Matthew 24 Pt 2 of the Olivet Discourse

Okay, so here we are, Matthew 24.

Going through what's called the Olivet Discourse, and it's called the Olivet Discourse because it happened on the

Mount of Olives. We like olives, being Italian, right? So last week

I told you how we're going to do this study. First we're going to read the whole passage together, which Jerry thankfully did last week for us and saved me, saved my voice, and he's got a much better voice than I do, so thank you,

Jerry. Then we'll summarize the entire passage broadly, which we did last week. This week we're going to go through each verse individually and explain it in context again up until verse 14 of chapter 24.

Now one of the things that I do want you to keep in mind is that our hermeneutic, which is our way to understand, the way we understand the

Scriptures and study the Scriptures is called your hermeneutic. We're going to use a hermeneutic called

Scripture Interprets Scripture. In other words, when the Scripture speaks about a specific topic in more than one place, we're going to look at both of those

Scriptures together to understand the full and broader meaning of what the text means. So we're going to be going through a lot of Scripture tonight, which

I hope excites you. Now before we're going to go next week or the weeks following, we're going to deeply address the larger key points of the text.

We'll then address opposing viewpoints to the text. And then some of the subjects we'll go through are the temple and its destruction in 70

AD. We're going to talk about wars and rumors of wars, the parorisa, which is the presence of the

Lord, the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, the coming of the Son of Man, the sun, moon, and the stars.

We're going to talk about Jesus using the phrase distant generation and the fig tree and why he curses it.

So I'm mainly going to be drawing from the work of Gary DeMar, Ken Gentry, and R .C.

Sproul and some of the online resources. Predominantly it's going to be Gary DeMar. He's a wealth of information on this topic.

So let's just do a real quick recap. In Matthew 23, Jesus rebukes the

Pharisees, calling them a brood of vipers, the seeds of the serpent. And he pronounced covenant curses upon them to happen when within their generation.

He then weeps over Jerusalem, exits the temple, leaving their house to them desolate and says that he won't see them again until they say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Jesus then leaves the temple, tells his disciples that the temple he just left will be destroyed.

There will not be one stone left here upon another. The disciples sit with Jesus on the Mount of Olives and ask, when will these things take place?

Jesus answers that there'll be false Christs, wars, famines, earthquakes before the end, but those are just birth pains.

Then Jesus warns them that they'll be hated and put to death because of him. Families will betray each other, false prophets will arise, lawlessness will increase.

However, the kingdom will be proclaimed by the faithful to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jesus cites the prophecy of Daniel as a sign of the coming of the Son of Man. He warns them to flee from Jerusalem, which is also known as Judea.

When that happens, and not to believe anyone who tries to tell them differently, the coming of the

Son of Man will be quick and it will be destructive. In chapter 24, verses 20 and 29, immediately after that tribulation or the distress, the sun, moon, and the stars, the powers or nations will fall.

Then there will appear a sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and he will come on the clouds, judgment with great power, and the trumpet call, which is the gospel.

It will go out to gather his elect from all of the earth. Jesus then uses a fig tree as an illustration of when to know that he is near.

He reminds his disciples that all of these things will happen to this generation and his words will come true.

Jesus assures them that no one knows when that day will be, but that it will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night.

He warns them to be ready at any time so that they can continue to do the faithful work they were assigned to do by their master.

The clear time references that govern the timing of the Olivet Discourse, which is really important, in Matthew 23, 36 and Matthew 24, 34, make it clear that Jesus was speaking of the events leading up to and including the fall of Jerusalem in 70

AD. Those who manipulate the clear meaning of the phrase, this generation, by trying to make it refer to events in the distant future, are involved in prophetic speculation that contributes to last day's madness.

We want to know what the text actually says and what the hearers, the original hearers of Jesus' words understood him to mean.

In other words, if we abandon the clear time indicators of this passage, then these verses can be applied to any generation, and we wouldn't know exactly what generation that would be.

All eras of history have had and will continue to have wars, false prophets, famines, and the like.

If people fail to recognize the timing of these events set by Scripture and the historical context of Jesus' words, then we will always be led astray to look for some future

Great Tribulation. When Christians are left to wonder whether the Great Tribulation might occur in their generation, this kind of speculation often leads to a pessimistic view of society,

Christian activism, and the future. However, once we realize that the Great Tribulation has already come and that the church has been promised a progressively victorious future, we will be encouraged to work diligently for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom.

Let's not forget that we serve the victorious King who has been given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve

Him. And we remember that verse, the Christmas verse, Isaiah 9, 6, of the increase of His government there will be no end.

Now right doctrine is going to lead to right living. It's very important. Right doctrine leads to right living.

If you misunderstand this passage, and you think that the end is coming in the future and is going to be a great persecution, and you're going to be raptured out of the earth, well, to work as a

Christian on the earth and build His Kingdom might be like polishing brass on the

Titanic. You know, you're going to be pulled out and the Titanic's going to be left. But if you understand things a little differently, and understand that the

Kingdom comes gradually over time, that's going to make a big difference in how you live.

Okay, so now we're going to start going through the text with a little bit more detail, starting at Matthew 23, 31, and 32.

And I'll read it for you. So you testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. Now, again, Jesus is talking to that generation, and the audience relevance is very important.

Jesus is not indicating to them a future generation. He's pronouncing judgment on that living generation, and that's in chapter 23, verse 36 and 34.

Stephen raises the same points in Acts 7, 51 and 52. The audience, which included a pre -converted

Saul, would not have been incensed if Stephen was describing a future generation.

In Matthew 23, 34, note the audience reference. How would you escape the sentence of hell?

Matthew 5, 22 says, you means them, those who he was addressing. So if Jesus was talking to, let's say you were in the audience, and he says, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

You would automatically infer that he was talking to you. He wasn't talking to a future generation with regards to the destruction of the temple.

So even prior to this, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus's parables, they perceived what?

That he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because he held them to be a prophet.

You know, the Pharisees, when Jesus addressed them, knew that he was speaking directly to them and about them.

They didn't assume, oh, this is a future generation he's speaking about. If they did, they wouldn't have killed him. In Acts 7, 51, this is important.

Stephen says, addressing the Jews who were about to stone him, you stiff -necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the

Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Now the people standing there would immediately understood that he was talking about them.

He goes on to say, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered.

So when he addressed the crowd, saying that they have betrayed and murdered him, he was talking to the people there who put

Jesus on the cross. Remember, this is Acts chapter 7, this is after the death, burial, and resurrection of the

Lord, and this is even after his ascension into heaven. So we know from the book of Acts, in all of those verses, and Paul's letters, that those

Christians carrying the message of the gospel were persecuted by the Jews. So when

Jesus is telling them, this is going to happen to you and your generation, we see biblical testimony to the fact that Christians were persecuted during that period of time.

Now Matthew, continuing in Matthew 23, 33, and 34, Jesus could also have meant that Jews would approve of Romans crucifying

Christians, like some of them did in Jesus' own crucifixion. Even worse was the fact that persecuting

Christians pleased the Jews. In John 19, he, meaning Pilate, said to the

Jews, Behold your king. And they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.

Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answers, We have no king but Caesar.

So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. This is what Stephen was talking about. You were the ones who persecuted and murdered

Jesus. In Acts chapter 12, about that time, Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.

He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest

Peter also. This was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. That was the Feast of Passover.

So what Luke is telling us in the book of Acts is that it pleased the

Jews to kill Christians and kill Jesus, which is exactly what

Jesus told the Pharisees. You murdered the prophets. You're going to continue murdering the people who

I send to you. In fact, you're going to murder the Lord of Glory. So the

Jews looked at their Messiah, their long -anticipated king, and said this,

We have no king but Caesar. Then it pleased the Jews to kill his disciples.

Is it any wonder that Jesus destroyed the temple and left it desolate? When the

Jews said, We have no king but Caesar, they renounced their Messiah at that moment.

In fact, when they were standing in front of Pilate, they said, Let his blood be on our hands and our children's hands.

And unfortunately, that rang true when the Romans came in and destroyed the temple and killed the Jews. They said to him,

Jesus said, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth.

Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. So we see them killing the scribes and the wise men and the prophets.

So why would we not think that this judgment would come upon those people who were standing right there in front of Jesus who actually killed the scribes and the prophets and the wise men?

This generation was their generation that came under judgment, not a future generation that didn't collude with the

Romans to crucify the Lord of Glory. This generation is always used by Jesus to refer to the generation of his day.

Every other use of this generation in Matthew 11, 12, and 23 refers to Christ's contemporary.

Continuing on in Matthew 23, 35, the generation of Jesus' day is more culpable than any generation since he appeared in the flesh and performed miracles and other signs that testified to who he was.

And he made that point earlier. So think about it. Jesus was the Messiah. He was God in the flesh.

He dwelt among them. He did miracles. He forgave sins. He basically told them who he was.

He says, if you do not believe that I am, which is the old covenant name for God, you will die in your sins.

And yet they still rejected him. Some didn't, but most did. By killing him, they would fill up or complete the iniquity of their forefathers, which is

Matthew 23, 31 through 35. On you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth.

Now the Greek word gesh should be translated land and not earth as in land of Israel, since the line of murderers begins with Abel and ends with Zechariah, son of Barakai.

So this is on you shall come all the righteous blood shed on the land because the entire earth didn't receive this bloodshed.

This was localized in Jerusalem and Judea. Matthew 23, thus the house that Jesus says will be left to them desolate refers to the temple.

However, because of the new covenant and Jesus bringing the new covenant with him, there is now a new house.

But Christ was faithful over God's house as a son and we are his house.

That's an incredible statement, completely abandoning the Old Testament temple and replacing it with the

New Testament temple of God's people. We as believers in Jesus, who trust in him as the payment for our sins and have been born of God's spirit or the house of God, God actually dwells in each one of us, which again is just amazing.

And it's a better covenant built on better promises. We don't have to go to a house to meet with God.

We become the house of God as he dwells within us. In fact, 1

Corinthians 3 .16 says, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.

What an incredible statement by God, by Jesus. And all that was by Paul, but it would an incredible statement that we now are the temple of the living

God. So did really, did

Jesus really have to destroy the temple? And here again, I'm going to encourage you if you have your

Bibles to turn to Leviticus 14 .33 and I'll just wait a couple of seconds and I'll tell you, yes,

Jesus really did have to destroy the temple because it was the duty and obligation of the priesthood in Leviticus.

So turning to Leviticus 14 .33, we're going to read, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, when you come into the land of Canaan, which

I give you for a possession, and I put a case of leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession, then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, there seems to be, to me, to be some cases of disease in my house.

Then the priest shall command the, they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest that, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean.

And afterward, the priest shall go in to see the house and he shall examine the disease.

And if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days.

And the priest shall come again on the seventh day and look. If the disease has spread in the walls of the house, then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city.

And he shall have the inside of the house scraped all around and the plaster that they scrape off shall pour out in an unclean place outside the city.

Then they shall take other stones and put them in the place of those stones and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house.

Verse 43, if the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, then the priest shall go and look.

And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house. It is unclean.

And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place.

Hence Jesus, the great high priest saying, see your house is left to you desolate.

There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. Jesus again fulfilling the priesthood and the requirements of a priest going into the temple, chasing out the money changers, then coming back to the temple, recognizing that still the

Pharisees are in a front to him and want to kill him says, okay, I've checked your house.

There is a persistent leprous disease here. This house must be destroyed.

It is unclean. Jesus makes the prophecy that not one stone upon another will be left.

They will all be thrown down. And that's exactly what comes to pass. So now we get to the actual

Olivet discourse, beginning at verse one, chapter 24. And again, I'm going to read it for you.

Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when his disciples came to the point of the temple, came up to point out the temple buildings to him.

Okay. In his previous discourse, Jesus had mentioned that their house would be left to them desolate.

Matthew 23, the disciples understood that what Jesus was saying, since they immediately point out the temple building to him, their house was the temple from which

Jesus departed. In verse two, anticipating their thoughts,

Jesus said that the existing temple, not one stone here. Again, this is a, this is a term of location, not one stone here, not a rebuilt future temple would be completely torn down.

Jesus was talking about that, that specific temple, not a temple that would be rebuilt thousands of years in the future, but the temple that stood right before them.

And here's a little bit of history for us. When the Roman commander Titus attacked Jerusalem in AD 70, the temple eventually was dismantled as Jesus had predicted.

He says, we do not have any remains of the Herodian temple itself because of the devastating

Roman destruction in AD 70. Then Terentius Rufus, an officer under Titus, plowed up the foundation stones with the result that the prophecy,

Zion will be plowed as a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, was fulfilled.

That comes right out of Micah 3 .12. Therefore, therefore, because of you,

Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins and the mountain of the house, a wooded height.

Now, it's real important that we do go back to the Old Testament and we look at the verses that point to the destruction of the temple, and this would be one of them.

So we have scriptural evidence, we have Jesus's prophecy, and we even have evidence outside of scripture, historical evidence, that points to the destruction of the temple being a fulfillment of the prophecy.

Even unbelievers and Jews recognize that. Okay, Matthew 24 .3,

as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when will these things happen and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

So after hearing Jesus's prediction, the disciples asked three related questions.

First, when will these happen? Second, what will be the sign of his coming?

And third, what will be the end of the age? Now, these three questions basically revolve around the one event of the destruction of the temple.

The destruction of the temple, his coming, and the end of the age are all related in these three questions.

They're all pointing to one thing. They do not ask about the end of the world, as the

King James Version translates the word aionos. The more accurate translation is age, a period of time, not the physical world.

Kosmos is the Greek word for world, which is not used. A lot of people will look at this, and the

King James Translates it, and what will be the end of the world?

Now, if Jesus was talking about the end of the world, that would be the end time. However, the word here is aion, which is translated as age.

It's aion, not kosmos. It's a very, very important thing that we need to keep in mind.

Jesus is not talking about the destruction of the entire world or the universe. He's talking about the end of the

Old Testament covenant, the Old Testament age. The age that was coming to an end was the

Old Covenant, represented by the temple, the priesthood, and animal sacrifices.

With the temple destroyed, all of the elements of the Old Covenant would pass away with it. With Jesus, the new covenant age of the

Messiah has dawned. We now have one sacrifice for all time. Jesus went through to the

Holy of Holies in the heavens, not the temple. We don't need that anymore because we have a better covenant with better promises.

Paul says, now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom?

Upon whom the end of the ages has come. Now, was Paul talking about the end of the world?

No, he was talking about the end of the Old Covenant age, upon which the hearers that he was writing to understood.

In Hebrews 9 .26, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Okay, so we need to see that this is, when we're talking about the end of the ages, the end of the age, this is the period of the

Old Testament, of the Old Covenant, from the Old, through the Old Testament. Okay, so this is not the end of the world, this is the end of the age.

That's a very, very important point that we need to just drive into our heads and remember. Okay, moving on.

Verse three, his coming. As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and saying, when will these things happen?

What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age? All right, so let's talk about what it means to see

Jesus come. The disciples equated the destruction of the temple with Jesus' coming in judgment.

The word for coming is parousia, which nearly all lexicons translate as presence, as the presence of a dignitary or a king.

Now, the debate over the meaning of parousia is whether it demands a physical presence or a symbolic spiritual presence, similar to when

Jesus said, for where two or three have gathered in my name, there I am in their midst. So, if every time

Jesus came and it had to be physical, where two or three believers would gather, well,

Jesus would have to show up there physically, correct? But that's obviously not what Jesus meant, and that's not what actually happens.

Where two or three or more believers are gathered in his name, there he is in their midst spiritually, okay?

Jesus is there, but he's not there physically. This is a spiritual reality, and this is what

Matthew 24, 3 is also talking about with the disciples' question. So, we must ask, can

God coming to his people be a real coming without it being physical? I say yes.

Isaiah 19, 1, an oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt, and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence, and the heart of the

Egyptians will melt within them. Now, this was a judgment upon the Egyptians.

The Lord came on clouds. Now, this doesn't mean that he was riding on a cloud.

Cloud in the Old Testament meant judgment. So, anytime you saw clouds, you knew this was like the day of the

Lord. It's a day of clouds, okay? So, when God came in judgment upon Egypt, did he really come to Egypt and judge them?

Absolutely. Was it physical? Absolutely not. So, he came to them in judgment upon them, which was a spiritual judgment, okay?

And he destroyed the Egyptians. So, every time we see the word his coming, we don't necessarily have to equate that with his physical coming.

There will be a time when Jesus comes back physically, but that was not what he was talking about in Matthew 24.

In Jude 14, he's talking about Enoch. It was also about these that Enoch who prophesied saying, behold, the

Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all. Now, Enoch was an

Old Testament prophet, okay? And again, the Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his holy ones.

Now, if the Lord came physically, he would also have to come with 10 ,000 other people physically, if that's what this verse meant.

But again, it doesn't. It's spiritual. It's symbolic when the Lord comes in judgment upon people, he comes with his angels who are invisible.

They're not physically present. Sometimes they are. In this case, they're not. And John 14, 3, if I go to prepare a place for you,

I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. Now, I would have to ask you, if you're a

Christian, have you come in contact with Jesus? Are you in union with Jesus?

And if the answer is yes, if you're born again and you're a Christian, you must be in union with Jesus. Jesus has come to you.

He's birthed the Holy Spirit inside of you. So was that a physical coming?

Did you see Jesus walk through the front door and sit down with you and say, okay, it's time for you to be born again?

Or was this a spiritual reality? Okay. And as Jesus speaking of spiritual realities in our lives, speaking to the disciples saying,

I'm going to go to prepare a place for you. And I will come again and take you to myself. He wasn't talking to them about a physical coming.

He was talking to them about the spiritual reality of him bringing them back to where he was, which was heaven, still is heaven.

Okay. James writes that the coming, the parousia, was near, right at the door.

Now, if I told you that payday is near, right at the door, what would you expect?

You would expect to get paid in the near future, a couple of days, maybe a week or two. But if I said that the coming of Jesus was near, right at the door, and it's been 2000 years and it still hasn't happened yet, you would say,

Jesus must have been a false prophet because if he said it was near, right at the door and he hasn't come back physically, well, then he spoke out of turn.

And again, that's why Russell Bertrand and I forget the other guy's name, they called

Jesus a false prophet. Now, the only way you can understand this is Jesus was speaking in a spiritual sense.

Okay. James 5, 8 through 9 says, be patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the

Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door.

Now, this all makes sense if you understand that the coming Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24 is a coming in judgment upon the

Pharisees and the Jews that put him on the Herod, Pontius Pilate, the

Jews and the Gentiles all put Jesus on the cross and they all deserve to be judged for what they did.

Jesus coming in judgment upon the Old Testament age, the end of the age and destroying the temple would perfectly fill this.

Now, there's four additional comings of Jesus. So there are four warnings to the churches in Revelation that still stand today.

The first one is Revelation 2, 1. To the angel of the church at Ephesus write, I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

Now, again, if this is a physical coming, there would be churches that have been visited by Jesus whose lampstand has been removed.

Now, again, if it's a physical coming, we'd also have to be a physical lampstand. And I don't know about you guys. We don't have a lampstand at our church.

So I don't think that's what it's talking about. Again, this is a spiritual reality that if you abandon your love for Jesus as a church,

Jesus is going to remove you as a church. Okay. He will take you out of the kingdom and not allow you to operate anymore.

And this has happened to several churches, not just now, but in the past. Revelation 2 .18,

to the angel of the church of Thyatira, but to the rest of you in Thyatira, who do not hold to this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan, to you

I say, do not lay on you any other burden. Only hold fast to what you have until I come.

Again, if this was written to the churches in Thyatira at that time, him coming would be a spiritual coming, not a physical coming.

Continuing with this theme, Revelation 3 .4, and to the angel of the church of Laodicea, right behold,

I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

Now, lots and lots of people quote this verse, and I think they quote it out of context because this is

Jesus knocking on the door of the church, not knocking on the heart of an unbeliever. But if it is physical, we would expect to hear and Jesus be on the other side of the door.

But I do not think that Jesus is talking about a physical reality. I think he's talking about a spiritual reality.

And this is actually one of the things we think about when we do communion. If we're walking in humility and walking in righteousness as a church, we celebrate communion where we take the bread and the wine, symbolic of the covenant meal, which is a foreshadowing of the supper of the lamb that we're going to eat at.

If we're walking in righteousness, we're walking in humility, and we've repented of our sins, we can take part in that meal.

But we're also warned not to take part of that meal in an unworthy manner. If we do, we could heap condemnation on ourselves, and we could get sick and die.

I mean, that's a real warning in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. So we need to heed that warning.

Jesus is saying, I will come and I will eat with you. But you need to walk in righteousness. You need to walk in holiness.

You need to have clean hands and clean hearts before you come to me and partake of that meal. And it's as simple as confessing your sins, because we know that we confess our sins.

He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of our unrighteousness. We have a good and gracious God, but we have to be mindful of our sin and repentant of it.

Okay. Be that as it may, this is not a physical coming of the Lord. Again, this is a spiritual reality that Jesus is talking about.

Revelation 3 again, and to the angel of the church of Sardis, I write, I have not found your works complete in the sight of my

God. Remember then what you have received and heard, keep it and repent. If you will not wake up,

I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Again, I believe this is talking about a spiritual reality of the coming of Jesus in judgment, not a physical reality of him appearing bodily before people.

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.

Again, these things, the book of Revelation was written, chapter one, to the churches in Sardis and Thyatira and seven other churches, seven total churches,

I should say, because the time is near. It was at hand. John was preparing them for the coming of Jesus in judgment upon the

Old Testament system. He wanted them to be prepared and ready. Now, if I was there and I heard that Jesus was coming in judgment and all these things were going to come upon this generation,

I would have very much appreciated John's writings because they're very encouraging. Basically, the message of the book of Revelation is

Jesus is the white horse and is going to win. So even though we may suffer temporary persecution,

Jesus ultimately gets the victory. So I think that should put it to bed at this point.

When Jesus talks about his coming, I'm going to come to this generation.

He's not talking about a physical coming. He's talking about a spiritual coming. If these are real warnings and invitations, then the

Power Easter does not need to be physical. If we say that it has to be physical, we're imposing something on the text that is not being told to us.

It's not exegeting the passage. It's eisegeting the passage. I also want you to realize how many scriptures we're going through to go scripture upon scripture.

We interpret scripture according to other scriptures. So this is not something that we're taking from outside of the scriptures and imposing on the text.

This is something that we're looking to internally within the scriptures to give us an understanding of what

Jesus is talking. James writes, oh

I think I did this one already. Now for a little mystery. This you're going to like because I thought this was very interesting.

There's a verse in John chapter 20 verses 20 to 23. You could turn there and I'm going to read it for you.

It says, Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, which is John, the apostle

John who wrote the book of John. He saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. The one who also leaned back against him during the supper and said,

Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, meaning John, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?

Jesus said to him, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

You follow me. So the same spread abroad among the brothers that the disciples was not to die, meaning

John. Yet Jesus did not say that he was not going to die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

So here we see Jesus saying that he's going to come. It's my will that John remain.

That means stay alive until I come. So if what

Jesus meant was he had to come back physically until I come, if every coming of Jesus must be a physical coming and he hasn't actually come back yet physically, then

John is still alive somewhere and very, very old. The only way this verse makes any sense is if what

Jesus meant was is a spiritual reality of him coming back in judgment upon the temple.

Now, we do believe that John was alive on the island of Patmos when the temple was destroyed.

In fact, we even believe that the book of Revelation was written before 70 AD because in it, the angel tells

John to go measure the temple. Now, if John wrote the book of Revelation after the destruction of the temple, the angel telling

John to go measure the temple wouldn't make sense. Because of that and the internal evidence of the book of Revelation, we believe it's an early dating.

It was before 70 AD. And again, Jesus did come in judgment upon Jerusalem in 70

AD. And after that point in time, John did die. So again, this does not necessitate a physical coming, a bodily coming of Jesus in order to be fulfilled.

Matthew 24, 4. And Jesus answered and said to them, see to it that no one misleads you.

Now, notice again the audience reference. Jesus uses the second plural, person plural, you.

Some claim that this is the transcendent you that's being used where God speaks to a present audience, but he's actually addressing future unborn generations.

But unfortunately, there's nothing in this passage and in chapters 21 through 23 that indicate any such usage like this.

Jesus has his contemporaries in view. Jesus was describing what was going to happen to their generation.

Again, as history attests and as the Bible itself attests to the persecution of the

Christians. In verse 5, for many will come in my name saying

I am the Christ and will mislead many. So there's going to be false messiahs.

In Matthew 24, 5, Jesus specifically warns for many will come in my name saying

I am the Christ and will mislead many. This is particularly significant problem in the first century because many

Jews are fervently anticipating a conquering political messiah, which is one of the reasons they reject

Jesus. Jesus was not, he was the lamb. He's coming back as the lion.

They were expecting the lion, the military general, the warrior to come in and trounce on the

Romans. But when that didn't happen and Jesus meek and mild came on the scene and preached love and sacrifice, that's not what they wanted.

They were waiting for this military conqueror, a leader, kind of like David, who was going to come in riding on a horse, not a donkey, and conquer the

Romans. Another theologian by the name of R .T.

France writes, such false messiahs and false prophets active during the siege of Jerusalem might include

Simon Bar -Giora. This was notated by Josephus, who is a

Jewish historian who was captured by the Romans and then fully defected to the Roman side.

This is important that we still have his writings because he was not a Christian insider.

He was not a friend of Christians. He was an enemy of the gospel.

So when he writes these things, we can take them as history. Again, not biased towards Christians, but actually biased against Christians.

So there was a false messiah by the name of Simon Bar -Giora at that time who was regarded as a king.

And also many other false prophets noted anonymously in Josephus wrote books and he called it

War, chapter 6, lines 285 through 88. And that passage goes on to relate a series of signs and wonders occurring in the period before the city was destroyed, which some took wrongly to be omens of deliverance.

That's a quote from him. So we can quote extra biblical sources that point to the fact that, yeah, there were many false messiahs going on at that time.

In fact, we're going to see a little bit more history with regards to what's happening there. Jewish theologian

Abba Hillel Silver has done extensive research in ancient Jewish messianic expectation.

In this research, he reports of the era in which Jesus prophesied. He says this, the first century, however, especially the generation before the destruction of the temple, witnessed a remarkable outburst of messianic emotionalism.

This is to be attributed, as we shall see, not to an intensification of Roman persecution, but to the prevalent belief induced by the popular chronology of that day that the age was on the threshold of the millennium.

Now that is a remarkable passage because that's a Jewish historian citing what was going on at the time.

The Jews of that day expected the end of the old covenant age and they expected the millennium to be ushered in.

They were waiting for their messiah to come riding in on a horse to lead them to victory, to conquer the

Romans and come out from under their occupation. So even

Jews at the time thought that the time was perfectly right for the messiah to come.

So this perfectly lines up with what Jesus says. There's going to be false messiahs that come.

Do not follow them. If they say he's here, he's there, do not follow them. So this fulfills

Jesus's prophecy perfectly. He also says there's going to be wars and rumors of wars in verse 6.

And according to several secular histories of the era, wars were common throughout the Roman Empire prior to the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

Again, Josephus, Roman historian, the 40 years that intervened before the destruction of the temple were full of these in all directions.

But we may probably think of the words as referring specifically to wars, actual or threatened, that affected the

Jews such as those which we read on the Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.

So Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were very violent men, violent generals, violent emperors, and they led many, many, many wars and battles.

So now why does this matter? This is of incredible significance. It's because of something called the

Pax Romana. Pax Romana means the peace of Rome. And the Pax Romana begins with Augustus's establishment of the age of peace in 17

BC. Now starting in 17 BC, Rome took charge. They brought peace throughout that whole land.

He, this particular Caesar Augustus, was able to affect this widespread, long -lasting peace by creating the

Roman Imperial Army, which was the earliest of its world's standing armies in which the soldiers were regularly recruited and cared for and finally pensioned off by the state and became one of the greatest, most formidable armies that has ever existed.

It is an imposed peace upon the land to be sure, but a remarkable, unprecedented peace nevertheless.

So what's going on? Jesus comes along and says that there's going to be wars and rumors of wars that are going to take place before the destruction of the temple.

Now everybody standing there was standing at a time of incredible peace since 17

BC. This is about 40, 50 years after that point in time. And Jesus says, no, there's going to be wars.

No one in their right mind would have believed him because Rome had such a stronghold, such a strong army that no one expected anybody to challenge the

Romans, no less there be wars. So Jesus was telling them that there would be wars and rumors of wars in what was probably the greatest time of peace that that area had ever seen and that era had ever seen.

No one would have believed him. But as Jesus is not a false prophet, but a true one, there were wars and rumors of wars.

And we're going to read that right now. There were famines. A mention of an empire -wide famine is found in Acts 11, 28 through 29.

Again, the Greek word translated as world in many translations is oikumene, not cosmos.

And here's why. In Luke 2, 1, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world, oikumene, should be registered.

Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is because, again, we're talking about the end of the age, not the end of the world.

So when Jesus says that there's going to be famines in the world, he's talking about oikumene, not cosmos, not the entire cosmos, his entire world, oikumene is the region that they were in.

So when Jesus says that there's going to be wars in the world, he's talking about the

Roman Empire. As far as the empire spread, that's where the wars would be. And again, we see

Luke uses the word when Caesar decides to put together a decree to take a census of the whole world.

Now, Caesar didn't mean to take a census of everybody outside of the

Roman Empire, let's say in North America, South America, Australia, China. He was talking about taking a census of all the people in the

Roman Empire, which is what the word oikumene meant. The famine was, in fact, widespread over the then known world, the

Roman Empire, as Christians participated in relief in the famine. They helped. Acts 11, 28, one of them named

Agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world.

Again, world meaning oikumene, Roman Empire. This took place in the days of Claudius. So the disciples determined everyone, according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.

So we see that there was a famine. It was prophesied by Agabus and Christians actually pitched in to help people who need to be fed.

Romans 15, at present time, Paul says, however, I'm going to Jerusalem to bring aid to the saints.

Again, he's bringing them food because they were in famine. John chapter 13, okay.

1 Corinthians 16, now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you are also to do, each of you is to put something aside and store it up.

Again, here we see Paul telling the Corinthian church to put stuff aside to help feed the people during the famine.

Jesus says in Matthew 24, seven, for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.

So we saw that there was famines and biblically we went through them. Now we're going to see that there's earthquakes.

Earthquakes are recorded in the New Testament in Matthew 27, 28, Acts 4 and 16 and in secular histories of the era that took place throughout the empire.

This is Thallus who's again, I think he's a Greek historian. He says on the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness and the rocks were rent by an earthquake in many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down.

So again, this is an extra biblical source pointing to the fact that around AD 52, there was earthquakes.

Major earthquakes that occurred before the destruction of Jerusalem were in Crete AD 46 or 47,

Rome in 51, Phrygia in 53, Laodicea in 60, Campania in 62 or 63,

Pompeii in 63 and Judea according to Josephus. Note that the passage does not say that there will be an increase in the number or the magnitude of earthquakes, but just that there will be earthquakes.

So again, the peace was disrupted, there was going to be wars, rumors of wars, there was going to be famines, that came true and now

Jesus said there will be earthquakes and there were many. Matthew 27, 51, and behold the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split, the tombs were opened.

This was actually at the crucifixion of Jesus which was noted as an earthquake. Matthew 28, and behold there was a great earthquake for an angel of the

Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. Again, this also happened after Jesus made the prophecy that there would be earthquakes.

And finally Acts 16, 26, suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.

So again, I want you to see that we're using scripture to interpret scripture.

So when Jesus says that there was earthquakes, the scripture testifies that there was earthquakes. We also have historical evidence that there were many, many earthquakes throughout that region.

So this is leading us to believe more and more so that what

Jesus was talking about was the end of the age, the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and not some way -off future destruction that many people think he's talking about.

Okay, continuing on with the earthquakes. Earthquakes are recorded. Wait, I just did this.

Sorry about that. Okay, here we go.

Wars, famines, and earthquakes, verse 8. But all these things, meaning wars, famines, and earthquakes, are merely the beginning of birth pains.

So these common things, which again are wars, famines, and earthquakes, are the beginning of the signs leading up to the destruction of the temple that took place before this generation passed away.

So when people look to these wars and famines and they see it's end times, actually it's not.

Those are just the beginning of the signs that are leading up to the end. So this was a warning, a sign for the disciples who were there to know what was going to happen.

As these indicators appear on the historical scene, the disciples must be aware that these are but the beginning of birth pains.

This is quite suggestive. The term speaks of an acute suffering that has no specific referent and is not reserved for final eschatological events.

Again, this is not talking about something that's going to happen thousands of years in the future. In fact, the

Old Testament uses this imagery for God's wrath befalling men in history. The rabbis frequently use this word as a technical messianic term in the phrase birth pangs of the

Messiah. The rabbinic phrase refers to the distress that will precede the messianic era.

And again, this is rabbis and Jews who understood what that term birth pangs meant.

We're going to see it in scripture right now in Isaiah 13 8. They will be dismayed.

Pangs and agony will seize them. They will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another.

Their faces will be aflame. So when Isaiah is talking that, prophesying that, the disciples would have known the prophet

Isaiah. They would have read his words. The pharisees, the Jews, everybody there listening to Jesus would have known what he was talking about.

Okay, this is the beginning. Okay, these are birth pangs. This is not the end of the world. Jeremiah 6 24.

We have heard the report of it. Our hands full helpless. Anguish has taken hold of us as pain as of a woman in labor.

Again, this is a sign of the coming in judgment upon Jerusalem.

In verse 24 9, then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.

Now notice the second person plural use of the word you. The apostles were arrested and jailed.

So it would apply to them. They were threatened. They were executed.

Paul was stoned and left for dead. Men and women were dragged from their homes and placed in prison and put to death.

We also see in Matthew in several of the places throughout the scriptures that the early disciples were put to death.

So again, this would fit right in for a near coming in judgment upon Jerusalem in 70

AD. In Acts 4 3, they arrested them and put them in until the next day for it was already evening.

And when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go.

Acts 7 58, they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named

Saul. So we see that the early followers, disciples of Jesus were flogged, stoned, beaten, threatened.

Acts 14 19. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned

Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. Acts 8 1. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church under Jerusalem.

So again, this is right in line with what Jesus is saying. These are the beginning of birth pains.

After these things happened, what happened? He came in judgment upon the temple and destroyed it.

Acts 26 10. Many of the saints in prison were put to death. Verse 10.

At that time, many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. So that would require that people be falling away, which is called, which is what's known as apostasy.

It's when somebody falls away from the faith. So there was a little apostasy prior to the destruction of the temple.

And we're going to again, go through some of those verses. Paul mentions false brethren and how he had been deserted by Demas.

At one point, everyone all deserted him. Then John writes, they went out from us, but they would really not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out in order that it might be shown that they are not of us.

Okay. So there were people who were part of the congregation who profess Jesus, who really were not believers.

They left the congregation and went on to persecute the church. Acts 20 29.

I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to destroy the disciples after them.

Okay. This is Paul saying, look, I know people are going to fall away. There's going to be people within the flock who are going to be the cause of it.

Second Peter two, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who brought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

Many will follow their sensuality and the way of truth will be blasphemed. Second Timothy four, for Demas in love with this present world has deserted me and gone on to Thessalonica.

At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. Okay. So we see that there were people deserting

Paul. There were many people leaving the faith. In fact, actually turning upon it and bringing destructive heresies into it.

Verse 11, many false prophets will arise and mislead many. Again, Jesus warns the people of false prophets.

There's going to be false prophets who lead many astray. Did that happen? Yes. The apostle

John tells us, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have what?

Already gone out into the world. So there are false prophets there at the time John wrote this, which again is a fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy, saying that these things will happen before the destruction of the temple.

Second Corinthians 11, 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds.

In second Peter two one, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying them as to bring upon themselves with destruction.

I know that's the second time I put that verse in there, but I wanted to highlight the part where it says you and themselves.

Again, this is audience relevance. They would have understood that this was going to happen to them.

There was going to be people in their midst that this would happen to. Verse 12, because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold.

All right, lawlessness was a major problem in the first century, as it is in every century afterwards, because we're all sinners.

We start off with a flawed heart and we need to be rescued by Jesus. So left in our unregenerate state, without the

Holy Spirit restraining the evil in our hearts, society is going to become more and more evil. So even back then, there were problems with homosexuality, incest, prostitution, fornication, kidnapping.

There was a wave of general unrighteousness in that area at that time. Paul says, therefore,

God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who was blessed forever.

God gave them up to dishonorable passions. God gave them up to a debased mind to do what not to be done.

And so we even see Paul testifying to the church in Rome that this is what God was doing. 1

Corinthians 6, 9, Paul's addressing a young church that was riddled with all kinds of problems.

He says, well, do you not know that the righteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. Once you're washed by the blood of Jesus and changed, you are no longer those things.

You are a born again child of God. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. So he was talking to them about issues that were happening at their time in their church.

Again, regular immorality and lawlessness. Verse 13, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.

So now again, what is this the end of? We know from prior verses, the end is the end of the age, not the end of the world.

So the salvation, which means saving, the saving Jesus is describing refers to physical safety, not just eternal life.

So if you persevere to the end, if you listen to what Jesus says, when you recognize the signs and the birth banks and you escape to the mountains, you leave

Judea, you don't go towards the city, you go away from the city, you will be saved, which is exactly what happened.

The idea involved in falling away does not reflect a temporary stumbling and a momentary spiritual setback.

Rather, the Lord is speaking of an absolutely destructive collapse of faith resulting in apostasy.

The word for fall away here is scandalizami. It appears in other contexts in Matthew where clearly speaks of absolute rejection of the truth from those who initially accept the truth.

And this is what we were talking about falling away. The followers of Jesus are going to persevere.

They're going to persevere until the end. The one who perseveres to the end will be saved, who doesn't fall away, who doesn't bow the knee to Caesar and confess

Caesar as Lord and deny Jesus as Lord. That was a very real threat in those days.

You were given an option. You can confess Jesus as Lord and you can die in any number of horrific ways.

They would saw you in half. They would drill a hole in the side of your head and pour hot lead into your head.

They might tar you and light you up as a torch on Nero's porch. There were a lot of creative ways that they came to persecute and torture

Christians. You could have got out of that simply by confessing Caesar as Lord. And many did.

But there were also many, many more that didn't, which is just a testimony to their faith. Because of all this,

Jesus urges his disciples to endure these troublesome times. The one who endures to the end will be saved.

And here he reiterates what he taught earlier in Matthew 10, 22. You will be hated by all on account of my name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.

The chaos leading up to and surrounding the temple's destruction, the end, which was what

Jesus was talking about, will eventually cease. But those who maintain faith in Jesus and endure the terrible struggles will be saved, not only physically through the dangerous upheaval that finally ceases, but most importantly, and eternally, spiritually as they cling to their faith.

So we're up to verse 14. The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Okay. So finally we get the gospel proclamation. Now, again, Jesus was not predicting that the gospel needed to go into the entire world.

In other words, the entire globe before that particular generation or the contemporary generation that he was spoken to passed away.

Again, Jesus used the Greek word oikomeni. Okay. Every time that word is used in Matthew's gospel, it refers to a limited piece of geography or the known or inhabited world.

In other words, the political boundary of the Roman empire. So the question becomes, did the entire

Roman empire hear the gospel? And we're going to look at some scriptures that talk about that. First, we're going to compare this to Luke 2 .1.

Now in those days, a decree went out from Caesar, and I quoted this earlier, a decree went out from Caesar that the census be taken of all the inhabited world, oikomeni.

Now again, that does not mean the entire globe. That just meant the Roman empire. So let's take a look at some scriptures that are going to help us understand what's going on.

Even Paul's letters describe how the gospel had been proclaimed throughout the whole world, in all the world, in all creation under heaven, to all the nations, and believed on in the world.

So let's see what those verses look like. In those examples where world is found, again, the

Greek word cosmos is used, which certainly includes the limited geography meaning of oikomeni.

If Jesus had used the word cosmos instead of oikomeni, Matthew 24 .14 would still have been fulfilled before that generation passed away.

So Paul in Romans 1 .8 says, I thank my God, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

Now, was their faith, the faith of the Church of Rome, proclaimed in North America when

Paul wrote that? Was it proclaimed in South America? Was it proclaimed in Australia? No, certainly not.

There were no missionaries to North America, South America, or Australia at that point. But Paul says, your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

So contextually, we have to understand that he was not talking about the entire globe. He was talking about the known world at that time, which again was the

Roman Empire. Colossians 1 .5 and 6, the gospel which has come to you as indeed in the whole world, it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you.

Again, whole world does not mean entire world in Paul's context. Colossians 1 .23,

the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven. Now, there are still unreached people groups in the world.

If all creation under heaven has heard the gospel, then those unreached people groups have really been reached.

We don't need to send missionaries there anymore. But that's not true. We do send missionaries to people who haven't heard the gospel.

Again, this is in context. What Paul means is the known inhabited world of the

Roman Empire. Romans 16 .26, but now has been disclosed and has been made known to all nations.

This is all the Gentiles. Still, there are unreached people groups who haven't heard the gospel. Jesus was explaining the end of the age.

Again, not the end of the entire world. Once the gospel went through the entire region, the Roman Empire, then the end of the age will come.

So again, Jesus' prophecy holds true because the gospel did go to all the known world so that the end of the age would take place.

The gospel would be preached to all the nations. That word nations means Gentiles. And then the end would come.

And again, there are still unreached people groups who haven't heard the gospel. This was Paul's ministry, whose

Paul's ministry was directed to. He says, now I'm speaking to you Gentiles in as much then as I am an apostle to the

Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. So the gospel had to be preached to all the nations.

Nations is Gentiles. Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. So the gospel was preached to the nations, the

Gentiles. Okay, that wraps up all of those verses up to 14.

We're just going to do a quick overview, and then we'll have a little bit of question time. I went through a lot of stuff.

So first, I want to reiterate that this generation, when Jesus says this generation, he meant the generation that he was addressing.

Very simple. He didn't mean a future generation, 2 ,000 years in the future that would not know anything about this.

When he said you, he meant them, not you. You understand? I'm speaking to you, right?

So he didn't mean some, again, some future generation that he wanted to flee

Judea. He meant the people who were right in front of him. Next, the temple being destroyed was the subject under discussion.

In fact, it was the Levitical mandate that the priest inspect the house, and if it was filled with a leprous disease, to tear it down, which is exactly what

Jesus said would happen. He says, destroy this temple in three days. I will raise it up again.

That was his body. I'm the whole temple.

The disciples asked when would that take place? They were talking about the end of the age, not the end of the world.

Jesus addressed it as the end of the age, not the end of the world. Finally, or almost finally, the parousia, which is the coming of Jesus, is spiritual, not physical.

Although there will be one last time that Jesus does come back physically to meet his people who are going to meet him as he comes into the earth, and then he's going to separate the sheep from the goats, and that'll be the eternal state from that point on.

So not every coming of Jesus has to be a physical coming. Again, we've seen that over and over.

Wars, famines, earthquakes, false messiahs, and persecution all took place in fulfillment of what

Jesus said. So those people who say that Jesus was a false prophet, they obviously don't know history, and they haven't seen the scriptural evidence for it.

Finally, I want you to understand and really keen on the fact that scripture interprets scripture.

This is very important. If our ideas are coming from outside of scripture and we're imposing them on the text, we're actually making the text say something that it doesn't.

So when the scriptures say that there's wars, famines, earthquakes, false messiahs, when the scripture talks about a coming of Jesus that's spiritual, when the scripture talks about the end of the age and the temple having to be destroyed by the

Levitical priest, we need to take that scripturally as meaning that those people.

Scripture interprets scripture, and I hope that we continue to do this again using the scriptures because that's ultimately where our information comes from.

Now, the good thing is that we do have historical sources that corroborate the

Gospels, which is great because even historians can say, yeah, there were false messiahs.

In fact, the Jews at the time, it was an age of expectation, you know, based on the time where they were at and all the prophecies that were taking place, they expected the messiah to be on the scene and the millennium to be ushered in.

Unfortunately, they missed the fact that it was Jesus. In fact, Jesus says so, you missed your time of visitation.

So, I think that wraps it up. All right, let me start off with, let me try, where's

Jason, where's Jason's, there it is.

Hey, Jay. Hey, Ant. Awesome stuff, really great stuff. Going back to Leviticus, it just makes so much sense that Jesus had to clean his house and it was the return of the priest.

Isn't it amazing? It's really amazing. Of course, I look at this from the perspective of, you know, the the end times cult of the

Jehovah's Witnesses. Unfortunately, when you, if you won't go to their

New World translation, they're comfortable with the King James, most comfortable with the King James Version.

And this whole chapter 24 is where they get their authority, where their governing body gets their authority because they believe that that faithful and discreet slave is what they call themselves, or that faithful and wise servant, which is clearly a parable.

But I went into, while you were doing this, I just grabbed the Kingdom Interlinear, which is, yeah, so it's great about this.

It's the New World translation on the right side of the page, and it's the Greek on the left. And clearly, in the

Greek, it is Aeon, the age of chapter 24, verse 3, and then they translate it over on the right side to the conclusion of the system of things.

This is a great tool for us to have because it's their tool. It was published by them, Brooklyn Bethel, and it's something that we're able to see consistently through here.

They hide the deity of Christ as they eschatology through Scripture, and it's a great thing for Christians to know that we could go online, we could go to this book and see what the real

Greek says and how they hit it. And it's what a lot of even Christians do because they're so excited about the end coming that they miss sight of the putting it into context as you just did.

Mm -hmm. Excellent. Excellent. Was there any questions? I think you covered everything, and I'm going to listen in as other people speak.

That was really just my angle on it and the reason why I wanted to sit down and catch it.

The other thing, you know, I don't want to steal anybody else's thunder, but the other thing that was great was Stephen, you know, if he was talking about something in the future, those men wouldn't have stoned him.

That's right. Exactly. And the same thing with Christ. He wouldn't have been crucified if it was so far in the future. You know, it's funny because if you didn't come to the

Scripture with these other ideas, you would never have derived those ideas just by simply reading the text.

You would read it and you would say, yeah, Jesus was talking to those people. Now, does it have application for us?

Sure it does. Absolutely. We can glean from that. We can see that the prophecies that Jesus makes comes true, right?

That's right. But when we start importing different ideas and different meanings of the word generation and when we get to it, the people who hold the dispensational understanding of this verse, they say that the word generation means race.

They have to change the word from generation to race so that this race will come upon this race, meaning the

Jews, the Israelites. Nowhere in the Gospel of Matthew can you put that word race in there and have it make sense.

It's never meant race, but that's what you have to do in order to satisfy your preconceived understanding of what you wanted to read.

And it also shows how close to the life of Christ the

Gospels were written. Yes. J. Warner Wallace speaks about this often because if you had lived through the sacking of your nation by the

Roman Empire, you would have spoken about that. Yes, you would have. Somebody would have put that into context.

It made 9 -11 look like a tiny little footnote of history. Yeah, you're right. The Gospel writers would have said, look,

Jesus made this prediction and it happened. All of them were killed, except for John.

And Jesus says, what is it to you that I keep them around until I come? All of the other apostles were dead by that time.

John was the only one there able to record that stuff. But thank you, pal. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Ms. Michelle. Hi. Am I on mute?

Okay, good. Yeah, me and Emily are here. Ava just stepped away and it was excellent. We had a question.

When it says the end of the world, it wasn't the end of the world, but it was the end of the age. How do you define the age?

Age, but there's two ages that the Scriptures primarily speak of, okay? The age prior to Messiah and the age after Messiah.

We know it as Old Testament, New Testament, right? Old Covenant, New Covenant. So the

Old Covenant would be the age of that covenant. So Paul says, upon us whom the end of the ages has come.

The winding down of the Old Covenant happened during their lives because Jesus replaced it with the

New Covenant. You go through the book of Hebrews, we have a better covenant with better promises.

We don't need to make those continual sacrifices week after week year after year after year, which never took away sins.

We have the one true sacrifice, who is Jesus. He makes that sacrifice once and for all.

Now we have a New Covenant. The Old Covenant is gone. They don't have a way to make atonement for their sins.

Jesus is that final atonement. So you either trust in Jesus as your

Savior, as the payment for your sin, sacrificed on your behalf, or you're going to have to make an animal sacrifice, which doesn't take away your sin, and the temple's gone.

You can't do that. So the two ages is, for real basic, simplistic terms, Old Testament, New Testament.

Did they know that? Sure they did. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you. Oh yeah, no problem. I'll get back to you again. Okay. All right.

How's my friend Kiana doing? I'm good. How are you? Did I surprise you? Oh no,

I didn't know I was unmuted. Well, I don't really have any questions.

It just, it makes a lot more sense thinking about God coming spiritually, because usually when

I think of the coming of God, I think like on a horse, you know, with the sword. But I've been hearing a lot of that at this time, just because of what's going on.

But I've been thinking like at this time, a lot of people are expecting something to happen.

And God said that he was going to come back when we were at least expecting it. So personally, just for that reason, I don't think he would come back at a time like this, because at other times in history, it was way worse than what's going on right now.

And he didn't pick, but like he said, we don't know. But I definitely think that he's doing something, just because a bunch of nurses praying in the hospitals, at one point they would have gotten in trouble, but now everybody's praying with them and stuff.

I definitely think he's coming spiritually and not physically. I agree with you, Kiana. I think this is a very, very pivotal time for the church.

This could be a defining moment for the church in history right now. We're either going to rise up to the challenge and recognize that this pandemic was brought on by God to get our attention.

Society is the report card for the church. It's really up to us as his ambassadors to bring the gospel to people and to be bold.

And for the longest time, we haven't been. We've been in America fat, dumb, and happy. We have our little house, we go on our vacations, we talk about Jesus on the weekends, and then we just do whatever we want.

And we really need to rethink what we're doing. The word is repent.

We need to turn away from what we were doing and change our direction and do something different.

We have to be passionate about his kingdom. We have to be passionate about who he is.

If he really is the king of kings and lord of lords, and he brought you into his kingdom out of his mercy and grace, your life is not your own.

You've been bought with a price. You can't hold on to what you don't own. So you might as well leave it all out on the field while you can, knowing that Jesus is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

It's a win -win situation that the church will never lose. So we have to break out of the mold that we've created for ourselves, this nice little

American dream, which is antithetical to the gospel.

The American dream is what you can do for yourself and how you can get ahead in the world. And Jesus is the last shall be first.

We're going to crawl to the bottom of the pile. We're going to help other people. We're going to lay our lives down as a sacrifice. We're not going to climb to the top of the corporate ladder and look at the beautiful car that I own.

That's not what the kingdom of God is about. So we have to break out of that mold and get back into a biblical way of viewing things.

Yes, definitely. But thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome, Kiana. Thank you for joining in.

Where's my buddy Jerry? There he is. Hold on. I freed you up to talk. What's that?

I said I freed you up to talk. I just wanted to add to what you just said, because it was something

I was thinking about. And then I got a couple of other points. But think about it.

The disciples, right? He chose general people, everyday people, right?

He didn't say to them, when you're done with your fishing, when you're done with your chores, when you're done with your whatever you're going to do throughout your life, then go out and be fishers of men.

So why should we think we're any different if we're called and saved for a purpose? And this is something

I've been beating myself up about. We all have, right? We've all been talking and thinking about it. And their whole life, when we read through the scriptures, it totally flipped when he called them.

Just some points on some of the things you brought out, how important it is for the timestamps that you've noted.

And you already brought up the point of going into it with a preconceived idea.

Unfortunately, many of us were raised up, whether we raised up in the church or whether we learned

Bible, we learned a certain way of thinking. And when we look at scripture, we take our mindset, we put it into scripture.

We're not exegeting it, we're putting our thoughts into it, exegeting it.

The other thing that I think is important, and unfortunately, as I've been doing some of my own study,

I'm realizing how much greater it would be if I understood the original languages. Even Dorcas and I were kind of talking about while you were doing your thing, sometimes it's a little difficult to understand why was it written this way when it really means that.

And so that's where some of the tools that we have, thank God, we have available to us, whether it be some of the really good commentators or whether it be

Logos, where you can go word for word. But we need to be diligent about that.

I guess that's the point I wanted to make. Really great. Excellent.

One of the things, again, we're saddled with English translations and translators can get things wrong or sometimes it's by committee, so somebody could be outvoted.

And number two, we don't know our Old Testament well enough. We understood our Old Testament and saw all of the references that Jesus made in Matthew 24 to the

Old Testament, like the Levitical priesthood. And the priest having to tear down the house.

They there listening to that would have known instantly what he was talking about. Unfortunately, we don't read the book of Leviticus over and over and over again.

And we need to because there's a lot of good stuff in there that we miss that they would have known and caught that we don't.

Right. Well, when you were reading that section in Leviticus, Dorcas goes, that's the destruction of the temple.

Exactly. Yes. It's such, you know, when you when you get these bits and these pieces and these nuggets, it excites you, you know, because it brings it all into context.

Yes. Context. That's the key. Context. Contest. Context. All right, buddy.

Thank you. Mr. Gene, how are you? Hey, Anthony, how are you?

Can you hear me? I can hear you perfectly. How are you doing? Very good. Thank you. First of all, thank you for your hard work.

You know, putting stuff together like this, you know, is very time consuming and just want to I'm sure on behalf of everybody that's on the call, really appreciate your diligence and your hard work.

It's a joy. Thank you. So so thank you for that. I the only other thing I had was

I had the same question as Michelle. OK, I was wondering if the disciples actually understood, you know, that there was they were he was talking about another age.

Did they actually really have a clear understanding when most of them didn't even understand that he had to die?

You know, did they really understand that it was the end of the old covenant and the beginning of the new?

I sort of like I'm a shaky on that because I I sort of don't think that they fully understood.

But why would they ask the question? Right. So I was I was just going to say they asked they used the question.

They used the word Aeon. So when was the end of the age? Now, Jesus explained it to them. Do I think that they understood it right then and there?

Absolutely not. It was it wouldn't be until Jesus is resurrected.

OK, and meets with them. Remember the men he read? He bet on the road to Emmaus and opened their understanding to go through the scriptures and see how all of it pointed to him.

I think there was a greater level of revelation given to the apostles, certainly the apostles and the disciples of Jesus after he he rose from the dead because he met with them and taught them other things.

Right. And Jesus said specifically and we have to remember this. Jesus said specifically to the apostles,

I'm going to leave you a comforter, the Holy Spirit who's going to lead you and guide you into all truth.

Now, again, we need to look at the context because Jesus is speaking specifically to the apostles at that point.

He was not speaking to the in to the entirety of the church. Now, do I believe that the

Holy Spirit leads us into truth? Absolutely. But the Holy Spirit led the apostles into a more complete understanding of truth than what we have.

You look out at the world today and you see so many different denominations, you know, who believes in, you know, believers, baptism, baby baptism, baptismal regeneration.

There's enough debates just about baptism to keep us going for a long time. And it is a myriad of other things, including

Matthew 24. Right. So if the Holy Spirit was to lead and guide every single believer into all truth, we would all be on the same page.

But we're not. In fact, Peter talks about growing into the maturity of the faith, which we haven't done yet.

The maturity of the faith means that most of the Christian world will begin to agree and see and see the truth for what it is.

The apostles had the complete revelation of truth. They knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

But when it comes to the end of the age, I think it happened after Jesus was resurrected.

And then they saw like Peter's first sermon at Pentecost. He says,

No, today that this God has made him both Lord and Christ. And then he preached to them the sermon and he quoted the prophet

Joel and says, This is that which was prophesied by the prophet

Joel. So he starts to make these connections. And now he has a greater understanding of what's going to happen to the point of his death.

He knew that he was going to be crucified. So did they know right then and there with clarity?

No, I don't think so. In time, did they know with clarity? Absolutely. Paul specifically said,

Upon us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. He knew specifically that the end of the ages had come upon that church at that time, which would mean the winding down of the

Old Testament system. Great. Thank you, Anthony, again for all your hard work.

Really appreciate it. Buddy, thank you so much for hopping on here. I'm so happy to get to kind of share with you a little bit through the internet here.

Absolutely. Say hello to Venus for me. Will do. Okay. Let's see. Joe Erso.

Joe and Anna. Hi, Anthony. Hi, buddy. How are you? Thank you for all your work that you put into this, because it's making more sense to me than ever about it's a spiritual coming, not a physical coming.

Right. I mean, even with the fictional work of Leahy books and all the movies that came out thereafter.

But the one thing I do, what stands out is that scripture interprets scripture, and that would be our go -to all the time.

Yes. One minor question I do have is Jude 14, verse 14.

What is the Holy Ones? Hold on. Let me just see. Holy Ones would more than likely refer to angels.

You know, like when Gideon's eyes were opened and he saw the battlefield full of angels, you know, it would pertain to heavenly beings that were with coming down to Enoch.

Other than that, excellent, excellent job, Anthony. Thank you again. Oh, good.

My pleasure, pal. My pleasure. So let's go to...

Hi, Ro. Hi, Anthony. How you doing? Well, I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

Yeah, go ahead. Well, when you said, you know, when the Lord said that the whole world will hear the gospel, the only way that the whole world could hear the gospel is a future tense to me, that with it said in the end times, knowledge will increase.

So I believe that that was an end time word. I believe that.

And I just do believe that, yes, he comes spiritually, but I do believe that we're going to see him physically, you know, again.

So I'm having like, you know, I'm torn between those kind of things.

I want to confirm, and I think I said it many, many times, there will be a second coming of Christ physically back to the earth.

What I'm saying is that that was not what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24.

He was talking about his coming in judgment. And we're going to get into the judgment and what it means to come on the clouds.

He says, you're going to see me coming on the clouds, which is judgment. That's judgment language, again, from the

Old Testament. So there's definitely going to be a physical second coming. In fact, if you don't believe in a physical second coming, you're going against the creeds, the councils of the church.

So I'm in full agreement with you there. We're okay. The question is, did

Jesus come back to Jerusalem in judgment in 70 AD?

And like I said, several different times, Jesus says, he will come to you.

If you forget your first love, he'll come to you and remove your lampstand. Is that a physical coming? You're born again.

Jesus lives inside of you. Yes. Did you meet him physically?

No. But he came to you, right? But he did. Yes. What I'm saying is, not every time when

Jesus says, I'm coming to you, does it have to 100 % mean he's coming physically?

Now, there is a time that he said he's going to come back. He says, I'm going to come back the same way I left, the way he ascended into heaven, he's going to come down.

And that will be a physical second coming. But I want to address, um, hold on a second.

I think it was Colossians 1. Okay. Yeah. Let me pull it up.

Colossians 1 .6 says, because of the hope laid up for you of this, you have heard before the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world is bearing fruit.

Now that was, Paul wrote that. And he said it was, it was in the whole world already. Does that mean?

I mean, when Jesus, when Jesus says, go into the world and preach gospel, and I will come at the end.

In other words, when all of the gospel is been preached to the whole earth, because he doesn't want any to perish.

So I feel in my heart that that was an end time word where he said, in other words, we can't preach the gospel through the whole world now.

But there is a time where the whole gospel will be preached, because that would be our technology.

Everybody's going to know the gospel because of his heart. He wants everyone to know.

So to me, that's an end time word. Okay. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There were several, uh, scriptures that, uh,

Paul said that it's the faith is, um, he commended them for their faith.

That's been, uh, shed in the whole world or shared in the whole world. My point was that when

Paul used that word world, he was talking about the Roman empire, not the entire globe.

And I could understand that. I could understand that. So then where does, where does revelation come in?

If, if you are saying that he already, you know, he already, uh, you know, everything was done already and that he had to do in, in, you know, you know what

I'm saying? In the, in the past that it's already done, you know, and it's like, what's already done is the destruction of the temple and the end of the age that's done.

So now his second coming, um, it's, uh, somewhat, do you know, do you know, and this is very, very important.

I would suggest if anybody has a pen and a paper to write this down, do you know what the most quoted verse in the new

Testament is out of the old Testament? Out of the old Testament. What is the most quoted old

Testament verse in the new Testament? Love the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. No, no. That was a very good guess.

I like that. Here it is. It's, it's Psalm 110 1 and it's, it's quoted, quoted or alluded to over 20 times in the new

Testament. One of, one of my favorite apologists, he says that, uh, this is God's favorite verse because it's repeated so many times in the new

Testament. And it says this, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

So now where is Jesus right now? In heaven. He's ruling and raiding.

He's seated at the right hand of the father ruling and reigning. Right? Yes. That's scripture.

There's at least four scriptures that tell us that. Yes, he is. Okay. And what is he waiting for? The father to tell him it's time to come down.

I wish that was the case. He's ruling and reigning. He's seated at God's right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

He's waiting for his enemies to be made a footstool. Now, how does that happen? That happens when

Christ's body, the church, gets up off its rear end and proclaims the gospel to every creature under heaven.

Right? Amen. Amen. So until that happens, until we go and we preach the gospel and we, we start living holy lives, righteous lives, and seeing people, seeing the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, once his enemies are made a footstool for his feet, then he comes back.

So many people are waiting to get raptured out of here. Okay. And God is waiting for us to do our job.

That's what we have to do. We have to do our job. But he does say there's going to be tribulation here.

There's going to be a time of tribulation. Right? We're going to, we're going to get to that. Paul, not

Paul, John says he's partakers of the tribulation with them.

So John talked about a tribulation that he was in that time and he called it the tribulation.

Now I know this is, obviously this is, this is different than what you had been taught.

I'm just trying to bring to light the certain things that were indicators in the text, like the book of Revelation.

I'm just going to read you the first verse, right? The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants, the things that must soon take place, must soon take place.

Did those things happen soon or they still haven't happened? They haven't happened. Okay. Well, he said they, they must, it was soon.

And he says, um, blessed is the one who reads the words aloud of this prophecy and who keeps what is written for the time is near.

But he also said, Anthony, that a day would be like a thousand years. So we, how can we judge his timing?

It's not our timing. Of course not. But when he says it must soon take place and the time is near, and he writes that to, uh, the,

John writes that to the disciples who were about to be, uh, about to witness the, the, his coming in judgment upon Jerusalem, that would have been very, very pertinent for them.

They would have understood exactly what he was talking. So that's why I'm here.

I want to, I want to hear another point of view and I'm open to what God has. Excellent.

Thank you for hanging in there, Ro. Thank you. Tell Pete, I said, hello. I will. Thank you, Anthony. You're welcome.

Hi, aunt Trish. Am I waking you? Hello? No, stop saying that.

I know your buddy's sleeping over there, right? Oh yeah. He went in about eight 15. He's like, I'll, I'll, uh, listen on the

YouTube. Okay. But he was loving it as I was, but I didn't have any questions.

Just listening to everybody and it's just, you know, excellent. Excellent. Are you sure?

Who wrote that? That was my son. That wasn't me. Yeah. He's sneaking in around as me.

Not good. Yes. I wonder why. Thank you, aunt Trish. Okay.

Bob and Joanne. I'm here. I was a very good, very good tonight,

Anthony. Okay. Um, I really don't have anything, but, um, it was very good.

I think you were very in depth with a lot of things and, uh, as usually you covered a lot of ground and, um, it was very profitable.

Excellent. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Is it helping you? You're understanding, you know, when Jesus says his coming to Parousia, you know, he, he doesn't necessarily mean physical coming.

It's spiritual. This generation is this generation. You means you. Yes. Yes.

And as a matter of fact, I thought you was stole my notes because I knew all this already. Okay.

Well, if you have notes, why don't you send them on over? I could use them, you know, No, it was very good.

You know, I'm only kidding. Yeah, it was very good. All right, pal. I can't wait to see you again. Trust me.

Same here. All right, buddy. Let me, uh, see who else where's my buddy, Jake, Jake. What's up, buddy?

Hey, Anthony, how's it going, man? All right. You. Yeah, it was, it was good, man. I really enjoyed it and, uh, just wanted to thank you for it, you know, and all the preparation you do to put it together.

So no problem. Such a blessing. Um, yeah, man, I, I don't really have much to say other than that.

Um, when, you know, when he continually says, you know, your and you and, and stuff like that, and to understand that, you know, the disciples are the ones who are asking him about what's going to happen and how he says you speaking directly to them, you know, and I, uh,

I recently just finished up the book of acts and, um, man, it's just amazing going, thinking in my mind, back to the book of acts, everything that took place, you know, with the disciples and everything.

And if, you know, reading, like I'm looking actually in Mark, uh, chapter 13, which is just a, another, um,

I guess, you know, side -by -side portion of the Olivet discourse. He says, but beyond your guard, talking to this disciples, he says, for, they will deliver you over to the councils and you will be beaten in synagogues and you will stand for governors and Kings.

Yeah. And then, um, and then going down, he says, uh, but whatever is given, but, um, do not be anxious beforehand what you were to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour for it is not you who speak, but the

Holy spirit. And I was like, huh, that sounds familiar. Cause it's like in acts, you see, I wrote down a couple of portions.

It's like acts four eight says Peter filled with the Holy spirit as he was going to speak to, um, the, the, the, the council that was telling them to stop speaking the name of Christ in the gospel.

You say, um, you see Stephen, a man full of faith and Holy spirit, you know, and Paul filled with the spirit, like countless times you see, you know, them not even speaking on their own accord, but the spirit of God filling them, you know, and using them and speaking directly to these

Kings. You think of Paul with King Agrippa and, and, you know, Felix and Festus, you know, all these, these high officials, you know, that they stood before.

And it's just, um, just, it's amazing how it's all intertwined, you know, and it's all, it's all right there, you know?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that, again, in reading the guys that I'm reading,

Gary DeMar, Ken Gentry, uh, they using scripture to back up what they're saying.

So they're, they're looking at Matthew 24 and they're pulling other scriptures out of the book of Acts, out of Romans, out of the epistles, uh, to the early churches that back up that there were famines, there were wars, there were false messiahs.

There was a little apostasy. There was all these things. So you can see the scriptures dovetailing like that.

It just puts the pieces together. Then you look, not just looking forward, but you look backward.

You'll, you'll look to the, to the Levitical mandate of the priest tearing down the house. You look to, uh, the, the, the talk of the talk about birth pangs.

And that's a, that's a reference to the Messiah. Uh, okay. And what the Messiah was going to do to the temple, you would, you would see all those things.

All right. So it really benefits us to know the old Testament and the symbolism, any imagery behind it.

And like I said, we're going to get into the abomination of desolation, which is in the book of Daniel. We're going to get to the sun, moon, and stars.

We're going to get into all those things and, and really look at them because they're so pertinent to, to this, to this passage of scripture.

And if you don't know those, those, those things, you're going to start thinking sun, moon, and stars is literal sun, moon, and stars.

And then you have a mess on your just going to completely miss what, what the intent and the purpose of Jesus telling his early disciples what this was about.

Amen. Amen. And I have to say, um, I'm also very blessed by Jerry going through Joel and even this, this past week, going all the language of judgment on the nations, you know, and you brought up, um, you know,

Isaiah 19 one, you know, with, uh, you know, the clouds and things like that. Um, you know, definitely.

I mean, even also in Isaiah, I think 13, the Babylonian, um, judgment, right.

That's what the, um, with the darkening of the sun, I think, and things like that.

But yeah, that's that judgment language, you know, and I was, I'm just really blessed by all that. So yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, pal. Let me see. Uh, we got Eric. I can hear you.

All right. How's the couch? The couch is good. Uh, I got a couple of things.

Yeah. I'm going to take apart your whole argument with one thing. I saw the apostle

John with Elvis the other day at seven 11, he's still alive. Has he got it out?

Very long one. Yeah. Um, that would help if we all learned

Greek in, uh, school, it would be nice. Right. Yeah. Attention of us all understanding this better.

Yep. But that thing with that Bertrand Russell, because I could read that and, uh, you know, he, he got soured on the whole

Christianity thing in God. Sure. And one of his points was that false prophet thing.

But another one of his points was how Christians were acting like Christians.

They were being very judgmental, right. And one of his points was that he can, he said, there's even a group who preaches that Jesus is coming tomorrow and they don't even plant trees.

That was one of his points, you know, which is today, if you're just waiting to get taken out tomorrow, not, you know, you have to plan for tomorrow too.

Right. Right. Uh, oh, and then the

Daniel, the reason why there were, there were so many messiahs at the time making it is because of the

Daniel 70 weeks. They knew that was the end of the 70 weeks, right? It wasn't 69 and then a cause and then one sometime in the future in 2020.

Right. That the 70 weeks ended then. And that's why there were all the faith messiahs because they, the country was expecting it at that time.

Uh, another point also is Daniel. Um, when that was written and that was prophetic, that was told to be sealed revelation was meant to be read right away.

It wasn't meant for the future. It was, it wasn't said this is for the future. Seal it.

Right. Daniel was told this is for the future. Seal it. Right. Um, and then just another thing where you said they changed the word where Jason said they changed that word to race.

Right. Well, technically even if they changed the word to race, it still happened. It happened to the Jewish race.

The old Testament was done at that time. It really doesn't change anything. Right. Right. Yeah. It really changed.

Yeah. Yeah. Just to, just to, um, refer to your point, it's a

Daniel chapter eight, verse 26. Um, the angel gives the revelation to Daniel and he says, the vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told to us is true, but seal up the vision for refers to many days from now.

It refers to many days from now. Now from the time Daniel wrote that to the time

Jesus came was about between seven and 800 years. Okay. So if we had this, if sealing up the vision, um, and, uh, until the book of revelation would be many days when the book of revelation says that the time is near, the time is at hand.

We would certainly expect that to be less than 800 years because it's many days from now is seven or 800 years.

The time is and must soon take place must be less than many days.

So the scroll in, in, in the book of revelation is opened. Okay. Because the time is near the time is at hand.

It was something that they needed to know. So just looking, looking at the, the old Testament language saying that seal up the vision to refer to many days from now, and that actually historically being about 800 years.

And in the book of revelation saying that the time is at hand and must soon take place. You would expect that to be soon.

Anytime less than 800 years, if it's more than 800 years, well then soon doesn't mean soon.

And many days from now doesn't mean many days from it. It's, it's actually flip -flopping what it actually means, but thank you for bringing that up Anything else, buddy?

No, that's it. Thanks. Good job. Thank you, pal. All right. Let's see. We have Mr. Rob.

Hello. How are you doing? All right, buddy. How about yourself? Good. We're doing good. I mean, it was excellent.

You hit, you hit a lot of good points on there. I don't really have any questions on that. I just, you know,

I, I like how you reiterated time to time, the audience that, you know, that the scriptures are speaking to.

I remember as a new Christian reading through Matthew 24, you get to the part where it talks about, you know, this generation shall not pass away.

I remember that it stopped me and I'm thinking, I'm like, I don't understand what that means. So I, you know, at the time

I was in a dispensational church and I asked some of the guys there, oh, it's a, it's a split in, it's a split in prophecy.

You know, that this is one part of prophecy and this isn't, and it didn't make sense, but I'm like, you know what, these guys are a lot smarter than me, so I'm just going to go with it.

Right. You know, and it just, it proves the point that you let scripture dictate scripture. You don't put your ideas in there and start coming up with these, you know, wacky reasons why this is going to do this, you know, just to get your point across though.

Right. It's just an important part we need to remember. Yeah, I agree with you. I think if you let the language speak for itself and you use the scriptures to interpret the scripture, you're going to come to a much more biblical understanding.

It doesn't mean that every conclusion we come to or every conclusion I've come to is 100 % rock solid, but I think,

I think we have a better chance of getting it right when we see it elsewhere in scripture. I mean, this is, this is how we understand the

Trinity, right? You know, we look at all the we look at all of, it's not just Sola Scriptura, it's

Tota Scriptura. We look at all of the scriptures, compile all that data, and then come to the conclusion that, yeah,

God is one essence in three in person. You know, he's triune. You know, you wouldn't come to that if you just read one verse in isolation and didn't understand what happened in the

Old Testament or the New Testament Revelation. I think the same thing is true of this, talking about the end of the age, not the end of the world to this generation and with regards to the destruction of the temple.

So everything centered, the whole Jewish life centered around that temple.

That was the center of everything for them. So for, for God to destroy that house, that temple and leave no stone on top of another was basically destroying their entire life.

It was, it was over. They had no way to make atonement for their sin. So again, that was judgment on Israel because they crucified the

Lord of glory. I mean, you know, he, he was merciful in, in, in allowing them to live up until that point.

So in warning them over and over and over again, that this was going to happen and to turn to him, but you know, they didn't, they didn't.

So, all right, pal, thanks for, uh, thanks for tuning in. All right. Thank you.

You got it, buddy. Let me see. That's where's Loretta? Where did

Loretta go? I think she turned out. You there Mike? Yeah. I think mommy left.

Yeah. Okay. I was great time. Did you have any questions? Uh, no, you covered a lot, a lot to digest.

I think you did a great job, but, uh, you know, thank you. Thank you for all the effort you put into it.

Yeah. No worries. I'm happy to do it. It's a, it's a, it's a blessing. It's a blessing. It's a pleasure. So, all right.

I think, uh, Mr. Jerry, you around? Yep. You want to, uh, pray and close this out?