign, and He again calls them a wicked and adulterous generation looking for a sign. Jesus is saying that it was a sexual and sensual generation, and such people are often so obsessed with the spectacular that they crave a thrill to get into anything, and they cannot just accept the truth even when it is not star studded, and with rockets going off all around it. Jesus was disgusted with people who needed sensationalism for any kind of commitment. He refused to feed this addiction in His day, and you can count on it that He is just as disgusted with it in people today.

Why is Jesus so angry about being seekers of spectacular signs? Is because such seekers are suckers that bring con men out of the woodwork, and the devil himself is the greatest con of all. You will note that the very first response of Jesus to the disciple's request for a sign is in verse 4, where He says, "Watch out that no one deceives you." More people have been deceived by being sign seekers than by any other way. They are sitting ducks for the master deceiver. The result is, this chapter is full of warning about the dangers of being sign seekers. In verse 24 Jesus says, "For false christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible."

This is the same Greek word the Pharisees used for signs. Jesus refused to grant their request, but Satan will not refuse. He will feed their lust for the sensational, and even believers will be impressed with these signs, almost to the point of deception. The thing we need to grasp right from the start is that Jesus is the greatest skeptic there is on end time signs. A major portion of His message to His disciples is this: Be as skeptical as you can be when it comes to signs of the end, and claims about the end and His second coming. You will find no such unbelief anywhere in the Bible as you find here in Matt. 24. Jesus borders on the fanatical as a skeptic. Look at the evidence.

V. 4-Watch out for deceivers.

V. 5-They will deceive many, these false christs.

V. 6-Don't let emotional things like war and rumors of war get you worked up.

V.11- Many false prophets will appear and deceive many.

V.23-Don't believe anyone who says Christ has come.

V.24-False christs will succeed in deceiving many.

V.26-Don't believe those with spectacular claims that they know where Christ is.

V.36-No one knows just when the second coming will be, so don't believe those who claim they do.

Anybody who studies end time theology, which is called eschatology, knows that every cult in the book specializes in it, for it is the most powerful too they have for deceiving people with their claim to know what nobody else has discovered in the Bible. The cults have brought millions of people into their fold by being sign seekers, and by using sensational literature about the Second Coming and the end of the world. Jesus knew it would be so, and that is why He warns, and warns, and warns. Do not be a sucker, but be a skeptic, and do not believe everything you hear about signs and the end of the world just because somebody sounds biblical. Every cult there is bases their end time schemes on their use of Scripture. If falsehood was easy to spot Jesus would not have had to warn so frequently. The fact is, false teaching on the end times is very plausible and seemingly biblical, and that is why it is so deceiving.

It is okay to ask with the disciples, what is the sign of your coming and the end of the age? It is right and valid to be curious about what we can know of God's plan for the future. But beware of the danger. Don't be a gullible person who gets all emotional about every claim and rumor, and follow after someone who professes to have a crystal ball into which he can see the future. Jesus is not anti-emotion at all, but on this issue He is. This is an area of theology that is so full of abuses and deception that it has to be an area where we become very rational and skeptical. We must weigh things very carefully before we give them any place in our understanding.

Jesus is saying to His disciples that if you are going to travel this road of sign seeking, keep your eyes on these signs that I will give you first of all, and they are: Caution, Slow Down, Danger Ahead. The sign seeker who does not give heed to these signs is almost certainly going to be deceived and led astray. So let's face reality. We are about to embark on a journey that takes us through a mine field where the enemy has laid one trap after another. If I seem to be overly cautious as I lead the way, it is because I take the warnings of Jesus seriously, and because I have studied the history of how God's people have been lead astray time and time again by following false prophets.

Christian people have been so gullible and so open to swallow anything that so-called prophecy experts come up with that many pastors and evangelists have rejected sign seeking altogether. John R. Rice, the great evangelist who won tens of thousands to Christ, and who has had a great influence on over 20 thousand pastors, of which I am one, got so fed up with the sensationalism of preaching the signs of the times that he began a crusade to whip out sign seekers themselves as being dupes of the devil. His message spread widely by books, pamphlets, and papers was this: There are absolutely no signs of Christ's Second Coming in the Bible. Those who say there are pervert the Bible and reject the clear teachings of Christ. This is the other extreme that many are forced to take because of the folly of those on the other end who see signs in every event that takes place. We will pursue this subject in our next message.

2. SIGNS OF THE TIMES Based on Matt. 24:1-14

Gene Autry paid 27 thousand dollars for one letter of an old sign. Back in 1923 a real estate developer put up a huge sign on the hill over looking Hollywood, California. It became a symbol for the many who came seeking jobs in the movies. Over the years it became weather worn, and was damaged by vandals. Several entertainers decided it was time to start a save the sign movement. They sold the letters of the old sign to raise money for the new one. Gene Autry bought one of the old signs. The new sign is 4 stories high, and is steel reinforced, and it has a fence to protect it from vandals. It is a state of the art sign, and has to be considered one of the signs of our time. People all over the world recognize this sign from Hollywood. It is a sign of the stars that people idolize in our movies and culture.

Signs have power to move and motivate people. Dorothy Parker, a short story writer and theater critic, had a small office in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. No one ever came in to see her, and she felt isolated and alone. She solved her problem by hanging a one word sign on her door. She got people coming in to see her all the time. The one word sign simply said Gentlemen. Signs determine the direction people go all the time, and we have to be constantly reading signs when we travel, or we could easily get lost. In a strange city the number one task of a driver is to find the right signs. We are all sign seekers as we travel, for they are essential for arriving at our destination.

Sign seeking can even become a full time job if you are in the situation Steven Callahan found himself in. His small plane went down in the Atlantic, and he was adrift for 76 days. This was the longest any man had ever survived in an inflatable raft. He drifted 1800 miles, and when he was rescued he wrote a book called ADRIFT. He said he spent his days looking for a sign. He was looking for any sign of life. It could be a plane, a fish, a bird, or any sign that would give him hope.

It is a world where people always need a basis for hope, and that is why they seek a sign. This is a world of sign seekers, and the result is that it is a gold mine for sign makers. There is a lot of money in signs, and not just the advertising and neon signs of the business world, but also the signs of the time makers, who make a fortune off people's hunger for signs. Jesus knew Christians would be sign seekers like everybody else, and so to save them a lot of emotional turmoil, and a fortune, he warns them to be on guard against the most common tricks of the sign promoters.

The first one is war and rumors of war. I call your attention to verse 6 where Jesus says, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come." Jesus makes it clear that no war or rumor of war is a sign of anything but the depravity of man. It is not to alarm the Christian at all as if it had an significance as to the time of His coming and the end. There have been hundreds of wars since he said this, and even two horrible world wars, but they were in no way signs of the end.

Commentators by the dozens point out that Jesus is teaching that war will be a part of history, and every age will see wars. They cannot be a sign of anything because they are so common. To make war the sign of the end would be like making bank robbery the sign of the end. Commonplace matters of every generation are not of much value as signs of a once in a history event. You need something unique and unusual, and not just everyday human folly. So Jesus says, first of all, don't let talk of war get you alarmed. Now what have Christians often done with this admonition to not get alarmed? They have sounded an alarm with almost every war of significance in history. Not just the cults and sensationalists, but some of the most godly men of history, whom God has used in a mighty way, have fallen into the trap of making some war the sign of the end.

They are not damned for paying no heed to Jesus, and doing what He says they are not to do, but by their disobedience they displease Him, and add confusion where He tried to calm the waters. Dr. Oswald J. Smith of the Peoples Church in Toronto, one of the giants of the 20th century said, "I'm reminded of the fact that the Lord Jesus stated in unmistakable terms that one of the many signs of the approaching end of the age would be talk about war." He was a great man of God, but he jumped to a false conclusion and twisted the words of Jesus to say just the opposite of what He really said. Book after book quotes that war and rumor of war is a sign of the end, and that we should be alarmed, even though Jesus said just the opposite is the case.

This is precisely why Protestants do not believe in a pope or any higher authority having the final say on what the Word of God is saying. The common people can often read the Bible and better hear what God is saying than the so-called experts. The Bible has to be in the hands of the people to balance out the mistakes of leaders. The Apostles themselves misunderstood Jesus and needed to be corrected, and so none of us are beyond misunderstanding the Word. We need each other to bring balance, and to overcome impressions that are not consistent with God's revelation. This is a good example, for many see war as a sign of the end, even though Jesus made it clear that it is not. I don't care what authority you quote, or how many of them you can quote. Jesus said war is not to alarm Christians as a sign of the end. That is my highest authority, so I refuse to get alarmed by any war as being a sign of the end.

Christians have let many wars become occasions to signal to the world that the end is near. Many of the cartoons depicting the doom of the world are aimed at religious fanatics. They have refused to listen to the Lord of history. None of us could escape the impact of the news coverage of the Persian Gulf War. The rumors were wild and I expected a war far beyond the level it came to. Rumors exaggerate war, and there is no way to escape some degree of alarm. Jesus is not saying that we should not care about war and its awful consequences. He is saying that we should not be alarmed that it is a signal that history is about to end. It is not a sign of the end.

If the United States and Russia go to war and blow each other off the map, and destroy a major part of the world, that is something to be alarmed about, but it is not a sign of the end. The work of the church will go on after that until the Great Commission is fulfilled, and the whole world has the Gospel. Jesus said in 24:14 that only then will the end come. Man will never set the agenda for Jesus by all of his wars. They can kill people by the millions, and bloody this planet from one end to the other, but war will never bring history to the end. Only Christ can do that, and He tells us war will not be His means of doing it. It will be the onward Christian soldiers who take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That is the sign that Jesus says we should give heed to.

Durant in The Lessons Of History tells us that in the last 3,421 years of recorded history there have been only 268 years that have been free of war.

There are always wars going on someplace in the world. If you are going to use war as a sign, you just as well use plane crashes for one as well, for one is as likely as the other to signify the end of history. The problem with using war, or any disastrous event as a sign of the end, is that you have to delude yourself into believing you live in the worst of times, and that your war, or disaster, is worst than anybody else's. This is almost impossible for those who know history.

Listen, for example, to the Roman historian Tacitus who wrote about life in the Roman Empire in 69 A. D. "I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished with the sword. There were three civil wars; there were more with foreign enemies; there were often wars that had both characters at once." After describing some of these he goes on, "Now too Italy was prostrated by disasters either entirely novel, or that recurred only after a long succession of ages; cities in Campania's richest plains were swallowed up and overwhelmed; Rome was wasted by conflagration, its oldest temples consumed, and the Capital itself fired by the hands of the citizens."

He goes on to describe the masses of exiles, and all of the many crimes. The corruption in government was a nightmare, and everyone was out to get what they could at everyone else's expense. He concludes his description with these words: "Slaves were bribed to turn against their masters, and freed men to betray their patrons; and those who had not an enemy were destroyed by friends." These were not exacting the good old days. It they ever develop a real time machine, don't be to quick to sign up for a trip back to the New Testament period in Rome. On the other hand, the trip might do you good, for you would realize it still a fallen world today, but you would lose your illusion that it is the worst of times. Those who latch on the wars and rumor of wars as the sign of the end are in direct opposition to Jesus, and they have filled history with many blunders.

Sign seekers create sign skeptics because they maximize the very thing that Jesus minimized-the wars, rumors of wars, famine, and earthquakes. All of this is just a part of history is what Jesus is saying, and they are no particular sign of the end. They come in all ages, and our age is no exception. If we are to look at current events as the focus of our hope, then we had better be ready for disappointment, for it can't get much better than World War I got for fulfilling all of these signs.

One of the great Bible prophecy experts of his day was Louis Bauman. He published the book Light From Bible Prophecy in 1940. It was well received by the evangelical world, and it was about as good as such a book can get in reading the signs of the times from current events. He shows by extensive evidence that World War I was the greatest war in history. It was the worst war in numbers involved, in cost, and in deaths. It made all previous wars seem pigmy by comparison. Then he gives evidence that the worst famines in history took place at the same time in both China and Russia. Many millions of people starved to death after eating all the animals, tree bark, and grass. The Archbishop of Canterbury said in 1921, "Never in the history of the world has a condition of things existed comparable to the ghastly death by famine of whole millions of men, women, and children."

It was also the greatest period of pestilence. In 1918 at least 12 million people died of the flu epidemic. It was more widespread than the black death of a former age, and this was considered to be without parallel in the history of disease. It was 5 times more deadly than war. The greatest earthquakes ever came after World War I. There is a long list of terrible quakes all over the world that killed many hundreds of thousands of people, and probably well over a million. In the light of these facts in his day, Bauman has this eloquent conclusion.

"Greatest war, greatest famine, greatest pestilence, greatest

earthquake-anyone of which should cause men to meditate

upon the way of God with men. And when all these can be

synchronized within the space of 10 years-1914 to 1923-

and a space of 20 years would include the last great Chinese

famine, then men who think, and especially those who think

in the light of divine revelation, will not dismiss it all with a

flippant sneer. I said-men who think! Most men don't

think. It is so much easier to sneer!

Weigh it well! Nearly 6,000 years have passed since God

placed Adam in Eden. And yet the 4 greatest plagues that

can afflict the human race were all packed recently in a

single decade! If that does not fulfill the sign that the Lord

Jesus gave an answer to the question "What shall be the

sign of Thy coming?" -Then, pray tell, just what is it going

to take to fulfill the words that "cannot be broken"?

This is a good question. It that decade did not fulfill the sign of the times, then what in this world can? The signs of our day are petty in comparison. Even if there are more earthquakes and more wars, they are not nearly as destructive. It is this reality that makes many question if Jesus intended us to even look at these things as signs of the end. We don't have the time to look at them, but I have the records of dozens of dates that have been set by godly men for the second coming of Christ. They are all based on what they felt were clear signs of the times. Some of them are sheer nonsense, and others seem quite convincing, but all of them are embarrassed by history, which made them false prophets.

Jesus says in verse 36, "No one knows about that day, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Jesus emphasized that it is a mystery when He will return, and there is no way to know. In Mark 13:23 Jesus says to His disciples, "You do not know when that time will come." He goes on to say that its like a master of the house going on a trip and leaving his servants in charge. They have no idea when he will return, and so they need to stay alert. He says in verse 36, "If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you speaking. What I say to you I say to everyone: Watch!"

The point of signs smashers, and the thousands of Christian teachers who reject sign watching, is that it detracts from the focus of Jesus to watch for Him by getting people to watch for signs. Sign watchers are almost always pessimistic, and they draw their strength from crisis events like wars and earthquakes. This means that people get all excited when such signs are prevalent, but when they are over and life goes back to normal they settle down again into indifference to the second coming of Christ. Sign watchers rise and fall like the tide with daily events. This means it has to be dooms day before people will give heed to the second coming. The focus is not on Christ at all, but on signs, and this is futile, since Christ said nobody can know by signs when He will come.

This sort of thing lets God's people be manipulated by the so-called readers of the signs. Jesus said watch at all times, and not just in the bad times, and crisis times, but in the good times as well, for He said He could come at anytime. No one can read the signs and tell when He will come, for He can come anytime. In fact, Jesus said that when He does come it will be a surprise, like a thief in the night, and only those who are always watching will be ready. Those who go by signs will not be ready, for He may come when there are no such signs.

This is what is called the doctrine of the imminent coming. It simply means that Jesus can come at any time. He does not have to wait until some signs are first given before He comes. If we can know there are signs to precede His coming, then He cannot come until He first gives us these signs, and if that is the case, we can know He is not coming before we see the signs. Those who hold this view of the imminent coming say they do not look for signs, but for the Savior Himself, for He is not bound by any signs before He comes. If He is, then we have to focus on the signs that are to precede Him. Sign seekers make Christ secondary to the signs. They reject His right to come again like a thief in the night. He cannot do that and surprise us, for He has to wait until the signs are evident first. So they cannot honestly sing that Jesus may come today, for the signs are not yet fulfilled. For sign seekers His coming cannot be at any time. He must wait until after the signs.

John R. Rice is dogmatic in his view that Jesus can come at any time. He writes, "Now the intent of the Lord Jesus was that they should expect Him to come at any moment in their lifetime. He could have come before World War I, or World War II, or before the rise of communism, or before the Catholic papacy. Yes, Jesus could have come at any time since Pentecost is a clear teaching of the Bible. Jesus said, "Watch, for you know not the time."

If we take at face value the Bible doctrine about the second coming, that it is imminent, then we know He could have come at any time in the centuries past. We cannot go by signs. No signs are prophesied. There is no prophesied event. He may come at any moment, and when He does come, it will be unexpected because it cannot be foretold."

Because of the history of sign seekers and the discredit and disgrace they have brought on the church, I can sympathize with this position, but it goes to far. The disciples asked for a sign, and Jesus did not reject them. He warns them over and over to be cautious, but He does go on to deal with signs, and in verse 14 He gives a very specific sign of the end of the world. This leaves me in the middle. The sign seekers on one side, seen signs in every disaster and unusual event, and the sign smashers calling it all nonsense, and rejecting all sign as of value.

There are many of God's most brilliant and committed children on both sides of this issue, but each side goes to extremes. The third way is the wisest way, and as I see it that is to be a sign skeptic. Be very cautious, as Jesus warns, but don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Work at focusing on the signs that really are valid because Jesus says so, and forget the rest. This third way says both the sign seekers and sign smashers are right if they join forces to smash the nonsense of sign sensationalism, and hold to the signs to which Jesus clearly points.

There are very few authentic signs, and possibly only the one in 24:14 is a truly valid sign that can be measured with any degree of accuracy. But I agree that over enthusiasm even for this authentic sign is folly if it takes our eyes off Christ. We are to be looking for our Lord, and not for signs. Annie Johnson Flint put it in poetry:

It is not for a sign we are watching-

For wonders above and below,

The pouring of vials of judgment,

The sounding of trumpets of woe;

It is not for a Day we are looking,

Not even the time yet to be

When the earth shall be filled with God's glory

As the waters covers the sea;

It is not for a King we are longing

To make the world-kingdoms His own;

It is not for a Judge who shall summon

The nations of earth to His throne.

Not for these, though we know they are coming;

For they are but adjuncts of Him,

Before whom all glory is clouded,

Besides whom all splendor grows dim.

We wait for the Lord, our Beloved,

Our Comforter, Master, and Friend,

The substance of all we hoped for,

Beginning of faith, and its end;

We watch for our Savior and Bridegroom,

Who loved us and made us His own;

For Him we are looking and longing:

For Jesus, and Jesus alone.

This is not just poetry, it is Bible exposition, for the only use of the word sign that Jesus makes is in verse 30, which if you look at it you will see is Himself. The only thing we know for sure is that when we see Him that is the sign He has arrived. Be skeptical of all other signs, but be every ready for this one.

3. THE KEY SIGN OF THE END Based on Matt. 24:1-14

It was reported in the mid 80's that shoes coming to America from Italy had a Common Market stamp on them. It was a circle with a line drawn through the middle, and in the top half was a lamb's head with two horns, and on the bottom half was the number 666. Joe Esses said he saw it himself in his book, The Next Visitor To Planet Earth. When Edgar C. Carlisle, an evangelist, read that he got all excited and incorporated it into his message, and he showed it on a screen as he traveled from church to church.

No doubt many pastors and evangelists used this startling information. But Carlisle was more fanatical than most. He started looking in shoe stores to find that circle, and he excited others to do the same. He even had people traveling to Rome to find a pair of those shoes, but none could be found. He wrote to the U. S. Emigration authorities, and the British Embassy, and they knew of no such stamp. He wrote and called Mrs. Esses, but he could make no contact. Finally in embarrassment he stopped telling the story, he hated to do it, for it was his best thriller, and Christians ate it up, but he had to stop because he realized he had been deceived by another prophetic hoax.

There is no way he could go back to the many people he told this story to, and so he became a tool of the great deceiver, and no doubt, many Christians are still spreading this false story along with dozens of others that come from the master deceiver. At least pastor Carlisle learned his lesson, and now he checks out his stories before he proclaims them. He saw in this travels across the country a tract that declared the vultures in Israel are increasing as a fulfillment of prophecy. He wrote to the authorities in Israel and soon heard back that 30 others had made the same inquiry. The answer was no, they are decreasing, and there were only 60 mating pair in all of Israel.

Christians all across the land were being deceived by false information. We could go on for hours looking at this sort of thing. Maybe, just maybe there is a reason why Jesus in this sermon on prophecy warns His disciples about deception 4 times. Jesus knew that in the area of prophecy and its fulfillment Christians would be susceptible to deception. Pastors and evangelists are very eager to have startling illustrations, and the result is they are the first to be suckered by a good story. Seldom does a pastor ever check out a story, and so if one tells it, it spreads like wildfire, each one quoting the other with none of them having any basis in fact.

Dr. Paul Reese, one of the greatest preachers in America. Wrote these words of criticism: "I shall go to my grave believing that, side by side with my ardent expectation of the Second Advent, most of our 'signs of the times' sermons and books are based on opportunism and a mistaken understanding of what the apocalyptic portions of Scripture are meant to teach us. These hot sermonic and literary outpourings tend, in the cases of many Christians, to distract from the 'occupy until I come' mandate for missions and social responsibility."

Spiros Zodehiates, the Greek scholar and author, writes, "I believe that the insistence on signs, or the craving for any form of the religion of signs or the religion of superstitious wonder, is an element of disease in the Church. It is analogous to the spirit that helped to bring Christ Jesus to His death." I agree with these men completely. If you are a sign seeker, there is a high likelihood that you will be a tool of one prophecy hoax after another. A wise Christian will doubt and question every sign he hears about, for the vast majority are fiction, and the more that Christians get excited about fiction, the more the world concludes that all that Christians believe is fiction.

In spite of all this negative warning about sign watching I want to focus on the key sign of the end of history. Remember, the abuse of a thing is never an argument against its proper use. In Washington D. C. the police dropped the charges against a man named Stanley for driving through 8 stop signs. How could anyone miss 8 stop signs and not be guilty? He proved that he was going the wrong way on a one way street, and so he could not see the signs. Here was a case where ignorance was an excuse, but we have no excuse for missing the key sign of this sermon on the signs.

The disciples wanted to know about the end of the age, and Jesus says there is to be a history of terrible things, but they are not the end. There will be wars and terrible persecution. There will be apostasy and wickedness, but hang in there to the end he urges. Then in verse 14 Jesus finally answers their question. All the rest is background, but here is the answer to their question: "And this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

The only clear sign that Jesus gave of the end of the world is the sign of world wide spread of the Gospel. Jesus says that when the Great Commission is fulfilled, then the end will come. It makes sense that if the purpose of Christ for the church is to take the Gospel into all the world, that when that purpose is fulfilled, the end should come. When the goal is reached, you move on to another goal, and this is God's goal for history, that the whole world have a chance to hear the Gospel. It makes sense also that Jesus would not come again and end history before His church finishes His purpose for coming in the first place. This goal must be reached before the plan is over.

This is the only clear sign that Jesus states, and yet the human mind is so stubborn in its lust for the sensational that this is the least of the signs you will read about in books on prophecy. It is not even mentioned by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth, and many other popular end time books. Why? Because it doesn't sell. The sign of Jesus is boresville. How can you get excited about the Gospel reaching the remote regions of the world? Sure it means people in heaven who otherwise would never be there, but there is no impact on our lives like a super earthquake or terrible war. We want news, and news is basically bad, and so give us the terrors of famine, the horrors of major disasters, and then you have our attention. Christians buy this stuff like crazy, and they support the sensationalists. That is why there is so many of them. You would think that Jesus taught us to keep records on the wars and earthquakes, and when they are high, then we will know it is near the end.

We don't pay any attention to Jesus because He is a kill-joy. He says that all of this sort of thing that we like in the way of signs are, in fact, not signs at all, but just part of the history of a fallen world. The sensational things will be in every generation, and false prophets will take advantage of them in every generation. But those who listen to Jesus will not be deceived by spectacular news of this or that disaster. If we listen to Jesus, we will be looking instead at the statistics of how many more peoples we have to reach before the Gospel is in every language on earth. This ignored sign, on the back burner of most prophetic stoves, is the really hot one for those who are interested in being right rather than popular.

There is no other sign that Jesus connects with the end but this one. All the others He states clearly are not the end, or at best, they are the beginning of the end, but this one is the sign of the end. Our business as Christians is not to study wars and rumors of wars, and famines, earthquakes, and all sorts of spectacular events, but to be about the business of getting the testimony of the Gospel to all the world. Let's face up to the implications of this verse. If the end will not come until the Gospel is taken to all nations, then Jesus did not expect to come anytime soon. He knew, and so did the disciples, that reaching the whole world would take some time. The known world was fairly well united under Roman rule, and so it was conceivable that it could be done in their life time, but still, it was going to be a long hard job to accomplish.

Pentecost helped a great deal, for there were people from all over the world there to hear the Gospel, and take it back to their land. A good many received Christ at that time, but Jesus would not be content until people of every language tribe and nation in the world were part of His family. It was a life time job, and not a task that could be finished quickly.

According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (1982). By A. D. 100 there were about 1 million Christians in the world out of a population of 181 million in the Roman Empire. That was just over one half per cent. By the year 1000 Christians were 18 per cent of the world's population. By 1900 it was 34.4 per cent of the world. But by 1980 it had slipped to 32.8 per cent. Christianity lost ground in that century largely because of the massive defection due to communism in Easter Europe, and secularism in Western Europe. That would lead to pessimism except for the fact of what has happened in the third world.

Christianity has grown in the third world from 83 million in 1900 to 643 million by 1980. That is a growth of nearly 800 per cent. In Africa in the same period Christianity grew from 9.9 million to 203 million, which is a 2000 per cent growth. In South Asia and Latin America the church is growing like wildfire. The point is, Christianity does not have to grow in the Western countries. The Gospel is there, and the task is achieved, even if Christianity does not grow. The issue is not the West, but the rest of the world where the Gospel is not being preached. That is what matters to fulfill the Great Commission, and that can be achieved in any one generation. It is not global conversion, but global proclamation that fulfills this sign.

The task is enormous, and so it could take many years to achieve, but the fact that it is even possible makes us to be living at a very unique time in history. No one has ever lived so close to the end as we are now living. Our century has seen some radical changes. In 1900, 85 per cent of the Christians were in the Western World. By 1980 only 32.8 per cent were in the Western World. 44.1 per cent were in third world, and 17.7 per cent in the communism world. In 1900, 81 per cent of Christians were white. In 1980 only 48 per cent, and non whites were the majority with 52 per cent. In the 20th century Christianity has become a universal religion with people in almost every country in the world. 96 per cent of the world's population has part of the Bible in their language.

The major sign of the church's task is being completed, and now more than ever the sign seekers are looking at this sign seriously. Anthony Hoekema in his book The Bible And The Future says, "The missionary preaching of the Gospel to all nations is, in fact, the outstanding and most characteristic sign of the times. It gives to the present age its primary meaning and purpose." G. C. Berkouwer in The Return Of Christ says, "In the last days the preaching of the Gospel is the focal point of all the signs. In it all the signs can and must be understood."

The focus of Jesus is just the opposite of what most end time messages stress. They stress the bad news of war, earthquake and lawlessness in man and nature. Jesus says that in the midst of all this world chaos, false prophets, increase of wickedness, and the love of many growing cold, the Gospel will be preached in the whole world. Don't look at the negative for a sign. That stuff is always present, but look for the positive, for that will be a once in a history sign that the end is near.

No matter how rotten the world, and no matter how corrupt the church, the mission goes forward until every nation has a chance to hear the Gospel. The great sign is the Great Commission being fulfilled. This means we should be concerned about reaching the unreached peoples of the world, for that is the only route Jesus left us to go in to make a difference in history. Bernard Ramm said, "Motivation for foreign missions is not exhausted by the love of God in the cross of Christ, nor the darkness of pagan hearts, but it is also eschatologically motivated. Our world-wide missionary work brings ever closer the parousia of our blessed Lord, and so we spread the Gospel far and wide to hasten His appearing."

The focus is on the unreached peoples now, for when they are reached, and people of every nation and language have a chance to be saved, and to be a part of God's family, the end will come. And not before this, for Revelation gives us a glimpse of heaven, and there will be people in heaven from every nation, tribe and tongue. Jesus could not come and end history before His goal was achieved, and cut out of the scene of heaven people not reached. Peter said that the second coming is delayed because Jesus is not willing that any should perish. He refuses to come until at least someone from every nation and tongue is saved. When the whole world can say that the word is out, and we know of Jesus, then the end will come. Nothing can hold Jesus back then, but nothing can bring Him until then.

This optimism about the whole world being reached is what motivates the Christians who call themselves Post-millennialists. They say this verse guarantees that the church will be successful, and will achieve her goal of reaching this world. They realize the world is a mess, and there is a lot of negative reality, but it is in the midst of all this negative that Jesus comes forth with the positive verse of success. There will be bad times, and there will be persecution, apostasy, and false prophets, and all the rest with the wars, famines, and earthquakes, but none of it will stop the church from reaching the whole world with the Gospel. Many focus on all the bad things that are a reality, but Jesus says the church will still fulfill His purpose, and this should be our focus.

I am not a post-mill, but I do accept their optimism as biblical, and recognize that they are only listening to Jesus when they believe He will become Lord of some lives in every nation on earth, and thereby have the only universal kingdom in history before He comes again. Jesus will not scrap His plan and cut short His agenda just because the going gets tough. Christians who are pessimistic about the future are listening to somebody besides their Lord. Christians who listen to Jesus won't give up, let up, or shut up until the job is done.

Jesus ended His Great Commission by saying, "Surely I will be with you to the very end of the age." In other words, there is no quitting. We will work together to the end, and never give up until we reach the whole world. Jesus is committed to this plan. It is the only plan there is, and the only truly obedient attitude is to support the fulfilling of this Great Commission.

There was a minor fulfillment of this prophecy in New Testament times, so that it was possible for Jesus to come in 70 A. D., or anytime after, but Jesus did not go for the short plan. He could have, for at Pentecost it says in Acts 2:5, "There were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven." The first sermon of Peter bore witness to people from every nation. Later on after Paul traveled all over the Roman Empire he wrote in Col. 1:23 that the Gospel had been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. Jesus could have come in the lifetime of the Apostles, for they had already touched the known world for Christ. They, of course, had a limited view of the world. There were whole continents of people they did not know even existed, and so they had achieved the goal as far as they knew, but Jesus did not return for He knew of a vast world yet to be reached. The minor fulfillment was not enough for Jesus, for He is going for the maxi-fulfillment which will cover the whole world.

The year 1000 was thought to be a good time for history to end. It was a great round number, and the world was reached as far as they could tell. They had no idea about the Americas or Australia, or other parts of the world. As we approach 2000 we are the first Christians to ever live who know there is no part of the world yet unknown, and who also have the technology to reach the whole world. We have the best choice of any Christians to play a major role in bringing history to a conclusion.

This does not contradict the statement in verse 44 that Jesus will come at a time when we don't expect Him. We have an authentic sign to watch, but the fact is, we have no idea when it will be fulfilled. It could be some time this afternoon, or a hundred years from now. Only God can know when all peoples are reached. There could be people from the unreached nations coming to a Western nation and hearing the Gospel that could represent the last people needing to be reached. We just have no idea when God will be satisfied that all people have been reached. That is why we can both have a great sign to watch, and yet still not know when Christ will come, for only He can know when the goal is achieved.

He is the Alpha and Omega. He started things, and only He can end it, and He will do so when He has accomplished His goal of making sure there are saved people to sing forever in heaven out of every tribe, tongue, and nation. The only sign we can even guess at is this one, and even that is a guess, for only Christ can know when it is fulfilled. More important than guessing, however, is getting in on the plan, and millions of Christians are doing so in their support of the effort to reach all of the yet unreached peoples of the world. Evangelism is the key theme, for in the next decade we could fulfill the purpose of Jesus for His church. We should all be excited about reaching the unreached people groups, for this is a key sign that the end is near.

4. THE GREAT TRIBULATION Based on Matt. 24:15-25

A man who tried never to miss a boxing match had an important business meeting the night of the championship bout. He hated to miss the fight, but he did what he thought was the next best thing. He asked his wife to watch it and tell him about it when he got home. When his meeting was over he rushed home and said, "Well honey, how did the match go-who won?" "Nobody won," she said, "One of the guys got hurt in the first round and fell down unconscious, so they had to quit."

Any sport is hard to interpret when you don't understand the rules. It gets even harder when people have different ideas of what the rules are. Have you ever played a game where the people you are playing with go by different rules than you are use to? You have to work out compromise somewhere, for no game or sport can make any sense unless everybody is playing by the same rules. Christians have their little games too which sometimes lead to major conflicts because they play by different rules. A great illustration of this is the subject called The Great Tribulation. There is a great deal of tribulation over this issue of the Great Tribulation, for Christians have radical different rules by which they interpret the Bible when it comes to this subject.

Believe it or not, the paradox is that there is almost universal agreement among the opponents in this conflict over one key issue. All Christians agree that God's people will escape the wrath of God. Jesus took the wrath of God on Himself at the cross, and now those in Him will not have to suffer that judgment. It would be totally inconsistent for God to let His wrath fall on His own children. That would be like chasing a car in which your child has just been kidnapped, and forcing it off the road over a cliff. You judge the culprit severely, but at the same time you destroy the innocent. It is not a very wise plan, and not the sort of strategy that an all wise God would use.

When He judged the world with the flood, He saved Noah and his family out of the flood. When He destroyed Sodom He took Lot out of the city. It is just logical, even if the Bible did not say so, that God would spare His own in a day of wrath. So all Christians see this logic, and they are fully agreed. But then we come to the wrath of man and Satan, which is what the Great Tribulation is all about, and the unity of Christians is shattered. Some say the church will be raptured out of the world, and escape this tribulation. They are called the pre-tribulationists. This means the rapture comes before the tribulation.

Other Christians, and keep in mind there are millions on both sides of this issue, say that the church will not be raptured until after the tribulation. They are called the post-tribulationists. So you have your two sides; each writing a ton of books defending their position, and in many cases calling each other lame brain numskulls for not being able to see the obvious truth. There is the mid-tribulationists too, but that is just another form of the pre-trib. Over the last 30 years I have read hundreds of authors on this subject, and there are brilliant and marvelous men of God on both sides. Anyone who thinks all the good guys are on one side are terribly ignorant. To cast doubt on any man's love for Christ, or his love for the Word of God, based on his conviction about the tribulation is a great sign of ignorance. No matter what your conviction is, some of your favorite heroes of the faith are on the other side. When wise and godly people see an issue differently, I like to try and figure out what is true and valid on both sides.

My first conviction is that both sides in this controversy can be shown to be correct in their emphasis as we focus on the tribulation that came in 70 A. D. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. The pre-trib side is concerned to spare the church from the tribulation, and this appears to be the whole point of Jesus here in Matt. 24. He is giving them these warnings so they can watch and be prepared to escape. When they see the abomination that causes desolation they are to flee to the mountains. By heeding this warning they will be spared from the Great Tribulation. We know from history that the Christians did listen to Jesus, and when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Roman legions they fled to a town called Pella 50 miles away. They were spared the great slaughter that killed a million and a half people in Jerusalem, as the city and temple were utterly demolished. So the pre-trib idea of the church being spared is supported here.

On the other hand, the post-trib side who stress that the church has to go through the tribulation are equally supported in this passage. They are spared from death, but they are not spared from the distress of the tribulation. Jesus says that in their fleeing the city they have to forsake their possessions. They are to flee so fast they are not to go into their homes to grab anything, and not even their cloak. In this emergency evacuation they get out with just the clothes on their back, and they lose all else. It will be dreadful for pregnant women and nursing mothers. It will be hard on anyone, but for them even worse. Then in v. 20 Jesus says to pray it does not take place in the winter or on the Sabbath. That will just add to the misery of an already terrible situation.

The point is, though they are spared from the death of this tribulation, they are not spared from the loss and suffering of it. They survive it by God's grace, but they have to go through it. Now we don't have to guess about this, for we have the history of the fulfillment of all this prophecy, and it was just as Jesus said it would be in 70 A. D. The Christians escaped to the city of Pella.

The problem is, though both the pre-trib and the post-trib are right in their basic ideas, with one saying Christians escape, and the other saying they endure tribulation, neither of them is right about the rapture. The pre-trib says the church will be raptured out of the world before the Great Tribulation, but we do not see that here at all. They are warned to flee, and God cuts it short for their survival, but they are not raptured out. The post-trib says the church is raptured after they endure it, but the record of history is clear-they went through it and survived, but they were not raptured out. The Great Tribulation of 70 A. D. did not see Christians raptured before or after. They escaped and had to endure, but there was no rapture.

Now they key fact that has to be established is that 70 A. D. was, in fact, the Great Tribulation that Jesus spoke of, and not some other tribulation at the end of history. Both the pre-trib and post-trib scholars in their desperation to be right twist this passage all out of shape to make it fit their systems. They ignore the context and force this passage to refer to some far off event that has no relevance to the disciples and that generation at all. This chapter is one of the most abused in all of the Bible. Common sense would never dream of the things men do to rip this chapter out of context. Lets put it in context as Jesus does, and see than any attempt to tear this away from the 70 A. D. fall of Jerusalem is abusive. Jesus clearly puts brackets around this Great Tribulation to make clear just what it is.

First he says in chapter 23:35-36, "And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berakiah whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation." The generation that rejected and killed the Son of God, as the last straw of unjust killing, was to be the generation of God's worst judgment. All other generations that were judged were judged for the sins and folly of their own generation, but this generation was to be judged for the sins and folly for all of history. That is why Jesus says in v. 21, "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equalled again." The Great Tribulation was to come upon that unique generation which crucified the Son of God.

There are many attempts to get around this obvious truth of what Jesus is saying, and not make that generation the most unique in all of history in terms of the judgment that is to come upon them. Many want to push this into the future and some unknown generation. They come up with elaborate theories that take you into the book of Daniel or Revelation, and they make this chapter refer to something totally irrelevant to the disciples and the Christians living in that day. They are clever theories, but they do not hold water. They are buckets without bottoms, in fact, for not only does Jesus tell us before this chapter that that generation was to suffer for all the unjust killing of history, but after telling of the Great Tribulation He says in v. 34, "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."

The first three Gospels all record this, but not John's Gospel, for when he wrote it was already history and no longer prophecy. This Great Tribulation was over, and that is why John does not record this longest teaching passage of Jesus on prophecy. I take Jesus at His word, and see that he clearly teaches here that the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. was the greatest tribulation ever in history, and there will never be another like it. The only way to escape from this conclusion is to try and make generation mean something else, like the Jewish race, or Christian race, and many try, but all attempts are futile, for generation is a word Jesus used frequently, and always to refer to the people of His day.

In Matt. 12:41 Jesus says , "The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here." In 12:45 He calls them "This wicked generation." In 16:4 He calls them, "A wicked and adulterous generation." In 17:17 he says, "O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you." Jesus is always referring to his contemporaries when He used the word, and that is what He means in Matt. 24. All of the details of the tribulation that Jesus gives here fit that generation, and it is far fetched and meaningless in any other context. If this referred to some future tribulation, as many try to teach, it is really obsolete. How many people in Israel live on their roofs any more? How many work in the field, and what is the relevance of the winter and the Sabbath for travel? The whole picture fits perfectly the events of 70 A. D. To take it out of context of that day and make it refer to some unknown event of the future is purely man made fantasy in order to force this passage to fit some man made scheme. Jesus said it would happen to that generation, and I believe Him.

There is a reason why men work at a theory that makes this refer to some future generation, however, for Jesus says that after this tribulation He will come again in the clouds with power and great glory, and the elect will be gathered from on end of heaven to the other. Obviously, this did not happen after 70 A. D. they say, and so that is what makes this one of the hardest chapters in the Bible to understand. Jesus seems to be teaching that His second coming and the rapture were to happen right after the fall of Jerusalem. This leads to all kinds of theories to try and explain what seems to make Jesus teaching an error. He said He did not know when He was coming, but here He seems to be saying it will be right after this Great Tribulation. Most of the theories to explain this are not very convincing.

My conviction is, let the so-called prophecy experts create their mazes, and have their fun trying to guide people through them. I prefer to stick with Jesus, and just see if we can make sense of what He is saying without abandoning His clear words that this was all to take place in that generation. I can agree with the many, even the majority of scholars, who see Jesus using the 70 A. D. tribulation as an illustration and type of the final tribulation of history, and the literal rapture and coming again. That is what makes this chapter relevant to every age, and not just that generation. This fits the pattern all through the Bible. But you cannot escape the fact that Jesus linked end time events with that generation and 70 A. D.

Before we can see how this applies to every generation we need to see how it applied to the generation Jesus is speaking of and to. First of all, lets look at the startling signs in the heavens in v. 29. "The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken." From our point of view this is an astronomical catastrophe and the end of the universe, and not just Jerusalem. But that is because we do not understand apocalyptic language. The people of that day were used to hearing this kind of language. It was not only a part of their popular reading material, it was a part of their Old Testament.

When Isaiah described the fall of Babylon, this is how he wrote in Isa. 13:10, "The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light." In v. 13 he adds, "Therefore I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will shake from its place." The judgment of God is pictorially displayed in the heavens. If this was an isolated thing we could not make much of it, but when we see it is a common pattern of Hebrew thought, then we begin to see the picture. Later on Isaiah describes God's judgment on Edam, and other evil nations, and he writes in Isa. 34:4, "All the stars of heaven will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine." We know, of course, if God ever did such a thing literally it would be the end of the entire universe, but God did not literally do it. This is just the Hebrew way of describing the anger and judgment of God.

When Ezekiel describes God's judgment on Pharaoh king of Egypt, this is what he writes in Ezek. 32:7-8, "When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you." Whenever God comes in judgment the prophets describe nature going bezerk. In Joel 2 we read, "For the day of the Lord is coming-a day of darkness and gloom....the earth shakes, the sky trembles, the sun and moon are darkened and the stars no longer shine."

When God breaks into history in any way the heavens register it. Thus, the star of Bethlehem at the Incarnation. Even when the Holy Spirit came on the church at Pentecost Peter makes a point of quoting Joel's prophecy with its heavenly signs. In Acts 2:17 we read, "In the last days, God says I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams." But then he goes on in v. 19, "I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood..." Peter says this was fulfilled at Pentecost in the coming of the Holy Spirit. There are other examples but these make the point clear. Whenever a Hebrew wants to tell you that God is radically involved with events in time, the heavens and heavenly bodies participate.

Here in Matt. 24 Jesus is saying that Israel is going out as the light of God in the world. He was going to close shop and abandon the temple for good, and destroy it not leaving one stone upon another. This was radical judgment, and the heavens speak their peace. This is apocalyptic language so common to the Jews, but so foreign to us. In verse 30 He says, "The sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the sky with power and great glory." This sounds like it has to refer to the second coming. How could this possibly apply to the fall of Jerusalem? It is our limited understanding of biblical language that leads to all the problems and complex theories. If we just take Jesus at His word, and take Him literally, this all fits into a very simple message that is fulfilled in 70 A. D.

If you say Jesus could not have come in the clouds in power and glory in 70 A. D., then you are really going to have a tough time with Matt. 16:27 where Jesus says, "For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what H