The Great Tribulation & the Elect

The Sermon’s Purpose, Church Partnership, and Local Church Membership

Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel. What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. Take a good turn in your Bibles to the gospel according to Matthew. And let's actually start today to get some context. Matthew chapter 23.

The Olivet Discourse in Historical and Covenant Context

Let's just start at 37, the very end of the chapter. I'm going to read through from there to the verse we're at today to get context. As you guys get there, we have been doing a study through the gospel according to Matthew verse by verse, sometimes word for word, for about 20 years now.

And, no, we have been in the Olivet Discourse for a little bit, and we've been trying to express the importance,.

Especially.

In light of the fact this text is so often used to abuse people, the importance of actually reading the text in its historical context, not importing our ideas or our context into the text, but letting the Lord Jesus speak through the narrative that Matthew has pulled together.

And I want to highlight this again, and I've been saying it over and over and over, and I hope before God that it's something that's been caught by now, is that what's happening here in the Olivet Discourse, the description of the destruction of Jerusalem, the promise of what is about to befall those first century covenant breakers, listen, is not a novelty.

This is not some interesting out-of-the-blue thing that drops into the story of God in the first century. If you have been tracking with the Tanakh and the Torah for the hundreds of years before Lord Jesus even comes into his ministry, and you've been pulling together these texts, now admittedly it's going to be hard for a Jew who has in synagogue, they're reading Torah and the Tanakh and knows these prophecies.

Admittedly, it's going to be hard without the incarnation and the revelation of God that comes through Jesus to make sense of all of these verses from the Old Testament, all these messianic prophecies that speak to so many different aspects of Jesus' work, his ministry, his life, his death, his resurrection, the salvation, the judgment that's going to fall.

Of course, we want to give them grace and say this is an amazing, powerful, sovereign God who's speaking about events that are about to occur in history, and it is incomprehensible in a sense without the divine revelation that comes through Jesus, but here we are.

If we know the word of God from the Old Testament, Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, those synoptic gospel parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse makes perfect sense. It has to be there. God promised the covenant people in the Old Testament hundreds of years before Jesus comes that the coming of the Messiah was going to be for salvation.

Yes, the kingdom of God, all the nations coming to God, atonement, all of that is there. He would justify the many as he'd bear their iniquities. He'd be pierced through for our transgressions. They surround him like dogs, Psalm 22.

They pierced his hands and feet, his heart like wax melted within him. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Long before Jesus comes, but that's not all. We also have, of course, the promise of judgment upon the covenant breakers when the Messiah brings his kingdom.

Isaiah 65, my servants will eat, but you're going to be hungry. My servants will drink, but you're going to be thirsty. I will give my people a new name. Isaiah 65, long before Jesus comes, about 700 years before he comes, the promise upon the covenant breakers of a covenant lawsuit and sanctions.

Malachi chapter 3 and 4, we hear about John the Baptist, the forerunner, and then the Messiah, Yahweh, whom you seek will come to his temple. Yahweh is coming to his own temple, Malachi 3 says, and then we have purification for sins and then covenant sanctions.

Judgment upon the covenant breakers. Enter Jesus and it all comes together. God in the flesh. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He's going to Jerusalem to be crucified. Why? To give eternal life to God's people, to gather together God's elect together.

But you have, of course, what has to be part of the story, the covenant sanctions upon the covenant breakers that God promises. Context. Matthew 23, 37, hear now the words of the living and the true God.

Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing.

See, your house is left to you desolate, for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.

But he answered them. You see all these things, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when will these things be?

And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? And Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Messiah and they will lead many astray and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.

See that you are not alarmed for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.

And many false prophets will arise and leave many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved and the gospel and this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house.

And let the one who's in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath.

For then there will be great tribulation such as not been from the beginning of the world until now, no and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.

Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you bless today as we open and study this incredible section of scripture. Help us, Lord, to fall in love with the power of this section of scripture.

Help us to understand your word. Teach us by your spirit. Guard you, guard us, your people, from error. Guard my mouth and my mind from error as I teach your people. Lord, I pray that you would cause me to decrease, Christ to increase.

In Jesus' name. Amen. So this is the story of God's covenant people. Now notice I have constantly, as we've been going through this study, I've been talking about the fact that this is local judgment, clearly local.

When you see the abomination that causes desolation, Luke 21 uses a different actual way of expressing that. Luke in this section actually says when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, what's the call of Jesus in verse 16 is let those who were in Judea flee to the mountains.

This is not a global judgment. This is not about the end of the cosmos, the physical world. As a matter of fact, it's not in the text. The word there for sign of your coming and the end of the age is from ionus, ion.

It's age. It has nothing to do with cosmos, physical world. This is not about the end of the physical cosmos. This is about the end of the age. Which age? Well, the disciples, the early Jews, weren't thinking like Gentiles when they're talking to Jesus here.

Jesus says Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. The Jews here are thinking about covenant context, covenant people of God, end of the age. Which age? They knew that history was marked off by two sections in the Old Testament.

What was it? The age of the Old Covenant and the age of the Messiah, the messianic age, or the age of the New Covenant. And notice when Jesus departs from just indicting the religious leadership in Jerusalem and says your house will be left to you desolate, he departs from Jerusalem and goes to the Mount of Olives, which we've already described is exactly the course that Yahweh took in the Old Testament in Ezekiel when God was going to destroy the first temple for their covenant unfaithfulness.

His glory, Ezekiel says, departs from the temple to the Mount of Olives and rests on the Mount of Olives. Jesus has just declared the same thing upon the second temple. Your house is left to you desolate.

He departs now and he's on the Mount of Olives. That's why it's called the Olivet Discourse. Now Yahweh is physically present as a man giving the description of the destruction of Jerusalem upon the covenant breakers.

Note that they heard him say Jerusalem, Jerusalem, your house is left to you desolate. He departs. They realize the judgment that that means. He promised it's going to be upon that generation and they now say look at all this.

Look at the temple and the buildings. I mean, this is an amazing edifice. This thing is glorious, Jesus says. Do you see all these things? There should not be left one stone upon another. And that occurred, brothers and sisters, literally in the destruction of Jerusalem, the three and a half year war of the Romans versus the Jews in history.

It's a matter of historic record. It's one of the bloodiest sieges in the history of humanity. One of the worst things that ever happened in history in terms of bloodshed and warfare. What happened is the Roman armies went into the temple.

They desecrated things. They set fire to it and they literally took the temple apart, stone off of stone, in direct filament of Jesus' prophecy. But note, they hear Jerusalem's gonna be judged, house desolate, temple destroyed, and they say end of the age?

Temple gone? No more old covenants? No more sacrifices? No more priesthood? No more temples? End of the age? What's the sign of your coming? When will these things be? End of the age. And Jesus begins now to talk to the covenant people, the early Jews, about what's going to befall them in that generation.

Now note this, I want you to go to the text with me because it's so important you see it with your own eyes. After Jesus' discourse here about all the things, now let me say that again, very important, all the things, wars, pestilence, famine, persecution, abomination of desolation, don't go back to get your cloak, vultures, signs, heavens, blood moon, stars, falling.

After all of that discourse, I want you to land on this. Look at your text in Matthew chapter 24. Jesus says after all of it in verse 34, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Which things? Well, some of them. No. Text says all these things and the word generation there does not mean race, cannot mean race of people. If you look throughout the Gospels themselves, particularly Matthew's Gospel, when you see the word genea, the word generation used, it's used in the common way we would understand generation.

All the people there living at that time. Jesus says after this discourse, he says all these things will be upon this generation. Those are the words of the Lord Jesus and I want to argue he meant it.

I want to argue actually alongside early church fathers and pastors that he meant it. Isn't it amazing that today we have books being written talking about the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13 as our present reality.

This is for us. It's about us. Books being written talking about blood moons and all the rest. People literally selling buckets that you can eat out of and poop in. The Jim Bakker show, right? Because at any moment, what's going to fall?

The Great Tribulation. On who? On us. Because Jesus is talking to us in this passage. Brothers and sisters, he's not. This is covenantal. Jesus comes and brings a covenantal lawsuit against the covenant breakers and now it's time for the sanctions.

Again, if you followed our studies and you can go back and look at them online to catch up with us. I'm not gonna do it all now. Jesus from actually chapter 20 begins the process of going to Jerusalem telling them he's going to be killed, crucified, and resurrected and then beginning to indict the covenant breakers and promise judgment upon that generation.

Just read chapter 20 through 24 and pay attention to audience. Pay attention to context and then think about that in tota Scriptura, all of Scripture. You notice today I've used some language, right? I've said covenant lawsuits and I've said sanctions.

People are like, I want a happy encouraging message, Pastor Jeff. I want to hear about how I can live my best life now and I can be told about how wonderful I am and how to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and to have a nice car and a beautiful wife or handsome husband and great kids.

What's all this covenant sanctions and lawsuit stuff? Well, brothers and sisters, I want to argue that if you interpret the Word of God properly, you will live your best life now. You'll live the most biblical life now because you'll understand God as he is.

You'll understand the world in the context that Scripture gives it to us. And if you understand that God is the covenant God, the covenantally faithful God, you'll know the God that you worship truly.

And watch, here's the big banner over today's message. Are you ready? You're gonna get to in a minute about the elect of God, chosen by God, the elect of God. We are recipients of mercy and grace and we don't receive, praise God, the covenant sanctions that they did.

Now, I can't do a big study on covenant theology today. And of course the the covenant that God made with the people of God. But I will point you to the passage that actually connects to Matthew 24. I want you to know where it's at in your Bible so you can go and read it later.

To do that, go to Deuteronomy, first couple books of your Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 28. So Old Testament, it's in the law, first five books of Moses. Deuteronomy comes from two words, Deutero and then namos.

Namos meaning law. It is the second giving of the law. So it's sort of like a recapitulation in many ways of the law itself and an explanation of what took place. So Deuteronomy chapter 28. I can't do it all today, but I want you to see some of the things that are mentioned here.

This of course is the amazing moment where now we have like the wilderness wanderings, the 40 years, they've come out of Egypt, ransomed, out of slavery, bondage, God rescues them, we've got blood over doorposts, we've got lambs with no spot or blemish, bones aren't broken, that whole story of Israel going out there worshiping false gods at the foot of Sinai, you've got Moses coming down, Ten Commandments.

This is all behind us now. And now the people of God are going into the promised land, but not before.

God.

Establishes this covenant relationship. It's again restated, but God promises, watch, so important you get this and you will understand so much of the context of what's happening in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and the story of Jesus and covenants, all of this.

God promises his people blessings and curses. Now, this is important. Listen, there are different kinds of covenants made in Scripture. One of the covenants that God makes with Abraham is not a covenant like this.

It's not, it's not actually quite like the Mosaic Covenant. It's not with the blessings and curses. I'll give you an example so you can see the difference because it's important you know this in terms of what God does in history.

And guess what? You're in this. This is your story, too. You're in this blessing. You're in this covenant. Remember Abraham, father of our faith, Abraham? I'm gonna give you a seed, and through your seed, you're gonna bless the whole world, Abraham.

You're gonna have descendants as numerous as the stars, stars, stars, you, me, in Jesus, recipients of this covenant blessing made to Abraham. And so he says what, Genesis 15, 6, it says Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness.

What did Abraham do? What did he do? Believed. What did he do in terms of works and righteousness and obedience? To receive righteousness as a gift from God. Not a thing. What did he do? He believed. He trusted in God.

And if you trust in Jesus, you have a faith like Abraham. You have that Abrahamic faith, the faith that comes to God as the God of mercy and grace and trust in him and you receive gift from God. Not a covenant of blessings and curses, but gift from God.

Now, this is important. When Abraham believes God and it's credited to him for righteousness in Genesis 15, 6, he hadn't done anything. There isn't, there are no works. There wasn't circumcision. He did not offer Isaac on the altar until like 20 years later.

So it's just faith, but God does something. He actually stoops down to a human level and he actually cuts a covenant with Abraham, but it's different. In this era of Abraham, when you wanted to cut a covenant, there weren't a lot of ways to do what we do today in terms of having the documentation, paperwork, notary, you know, signing things and evidence and email, put it away in a zip file or whatever the case may be.

You did things very symbolically with witnesses at times to make sure nobody forgot the deal and you had covenants you would make with people where you would actually take animals, you would slice them in half, very graphic, and you would pull their body parts apart.

There's blood everywhere and you would walk through the parted animals with the person you came into a covenant arrangement with to actually swear by this covenant. If I don't keep my side, let what happened to me, happens to me, what happened to these animals, let it be done to me like them.

That's how, so you're walking through these bloody carcasses in a very symbolic action to essentially say I'm gonna keep my word here. I understand how serious this covenant is. But with Abraham, in the Abrahamic covenants, God does something incredible.

What's he do? The animals get parted and then God causes a deep sleep to fall on Abraham. What part is Abraham taking in this covenant with him and God? What? He's asleep. He is, ready? Here's the word,.

Passive.

He's totally.

Recipient. He's out. He's doing nothing. He is just the recipient of love and mercy and grace and then God himself, because he can swear by nobody greater than himself, God himself goes through the parted animals, swearing on himself.

I am gonna accomplish this. So there's that covenant that you and I are in. God said I'm gonna give you descendants. I'm gonna do this. How's it gonna be accomplished? You believe I'm doing everything.

You trust in me. I will be covenantally faithful to you and to your descendants. If you trust in Christ, that is where you're at. But yet God brings a people, a chosen people. Israel, you only have I chose through all the nations of the earth.

God, yes, has an elect people, the nation of Israel. He calls together and he brings them to actually accomplish.

His.

Redemptive story of Messiah through the people of Israel. But now he's redeemed them. They've wandered around a bunch. They cannot figure this thing out. Why? Because they don't have what you have. They don't have the blessings of the new covenant and the law written within them, the spirits and dwelling, the accomplishment of the atonement.

They're just wandering, just sinning, face-planting, face-planting. But God makes a covenant with national Israel. Blessings? This one's different.

Curses.

This one's different. It's not just blessings. It's curses. It's a covenant where God actually says I'll do this to you if you obey. I'll bless you. But if you disobey, I'm going to curse you. Here are the sanctions.

So this is a different sort of covenant arrangement than God made with Abraham. Now watch. Paul says all these covenants come together in a unified way, organically in a sense, but the covenant here is different and it comes with sanctions.

And yes, this is connected to the Olivet Discourse. Now, I want you to see it. So Deuteronomy 28, verse 1, God says this, I'm not reading the whole thing, just bits so you can get a sampling, okay? And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.

If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of the ground of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.

Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you.

Do you ever, I can't do it all today and I so want to, but you ever read that one story in the Old Testament where you have the issue of the Israelites have to fight a war and they call all the men of war to go fight the battle and then God's like, actually your army's too big, cut it down.

Because God wanted to display his glory, like your army is too big, it's too many people, like make it less so everybody knows that I did it, right? Isn't that awesome? But that's one of the blessings of the covenant.

God says this, I'm gonna destroy your enemies in front of you. Like they're gonna rise against you, you obey me and I'll defeat your enemies for you. God says that and he says verse 8, the Lord will command the blessing on you and your barns and in all you that you undertake.

He'll be blessed you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself as he has sworn to you if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God and walk in his ways.

So there's blessings, blessings, blessings, obey blessings, but God promises the nation of Israel this, verse 15.

But if.

You will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I'm command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, cursed shall you be in the field, cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl, cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of the ground, of the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out.

The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, frustration in all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me. Look at verse 25.

The Lord Yahweh will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. Now jump to 52. Look at this. It's very relevant. Covenant sanction 20 or 52. They shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls.

In.

Which you trusted come down throughout all your land. They shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which you, which the Lord your God has given you. And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters.

And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. God promises them plague.

He promises them famine. He promises them sanctions and curses in this covenant he makes with his people. Very important to understand that history and now go back to Matthew chapter 24. So that is Deuteronomy 28.

The covenant God makes with his people, the promise of curse, curses and blessings upon his people. Now back to Matthew chapter 24. Now,.

Where were we?

We just did the abomination of desolation. So we're back in 50. Go to 15. We just did a message in the abomination of desolation. We went back to Daniel 9 to show you. Listen, very important. If you missed the sermon, this is all we really need to talk about today.

Daniel 9, hundreds of years before Jesus, there is no temple. They are in exile to Babylon and Gabriel comes to Daniel and promises this 490 year time period from the decree to to restore Jerusalem till Messiah the Prince.

You have this covenant made where God's actually promising his people. He's going to actually bring an end to sin. He's going to bring atonement for iniquity. He's going to finish the transgression. The transgression of the Jews is going to come to its climax.

The anointing of the Holy, all of that is there. You also have the promise that Messiah, Mashiach is coming and he's going to be cut off and have nothing and then the second temple is going to be destroyed.

So what is Daniel 9 promise? When there is no temple, there's going to be a second temple. Messiah is coming before it. He'll be cut off and have nothing and then the temple will be destroyed. Isn't it interesting that when Jesus describes in Matthew 24 the destruction of the Jewish temple, he mentions the abomination of desolation that's in Daniel 9, the promise of the destruction of that second temple.

So here's the Messiah who's about to be cut off and have nothing, promising that that house is going to be left to them desolate. That temple is going to be destroyed. It's all coming together in this story, God's story.

But what's interesting is the rescue of God's people that's promised. This is what I wanted to talk about just for a moment. Remember I read to you guys Eusebius. Eusebius is a bishop. He's a pastor in the early church and we have his records, we have his history and he wrote down a record of what took place in the destruction of Jerusalem and this is what he says in book 3 chapter 5.

I'll just read a small section here. Some of you guys heard it before but here's what he says. He says, but the people of the church, this is him writing a 4th century pastor, in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men before the war to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella.

And when those that believed in Christ had come there from Jerusalem, then as if the royal city of the Jews and the whole land of Judea were entirely destitute of holy men, the judgment of God at length overtook those who had committed such outrages against Christ and his apostles and totally destroyed, listen, that generation.

So here's an early church father referring to this text, Matthew 24, as a past tense reality and he's using it as an apologetic, saying that the people of God were actually spared and rescued from the destruction of Jerusalem because of the prophecy of the Lord Jesus and when they escaped to Pella, then God overtook and destroyed who?

The people who had killed Jesus. The covenant sanctions.

Fell,.

Eusebius says, upon that generation. It's a powerful section from an early church father. I love that section from Eusebius. Encourage you guys all to read that. Book 3, chapter 5 and on describes these events.

But in Matthew 24, Jesus told his people, don't go back, don't go grab your things, immediately get out. I couldn't help but remember this. Did you catch it? Here you have Yahweh as a man walking with his people, promising destruction on a city.

There's a harlot city that has gone astray, that's doing wickedness and abominations. And are you sort of hearing the hints in it? You know of any other times in history where Yahweh, the angel of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Christ came and he warned people to depart from an abominable city and he told them not to essentially go back, not to return, but just to flee.

Any other stories like that in Scripture? What? Sodom and Gomorrah. Now you have Jesus, Yahweh, saying abomination of desolation, destruction of the city, and he says what? Don't go back, right? You turn away and you run.

You get out of the city because the judgment of God is about to fall. Yahweh in the Old Testament, it says, it says Yahweh rained down fire from Yahweh in heaven. You see the Trinity there in the Old Testament even?

It's amazing, right? But you have this example of Jesus promising his people, get out of the city, get out. And Eusebius says they were spared. Who was spared? The Christians were spared. I mentioned, I'm gonna throw it out quickly so that you at least have it, that in the book of Acts there's a moment where you see that the early Christians were doing something kind of peculiar.

What was it? They were selling their property in.

Jerusalem.

They're selling their land and property that they have that's there and they're distributing the money to take care of the needs of the saints. And I mentioned in history, there's been all kinds of weird, kooky, unbiblical Christian socialist movements that have actually looked at Acts and said, look, the early Christians living kumbaya together in one community.

Nobody owns their own stuff and they're just sort of like giving up their stuff and selling it. Hey, they were selling their stuff in Jerusalem because they knew Jesus said what? This is all about to be destroyed.

They knew that it wasn't land to hold on to. They knew that this was about to be destroyed and one of the actual things said about the early Christians was that they were saying, read the book of Acts, first six chapters, they were saying that this Jesus was gonna return and destroy the customs that have been delivered to them.

What customs? Temple, sacrifice, ritual, they knew it was coming. The message of the early church is you better repent in a hurry because Jesus is coming to bring sanctions upon the city. It's coming.

The Great Tribulation and the Days of Vengeance

So,.

We have in Matthew 24, 21 through 22, this saying from Jesus. So many books called Great Tribulation, the tribulation. People say, when is the rapture gonna happen? Is it pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib?

I say none of it. The trib already happened. So technically it's post-trib. But thousands of years post-trib, right? There is no secret rapture in Scripture. There's a putting death under the feet of Jesus, a final resurrection and judgment, but none of these secret rapture things, people left behind, the people who are left behind in Scripture in Noah's day were the righteous ones.

They're left behind. Wicked aren't left behind. It's the righteous, the meek, who inherit the earth. But what's interesting is that there's the word. It comes right now. Now you're reading it. The Great Tribulation.

It says in verse 21, for then there will be great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and will never be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.

But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. Here's what I want to talk about. Jesus says elsewhere, not an exhaustive talk today, just something to think about. He says in Luke 21, 22, same passage for Luke, the Olivet Discourse.