37. The Second "Coming" Already Happened... But Not In The Way You're Thinking (End-Times Series Part 18)

Welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 38. The second coming already happened, part one.

But immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened. The moon will not give its light.

And the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the son of man will appear in the sky and then all of the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.

And he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of the sky to the other.

Matthew 24, 29 through 31. Now you'll need to pardon me while I let a little cat out of a very big bag when it comes to a passage like this.

Of all the things that Christians usually are divided over, Jesus's incarnation, his first coming, seems to be a point of unity.

We all agree that he was born a few years BC, which humorously might suggest that Christ was born before Christ.

Rather ironic blot upon poor Dionysius Exiguus' dating system. Yet, notwithstanding a sithian error or two, we all agree that Jesus lived to be less than 40.

He died a horrific death at the hands of the Jews. He rose again visibly and bodily in the city of Jerusalem.

And he ascended into heaven in his early 30s of that first common year century.

His ascension into heaven not only ended his first incarnational coming, but it also ushered in his heavenly reign over the kingdom, the church that continues down until this day.

Yet, as clear as all of those first coming events have been, there's been an unbelievable amount of confusion on when his second coming will occur.

For instance, some among the full preterist types believe that everything in the

New Testament has already happened and that a future bodily coming of Christ is either unnecessary or at the very least was not recorded in the

Bible so that we cannot rightfully expect it. Yet, on the other hand of the eschatological spectrum, the full -fledged futurist types tend to quibble over whether Jesus' second bodily coming will be pre -tribulational, mid -tribulational, or post -tribulational escape via a

Wankavator -like rapture, and that's not to include the thousands and thousands and thousands of false predictions that have occurred over the last 2 ,000 years.

What very few seem to notice, however, is that there's two kinds of divine comings in the

Bible. There's a bodily coming where God takes on human bodily form, and then there's a spiritual, covenantal, and judgment coming where God comes in wrath against the nation.

This is very important. When God comes in bodily form, such as when he walks with Adam and Eve in the garden, or he passes by Moses and Moses is allowed to see the backside, when he dances in a fiery furnace and Nebuchadnezzar exclaims that there's four people in the furnace when he only put in three, when he comes as Lord and Messiah to the

Jews and he returns in bodily form at the end of human history, all of these bodily comings we affirm.

Yet, there is another kind of divine coming in the Bible where God spiritually comes in judgment against a wicked nation that we cannot overlook if we're going to understand this particular passage.

Now, that is the eschatological kitty cat that I would like to pull out of my end time knapsack, and that is where I would like for us to dive in today.

Now, for clarity, I'm gonna provide 10 cold, hard biblical reasons for why

Jesus' second coming has already occurred in the first century. I'm gonna do that in two parts. This week, we're gonna cover evidences one through three.

Next week, Lord willing, we're gonna cover evidences four through seven. But I wanna give you the most important qualifier right off the bat that is needed before we begin.

Here goes. I believe that Jesus will physically return at the end of human history.

I believe that he will come back in bodily form, that he will give us new spiritual bodies, that he will call all of the dead in Christ out of their graves to meet him in the air.

1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4, amen. My contention in this article, and I want you to hear me very clearly so that I have no one accusing me of full preterism or of some sort of weird heresy, my contention in this article is that the coming, quote unquote, that Jesus is referring to in Matthew 24 is not the bodily end of human history coming, but a divine judgment coming against the

Jews for their covenant infidelity. Now to support this view, again,

I will be giving 10 lines of evidence, three this week and seven next week that come right out of this text.

But if you'd like more information on these two kinds of comings, the physical incarnational coming versus the judgment covenantal coming, then

I've written an article on that entitled When Will Jesus Return? You can look up that on our website or you can go back through the episodes on Spotify or Podcast or Apple Podcast or wherever you get your content.

You can go back in the episode catalog and you can listen to that if you would like more information on the premise that's undergirding this passage.

But for everyone else, let's move onward. Evidence number one, that the

Matthew 24 coming of Jesus was not the end of human history bodily coming, but instead was a judgment coming of Christ against Judah.

Evidence one is the meaning of the word immediate. Many such as eminent

New Testament scholar D .A. Carson suggest a multi -thousand year gap between verse 28 and verse 29 of Matthew 24.

Those within that ilk conclude that the Lord is referring to the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 17 verses 15 through 28, but then they wrongly assume that Jesus hopscotch is 2 ,000 years forward into the modern era when moving to verse 29.

This suggestion might be reasonable if there was a single shred of evidence to defend it, yet the evidence is entirely insurmountable in the opposite direction.

In fact, this insurmountable evidence that I'm speaking of does not rest on a single word, immediately. Notice how the passage flows.

This is what it says, verse 27. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the

Son of Man be. Wherever the corpse is, there the vulture will gather.

That's verses 28, now 29. But immediately after the tribulation of those days.

Now, if you're gonna assume a multiple 1 ,000 -year gap between verses 28 and 29, you wouldn't use the word immediately.

That's like the scholarly equivalent of trying to sell ice to an Eskimo. To say it differently, it might be a tough sell.

Now, I suppose that it could be done if there were actual contextual factors that were right there in the text alerting the reader that Jesus consciously intended to wax proleptically, which means that he meant immediately to jarringly change the timeframe signature, but that cockamamie thesis falls apart quicker than a house made of toilet paper when you stop to consider that the word immediate can't mean any other thing but immediate.

Not to state the obvious here, but if verse 28 is referring to the downfall of Jerusalem, as many attest rightly, and we just proved that conclusively last week, then verse 29 cannot refer to any entire different era.

It must flow immediately after the previous section, which means that it's a first -century event.

So the coming that's being described in verse 29 is a first -century coming.

That's the first evidence that immediately proves that. Number two, evidence to all these things, quote unquote.

Now, before we get to the meat of verses 29 through 31, I do want us to recall an evidence for this proof that comes outside of the scripture, which comes in verse 34 through 37.

This is what Jesus says. "'Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away "'until all these things take place.

"'Heaven and earth will pass away, "'but my words will not pass away.'" Matthew 24, 34 through 35.

Now, you don't have to be a mathematician on par with Isaac Newton to understand that the number 34 is just a little bit larger than 29, 30, or 31.

And we do not need to require formal training from men like Noam Chomsky to comprehend that all these things, that phrase, means all the things that Jesus just said in verses 21 through 28.

What we need is the courage of men like Luther, Calvin, and Knox to believe what

Jesus said, even if it's difficult to imagine, especially if it messes with our theological system. If everything is gonna happen in a single generation, then we need to believe that instead of imposing upon it our system or our view or our expectations or whatever.

We need to let the text determine our beliefs and not let our beliefs determine the text.

I'm gonna say this plainly. Verses 29 through 31 happened in the first century, in that generation, because Jesus said all these things are gonna happen to that generation in verse 34.

And we believe that when Jesus said that, he meant it. That is the unavoidable conclusion that you must come to unless you wanna turn yourself into a life -size human pretzel.

Evidence number three. The sun, the moon, the stars as apocalyptic imagery of judgment.

That is a mouthful. And this particular evidence is gonna be the last one that we're able to deal with today because it is massive and dense.

And I want you to pay really close attention to what I'm saying in this section.

I'm saying that the sun and the moon and the stars are common apocalyptic images that describe judgment.

What I'm gonna be showing you is that God, like an artist, paints in the heavens what he is about to do on the earth to the kings of men.

And I'm gonna show you that in a variety of different places, but hang on, pay attention, take notes if you want.

Listen to this section again if you need to, but this is really important, but it's also not easy content.

Not everything that's worthwhile is easy. This one is not easy, so we need to dig in a little bit.

We need to pay attention, but it's worth it. Trust me, you will understand what Jesus is saying with much greater clarity if you understand what we're gonna talk about in this section, the sun, the moon, and the stars as apocalyptic imagery for judgment.

Jesus said in Matthew 24, 29, but immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken,

Matthew 24, 29. In the infamous words of Ricky Ricardo, it looks like we've got some explaining to do.

So if we are positing that all of these things are gonna happen in the first century, then it sounds like that we're saying that the sun was darkened, that the moon decided to stop shining, and that the host of stellar luminaries fell out of the sky all within a generation from when

Jesus spoke these words. And to be fair, that is what I'm saying, but not completely, because there's a lot more under the surface that we need to understand about this before we can really grab hold of it.

Like D .A. Carson and other scholars, I also detect that a switch has occurred between verses 28 and 29.

But instead of seeing that that switch is happening in the timing of the prophecy, I see the switch is occurring in the talking, or in the manner of speech, or in the kind of genre that Jesus is employing.

It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of genre. For instance, in verses three through 28,

Jesus is using the normal kind of language that one would use when they're speaking to a friend. He's answering their questions in conversational, straightforward, dialogical manner.

The disciples are accurately recording this in the genre of historical prose, or dialogical prose.

This form of communication is straightforward, it's plain, and it's very easy for the modern person to discern what it means.

But yet, as Jesus continues speaking, he switches to another common

Old Testament form of communication that his first century interlocutors would have easily comprehended.

That switch was called the apocalyptic genre, which foretells future -oriented events through the lens of symbols.

The word apocalyptic means to reveal, and it does so through visionary, figurative, and metaphorical speech patterns that were common to his contemporaries, but not to the modern man.

Now, I will give an example here because I think it's really important, and I think that it could be helpful for our

Presbyterian brothers that are listening to this podcast. I'm Presbyterian as well, so this is helpful for me.

When we think about baptism, we know that baptism is not ex operi operata.

It's not the working of the work. It's a sign that signifies what God has done, but it's not the thing that's signified, right?

Well, if we understand that baptism is not the work, but it's a sign of the work, then what

I want you to understand here is that the sun and moon and stars are signs of what

God is going to accomplish. They're not a physical sign. They're a spiritual sign of what

God is going to do physically to his wayward people. That is sort of the way that the apocalyptic genre is working through the telling of signs.

These signs are figures that represent something, and they're revealing a coming judgment that is about to happen to the man.

Now, we know that Jesus makes this hard switch in the conversation because, frankly, he stops using his own conversational words, and he begins quoting from well -known apocalyptic passages in the

Old Testament to hammer down his meaning. By quoting from these

Old Testament apocalyptic texts, he was inviting his disciples and us even by extension to interpret his words in light of their apocalyptic meaning instead of continuing to interpret them through the wooden literalism of conversation.

Take, for instance, a silly example. I think this will be helpful. When a husband and wife are discussing options for dinner, they're in the realm of dialogical communication.

They're talking back and forth with one another about actual buildings, addresses, menu options for considerations.

They're going on websites. They're looking up options. But when the matter of where to eat is settled and the husband finally exclaims, great, let's go, my stomach is eating itself, it would actually be wrong for the wife to reply, oh, no.

How could we think about dinner at a time like this? We gotta go to the hospital immediately, get you checked out.

You could die from a thing like that. Any moderately sane woman would understand that her husband, when he made that statement, was not dying from a rare stomach eating disorder, but he had instead switched the genre of language to drive home the point,

I'm hungry, let's go. Well, in fact, this is precisely what Jesus is doing in Matthew 24.

He's been giving them dialogical answers to their question. Now, he's ratcheting up in a more emphatic genre to make his point, this judgment is coming.

And while a detailed account of the apocalyptic genre would certainly be helpful, especially in light of how it employs astronomical phenomenon, or as R .C.

Sproul once said it, astronomical perturbations, I will only briefly in this episode today be able to sketch out what

Jesus means in this passage, because a full -length treatment would be too long for this medium.

But I am gonna try to briefly sketch it out. Why is the apocalyptic genre so necessary for this, and how does all of these things apply to Jerusalem?

And how are they not physical events that we need to be looking forward to in the future, looking up to the sky to see that the sun will eventually go out, and the moon will go out, and the stars will fall from the sky?

Why can we know that that is not a physical event, but it's a spiritual event that forecasts the fall of apostate

Jerusalem? Well, to do that, we're gonna need to look at a few different things. And first, I want us to look at the purpose of the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

And to do that, we're gonna have to go back to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1,

God created both the kingdoms and the realms that would be occupied by his creations, as well as the kings and the rulers that would reign over those spaces.

For instance, on days one through three, we see God separating out the spaces such as light from darkness, that's day one, heavens from earth, that's day two, and waters from dry land, that's day three.

These are the three triad of kingdoms that are waiting to be filled.

They're empty, waiting to be filled. Then on day four through six, we see God in perfect sequential order, filling those three spaces with various rulers who are given authority to reign over God's behalf.

On day four, the cosmos is filled with the sun, and the moon, and stars. They're given authority to rule over the cosmos by day and by night, that's

Genesis 1, 14 through 19. If you read that text, it says that God placed them in the sky to reign, to rule, to have authority.

So God places the heavenly objects in the sky to reign.

They're the kings of the sky, as it were. On day five, the skies and the waters were filled with birds of the air and fish of the sea who would rule over the atmospheric heights above and down to the watery depths below, that's

Genesis 1, 20 through 23. They are given authority to rule over the realm of sky and over the realm of water.

So you've got the kingdom, sky, the kings, the birds, the kingdom, water, the kings, the fish, and the sea creatures.

Then at the pinnacle of God's creative work on day six, he installs human beings to be the rulers over the dry land and to extend

God's blessings to all the dusty places on earth, Genesis 1, 24 through 28.

These are the triad collection of kings that God set about to rule in the triad of realms with man being preeminent over the created kings.

Now, if you're a visual learner, I have provided a chart of this on our blog.

You can go to it at theshepherds .church forward slash blog and you can look at the chart that I've given.

And it's a chart that was originally given by Meredith Klein, but it just shows how day one and day four are correlated.

Day two and day five are correlated, day three and day six. Day one is the kingdom of light and darkness.

Day four is the sun, the moon, and the stars installed to reign. Day two is the kingdom of water and sky.

Day five is the birds and the fish installed as rulers. Day three is the kingdom of the dry ground.

Day six is the man installed as king of the earth. Now, if you can understand the concept that God in the first three days created realms and God in the second set of three days created rulers, then now you may be asking, why is this so important to understand

Matthew 24? Well, I want you to remember that the apocalyptic genre reveals truth in visionary ways.

So for instance, when man who is called to rule on the earth is undergoing divine punishment for his rebellion, the kings and the rulers of the other realms take notice and they shake with apocalyptic fury.

Well, why is that? Because each of these kings, the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, the birds in the sky, the beast inside the water, these kings were all designed and installed by God to give him glory.

And more than that, every single one of these kings were designed to swarm and team and gather together in meaningful collected bodies in order to give glory and honor to God.

God did not create lone rangers. He created things to be collected together to give him collective glory.

For instance, the stars who were part of the ruling agency of the sky were organized into meaningful patterns called constellations.

They were gathered into something meaningful in order for them to declare the glory of God, Psalm 19 .1.

The birds were called to flock together in the sky in order to give praise to Yahweh, Psalm 114 .12.

The sea creatures teamed together to magnify his great name, Psalm 148 .7.

It is only the man who organizes himself to be in rebellion against God.

The sun, the moon, and the stars organized themselves to give glory to God. The birds organized themselves to give glory to God. The sea creatures organized himself to give glory to God.

Only man organizes himself to rebel against God, which is why the strongest language of judgment that comes in the

Bible is not against individuals, but it's against wayward nations and cities.

And if you don't believe me, you can look in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and all of these, and look at the prophecies concerning Babel and Nineveh and Tyre and Sidon, Assyrian, Babylon, Jerusalem, Israel, Judah, Rome, Greece, Persia.

You can look at all of these examples. There is striking, furious language from God against these collected factions of people who gather in order to rebel against God.

Now, if you can understand this, then it makes good sense why the sun would grow dark and the moon would refuse to give its light.

As rulers in the cosmos, they would rather abandon their function of shining than to gratify the misdeeds of wayward men.

When men are on earth in grievous sin, the sun refuses to shine on them.

The moon refuses to give light to them. They are being abandoned into darkness.

In a sense, there's both shock and shame being emanated from the kings of heaven when they view the rebellion of sinful man.

This is why the heavens shake with fury and the stars flee from their places.

It's not because matter and energy have been rendered unstable or that the stars suddenly leap billions of light years physically in nanoseconds, which would collapse the cosmos.

Instead, these are apocalyptic images of one set of kings being shaken to fury over the waywardness of the other set of kings and that they're demonstrating what is about to happen to men.

Let me say this very plainly. When the Bible says that the sun and the moon and the stars go dark, it is not talking about physical events that happen in the physical cosmos.

It is spiritual signs that are occurring that are going to soon be happening to that wayward people.

As the sun goes dark, the light will go out on that people.

As the moon refuses to give its light, God refuses to illumine that people.

As the stars fall from the sky, that people will fall from their place. These are apocalyptic images of judgment that are about to overtake a nation.

And you may be asking, well, can you prove this? That's a really fanciful interpretation you have there.

How can I know, Kendall, that this isn't physical astrological perturbations?

Well, I can prove it. I want you to look at what happens to the heavens when man is judged for his rebellion in all of the

Old Testament apocalyptic passages that Jesus is quoting. And let me give you a disclaimer here. If you believe that the sun and the moon and the stars in Matthew 24 is a physical future event where the sun literally stops shining and the moon stops giving its light and the stars fall from the sky, then you have to reconcile with the fact that this has already happened five or six times in the

Old Testament. So you have to grapple with, did the sun really go out physically five different times?

Did the stars really travel billions of light years falling out of our visible night sky five or six different times in the

Old Testament? Did that really physically happen in the same way that the mountains melted like wax, in the same way that the trees clapped their hands for the glory of God, in the same way that the

Egyptians' hearts were melted like wax within them, in the same way that all of this apocalyptic imagery is used in the

Bible? Is all of that physical or can we have a consistent hermeneutic? Because if we have a consistent hermeneutic, we'll know that the soldiers' hearts did not melt like wax.

We know that the mountains did not leap out of their place. We know that when in Ezekiel 19 one, when it says that God came riding on the clouds in judgment, oh, maybe that's

Isaiah 19 one, when God came riding in the clouds of judgment against Egypt, we know that these things are apocalyptic images, not physical events.

So all we're saying is we should have a consistent hermeneutic. Now let's prove it. Here's some examples of the heaven shaking because of divine punishment coming on human beings.

In Isaiah 13, 11 through 13, God says, I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity.

I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. So here we have judgment is coming on man.

In Isaiah 13, I believe it's judgment is coming on Babylon. I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold and mankind rarer than the gold of Ophir.

So judgment language, right? Look at what it says in verse 13. Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the

Lord of hosts in the day of his burning anger. When man who is ruler of the dusty ground installed by God to be king over the earth is under the judgment of his covenant

God, then all the other rulers of the sky begin to shake and tremble at the fury of the

Lord and man's unforgivable haughtiness. The skies are not undoing themselves physically, the skies are showcasing covenantal judgment is soon to come.

The same is true on the earth, the realm where man was called by God to rule. It shakes with fury whenever man abandons his purpose to rebel against God.

I want you to notice what Isaiah says in chapter 24 verses five through six and then also down in 18 and 20.

The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants for they transgressed the laws, they violated the statues, they broke the everlasting covenant, therefore, a curse devours the earth and those who live in it are held guilty.

Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned and a few men are left. Then it will be that he who flees the report of disaster will fall into the pit and he who climbs out of the pit will be caught in the snare for the windows above are open and the foundations of the earth shake.

The earth is broken asunder, the earth is split through, the earth is shaken violently, the earth reels to and fro like a drunkard and it totters like a shack for its transgression is heavy upon it and it will fall never to rise again.

Isaiah 24, five and six and 18 through 20. Now, there's several things that we need to know here.

Is the earth really split in half in Isaiah 24, which is a specific prophecy against a specific nation?

Because if it were, then we would be today on a half of a planet that wouldn't rotate anymore.

So like, let's be honest and say that this is not physical language. Does the earth really totter to and fro like in drunken stupor from maybe possibly having too many drinks with Mercury and Venus?

This is not a physical phenomenon, but it's concovenantal judgment.

We see the same pattern in the heavens when Joel prophesies about the coming downfall of Jerusalem and we know from Joel chapter two, which

Peter quotes in Acts chapter two, that this prophecy got its fulfillment in that first century.

We talked about this last week, but this is what Joel says. Before them the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and the moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness.

Again, it's described in Amos where the shaking of the earth is prophesied. Amos says this, the

Lord is sworn by the pride of Jacob. Indeed, I will never forget any of their deeds. Because of this will not the land quake and everyone who dwells in it mourn.

Indeed, all of it will rise up like the Nile and it will be tossed about and subside like the

Nile of Egypt. With all of this, and there's so many more passages that we could talk about, but I just gave you a few to sort of prove the point, as it were.

With all of this, is it any wonder that Jesus prophesized that the powers of the heavens will be shaken?

Isn't that a fascinating phrase? The powers of the heavens will be shaken. Jesus does not say that the heavens themselves will be shaken, but he says that the powers of the heavens will be shaken in the downfall of Jerusalem.

Throughout the Old Testament, we realize that the powers of the heavens is the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Installed by God in Genesis 1 to rule over the cosmos. That's the heavenly kings that underwent a shaking whenever the earthly kings fell into sinful misery and ruin.

And we have several Old Testament passages that are proving this. This is not, again, a physical shaking where the fabric of the universe is tipping off kilter with seismic rumblings, but it's a covenantal response from the cosmic kings over what sinful man has done.

It is God's way of describing with hyperbolic, apocalyptic personification, what is about to be done to sinful man.

Whenever God causes the cosmic kings in the sky to metaphorically shake, the kings of men ought to know that they are about to undergo a shaking that is going to purge them from their place and propel them off their thrones and scatter them into oblivion.

This kind of language from the prophets is common apocalyptic judgment language against sinful nations, states, and cities.

And what's ironic is that the people of the Old Testament didn't believe the prophets either, and then soon judgment came upon them.

In the same way, most of the people of Judah in the first century would not believe

Jesus. They were like, these things are not gonna happen to us, and yet they did.

So Jesus employs a common apocalyptic genre to prove his point.

The second thing I want us to understand is the sun, the moon, and the stars. In the Old Testament, they also fade.

They go out. They run from the sky. They do all sorts of interesting things whenever cities, states, and nations are punished by God.

This same linguistic phenomenon happens all over the place, which is another example.

So for instance, when the ancient city of Babylon comes under the judgment of God, the stars go dim, the sun grows dark, and the moon refuses to give its light.

That's Isaiah 13 .10. This also occurs in the downfall of the nation of Tyre.

This is Isaiah 23 through 24, where the moon becomes ominously bashful, the sun hides as a precursor, an omen of the divine infinite fury that's coming upon Tyre and Sidon, Isaiah 24 .23.

When God judges the land of Edom, this is another nation that's coming under the judgment of God in Isaiah 34.

The sky is described as being rolled up like a scroll, and the heavens are said to wither away, enacting the rolling up and the withering that's soon gonna come on Edom, Isaiah 34 .4.

When Egypt is being destroyed by God, God covers with his hand the heavenly lights as a symbol that Egypt will likewise be extinguished,

Ezekiel 32 .7. And as we have seen, when Jerusalem's day of judgment comes in AD 70, this same language is liberally employed, and you can look at Joel 2,

Joel 3, Amos 5, Amos 8, Zechariah 1, and there's many more for positive examples of this theme.

Now, I don't wanna take a victory lap here, but when Jesus cites one of the most common apocalyptic images for a fallen nation state, sun, moon, and stars in heaven shaking, we should understand him in the genre that he's speaking.

We should not look up at the sky and imagine how can the universe survive another occasion where the sun goes dark, where the stars run away, where the heavens shake, where the moon stubbornly turns off its luminaries.

We should see that Jesus is evoking a common covenantal linguistic structure that's showing that God is about to bring judgment upon the sins of men.

To treat these texts as physical events is to abuse the genre and to make them say what they are not actually saying, and it's to adopt a hermeneutic that cannot lead us to understanding.

Finally, I wanna talk about the rising of the newly illuminated new

Jerusalem because that comes to bear here as well. This language that Jesus is using is not only covenantal and apocalyptic, but it shows that Jesus is serious about Jerusalem's downfall.

He spent verses one through 28 talking about it, now he's sealing their doom. As the sun is darkened, the light is gonna go out on Judah and they're gonna fade away into the darkness.

As the moon refuses to give its metaphorical light, God is no longer going to illuminate the old covenant temple and the old covenant priesthood and the old covenant sacrifices, they will fade away into oblivion.

As the stars are scattered across the heavens, so the Jews will be scattered among the nations, no longer sitting on the throne of David, but assimilated into more powerful peoples.

And finally, as the powers in the heavens are shaken, so the powers of the old covenant Judah and its old covenant religion will be shaken to rubble, making way for the new covenant kingdom of Christ to rise from her ashes.

It should not be surprising to note that the new covenant church that is described as the new

Jerusalem in Revelation 21 comes down from heaven. But what may be surprising is why

God no longer calls the sun and the moon and the stars to shine on his church.

John tells us in verse 10 of chapter 21 and also in verse 23, and he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, he showed me the holy city

Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. Verse 23, and the city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illuminated it and its lamp is the lamb.

While the downfall of the old kingdoms was evidenced by the dimming and the muting of the sun and the moon and the stars, the new covenant kingdom of Christ will be illuminated by God himself.

Old temporal Jerusalem and its downfall was signaled in the heavens.

The new Jerusalem, however, will never fall into the same kind of misery and ruin as the old covenant kingdom did because she's not being illuminated by the gaseous balls of heavens, but by the living

God. Because he, God alone, is directly sustaining the church.

She no longer needs solar photons to radiate her existence or to expose her sin because now she has the divine illumination provided by Jesus Christ and the power of his

Holy Spirit to illuminate her, to reveal her sins, and to lead her to repentance.

While the church may sometimes falter like Judah, she will never fall like her.

Amen and amen. Today, we've seen how

Jesus's second coming was not a bodily and physical coming at the end of human history.

Instead, it was a spiritual, covenantal, and judgment coming upon Jerusalem at the hands of the

Romans in AD 70. Furthermore, as we've said previously, we do believe in an end of human history, physical coming of Christ, but that is not what

Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24. As we have seen, the judgment that God foretold in the heavens in the

Old Testament and through Christ in Matthew 24 would soon rain down on the

Jews for their infidelity. Join us next time as we explore seven more proofs that Jesus's second coming in the first century was not physical, but was spiritual, covenantal, and judgment, but until then,