36. Thirteen Reasons Why The Great Tribulation Already Happened (End-Times Series Part 17)

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This episode 36, 13 reasons the great tribulation has already happened.

If failed end time predictions were a category in the winter Olympics, the competition for the biggest loser would be the most competitive event by a long shot from Simon Bar -Giora declaring the world's end as Rome invaded

Judea in AD 67 to Edgar Wisenot's 88 reasons why the rapture could be in 1988.

It seems that the Christian church has become an ever growing trash heap of failed eschatological predictions.

Now I might be inclined to call it a dumpster fire, but under the circumstances, that seems that may be giving it too much credit.

Some of the ones among us who always, you know, the positive types say things like, if at first you don't succeed, well then try, try again, those continue right along in the ministry of failed predictions, unabated, believing that the right combination of news articles, numerology and blood moons is bound to line up and it's just around the corner.

Yet amid the echo chamber of eschatological fanaticism, so few actually stop and examine the real reason why these predictions don't come true.

And it's quite simply because most of it has already happened. And what follows today,

I'm just, I'm going to be sharing 13 reasons from the text, from history, why the great tribulation has already occurred.

Now, I will not appeal to nanobots, the next appearance of Haley's comet pandemics or Klaus Schwab and his world economic forum in order to come up with my answers,

I'm going to cite scripture alone with a little bit of history mixed in, and I'm going to prove once and for all why every end time prediction about the coming tribulation is doomed to fail because it already occurred.

My hope in all of this is that Christianity would recover from the gangrenous rot of dispensational madness.

And then we would march onward in our mission to disciple the nations for Jesus. So to that end, let us begin.

The Olivet scene. Now, if you're just joining us, this article is a part of a larger series that gives a tremendous amount of context for these events.

If you'd like to catch up on any of those episodes or articles, you can go to the website, the shepherds .church,

or you can, you can check those out by going to Spotify and Apple and wherever your podcasts are delivered.

But if that seems like a little bit too much effort to satiate your current curiosity, I mean, you are here right now, then here's a three sentence summary of how we ended up here.

Jesus, this is sentence one. Jesus predicted in a variety of ways that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed because they rejected him.

That's Matthew chapter 22, all the way until Matthew chapter 24. That news of the temple's destruction so deeply unsettled the disciples that they wanted to give, they wanted

Jesus to give them more details on how all of this was going to play out. And then we see that in Matthew 24, three.

And then finally, here's the third sentence. In passages that are normally perverted by futurists, which

Matthew 24, almost in its entirety, Jesus answers their specific questions with some specific evidence showing them that all of these things was going to happen in their lifetime.

Matthew 24, 34 is a great example. And that's where we're going to begin. Reason number one, that the great tribulation has already happened is this generation and all these things.

When Jesus said in verse 34 of Matthew 24, truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, he is giving his disciples two very powerful criteria for understanding the

Olivet discourse. And if you're not familiar with that term, the Olivet discourse is Jesus' teaching on the

Mount of Olives in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. So when

Jesus says this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, he's giving them two criteria for understanding what he means.

First, he is limiting the scope of fulfillment to about 40 years, which is a biblical generation.

He is saying that these things will occur within a single 40 -year period.

Second, he's affirming that everything that he has said prior to verse 34 and the explanatory verses that follow verse 34 are going to happen in that same 40 -year time period.

That means that the rise of false messiahs, the wars and rumors of wars, the earthquakes, the famines, the persecutions, the tribulations, the increased lawlessness, the apostasy, the worldwide gospel proclamation, the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, the signs and the wonders, and the sun darkened, and the stars falling from the sky, and the heavens shaking, and the tribes of the land in mourning, and the son of man returning in the clouds, and the so -called rapture, all of that happens either prior to verse 34 in Matthew 24, or it's an explanatory note that occurs immediately after verse 34, but in either case, all these things means that all of them are going to occur in that generation.

When Jesus says, some of you will not taste death until you see these things happening, he meant it.

Again, when Jesus says all these things, he meant every single one of the things that I just shared with you was going to occur in the lifetime of his disciples, further, when our

God in the flesh with infinite maximal wisdom and unlimited knowledge limits the fulfillment of this prophecy to a single generation,

I think that he meant for us to believe him, to lay down our opinions and to simply submit to his wisdom.

And listen, while there's a phenomenal amount of evidence that supports the view that I've been putting forward, we do not need to understand really any of it in order to adopt a humble, submissive, and faithful posture to Jesus.

If he said everything was going to happen in a single generation, then that really ought to settle it for us. There should not be any further debate.

For us to go on insisting that these events inside the Olivet Discourse necessarily must occur in the future, just because we can't imagine a scenario where everything that he said is going to be fulfilled would be, is not only to challenge the infinite wisdom and intelligence and integrity of Jesus Christ, but it's to set ourself up as a teacher and as a standard that is over him.

Which, if you're asking my opinion on the matter, sounds like a very foolish and unsafe and unholy thing to do.

Let Jesus speak and then you be the one who believes it. That's what I say. So all these things happen in that generation, check one.

Reason two, Jerusalem surrounded. In Luke's account of the

Olivet Discourse, he says this, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near.

In an age of such rampant confusion, it's vital to actually remember how pronouns work.

When he said you, he was talking to them. That's the first thing. But in fact, I would even argue that there's another pronoun in here and really pronouns all throughout the

Olivet Discourse sufficiently prove that the great tribulation has already occurred. For instance, when

Jesus says you in this passage, he is not unclear on what he means. He's not flip -flopping his pronouns like a Disney star before a new album release.

He knows what these words mean, and he is using you, a second person plural pronoun to refer to the men standing right in front of him who were listening to him in the year 30

AD. You. This is critical. This is absolutely critical for us to understand because when we know that Jesus is applying the meaning of this passage directly to his apostles or in his disciples and not vicariously to us somehow, then any thought that a great tribulation must occur many thousands of years into the future, long after the death of his disciples becomes all the more untenable.

When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then they would know that it's desolation was near.

The case becomes even more certain when you notice that Jesus is telling those men to pay attention to the comings and goings of the city of Jerusalem.

And it happened. And it happened. The armies really did surround

Jerusalem. They really did come in and desolate the city. All of these things are exactly according to what

Jesus said. In summary of point number two, Jesus believes some of his disciples would live to see armies approaching

Jerusalem to destroy it. He believed that when this happened, it would signal the end for the city of Jerusalem and the end of the old covenant era and the beginning of a great tribulation that would be unparalleled in the history of the world that would birth the kingdom of God onto planet earth, like in labor.

He's already compared it to this, like the great tribulations of the womb, the great distress, the great pains that a woman goes through and the travail that she goes through in childbirth, the greatest moment of pain would be eclipsed by the greatest moment of pleasure.

The great tribulation in Jesus's mind and in his theology is that all these pains and sufferings were going to happen in 8072

Jerusalem and to the people who rejected him as their Messiah, but that would be the moment of his greatest victory where his kingdom now untethered from Judaism, now unencumbered by Jewish persecution would now go out and disciple the nations.

And since no other city on earth had the religious standing of Jerusalem possessing the very house of God, where the creator of time and space literally promised to live and dwell among his people, we know that the destruction of the city and the temple that Jesus is talking about would be unrivaled in the history of men and would have monumental implications.

Now, all these things occurred when Rome surrounded the city, reducing its buildings to rubble and burning the temple to the ground.

That's the second point. When Jerusalem was surrounded, it already happened, which means that we now have two lines of evidence showing that this event already happened.

Reason three, the fleeing Judeans. Jesus says in Matthew 24, 16, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, he says in Luke 21, 21, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave and those who are in the country must not enter the city.

So Jesus saying before the great tribulation occurs, Jesus is telling his disciples to be on the lookout.

When they, not us, see the Roman army surrounding Jerusalem, and when they see the temple being defiled, they, again, not us, must flee to the mountains for safety.

In our day, if Jesus were actually looking past his disciples and talking to us, this would make very little sense.

If a world leader, AKA Antichrist or Nicolai Carpathia or whatever you want to call it, if that guy brought armies that surrounded

Jerusalem with his armies to kill the Jews who were worshiping at a newly rebuilt temple, then it would make very little difference whatsoever if they fled to the city or if they fled to the mountains.

In our day, helicopters would mow them down, tanks would saw them in half, and mortar rounds would rain down on top of their heads, and drones would find them in every little foothill in Judea.

There would be no escape in the modern world if an eschatological super beast rose to power and then surrounded the city of Jerusalem.

He would wipe them out, especially given the reality of nuclear warfare.

Yet, this is the way that dispensational thinkers imagine Matthew 24, 16 is going to play out.

Now, for us, instead of comic book eschatology, I want us to think about what this passage is actually saying.

Jesus is telling his disciples to be on the lookout for a ancient first century

Roman invasion that began in 66 AD. At first, we know from history that the

Romans concentrated their power in Galilee and then Judea. They were conquering one town after another, which motivated the populations of those cities to run to the next town, because when their town got set on fire by the

Romans, they fleed to the next town and then to the next town. And eventually, as the

Romans systematically were wiping out one town after another, everybody eventually who was left and who was alive ended up in Jerusalem.

By the time the Romans arrived at Judah's largest city, the population of the

Jews had swollen to unsustainable proportions from taking in refugees and country folk who were seeking refuge in the city.

Now, at that time, that was not an uncommon practice. That's simply what you did.

When an army, especially a massive army like the Romans can muster, when they attacked your nation, then you went to the highest and most fortified citadel where the largest amount of resources could be amassed.

Usually this would be your largest city with your greatest fortification around it, like in walls and stuff.

And in the case of Judah, this would have been Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a city top fortress that armies could not conquer easily.

This is especially true when you consider that Jerusalem also boasted an underground water supply, which meant that it would have under normal circumstances been an ideal place to wait out an enemy siege, especially if they could muster a fairly large food supply, which normally they could.

Yet, because Jesus knew that this was not a normal event, he warned his disciples to abandon conventional wisdom and instead of fleeing to the city, to flee to the countryside.

Instead of going to Jerusalem, which would have been certain death, they would have been told to seek shelter elsewhere, which people would have laughed at them.

They would have thought that they were foolish and stupid. There's nowhere stronger than Jerusalem. And yet Jesus's words make perfect sense in the ancient context to which they were given, not in a modern world.

Now you asked the question, could it be that these things truly were only applicable to the ancient world and they have no bearing today?

Well, I think the ancient people who heard these prophecies took them very seriously.

And I think that there's good evidence to think that the application is not universal in its scope, but really was applied to them.

For instance, why do you think the first Christians sold their property in Jerusalem in Acts 434?

Remember, they sold their property, they brought the proceeds to the apostles, they laid it at the apostles' feet. Why did everyone sell their property and basically adopt a mobile lifestyle if they didn't believe that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and what was the point of owning property?

If everyone knew in the year 2028 that a meteor was going to hit your town and that it was going to affect basically a third of the country, then who among us would not sell our property and move to the other side of the nation?

We would all do that. Well, in the same way, Jesus told the earliest disciples that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.

Those who owned land in the city sold it, gave it to the apostles for the building up of the kingdom of God and the church because they knew that it was going to outlast

Jerusalem, and that's what they did. I think the reason that they did it was not just that they wanted to be a socialist commune led by some first century version of Bernie Sanders.

No, they wanted to obey what Jesus said, live light, live mobile, and get rid of property that was going to be destroyed anyway.

I think all of that makes sense with the context. This is also why the

Christians in history, there's not a single Christian that's recorded dying in the city of Jerusalem during the

Roman siege. Why is that? Is it because that the Christians were lucky? Is it because that the

Jews would let them into the city? No, it's because while we do not have record of Roman armies killing any

Christians, we do have record that the Christians left the city just as Jesus told them to.

They preached the gospel faithfully like Noah in a city that hated them, and they did that for 40 years, which is exactly what

Jesus told them to do, and that ended with all kinds of innumerable persecutions in the service of Christ to that wicked generation, but before the greatest of all sufferings occurred, before the

Roman armies came in and set everything on fire and killed and maimed all of the survivors, before that happened, we have record that the

Christians got out. They got out of the city just like Jesus said, and they did not suffer the fate of the

Jews. That alone is an excellent proof that the great tribulation that Jesus prophesied has already occurred.

The disciples believed him, and because they believed him, their lives were spared. Reason number four, rooftops and backpacking.

Matthew 24, 17 says, whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things that are in the house.

In the same breath that Jesus used to tell his followers to flee the city before the great tribulation, he also warned them with a very peculiar and very ancient example that does not apply very well in the modern world.

He told them not to go down from their rooftop patios in order to collect their belongings within the house.

Today, this would be almost meaningless since no one lounges, congregates, or spends any meaningful time on their rooftop.

You've never ridden down a city in any town that you live in in America and seen the vast majority of people hanging out on their roof.

You've never seen that because that is not a part of our customs in the modern world. In fact, in most of the world, pointed and pitched rooftops would be dangerous to climb on, much less to do life on.

Yet at that time, houses became insufferably hot during the day so that congregating on a flattened roof would actually have been the most comfortable until the home cooled off in the evening.

So they constructed their homes to have flat roofs as opposed to the way that we construct our homes now to have these steep, pitched, shingled roofs.

It's just not the same. This means that meals would have occurred on the top of the roof.

Parties, family gatherings, many other significant occasions in life would have all taken place on the rooftop of the house instead of inside of it, and they would have done life up there until the evening time when the house finally cooled off enough to where everybody could go down and congregate in the lower part of the home and then mostly do their sleeping.

You see, you would sleep inside the house, you would store supplies and possessions and spend your cooler moments, which were very rare, inside of the house, but that's about it.

The rest of life would have been done on the rooftop, which is not true today. But, you know, that was certainly true back then.

And if you add to the fact that a lot of the houses in Jerusalem were built into the structure of the wall so that the outer wall of your house was also the outer wall of the city of Jerusalem, then you can imagine that when an army surrounded the city that homeowners who were escaping the sweltering heat in the middle of the day would have had a perfect view of the advancing troops and they would have been able to warn the city folks that, hey, there's an army coming.

And in that, they would have probably been scared and they would have had every reason to want to go down in their house and to pack their bags and to get their rolling pin and everything else.

And Jesus is saying, don't waste your time packing your bags, flee immediately because if you don't, it's going to be too late.

That warning makes perfect sense in a world where the houses had flat roofs and they were built into the structure of the city of Jerusalem and it makes no sense whatsoever of the pitched roofs that are strewn about in suburbias all over the world and that's the way that we live today.

So yet again, another proof that Jesus is speaking to that culture in their situation and in their time.

And let's be honest, if Jesus wanted to speak in such a way that made sense to us, he could have befuddled his disciples by saying something that made more sense to our context and our culture if we were the recipient of this passage, but we're not.

He gave specific details that make sense in their culture and gosh, we should look at that and say, huh,

I'm assuming that he meant for it to apply to them because it does. So that's reason four.

Reason five, hey, farmer, don't go get your coat. Matthew 24, 18 says, whoever's in the field must not turn back to get his cloak.

This is the fifth reason that Jesus gives that we can know that this passage occurs in that time period.

And he's saying, farmers, don't go get your coats. Now, this is a similar warning to the one before Jesus tells the farmers not to go to his house, not to go inside and not to get his coat.

Why? Well, this made great sense in an agrarian society where the majority of the Judean landscape outside the city of Jerusalem was filled with farmers who all cared very deeply about their cloak.

At that time, a good coat actually said something about you. You remember Joseph and his coat of many colors.

We also have biblical examples of bloodthirsty men who are gambling to have an expensive and desirable coat after its owner was crucified.

You remember Jesus. At that time, a coat said something about you. It could actually be considered one of your most prized possessions.

Jesus even says to his disciples, if someone asks for your coat, give it to them. And that would have been such a revolutionary thing to say because at that point, it's like I'm giving them my greatest possession that I own.

Today, a coat is not normally one of the most prized possessions that you have in your arsenal of material objects.

Few people would actually run into a burning building in order to get their coat or their pullover or their cardigan.

But at that time, people thought about that particular clothing item a little bit differently than we do today. The same is true of farming.

When Jesus gave this warning, it would have applied to the majority of the population who were blue -collar workers extracting resources from the land and seed through tremendous labor and energy.

Judah at that time was dominated by farmers and shepherds and fishermen who were poor and who probably their greatest possession was a nice coat.

But that's not the case in modern -day Israel today. The geographical region that Jesus was referring to back then, once the home of blue -collar tradesmen and poor people who were just trying to eke by an existence with fishing and farming, well, today, that same geographical area is filled with sprawling metropolises that have been filled to the brim with high -tech industry.

Instead of farms that are filled with plants and crops, now the landscape is dominated by server farms, by cybersecurity operations and information and communication technology firms and various research and development enterprises, all which comprise the majority of modern -day

Israel's economy. Sadly, farming doesn't even contribute meaningfully at all to modern -day

Israel's life or their economy, making this warning that Jesus is giving totally irrelevant to the modern -day

Israelite. This plain and simple fact is that this way of speaking that Jesus is doing is a specific warning to people who are living in the first century on how to avoid a great tribulation that was going to happen to them.

Forcing this into a modern world is just simply to accept the ridiculous. These things don't make sense in our world, but they make perfect sense in the world that Jesus' disciples were living.

That's point number five. Point number six, winter pregnancy and zealous Sabbatarians.

Jesus says in Matthew 24, 19 through 20, but woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, but pray that your flight will not be in winter or on the

Sabbath, Matthew 24, 19 through 20. If you were planning to flee your ancestral homeland, when

Vespasian, the Roman general brought his Roman legions right to your very doorstep, then you would have appreciated

Jesus' warning here. Beyond not going home to get your cloak or coming down from your roof to get your rolling pin, it would have been a good idea to know what other travel hindrances might afflict you.

For instance, if, if speed was of the utmost importance and it was a critical component of your flight and staying alive, then being pregnant would certainly slow you down when a

Roman armies are surrounding the city. So Jesus is just saying, man, it's going to be really hard for you.

If you're pregnant in those days, if you're nursing, stopping to nurse an infant while you're frantically running for your life would not only be inconvenient, but any crying baby would risk revealing your position to the

Roman armies. Think about it like this. Winter travel would have made your flight miserable. Judea is, is muddy and, and wet and even cold in that time.

So you'd have been exposed to the elements and with all of the hard line zealots who were running the city of Jerusalem at that time, trying to do anything on the

Sabbath would have probably gotten you killed. All of this applies brilliantly to a group of ancient refugees who were leaving

Jerusalem in 70 AD. But it doesn't apply very well to a world where temperature controlled automobiles, heated runways, and hospitals are on every corner so that you can go and have a baby.

And there's scant few hardliners who are paying attention to your comings and goings on the

Sabbath. These words in today's context, lose their meaning. But you know, if the disbees are right in the future,

Antichrist wages all that war on Israel. Then still, even if that happens, being pregnant, nursing, and traveling in the winter or on the

Sabbath, it's just not going to impede you in the slightest. This is yet another proof how these words find their perfect fulfillment in that generation, in that time period, and in that social context.

And that really gives us at least now six indications that the great tribulation was a first century event that Jesus was warning them about for them.

So that's reason six. Reason seven, these be days of vengeance. Luke 21, 22 says, because these are days of vengeance so that all things which are written will be fulfilled.

Again, Luke 21, 22. Now to break this one down, I want to go back to my lackluster elementary school career, where at some point,

I cannot remember even which grade it was in, I was introduced to the concepts of near and far demonstrative pronouns.

Now this sounds like a complicated thing, but it's actually a fairly easy thing. A near demonstrative pronoun describes things that are close in relationship to you, whereas a far demonstrative pronoun identifies things that are far away from you.

So for example, if I had an apple in front of me, I could say,

I will eat this apple because it's right in front of me. But if I look up at the TV and there's an apple on the

TV and I say, I want to eat that one, well, then that's far away from me.

I would have to travel through airwaves and space and time in order to get to the place where that apple was filmed and hope that it's not rotten by the time that I get there.

That silly example is kind of proving my point. We use words like this and these and that and those to describe things that are either near in relation to us or things that are far in relation to us.

Knowing this, Jesus says that these days, which is a near demonstrative pronoun, are the ones where God's vengeance would be poured out.

He's not speaking in far demonstrative terms about distant years that are way off into the future, like if he was, he could have said that year or those years.

He's talking about this year or these years, which are immediately in the purview of his disciples.

By using the word these, it seems clear that Jesus is limiting the fulfillment of this prophecy to a timeframe that's very near to the disciples' experience.

If multiple thousands of years were in the future in Jesus's mind, then his sentence would not have said in these years, it would have said in those years.

And again, by pushing this out to 2 ,000 years, we're making this grammatically meaningless.

In addition to just basic elementary grammar, Jesus cites the fulfillment of Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 63,

Daniel 9, and Hosea 9 as reasons that the Great Tribulation would occur in that very generation.

He alludes to these passages in what he says to his disciples. Case in point, I want you to notice how

Hosea speaks about the punishment that's coming and why God is going to bring it.

These things are things Jesus is alluding to in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. This is what Hosea says.

Verse 7, the days of punishment have come. That's exactly what Jesus said, the days of vengeance, the days of retribution have come.

Let Israel know this. That's what Jesus is doing. He's letting Israel know. Then it says the prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented because of the grossness of your iniquity and because of the hostility, your hostility is so great.

Now go down to verse 17. My God, this is in the voice of the true prophet, and I think it's in the voice of Jesus even,

Hosea's prophetic voice is sort of capsulating what Jesus is going to say, my

God will cast them away. That's the Jews because they have not listened to him.

They've not listened to Messiah and they will be wanderers among the nations.

Hosea 9, 7 and 19. Now that verse perfectly has been fulfilled in the first century.

The Jews did not listen to Jesus. And because of that, God made them wonder all over the face of the earth.

And that's been the case for the last 2000 years. I don't want to keep beating the same drum and I certainly don't want to beat the horse until it turns into a puddle, but like this has already happened and we see it all over the place.

That's seven examples so far. We've got six more. Reason number eight, land distress and people wrath.

Luke 21, 23 says, for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people.

After our lesson, just as a moment ago on near demonstrative pronouns, you're probably well qualified to see the point

Jesus is making. Great distress is going to fall upon the land.

The land is a common reference to the geographical territory of Israel, but he says that great wrath is going to fall upon this people.

He's not saying those people over there and he's not saying that people in the future, wrath is going to fall on that people.

He's saying it's going to fall on this people, the people who are alive right now and who are rejecting the

Messiah. Just like Hosea 9, 7 said, this is the generation that great distress and great tribulation will inevitably fall upon and that generation was in the generation of AD 30 to AD 70, that 40 year period that Jesus perfectly predicted.

That's reason eight. Reason nine, an unprecedented event.

Matthew 24, 21 says, for then there will be a great tribulation such as not has occurred since the beginning of the world until now or nor ever will.

Now, I just want to make clear here from Matthew 24, 20 to Matthew 24, 21, there is no hint, there is nothing in the text that gives us any exegetical warrant to say that Matthew 24, 1 through 20 was talking to the disciples and then all of a sudden

Jesus switches to be able to talk about us 2 ,000 years later. There's nothing in the text that says that.

Jesus says four, which connects it back to verse 20 and beyond for then after these things, then there will be a great tribulation, not 2 ,000 years later, but like immediately after that.

That's the first thing I would say. So I would say, apparently, Jesus believed that immediately after the

Roman army showed up and surrounded the city, that a great tribulation was going to occur and that was going to bring about such intense and complete ruin that it could be said that it's never happened before nor will it ever happen again.

He says, then, meaning after the army show up, a great tribulation with manifold calamities is going to befall the people and it happened just like that.

We know that from the history. After Rome showed up, set up camp, began chopping down trees in the

Mount of Olives to build their catapults and siege ramps, the Jews inside the city were driven to a kind of insanity that fueled needless turf wars, factional infighting, food poisoning, and everything else that left thousands of Jews butchered, innocent, robbed, and pillaged, that left the temple defiled, the food supply compromised.

And all of this brought about such intense pain, starvation, and misery that mothers resulted to roasting their own babies in the fire and dignified, wealthy, well -to -do men were eagerly feasting on animal excrement that they found in the city's sewer system,

Jewish Wars 5, 13, 7, and 6, 3, 4. Josephus, our eyewitness historian to these events, barely had words to describe the horror and the atrocity and calamity and misery that was brought upon the

Jews. He tells us this in the preface of his history. He says, but if anyone makes an unjust accusation against us, meaning against him, when we speak so passionately about the tyrants, he's talking about the zealots that took over the city and ruined everything, or the robbers, or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my affections.

For it appears to me that the misfortunes of all men from the beginning of the world, if they were to be compared to these of the

Jews, are not even considerable as they were, Jewish Wars preface, paragraph four.

Listen, while Josephus was not a believer, and there's no evidence that he ever heard or read the prophecy that Jesus gave in Matthew 24, 21, he is saying the exact same thing that Jesus said.

He is corroborating the testimony that these tremendous devastations that befell the

Jews were unlike anything that any people had ever experienced ever before. Josephus is saying from the beginning of the world until now, there has never been a people who have suffered so greatly as these.

That is an astounding statement from a non -Christian Jew. And it makes all the more sense when you consider the fact that there's no nation on earth that was the covenant people of God.

There's no nation on earth where Yahweh promised to make his presence dwell. There's no place on earth that had a temple where God actually lived inside of it.

So for that nation to fall and for that nation to experience utter calamity and ruin is unlike any downfall that has ever happened in the history of the world.

Jesus is not saying that the Romans were more violent to the

Jews than any other nation was violent to another people. Although the punishments that we read in the

Jewish wars by Josephus are grotesque and they are despicable and they are atrocious.

In the history of the world, I personally have never read of anything quite so bloody and so disgusting as the war that the

Romans brought upon the Jews. And to be honest, the Jews brought a lot of this upon themselves and did a lot of this to themselves, but not even withstanding that,

Jesus is not saying that the violence was going to be the worst part of it. He is saying that the worst part of this, the history changing, this has never happened in world history before kind of stuff, that was because the covenant people of God turned their back on God and God removed his presence.

He removed his temple. He removed his favor and he cut them out of the covenant. That is why this event is unrepeatable and unprecedented in the history of man.

That's the ninth reason. Number 10, moving right along. We've got a couple more. The days will be cut short.

Mark 13, 20 says, unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days.

From the beginning of the Roman invasion into Galilee and Judea, where the Roman armies first showed up, which occurred in AD 66, to the very final stand of the zealots at Masada, which is in Southern Israel, where the

Jews after the destruction of the temple fled for one final stand, that happened in AD 73.

So seven years were appointed basically by God for the total destruction of Judah.

Romans came into the country in AD 66 and they put down the final stand in AD 73.

So that's seven years. Isn't it ironic for all my dispensational friends, seven years.

Another ironic bit is that three and a half of those years were appointed to the siege of Jerusalem.

Which was by far where the most awful and horrifying atrocities actually occurred. So Jesus is telling his disciples that as bad as those three and a half years were going to be, they were still shortened as an act of God's grace in case any elect

Christian remained in the city. And again, while we have no record that any

Christian decided to stay and wait out the siege of Rome, and we have no record that any

Christian made it to the very end of the siege without losing their life, we just don't have record of that. We do know that the

Romans eventually at the end, they grew tired of killing people. And they did take several survivors back to Rome.

And we know that because Josephus tells us, this is what he says. And now since Titus' soldiers were already quite tired of killing men, and yet there appeared to be a vast multitude that were still remaining alive,

Caesar gave orders that they should kill none, but those that were in arms and that opposed them, but they should take the rest of them alive.

But together with those whom had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm. But for those that were in their flourishing age, and it might be useful to them, they drove them together into the temple, but of the young men he chose out of the tallest and most beautiful and reserved them for the triumph.

That's the parade that was going to happen in Rome because they had this great victory and for the rest, meaning the ugly ones, the fat ones and the short ones, the rest of the multitude that were above 17 years of old, he put them into bonds and he sent them to the

Egyptian mines for perpetual slavery. Titus also sent a great number into the provinces as a present to them that they might be destroyed upon their theaters.

That means fed to the lions in the Coliseum or by the sword and by the wild beast.

But those that were under 17 years of age who are the most beautiful and the most impressive, they were sold for slaves.

Wars six, nine, paragraph two. This was not only dramatic fulfillment of Hosein nine, six and 17, where they would be scattered to the nations, but it demonstrates that God did shorten the days of calamity upon the

Jews. There were some survivors. There were those who endured to the end who were spared, albeit they were cast into a lifelong perpetual slavery reserved for a fight with a hungry lion in the

Coliseum, or they were paraded around downtown Rome as a picture of Roman dominance. Either way, those who endured the to the end were saved.

Jesus warned them to flee the city that was doomed upon destruction for a reason, and the

Christians did that. Number 11, false messiahs and false signs.

Now, we've already covered a tremendous amount of data, and this is some of the strangest, but I think some of the most incredible information that I can share with you on why these things happened in that time period.

We've already covered in a, in a previous episode, the mark on and the rise and the proliferation of false messianic figures that were dominating

Judea in the years before 80, 70, they were popping up all over the place and people were following them to their death.

Jesus weren't against that, but during the buildup to the Roman war, these charismatic rebels were also overseeing and they were seeing false signs occur that we haven't been able to cover yet.

We haven't been able to look at the false signs that were occurring in the final months of the great Jewish tribulation, and I think for a moment we need to at least explore the seven different signs that Josephus himself records occurred in the city, because if we look at these and we see that even though there's, they seem very fantastic and we, we would almost even want to question

Josephus his credibility as historian, after we read them, some kind of strange things were going on in the city and Jesus said some kind of strange things were going to happen and it did.

So let's look at the seven signs now that Josephus gives, and we're going to see all of that overarching witness as a testimony that these things have already occurred,

Jesus predicted it and they did happen. So the first sign that Josephus record is a sword that appears in the sky.

Josephus says, thus were the miserable people persuaded by these false messiahs, the deceivers and such as bellied

God himself while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident.

Josephus is saying that there were signs in the city that they were not paying attention to, and they were being led by false messiahs.

This is exactly what Jesus said would happen. Josephus continues while they did not give, attend to, nor give credit to the signs that were so evident and did so plainly foretell of their future destruction, but like men infatuated without either eyes to see or minds to consider, they did not regard the denunciations that God made to them.

Thus Josephus is now saying there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city and a comment that continued for an entire year.

Josephus is saying that there were lots of signs that they did not listen to. These were clear that God was marking them out for judgment, but they weren't paying attention.

And the first sign that he says happened was a sword that hung over the sky and a comment that continued for an entire year.

In those days, things that happened in the sky were seen as powerful omen of national triumph or of coming destruction.

We are told by one Roman historian that the emperor Nero, who was a beast of a man, killed himself on the night of Haley's comment because he believed that it was a sign of his imminent downfall.

In the same way as that, Josephus tells us that terrifying signs were flashing in the sky over Jerusalem.

They were signaling to any person of discerning that Judah was doomed. And while it's hard to imagine a sword -shaped visage hanging over the sky in Jerusalem in the months leading up to the war or a comment that was just hanging out over the city for an entire year, this

Jewish historian was an eyewitness to these things did occur, and he's also telling us that other people saw it and also believed the same things.

So that's a sign that Josephus said was a unique and strange sign that signaled their destruction.

That's sign number one. The second sign that Josephus records that occurred during this period of heightened false messiahs was that a bright light occurred in the middle of a festival.

Josephus says, thus, also before the Jews' rebellion, that means before the war actually began, before the commotions which eventually precipitated the war occurring, when the people were gathered in the city for the

Feast of Unleavened Bread on the eighth day of the month of Nisan, and at the ninth hour of the night,

Josephus tells us this, so a great light shone round about the altar and the holy house that appeared to be so bright that it appeared to be daytime, and it lasted for about a half an hour.

This light seemed to be a good thing to the unskillful, or in his, what he's trying to say there is the unintelligent, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it.

What he's saying is that those who were wise and who understood what was going on in the world saw that these things were a bad, wicked, and evil thing, that they were a sign of Jerusalem's not success, but of their destruction.

He's saying that all the events that followed, meaning the destruction of Jerusalem, can be summed up by that sign.

It haunted the skies in Jerusalem in the months leading up to its downfall. Apparently, at a time of night when it should have been very dark, a strange and unnatural light came out of nowhere and shone upon the temple with noonday intensity, almost like a spotlight being shined right down upon the temple.

And again, while many in the city mistook this as a positive thing from God, that the Jews were going to be victorious and overthrowing

Rome and all the positive prophets spinning their fables and all that way, Josephus reminds us that the spotlight that was shone down on them was a spotlight of judgment, like a spotlight that's shining down from a helicopter on a prison escapee.

That light was not good news to the people who had become God's enemies. They could not run.

They could not hide. The light was on them and they were marked out for judgment. That's what Josephus is saying.

That's the second sign. The third one is that the heifer, there was a heifer that actually birthed a lamb.

Josephus says, at the same festival of unleavened bread, a heifer, as she was being led to the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple, and he's alluding to sort of euphemistically that this heifer gave birth to a lamb.

Now, while Josephus doesn't elaborate on this in his Jewish wars, this is book five, paragraph, or chapter five, paragraph three, while the historian does not pause to give us any commentary or opinion on this account, and it's fantastic nature, no doubt, he is reporting to us that a female cow gave birth to an actual lamb as it was being led to the slaughter, and that many people actually saw this happen.

This strange sign and mysterious events like these were brought to the people of Israel, and instead of viewing them with terror, they actually seem to be interpreting them as signs of God's favor, like lambs being led dumbly to the slaughter, that's what was happening.

The fourth sign Josephus tells us about is the day that God opened up their gate.

Josephus says, the eastern gate of the inner court of the temple, which was of brass, it was vastly heavy, and it had only been shut with great difficulty by 20 men, that's how heavy it was.

It was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now, those that kept watching the temple came running to the captain of the temple, and they told him of it, and they all came hither and thither, and not without great difficulty did they actually get the gate shut again.

So by some mysterious providence, this gate that it took 20 people in order to shut was somehow opened up to the temple, which sort of left the whole city vulnerable.

If the Romans would have showed up at that point and saw that the gate was open, then they would have came right in and destroyed everyone immediately.

The people were really up in arms about this, and then Josephus continues. He said, this also, this sign appeared to the vulgar people to be a very happy prodigy or a very happy sign that God did open up a gate of happiness to them.

But the men of learning and of understanding in the city understood that the security of the holy house was dissolved of its own accord and that the gate was open for the advantage of their enemies.

So these publicly, these signs Josephus is telling us, publicly testified that their foreshadowing or that their desolation was coming upon them.

That's, again, book five, chapter five, paragraph three of the Jewish Wars by Josephus.

Josephus and the men of learning in the city understood these signs were signs of doom.

They were clear pieces of evidence that God had turned against them and was leaving them vulnerable to their enemies.

And again, while this seemed clear to the powerful or to the discerning, the powerful faction of messianic firebrands who were in control of the city at that time, and who were leading the people to believe their false prophecies and their false hopium, they were the ones who were leading the people astray and who were leading the people to their doom.

Jesus warned his followers not to listen to them and many did not heed his counsel.

It's Matthew 24, 23 through 24. Sign number five, chariots running across the sky.

Now, after the first four signs, things become even stranger in the final three signs in the writings of Josephus.

This is what he says. Besides these, a few days after the feast on the 20th day of the month, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared.

I suppose the account of it would seem like a fable were it not related by those that saw it and were not the events that followed of it of so considerable in nature as to deserve such signals before the sun setting, there were chariots and troops of soldiers and their armor seen running about among the clouds in the surrounding of the city.

Now, while we dare not speculate what Josephus is actually seeing here and what his contemporaries also were eyewitnesses of, it's clear that they saw something in the sky.

In fact, Josephus felt encouraged to write about it only because a sizable group of people had actually seen the same phenomenon parading in the sky, soldiers marching, riding to war in the sky, in the clouds.

He saw this, and the people who were with him saw this, eliminating the possibility that this is some kind of shared schizophrenic delusion.

Again, those who were discerning in the city of Jerusalem realized that they were totally surrounded.

The city was going to be encamped not only by three legions of Romans who were surrounding it on all sides, but from a different plane of existence, from above them, the heavens were being weaponized against them.

Not only were the Romans going to invade them on earth, but the heavens seemed like they were being staged to invade them spiritually from heaven.

Sign number six, let us remove hints. Josephus tells us, moreover, at the feast, which we call

Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner court of the temple, as their custom was to perform their sacred ministrations, where they said that in the first place, they felt a quaking, and they heard a great noise shaking the temple underneath their feet, and after that, they heard the sound as of a great multitude saying, let us remove hints.

Earthquakes at that time were generally considered divine punishment upon a particular people, so we can demonstrate that, and we have actually in the episode called

Earthquakes and Famine, so you can check that out, but a different sign was also accompanied with it.

The priests who were going into the temple not only had the earth shaking under their feet, but they heard the sound of a multitude of heavenly beings shouting, let us remove hints.

Let us remove hints, which the priests took that as a symbol that they were going to be removed, that they were going to be removed from their office, the temple era was going to be removed from the city of Jerusalem, and the decimation of their holiest building was inevitable.

You see, the writing on the wall was just about fully dried at this point. The signs of their demise had been stacked one upon another.

They had all occurred right before their very eyes, and yet, ignorantly, they persisted to the bitter end.

It was not long after this sign occurred that the zealots came in and killed the high priest and then killed most of the priest in the temple courtyard and defiled the temple of the holy

God, so the prophecy of these angelic beings saying, let us remove thence, actually did occur within days and even weeks of when it was given.

Sign number seven, the last one, woe, woe to Jerusalem. The final sign that Josephus records in his account appears to be the most important one to him.

He not only describes it as being the most terrible and perhaps even the strangest of them all, but he even spends the most time in the most words describing it.

You see, unlike the sign in the sky or the chariots or the cow that was giving birth to the lamb, this one seems a little bit more plain, but it seems to hit a little bit more closely to home.

This is a long form quote of what Jesus says. It is a long quote, but I do want to read it to you because I think it's important.

This is what he says, but what is still more terrible than all of these? There was one named

Jesus. Now, this is not the Jesus that we know as savior and Lord over all creation.

This is a common name at that time. This man's name was Jesus, and this is what Josephus says.

There was one named Jesus, the son of the high priest at the time, Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman who for four years before the war began and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, he came to that feast, whereupon it is the custom for everyone to make tabernacles to God in the temple, and began on a very sudden to cry out loud a voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds of the earth, a voice against Jerusalem, and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people.

Josephus tells us that was his cry, and he went about saying it day by day and night by night in all the lanes of the city.

However, certain among the most eminent in the city had great anger over this dire crying of his, and they took this man and they gave him a great number of beatings and severe stripes, yet he did not say anything at all for himself.

He did not speak up or say anything peculiar to those that were chastening him, but he simply went on with the same words which he cried before, condemning the city over and over and over again.

At this point, the rulers of the city, supposing that this was some sort of divine fury that was in the man, brought him to the

Roman procurator where he was whipped until his bones were exposed, yet he did not make any supplication for himself, he didn't shed a single tear, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip, his answer was, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

And when Albinus, who was at the procurator at the time, asked him who he was and whence he came and why he uttered such words as these, he made no reply to what he said, but he still did not leave off his melancholy ditty till Albinus took him to be a madman and dismissed him.

So let's stop for a second. While he was being beaten, all he would say is, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

Why are you saying this? Woe, woe to Jerusalem. Why are you doing this?

Woe, woe to Jerusalem. That's all he would ever respond with. Now, let's see what

Josephus says, how it continued. Now, during all this time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so, but he every single day uttered these lamentable words as if it were his premeditated vow.

Woe, woe to Jerusalem was all he would say, nor did he give any words to any of those who were beating him every single day, nor of the good works that some would come and give him food because they felt pity upon him.

He didn't say anything to anybody. He didn't reply to anyone. All he ever said was, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals. He continued this ditty for seven years and five months without growing hoarse, without growing tired or weary until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in the siege.

What Josephus is saying, he cried these things until the Romans came. And when the

Romans came, around that period of time is when his crying ceased.

And the reason that it ceased was this. As he was going round about the wall, he was crying out with his utmost force, the loudest he had cried to this point, woe, woe to the city again and to the people and to the holy house.

And the last words that he uttered, according to Josephus, was he broke the chanting repetition that he had been on.

And then the final words that he said is, and woe be unto myself. And at that moment, when he said, and woe be also unto myself, one of the catapults shot a rock, a massive stone that landed on top of him and killed him immediately as he was uttering these words.

And then he gave up his ghost. Josephus book five, chapter five, paragraph three. I want you to imagine the haunting howl of this man, pronouncing the woe upon the city for seven years and the people not listening, and then imagine watching the leaders beating this man as if he were crazy, a scoundrel or a liar.

And yet in the end, his proclamations upon the city were confirmed as true. Woe did come upon that city.

Signs were given about them as they were going to be beaten to a pulp by the

Romans and he was calling them to repent and turn from their wicked ways. But in their blindness and in the blindness of the false messianic figures who were leading him, leading them, they did not turn.

It's astounding to even consider. Seven years, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

And then in the end, woe did come. You know, for me, seeing that all that Josephus has written, all the astounding signs of warning, all the denunciations of the false prophets and the zealots.

I can hardly imagine how the end times experts can avoid the magnitude of evidence that's being given.

The event that Jesus called the great tribulation, Matthew 24, 21, which was filled with false

Christ, false signs, false wonders has demonstrably already occurred, and we see that in the downfall of Jerusalem with these seven signs, how the people ignored them and how eventually woe came upon them.

This passage of scripture where Jesus is promising false signs and wonders, that's not a future event.

It's not a future period filled with awful suffering that's poured out upon the Jews in modern day

Israel. It is a period that has already occurred where wrath was poured out upon the

Jews in AD 70 for killing their Messiah and abandoning their covenant that they had with their

God, and for all those reasons, the curses of Deuteronomy 28 were brought down upon them.

Now, the final thing I'm going to say about this section of the signs and wonders is, isn't it ironic that there was a man named

Jesus who warned them that these things were going to happen in Matthew 24 in the year AD 30, and then right after that, they took him in front of the procurator and they whipped him until his bones were laid bare, and then they crucified him.

Isn't it fascinating that just before the city fell, another man named

Jesus was howling in the streets, telling them that judgment was soon going to come upon them, and then they beat him and they whipped him and they took him, just like they took

Jesus to Pilate, they took this Jesus to Albinus, they laid his bones bare, and not long after that, he was crushed.

It's a fascinating thing indeed that God and his sovereignty gave them two Jesuses, one obviously being his one and only son, one being a raving man in the streets, but both of them going through very similar things, and yet the people could not see the writing on the wall and they would not repent.

That is the 11th reason that Jesus gave that this event has already happened.

It's the false Christ and the false signs and the false wonders that caused the people not to repent, but to come under the fury of God's wrath.

That's 11. Number 12. Number 12 is, I told you so, and I'm not talking about me.

I'm talking about Jesus. Mark 13 23 says, but take heed. Behold, I have told you everything in advance.

Now, I believe this needs very little explanation because after giving them explicit details on the great tribulation that was coming in their lifetime,

Jesus reassures them not to worry because he told them that these things were going to happen in advance.

He gives them this reassurance that if you would just listen to me and pay attention to what

I'm saying, you will be spared from these things because I'm telling you about them before they happen. This reassurance would not mean much to his disciples at all if Jesus had an event in his mind that was still 2000 years into the future.

That would be like warning me of a worldwide financial collapse that was going to happen in the year 4250 and then encouraging me afterwards to, you know, don't spend your life worrying about it because I told you it was going to happen.

Well, you know, I appreciate that, but I'm not going to spend my life worrying about a financial collapse that's going to happen in the year 4250 because it's entirely and utterly irrelevant to my life.

If you told me there was a financial collapse happening in my lifetime and that I needed to prepare for it, then

I would be very grateful that you shared that with me and I would spend my life preparing for that event and I wouldn't worry about that event.

But to tell me about something that's happening 2000 years in the future would be meaningless to me. I wouldn't even lose a minute's worth of sleep over something like that.

So if we look at what Jesus is actually saying, that I have told you in advance that things that are going to happen to you, it makes much more sense when we realize that he's warning them about things that are going to happen to them.

That is the 12th proof that these things, that the great tribulation has already occurred in the past.

Number 13, the coming like lightning. Jesus says in Matthew 24, 27, just as lightning comes from the

East and also flashes even to the West, so will the coming of the son of man be. Again, Matthew 24, 27.

The point Jesus is making is entirely unavoidable here. He's coming, his coming is going to happen quickly.

It's not going to take several millennia in order to materialize. He's going to be coming quickly like the flash of lightning.

And for those who are uncomfortable with this language, when I'm saying that Jesus was coming in the first century, that his second coming has already happened, if you're uncomfortable with that language, then

I would ask you to evaluate what you believe the coming of the Lord actually means.

If coming, quote unquote, can only mean his end time physical bodily coming at the end of days when he calls all the living and the dead in Christ and rise and meet him in the air and those who are not in him to be brought to the throne for eternal judgment, if that's the only thing that coming can mean, then it would make sense why what

I'm saying doesn't make any sense to you. But if coming can be used in a different way and mean something a little bit different than just that single meaning that we've discussed, then

I think that this passage can actually make good sense without us having to do theological pretzeling to get there.

For instance, I'm not going to be able to go into this very much today, but I will go into this actually

I think next week, but in the Old Testament, when God describes himself as coming, there are times when he's coming in judgment.

He's not coming bodily and physically and incarnationally. He's coming in judgment against the people.

He's coming on the clouds. He's coming with the sun, the moon, and the skies darkened.

We will see that next week where these sorts of divine judgment comings of God happen in the

Old Testament, and Jesus is promising that he's going to come against Jerusalem in that way. He's not going to leave heaven.

He's not going to leave the right hand of God. He's not going to stand up from his throne and leave his place in heaven and come down and wage war on earth against Jerusalem.

What he is going to do though is he's going to use the Romans, just like God used the

Babylonians, to come in as his weapon of choice and annihilate his people and burn his temple to the ground and carry them off into the nations.

We already have that happening in the Old Testament. God appoints Nebuchadnezzar and his

Babylonians to come in, destroy the city, burn the temple to the ground, and take the people away in chains back to Babylon.

Should it surprise us that Jesus appoints the exact same destruction to happen in the

New Testament, except this time with the Romans, and except this time it wasn't Babylon, it was going back to Italy and back to Rome in chains, in bondage.

The same thing occurs here. This kind of coming that Jesus is talking about is a coming that is going to happen quickly.

It's going to happen in the first century. It's going to happen in their lifetime. It's not going to be some protracted multi -thousand -year waiting period, as if Jesus were describing some sort of DMV on steroids, like, no, this is going to be quick, you're going to get to the front of the line, and this is going to happen swiftly like lightning.

That's what Jesus is saying. Now, I feel that we could end there.

That's 13 reasons, like I said, but I want to give you one more. I want to give you a bonus reason. I want to give you a reason that I think that this event has already happened, and I'm going to call this evidence circling vultures, question mark.

Jesus says in Matthew 24, 28, at the very end of the section, wherever the corpse is there, the vultures will gather, which is a very strange thing to say.

Now, it could be the case, as we've been showing, that Jesus is predicting that after all the devastation and all the dead bodies have been heaped up in piles by the

Romans, as the temple's burning, as all this destruction and mayhem has occurred, that the skies over Jerusalem would be filled with circling vultures that are ready to feast upon the

Jewish dead men's carcasses. That's logical, and that very well could be what

Jesus is talking about. After such harrowing events that Josephus records to us, that could have been the case, although Josephus does not record that the sky was filled with vultures and the vultures were feasting upon the dead bodies.

If we use our morbid imaginations long enough, we can imagine that such an event like that would occur, but Josephus doesn't record anything about it.

But there's something underneath this that maybe you've never heard before. Maybe a lot of this you've never heard before, but there's something underneath this that actually can make a whole lot more sense of what the text is meaning and can prove definitively that this text was fulfilled in the first century, and it comes down to the

Greek language. You see, because unfortunately our modern -day translators have mistranslated some words from time to time when it comes to the translation of the

Bible, and in this verse is actually one of them. The verse is not saying when the vultures, the vultures are the ones who are going to gather, that word eitos in Greek primarily doesn't mean vultures at all.

It primarily actually means eagles. So what Jesus is actually saying is, where the corpse is, there the eagles will gather.

Now, why is that important? Why am I making a distinction there? Well, in ancient

Rome, the eagle was a very prominent symbol of imperial power that was carried and displayed by every

Roman legion. That's a cohort of about 6 ,000 soldiers. There was no significance at all to vultures.

No one, no basketball team in the first century, I'm being tongue -in -cheek, but no one had vultures as their mascot, but the eagle was the symbol in the inside of Rome.

The eagle would have been prominently displayed right at the front of the marching armies, and it would have been as recognizable to the ancients as the golden arches of McDonald's are to us today.

More than a mascot, men and women of that time would have associated that bird that the

Romans were carrying with dominion and power, and they would have been morbidly afraid if they ever saw that symbol.

Because if you think about it, just like in the 17th century, when pirates would be riding around in the bays of various countries, and when you would see them hoisting up their black flag or their skull and crossbones flag, then you would realize the fact that you can see that black flag means that they are about to attack you.

The ancients, if they saw those Roman eagles, they knew that they were going to were not marching in peace, they were marching in battle against you, and you were about to die.

So that eagle would have engendered lots of different emotions. Fear would have been especially one of them.

But to make matters a bit more complicated, the Jews considered this pagan symbol also to be grossly idolatrous, and they forbade any of the

Roman soldiers from bringing it into the temple or to its courtyards, which was not that difficult to do, because if Rome wasn't marching in war, then there'd be no reason for them to bring it.

So it was sort of like this complicated truce where the Romans said, fine, whatever, and the

Jews said, thanks so much. And they sort of lived in this sort of peace for about 100 years, or maybe a little bit shorter than that.

But there is an example that I can show to you from the history of the Jews to show how much the

Jews hated this symbol. About 80 years before the destruction of the temple, Herod the

Great, he's the man responsible for building the temple and making it, not really building it, but building onto it and adding to it, making it one of the wonders of the ancient world.

He actually thought it'd be a good idea to install a golden eagle, which is the Roman mascot, up on top of the temple in order to appease

Rome and to also remind the Jews that they were a subjugated people and that they better not get any ideas of trying to rebel.

Well, unfortunately, that was a foolish oversight on the part of Herod's part because it violently caused the

Jews to be whipped up into a frenzy. They climbed up on top of the temple. They ripped the bird down.

They tore it into several different pieces. They burned it. And then to retaliate against that,

Herod decided to set all of the agitators on fire right there as their countrymen were watching.

They died happily because they would rather die that way than see the temple profaned. Herod slaughtered the high priest at the time who allowed such an event to happen.

He installed his own high priest who would be loyal to him and do the bidding of Rome, but one thing that Herod did not do,

Herod, who was a crafty politician, did not install another golden eagle on top of the temple.

He knew that even though he had responded and killed all of the protesters and even though he had showed that he was the man, he wasn't going to push that point because he knew that the

Jews would continue to die and continue to fight and continue to go, and that if all that political attention came upon him, then

Rome would eventually depose him too. So he left well enough alone. Just like Rome, Rome left well enough alone, and they did not bring the eagles into the temple courtyard until the

Jewish war began. That's when the eagles gathered. Josephus tells us that when the three legions of Roman soldiers came to Jerusalem, they brought one eagle apiece.

They brought their eagle with them, and he tells us this. Then came the end signs encompassing the eagle, which is at the head of every

Roman legion, the king bird, the strongest of them all, which seems to them, the Romans, to be a signal of their dominion and an omen that they shall conquer any who oppose them,

Jewish wars, book three, chapter six, paragraph two. Now, and conquer, they did after three years of devastating battles,

Jewish starvation, death, and destruction, the Romans finally entered into the temple complex, murdered the final remaining protesters, and set the temple on fire.

Josephus tells us as the city and the temple were burning, and as the dead bodies were bleeding out, the

Romans brought three eagles, one for each legion that was fighting, right into the temple complex, and they did the unthinkable.

They began offering sacrifices to their eagles right in the midst of all those dead bodies.

Josephus says in Jewish wars, book six, chapter six, paragraph one, and now the

Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city and upon the burning of the holy house itself and all the buildings around about it, brought their end signs.

That's the eagles to the temple, and they set them over against its Eastern gate and there they did offer sacrifices to them after perhaps the bloodiest battle in the entire campaign was finally over after the epicenter of Jewish resistance had failed after the temple and all of its treasures were lost.

And the majority of the fighting men were now heaped up in piles of dead bodies right there in the temple courtyard.

The Romans offered sacrifices to their pagan gods. When Jesus tells us wherever the corpse is there, the eagles will gather.

He could have been referring to real eagles that were flying overhead and looking for an easy lunch, but I think it is far more likely, and at least it is likely that he has a double meaning here.

That when the Roman soldiers bring their end signs into the city and they offer sacrifices right at the very place where the corpses are lying, when he says wherever the corpse is there, the eagles will gather,

I think he's alluding to Roman invasion and Roman tribulation.

I think that when Jesus gave this prophecy in Matthew 24 and he said, there the eagles will gather,

I think he understood. And I think that he was letting his disciples know that the destruction that is coming is going to be led by the

Roman armies, evidenced by them marching into the city with their eagles.

That's 14 technical reasons from the text, from history, from good exegesis that prove to you and I that these events have already occurred.

And while it may be fashionable and popular to concoct endless end times scenarios from newspapers and reports and all of that, that inevitably won't come true, we have real historical reasons.

We have a real basis that perfectly aligns with that culture, that time, and the prophecy that Jesus gave to see that these events have already occurred.

Now, to be fair, this doesn't mean that everything in eschatology has already happened, we do believe that there are some things that are still in the future.

And if you can stomach wading through some of these waters a bit longer with me, then we're going to soon arrive at those passages and you're going to see the things that are still future for us as believers.

But for right now, intellectual integrity and just pure honesty requires that we view the passages in front of us in their context and with faithful exegesis.

We're not going to come to the text with our preconceived notions, but we are going to draw out of the text what it means. And what we have seen is that Matthew 24,

Matthew 23, Matthew 22, Malachi chapter three, Malachi chapter four, and all the other things we've examined so far, if we look at them in their proper context, they're not talking about an end time disaster, but they're talking about a blisteringly accurate prediction by Jesus that great tribulations were coming upon the apostate

Jews. What's the practical application of this? Don't fear. If you're living 2000 years after these event in the kingdom of Christ, my brothers and sisters don't fear end times theology, don't fear whether you're going to go through a great tribulation.

Don't fear whether it's going to be pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib or no -trib. Don't fear all that stuff.

These things have already occurred. You didn't miss the rapture. You're not going to, there's not going to be an eschatological antichrist who rises up and who weaponizes the world against you and woe if you're pregnant.

These things have occurred. So have joy and serve

Jesus while you're here. If you spend your life worried that there's a, that there's an antichrist around every corner, that there's a mark of a beast in every vaccine, you're going to be the most discouraged and stressed out people when

Jesus died to give you joy and pleasures forever. Live in the, in the truth of the matter that the

Jews were punished because they rejected Christ. So don't reject Jesus. Live for Jesus.

Take his gospel to the ends of the earth, build the kingdom of God while you're here. Go to church, read your

Bible, love your wife, love your kids, love your family, and serve

Jesus faithfully with joy until Jesus returns. That's all I got for today.

Until next time, I hope that you're blessed. I hope that you are well, and we will see you back on another episode of the podcast.