109. The War For The Soul of the World | A Practical Postmillennialism Series

Christ Church Multiplies Through the Mustard Seed Kingdom

Christ Church is hardwired for multiplication. He says that some are gonna produce 30-fold, some 60-fold, and some 100-fold. Multiplication is what the church does. We don't lose down here, we multiply down here until there's nowhere else to multiply.

Hello and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 109, The War for the Soul of the World. Well hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast.

Now if you haven't been with us, we've been in a series called A Practical Postmillennialism where we're building the case from the Bible on what postmillennialism is. Now if this is your first time listening, postmillennialism is the view of the end times where Jesus wins in the here and now.

The world that we live in is not going to aggressively get worse and collapse into ruin before Jesus has total victory. No, Jesus will progressively, little by little, bring the world into conformity with his vision.

The Arrival of the Kingdom in Christ's First Coming

Introduction. Now from the most humble beginnings, Jesus launched an unstoppable invasion on Satan's realm that would shake the foundations of this world and it would wrestle back control of this planet from the prince in power, the heir, into the hands of Christ.

And he did this with the 12 most unlikely men. This peasant rabbi from Nazareth set in motion a spiritual tsunami sweeping over Jerusalem and flooding through Judea and Samaria and eventually inundating the entire Roman Empire with the waters of his grace, toppling history's greatest superpower from within.

Now what started as a fringe rabble of outcasts and nobodies exploded into a global force that now occupies 2 .5 billion worshipers with no sign that that's gonna slow down. And this was not an accident of history.

This is not a story of a band of lovable losers who bumble along in a world getting increasingly rotten until the savior tractor beams all of us out of here and zaps us back to the mothership. This was always the creator's intent that his image-bearing people would multiply and fill the world with worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth and who obey him in all things, Genesis 1, 28.

Though sin brought devastation and ruin upon the world, Jesus, the true and better Adam, is restoring humanity to her original God-given purpose. He has forgiven us of our sins on the cross and he's reinvested us with our original Adamic authority to advance God's kingdom to all the peoples and places and leading the church to bring God's blessings to every family on earth, Genesis 12, one through three.

Just like God promised to Jacob or through Jacob to Judah, the nations are one day going to rally under this Messiah scepter of righteousness. He's gonna render complete allegiance to God and to the obedience of God.

That's who Christ is. He's the Shiloh king of Genesis 49, 10. From that tiny little mustard seed, a revolution was unleashed upon the world that's not gonna be stopped until it's brought the entire world under the shade of its branches.

That is the kind of unstoppable kingdom that Jesus is building. And it goes well beyond the book of Genesis. It's in the book of Exodus, in the story of Israel, in the hymns of Israel, in the collapse of the Israelite and the Judean empires, we see glimpses of it.

In the prophetic promises, it is shouting at us. Every line of the Old Testament points to that kind of kingdom. And it's not just the Old Testament. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the epistles of Paul and Peter and James and John, and the history of the church that's reported to us by Luke and Acts all look forward to a kingdom that's gonna take over this world like Georgia Kudzu.

Now, in today's episode, I wanna show you how this happened. I wanna show you how 2000 years ago, the kingdom landed on the shores of this earth like Americans upon the beach of Normandy. I wanna show you how Jesus eradicated his fiercest enemy, which is the devil and his demons, along with this unlikely group of loyalists who Jesus said, your father is Satan, that's the Judeans.

We'll see that in a moment, who align themselves with Satan's unholy vision. And after that, in conclusion, I want us to attempt to demonstrate how once the gospel, once that kingdom had put down its first century enemy, Satan, sin, and all of that, that it was going to build and grow throughout all the centuries until there was nothing left for it to conquer.

You and I are in the reign of Christ. You and I are in the kingdom of the conquering one. And you and I can find our place in that kingdom by doing what Jesus said, by extending his kingdom in our spheres of influence today.

So that's what we're gonna be talking about, how Jesus brings the war to the fallen cosmos. Part one, the arrival of the kingdom. Now for centuries, the prophets were straining to glimpse through this veil of prophetic imagery that God was giving them, longing for the day when heaven would invade earth.

When the forces of God would storm the sin-stained beaches of this embattled world. Isaiah foretells of that, when the light breaks into this world of darkness, Isaiah 9 .2, where a son is gonna be given to bear the endless government and the peace upon his shoulders, Isaiah 9 .6 -7.

Prophet Malachi talks about the day of his coming and who can endure the arrival of it, Malachi 3 .1 -2. The Old Testament's looking forward to an invasion. At last, with the coming of this Christ, the invasion began.

The Lordship of Christ had come, the longships of God's kingdom were now sighted upon the horizon and the enemies of God began to tremble. Jesus marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, sounding the trumpet blast that the long-awaited invasion was now here.

He said, the kingdom of God is at hand, Mark 1 .15. That doesn't mean that the kingdom of God is a long way off. That doesn't mean that the kingdom of God is 2 ,000 years off. It means that the kingdom of God is eminently upon the shores of planet earth.

John the Baptist says something similar when his voice echoed in the wilderness, prepare the way for the kingdom of heaven, for it has come near, Matthew 3 .2. There were other places in the gospels where Jesus said that the kingdom is now among you.

So the kingdom Jesus was bringing, the invasion Jesus was bringing had come in his lifetime. That's not a temporary skirmish, but the beginning of an unstoppable, eternal occupation of this planet. As the angels decree, Christ's kingdom would know no end, unlike the fragile, fading dynasties of mere earthly kingdoms.

Let me put it to you this way. Rome is gone, Assyria gone, Babylon gone, all of these ancient empires gone, but the kingdom of Christ stands forever, Luke 1 .33. The shouts of the people ironically began to recognize that this kingdom had come when Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem and they said, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David, Mark 11 .10.

They recognized in this humble Galilean rabbi that the conquering David had returned and he had come to bring the war upon a rebel planet. Jesus was the D-Day that would put away all of the rebellion of old.

He was the point man of heaven's liberating army who had burst upon the world's beaches to resubjugate a planet who was in rebellion to him. His very presence revealed that the ancient prophecies had found their fulfillment.

The kingdom that Moses looked forward to and the prophets foretold about was no longer just a misty vision in the minds of prophets, but it was a tangible reality that had come before their very eyes, Luke 10 .9.

This was not a political coup achieved through human strength, but it was an unstoppable insurrection from heaven to earth, bringing the unstained, untainted reality of Jesus's kingdom to a world that was in rebellion, John 18 .36.

As Christ's feet hit the embattled shores of this world, every ritual, every tradition, every earthly pretension was exposed as a hollow symbol that must now submit before his power. He's the true temple that's gonna put away the old temple.

He's the sacrifice that's gonna end all sacrifices. He's the priest who's gonna end the line of priesthood. He's the feast of heaven's own deliverance who is going to feed us and nourish us forever. The old order was obsolete the moment Jesus put his feet upon our shores.

And that invading sovereign who had came to pitch his tent among us and raise his flag was willingly putting away every part of that old world. This spearheaded an advancing occupation not to timidity, to coexist along the capitals of sin, but to take them over, to displace them, to make his kingdom come on earth as it had in heaven.

What began as a small little rabble would grow into an ever increasing onslaught until the entire enemy territory was liberated and reclaimed for the dominion of Christ. Mark 4, 30 through 32. The mustard seed regiment would become an overwhelming surge.

It would unfurl its banner on every hill on earth. Satan's little blitzkrieg of deception that he brought was now gonna be met with the infinite reversing tie to the kingdom of God. And it would now relentlessly push its way, liberating every sphere of human existence until the entire global theater fell in humble worship before its God.

This invading kingdom was not going to cease until every enemy, foreign and domestic, were expelled and the earth was filled with the knowledge of Christ the King. Phase two, the battle between heaven and hell.

Christ's Victory Over Satan and His Demons

Now, as Jesus landed upon the shores of this fallen world, being born of a virgin, he was not greeted with cheerleaders and celebratory fanfare. In his earliest years, Satan tried to kill him through the mentally depraved puppet king named Herod.

And that was just the beginning of a long sequence of assassination attempts from Satan on Christ. His demonic forces recognized the dire threat that Jesus posed. They knew that Jesus had not come to affirm their stolen leadership.

No, no, he had come to dispel the spiritual squatters who had been living in God's world for far too long, ruining God's good earth for far too long, which means that Jesus's arrival on earth signaled their demise.

That is why Satan and the demons come out in a all out military campaign against Jesus all throughout the gospels. It's almost like demons are on every page of the gospel because they're making their last stand before they surrender the world back to the hands of Christ.

Matthew 28, 18 says, all authority in heaven and earth now belong to me because he won. At the end of his life, when he resurrected from the dead, the battle with the demons was over. But that battle began, like I said, with Herod trying to kill Jesus.

And it started directly in the wilderness when Jesus came into his ministry. And that's actually an interesting point if you think about it. It was from the wilderness where the serpent once slithered into the garden and brought deception to the line of men, to Adam.

Now in Jesus's life, Satan is slithering out to meet him in the wilderness where the serpent is going to face his creator. And he's going to tempt him after his baptism. And after 40 days of fasting and being in hunger, Jesus was in a profound state of vulnerability and the enemy struck him like the Lufafa who were flying over Poland.

Now, the enemy didn't have any new weapons to wage, so he used his old tricks. Did God really say? And he did that, tempting Christ. He hurled his fiery darts upon our Lord, hoping to corrupt him in the same way that he had corrupted our father, Adam.

And yet, as we know, Christ deflected every assault and he succeeded where Adam failed. And he triumphed over the enemy in the wilderness. With every repelled advance, the path was cleared for Jesus to launch an overwhelming counter offensive on the powers of hell, which unfolds before our eyes in the gospel.

He's not armed with swords, but he's armed with the word of God. That's his blade. The Lord engaged these hellish minions all throughout Judea and Galilee, like surgical drone strikes leveled against strategic targets of the enemy.

Christ precisely aimed his ministry at the forces of hell to liberate those who were held in captivity by the unclean spirits and he wins. In Capernaum Synagogue, for instance, a man possessed by a demon shrieked and cried at the sight of Jesus, and he sensed his own doom had arrived.

And then Jesus, with a single authoritative command, cast the evil spirit from him, silencing him powerless because he can't disobey because he has no authority over Christ. Later in the region of the Gerasenes, Jesus encountered a man who was indwelled by a horde of demons, so many that his name is called Legion.

And yet these foul entities have no power. They're pleading and begging with Jesus to be driven into a herd of pigs that eventually fall off the edge of a cliff and drown themselves in a Galilean lake.

Jesus is bringing the war to the devils. It says later in Galilee that all who were oppressed by the devil after they saw these things came to him to be liberated by him. Like Napalm torching an enemy infested forest, the Lord's commands were incinerating.

His word, his power, all that he was doing was incinerating the enemy stranglehold and he was bringing those who were in captivity into freedom. Even the disciples, the ones who were trained by Jesus to make war with the devil were exercising demons.

They were bringing God's deliverance to the captives. The disciples even rejoice and say, Jesus, look, the demons obey us.

Why?

Because Jesus gave his authority to them. The final conquest of the enemy was happening before their very eyes, but the final battle in that conquest was reserved for Jesus alone. He took his disciples on three years of mission and ministry, overcoming the powers of hell, but the final death blow to the serpent would be reserved for Jesus alone, where he would deal the final fatal blow to Satan and his operations by binding the strong man through his sacrificial death on the cross.

And when he rose in triumph over sin and over death's tyranny, he forever stripped the dark powers of their weapons, parading them around as spoils of war in the wake of his conquering kingdom. The aftermath of that heaven-sent D-Day left liberated multitudes all in Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth, casualties of his divine grace.

They died to their sin and now they're risen to life in Christ and they're encountering, because of his victory over the devils, a love that is much more potent than any of the chains of oppression that they have ever faced.

Jesus is raising the dead to life. He's bringing the ones who are in darkness into light. He is defeating the devils in every aspect of his ministry. In those days, Jesus launched more than a few pop shots, more than a few guerrilla skirmishes.

He launched a full-on invasion. He came to the capital of satanic oppression, where the enemy had centralized his power and threw down his strongholds and Jesus crushed them. That work began in Galilee.

It spread to Judah and hell's gates are still being overthrown today as the church takes the kingdom to new parts of the world and advances as the gates fall down. He won then, he's winning today. That's the kind of kingdom Jesus is building.

Judgment on Judah and the Destruction of Jerusalem

Part three, judgment poured out on the wicked. Now, while Jesus was engaged in warfare against the spiritual forces of darkness and the principalities and the powers and all of that, it also became increasingly clear in that first century that the Jewish people of that day were not allies of the kingdom of God.

At every single turn, they were opposing Jesus, which means that they were opposing God. And that sort of rebellion led the Savior to expose them publicly, declaring that they were not descendants of Abraham, but rather they were children of Satan who loved the darkness instead of the light, John 8, 44 and John 3, 19.

As the Lord himself marched through the dusty little towns of Palestine, entering city after city like Joshua conquering Canaan, he sounded the trumpet blast that the long prophesied kingdom of God had come.

The kingdom is at hand. Now, for those willing to repent and to turn to Jesus, that message was glorious. They were excited. They were joyful. They had finally met their long awaited king. But for those who remained stubbornly opposed to Christ and to his kingdom, they would be overwhelmed by the fury of his advance.

This was not, his kingdom was not merely a peaceful endeavor, but it was an outbreak of spiritual war. For centuries, Israel had been God's little strategic outpost on earth. They were the covenant people.

They were the one place on earth where the rule of Satan was supposed to be off limits. And we see in the Old Testament that they fail time and time again, allowing the serpent back in, allowing idolatry back in.

But due to their repeated disobedience, now the punishment had come. Now the punishment had come. By the New Testament era, the spiritual forces had become welcome in Judah, which is astonishing if you think about it.

Again, Judah was the place where the reign of God was supposed to be most central. That's where the temple was. That's where the priesthood was. That's where all of the sacrifices happened. And yet, because you see all of the demonic activity happening, you have to understand that the Jewish leadership had failed.

They had allowed demons to come into the nation. They had welcomed demonic powers. And they had unwittingly over centuries and centuries and centuries of covenant betrayal to God. They had welcomed the covenant curses to come back on top of their own heads.

In their blindness, the Jewish people obstructed and rejected their only hope of rescue. They had continually over the course of time worked to subvert Jesus's mission at every turn. And as his invasion advanced in Judah, Jesus encountered the fiercest resistance from his own people.

He came to his own, John says, and his own knew him not. The religious leaders were the ones who arose as hostile insurgents against him. They were a militia that was bought and paid for by hell. And instead of loving their Messiah, they opposed him.

They were like the Nazis of World War II seeking to exterminate God's purposes in the 20th century. These hardened Jewish sects of the first century became entrenched little pockets of opposition dedicated to destroying the very deliverer that they should have been embracing.

Despite witnessing Jesus's miraculous power and his supernatural wisdom, they stubbornly rejected his rightful authority to rule on the throne of David. They rejected him. That rejection metastasized into a cancerous plot to murder the Prince of Peace himself at the end of Jesus's life.

They arrogantly clinging to their own narrow ethnic prejudices because they believed that they were better than all the other peoples on earth. Their pride said that the Gentiles were scum, that the Samaritans were even worse, and that we are the chosen people of God and we hold the credentials and we hold the gospel and we don't share it with anyone.

That sort of ethnocentrism that plagued the first century church, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all the sectarians exposed their unfaithfulness and showed that they had a hard heart that was not after the things of God.

That comprehensive rejection of God and his purposes, his love, his mercy, and his grace, and his goal, which is littered all throughout the Old Testament, he is going to win the nations unto himself.

That hatred of the nations, that hatred of all things that were righteous, that hatred of even God when he came in the flesh is the reason why the covenant curses that Moses warned them about in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 would be poured out on their heads in the first century.

The temple that they love would be reduced to rubble, allowing the nations finally to come in and worship Christ. Do you remember in the temple when Jesus cleansed it and he cast the money changers out?

The reason he had to do that is because that was the court of the Gentiles and the Jews hated the Gentiles so much they would not let them in to worship. Jesus says my house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations.

So now that Jesus is going to destroy their temple, the nations can finally come to know God through the true temple, Jesus Christ. The priesthood was gonna be abrogated as a new eternal priesthood from the line of Melchizedek was gonna be installed in Christ.

The feasts were gonna become obsolete as Jesus is our true supper and the one who feeds us and he's our Sabbath rest. All of the trappings of that old covenant world were gonna be replaced by Jesus who refused to allow them to keep standing in competition with the new covenant kingdom he was bringing.

He refused to allow the temple to stand in competition with him. He refused to allow the priesthood to stand in competition with him. He refused to allow the festivals and the feast and the new moons and the Sabbaths and all of those things to stand in competition to what he was bringing.

He would not allow the types and shadows to compete with the reality and the ones who opposed him and the ones who white-knuckled their covenant forms to the bitter end would be put under his feet. This war and Jesus's battle plan became astonishingly clear as his ministry neared its final week.

We just talked about how Jesus went to war against the demons and that's all throughout his early years of ministry. But in the later years of his ministry, his war, his wrath, his battle turns decisively against Judah.

As he approached the city on the back of a humble beast and as the doomed city ironically called out to him, blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our father, David. Jesus came into a city that was supposed to be bearing him the fruit of God and yet that city offered him only leaves.

Matthew 21, eight. Confronted by the fruitless city, Jesus wasted no time then by going to the fruitless temple, the one that was supposed to be doing the works of God and they weren't. And he cleansed it because they were doing the deeds of evil and he actually healed people there because that was the purpose that the temple was built for all along and yet they weren't doing it.

So he went and he cleansed the temple one last time before it was gonna be destroyed 40 years later. And then what does he do? The following day in a very symbolic act, he destroys, he curses a barren fig tree.

Do you see the point? He had come into the fruitless city that offered him nothing but leaves. He had come into the fruitless temple that offered him nothing but leaves and now he deals with a tree that offers him no fruit, only leaves and he rips it out of the ground.

He calls it where he calls a curse upon it where it will be ripped out of the ground and thrown into the flames. That is exactly what Jesus is prophesying is going to happen to Jerusalem. Matthew 21, 18 through 22.

It was Jerusalem was gonna be chopped down by the Romans. It was gonna be set on fire and it was gonna undergo the curse of Yahweh in 40 years. And that's not all. Jesus goes immediately from that fig tree and he goes into the city.

He arrived in the city that morning and the Jewish leaders were ready they were threatening Jesus. They were encircled around him like a bunch of vultures threatened by his own authority and they came out to meet him in a sort of spiritual firefight demanding to know the source of his authority and power.

Now in response to their challenge of authority, the Lord lobbed a trio of three grenade like parables exposing their treachery and their fate and promising that the little kingdom that they had been made stewards over was gonna be taken away from them and given to a better king.

Kind of like in the Lord of the Rings when Denethor is clinging to his own life and he sets himself on fire to make way for Aragorn, the return of the true king. This is exactly what's happening in Judah at this time.

Now in the first parable that Jesus tells them, he likens them to a son who had disobeyed their father. He had promised obedience to his father but he failed to deliver, Matthew 21, 28 through 32. Jesus says they're gonna be punished for that.

And then next, Jesus depicts the Jewish leaders as wicked tenants that the father had entrusted with his own vineyard, Matthew 21, 33 through 46. And at the end of that parable, that they kill his own son.

They viciously attack the prophets and the messengers that the king is sending to them. They kill his own son and appalled by that story, the Pharisees that were standing in front of Jesus said, those wretches should come to a wretched end.

They unwittingly condemned themselves. And then when they said that, as soon as the words exited their lips, Jesus revealed that the story was about them. He was performing the Nathan role to David saying, you are the man.

Except for then he was saying, you are the ones. The tenants in that story were the Jews. The ones who had been sent the prophets, but killed them. The ones who had been sent the messengers of God, but killed them.

The ones who had sent the father's son. And the father said, surely they will respect my own son. And they killed him and threw his body outside of the vineyard, which is what they did to Jesus in AD or in his death.

Jesus explicitly tells them that they're going to do this. And he tells them that as a result of them doing this, the father is gonna take away the vineyard, which is the kingdom of God. And he was gonna give it to a nation that would produce its fruit, Matthew 21, 43.

So Jesus comes to the fruitless city. He goes to the fruitless temple. He curses the fruitless tree. And now he's saying to the fruitless people, I'm gonna take away your kingdom and I'm gonna give it to a people who will bear its fruit.

He's bringing them under a curse. Jesus also tells them that they're gonna be crushed and scattered like dust, Matthew 21, 44, which is a reality that has existed for the Jews now for 20 centuries and counting.

Now, in the final parable, the third in this series, a king is preparing a wedding feast for his son. His son's gonna get married and he's inviting the guest. And then yet the guests of his kingdom, the ones who should have been excited for this event, the ones who should have shown up with bells on are refusing to come, Matthew 22, one through 14.

Enraged by that insult, the king sent his troops to burn the defiant city, foreshadowing the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies as judgment for rejecting the wedding of God, the wedding of Christ and his bride.

Of all the people on earth, the Jews should have been most excited about this, that the temple was going to be put away. The priesthood was gonna be finished, that God was going to marry a bride and he was gonna bring his covenant people both Jew and Gentile into one nation, into one people.

They should have showed up for that. They should have showed up to that wedding. And because they said no, and because they refused, and because they hated the king for taking away their place and their status instead of realizing that he was giving them so much more in the reign of his son, the king sent his armies and set that city on fire 40 years after this parable was given.

Now, some, especially those who like to think that Jesus is an overly emotive man-girl might object to the severity that I'm talking about in these parables. They say that it's out of character for Christ or it's altogether unjust that Jesus doesn't do that sort of thing.

He's came to be an effeminate, emotive sort of, loves everyone, meek and mild. Jesus would never promise to pour out his wrath on people and burn a city to the ground and leave its ashes smoldering in the Judean desert.

Jesus would never say that. But you have to remember, Jesus came to bring a sword. Jesus came and overturned the money changers. Jesus actually braided a whip before he went and overturned the money changers and he whipped the people with a whip that he made.

That's boss. And we also need to remember, not just that. But that he's also the one who is repeating promises and oracles of doom that were given way before he came along. All Jesus is doing is repeating the prophecies of the prophets that were centuries before.

And in the face of the covenant God coming in the flesh to meet his people and when they respond to him in such anger and violence, well, you can see that their covenantal chickens are coming home to roost.

The nation is forfeiting its calling by continually breaking God's covenant despite his patience. And the irony of the whole thing is because, or is we see in Psalm 110. One of the most central aspects of Jesus's ministry is that he is going to put his enemies under his feet.

He is going to do that to the nation that rejected his rule on earth. And that first enemy that he put under his feet was the first century nation of Judah. The escalating conflict between Jesus and the unbelieving Jewish leaders, it reached its boiling point as he finished that third parable.

The religious elite there in the city were openly mocking him. They were challenging his authority. They were doing all sorts of things to try to undermine him and Jesus mercilessly embarrassed them. He embarrassed them with every answer.

And then he also embarrassed them with a viscerating, stinging set of condemnations in Matthew 23. In the blistering storm of his judgment, he assumed the mantle of Hebrew prophet and he evoked seven curses upon the impenitent Jewish nation, echoing the warnings that we see before from Moses in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.

I encourage you, please go read those because Jesus is saying that those things had come now on that generation. One by one, he pronounced woe after woe after woe upon the scribes, the Pharisees and the entire city that was gonna kill him.

They'd already killed the prophets and now they're going to kill him. And Jesus recited this horrific covenant malediction awaiting those who broke covenant with the living God by killing his one and only son.

And he says that things like abject poverty, famine, famine is so severe that women are gonna turn into cannibals eating their own children. That's what it says in Leviticus 26. That's what it says in Deuteronomy 28.

When Jesus calls down these covenant curses upon that city, that is what the city devolved into. When Rome came and surrounded the city, Josephus tells us, Josephus tells us that the women were eating their children because they were so hungry.

And he says that there were even worse things happening, which I can't even imagine what that means. The covenant maledictions that Jesus spoke came to appalling reality within a single generation of him saying it.

With finality in Matthew 23, the Lord proclaimed, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, your house is gonna be left to you desolate. Matthew 23, 37 through 38. He says that all of the wrath and the judgment that God had been storing up since the very first murder of Abel was now gonna be poured out on that generation.

Matthew 23, 35. He says in Matthew 24, not one stone is gonna be left upon another within 40 years. He's talking about the temple. And as the conflict with those unbelieving Jewish leaders reached its boiling point, reached its pinnacle, Jesus pulled no punches in detailing the cataclysmic judgment that was awaiting those who defied his reign.

He left the city in Matthew 24 and he provided terrifying blow by blow prophetic clarity to what was getting ready to happen to the city. A holy spiritual warfare had been unleashed and the very king that the Jews had scorned would meticulously execute his battle plans like a field commander briefing his troops.

In Matthew 24, we see Jesus talking to his disciples about what's getting ready to happen, what's gonna happen within a single generation. Matthew 24, 34. Do not be fooled by the dispensationals who say that all of these things are gonna happen sometime in the future.

They're not. Jesus goes into a fruitless city, a fruitless temple, curses a fruitless fig tree, curses a fruitless people, calls down seven covenantal woes upon them. And then in Matthew 24 says, now this is what's going to happen.

He's not talking about long into the future. He's talking about what happened then. He says not one stone of that rebellious, beautiful architectural glory called the temple was gonna be left upon another.

Matthew 24, two. He says that false prophets and deceivers claiming to speak for God were gonna rise up and proliferate in that first century. And Acts 5 .35 -37 confirms it. It was happening. Luke tells us that there were two false prophets that were mentioned there, Thutis and Judas.

You can look it for yourself. But false prophets were happening early in the church. Here's another one. This was an era of peace that was known as the Pax Romana. Maybe you've heard of it. Now this is an era that's really unique in human history.

Jesus told his disciples that this peace was going to break, that wars and rumors of wars were going to come in just before Jerusalem's downfall. Matthew 24, six. And you might be thinking, well, that's really not that special because there's been wars and rumors of wars in all history.