Is The Great Tribulation About To Begin?

Matthew 16 and the Signs of the Times

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

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What?

What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their.

Courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Right.

Don't go into the world and make homies.

Right.

Disciples.

I got, I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Fill up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers. How are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakaya, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 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. As Matthew chapter 23, everybody from verse 32 all the way almost to the very end there. Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world, everyone.

Thank you guys for joining us. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com, A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com. There is an app underway. Hopefully it's done very, very soon.

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So thank you. And thank you. And thank you. We are back again for another episode of Apologia Radio. I wanted to stay with the theme we were already on. The last episode seemed to really bless people.

I think the title of that was it's in the feed here somewhere. I think it was End Times Made Easy. And a lot of people were really encouraged by that and blessed by that. So I thought we would just extend it a little bit.

So to help with this episode, you may want to go later and listen to that episode. But there's a lot of talk with all the craziness happening in the world today, all the evil, all the decay, all of the rebellion.

There's a lot of talk about End Times, eschatology, the Great Tribulation, all of that. And so if you've been part of Western Christianity and then you know you've experienced the people warning of rapture, it's coming at any moment, even people setting dates, maybe you've been a part of the debates that have taken place amongst Christians on, you know, are you pre-trib rapture?

Are you mid-trib rapture? Are you post-trib rapture? All kinds of ink has been spilled on that. All kinds of heat and oftentimes not a lot of light has been given to that discussion. And so we're going to talk today a bit about the Olivet Discourse and the Great Tribulation.

And so that's what we're doing today. I hope it's a blessing to all of you. I have my Bible open. I hope this is something you're doing as well. Open your Bible, go to these references, check them out, look at them in context.

And so let's just get right in it, into it, shall we? This will take more than one episode to do to at least make this something that's a real benefit. And so one of the things that I said in the last episode, when we talk about End Times, eschatology, what's the goal of redemptive history?

What does Scripture say about that? One of the things that I emphasized is that the Apostles are not creating something new. And that's constantly reiterated in, say, the writings of the Apostle Paul.

When he's explaining the gospel in Romans, in Romans chapter 3, when he takes that long list in the Catena of verses from the Old Testament, there is none good, there is none righteous, all of that, he's pulling all that stuff over from the Old Testament.

He makes the point that the Scriptures are what testify to this. And he's emphasizing that, that this story is the Bible story. This is not something new and unexpected. The Scriptures testify to all of this about Jesus.

And that's one of the things that Jesus said to the men on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, when they're walking around as a bunch of sad saps, thinking this whole thing is over, and they were mistaken about Jesus and his identity and everything that happened, Jesus chastises them in the book of Luke, and he calls them slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, slow of heart to believe that all of the prophets have spoken.

And then Jesus takes them through Moses and all the prophets and shows them everything that was testifying to him. And he even goes so far, and this is I find so compelling, is that he goes so far as to challenge them on they should have known that the Messiah was going to die and rise again, because that is what the Old Testament prophesied.

I find that fascinating because you even hear Christians today, I know of a few Christians that have said basically the resurrection of Jesus is either not in the Old Testament or is unexpected and all those different things.

And that's not how that wasn't Jesus perspective. He said that the Scriptures testified to his death and resurrection. They should have known this was going to happen. My point in saying that at the start of this is that when you talk about Christian eschatology and you get into the Olivet discourse and you're talking about the Great Tribulation passage, it's important for us to read those passages biblically.

Now, I know that I'll say that and everybody says, well, Jeff, we grant that. That's exactly how we should be doing this. We should read the Bible biblically. We should have Scripture interpret Scripture.

And we're all conceding like that is how we have to do this. We can't just proof text the Bible. The challenge, though, is that you see in a lot of different areas of Christian theology that we engage in that kind of proof texting and we should always be aware when we're doing it.

It's not to say that you can't use a text to prove a point. It's to say that proof texting is understood to be snatching something out of its context and not allowing the context to speak. You know, I in particular think that this is something that's methodological in, say, like the NIFB movement, New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, or some IFB churches, where sort of like the sermon isn't, and this isn't always the case, but you'll see oftentimes that the sermon is sort of a hodgepodge of different verses snatched from here or there that may not necessarily even be related to one another and maybe not even in context.

But you're sort of doing the Bible that way. And this is particularly a problem when you talk about the issue of eschatology, because what people tend to do is they read the newspaper or their current circumstances, and then they go running to a Bible to try to see if I can find a text in the Bible that sounds like what I'm seeing or what I'm experiencing.

And that's a dangerous way to handle the Bible. We should never handle the Bible in that way. We need to let the Bible be the ground for our interpretation of what's happening around us. And the only way for it to properly be a ground for the interpretation of what's going on around us is that we're actually letting it tell the story and saying, what is its context?

Who's the author? Who's the audience? What's a specific language being used? Why is this verse being referenced in the New Testament? What was its original context? And that's how we're supposed to read the Bible.

And so what I said the last time in the End Times Made Easy video is that if we're going to do Christian eschatology right, in my mind, we need to make sure we're letting the whole Bible speak. And we actually have to start with Christian eschatology back in the Old Testament.

And so what I emphasized last time was the theme throughout Scripture, but in particular, the Old Testament, the theme of the messianic king, the kingdom of God. And then I demonstrated that in the New Testament, the assumption is that this is just a carry on of that theme of the kingdom of God.

And now the New Testament authors are saying that it has arrived. Jesus is on the Davidic throne. He's ruling and reigning now. And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, he must reign until, and he quotes Psalm 110, 1, he must reign until all of his enemies are made a footstool for his feet.

And then after that happens, the last enemy to be defeated is death. And so I made the point that Paul is just basically carrying on this redemptive story. And he's saying that that messianic kingdom has arrived and Jesus is in the process of doing what they expected the Davidic king to do.

And that is putting all the enemies of God under the feet of the Messiah and then finally defeating death. And so I made the point that we really have to begin the study of Christian eschatology into the Old Testament and let that story run through.

Now, I'm making that point right now for a particular reason. Oftentimes, and you've seen this, when Christians will talk about the Great Tribulation and end times, they'll go running to the book of Revelation.

And that's sometimes a scary thing to do in terms of like proof texting from the book of Revelation, because you've got seven headed ten horned beasts and whores drinking blood and riding those beasts.

And you've got just a lot of biblical symbolism and imagery there that you need to understand the Old Testament and what that imagery means. And why is the Apostle John essentially plagiarizing the entire Old Testament?

Over 400 verses in the book of Revelation, over half of them are direct quotations from Old Testament passages or allusions to Old Testament passages. I've often said that like John could be accused of plagiarism by today's standards because of what he's doing in the book of Revelation.

But all that said, when Christians today will go running to the book of Revelation and this was done even recently with the assassination attempt of President Trump, former President Trump, because of his wound to his ear, people were literally running to the book of Revelation and talking about this wounding and drawing a verse, proof texting for the book of Revelation.

There's literally nothing to do with that, but they did it anyways. And so Christians will tend to like run to like a proof text from the Great Tribulation passage and apply it to us today. And it's like, OK, well, let's go to that passage.

Let's go to the Olivet Discourse. Let's see who the audience is. Let's see what the specific language is. And let's see who Jesus is talking to. Who is this promise to? But there's a danger in sort of like the hodgepodge methodology of the end times study and just ripping verses out of the New Testament and trying to find some way to apply it to us today or to our future.

And in sort of like out of it just ripped out of the entire context of the eschaton that Scripture is teaching from Genesis to Revelation. And so I think actually, if you're going to do the study of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus and the Mount of Olives, if you're going to do this study and do it right and be faithful with the text, I actually think it's important for us to go back to the Old Testament in terms of, well, we've got one author, one story of redemption.

We've got, you know, one goal of history that God is sort of pushing everything to. And God has actually prophesied what Jesus was speaking about on the Mount of Olives in the Great Tribulation passage.

This is not something that God had mentioned before. This is actually expectation, much like the expectation of the Messianic King. I mean, we know we all acknowledge as Christians that there are specific prophecy in the Old Testament about the identity of the Messiah, of Jesus.

There's specific prophecy about who he is that's coming, what he's going to accomplish, why he's doing it, where this is going to happen, when it's going to happen. All those prophecies are there and they're fulfilled and summed up in Jesus.

Well, when we get to the issue of the Great Tribulation, I argue that, well, that study has to begin in the Old Testament because the Old Testament actually predicted everything that Jesus was speaking about.

When you get to the Great Tribulation passage and you get to the passages, even the Book of Acts, where Peter's quoting from Joel chapter two, and you get to what's taking place in the New Testament in that generation before the temple falls, this is one unified story.

They're carrying on this redemptive story and the story of the coming judgment. And so if you were able to listen to any of my messages, my sermons on the Great Tribulation when we did the Matthew series, you'll remember that I kept emphasizing that the Old Testament prophesied that in the coming of the Messiah, there would be at least two things.

And I emphasize that this is shown in the Old Testament. There would be salvation through the Messianic King. And there's descriptive passages that talk about like the how it's going to be accomplished.

Isaiah 53, he'd be wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, a chastening for our well-being would be upon him and by his wounds would be healed. He justified the many as he would bear their iniquities.

He'd be pierced through for our transgressions, like there's specifics there. There's salvation. There's also the salvation promise to the world with the Messianic King that the earth will be covered with the knowledge of God like the waters cover the sea.

You have all the promises about the nations being drawn to God, Isaiah chapter two, Abraham having descendants as numerous as the stars, Genesis 49, 10, to him shall be the obedience of the nations. Psalm 22, all the families of the earth will return to worship Yahweh.

So there's salvation promised. But it's interesting because there's passages that talk about the salvation and the purification of the Messiah will bring. And in the same passage, it talks about judgment upon the covenant breakers that's also coming.

So what I emphasize was this, if you have the Old Testament revelation, the expectation is that when Messiah comes, there's going to be salvation and judgment. And I think that if we're going to do this study of the Great Tribulation rightly, we have to start the discussion farther back than the Great Tribulation passages in Luke 21, Mark 13, and Matthew 24.

We have to start it back in the Old Testament. Otherwise, we're not going to understand what's going on. And I'll try to make hopefully a solid point to demonstrate that to you in terms of faithfulness to the scriptures.

We start the study of the Great Tribulation and that judgment that was promised in the Old Testament revelation. And I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. So if you go to your Bible to Isaiah chapter 65, and you guys all know, you've heard me say it a bunch of times, that Isaiah is by far my favorite prophet in the Old Testament.

I just absolutely love Isaiah. I cannot get enough of Isaiah. The portraits that are painted of Messiah and his work in Isaiah are so compelling to.

Me.

I mean, this revelation written like 700 years before Jesus, that gives you these like, almost at times, it must have been to them, confusing portraits of the Messiah. Like, okay, Isaiah 9. Okay, so he's God.

He's God and man. He's a son and a child, and yet El Gabor. And it talks about his kingdom and increasing with peace and justice. And the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. And you see the promises of like the effects of that kingdom in Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 11, that the nations are drawn to God.

The law of God goes forth from the people of God. And Isaiah 42, he establishes justice in the earth. He will not grow faint or weary until he's done so. And the coastlands wait for his law. And then it gets into like, you know, this specific servant of Yahweh, because like Israel's called the servant of Yahweh.

And then it gets into a specific servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53. And then it gives like this crushing, like, that's confusing. I thought you said he was a God and man and like his kingdom is going to grow and increase and the nations are going to come to God and he's going to establish justice.

And then Isaiah 53, like a confusing turn of events. It's like he's crushed and Yahweh lays on him the iniquity of us all. And he's counted among the rebels. And you're like, wait, it had to be like so confusing.

So that's what I mean, like the portraits there are just so compelling to me that there's all these different facets of the ministry of Jesus. But so you get to Isaiah 65 and check this out. And Isaiah 65, verse one, it says, I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me.

I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, here I am. Here I am to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good following their own devices and people who provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens and making offerings on bricks who sit in tombs and spend the night in secret places who eat pig's flesh and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels who say, keep to yourself.

Do not come near me for I'm too holy for you. The hypocrisy there, God just detests. These are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all the day. Behold, it is written before me. I will not keep silent, but I will repay.

I will indeed repay into their lap both your iniquities and your father's iniquities together, says the Lord, because they made offerings on the mountains and insulted me on the hills. I will measure into their lap payment for their former deeds.

And this is where it starts to get interesting. Thus says the Lord, as the new wine is found in the cluster and they say, do not destroy it for there is a blessing in it. So I will do for my servant's sake and not destroy them all.

I will bring forth offspring from Jacob and from Judah, possessors of the mountains. My chosen shall possess it and my servants shall dwell there. Sharon shall become a pastor for flocks in the Valley of Acre, a place for herds to lie down for my people who have sought me.

But watch this.

Here it is.

But you who forsake the Lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for destiny, I will destiny you to the sword and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter.

Because when I called you, you did not answer. When I spoke, you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry.

Behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame. Behold, my servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and shall wail for breaking of spirit.

You shall leave your name to my chosen for a curse and the Lord God will put you to death, but his servants he will call by another name. And so there's this expectation that God is going to judge these professing people of God who are provoking God continually.

He says, I will repay. And there's this expectation that I'm going to destiny you to the sword. You're going to die. My servants will eat. You'll be hungry. My servants will drink, but you're going to be thirsty.

And so God's promising you have people who profess to know God and he's going to punish them. He's destining them for the sword. He's going to destroy them. And he promises that he will give his people.

He will, the wording here is, he says, you shall leave your name to my chosen for a curse and the Lord God will put you to death. So there's this promise that God has people he's going to bless and protect and love and feed and he's going to judge these people who provoke him continuously and he will repay them.

And so the expectation is that judgment is coming and there's this description of a new people that I find to be very interesting. And we can go, hopefully at some point we'll get into, it switches immediately to verse 17 to 65, for behold, I created new heavens and a new earth and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

We can talk about that a little bit later. I've done a whole sermon on that. Maybe you guys go check it out. Jeff Durbin, new heavens, new earth. Now my point is, is if you go to the old Testament and you go to this very messianic book, this messianic prophecy book, the expectation is, uh-oh, something is coming where the professing covenant people of God are going to be destroyed by God and there's going to be a new thing, a new thing that God does where he actually cares for his chosen ones and he destroys these people who continually provoke him to his face.

Now that's important to recognize because you see so much in the New Testament revelation, this expectation, this any moment expectation, this impending judgment that is coming upon the covenant breaking Jews of Jesus' day.

Now remember, Jesus is a Jew. His first followers were Jews. The Bible is written primarily by Jews. And so the Christian faith is the truly Jewish faith. But there is a distinction made in the New Testament between those who say that God is their father and really their father is the devil.

Those who say they know God, or as Jesus puts it in Revelation chapter 3, where Jesus says, I'll make those who say they are Jews and are not. They lie. They're a synagogue of Satan. That's how Jesus puts it.

So you can say you're Jewish all you want, but the truth of the matter is the New Testament is very, very clear that only those who are of the faith of Abraham are truly heirs of Abraham and those who are circumcised in the heart.

So being outwardly Jewish is not what makes you Jewish, but being inwardly circumcised in the heart. So the New Testament makes that distinction that there's impending judgment. It's coming soon. It's going to be upon the covenant breaking people of God.

They're about to be judged. Jesus warns, gives the seven woes in Matthew chapter 23, right before the great tribulation passage is the passage of the seven woes of the Messiah to the covenant breaking Jews of God.

That's all there. And it's interesting because if you read the Matthew, the most Jewish technically of the gospels, like just seeped in the Old Testament and the Old Testament worldview, Old Testament thought, if you read that, you see that from like the start of Matthew, Matthew 3, when John the Baptist enters in, the first thing he's saying is repent for the kingdom of heaven is in hand.

And then he is speaking to the leadership right there. We're going to get to it later. He speaks to them and he warns them that his winnowing fork is in his hand. The ax is already laid at the root of the trees.

In other words, it's coming. The judgment of God is coming upon you. And like Matthew just kickstarts that whole thing, the whole gospel with that eager expectation that you're about to be judged. And then Jesus says, your house is left to you desolate.

All the blood of the righteous is going to be upon this generation. And I think that that actually is the context of Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13, but we're going to get to that. So as you further explore the Old Testament, and we're not going to tap this out today by any means, as you further explore the Old Testament and say, get to Joel, not a large book in terms of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament, very short, you can get through it in almost no time.

I'm going to read to you something from Joel chapter two.

Okay.

And in Joel chapter two, this is what said in verse 28. And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit in all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

Even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit. Now, this is important because this is specifically the passage that the apostle Peter refers to, Joel chapter two, at Pentecost, when all these amazing signs and wonders are taking.

Place.

And they took place throughout that entire generation of those first Christians before the destruction of Jerusalem. You see so much of these amazing sign gifts of the spirit of God taking place. There were healings that were taking place.

There was speaking in other languages. There was tongues. There was all that stuff taking place. And Peter actually says at Pentecost, this is that which is spoken of by the prophet.

Joel.

So, he specifically points to this amazing outpouring of the spirit of God and all these gifts now in action. He specifically points to it and says, this is what Joel was telling us about. Now, what I think most of us, if we're honest, and I'm in this boat too, when I was first reading Acts and reading through the New Testament over and over and over again, I wouldn't hardly ever really, I mean, I did on occasion, but I wouldn't really go back to like the reference from the Old Testament to go explore it and to read above and below it and really try to understand like, what's the context of that passage?

Why is it being quoted? You sort of just take it for granted that this is inspired revelation, the apostles quoting from it, and so he's got it right. That's what that was referring to. But if you are reading Acts and Peter says this, what you're seeing right now with the outpouring of the spirit of God and all his gifts is that which is spoken of by Joel the prophet, and you go to Joel and you just keep reading, you'll see something interesting.

And that is after he says in verse 29 of two, even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

Okay.

Peter acknowledged that. He said, these are those days. That's what you're seeing right now. But notice what it says right after, and I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it should come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there shall be those who escape as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.

Now, I'd love to continue going on there, but what are you noticing immediately? The old Testament has the expectation of, as I argued, you're going to see in a moment here, even more salvation and judgment, salvation for the world, all the nations coming to God, messianic redemption, atonement, all that, but also judgment.

Judgment's coming on the covenant people of God. They're going to be judged. People who provoke God to his face, he will repay. And in Joel 2, which Peter says, what you're seeing is Joel 2, the outpouring of the spirit of God, Joel immediately goes into after the outpouring of the spirit of God, that this is what's taking place.

I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the awesome day of the Lord comes. So what do you see here is that there's a specific link between the outpouring of the spirit of God and then God's fiery judgment.

The judgment is right next to the outpouring of the spirit of God. And so really what the Jews who are listening should have done is go and roll that scroll and see where the story is, because this outpouring of the spirit is followed by judgment.