21. When Does "The End" Begin? (End-Times Series Part 2)

The PRODCAST

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 21, a question of time.

00:26

As we begin this study on the end times, I would like to address you from the junkyard of eschatological insanity that we find ourselves in today.

00:34

To my left lies a cardboard cutout of the late Harold Camping, beside of him a stack of books titled 88

00:41

Reasons Why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988, and a few assorted posters of various blood moons, pale horses, and tracks about being left behind.

00:52

To my right, an ever -growing pile of anti -Christ candidates and the Mark of the Beast hopefuls heaped on top of one another, and most are now thoroughly rusted.

01:03

All around us is the odious stench of eschatological failure, from end times views as assuming future failure, to failed past and present predictions, to wild speculations about Gog, Magog, and Vladimir Putin.

01:16

Is it any wonder that the Church is so confused, frustrated, and lacking joy when they think about eschatology?

01:26

In this series on eschatology, my hope is to actually bring the joy and the clarity and the hope back to this topic.

01:34

And to do that, we're going to need to flush everything that we've heard about the end down the eschatological toilet and wave goodbye to all of it, because it's going back to where it belongs.

01:47

Now, I say this so strongly because I believe that there's so much bad teaching on eschatology.

01:53

And more than that, I believe that the Bible was never meant to be a Gordian knot of confusion that frustrates and paralyzes you in your faith.

02:02

It was always meant to be a clear revelation to encourage, strengthen, and give a living hope to the saints as they face the days ahead.

02:14

When we return to what the Bible actually says about the end times, and when we talk about those things in biblical ways,

02:24

I believe that eschatology can be one of the most encouraging topics that you will ever study.

02:30

But we have to do the work, and today is no exception. So in the weeks ahead,

02:36

I want us to look at what the Bible says about the end times. And today, I want to focus on the question of time.

02:47

When do the end times begin? Are they getting ready to happen here in the 21st century, or are they still lingering out somewhere in the undetermined future?

02:58

Or, and this is the view that I'm going to be presenting, did the end times begin sometime in the past?

03:08

Now with that, let us begin by looking at a few passages in Scripture to gain some biblical perspective.

03:15

Part one, end times incarnation. By far, one of the clearest passages in all of the

03:24

Bible when it comes to the end times and when that end time will begin is Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 2.

03:31

This is what it says, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his

03:44

Son, whom he appointed the heir over all things. What the author of Hebrews is doing here is he's juxtaposing two very different sets of time in the history and the economy of redemption.

03:59

There's an old covenant era of temples and feasts and priests and sacrifices where God once spoke to his people through the fathers and through the prophets, and that era is known as the

04:10

Old Testament. But now we're told that a new era of human history has dawned.

04:16

In fact, it is the very last era of human history where Christ has come as the incarnate

04:22

Son of God to reign and rule over a new kingdom. That new era,

04:29

Hebrews says, is the last days. You see, what Hebrews is saying is that when

04:36

Jesus came back or came in his incarnation, he not only secured salvation for his people, but he also fulfilled all of the

04:47

Old Testament and Old Covenant expectations, the types, the shadows, the norms, all of that.

04:53

In himself, he fulfilled all those things. So for instance, he's the true king that the

05:00

Old Testament is looking for, Hebrews 1 .8. He's the true priest that can truly serve the people of God in Hebrews 2 .17.

05:07

He's the one who made himself to be the true and perfect sacrifice, Hebrews 7 .27, offering himself in a true heavenly temple,

05:16

Hebrews 9 .11, in order to secure a perfect and unvarnished redemption for his people.

05:24

The point of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus, when he uttered, it is finished, finished it.

05:32

He perfectly drew to a close all of the Old Covenant types and shadows.

05:38

He brought that to a glorious end. He fulfilled every jot and tittle of the law, leaving no temple stone unturned so that he,

05:47

Jesus Christ alone, could become the cornerstone of a new end time era.

05:55

In him, the Old Testament has been finished. And in him, the new end time era, the last days, has truly come.

06:08

Now, the importance of this cannot be understated. Jesus Christ has put an end to the old era of redemption, and he's began a new era called the last days.

06:19

And he did that at his coming 2 ,000 years ago. That is why the author of Hebrews can say that we are living in the end times.

06:29

Because the author of Hebrews assumes that we would understand that those end times began at Jesus's first and glorious coming.

06:36

That's why he said that in verse 2. And since that is true, it's clear, uncontestable even, that you and I are living in the last days.

06:49

We've been living in the last days our entire life. In fact, the church has always existed in the last days, and the last days have lasted now for 2 ,000 years.

07:01

The last days are not a future -oriented period of time where you have all of these different things that you see in the end times movies or end times books.

07:13

The last days began 2 ,000 years ago with the coming of Jesus Christ. And again,

07:19

I know that many have wrongly stated otherwise, that the church is a part of this asterisk period where, you know, hey, the

07:28

Jews rejected Jesus, so he went to Plan B, the Gentile church, that's sandwiched in between the

07:34

Old Testament and a future millennial reign where the Jews will have a temple, and all of that is hogwash.

07:41

The church was and is and will continue to be God's Plan A for the world.

07:49

For these last days, the church is God's means to preach the gospel to all the nations, to make disciples of all the nations, and then the end of the end will come.

08:06

We are his end -time bride on his end -time mission, waiting until the final sands in the end -time hourglass fall through the crack, and then our royal

08:20

Savior and King will return. Whatever thoughts that you and I have about the end times, at a minimum, need to be filtered through and grounded by the firm exegetical understanding of Hebrews 1, verse 2, that the last days have already come and that we are currently living in them because of Christ.

08:47

That much is abundantly clear that we are living in the last days. I would encourage you to study that passage and see if what

08:56

I'm saying is true. But with that being the case,

09:01

I think we should continue on to a second proof that the end times are a past, present, and future event for the church, mostly past, and we're going to look at the second part of this, which is called end -times dissolution.

09:20

Now, as mentioned above, one of the reasons that we can be so confident that the end times have already begun is that Jesus so carefully and methodically brought an end to all of the old -timey

09:36

Old Testament stuff. He brought a new priesthood. He brought a new temple.

09:44

He brought a new mountain called Calvary. He brought a new sacrifice, a new era, a new bride, and He's going to be bringing about a new covenant city, the

09:54

New Jerusalem. And in the weeks ahead, we're going to examine some of those things in greater detail, but for now,

10:00

I just want to offer a summary about God's end -time bride and His end -time city, and let's begin with His end -time bride.

10:08

In the Old Testament, there is a very specific wedding theme that's undergirding the entire

10:15

Old Testament narrative, and it must be understood, if we're going to have any hope of understanding what it means for us to be the eschatological bride of Christ in the

10:23

New Testament. So take, for instance, Old Testament Israel. In the

10:28

Bible, Israel is called God's faithful and covenantal bride,

10:35

Ezekiel 16, 8 -18. She's the one that God lovingly drew out of the land of Egypt, and He clothed in His love, and He brought her to a mountain marriage ceremony at Sinai, which is talked about in Jeremiah 31 -32 and Ezekiel 16, 59 -60.

10:54

And if that wasn't clear enough, God explicitly calls Himself the Husband of Israel in Isaiah 54 -5, and He identifies the relationship that He has with Israel as a marriage in Jeremiah 2 -2.

11:09

It was this people that God set His covenantal affections upon,

11:15

Deuteronomy 7, 6 -9. And it was this people who provoked

11:21

His holy, husbanding jealousy in Ezekiel 20 -5, or sorry, in Exodus 20 -5 and Ezekiel 16 -38.

11:32

It is to this matrimonial status that God appeals to Israel to repent,

11:40

Jeremiah 3 -14, when she burned in belligerent and raunchy affections, playing the whore with the other nations and the other gods,

11:48

Ezekiel 16, 27 -48, instead of living in purity and fidelity to her covenant husband and Lord.

11:55

She acted shamefully in debauched spiritual adultery that's talked about in Hosea 2, 3 -7, until she finally provoked the righteous fury of her

12:08

God. For a time in the Old Testament, God was graciously pursuing

12:14

His faithless bride, beckoning her to leave her lurid pleasures behind and to be reconciled to Him, Hosea 2 -7,

12:21

Joel 1 -8. But alas, it was to no avail, and Israel actually exhausted all of God's mercy.

12:30

In the end, she would not return because she was so polluted in her perversions that God Himself issued those ten tribes of Israel a formal certificate of divorce,

12:44

Hosea 2 -2, Isaiah 50, verse 1. And God wrote them out of the annals of history through a devastating

12:54

Assyrian invasion. And along with that, God also warned the southern nation of Judah that if she continued to play the twin harlot sister,

13:06

Jeremiah 3, 6 -10, that imagery of God marrying

13:13

Israel and marrying Judah is the operative backdrop that is in play as soon as we turn the page from Malachi to Matthew.

13:25

When we arrive in the New Testament book of Matthew, we must remember two important truths, that God, although He divorced

13:33

Israel, is still married to Judah, although barely. And number two,

13:39

God is not a polygamist. Now, that point's a little frank and maybe a little shocking to hear, but I really think it's an important point that we need to consider because when

13:51

God takes the new covenant bride, the Church—we all know that the Church is the bride of Christ, that Christ loves the

13:58

Church like—that He loves the Church like a husband ought to love his bride, that we know that God married the

14:05

Church. That's a New Testament fact. Well, we ought to remember that the only way that that's possible is if Judah was issued a formal certificate of divorce from God before he married the

14:21

Church. If not, then God would be participating in polygamy, which is something that God forbids.

14:31

So, while we explore this topic in a little bit more detail in the weeks ahead, one of the major themes of Revelation solves this issue because there's not an explicit verse that talks about God issuing a certificate of divorce to Judah.

14:45

But the book of Revelation, in pictorial, covenantal demonstration, talks about how the whore of Babylon, who

14:54

I take to be the unrepentant, unregenerate, paganized, Rome -loving, idol -worshipping

14:59

Judah, is going to be put away by God—Revelation 17, 1 through 18—so that God can claim for Himself a new and spotless, blood -bought bride in Revelation 21, 2.

15:13

If that verse means what I think it means, and I'm pretty sure that it does, then God divorces

15:19

Judah in Revelation 17 so that He can marry the Church in Revelation 21, which means that this end -time book of Revelation is talking about a past -time event where God put away

15:35

Judah and married the Church. And if that's the case, and I believe that it is, then most, if not all, of the book of Revelation concerns things that have already taken place.

15:49

Now, I don't want to get into the weeds here because there's a lot that we're going to discuss in the weeks ahead, and there's a lot that I'm going to show you that maybe you've never heard before.

15:58

And I want you to think about it carefully. I want you to consider it faithfully, just like a Berean would. I want you to look at the

16:04

Scriptures and see what it says. But so far, all that we've learned is that we can rightly assume that if God marries the

16:12

Church in the New Testament, then He must put away the harlot Judah. That fact, I think, is fairly clear.

16:18

And we have to understand where God does that. We know that this divorce from God must be executed in a lawful way because He's righteous and He never is the unfaithful party in a marriage.

16:30

And knowing that, the New Testament records ample examples of how the Jews piled up their adulteries as high as the heavens, even making

16:39

Old Testament Israel blush in embarrassment. It was this Judah who got into the—and got into bed with Rome and turned their back on their king,

16:49

God. It was this Judah who became so blinded in her perversions and defilements that she killed

16:55

God's one and only son. And it was this feckless nation of Judah that God brought down the full fury of His righteous, just, and deforcing wrath.

17:09

We can know from the manifold testimony of the New Testament that Judah was put away.

17:16

We can learn from history that—and we're going to look at that about Josephus and his recordings of what happened in the city of Jerusalem in AD 70 when

17:25

Rome came in and set the city on fire and leveled it to the ground, to a smoldering pile of rubble.

17:31

We're going to look at that. We can know that the end times have come, not just because the author of Hebrews has told us so, but because God has put away

17:41

His Old Testament bride, Israel and Judah, and He's taken for His son, the end -time bride that Revelation describes, the church.

17:52

A bride that was blood bought on a better mountain called Calvary, married in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, and waiting for the final consummation when

18:03

He returns to call her into His arms forever. That's the mystery of the gospel in Ephesians 5 .32, and it's a sure clue that we, the church,

18:12

His bride, are already living in His end -time kingdom because the end -time marriage has already occurred.

18:19

Again, we're going to revisit this theme in the weeks ahead as we look at the book of Revelation, but for now, let us proceed along to our third line of evidence, which is end -time demolition.

18:31

Along with putting away his old wives, part of Jesus' work to usher in His new covenant kingdom was to put away the old faithless city of Jerusalem.

18:42

Jerusalem became an enemy of God's kingdom, so God had to put Jerusalem away.

18:48

Now, as you're aware, Jerusalem was the Old Testament city of God where He would meet with His people.

18:54

It was in that city that He promised to dwell within the temple, to live within their midst, to be their God, and that they were going to be

19:00

His unique chosen people. And it was in that city that the epicenter of Old Covenant religion and eschatological hope perfectly collided.

19:10

With every song, every feast, and every sacrifice in Zion, they were expecting the coming of their

19:16

King. Yet, it was in this city, it was in this city where God rained down His punishment on them for covenantal unfaithfulness and put them away as decisively as the prostitute of old.

19:33

In some of the final moments, for example, in Jesus' life, the city of Jerusalem collectively turned against the

19:39

Son of God and sided with the Caesar as their one and only King, John 19, 15.

19:46

They said, we have no king but Caesar, crucify Him, crucify Him. In that, since God alone was the

19:53

King of Israel, the irony, the idolatry, and the infidelity that they were committing against God was palpable.

20:01

Is it any wonder that Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem and pronounced covenantal curses upon the city for all of her long -standing rebellious tendencies against God?

20:14

In Matthew 23, 34 through 36, this is what it says, Therefore, behold,

20:21

I am sending you prophets, this is Jesus talking, I'm sending you, the city of prophets and wise men and scribes.

20:29

Some of them you're going to kill and crucify. Some of them you will scourge in the synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous

20:45

Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

20:50

Truly, I say to you, truly, I say to you, all of these things are going to come upon this generation.

21:01

Jesus is not being ambiguous here. He's making a straightforward claim that Jerusalem was entirely to blame.

21:13

She is the city that systematically cut down God's prophets of old, killing them every time that God sent them, and it was this

21:22

Babylon -loving inspired city of sin that would also slaughter the disciples of Christ in cold -blooded murder and turn on God's one and only beloved son like a rabid dog, slaying him and crucifying him before the nation.

21:41

For these atrocious and inexcusable crimes of war against their

21:46

God, the kingdom would not only be taken away from them and given to the

21:52

Gentiles, Matthew 21, 43, but all of God's long -suffering wrath, the manifold collection of his entire fury that has been being stored up from the days of Abel, the first murder, the first murder victim, all the way until the present day, the final murder victim in Jerusalem, all of that wrath is going to be poured out on that generation, not a future generation, not a past generation.

22:23

On the generation standing in front of Jesus, all of God's wrath and his covenantal fury would be poured out on them.

22:32

And just in case you're wondering what an episode like that would look like, when

22:37

God's unique one -time dispensation of holistic fury is poured out on a nation like Judah, we need to look no further than Matthew 24,

22:50

Mark 11, and Luke 21, which describes—it's called the

22:55

Olivet Discourse—that describes the covenantal downfall and systematic cursing shredding and leveling of the rebellious city of Jerusalem.

23:07

That town would go from a thriving metropolitan religious paragon to a pathetic pile of rural rubble, all in the span of 40 years, which is exactly the length of a biblical generation.

23:23

This generation shall not pass away until all these things have come upon you.

23:30

In the weeks ahead, we're going to be looking at the downfall of Jerusalem in 8070, and looking at Josephus and other historical events, and looking at how this event is the perfect fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy in the

23:43

Olivet Discourse. But for today, all I want you to do is to notice that God is putting away

23:50

Old Testament norms, patterns, and institutions, like the sacrificial system, the temple system, the priesthood, the prophets, the kings, his two unfaithful wives, and his unfaithful city, so that in these last days, as Hebrew says, he could communicate to his new

24:07

Jerusalem -bound people entirely through his Son. In these last days,

24:12

God has spoken sola Christos, through Christ alone. Not through Jerusalem, not through the temple, and not through the

24:22

Old Covenant bride. Those things have been done away with so that his end -time kingdom can come.

24:29

It is no coincidence at all that those last days have certainly and assuredly already dawned for the people of God.

24:38

And as we will continue to see in the Scriptures, the evidence for this case is overwhelming once you begin looking.

24:47

The next section, end -time mission. Now, among the many things that Jesus was preparing his disciples for, one of the most overlooked and misunderstood facets of his ministry was that he was getting them ready for his second coming.

25:04

Now, I want you to do me a favor right now and take a huge, deep breath, because I understand that if you've been involved in end -time circles, ministries, if you've heard an end -time sermon, if you read an end -time book, then what

25:20

I just said probably either calls you to scratch your head or to turn off this podcast.

25:27

I completely appreciate when you hear the phrase, second coming, that you are automatically thinking about an end -time event in the future called the rapture, where Jesus comes and he raptures his church back to heaven.

25:43

That is not what the New Testament is calling the second coming.

25:48

That is what end -time prophecy experts and end -time book writers have called the second coming.

25:55

My challenge to you is to view the Bible biblically. Don't believe something just because someone told you.

26:03

Don't believe that the second coming is equal to the rapture just because you heard it in a sermon. Look at what the

26:08

Bible says. And in the Bible, Jesus says that his second coming is going to occur in the lifetime of his disciples.

26:18

It's a shocking thing. Look, Matthew 10, 23 makes this clear. There's multiple verses, but let's start with that one.

26:26

Jesus says, but whenever they, that's the Jews, whenever they persecute you in one city, then flee to the next.

26:34

For truly, I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the

26:40

Son of Man comes. Until he comes. Until he comes again.

26:47

Until he returns. Now, as long as you remember that Jesus is speaking to his original 12 disciples who were living in first century

27:00

AD, who were being commissioned by Jesus to go out and reach all of the ancient cities of Israel, and they were going to be reaching people who lived in first century

27:14

Israel, as long as you remember that, then it is painfully obvious that some sort of coming had to have occurred before they finished going through all the cities.

27:28

Some kind of coming had to occur in the first century or else

27:34

Jesus was lying or he was mistaken. He told them flat out, you 12 men will not finish the job that I've given you before I come again, which is crazy.

27:48

I get it. Here's some context that we have to understand before this is going to make any sense.

27:54

By the time that the true light of the world, Jesus, showed up on this darkened planet,

28:00

Israel and the Jews had become a dim people. They had long ago failed in their mission to be a spotlight of God's love and his light to the nations.

28:12

That's Isaiah 49 .6. Israel was called to be the light of the world, and they failed.

28:18

Because the 12 tribes of Israel had failed in that calling, Jesus came as the light of the world.

28:24

He chose 12 disciples who would become his new spirit illuminated lamps.

28:30

He sent them out into the dreary world to illuminate it with the gospel. That's Matthew 5, 14 through 16, where he says, you are the light of the world.

28:40

As lights and as lampstands and as lamps, he would send them out on a mission to all of the darkened cities and towns across Israel before sending them out to the rest of the world.

28:52

This exclusively Jewish mission began in the gospels when Jesus sent out the 70 and the 72, and it continued in the early portions of the book of Acts, even as those earliest

29:05

Jewish Jerusalem Christians were met with tremendous persecution. Think about the stoning of Stephen.

29:12

Think about Paul overseeing the execution of Christians in Jerusalem. That's the era we're talking about.

29:18

Now, sometime before Peter, James, Paul, the rest of the discipleship community,

29:25

Philip, Andrew, Bartholomew, Thomas, before they made it through all of the towns of Israel in fulfillment of Matthew 23,

29:34

Jesus returned. He returned. His second coming happened. Now, the question is, what kind of return was it?

29:43

Because if it's the kind of return where everyone is raptured to heaven in a blinking of an eye, their clothes are laying on the ground, their false teeth are laying on the ground, their sandals are laying on the ground.

29:52

If it was that kind of return, then I would say, you're right, that didn't happen in the first century. So what kind of return is the

29:59

Scripture talking about? With that question, I need to relieve a little bit of pressure here.

30:06

When Jesus is talking about returning in Matthew 10, 23, He is not speaking about His final coming where He separates the sheep and the goats, where He separates the wheat and the tares, where He throws some, the tares, into the eternal flames of hell while He welcomes

30:24

His people, the wheat, into His eternity, into His barn where we spend an eternity with Him.

30:31

That is what Jesus is going to do in the future. That event is still future for us.

30:37

What Jesus is talking about and what He's preparing His disciples for in Matthew 10 is a different kind of coming.

30:46

It's a judgment coming against the city of Jerusalem that absolutely did happen within the lifetime of those first century saints.

30:55

You either have to believe, and I'm going to demonstrate this over the coming weeks, I'm not going to be able to do it fully here today, but if you believe that Jesus did not come in the first century, then you have to believe that Matthew 10, 23 is a false prophecy and therefore you have a false

31:13

Christ. He says, you will not go through all of the towns of Israel until the

31:19

Son of Man comes. So either that happened or it didn't. And the question is, what kind of coming was it?

31:27

I'm arguing that it's a judgment coming of Christ against Jerusalem, just like God came in judgment against Jerusalem when

31:35

He sent the Babylonian armies through the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the temple and burn it to the ground.

31:42

That's recorded in the Old Testament. We'll talk about that in the weeks ahead. I'm arguing that the same kind of coming, a judgment coming, where God raises up a pagan army and He sends that pagan army against His covenant city and destroys it and levels it to the ground, that's the kind of coming that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 10, 23.

32:07

And that kind of coming is normal in the Old Testament, where God is said to come on the clouds in judgment, where God is moving around the sun, the moon, and the stars because of judgment, and where God is raining out

32:19

His fury on nations like Egypt, Tyre, and Babylon and Israel.

32:25

Again, we'll show all of that in the weeks ahead. But what I want us to know, the point that is clear in the

32:31

New Testament, is that Jesus had a coming in the first century, a second coming.

32:37

That point is so clear in the passages that I'm going to share with you that you have to work against your reason in order to believe otherwise.

32:44

You have to hold to your opinion of the end times and put away what the Bible says so very clearly in order to hold that view that the second coming still hasn't happened.

32:55

The second coming has happened. It's not the end time coming that happens at the end of human history, but the second coming has already happened.

33:04

For instance, Jesus says in Matthew 16, 28, truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the

33:14

Son of Man coming in His kingdom. This verse teaches us that the second coming, while again, not the final end time coming at the end of human and redemptive history, was a real coming of judgment that was going to happen in the first century, and it was going to concern events that were specific to them.

33:36

If you don't believe that, then you believe that one of the twelve disciples is still bumbling around the earth, or you believe that Jesus got it wrong.

33:44

Because He said, some of you standing here will not taste death until you see the Son of Man coming. So either they saw the

33:50

Son of Man coming in the judgment of Jerusalem, or one of them is still bumbling around and hasn't tasted death.

33:57

Ironically, in the Middle Ages, there was a lot of evidence that churches actually believed that John never died because they didn't understand that Jesus had come in judgment against Jerusalem.

34:11

And they said, Matthew 16, 28 says, some of you will not taste death until you see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. So because the

34:17

Son of Man has not come in His kingdom, therefore one of the disciples, at minimum one, has to still be alive.

34:23

And because they read into some passage in some other places, they said John must still be alive, bumbling around all over the face of the earth.

34:30

They took the Bible more seriously than the end -time prophets do today. They would rather believe that John was a thousand years old, bumbling around the earth, than to believe that Jesus Christ had failed in His prediction.

34:43

I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ was successful in His prediction, and that that coming happened in the first century at the downfall of Jerusalem in 80 -70.

34:53

We're either going to believe Jesus, or we're going to label this event as a future event, calling Him a liar.

34:58

And I refuse to do that. In a similar passage in Luke 9, 27, Jesus says this, but I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

35:15

Luke is going to help us understand the Jewish nuance of Jesus's teaching in a way that Matthew can't.

35:20

Matthew, if you remember, is written to a Jewish audience, so he's talking in very Jewish ways, and he says the

35:26

Son of Man coming in His kingdom. Luke's not doing that. Luke is written to a

35:31

Gentile audience who are not super familiar with the Old Testament laws and rituals and feasts and sacrifices and all of that, so he breaks things down in a much clearer way for us, and he says the

35:43

Son of Man coming in His kingdom in Matthew means the exact same thing as the coming of the kingdom of God.

35:49

When we are talking about the end times, Matthew is going to tell us that the end times are ushered in when the

35:55

Son of Man comes in His kingdom. Luke says, I'm going to tell you this in a little bit of a different way so that you can, as a

36:03

Gentile, understand this. The end times come in when the kingdom comes. So quite simply, when

36:11

God's kingdom comes, the second coming has accomplished its intended effect.

36:18

That's what Luke is telling us. Now, to untangle this knot just a little bit further, we need to unpack two more things.

36:24

First, Jerusalem made herself a direct opponent of God and His new covenant kingdom,

36:30

Matthew 22, 1 -14. They were not invited to the new wedding feast.

36:37

Because of her rebellion, she was going to be put away like the Israel of old, and after a single 40 -year generation, see

36:44

Matthew 24, she would be destroyed. Furthermore, as the very first enemy that was trying to stop the kingdom of Christ from expanding,

36:56

Judah became the first enemy of God that was crushed under the

37:01

Messiah's feet. And I want you, if you don't understand this, look at Psalm 110, Acts 2, 34 -36,

37:08

Hebrews 1 -18, or Hebrews 10, 12 -14. Jesus' kingdom is going to crush its enemies.

37:15

The final enemy is death. The first enemy was Judah. The second thing that we need to understand about this passage is when

37:23

God's kingdom comes. And thankfully for us, that question is not all that difficult to answer.

37:30

According to Daniel, God's end -time kingdom would be set up by Jesus during the

37:36

Roman Empire, which is Daniel 2, 44 -45, and it would come about after He ascended to the

37:44

Ancient of Days, Daniel 7. Jesus tells us that this end -time kingdom was already present in seed form during His ministry,

37:52

Luke 17, 20 -21. He tells us that the coming kingdom was looming imminently upon the horizon of first -century

38:01

Judaism in Matthew 4 -17. And He proved that that end -time kingdom had already come, and it was already there, already operating, and already present when

38:12

He cast out demons by the power of the Spirit of God, Matthew 12 -28.

38:19

Paul clarifies this teaching by telling us that the coming of the Spirit of God at Pentecost to the believers, that coming was unmistakable evidence that we are living in the end -time kingdom of God, Romans 14 -17, which is explaining the prophecy that happened in Joel 2, 28 -32.

38:42

So when Jesus tells His twelve disciples, some of you standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God, He's letting them know that in their lifetime,

38:56

God's long -awaited kingdom would arrive. And when that kingdom arrived, it would arrive by the coming of the

39:05

Son of Man, which is what Matthew tells us. Luke and Matthew give us a complete view of what this means.

39:11

The end -times are ushered in by the coming of the kingdom of God, which was ushered in by the coming of the

39:19

Son of Man. Jesus came against Jerusalem.

39:24

He put that wicked city under His feet, and He gave to His people a kingdom that will not end.

39:33

That's Daniel 2 -44. That kingdom was going to arrive when

39:39

Jesus was crowned King and Lord with all authority to rule over the earth in His resurrection,

39:45

Matthew 28 -18. That kingdom was going to come when Jesus returned to heaven to sit on His end -time throne to rule over His end -time people, 1

39:54

Peter 3 -22. That kingdom would come when He sent His Spirit to indwell, regenerate, and create a nation of new citizens for Himself to dwell in His end -time kingdom,

40:06

John 3 -5, Philippians 3 -20. And that kingdom would begin as a mission early on to reach the city of Jerusalem, Matthew 28 -19 -20,

40:17

Acts 1 -8, before it was too late. But just like the angels who were sent to rescue

40:23

Lot, that ministry to Jerusalem would occur just long enough for the righteous remnant to flee before the

40:29

Roman armies would come and execute Christ's fiery judgment on the city, Luke 21 -20 -24.

40:36

That is when the Son of Man comes in His judgment with the

40:43

Roman armies via proxy. That's when the Son of Man comes. The Son of Man comes in judgment so that the

40:53

Kingdom of God could come to the church. That is what the end -times doctrine is saying, and we can see that very clearly in some of these passages.

41:04

Now, I want to be very careful here to say that there's not a hard stop on the old covenant kingdom and a hard beginning on the new covenant kingdom.

41:15

There was a period of overlap. When Christ rose from the dead and ascended to the throne and He's reigning on His throne in heaven in A .D.

41:22

30 or A .D. 33, that's when the new covenant kingdom began. The old covenant kingdom did not end until A .D.

41:30

70. So you have a 37 -40 year period of overlap here where God was sending witnesses to the

41:37

Jews for them to repent before it was too late. And when that 40 years was finished, like rebellious

41:44

Israel before, an entire generation of dead bodies were going to litter the

41:51

Jerusalem soil as vultures circled overhead, and that's recorded in Luke 17 20 -37.

42:01

Final section, end -time revelation. Now, before I call it quits today, and I know that we've already gone on long enough,

42:10

I hope the content is helpful for you, and I hope that it's helping you think and process through the end times in a way that maybe you haven't before, or a way that maybe is reinforcing a way that you've thought about it before.

42:21

But before we call it quits today, I want to show you how even the book of Revelation—this is the book that is entirely future according to most people—how the book of Revelation assumes a near -term past fulfillment, and we'll see that in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end of the book.

42:39

This book that we've been told is entirely about the future, peculiarly continues to want to tell us about events that are happening in the past.

42:49

Now, let's just look at a few examples of this. Verse 1. Verse 1, the very beginning of the book, this is what it says.

42:57

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his bondservants—that's his disciples—the things which must soon take place.

43:09

John reports to us that this revelation of Jesus, whereby the name—whereby the book actually gets its name—concerns events that must soon take place.

43:21

This book is not an imaginative musing of an old—of a burned -out apostle describing very speculative future -oriented events that had no relevance at all to the people that he was writing to.

43:34

This is not what that book is about. This book is about near -time events that would happen in the lifetime of the people that he was writing to.

43:44

Revelation 1 .3 says, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near.

43:56

Look, put yourself in John's shoes here. He was not told, you know, blessed is the 21st century future

44:04

American millennial who reads this book and figures out with their decoder ring and their clues on the back of a cereal box concerning the rapture based on modern current events in Russia and Ukraine.

44:15

That's not what he's saying at all. That's absurd and that's laughable. Jesus tells the apostle John that the time is near for him.

44:23

The time is near for his audience. The time was near when John received the message, and the time was near when the church received the letter, and that generation would be blessed if they read it, if they heard it, and if they applied it.

44:40

That is what the book is talking about. It's not a letter to some ambiguous future audience that has no relevance to the people it was written to.

44:50

It was written for them. It was written for their benefit. That's what it says. Another verse,

44:57

Revelation 1 .7, behold, he is coming with the clouds. Again, that's an Old Testament allusion to judgment.

45:04

He was coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him, so it is to be.

45:13

Amen. This verse is almost like sealing the deal here, because first,

45:20

Jesus tells us that he will come again with the clouds, a common Old Testament allusion for judgment,

45:27

Jeremiah 4 .13 through 14, Joel 2 .2 and others. Second, he tells us that that judgment is coming against a particular group of people, i .e.,

45:38

the ones who pierced him, which had to be the first century Jews that lived in Jerusalem because they're the only people in history that actually pierced him.

45:48

So the judgment is coming against them. They are going to be the ones that experience his fiery judgment coming, not us in the 21st century, not the 23rd century or the 3000s or whatever.

46:00

It's the people who pierced him. They're going to see his coming. Third, he tells us that all the tribes are going to see it, which is a very

46:11

Jewish thing to say. Why? Because the word tribes was a specific word used to describe

46:17

Israel, a nation that was comprised of 12 unique tribes. They would see the

46:24

Lord that they crucified coming back in judgment against them. Every nation on earth didn't have tribes, so it was the nation that had tribes that was commonly known to have tribes that was going to see his coming.

46:38

That's Israel. Fourth, and finally, the word that is used for earth in this passage, it says that,

46:48

Behold, he is coming with the clouds. Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn for him.

46:54

That word that is used for earth is not the common word that is used for the three -dimensional spherical planet that's third in line from the sun.

47:02

That word for earth that's used here is the word that is normally used for land, earth, or ground.

47:09

If you were to reach down and grab a handful of earth, that is the word that is used here, not the word for planet.

47:17

That is incredibly important because when Jesus says all of the tribes of earth will mourn when they see him, the better way to translate that, the more genuine and authentic way to translate that, is all of the tribes of the land will mourn.

47:31

All of the tribes of the ground will mourn. And knowing that, it seems overwhelmingly clear that every single human on earth is not going to see his coming.

47:43

It's the nation made up of 12 tribes that have a specific geographical boundary who pierced him that is going to see his coming.

47:53

It seems overwhelmingly clear that this prophecy, at least in its first chapter, is concerning events that have already taken place.

48:04

This theme is not isolated to Revelation chapter 1, but it is some of the first statements that we looked at, but it continues on through the book as well.

48:12

For instance, Jesus tells one of the churches that they must repent because he is coming back quickly, and he's going to make war against all of his enemies.

48:21

That's Revelation 2 .16. Why would Jesus tell them to make haste in their repentance, to do it as quickly as they possibly can, if he actually intended on coming back a thousand years or two thousand years later?

48:35

That would make no sense. That would be like me saying, you better get right before I come after you. Don't worry,

48:40

I'm not coming for two thousand years. That would make no sense. That's long after the people involved would have already been dead, so their repentance would have been unnecessary.

48:50

That's Revelation 2 .16. Another passage is Revelation 3 .11, where Jesus tells the church to hold fast to what they have, to continue faithfully during their times of persecution.

49:01

Why? Because he, Jesus, is going to be returning quickly, and at a moment that was relevant to them.

49:09

Why would he tell them to hold on and to be faithful during their persecution and not give up if he was like, don't worry,

49:16

I'm going to return quickly. It'll be in two thousand years after you're already dead. That would make no sense.

49:23

This passage and the first three chapters, at a minimum, have nothing at all to do with the 21st century modern world and everything to do with a specific threat that was attacking the church in the first century.

49:37

And that theme plays out across the entire book, from the very first words that are spoken in verse 1 to the final statements that are uttered in Revelation chapter 22.

49:48

Look at how the book ends. So we're going to look at the book ends, how it ends or how it begins and how it ends.

49:54

And the whole manifold witness is near -time fulfillment. Look at what it says. Jesus says to them, these words are faithful and true.

50:05

And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his bond servant the things which must soon take place.

50:12

Revelation 22 6. As Jesus did in chapter one, he reminds everyone who's reading the book of Revelation, all of those first century

50:22

Christians, that this message is faithful and true and that it concerned events that were soon to take place.

50:32

Events that were going to happen after John's writing in their lifetime. And Jesus also repeats this timeframe reference in verse 7 of chapter 22, when he says that his judgment against the

50:43

Jews is coming quickly, as in not 2000 years later. Jesus ends the book of Revelation by saying that the time was so close upon the horizon,

50:55

Revelation 22 10, that John's scroll needed to remain open and unsealed because it needed to be read by the people who had applied to.

51:04

Typically, when you write a scroll of end -time prophecy and it does not apply to the generation that you're writing to, it would be sealed up and saved for later so that the people that it did apply to could have it and read it.

51:21

You see, sealing up a scroll would protect the scroll from weather damage, but it would also preserve its message for the future generation that it applied to.

51:29

Go read Daniel 8 26, where God tells him to seal up the scroll because its fulfillment would not happen for hundreds of years.

51:39

But that's not the case here. The scroll that John wrote in Revelation 22, the one he finished writing, was not to be sealed because it was not written to a future generation that it needed to be sealed up and preserved and put away on a shelf for.

51:57

It was written to that generation. From start to finish, from the alpha and omega of this great book, from chapter 1 to chapter 22, the time frame references consistently appeal to a past fulfillment.

52:13

To overlook these clues and to assume that everything in the book of Revelation is meant to be decoded in the future by someone wielding a newspaper and a nightly news service, to read it like that is to miss the entire meaning of the book and to apply an entirely false hermeneutic.

52:32

In the weeks ahead, I'm going to be laboring to try to make all of these things clear to you. This is a massive undertaking, and I'm not even sure how many episodes this is going to take, but I want to do it.

52:42

I want to help in any way that I can to make this topic more clear, so that we're going to dive into specific prophecies, we're going to explore specific sections of the

52:52

Olivet Discourse, we're even going to walk through the book of Revelation together. So I want you to hang tight, because these things are coming.

52:58

Rome was not built in a day, and Jerusalem did not fall in an hour. But for today, my hope is that you've seen that the time frame references in the

53:09

New Testament are really pointing to the fact that we are living in the last days according to Hebrews.

53:16

We learned that the end time kingdom of Christ has already began with his first coming.

53:21

And when Jesus says this generation will not pass away in Luke and in Matthew, we see how Jesus's end time kingdom is putting away all of his enemies, beginning with rebellious

53:32

Jerusalem when he sends Roman armies to punish and destroy them. And we'll see this more fully in Matthew 24.

53:40

When we see the book of Revelation calling the events that it's talking about, events that must soon take place, events that are going to happen quickly because the time is near, we see a positive case that what we are still waiting for may have already occurred.

53:56

The end times are here. The end times began 2 ,000 years ago.

54:03

We are living in the last days. That is the point. A final word of encouragement.

54:10

Brothers and sisters, I don't want you to get discouraged. I have shared these biblical facts with a lot of people.

54:21

And because dispensationalism and because end time trickery and because a lot of bad opinions on the end times abound in modern day

54:31

America, many people will become discouraged, defeated, or frustrated by the things that I'm saying.

54:37

I have been shocked to see how many people hold on to their view of the end times stronger than they hold on to their participation in church, to their view of the sacraments, to their view of fellowship, to their view of worship, to their view of personal devotion.

54:54

People will likely get angry at a message like this because it challenges a preconceived notion about what the end times mean.

55:03

My goal is not to frustrate you, and my goal is not to hurt your feelings.

55:08

My goal is to share what the Bible says about end times theology. Now, I fully admit that there's a lot of various opinions on the topic, and in humility,

55:21

I'm doing my very best to share the way that I see these things in Scripture.

55:26

I'm going to promise you that I'm always going to improve my points with Scripture. I'm going to back up my case with biblical evidence, and I'm going to try my best to make a compelling case.

55:37

But my hope for you is that you would search the Scriptures as Bereans, and that you would look into these things for yourself to ensure the things that I'm saying are true.

55:47

But more than that, my hope is that the end times doctrines would not be a snare to you, or a frustration to you, or a disappointment to you.

55:58

My hope is that when you think about the end times, you don't think about the Church being defeated by a world that continually gets worse and worse.

56:07

My goal in sharing these things is that you would see that Christ's kingdom is more powerful than the world, that His kingdom will continue to spread in the world, and that eventually, when

56:18

Christ returns, every tribe, tongue, and nation will have heard the gospel, and all the nations will be discipled.

56:25

We do not have a pessimistic kingdom. We have a powerful and optimistic kingdom led by a triumphant king.

56:33

My goal in sharing these things is to take away the fear that is so prevalent in eschatological studies, and to just leave you with the hope—the hope of the gospel, the hope of Christ's kingdom, the hope of glory.

56:46

Until next time, it may be the end of time, but I feel fine. God bless you.

56:54

It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it.

57:02

It's the end of the world as we know it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast.

57:09

If you like what you've heard, share it on Twitter, post it on Facebook, write a pen pal about it, smash that like button, do whatever you want, but help us get the message out there to as many people as we can.

57:20

Eschatology has ruined a lot of good Christians and made a lot of people afraid. Our goal is to encourage you with hope, so share it, and I'll see you next time on the podcast.