142. Murdering Jews and Fiery Trials (PART 1)

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Following Jesus, loving Christ, was gonna be a very dangerous reality for them in the immediate years ahead.

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They were gonna be crushed by Jewish persecutions. They were gonna be pressed in on every side. And if it were not for the grace of God, the bloodthirsty

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Jews would have murdered and martyred every single one of them. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf.

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This is episode 142, The Murdering Jews and the Fiery Tribulation.

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Well, hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. We are in a series on the book of Revelation and to make sure that everyone understands what

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Revelation is all about, we've decided to begin our series with a very short prequel on Matthew 24.

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Because in that great chapter, it says everything that Revelation says, but in a much more straightforward way.

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And so far, we've learned the critical context that's gonna help us in our study of Revelation and what biblical eschatology actually looks like.

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Now, if you're new to the show and it's your first time tuning in or maybe you haven't been here very long, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here with us.

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And I would encourage you to go back and to watch the first couple of episodes in this series because there is so much context that's gonna be essential for understanding what's going on in Matthew 24 and what eventually is gonna be going on in Revelation.

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So if you have a chance, go back and listen to those episodes. I promise you it will be worth your while.

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Also, thank you so much to every single person who's been watching and tuning in.

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The comments were amazing last week. Thank you so much for your encouragement and for continuing to enjoy this show and love this show.

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And thank you for everyone who told me that a series on Josephus would be great.

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I have to decide when I'm going to do it because I'm currently in a very long series on Revelation and we're just getting started.

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But I was so encouraged to see that people would want that and eventually we are going to do that.

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So as a little bit of context for where we've been in Matthew 24, we've been talking about things like Jesus's parables that he spoke in Matthew 21, 33 through 43, where he said that God was gonna rip the kingdom away from the

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Pharisees because they were not bearing him any fruit. We saw how Jesus promised in a third parable in that triad in Matthew 22, one through 14, where God was gonna send his armies in order to set on fire the rebel city of Jerusalem and to crush it because of their violence against his people because they killed his prophets, they killed his disciples, they killed his messengers and they refused to come to the wedding feast of his son.

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We've looked at how the Jews didn't take kindly to that message in Matthew 22 and they did everything in their power to humiliate

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Jesus in front of the onlooking crowds who were standing right there in Jerusalem, Matthew 22, 15 through 46, which did not ultimately work because after their great attempt to embarrass the son of God, Jesus Christ went on a final blistering string of judgment woes where he evoked seven covenantal curses to be poured out from Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 16 in the form of seven woes that would be poured out on that city,

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Matthew 23, 13 through 36, which meant that all of God's covenant fury was gonna be poured out on them.

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And Jesus says that it's gonna happen to that generation, not some distant generation and somewhere off in the distant future, but to that generation, the one who killed him and killed his disciples.

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Now, we also looked at how Jesus and his disciples after this, they walked out of the city and you can imagine how awkward it must have been when

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Jesus just pronounced covenant woe on the city, said that the city was gonna be left desolate, the temple was gonna be left desolate and he and his disciples walk out of the city, sort of a mic drop moment, and they walk up the

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Mount of Olives where Jesus took the waning hours that he had left with his disciples before his death to make sure that they understood exactly what he was saying.

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Because Jesus didn't mind if he left the Pharisees in confusion, he says multiple times that seeing they will not see and hearing they will not hear, so Jesus is telling them parables, he's telling them different kinds of teachings that will purposely confuse them to keep them in their confusion, which is what

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Isaiah says. But he wanted his disciples to understand what he was talking about so that they would be prepared for what is coming.

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He wasn't preparing them for a long period of time before these things would occur, he wasn't telling them about things that were gonna happen millennia into the future, no, he was telling them things that they were going to face, that they were gonna walk through in their generation, which was 40 years.

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They were gonna see the temple left desolate, they were gonna see the city destroyed, they were gonna see the Roman armies coming, they were gonna see

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Jerusalem facing the consequences for killing the prophets and murdering God's son and butchering his disciples all over the

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Roman world. And to make sure the disciples were not gonna get the timing of all of these events confused, he gave them detailed signs for them to be on the lookout for so that they would know when these things were going to happen.

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He told them that there would be a notable rise in false messiahs, false teachers and antichrist,

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Matthew 24, five, verse 11 and verse 24. He told them that even though they lived under this famed system called the

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Pax Romana, that they were gonna be hearing about wars and rumors of wars, as well as famines and earthquakes that were gonna rob the land and the empire of its peace,

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Matthew 24, six through seven. Now today, we're gonna be looking at another sign that Jesus gives, which is that the first century disciples were going to go through all kinds of painful and very toilsome tribulations at the hands of the

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Jews. And as we'll see, Jesus and the rest of the New Testament reveal the story of a ferocious

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Jewish hatred of Jesus and his church, which is gonna spill out in violent persecutions, martyrdom and oppression for 40 paralyzing years between the resurrection of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem.

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For their part, the Jewish people are going to go on an all out terror campaign to murder every

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Christian that they can possibly get their hands on. And that's what we're gonna be talking about. Not only today, but also next week, because this is part one of a two part series called

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The Murdering Jews and the Fiery Tribulations. Today is just part one. Today, we're just gonna lay the groundwork and the foundation and we're gonna try to understand what the word tribulation actually means and how the majority of Christendom today has not only misunderstood the word tribulation, but they've punted it somewhere into the esoteric eschatological future.

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Now, to combat that error, we're gonna look at the totality of what the word means, what the

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Bible says about this word, what extra biblical sources are gonna say about this word and how this concept relates to the covenant redemptive status of the

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Jewish people. And we're gonna do that over two weeks. This week, in this episode, we're only gonna cover half of that goal by focusing on three key areas.

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Number one, we're gonna focus on the meaning of the word tribulation in the original Greek language. What it means in the context of Matthew 24.

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Then, we're gonna look at two striking examples of the word tribulation in the

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Septuagint, which is gonna help us understand what the tribulation is and what the great tribulation is, which are two distinct events that must be understood within their first century context.

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Then, we're gonna talk about how Revelation, the book, connects to Matthew 24 because this is a prequel to where we're going.

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So, I wanna give you a little glimpse of where we're heading and after that, by the end of today's episode and with the help of next week's episode, which is gonna be even deeper and even more in depth and next week's episode's probably gonna be like two hours long.

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With the help of these two episodes, I'm hoping that you'll see beyond the shadow of doubt that the tribulation has already occurred, that the great tribulation has already occurred.

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It was a Jewish -inspired campaign of terrorism against the early church and they perpetuated violent tribulations upon Jesus' bride for which they were destroyed in AD 70.

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Now, again, next week, we're gonna expand on this foundation and we're gonna look at the entire New Testament case for this

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Jewish -led campaign of terror and we're also gonna look at extra biblical sources that are confirmed that the

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Jews ferociously persecuted the early church, more so than any other group.

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It wasn't the Romans who were the greatest persecutor of the church, it was the Jews and then we're gonna end next week by looking at the current state of the

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Jewish people and what hope, if any, remains for them for the monstrous crimes that they committed and for the absolute covenant rebellion that they did when they crucified

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God's one and only son and just as a spoiler alert, there's always hope in Christ, which we're gonna see next week.

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Now, this could be the most ambitious episode that I've ever undertaken on the podcast and I hope that all of the information that I'm providing brings clarity to the topic, that it encourages you and that it helps you live more ardently for Jesus in our world.

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So with that, thank you for all your support. Thank you for everyone who's joined this channel as a member and now let us dive in and look at first the linguistic case that the tribulation has already occurred and it occurred in the first century.

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Part one, the linguistic case of tribulations. Section one, the transing of words.

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Now, we live in an era where words have the fluidity of a cold glass of water.

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Not only are good terms redefined every time someone has a case of the feels, but coherent terms are being stretched like Gumby or Stretch Armstrong even to fix whatever grotesque ideal our confused culture is currently propagating.

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Take for instance, a word like gay that was turned from an innocent form of merriment and joy to a kind of lurid sexual deviance that caused

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God to obliterate Sodom. By hijacking the term and by disfiguring it in the style of Pablo Picasso, those who are guilty of real abominations have assuaged their conscience and seared their own hearts so that they no longer feel the guilt that they should feel.

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By changing the term, they are assuaging their conscience. Now, this along with a host of other words or phrases like calling a woman a birthing person or calling abortion healthcare, there is evidence of a large -scale industrialized transing of terms that is going on in the modern world.

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And while it may seem like a bit of a leap for me to say this, there is a similar disfigurement of terms that has taken place in the church, especially with dispensationalists who've mangled words like antichrist and tribulation to mean something entirely different than what they originally meant.

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Now, in the same way that a very handsome and healthy young boy, under the pressure of a woke mother and a degenerate healthcare system, can be hacked up and morphed into a pitiful -looking eunuch with man boobs, that a society calls a real girl, so too the term tribulation has been mutilated, hacked, and stretched and transfigured until its original meaning has been all but lost.

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In the words of Enigio Montoya to the dispensationalists, I would say, you keep using that word, but I do not think you know what it means.

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Inconceivable. Which begs the obvious question, what does it mean? Section two, the transing of tribulation.

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If dispensationalists are to be believed, the word tribulation refers to a singular event in the future that is so nasty, it engenders anxiety and panic for all who miss the heavenly tractor beam to the sky, which is affectionately known as the rapture.

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For those who are the left behind and miss the short yellow bus to heaven, an antichrist -led dystopia is gonna be unleashed upon the earth for seven hellish years of unparalleled tribulation that'll be coupled with computer chips getting shoved in the back of our heads, probably by men like Elon Musk or one of his robots.

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Hailstones the size of basketballs are gonna land on top of your grandma, and helicopters that appear like locusts upon the horizon are gonna do the bidding of this calculating man of lawlessness, plunging the world into unspeakable horrors and misery.

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Now, instead of careful exegesis, which is what we should have been doing all along, we've been spoonfed this crap that doesn't actually grapple with what the word tribulation means, and it reads more like a subpar knockoff of the

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Hunger Games rather than actually presenting what scripture says. And I do hate to be rude here, but as you will see from everything that I will be presenting today and next week, for many people in the church to peg tribulation to a future end of the world is ridiculous.

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And it's one of the great lies that I think that Satan has foisted upon the church, who has become content living in an easily disprovable error.

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It's hard to imagine. Now, tragically, the church has suffered mightily for the error of dispensationalism after a century and a half of mutilating and Frankensteining the word tribulation, ripping it out of its biblical context and from the context of the

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Olivet Discourse. Well, the church has become an eschatological hypochondriac, expecting disaster around every single turn.

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And because behavior is always downstream of our beliefs, this soiled take on tribulation has led the church to hysteria, panic, despair, and doom, and wetting her pants every time that something goes wrong in America.

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This has settled down into the soul of America like syphilis had on Al Capone.

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It's bad. By adopting such a flawed eschatology and such bogus definition of terms, a once militant and active church, the ones that built

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Christendom, the ones that stormed the gates of hell and built institutions like hospitals and education, that church has been reduced to a clique of world -escaping heaven -gazers who have lost our culture.

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As the church has retreated from the world and waited for our ticket out of here, we took the salt and we took the light with us, abandoning our society to the darkness and to the decay, which is why they are now dark and decayed.

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All of this points to the unmistakable fact that while the church has been complaining about the sorry state of the world for the last 100 years, much of the blame for its devolution lies squarely at her feet.

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We've become the church who has buried her talents in the sand while waiting for our master to return so that when he does return to this generation, we would be called wicked and lazy and unfaithful, and that is what our generation has been.

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Now, I'm thankful that people are starting to see the dangerous, demonic side of dispensationalism, but for 100 years now, it's worked its way through the corpse of America like cancer, and I pray to God that it would be over, that we would move on from it so that we could see eschatology rightly and biblically, but that we actually have a robust view of the world, of our country, of the direction that the world is heading through Christ and what

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Christendom actually looks like. Now, that leads us to section three, the actual meaning of the word tribulation.

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Now, with all of the buffoonery that I could mention and that we already have mentioned, I think it's time for us to transition away from the linguistic failures of dispensationalism to begin building a case for what tribulation actually means.

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And to that end, we need to begin with the word tribulation itself, which comes from the

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Greek word thalipsis. Now, according to the preeminent Greek lexicon of our day, which is known as the

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BDAG, thalipsis literally means pressing down or pressure. But since the term is frequently used in a metaphorical sense,

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BDAG also gives the following secondary definition to the term, which means trouble that inflicts distress, oppression, and affliction, a

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Greek lexicon of the New Testament. Now, but the BDAG is not alone in how it defines this word.

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The Launida lexicon, which is based upon semantical domains, defines the word this way.

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Thalipsis is trouble involving direct suffering, Greek -English lexicon of the

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New Testament. And the Dictionary of Biblical Languages says roughly the same thing, defining the term like this, trouble, distress, oppression, or tribulation,

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Dictionary of Biblical Languages. Now, far from the word tribulation pointing to a specific window of increased peril just before the end of the world, listen to what

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I'm saying here. Far from this word being a proper noun that points to a end -of -the -time scenario, the best linguistic scholars in our day all universally agree that this is not an end -time event.

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And notice, you didn't see anything about the end times in that word. Instead, this is a general term that describes any period of intense pain or suffering.

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It is not a specific period of eschatological mayhem. It is a general period of suffering that all of us face.

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For instance, in the same way that English speakers use phrases like pressure and suffering and heavy and things like that to communicate times in their life when they're suffering, because suffering is a shared human experience, well,

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Greek speakers did the same thing. They would talk about the death of a loved one being crushing to them.

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And when they did that, they were using the same word that is used here called tribulation.

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When a man describes how a particular situation at his work was laying heavy upon him, he is talking about going through tribulation.

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Again, this is not a special word that always applies to the end of human history.

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It's a very common word that shows up hundreds of times in the Bible to describe

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God's people suffering, which we're gonna get into in just a moment. For the dispensationals to say this word means the end of human history, ipso facto, is just foolish, it's ignorant, and it's woefully ignorant of what the

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Greek language actually means. So we reject that conclusion. Now, when

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Jesus looked his disciples right in the eye and he warned them of tribulation in Matthew 24 and on, he was not pointing to a novel period known cryptically as the tribulation.

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He was telling them that they were soon gonna be walking through troubling times, that they were gonna be persecuted, that they were gonna be maligned, that they were gonna be beaten, that being a

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Christian, following Jesus, loving Christ, was gonna be a very dangerous reality for them in the immediate years ahead.

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They were gonna be crushed by Jewish persecutions. They were gonna be pressed in on every side. And if it were not for the grace of God, the bloodthirsty

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Jews would have murdered and martyred every single one of them because they were filled with a kind of demonic hatred for Jesus and his people.

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This is why Jesus says, if they hated me, then they also will hate you because I am in you,

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John 15, 18 through 19. Jesus isn't talking about everyone on earth. If everyone on earth hates

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Jesus in a general sort of way, because we're all haters of God before we become Christians, that's not what he's saying.

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He's saying, they, the Jews, hate you because they hate me and they hate you because I am in you.

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Jesus is saying that these Jews have a particular and a peculiar hatred about them for the things of God.

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And just in case, there's some who remain unconvinced that this is what tribulation means when

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Jesus looks at his disciples and said, you're gonna go through tribulations. Just in case you're not convinced of that,

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Jesus said that everything that he predicted in Matthew 24 was gonna happen in a single generation,

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Matthew 24, 34. He said, all these things are gonna happen in this generation. So the burden of proof now is on you if you believe that tribulation is a future event because Jesus said, everything

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I just said is gonna happen in a single generation. And you have to twist and mutilate that word in order to make it thousands of years.

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And the twisting and the mutilating is not only anti -intellectual, but it's foolish and it doesn't actually make sense of the text.

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Everything Jesus prophesied, Matthew 24, including Jewish -inspired persecutions of Christians had to happen within 40 years or Jesus would be a false prophet and that he would have died justly for his blasphemies against God.

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I want you to pay attention to what I'm saying here. If there had not been a rise in false prophets and antichrist in that generation, if the

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Pax Romana had not been broken by wars and rumors of wars, if the peace on earth were not shaken by earthquakes and seismic famines, and if the peace of the church were not violently disrupted by persecutions in that generation, then not only would

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Jesus have been a false prophet worthy of being stoned to death, but he could not be your savior.

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His death would have been totally in vain and your salvation would have been meaningless.

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That's what's at stake here. That's why I'm going as far as I'm going to describe this to you because I'm not just quibbling over the meaning of words.

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Well, you think tribulation is a future event that happens somewhere in the far distant future, and I think that it happened in 80, 70.

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I'm not just quibbling over words. Jesus said that everything is gonna happen that he said in that generation, and it either happened or it didn't.

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And if it didn't happen, then he is a crook and a liar and a deceiver who cannot be trusted.

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But if it did happen, then you're the one who's manipulating the text. Next, that is the linguistic case for how the word tribulation refers to the suffering that the first century church would undergo at the hands of the bloodthirsty

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Jews, because the word means suffering, the word means pressure, and Jesus said that they are gonna be the ones that deliver it to you, and we're gonna look at that more next week because we're gonna look at hundreds of New Testament passages that prove that the

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Jews actually did this to the early church. But now,

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I wanna transition to part two of this episode where we're gonna look at the word thalipsis in the

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Septuagint. Now, the Septuagint has the word thalipsis show up 133 times, which is striking.

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That alone proves that this word is not a special word that talks about a special season of time.

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It's a common biblical word that talks about suffering for God's people. But what

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I want you to see in this next section is I'm only gonna talk about two uses of the word thalipsis, and the two uses that I'm going to use not only,

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I think, are on the mind of Jesus in Matthew 24, but they also show up in the book of Revelation.

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We're gonna look at two examples of thalipsis in the Septuagint that teach us about the unique sufferings that the people of God were gonna undergo in the first century, and we're gonna see how

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Jesus predicted it all before it even occurred. Part two, the

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Septuagint's case for tribulations. Now, without getting into a full -blown case for what the word thalipsis means in the

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LXX, which is another word for the Septuagint, I'd like to show you two Old Testament examples that is gonna prove our point.

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Of the 133 uses of the Greek word for tribulation, thalipsis, in the

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Septuagint, two of them are remarkably striking, and they help us understand what

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Jesus means by the tribulation in Matthew 24, 9, and the great tribulation in Matthew 24, 21, which, as we will see, are two distinct events.

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Now, the first use of the word to describe tribulations shows up in the book of Exodus, where the people of God suffered under Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

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And as we will see after examining this Exodus scene, how these kinds of tribulations are exactly what

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Jesus is predicting that the early church is gonna go through in Matthew 24, but now at the hands of a new

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Egyptian -esque enemy, the Jews. The second use of the term tribulation that we're gonna look at is even a greater kind of tribulation that Jesus himself calls a great tribulation that does not apply to the church, but it applies to the punishment that's gonna be poured out upon the

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Jews who are gonna suffer the same fate as Old Testament Egypt, coming under the fury of God's wrath, and what we will see is how this tragic end to the

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Jewish covenant was predicted with uncanny accuracy 1 ,500 years before the

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Romans captured Jerusalem. So to start, I want us to look at the Exodus example of the word tribulation, which

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Jesus alludes to in Matthew 24 in order to see the kind of suffering that the early church would undergo.

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Here we go. Section one, tribulation, thelepsis, and the

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Exodus. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is called the

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Septuagint, the word thelepsis is translated as tribulation 133 times, and it occurs in every major section of the

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Old Testament, in every, in the law, in the prophets, in the histories, in the poetry.

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It shows up, which demonstrates how common the word really is.

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The word isn't describing a period of novel eschatological suffering that's gonna happen at some point at the end of human history, but it's instead a very common descriptor of pain and pressure and suffering that is experienced by God's people throughout history.

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Now, of those 133 usages, the plight of Israel in Egypt, serving as slaves under this tyrant king is one of the clearest examples of thelepsis that we have in the entire

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Old Testament, and the term is used explicitly in the book of Exodus chapter four, verse 31.

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The text reads like this. And the people believed, and when they heard that the

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Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel, and that he had seen their affliction, thelepsis, they bowed low and worshiped,

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Exodus 4 .31. Here, thelepsis describes the crushing weight of Pharaoh's oppressive regime, a burden that was growing increasingly unbearable as their deliverance was drawing near.

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Now, as you may recall, the more that Moses sought for their freedom, the more Pharaoh's cruelty actually escalated.

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And he even went as far as to demand that the Israelites produce the same number of bricks without providing any additional straw,

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Exodus 5, six through 19. Now, from this pivotal scene in redemptive history, a precedent kind of emerges where thelepsis tribulations often intensify for the people of God just before freedom and redemption arrives.

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So, as the people are waiting on redemption to come, trials tend to increase until the moment that freedom comes.

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Furthermore, this pattern also highlights a striking contrast for the enemies of God, those who are inflicting thelepsis, those who are inflicting tribulation upon God's people, often appear like they're escaping judgment for a time where nothing bad is happening to them.

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And yet, this season of apparent immunity ends quite quickly.

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And suddenly, in Egypt's case, it culminated in God unleashing, after 400 years of slavery and wickedness,

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God unleashed 10 devastating, pulverizing plagues upon Pharaoh and upon the people of Egypt, ultimately leading to their destruction at the

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Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula. So, for one group, it looked like that their tribulations were increasing, but then all of a sudden they experienced freedom.

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And for the other group, it looked like they were getting away scot -free, and then all of a sudden, a great tribulation falls down upon them.

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This kind of pattern is set there in the Exodus, but it's also what Jesus is working with in Matthew 24, because when

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Jesus warns his disciples of tribulation in Matthew 24, nine, he's intentionally evoking the same kind of Exodus pattern that's going on back in the book of Exodus.

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Just as Pharaoh tightened his grip on the Israelites before their liberation, Jesus was predicting that the first century church was gonna have the noose of persecution tightened around their neck, and the ones holding the rope would be the

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Jewish leaders, who had become kind of like a Pharaoh to the church and her oppression.

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She, the Jews had become a kind of tyrant leader, like Pharaoh, to the people of Israel, and this is not a linguistic coincidence, but it reflects a deliberate way that Jesus is framing the tribulations of his people as a part of the pattern of Philipsis in the scripture, the

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Exodus pattern, for sure. Now, this Exodus symmetry goes even deeper than the analogy that I've just worked out.

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It's a profound kind of theological statement about who Jesus is and what his mission entails.

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For instance, throughout the gospels, Jesus is acting like he's a new and greater

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Moses, and he's leading the people of Israel into a new kind of deliverance from a new kind of Pharaoh.

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For instance, just as Moses was born under the threat of a tyrant king who sought to kill all the

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Hebrew baby boys, Exodus 1 .22, Jesus was also born under the threat of a homicidal king who was threatening to kill all the

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Hebrew boys, Matthew 2 .16. And similarly, just as Moses led

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God's people through the waters at the Gulf of Aqaba, Paul calls this a baptism, which symbolized their deliverance from their captors,

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Exodus 14 .21 -22, Jesus started his ministry by passing through the waters of baptism,

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Matthew 3 .13 -17, and then he ended his ministry by calling the entire world to follow him through the waters of baptism,

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Matthew 28 .19, which tells us that Jesus thought about his mission in an

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Exodus kind of way. He's starting his ministry in a Red Sea kind of moment, and now he's calling all of the rest of humanity to follow him in crossing the

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Jordan. Moreover, Jesus reinforces this kind of theme by teaching the people that a new law on a new mountain, you'll remember the

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Sermon on the Mount, that's Jesus acting like a true and better Moses, that he's the one sitting down and giving them the law.

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These parallels of Jesus and Moses are unmistakably clear in the Gospels, and it shows us that Jesus saw himself as a new, as a savior in the line of Moses who was gonna deliver his people from their chains and from their slavery and from their sin, and that he was the one, not

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Moses, he was the one who was gonna bring a better deliverance, a better redemption to the people of God.

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Now, in Matthew 24, when Jesus, the greater Moses, predicts a coming

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Philipsis, a coming tribulation, he is intentionally pointing to a period like the

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Israelites went through in Egypt of intensified persecutions for his disciples, persecutions that would come not from the

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Egyptians, but shockingly, this time, it was gonna be coming from the Jews. Just as Pharaoh increased the

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Philipsis, the tribulations on Israel before God set them free, now the descendants of Israel, the ones who should have known better, the ones who knew what it was like to be persecuted and tried and hated and killed, now they're the ones who are acting out

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Egyptian behavior by killing, murdering, and martyring the early church.

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And just as it happened in the days of Moses, the church was gonna be the ones who, even though they went through tribulation, would be set free, and it was their oppressors who looked like they got away with it, who looked like they were getting out of these things scot -free, were gonna be the ones who drown under the fury of God's wrath at AD 70.

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Just as the Pharaohs and all of his chariots were drowned in the waters of Aqaba, the unfaithful Jewish nation would face a tidal wave of God's wrath in the destruction, in the devastation of Jerusalem.

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Now, this deliberate use of Exodus imagery assures Jesus' followers that Philipsis, tribulation, is not a sign of God's abandonment of them as a people, but it's a hallmark of how

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God accomplishes redemption. He calls his church out of tribulation and into freedom instead of from freedom into tribulation, which is what happened to Egypt, and it's what happened to the first century

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Jews. The early church, like Israel, in Egypt, would endure great suffering, but it was within that suffering that God's power and his deliverance shone most clearly.

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Jesus, the true and better Moses, was leading that first century church out of oppression and into freedom.

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But unlike Moses, who was kept out of the promised land because he sinned against God, he wasn't allowed to lead the people any longer, and he died even outside of the promised land before the promises of God for the people of Israel, he had seen them.

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But unlike that Moses, Jesus, the true and better Moses, would not die outside of the land.

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He would rise and he would lead the people of God, not to plunder one nation, but to conquer every nation, to plunder the world, to conquer the world, to conquest the world, until every nation on earth was filled with the people who obey him.

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The Jews came under a Egyptian -like curse, and they were thrown under the fury of God's wrath like the

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Egyptians of old. The church, like Israel, was not only led into the promised land by their deliverer,

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Jesus, but now they're being led into the entire world. That's the first instance of the word thellipsis, and Jesus is definitely leaning into that in Matthew 24.

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Now, the second instance of the word is next. Section two, the great tribulation, thellipsis and covenant curses.

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Now, the second use of the word thellipsis that I wanna explore has an even darker and more terrifying undertone, and it's found in Deuteronomy 28, 53 through 55.

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In that chapter, God outlines a long list of all of the blessings that his people are gonna receive if they obey

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God and they obey the terms of the covenant. You should read it. Deuteronomy 28 is an astounding chapter, but if those same people refuse to obey

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God and they refuse to obey his covenant, they refuse to submit themselves to the terms, well, then

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God reveals a series of curses that are so chilling that they send shivers down grown men's spines.

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This chapter paints a grotesque and a stomach -turning kind of picture that's going to happen to the people if they utterly abandon his covenant.

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It depicts unspeakable horrors, madness, depravity, that defy imagination, that you can't even read about in novels because our imagination doesn't go that far.

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The passage, Deuteronomy 28, is not just a warning, but it's a portrayal of how far humanity falls when it turns away from God, and this descent into a great thellipsis serves as a covenantal consequence for breaking covenant with God, and a theological statement about the destructive power of sin.

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It reminds us that God's judgment is not arbitrary, but is deeply connected to his holiness and the covenant relationship that he established with his people.

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This warning in Deuteronomy 24 that Moses gave to the people of Israel, they said, if you don't obey the covenant, this is when it's gonna happen to you.

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This should have led them to repentance. This should have led them to a deeper reliance upon his grace to avoid the depths of despair that are described in these verses, but what happened was is that Israel's heart was hardened, and they did not repent of their covenant rebellions, and they did not repent of killing the prophets, and they did not repent of all of their different sins that they perpetrated for 1 ,000 years until finally, when

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Christ, God in the flesh, shows up in their nation, they murder him, and then they start killing his disciples, and God says, enough.

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The very passage that I'm getting ready to read to you is what

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God poured out on Judah. This is what it says. Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your own sons, and of your daughters whom the

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Lord your God has given you during the siege and the distress, the lepsus, by which your enemy will oppress you.

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The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile towards his brother and towards the wife that he cherishes, and toward the rest of his children who remain so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left during the siege and the distress, the lepsus, by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns.

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Deuteronomy 28, 53 through 55. I mean, let the weight of those words sink in for a moment.

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Parents gnawing on the flesh of their children, so driven to madness that even the delicate and the refined among them were reduced to snarling like feral beasts, hoarding scraps of human meat in a frenzied fight for survival.

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That is the climax. That's the calamitous end of the people of Israel in covenant relationship with God.

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That is after 1 ,000 years of them rebelling and rebelling and rebelling, the crescendo of their downfall is this.

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And in this passage, the lepsus is not just a general kind of suffering.

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It is a multiplied suffering. It's a great suffering, great in the

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New Testament and also in the Bible. Great means multiplied. It means that something that is normal has been multiplied and amplified and blown up until it's great.

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A great wave is an amplified wave. A great hurricane is an amplified hurricane.

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A great tribulation is a tribulation of suffering that's been amplified to hellish proportions.

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And this is exactly what Deuteronomy says is gonna happen. And this is exactly what did happen when the

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Romans encircled Jerusalem in AD 70. The Jewish people were trapped inside of their city and they were spiraling into a nightmare that even the most hardened soldiers can't even possibly comprehend.

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Famine was gripping every household. It was reducing families to skeletons of their former selves.

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Starvations, icy fingers were tightening its grip around parents until they did unspeakable things to the tiny bodies that they had recently been snuggling with and trying to keep warm and to protect and to comfort in their pain.

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Now they were roasting them in oversized cauldrons to secure their next meal with the light in their eyes growing dull like a psychopath who's now finally grown accustomed to murdering.

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Parents snapped, people snapped, their mental health broke and these people who were accustomed to loving their own family now became accustomed to cannibalism where they were chewing on the carcasses of their own family members like ogres in the night, no longer understanding how deplorable what they were doing actually is.

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A madness had settled upon their souls. A once proud nation had been reduced to the depths of unspeakable insanity and the stench of death hung thick in the air over the city of Jerusalem on that day where man turned against man, parent against child, neighbor against neighbor, the living squabbling over corpses of the dead, gnawing on scraps like rabid dogs.

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That is not hyperbole, that is history. That is the ellipsis in its most visceral, soul -wrenching, amplified form.

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That is tribulation taken to the great proportion.

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It's the brutal fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28, a prophecy that made it absolutely clear what was gonna happen to the

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Jews when they utterly and totally abandoned their covenant with God.

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The passage says that an enemy is going to siege them, an enemy is going to encircle them, an enemy is going to starve them and that in their starvation, they will eat their own children.

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That is what happened at the siege of Jerusalem. With rivers of blood flowing down from the temple complex because of all of the death, where bodies were strewn and piled up all over the city and where cannibalistic horrors were witnessed within every street corner because of the culmination of centuries of covenant unfaithfulness that were poured out on that generation.

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A moment when the Jews who were meant to be God's light to the world were plunged into utter darkness.

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That is the coming tragedy that Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 24, 21.

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When he warned his disciples, not only of a coming tribulation, but he did, he spoke of a tribulation where his followers are gonna endure tribulation, where his followers are gonna endure persecutions and martyrdom and death and beatings and mockery at the hands of Jewish oppressors.

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The early church was gonna be slandered, hated, crushed under Thalypsus, under tribulation.

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But yet, when he spoke in verse 21 of a great tribulation, he wasn't talking about an end of human history event.

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He was describing the ultimate judgment that was awaiting the covenant people of old who spat in the face of God and who broke covenant with their king.

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The city that murdered its Messiah and the city that declared war on his church was going to drown in its own blood and its temple would be left desolate, torn apart brick by brick until there was nothing left.

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That, my friends, is the great tribulation that Jesus is warning about in Matthew 24.

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That's the great tribulation. That's what Jesus guaranteed was gonna happen within a single generation,

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Matthew 24, 34, and that is what Jesus guaranteed was coming when he evoked seven covenant woes from Deuteronomy on the people of Israel in Matthew 23.

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Jesus made it certain. The tribulation that we're talking about this week and next week and the great tribulation that we're gonna cover in a different episode in the future are not end of human history events.

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They're historical realities that have already unfolded in the first century, just as we've just demonstrated.

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Just like the Exodus, where the children of Israel underwent a tribulation before the Egyptians were plunged into a great tribulation, so too the church in the first century walked through a tribulation en route to freedom as the

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Jews, like Egypt, walked in a great tribulation unto destruction. Jesus promised that these things were gonna happen.

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The Exodus foreshadows how these things are gonna happen. These two passages that use the word tribulation,

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Exodus 4 and Deuteronomy 28, prove that these two kinds of tribulations exist in the mind of the

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Jewish audience and in the mind of Christ, who is speaking about these tribulations in the exact same way.

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Now, understanding this kind of tribulation, this symmetry between Exodus, this tribulation and great tribulation, understanding that, it's time for us to go into our final section for today, which

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I wanna tie all this together in the book of Revelation, because we're using Matthew 24 as a sort of a launching pad to get us into the book of Revelation.

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So I wanna take a moment as we wrap up and as we close to show how what happened in the

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Exodus, what happened in Deuteronomy and what happened in Matthew 24 are also the same things that are happening in the book of Revelation.

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So with that, part three, the apocalyptic ellipsis. Section one, the continuity of two

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Olivet discourses. Now, as we've said before, Matthew 24 is called the

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Olivet discourse and it stands out as one of the most dissected, debated and most frequently misunderstood passages in the gospels.

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Yet, when we allow scripture to interpret scripture, the clarity that's emerging here with the kind of brilliance that leaves us trembling in awe is gonna point us to what

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John's revelation is talking about. And as we've said many times before, revelation is

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John's Olivet discourse. So John's Olivet discourse is likely gonna be covering the same things that Matthew's Olivet discourse is covering as well.

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And why do I say that this is John's Olivet discourse? Well, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Matthew 24,

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Mark 13 and Luke 21 all cover this moment where Jesus is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem on the

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Mount of Olives. That's why we call it the Olivet discourse. Well, John's gospel doesn't have it. And it's such a profound moment in the ministry of Jerusalem where Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple.

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This would have been something that would have crippled his first century audience. It's the most important conversation he ever had with these men.

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The fact that John doesn't include it is odd. But when you see that revelation is covering the same things as Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and Luke 21, when you see that, you'll realize that John didn't write a chapter about the

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Olivet discourse. He wrote an entire visionary book about the Olivet discourse, which is why we can say that revelation is

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John's Olivet discourse. Now, it's not just a smattering of disconnected apocalyptic elucidations.

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It is inspired and it is a companion to Matthew 24. And as we look at these two passage together, it sharpens our ability to understand eschatology.

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It amplifies the thunder and the lightnings and the seals and the trumpets. Together, Matthew 24 and Revelation unleash a clarity of prophetic fire burning through false eschatologies, exposing the naked truth of God's judgment and redemption.

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Why is all of this so critical? Because if you don't understand Matthew 24, you're not gonna understand Revelation. Because so many

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Christians stumble in books like Revelation and they feel like they're lost in a labyrinth of cryptic symbols and confusion.

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And they imagine a far off dystopia like environment where the world is plunged into chaos and that we're just a moment away from all of that happening.

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This error has blinded so many people because we misunderstand what Revelation is all about.

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Revelation and Matthew 24 are not saying different things. They're saying the same things.

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They're two twin swords forged to cut through the same lies of dispensationalism and to unveil the glory of Jesus's dominion.

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So because I want you to see this connection and because I believe that understanding

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Revelation is at stake, we're gonna talk about these two things together and we're gonna see how they work together.

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Section two, Philipsis and Revelation. Now in Matthew 24,

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Jesus speaks of Philipsis, tribulation. We saw that in Exodus 4 and Deuteronomy 28 as well. And this word, tribulation, is not a end time event.

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It's the crucible that his followers are gonna be walking through under the pain and the torture of apostate

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Israel. This isn't a distant seven year horror film marketed by dispensationals.

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This is not Kirk Cameron's Left Behind movie. This is real things, real realities that the early church faced as they were nearing the destruction of Jerusalem.

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The tribulation is not an epic of Hollywood fantasy, but it's a covenantal earthquake that was shattering the entire old world.

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Revelation picks up on this theme from Matthew 24 right at the very beginning.

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In Revelation 1 .9, John declares himself a companion in the tribulation. Not just any tribulation and not the tribulation of end time history, as many will assume that Revelation is talking about.

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John says that he's a companion in the tribulation, which means that the tribulation was happening in John's lifetime.

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The tribulation was the catastrophe of the church coming under the terror of Jewish persecution.

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And we see that in Revelation. Revelation's judgment, the seals, the trumpets, the bowls, those are not random explosions of chaos that are gonna happen at some point in the future.

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Those are the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28. Because the Jews are persecuting

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Jesus's church, God is opening up bowls and trumpets and seals, covenant curses, and he's pouring them out on the people of Israel.

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That's Deuteronomy 28. This is not speculative eschatology.

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It's just looking back into our Bibles. It's just looking back into the covenant forms of old and seeing how

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John is using these covenant forms in a visionary way. I mean, dispensational eschatology with all of its helicopters and vaccines and marks of the beast, masquerading locusts, barcodes on foreheads, it deserves mockery by every serious

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Bible student because it is ludicrous. Revelation is not about a dystopian future, but about the catastrophic demise of the covenant breaking

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Israel. It's the end of their world, their world of temples, their world of sacrifices, their world of Levitical rituals, that that old world is crashing in the book of Revelation.

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Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28, the woes of covenant infidelity are being poured out on them and they have become the whore.

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The message is clear. The message in Revelation is clear. The old covenant order has been broken and because it has been broken, it's being obliterated and because it is obliterated, it's making the way for an unstoppable kingdom by a true and better savior,

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Jesus Christ. Section three, Egyptian themes in the New Exodus in Revelation.

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Now, the parallels between Matthew 24 and Revelation are even more significant than this and they're particularly breathtaking in their use of Egyptian imagery.

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In the same way that it's likely that the Egyptian themes or the Exodus themes are on the mind of Jesus in the book of Matthew, well, it's also true that they're on the mind of John in the book of Revelation.

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As we established in part one, Matthew's tribulation draws heavily on the Exodus story in both

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God's people who are enduring tribulations before their deliverance and also the oppressors who are facing great tribulation and devastation.

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Well, Revelation cranks that up in the most cosmic bending intensity that you can imagine.

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Exodus, where the church becomes the new Israel and the apostate Judah dons the role of Egypt, all of these things show up in the book of Revelation.

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For instance, consider the plagues. Revelation tells us that rivers are gonna turn to blood, Revelation 8 .8.

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Darkness is gonna swallow up the land, Revelation 8 .12. And then there's these demonic locusts that are tormenting the wicked,

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Revelation 9 .3. Those aren't random events, those are the Egyptian plagues. Now, instead of being unleashed on Egypt, now they're being unleashed on Judah, why?

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Because she's been unfaithful to her covenant. Judah's rejection of Christ makes her the new

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Pharaoh who stubbornly defying God, hardening her heart against the things of God, and now she's being led to the water for her destruction.

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And she's suffering the same catastrophic end as the Pharaoh of old. Jesus' warning in Matthew 24 .16

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for the faithful to flee to the mountains, to run away from the city of Jerusalem is the

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Israelites who are fleeing from Egypt, running away from that nation, running away from them in the waters of the

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Red Sea before that nation is destroyed. The people of Israel in the book of Revelation are to flee to the mountains,

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Revelation 12 .6, where the woman represents the faithful church is carried into the wilderness, just like the people of Israel who were delivered from Egypt by being carried into the wilderness for protection while the destruction event occurs.

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The church, when the armies of Rome were marching towards the city, were carried out into the wilderness, which goes against every single tendency that you would have had in the ancient world.

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When a army is coming, you run to the city, you don't run to the wilderness, but the church did.

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Josephus records that the church did. And when the church ran away from the city, the city was destroyed like Egypt at the

01:00:02

Red Sea, and the people in the wilderness were spared like Israel of old.

01:00:08

The pattern in Exodus and in Matthew 24 and in Revelation are all the same.

01:00:16

God is shielding his people amidst tribulation while raining down a great tribulation upon their oppressors.

01:00:24

And Revelation's narrative confirms this, but it also crescendos with the fall of Babylon the

01:00:30

Great, who has become Jerusalem. Or better yet said, Jerusalem has become

01:00:35

Babylon the Great in the book of Revelation. The city that killed the prophets and rejected her king, that is the ultimate

01:00:43

Exodus. The saints are delivered, the covenantal stage is set for the reign of Christ.

01:00:48

Jerusalem, like Egypt before her, collapses under the weight of judgment, and her temple is reduced to rubble, and her privileges are stripped away, and her lampstand is snuffed out, and the church goes into the land of promise to conquest the nations as the true and new

01:01:08

Israel. Do you see the themes? Section four, curses, woes, and revelation.

01:01:15

Now, we've looked at the connection between the Exodus event and Matthew 24 and Revelation. We saw how they show up in all three.

01:01:22

Now, let's look at Deuteronomy 28, which serves as a grim backdrop for the prophecies of both

01:01:28

Matthew 23 and 24, but also in Revelation. The blessings for covenant obedience and the curses for disobedience are outlined in the

01:01:38

Torah. Again, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. But we see them showing up again in Matthew 23 in the destruction of the temple in AD 70 in Jerusalem, and we see them showing up in Revelation.

01:01:55

Revelation takes these Deuteronomic themes and unleashes them with ferocious clarity.

01:02:02

The seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls, these are not random acts of cosmic chaos, but they are the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy being poured out once and for all.

01:02:15

The imagery of famines, pestilence, sword, all of those things in Revelation 6, 8 come out of Deuteronomy 28.

01:02:25

And they echo the terrifying warnings that Moses warned the people if they did not repent.

01:02:32

The cries of martyrs under the altar, Revelation 6, 9 through 10, reverberate from Deuteronomy 32, 43, where God promises vengeance for the blood of his servants.

01:02:43

The gruesome plagues in Revelation 16, boils, blood, scorching heat. All of those are

01:02:48

Deuteronomic curses that are now coming to life. The fall of Babylon the

01:02:54

Great in Revelation 18 is the final nail in the coffin, just as Israel was warned over and over and over again.

01:03:00

If they did not obey the covenant, then it would lead to their exile, their ridicule, and ultimately them becoming a public spectacle of divine wrath.

01:03:13

And in Revelation 18, 9 through 19, the city of Babylon is destroyed.

01:03:20

And the city of Babylon being destroyed is the city of Jerusalem being destroyed because in Revelation, Jerusalem has become not only the

01:03:27

Egypt and not only the Sodom, but she's become the Babylon. She's become the whore.

01:03:34

So when Babylon is destroyed in Revelation, you're looking at a symbolic picture of Judah being destroyed for breaking the covenant and the signs and the seals and the trumpets and the bowls are covenant cursing language from Deuteronomy 28.

01:03:53

Go and read Deuteronomy 28 and then read the book of Revelation and highlight every single time you see a thing from Deuteronomy 28 there in Revelation and you will see that all of it is covenant curse language against Judah.

01:04:13

Revelation is the funeral song for the covenant breaking whore who would be replaced by a true and beautiful bride.

01:04:22

That is what Revelation is all about. That the Jews are being put away so that a true bride, a bride that would bear fruit for Christ, a bride that would make herself ready and that she would be dressed like a beautiful, spotless, gorgeous bride who would be ready to receive her husband when he returns.

01:04:41

That's what Revelation is about and the first 70 % of the book is about the old covenant whore being punished and being broken and being dismissed and being divorced and being destroyed.

01:04:56

That's not a Sunday school sanitized lesson that you would probably put on a flannel board but that gut -wrenching reality of covenant justice and covenant curses is what

01:05:09

Revelation's about, it's what Matthew 24 is about, it's what Deuteronomy 28 is about. Apostate Israel, for them,

01:05:19

Revelation is the dirge of death. For the church, Revelation is the triumphant anthem of a brand new bride.

01:05:27

And like the Israelites in the first Exodus, the saints of God are brought safely through the waters of judgment and brought into the marriage supper of the lamb, which leads to our final section, section four.

01:05:40

The triumph of the lamb. Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation form a unified symphony of judgment and redemption, of punishment and celebration, of curse and blessing.

01:05:56

Together, like Malachi 3 says and Malachi 4 says that the fires of God are gonna purify some and destroy others.

01:06:06

Together, these two, this chapter and this book unveil a synchronous, terrifying justice and an unshakable display of God's sovereignty and wrath.

01:06:22

This book of Revelation is not the story, and neither is Matthew 24, of a passive Christ, of a

01:06:31

Christ who's wringing his hands as history is spiraling out of control. I mean, think about the dispensational story that Jesus is up in heaven like a total wuss, watching the nations fall apart and saying, dear

01:06:46

Lord, I wish that I could do something about this. This is not what

01:06:53

Revelation is saying. Jesus is the lion. He's the lamb. He's the one who's roaring over his enemies.

01:07:00

He's the one who's rescuing his bride. He's the one who's coming with a sword coming out of his mouth. He's the one who when speaks,

01:07:06

John hits the deck. This is the holy triumphant Christ that no one thwarts, that no one circumvents.

01:07:15

He is the one who's come to establish his kingdom and the nations will either bow down to him or they will be crushed by him.

01:07:23

Revelation is not the story of a wussified, metrosexual Jesus, but of the lion and of the lamb.

01:07:32

The tribulations of this world, whether they're in the first century or the 21st century, are not random and they're also not thwarting of Jesus.

01:07:44

These things are deliberate. They're part of his divine plan. They're orchestrated by the lamb who was slain and Revelation 11, 15 thunders this truth saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our

01:07:58

Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.

01:08:05

And with that, let the skeptics rage and let the dispensationals repent because he is not reigning unto defeat, but he is reigning unto victory.

01:08:18

Conclusion. From the moment Jesus warned his disciples about the tribulations ahead, history has unfolded exactly like Jesus promised.

01:08:30

Remember, if all the things that Jesus said in the first century didn't happen, he's a false prophet, but everything did happen in the first century just like he said.

01:08:39

The early church faced relentless pressure. They were arrested by Jewish leaders.

01:08:44

They were stoned by angry mobs. They were hunted by emperors who were reveling in their suffering and yet through it all, they remained steadfast, proving even in the crushing trials that God's power was being made perfect in their weakness.

01:08:59

Today, we've seen how the term tribulation was never meant to evoke a futuristic panic of dystopian dread, but rather, the tribulation was a real historical event that happened when the church was suffering under the wake of Jewish persecution.

01:09:20

It was a time marked by obsessive violence from the

01:09:27

Jews against the people of God, which caused Jesus to pour out covenant curses upon them and ultimately to lead them into a great tribulation where they would be utterly destroyed.

01:09:41

And then ultimately coming out of that, the church that experienced the tribulations eventually came into freedom.

01:09:49

It was the birth of a victorious, unshakable new kingdom under Christ. And the persecution, while it was great, it led to a triumph that was even greater.

01:10:01

But that's just the beginning. Today, we laid the foundation by examining the linguistic case, the Old Testament case, and how it connects to Revelation, barely.

01:10:11

Next week, we're gonna take it even further and I'm gonna show you from the New Testament how the

01:10:16

Jews were the ones who persecuted God's people at every turn.

01:10:22

We're gonna see that in Acts. We're gonna see that in Romans. We're gonna see that in Corinthians. We're gonna see that in Ephesians. All throughout the

01:10:28

New Testament, we are going to see that the tribulation has already happened. We're gonna see that with extra biblical evidence.

01:10:36

We're gonna see that from Pliny the Elder, from Suetonius, from Josephus, from all of these different people.

01:10:43

We're gonna see how the Jews hated the early church and persecuted them with ferocity, just like Jesus said.

01:10:51

And then, in the end, next week, we're gonna look at the covenant status of the

01:10:56

Jewish people. And we're gonna look at what future they have. And what we're gonna see is just like all people who've turned their back on Christ.

01:11:07

The Jews have hope if they will turn to Jesus and repent. Brothers and sisters, the

01:11:14

Jews today are not God's chosen people. They are the people who have chosen to hate

01:11:20

Jesus, just like the atheist and just like everyone else. The hope that the

01:11:27

Jewish people have, the hope that Israel has, the hope that Netanyahu has, the hope that any

01:11:35

Jew on earth has is turning to Christ because there is salvation in no other name.

01:11:43

We are not a Judeo -Christian nation. We are a Christian nation, and we are going to be a nation that proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is not through Judaism that you become saved.

01:11:54

It is through Jesus Christ and Christ alone. So with that, here's my challenge for us this week.

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Since we've seen all of these things, I want us to stand firm like those early believers did under tribulations.

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I want us to embrace the trials that come in our life and bear the name of Jesus honorably.

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If our brothers and sisters could be fed to lions and could be slandered, murdered, hunted down in every single city with their throats slit and rocks thrown against their head until they perished, if our brothers and sisters 2 ,000 years ago could undergo tribulations and be honorable and magnify the name of Jesus in the midst of that, then brothers and sisters, you and I can do the same in far easier circumstances than they went through.

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Stand firm in the gospel of Jesus. Stand firm in your faith in Christ, and do not let the momentary and the very light afflictions that you are suffering rob you of your faith and rob you of your joy because this is preparing you for an eternal weight of glory and the world is watching to see how you suffer for the name of Jesus.

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So suffer well, even if it is mild in comparison to the first century church, especially because it is mild in comparison to the first century church.

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We of all people have to have gratitude to God that he has led us into such freedom and into such blessings.

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And instead of becoming fat and lazy on those blessings, let us suffer well, serve well, praise well, build well, work well, and all of that.

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And I pray that we would remember as we faithfully endure this life, our circumstances, our trials, our whatever, as we endure those things, that we would participate in the great plan that God began in the days of the apostles and continues down to this very moment, which is the building up of the kingdom of God.

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Don't sit on the sidelines. Don't just go to church and go home. Make your entire life about the kingdom of God.

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Build the kingdom in your family. Build the kingdom in your marriage. Build the kingdom in your children. Build the kingdom in starting

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Christian schools. Build the kingdom in starting businesses that glorify God and create an alternate economy so that we will have places to go to be able to buy goods and purchase goods from other

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Christians. Donate money to the church so that the church can build a building. Support podcasts like this.

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Build, do something with your life. At the end of it, don't have just hay and stubble to show for it.

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Have something that you've built. Grab your hammer, metaphorically speaking, and grab your nails and build a kingdom that is unshakable.

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And until next time, brothers and sisters, remember that Christ is king, that history belongs to him, and that our calling in this life is to live all of Christ for all of life until Christ returns.

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And until next time, God richly bless you, and we'll see you next time on the podcast.