The End of the Age

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 13.

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I do want to say I've noticed a theme happening. Jake has been requesting me read whenever there's 30 plus verses on the regular.
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And I think it's kind of a dark joke because I'm the worst reader of the group. Chapter 13, one through 37.
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Mark, as he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, teacher, behold, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings.
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And Jesus said to him, do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.
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As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James and John and Andrew were questioning him privately.
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Tell us, when will these things be and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?
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And Jesus began to say to them, see to it that no one misleads you. Many will come in my name saying
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I am he and will mislead many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be frightened.
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Those things must take place. But that is not yet the end for nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom.
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There will be earthquakes in various places. There will also be famines. These things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
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But be on your guard, for they will deliver you to the courts and you will be flogged in the synagogues and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them.
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The gospel must first be preached to all the nations when they are when they arrest you and hand you over.
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Do not worry beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given in your in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but it is the
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Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death and father his child and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death.
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You will be hated all because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.
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But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.
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The one who is on the housetop must not go down or go into to get anything out of his house.
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And the one who is in the field must not turn back to get his coat. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days.
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But pray that it may not happen in the winter for those days will be a time of tribulation. Such has not occurred since the beginning of the creation which
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God created until now and never will. Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved.
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But for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days. And then if anyone says to you, behold, here's the
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Christ or behold, he is there. Do not believe him for false Christ and false prophets will arise and will show signs and wonders in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
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But take heed. Behold, I have told you everything in advance. But in those days after the tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken.
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Then they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he and then he will send forth the angels and will gather together his elect from the four winds from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.
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Now learn the parable from the fig tree when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves.
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You know that summer is near. Even so, you too, when you see these things happening, recognize that he is not he is near right at the door.
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Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all of these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
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But of that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but the father alone.
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Take heed. Keep on alert, for you do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man away on a journey who, upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert.
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Therefore, be on the alert, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning.
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In in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say, say to you,
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I say to be all be on alert. Let us pray. Dear God, I pray over Josh, pray over his time just preaching the sermon.
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Father God, as it is, as I read it, it's. It's very basic in understanding, but I know there's a lot of interpretations out there and God, I just pray that our church would be a place where on secondhand issues, thirdhand issues that we would have grace towards one another.
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God, that we would have understanding of where people are coming from. God, that we would also have an understanding that our pastor has a place where he's coming from and his interpretation of your word and God, that we would have grace towards towards our elders who preach tough sermons.
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Thank you for your word, God, we're so thankful for a Bible that just teaches us about your son and about the salvation that you've given mankind that we don't deserve.
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And God, we're just thankful for Christ's words here. And we just pray that they would edify this body and your son's awesome name.
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I pray. Amen. So broken record context is critical, absolutely crucial to a text like this, because I think what what
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I fight this morning is that this is, in my opinion, one of the most mishandled piece of text in the
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New Testament. It's one where we come in in our Old Testament illiteracy.
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We come to a text like this and we immediately think, I don't really know what that's talking about. And we start to make claims like, well,
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I've never seen that happen. So it can't be talking about the past. And what we never stop to do is think about why is
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Mark writing this? Why did Jesus teach this at this point? What's going on in the broader context of this literature?
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So what I want to do and the real challenge that I have today is twofold. I think number one is
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I have to make some things that are complex, simple. And I think the other challenge that I have is to make a sermon out of something that every bone in my body would want to make a theological seminary lecture.
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And I don't want to do that because that's not the point of why we're here. We're here as the body of Christ to be edified and to hear the word of God and be exhorted and encouraged and to go out recharged and filled up with the zeal of the
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Lord. I think in order to do that, in order to make this simple, we have to understand that Mark is working in segments and his segments are contained.
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And so what I want to do is give you a roadmap of the latter half of Mark. I think we did it a few weeks ago as we looked at Mark chapter 8 through 10 had the theme of blindness.
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There was a theme of partial blindness with the disciples and blindness being healed in those who are around Jesus and then the full blindness of the leaders.
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And then the full blindness of the leaders brings its way into Mark 11 through 12, where the king comes in.
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If you remember, Mark 11 begins with the king coming in with the triumphal entry. And as he enters and he starts to examine things, he gives the idea of the withering fig tree.
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And then that comes back at the end of this chapter, which should make us take note of what the author is doing.
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So when he examines the fig tree, he starts to deliver blessings and curses. Mark 11 and 12, blessings and curses, blessings for those who stand, curses for those who have made the temple a den of thieves who have taken all of the fruit away who are barren fig trees.
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And here in Mark 13, we have the culmination of what Jesus has come and observed. He's seen the decay of the temple.
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He has seen the robbery of the people. And what he does is he enters into his prophetic office.
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And we don't often think of Jesus the prophet. This is Jesus the prophet. He is the greatest prophet because he prophesies with the greatest clarity because he's not searching around in the shadows like the prophets of old, where they were they were trying to claw to see what were the real manifestation of the things they were prophesying.
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Jeremiah, Isaiah, when you go back to the miners, they were scratching around in the dark trying to understand the full culmination of everything that they prophesied.
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Jesus sees all of it. He sees it in perfect clarity. And with his prophecy, he unveils it in a near term prophecy that's going to come true exactly as he proclaims it.
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But it's also a sentencing for the high crimes of the people of Israel, of especially the leaders who have made this temple such an abomination.
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And then as we turn the page next week, we'll see in chapters 14 and 15 that we see the high crime that this sentence is being passed for.
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The question that's being answered in Mark 13 is what happens when you kill God? What happens when you kill
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God? And so when we look through that perspective, we see that what happens when you kill God is a tribulation such as has never been seen since the creation of the world and never will be again.
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We should understand what's going on here. So let's look. First, we carry out this theme of blindness.
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At the beginning of the chapter, they're going out of the temple and the disciples are looking around in awe.
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And there's a teacher. Look at this temple. Isn't this beautiful? And it would have been beautiful.
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These stones were huge. Some of the stones in the base were 46 feet long. Can you imagine a structure like that?
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Gold plated in the stones. And so when the noon sun would shine, it would be difficult to even look at the temple in its brilliance.
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And it would be sitting there and people would marvel. It was a wonder. And so the disciples look at it and they see the strength of their forefathers and the strength of their religion.
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And they say, wow, look at all these stones and buildings. And they still don't get it.
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They're still partially blind. The disciples have heard all of the judgments that Jesus is giving on the leaders and on what's going on in the temple.
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And so Jesus tells them that this is all going to be destroyed, not partially destroyed like in Babylonian captivity, not partially taken away into exile like the
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Assyrians, but completely brick upon brick, stone upon stone, taken down to where it's as though it never existed before.
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Extremely important. We have a tendency to be dazzled by the strength of the physical world that we see around us.
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We are dazzled by huge buildings. We're dazzled by the wonders of the world. And these disciples in the presence of God are dazzled by this building.
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Do you understand what's going on with the blindness? They are walking with the Son of Man himself. And they're looking at Jesus.
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Have you seen this amazing building? Jesus is the temple. Do you understand? He is the glorious manifestation of light and God's word.
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And they've missed it. See, they're shocked by what Jesus has been teaching and they have not put it all together.
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But Jesus makes a declaration here and we shouldn't miss it. It's crucial to understanding this chapter. And that declaration is this.
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The temple is over. Jerusalem is finished. And this old world passes away and should never be brought back.
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And much of the New Testament is written in warnings that we should not try to bring it back. And there were many who would sneak into the church even this day and they would search out your freedom in Christ and they would try to hold you in bondage to the traditions and the laws of that old system.
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Don't let them do it. Don't let them do it. It's important that it's totally destroyed because it will never come back.
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Red Heifer's notwithstanding, it doesn't matter. There will not be a temple rebuilt.
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And even if there is, guess what? The old world's never coming back. Jesus destroyed it. It became an enemy to his reign and it was the biggest part of the struggle of the
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New Testament saints in the first century. It was a difficult time. So the disciples, as he makes this this bold declaration, this temple that you see in all of its strength and all of its grandeur, it's going to be completely leveled and destroyed.
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And they go, well, when is that going to happen? So faithful brothers in our day will take that question and they will transport it.
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Two thousand years from then to present day America. And look, guys, I am I do not
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I'm not throwing dispensationalists out of the kingdom of heaven. I am not doing that. But I'm telling them is that they are dangerously wrong about this passage.
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Dangerously wrong. You missed the whole point. Imagine asking the great teacher a question and he just doesn't answer it.
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That is the reading of this text that would be given when we transport these signs two thousand plus years into the future.
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That's not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is answering the questions of the disciples. He told them, you see that building, not one stone left on another.
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When's that going to happen? And he starts to tell them. So this is what he tells them in verses three through 13.
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He gives the first signs and these first signs are not very precise because what you should see is that they are a build up to the most precise sign when they will know when every
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Christian in Jerusalem and in Judea will know we have got to get out of here now. Anyone who listened to Jesus words understand this.
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Anyone who listened to Jesus words understood what he was saying and they left before all of this happened because he was prophesying with clarity.
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In our day, we often miss the clarity because we don't live in the first century and we're not walking in Jerusalem and we don't see the culture and we don't understand what
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Pax Romana was like and what was going on. And so these words, we lose them in translation. But every
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Christian in the first age, they knew what Jesus was talking about here and they left because he gave them signs that were as obvious as this fig tree has leaves on it.
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Can you go out and look at a fig tree and see if it has leaves on it? Yeah, that's how easy these signs were for Christians.
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OK, so we get a warming up, a ramping up in verses three through 13. What will be the signs of this destruction of the temple and the end of this age?
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And the end of this age is the temple age, the old covenant age, the age of Old Testament worship of God, which has been completely destroyed forever since 80, 70.
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Do you understand that? Jews today in Israel do not worship in the Old Testament way. In fact, they wrote their holy books in the time of the first century against Jesus.
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They are the antichrist that first John is talking about. Hard words, difficult words.
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Does that mean we hate ethnic Israel? No, it does not mean that. It does mean that they are not just trying to worship like Moses did.
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They are not. That system is gone and it will never come back. So what will these things be?
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Well, here's the run up, here's the run up, and I'm going to go through them one by one. First, people will declare themselves to be
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Jesus himself and to deceive the disciples that he had come back. This appears two times in this passage, in the first run up and also in verses 21 and 22.
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There's a difficulty because what's going on in the city and in the area is there's a bunch of confusion as this starts to ramp up.
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There's zealots, there's the Pharisees, there's Roman occupation that's coming, there's political unrest.
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And it is a dangerous, dangerous time to be in Jerusalem in the run up to 80, 70, especially in the 60s.
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OK, as this thing is running up, many people would claim to be messiahs so that they would lead people to their banner.
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Hundreds, and there were several of them. There were two notable ones who claimed to be messiahs and they had hundreds or thousands of people under their sway.
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And so Jesus warns his people, if anyone comes back and says that they are me, they are not.
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So what do we take from that implicitly? Jesus was not coming back in the flesh from the
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Olivet discourse. You understand that? Anyone who says that he was, anyone who says that he is back is declaring they are a false
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Christ. Jesus is coming back one time. One time.
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And when he comes back, he will gather everyone and judge them. OK, whichever eschatology you are, we know that he's coming back and he is going to judge.
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That's what he's doing. OK, the question is when. But that's not a question for today. All right.
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There are there are also wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom.
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And we look and we think, well, look at all this stuff going on with Iran and Israel. Wars and rumors.
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Look, that's been going on forever. That's not a sign. It's not a sign. Can you remember a time in your life when
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America has not been at war or had rumors of wars? Or the Middle East has not had wars or rumors of wars?
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It has been going on nonstop. This is not a sign. There had to be something different about when Jesus is saying this.
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How is this a ramp up? Well, we know it's a ramp up because in the ancient world, Caesar Augustus had instituted
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Pax Romana. The Roman Empire was so powerful and so strong that there was a time of peace.
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It was peace through strength. It was death to challenge the Roman Empire. And so there was a time period here where they are the unquestioned leader.
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But as this ramps up to a crescendo in A .D. 68, we have this guy named
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Nero. You ever heard of him? Yeah, he's really famous. All right. So Nero in A .D.
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68, this is two years before this tribulation is going to come. Two years before, he was declared a criminal and he was put out of the
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Roman Empire. But he committed suicide and began a civil war called the Year of the Four Emperors.
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So two years before the temple is going to be destroyed. We have the distinctive, decisive end of Pax Romana that had come after a period of lots of rumors of wars, skirmishes on the outskirts of the frontier, a lot of kingdom against kingdom.
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And now the whole empire is being divided up in factions where they are vying for the throne.
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A civil war. Is that a sign? Yeah, it was a sign in 68. The disciples should have been looking at the fig tree then.
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Anyone who heard Jesus' voice, this would have been a huge shakeup. Can you imagine the American empire being divided into quarters with four generals who all fight each other for the presidency?
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Yeah. Would you be a little nervous? I think you would. I think you would. And so it is that in the
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Roman Empire that anyone who was in this empire would be listening to the words of Jesus and they would be like, oh boy, it's coming.
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It's not rumors of a war in Russia. No, it was in their backyard.
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And so it was a run up sign and they should start looking. We see earthquakes and famines. I've heard so much nonsense about this in my life.
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See earthquakes? There's earthquakes happening all the time. They're happening all the time. That is not a sign for us today.
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That makes no sense. You're going to see this over and over again. So these earthquakes, we see them in the old world.
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There are several that are detailed in Acts, right? There's one that breaks a prison open and Peter gets out. There are many ships on the bottom of the
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Mediterranean Sea from the storms and upheaval in the world in the first century. There was a lot of stuff going on.
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In Judea in 46, there was a nasty famine and there were lots of famines in AD 51.
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This is the period. AD 30 between AD 70, this generation, 40 years, right?
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During this time, you're starting to see all this stuff ramp up. But it's not the end, right? This is the birth pains.
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This is when you start to believe, oh man, the baby is coming. Okay, that's what these signs are about.
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It's not, see earthquake, Jesus is coming back. That's not what it was. It was the world seems to be shaking.
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All right. And in heaven, we know from Hebrews that what's going on is that God was shaking the world and what was going to be stable and in him was going to stay and not be shaken and everything else was shaken out.
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The kingdom was going to be shaken and what was left is what is going to be true and last forever. But what has disappeared and gone forever is this old covenant system that Jesus prophesied himself 40 years before it happened.
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We will see this one gives people a lot of hard time. I hope to make this very simple. He says the gospel will be proclaimed to all the nations.
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And we go, well, it wasn't, right? Was the gospel in Arkansas in AD 70?
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No, no. But read this two places and I can give you several. Colossians 1 23.
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If indeed you continue in the faith firmly grounded and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven.
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And of which I, Paul, was made a minister. So Paul says the gospel was proclaimed in all creation.
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But you could make the argument, OK, that's like a Romans 1 revelation, general revelation thing. Well, he doesn't leave the door open.
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He goes on Romans 1 8. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world.
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The gospel was proclaimed to all the nations in the period between AD 30 and AD 70, according to the word of God itself.
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That should not be a problem for us. We should not look at this and go, well, this couldn't apply to the past because the gospel wasn't proclaimed everywhere.
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It was. It was proclaimed to the entire known world by the pen of Paul. There would be a sign of trying to lead
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Christians away, pull them into persecutions. But the Holy Spirit would speak through them.
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Do we not see this as Paul really ends his whole ministry? And we see in Second Timothy that Paul has seen the culmination of his whole ministry go to use his sway as a
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Roman citizen to be able to speak before the emperor. That's the goal, that he is going to proclaim the gospel in the courts of kings.
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That's what he was about. But before that, we see Stephen in Acts, who Paul, it was probably a huge part of his conversion is that he sees
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Stephen sown. And when Stephen is being persecuted and when he's about to die, Stephen speaks through the
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Holy Spirit and gives one of the greatest sermons that was ever spoken, where he recounts the whole history of God's redemptive story from Genesis until that point.
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And he is given that Holy Spirit. Can you imagine? We don't stop and think. Can you imagine that you're let out to the public square and you are sentenced to death?
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Can you imagine the stress level? What your heart rate is doing? And then to give a clear minded, passionate, probably 30 minute long presentation of the gospel and redemptive history, who was speaking through Stephen?
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It was the Holy Spirit. And in many ways, we look at that passage and we think, well, that was a great thing by a great man.
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And we don't see that that was prophesied by Jesus Christ. It's a object lesson and an example of how
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Jesus knew exactly how his people were going to respond to persecution this time. They weren't going to have to think of what to say.
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The Holy Spirit was going to speak through them. We see that family would betray family. This is a run up sign.
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And we see very clearly in Jerusalem in the late in the 60s, the Hasmonean civil war between brothers, literal brothers in Jerusalem ended in Roman intervention.
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So there was a family civil war inside Jerusalem where brothers were literally trying to kill each other and bring their houses against each other.
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And Rome had to come in. And we know that there were always informants as the way was throwing people out of the synagogue.
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It was throwing people out of the temple. This is where you would go in the first age to be persecuted. They didn't take you before the
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Roman people, the Roman consulate. They brought you into the synagogue and they flogged you because you were breaking the
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Jewish customs and the Jewish rules. There were many informants in the Nero persecution of AD 64.
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It's spoken of historically that what would happen is family members would turn on other family members, inform about them to Nero so that he could light you on fire in his garden parties.
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He was a brutal tyrant, but he had a lot of help on the inside as brother rose against brother, as child rose against father.
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And what is what is the culmination of all these things? These world changing things, these run up signs. It is endure.
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This is a common theme for us that we will see in this text. What's supposed to happen? The disciples are supposed to endure.
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And he gives us something and Luke gives us a little bit more. You will be led to death. Excuse me.
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But in Luke's account of this, he says, not a hair of your head will perish. He gives us a clue into the physical, spiritual reality of what's going on.
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That in the physical world that you are going to be persecuted, that you're going to go through famine, earthquake, wars, civil war, your whole society is going to be burned to the ground.
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You're going to be refugees in the mountains. Hope it's not winter because if it's winter, it's going to be really hard to live in the mountains as a refugee.
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Hope you're not pregnant because if you're a pregnant woman having to live in the wilderness, it's going to be difficult.
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We hope that that doesn't happen. But if you endure to the end, what will happen? You will gain everything.
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The temporal reality is that old world Jerusalem is being torn down. But the eternal reality is that an unshakable mountain is being brought about and that New Jerusalem is going to have her king and he will reign forever.
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And not one hair of anyone's head in that kingdom will ever be torn away. It's the eternal reality of physical pain.
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In our forefathers, in our fathers in the faith in the first century, they endured to the end.
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And we today have the faith once delivered to the saints because of the perseverance of the
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Christians that Jesus was talking to. They endured things that we can't imagine and they stayed and they wrote it down and they passed on the faith.
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And we today have seen that faith grow from a mustard seed to a tree as the name of Christ covers the whole globe in a way that was unimaginable to them in the first century.
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And we look back and we don't even take the time oftentimes to understand their story and understand what they were doing.
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And so we see a church today deracinated from its fathers. We think that we have to write our own statements of belief.
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We think that we have to invent our own branding signs. We think that we have to have our smiley faces and stuff and be attractional and market people to come in because we don't believe that we serve the true prophet who laid out everything, who died for his people.
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Because the message of scripture is powerful and it doesn't need marketing and dressing up.
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What it needs to have happen is to be taught clearly and to be expressed with passion because his word is enough.
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And we know that. So the signs are ramping up and things are happening.
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And then he gives us very much precision in verse 14. Look at it.
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I call it the acute sign. The acute sign of the apocalypse. Okay. Here it is.
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The abomination of desolation. Let the one who reads understand. Let the reader understand.
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Understand what? Well, the reader needed to understand Daniel and a little bit of history that the
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Jews would have certainly known. Okay. Here's what happened. Daniel, several times, he three times talks about the abomination of desolation and he talks about when it happens and when it will happen again.
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But for us, look at this, because it gets a little bit confusing. Okay. Luke gives a different instruction.
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Luke says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand.
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So Jesus, through the hand of Luke, the historic thing that we see is that he said, when you see the
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Roman armies, when you see the army surrounding, get out now. Do not grab anything in your house.
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I hope you're not pregnant. I hope it's not the winter, which by God's mercy, it was not. It was not in the winter because God has mercy on his elect.
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Right. He always has mercy on his people and on his remnant. He will not burn you along with the wicked.
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He does not punish us with the wicked, but he disciplines us. As a child, he doesn't destroy us.
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He loves us. But when you see the armies or in Daniel, when you see the abomination of desolation standing, let the reader understand.
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And they would have understand. There was a past event that was detailed in Daniel's prophecy. And it is the reason that Daniel is called out as being one of the books that is highly challenged in the
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Old Testament canon. And that's because Daniel, especially in chapter nine, goes through a detailed explanation of what was going to happen in the world between his prophecy and this first century.
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And he does it. And it's incredible. And one of the things that he talks about is that there was going to be a man who was going to cause the abomination of desolation.
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And that is about 200 years before Christ says these words on the Olivet discourse.
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There was a man named Antiochus Epiphanes who had gone into the temple and he had killed a pig to worship
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Zeus. And everybody knew this was an abomination of desolation. It was a key that burnt sacrifices stopped during this time.
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And so the reader certainly would have understood. When Jesus said this, it's going to be when you see this happen, when you see someone who should not be there, who is making sacrifices to a false god, then you know that the abomination of desolation is standing in the temple and you need to get out now.
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So what happened? What happened? Well, we know that eventually Titus would enter the temple, bring the
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Roman standards in, that people would worship the Roman gods and that he would take all the gold out of the temple and burn the whole thing down.
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But that's not the abomination of desolation that Jesus is talking about because it was too late by then. When Titus had come into the temple in A .D.
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70, it was already sacked. And it was unbelievably brutal. It's not talking about that.
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But there was a time before that. See, the zealots who are inside Israel, we've talked about them a little bit before.
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In 67 and 68, what the zealots did is they assassinated the high priest and they installed their own high priest.
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And what he did is he went into the temple, stopped the burnt offerings and made abomination of desolation in the temple.
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And at this point, what this Christians in Jerusalem should know is get out.
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This is the recapitulation of Antiochus of Epiphanes. If you stay in here now, you're going to be in the fight.
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You're going to be in the thick of everything that's going to happen in Jerusalem. And what happened in Jerusalem is unbelievable. Unbelievable.
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Josephus has written much and it's like in for a penny, in for a pound with him. He was a historian who was sanctioned by the
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Romans. It's an interesting story. But he gave this quote. Here it is. Ananus, the oldest of the chief priests, is reported as saying,
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How wonderful it would have been if I had died before seeing the house of God full of countless abominations and its unapproachable sacred precincts crowded with those whose hands are red with blood.
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This is talking about the actions of the zealots. The abomination of desolation came right, right before.
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The Roman occupation where the armies came, surrounded Jerusalem and then got orders somewhere else and left for a time.
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And that was the time when everybody had to get out of Dodge. And then they came back and they sacked the city. So that brings us to another thing that we have difficulty with.
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He says that there would be trouble, big trouble, the greatest trouble ever. Verse 19.
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That this tribulation would be the great tribulation. That it would be like nothing that had ever happened in all of creation or ever will again.
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Now, so what we do is we sit in 2025 and we go, wasn't the Holocaust worse? Right. That's what we do.
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OK, here's why it's not. Here's why it's not worse. The reason why is because this was a rolling up, packaging away and burning away of an entire covenant age.
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And that has never happened since creation and will never happen again. Do you understand that we live now in the new covenant and that new covenant never ends?
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Never. It's an eternal covenant. And it's the covenant that has been instituted by the most precious thing the universe has ever seen, which is the very blood of God.
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He has shed his blood. And we often take for granted the institution of this new covenant.
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And we don't understand the gravity of what happened. It was a very confusing thing to be in the church between A .D.
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30 and A .D. 70. A very confusing thing. Because you were told in God's word, the scripture that they had, you were told, be circumcised.
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You were told, live according to these customs. The ceremonial law is active. And the way the
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Christians say, no, sorry, that's not the way it is. That's not what we're doing.
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And there was a huge amount of confusion in the church to where Paul writes time and time again, don't be led into these festivals.
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Don't be led into the circumcision. It's not important anymore. And so this tribulation is the culmination of the big trouble that had been going on.
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The covenant age ends and a new one begins. The old one will never be reinstituted as much as people want to.
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Do you understand that today? We sit nineteen hundred eighty five years away from this event.
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Okay. Maybe I did the math wrong. Somewhere in there. Nineteen hundred fifty years. Almost two thousand years since this event.
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And still we have people in Missouri and Texas who had never been heard of at that time who want to re -institute
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Old Testament temple worship and bring it to Jerusalem. How stupid is that?
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But we have many who we take this text and we don't understand what Jesus is saying because we don't want to understand because we're
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Old Testament illiterate. And we think, oh, that would be great. It would not be great. It's an abomination to Jesus to re -institute what he judged and put away.
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We cannot do it. We cannot do it. So in this tribulation, in this slaughter of old
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Israel without mercy, you can't imagine what it was like. You truly can't. If you were in this city, you cannot imagine what happened.
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The buildings were burned down. The famine was so severe that people were eating their dead children. There were over a million slaughtered.
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There were thousands and thousands and thousands taken into slavery. The crucifixions were ranging down the road as people were being pecked by the birds on the cross.
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You remember a verse like that in Revelation? Yeah, I do too. OK, what was going on was the whole world was being turned upside down and there was no mercy of God on Old Covenant Jerusalem.
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It was dead forever, annihilated. It was a foretaste and a picture of what damnation looks like.
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What happens when you kill God? Utter destruction without any possibility of return.
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It'll never come back. God's hand is against it. And if it had not been shortened, if this time had not been shortened, if the
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Roman occupation and the brutal hand of Titus had not been shortened here, not one person would have been left who was a
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Jew in this area. Do you understand it? Not one person. But for the sake of the elect, for the sake of the elect who are in Judea, who had fled to the mountains and some even who had been remnants in Jerusalem itself, there were
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Christians in there for the sake of the elect. This tribulation was cut short because God always saves his elect.
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Do you understand? You would have had to be in disobedience as a Christian inside Jerusalem and God still cut the tribulation short for his elect.
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Shouldn't that recall the conversation that Abraham had about Sodom and Genesis? How many people will
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God save for the benefit of his elect? He will put up and forbear the wickedness of those who hate him for the sake of just five of his elect, ten of his elect.
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If shortened, no Christian would be left in this world. It was a time of confusion. It was a time of death.
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It was a time of iniquity. It was a time of lies. No one would have known what to believe or where to go.
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Fake messiahs, fog of war, the loss of home for God's chosen people.
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And I use that in quotation marks because it's extremely important to understand the confusion that's going on. These people believe down to their toes that they were the sons of Abraham.
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They believe that they were specially chosen of God and this would never happen again. See this golden temple we got?
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God gave it to us. We're so back. And their pride and their vanity and their loss of who
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Jesus truly was and their rebellion against him took away that status forever.
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Forever. Who are God's chosen people? Those who are in Christ forever and always.
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And you know what? Here's what they didn't understand. That's never been otherwise. Who are
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God's chosen people in Exodus? The people who believed in Christ. See, we know from Hebrews that Moses, he did not see, he did not regard the riches of Egypt as being more important than the reproach on behalf of Christ.
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That's a curious verse in Hebrews 11. But God always saved the same way.
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So you better hope when this happens, you better hope when the world ends that you've listened to Jesus and you're not there.
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And pray to God that it doesn't happen in the winter. And pray to God that you're not pregnant. And you better be ready when you see the signs ramp up because you don't have time to go back in your house.
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You're going to climb straight off the roof on the outside, not go back through your house. And you are going to run, not walk out of the city because your destruction is at hand.
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And as for you, disciples, I have told you everything in advance. Jesus' people were intended to know what was going to happen.
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See, these are not nebulous signs of something that's about to happen in America 2 ,000 years later.
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These were signs that were intended to be known by God's people. And they did know them. I'm telling you so that you can do something.
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See, Jesus is not only teaching them about when the temple is going to be destroyed. Understand, he's teaching them why the temple is going to be destroyed, who's going to do it, and how you had better get away from it.
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He wants them to do something. Would he have wanted the disciples to do something if this didn't apply to them?
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No, that's ridiculous. He wants them to do something. And it's very simple. I appreciate how Cooper said it in his prayer.
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There are things about this text that are extremely basic, right? What does he want the disciples to do? When you see it happen, get out.
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I mean, you can almost title the whole passage that way. When you see it happen, get out or you will die.
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Then we get a triumphant return. There's a turn in verse 24. Time runs out on me as I knew it would.
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We're going to go through this. This kind of language is part and parcel. I think there's a few parts of this text that really confuse us and have made a lot of confusion about this text in the modern church.
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One of them is that the gospel would be preached to all nations. Hopefully I've adequately explained that. Here's another one.
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We read verses like this and we say, well, that didn't happen, so it has to happen in the future.
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Here it is. In those days after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken.
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And we think, well, that had happened. I mean, we still have stars, right? We still have the moon.
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So this confuses a generation of non Old Testament readers. How many of you guys have sat down and really carefully examined
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Isaiah and Ezekiel? And we are reformed people. The doctrine is everything to us, right?
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And we read and what you should see, these are not disputed texts. Everybody knows what these texts mean if you are careful enough to study them and read them.
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I'm going to give you two examples this morning. The destruction of Babylon by the Medes that Isaiah talks about in chapter 13.
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Here's what he says. The destruction of Babylon by the Medes as prophesied in Daniel with the different kingdoms and different empires.
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We know in Daniel how it happened, right? They laid siege. They dammed up the river and they came in and they took over the
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Babylonians. We know what happened. How does God prophesy it? In Isaiah 13, 10, for the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light.
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The sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. Did this actually happen?
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When Babylon was captured by the Medes, did the stars fall out of the sky? No, it's prophetic language that says when these things happen, when the
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Medes take over Babylon's light is out and they will never be a world power again. And have they been?
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Anybody real concerned about Babylon today? No, no, they're not. Their light's out.
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Let me give you a more extreme example. The destruction of Pharaoh's army from Ezekiel 32, 7 through 8.
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And when I extinguish you, 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.
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All the shining lights in the heavens, I will darken over you and will give darkness on your land, declares the
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Lord God. Anybody worried about Egypt's world empire today?
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Or is their light out? See, in the old world, there was an idea that there was this kind of divine council.
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Talk about in for a penny, in for a pound. There was this idea there's a divine council and that the constellations and the stars actually had something to do with the nations.
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And maybe even nations represented certain stars and celestial bodies. Not going new age on you, but in that frame of thinking and in that idea, when the lights go out, what that's saying is, hey, the star of Egypt, it's out.
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You're done. You fell out of the sky and you will be ragtag and never rise again to prominence.
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Has that been true? Is God's word true about Babylon and Egypt and the Edomites and many others?
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They're gone. They're gone. So for us, what are we seeing? Do you understand how this turns the guns?
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Who is who is Jesus saying this about? Understand the Babylonians snuffed out by the
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Medes. The Egyptians snuffed out. Who's God talking about here? Whose stars are falling out of the sky?
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Whose moon doesn't give light? Whose powers in the heavens are shaking? The answer is Jerusalem.
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Who in Revelation, John would write that they are Babylon. It's a recapitulation of the same thing, but the
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Jewish star, it's going out. It's done. They have been judged and found in rebellion.
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And so they, as a civilization, will fall never to rise again. There will never be another
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King David of ethno -nationalist Israel. It's not going to happen because Jesus is the only king of his people and his people.
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He has fulfilled the covenant to Abraham and extended it as far as there are sands of the seashore.
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And that's not only by number, it's by type. We sing the song, right? Red and yellow, black and white.
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They are precious in his sight. That is not what the Jews would have sung. That's not what they believed.
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But they were found wanting. And today we know the salvation is given to everyone, to all the nations.
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Not only a mount, but type. The Gentiles have come in. It's a mystery. It was an amazing thing.
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And so we should not be confused by this language. We should understand that they were judged, that they were extinguished, that they are gone.
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And then we have a little bit of a turn, I think. I'm going to try to defend myself. I don't hold this with a closed fist.
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But I believe that certainly verses 24 and 25 refer to the end of the temple.
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This is a tribulation. Understand timing. Run up signs, acute sign, abomination of desolation, tribulation.
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Gone. The sun goes out. The tribulation. And then the sun goes out. That could be Titus sitting in the temple, burning it down.
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The death of all the people in the city. The enslavement of that whole culture. They're gone forever. And then we have something else that happens.
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And he gives us this perspective as he writes. And then, and then, after the stars fall from heaven.
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And then what happens? He, they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
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And then he will send forth the angels and gather together his elect from the four winds. From the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.
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This gave me tremendous trouble the last couple of weeks. Very difficult.
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Okay. So what do we make of this? Here's what I think. I think this is the turn. I believe this is the turn in Mark where we go to a future reality.
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And I see it this way. Let me give you my 10 ,000 mile view. Okay. I think that Revelation is
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John's Olivet in a sense. With so much more than that. I'm going to give you a simplified version.
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And I think what you see in Revelation is that over and over there's these judgments. These apocalyptic judgments.
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But then at the end, there is this future thing. Right. And this future thing is a judgment of God, eternal life, all of this stuff.
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But he has come in judgment on the clouds. And that's what it means. He comes in judgment on the clouds. Now, does that mean after the tribulation?
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I hold out that it could. Because then we get this thing about a generation will not pass away before these things happen.
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I do think the bulk of this text is showing you that these things are the tribulation and the destruction of the old way.
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I believe that. Okay. So what do we do? Why do I say future? Why do
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I say that this is his ultimate coming on the clouds where everyone will see him? The nations will mourn, as it would say elsewhere.
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Why do I believe that? Because I think that this is the gathering from the four winds for judgment. And he will judge the elect and he will judge the non -elect.
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And then following the tribulation. That's why I think it's future. Another thing immediately after in Matthew 24, 29, he says the heavens will fall and then we get a constant theme.
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And I ask, I ask, simple question. Now, look, it can be answered. I'm not making fun of these guys.
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Truly, I'm not. I respect their arguments. Has Jesus descended on the clouds such that he is seen by the nations in the same way that he ascended?
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I say no. I say no. And I take this to mean that what's going to happen is the nations are going to mourn because they're going to see him come back the same way he ascended.
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Right? In Acts, he ascended into the clouds to the right hand. He's going to come back in the clouds and we're going to see him and everybody's going to know then.
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They're going to know. Can you imagine if you see the Lord of Glory coming out of the clouds? Can you imagine the fear for those who have heard his gospel, who have heard
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Christianity and don't recognize him? They're going to be afraid. I ask this, have the elect from the farthest of the earth to the farthest of heaven.
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And that was the key phrase for me. I could get when the farthest of the earth. OK, because because the church was being gathered at this time.
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I get that. But I think that this thing, it really gives me symbolism of the Great Commission. Right. That the furthest of earth to the furthest of heaven, which
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I take to mean the dead in Christ. OK, the dead in Christ are gathered and they will be judged.
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And we will like that judgment because we're going to be judged by the righteousness of Christ. The clouds definitely indicate judgment.
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And we know that he comes to judge the righteous and the wicked. Everyone will see him. Matthew 24 30 says the tribes of men will mourn.
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There's the tribes of God and there's the tribes of men. Hopefully this morning you are in the tribe of God, not the tribe of men.
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The tribes of men will mourn that when they see him. And then to tie this up, we end kind of where we started with a fig tree.
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And Jesus tells them, learn the parable from the fig tree. And what is the parable of the fig tree? There's so much going on here.
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I wish I could do it better. Here's what I was telling Corey this a couple of weeks ago. Here's the deal about parables.
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We read parables and we instantly think, what a bunch of idiots. This is so obvious what it means.
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How could they not get it? And I posit to you that the obvious meaning is not the real meaning of the parable.
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It's a meaning, but it's not the deeper meaning that's hidden. And so here's what I think is going on. The obvious meaning of this parable that any dummy could get is that you're going to see these things happen.
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It's going to be like looking at a tree and going, is it summer? Well, it must have leaves. So yeah. Does it take a botany degree to understand that?
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No, it's obvious. But I think the deeper meaning of this parable is that there's an interplay here.
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Is that you're going to see, you're going to see what's going on. And it seems like everything was good, but it's all coming apart.
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Remember the withered fig tree. This is not the same one. But there's an idea that Jerusalem is the fig tree that's going to be destroyed.
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And in the height of her glory with the temple, right? It maybe looks like the zealots are taking sway. You're going to throw off rule.
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All this stuff starts to happen. Understand, understand their end is here. Truly, not one generation will pass until these things take place.
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This word, people stretch it and they try to mean things it doesn't. Everybody who was listening to him would have understood what
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Jesus meant by this. This generation will not pass away. It's the people I'm talking to. Do you understand?
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It's a people in a place. This generation does not mean people 2000 years later. It can't mean that.
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Jesus is a false prophet if it means that. That is a prophecy that doesn't mean anything. That's like me saying,
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I believe that this church will have 600 members in 20 years based on what this generation will not pass away.
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And then it happens 2000 years later. Let's see. He was a prophet. No, no, no.
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These things have to be specific. This generation won't pass away. The people who are listening to him largely would go through these events and their children would go through these events.
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And then we get this, this thing. It's difficult. We don't make theology off this, but I thought I would note it. The father, the father only knows.
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The son doesn't know the day or the time. What does that mean? Well, let's not build Trinitarian theology based on this.
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And let's understand that these are one of the mysteries of the Godhead. But we can gain this from it. That Jesus in his submission to the father with his decree that he doesn't know this in his form as he is a man and he is ministering to disciples.
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He does not know the day as he sits and talks. It is a special time with a hypostatic union. But he knows there will be signs and he's been told when these signs are going to happen.
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So always be on guard. And this is where we come to us and it's the very end. And it's the biggest message of this.
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If it's watch what's going on and get out, that's what he wants them to do. Here's the other thing that the church has not done a good job of that we must.
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And that is be ready. Be ready. Don't grow weary. Don't go weary in the seeming length of time before he comes back on the clouds.
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Whatever you think that verse means, we also believe that he is coming on the clouds. That is
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Christian orthodoxy. He is coming back in the clouds physically to resurrect the dead in the ground, the dead in Christ and the dead in wickedness to come before the throne and judge.
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Do not be lulled to sleep by the length of time that has happened between now and then. He is calling the elect in order to gather them.
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God is not slow in the way that we count slowness, but he is patient. He is patient so that all of his elect would come into the faith.
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Do you understand God loves his elect so much that he will wait and he will endure insult upon insult to his son's great name so that he would make his family bigger with those those stupid idiots like us who has called before the beginning of time to come into his family.
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And we don't understand why, but we give praise. And that is the message of the
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Olivet discourse. What is it simply? If you rebel against Christ, your death is certain, your damnation will happen.
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It is inexorable. You will be punished forever if you are found on the wrong side of the king of kings.
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But if you're found on the right side, if you are his elect, there is no end to his patience. There is no end to his long suffering because he is doing a work in you that he will perfect, that he will complete.
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And in glory, we will sit around the table and we will praise the lamb who was slain for the sins of the saints.
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And that's the message. Don't miss it. Let the reader understand all the warnings that are in place.
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Don't go back. Don't be lulled by festivals and exterior trappings, but understand it's by faith that we please
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God. Without it, it's impossible to please him. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I thank you.
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I'm so thankful for how we stand later and we see the clarity and the prophecy that you gave to your people, that you would save those who followed you, that even though they were a remnant amongst an idolatrous generation or that you spared the elect, that you even cut short your immensely justified wrath on covenant breakers for the sake of the elect.
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Even those who heard and disobeyed. Lord, it's an amazing thing, the patience you have with your people.
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Lord, that we fall, we sin, we forget. We even sometimes make mockery with our words and with our actions, that we take the great love that you've given for us and we don't return it.
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And we hate our brother and we forget our God. And yet, Lord, you are patient and you discipline your children.
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Lord, I pray that there would not be a single one in here who's on the wrong side of this.
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Because, Lord, if we don't believe in the blood that you shed, that we look back on with clarity, if we don't believe in that, what salvation is there?
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Because if that's not enough, then we would have to recrucify the Lord of glory. What a blasphemy it is.
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So, Lord, help us, protect us to not go back, to not look at exterior trappings, to not look at outward actions, to not look at the great buildings and the great institutions and the great things that we've built even in your name,
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Lord. But instead, that we would look on your son and we would place all of our hope and all of our dependence on what you have done.
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And Lord, for that, I know that we will be blessed and we walk in those works that you have laid out beforehand. We are your workmanship.
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Lord, thank you. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the clarity. Thank you for the warning.