148. 14 Reasons the Great Tribulation ALREADY Happened

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 148, 14

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Reasons the Great Tribulation Already Happened. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast.

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Whether you are a regular viewer of the show or if you're one of the over 400 new subscribers who just joined in the last 30 days, thank you and welcome.

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We're so glad that you're here, and if you're new, let me catch you up a little bit on where we've been.

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This is a show where we're trying to shake off dispensational defeatism. We're trying to revive the church to have an optimistic view of the end times.

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We're trying to inspire God's people to joyfully rebuild Christendom today.

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And if you've been curious about things like preterism, the view where many of the prophecies that people think are actually in the future have already been fulfilled in the first century, then you're in the right place.

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We've already done 10 episodes so far in this Revelation series, which, by the way, have been on Matthew 24, because we believe that Matthew 24 is a wonderful introduction to the book of Revelation.

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So we've got 10 episodes that are filled with all kinds of details about how these great end times events have happened in the past.

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So you can go check those out on the channel. Be sure to do that because there's a ton of information in there that you won't wanna miss.

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Eschatology, what we've been kinda walking through here, matters. If you believe that the world is on a doom and gloom rollercoaster, if that's the trajectory, if we are spiraling towards an inevitable collapse, well, then you're likely to perpetually live out your life as if you were in a hotel room, never really fully unpacking your suitcase, because you're not gonna be here that long.

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You're just kinda passing through. But, but, that's not the way that we believe on this show.

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We believe in victory. We believe in the steady and unstoppable growth and increase of Jesus's kingdom on earth, where every passing generation, every century and every millennium is gonna be more

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Christian. The population of the church is gonna continue to grow. And as more spirit -indwelled believers inhabit the world, the earth is actually gonna become increasingly sanctified.

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And the net effect of that, with more Christians being in the world, is not that the nations are going to spiral into greater forms of lawlessness, but with more

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Christians on the earth, we would expect that the world would actually become more moral.

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The world would become more worshipful. The world would become more conformed to the image of Christ.

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Now, that doesn't mean we're not gonna face setbacks. Of course we will. But when the times feel dark and discouraging, the answer is not retreat or resignation.

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The antidote to defeat is not despair, doom, or dispensational gloomery.

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The antidote is courage. The answer is resilience and a fighting spirit.

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Christ calls us to plant our flag and plant his kingdom flag in the soil of this world, not to wave the white flag of surrender.

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Just like the book of Acts, we advance no matter what happens. Whether they mock us, imprison us, or even kill us, we keep advancing.

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Because here's the thing, if we persevere in faithfulness, we're gonna win. It's not because of us, but it's because that this world belongs to Jesus and he's told us to go and spread his dominion to the ends of the earth.

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He gave us a mission that he wants us to accomplish and by his spirit, he will lead us to accomplish it.

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That's why this show zeroes in so much on eschatology because I believe eschatology shapes the way we live.

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It shapes the way we work. It shapes the way we build and fight and do everything to the glory of God.

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Because if we believe that we're just waiting to get raptured out of here, like I said before, we're not gonna work, we're not gonna build, we're not gonna do things that take long periods of time to work themselves out.

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But if we realize that Jesus is advancing his kingdom through the church, that he is gonna win the world, he is gonna win the nations and he's gonna use you and I to do it, well, then you're going to spend the time that it takes to build strong families, strong churches, strong businesses, strong nations and all of that.

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So, welcome back to your weekly little kick in the pants where we're gonna prod all of God's people to righteousness and where we're gonna call the church to continue crushing the enemies of God under her feet.

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And today, we're gonna dive into our next episode in this Revelation series, which is called 14

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Reasons Why the Great Tribulation Has Already Happened. And we're gonna do that by setting the stage.

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Setting the stage. If failed in time predictions were a category in the

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Winter Olympics, the competition for the biggest loser would be the most competitive of them all.

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From Simon Bar -Giora declaring the end of the world as Rome invaded

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Judea in 1867, all the way to Edward Wiesenot's 88 Reasons Why the

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Rapture Could Be in 1988, it seems that the Christian church has become an ever -growing trash heap of failed eschatological predictions that never end up materializing.

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I might even be inclined to call it a dumpster fire, but I think that would be giving it too much credit.

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Now, there's some among us who would probably cling to the mantra of, if at first you don't succeed, well, you need to try, try again.

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Persisting with a zeal of fools in the ministry of failed predictions, convinced that the right cocktail of news articles, numerology, and blood moons will finally crack the prophetic code as they trudge forward undeterred.

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Yet, within this echo chamber of eschatological stupidity and madness, almost no one in the futurist camp pauses to ask the very obvious question, why aren't these predictions coming true?

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Why is it that every year we get a new prediction about when the temple's gonna be built, when the sacrifice of the red heifer's gonna happen, and all of this madness?

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Why is it that none of it ever pans out? Well, the answer is plain and obvious.

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The events that they are forecasting for the future have already unfolded in the past.

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All of the things that they're looking at the news and they're saying, this must be a sign of this, this must be the king of the north, this must be

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Gog and Magog, all of it, every bit of that has already happened in the past.

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There is a historical fulfillment of every one of these passages that they're projecting into the future.

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So the reason that they can't figure out how to accurately prophesy those passages into the future is because they don't belong there.

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They've already occurred in the past. Now, we've said this several times, I'm not a full preterist.

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I do believe that Jesus is gonna return. I believe that when Jesus returns, he's gonna give everyone who's ever died in Christ new imperishable bodies so that we can live with him forever.

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And everyone who was not in Christ will be given imperishable bodies and they'll be thrown into the lake of the fire to suffer forever.

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That's the end. Jesus will return and do that. He himself will put death under his feet, the final enemy.

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But until that point, all of these other passages like the abomination of desolation that we looked at last week and false messiahs and rumors of wars and famines and earthquakes and all of it, have already happened in the past.

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And rather than acknowledging that glaring truth, many continue to watch these episodes, many continue to interact with me in the comments, many continue to interact with me on other social media platforms and just straight up ignore all of the evidence that we've been presenting.

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They avert their gaze, they ignore history, they march on in a kind of delirium of denial chasing new fulfillment with the fervor of an addict that's chasing his next high.

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Like a heroin addict returning to the needle over and over and over again, the futurist returns to the drawing board, feverishly linking ancient prophecies to the latest headlines and it's pitiful.

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It's pitiful in the way that Sisyphus in ancient Greek mythology is, always rolling the rock up the hill and at the end of every day, the rock rolls right back down, which is a spectacle of futility.

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The futurists are doing the same thing. They're trying to find the next eschatological event in the timeline when they've already happened.

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In what follows, I'm gonna give more evidence. I'm gonna talk about the great tribulation, which we talked about a little bit.

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If you remember, we talked about it a little bit in our episode called The Tribulation. There's a difference between the tribulation and the great tribulation.

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The tribulation, we said in that episode, is when the church goes through this incredible season of persecution, violence, murder, martyrdom and all of that and we showed how that happened between 8030 and 8070.

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Now, we're at the end. We're at the end where the temple is getting ready to be destroyed.

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The Roman armies are getting ready to seal the deal and the great tribulation is what we're looking at today, which is right at the very end.

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And for my futurist friends, if you're watching, I'm not going to appeal to nanobots.

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I'm not going to appeal to Haley's Comet. I'm not going to appeal to the Plandemic, Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, the

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Trilateral Council or any of that other nonsense. I'm simply gonna cite scripture and I'm gonna prove once and for all why the end time prediction of the great tribulation has already occurred in the first century.

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And my hope in doing this is that Christianity would recover from the gangrenous rot of dispensational doom and gloom madness and that we would march forward as disciples of Christ, ready and eager to build the kingdom that he has called us to build.

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So with that, let's jump to our text, let's read it and then let's get into it. 14

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Reasons Why the Great Tribulation Has Already Happened. Matthew 24, 15 through 28 says this.

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Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.

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Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains and whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things out or that are in the house.

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Whoever's in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days.

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But pray that your flight will not be in the winter or on the Sabbath, for there will be a great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now nor ever will.

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Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.

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Then if anyone says to you, behold, here's the Christ or there he is, do not believe him. For false

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Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, even if possible, the elect.

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Behold, I have told you in advance so that if they say to you, behold, he is in the wilderness, do not go out or behold, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe them.

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For just as lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will be the coming of the son of man.

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Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. Matthew 24, 15 through 28.

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Now, let's get into our 14 evidences. Reason one, this generation and all these things.

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Now our first evidence comes from Matthew 24, 34. We've said this passage many times.

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Jesus says this, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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Matthew 24, 34. Here, Jesus has given us two very powerful criteria for understanding the entire

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

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Second, he's affirming that everything that he said prior to verse 34, you know the verse where he says all these things will happen in a single generation?

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Everything before that happens in a generation. It would happen in the same 40 -year window that we've been talking about this entire time.

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This means that the rise of false messiahs, the wars and rumors of wars, the earthquakes, the famines, the persecutions, the tribulations, the increased lawlessness, the apostasy, the worldwide proclamation of the gospel, the abomination of desolation, and this great tribulation, signs and wonders, suns darkened, stars falling, skies rumbling, the heavens being shaken, the tribes of the land being in mourning, the son of man returning on the clouds, and the so -called rapture.

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All of that occurred before verse 34, which means that all these things are gonna happen in a single generation.

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When Jesus said that, he meant it. He really meant that every single one of those things that he said were going to happen in that generation before even some of his disciples died.

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And we've been going through the proofs for this. We saw the rise of false messiahs that were evidenced by figures like Thutis and Judas in Acts chapter 5, 37 through 36.

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We saw how wars and rumors of wars were actually happening. At the time Jesus made this prediction, the

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Pax Romana was bringing peace to the entire Roman world, but by the time you get to AD 68, you have a

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Roman civil war, then you have the year of the four emperors, then you have the Roman nation almost completely collapsing due to these civil wars until Vespasian becomes emperor in AD 69.

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What about the earthquakes? We saw over and over and over again seismic activity that was recorded in places like Laodicea and Pompeii, and also in Judea.

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What about the famines? We saw the one that was mentioned in Acts 11, 28 that came true under Claudius.

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We saw tribulations and apostasy. We saw persecutions that were erupting all over the early church,

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Acts 8, 1, as believers were facing hostility from the Jews and the pagans alike. We saw how the gospel was even proclaimed to the whole world,

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Matthew 24, 14, because the word for world there is the known world of the

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Roman empire, which Paul himself affirms was already happening in Colossians chapter one, verse six and verse 23.

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Further, when our God in the flesh with all intelligence and all wisdom and limited this prophecy, when

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Jesus, the omniscient savior, limited this prophecy to a single generation, he didn't do it to confuse us.

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He didn't do it to trick us. He didn't do it to give us a word riddle that we would have to figure out with decoder rings and all of those things like we've made fun of before.

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Jesus was giving us this word because he meant it.

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He meant for us to lay down our opinions. He meant for us to lay down our doubts, and he meant for us to simply believe that all these things were gonna happen in a single generation.

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He didn't ask us to debate him. He didn't ask us to turn on Fox News or CNN or wherever else and try to find evidences of the end times in our generation.

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He told us to trust him. He told us to defer our opinion so that we could trust his.

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He's the one who said that this is not gonna happen in a future speculative age, but that it was going to happen in a single generation.

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He gave this prophecy as an unmistakable warning to his disciples about things that were gonna happen in their lifetime.

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And while there is a phenomenal amount of evidence to support this view,

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I would even go as far as to say you don't even need to understand any of it in order to adopt a humble and submissive and faithful posture to the word of God.

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If you are reading Matthew 24 and you're like, man, when did all these things happen?

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And you get to verse 34 and Jesus says, I'm telling you the truth, all these things are gonna happen in that generation, then all you really do is just, all you really need to do is just believe it.

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That really ought to settle it. The precision with which Jesus foretold all of these events that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 should be enough to silence all doubts and skeptics.

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To go on insisting that these events that are listed in the Olivet Discourse have to occur in the future just because we can't imagine a scenario where they've already been fulfilled in the past is to not only challenge the infinite wisdom, the infinite intelligence and the infinite integrity of Jesus Christ, but it's to set our teaching and our opinions over and above his.

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That, dear reader, seems like a very foolish, unsafe and unholy thing to do.

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Either Jesus is right or the dispensationals are right. It cannot go both ways because he said that it all must occur in a single generation, which means the futurist disagree with him.

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That's evidence number one. Reason two, Jerusalem surrounded.

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Now in Luke's account of the abomination of desolation, he quotes

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Jesus as saying this, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near,

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Luke 21 20. Now, among all the rampant confusion about this, it's vital to remember how pronouns actually work.

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In fact, I would even argue that the pronouns in the Olivet Discourse alone sufficiently prove that the great tribulation has already occurred.

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For instance, when Jesus says you in this passage, he's not unclear on what that means.

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He's not flip -flopping his pronouns like a Disney pop star before her or his or they or them's next album release.

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He knows what the word you means, and he knows when he's using you, a second person plural pronoun, that he's not referring to you and I.

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He's referring to the men who were standing right in front of him. He's saying when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, he's not saying when

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American Christians in the 21st century see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then we'll know that the Antichrist is, he's not saying that at all.

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He's saying to his contemporaries who he's looking at in the eyes.

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He's looking at James and he's looking at John and he's looking at Peter and he's looking at Barnabas and Bartholomew.

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He's looking at all of these men. And he's saying when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you will know that her desolation is near.

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He said that to them in AD 30, and he said that they were going to see it.

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That is so critical to understand because when we know that Jesus is applying the meaning of this passage directly to his disciples and not vicariously to us, then any thought that a great tribulation must occur many thousand years later into the future, long after the death of Jesus' disciples becomes not only untenable, but foolish.

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

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He's telling them that when you see it surrounded by armies, by Rome, then you're gonna know that its desolation has come.

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Jesus believed that some of his disciples were going to live and they were not gonna die before they saw

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Rome surrounding the city of Jerusalem. And he believed that when this happened, that it was gonna signal the end of the city, but also it was gonna signal the end of the old covenant era.

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And it was gonna signal the end of the Jewish people being in a covenant standing with God. But it's also gonna signify the beginning of the great tribulation that would be unparalleled in human history.

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And since no other city on earth had the religious standing of Jerusalem, no other city on earth was in covenant relationship with God like Jerusalem.

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No other city on earth had the temple of God, the very house of God, where the creator of time and space literally promised to live and dwell and be among them as their

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God and his people. When you realize that, that we are talking about the one place on earth where God has chosen to make his home and he's saying that when that city is surrounded by armies, that's when it's gonna be desolated.

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When you realize that, that this is happening, then there is no event in human history that rivals it.

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It's not like the destruction of Babylon. It's not like the destruction of Egypt. It's not like the destruction of Tyre, Sidon, Sodom or Gomorrah.

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It's unparalleled because none of those cities were the city of God. When this city and this temple is destroyed, it is unrivaled in the history of man because there is no other example of the city where God chose to make his dwelling known, being destroyed, cut off, covenantally speaking, and left desolate.

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The prophecy that we're talking about came to vivid and horrific fulfillment in AD 70, when

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Rome surrounded Jerusalem. And as Josephus recounts, the Roman legions cut off her supply routes.

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They trapped hundreds of thousands within the city walls. Famine consumed the people, leading to unspeakable acts of desperation.

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Internal factions among the Jews turned brother against brother. They slaughtered one another, even as Rome was preparing for its final assault.

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And when the walls were breached and the temple was desecrated and burned and utterly destroyed, all of it was accomplishing what

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Jesus said. All these things happened when

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Rome surrounded the city and they reduced their buildings to rubble and they burned their temple to the ground.

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No greater calamity had ever befallen another city on earth or in human history.

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This is unparalleled. Why? Because there is no city that ever claimed to be the city of God like Jerusalem did.

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There is no city that housed the temple of God like Jerusalem did. And when it was destroyed, it was earth changing and it was unparalleled.

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That's evidence number two. Reason three, the fleeing

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Judeans. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains,

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Matthew 24 16. And those who are in the midst of the city must leave and those who are in the country must not enter the city,

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Luke 21 21. Now, before the great tribulation occurs in Matthew 24 21,

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Jesus tells his disciples to be on the lookout. When they, not us, see the

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Roman armies coming and surrounding Jerusalem, when they see the Romans defiling the temple, then they, again, not us, need to flee to the mountains for safety.

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Now, in our day, this makes almost no sense whatsoever. If a world leader, aka the Antichrist, surrounded

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Jerusalem by armies in order to kill the Jews who were worshiping at their newly rebuilt temple, then it would make very little difference whatsoever if they fled from the city to the mountains.

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Because in modern warfare, helicopters would mow them down, tanks would saw them in half, mortar rounds would rain down on top of their heads, and drones would cut them down before they even reached the foothills.

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There would be no escape for them in the modern world. Yet, this is the way that dispensational thinkers imagine

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Matthew 24 16 playing out. They imagine that the Antichrist is gonna surround Jerusalem and that the

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Jews are going to somehow going to be able to flee to the mountains. That's not going to happen if this were a modern passage.

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And instead of that comic book eschatology, we need to think about what Jesus is actually saying.

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He's telling his disciples, not us, to be on the lookout for Roman armies that are gonna begin invading

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Judea in AD 66. At first, the Romans are gonna concentrate their power in Galilee and then in Judea.

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They're gonna conquer one town after another, after another, after another, which is gonna motivate the local populations to abandon their smaller towns and run to the city, which is what you did in the ancient world.

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You would leave your towns when you were being invaded and you would run to the highest point in the city, which was

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Jerusalem. Jerusalem at that time was a mountaintop city. It was a city with great fortification and that's where you would have naturally went if you were being invaded.

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By the time the Romans arrived at Judah's largest city, the population of the Jewish people in that city would have swelled to unsustainable proportions from taking in refugees from all of the

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Galilean country towns along the way. At that time, that is just simply what you did.

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When an army attacked your nation, you went to the highest, most fortified citadel where the largest amount of resources were already collected and amassed and ready and Jerusalem had an underground water supply which would have made it ideal for undergoing this kind of siege warfare.

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Yet, because Jesus knew that this was not a normal siege, he knew that the people of, he knew the

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Jews were gonna be brought under the doom of God. He knew that God was going to pull his grace away from them in such a way that they were gonna destroy themselves.

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He warned his disciples to abandon conventional wisdom. Don't flee to the highest point in the country.

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Don't go to the fortified city. Don't do that because if you did, it would signal certain disaster and death for anyone inside of those walls.

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Jesus knew that it was coming. So he told the earliest Christians to leave

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Jerusalem, to seek shelter elsewhere, to flee to the mountains which would have been the exact opposite of what you would have normally done but it's the reason why no

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Christians died in the siege of Jerusalem. Could this be why the earliest

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Christians sold their houses and sold their property in Acts 4 .34 because they knew that they were gonna need to live a highly mobile life that was ready to leave at a moment's notice?

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Is this also why Eusebius, the Christian historian, records that Christians fled to Pella which is in the mountains of Jordan before the siege began?

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History does not record a single Christian dying in Jerusalem. Why? Because Jesus told them to leave.

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This doesn't have anything at all to do with a modern event led by a maniacal

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European Antichrist. In fact, we do have a record that when the Roman armies began coming, the

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Christians left just like Jesus told them to knowing that their ministry to the apostate

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Jews was complete. They sold their homes. They became highly mobile and they spent 40 years in the city like Noah in a city that hated them trying to get the city to repent, preaching the gospel to them.

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And by that they endured innumerable persecutions in the service of Christ. In that wicked generation, they were treated horribly and they preached the gospel and they preached the gospel and they preached the gospel until finally the wrath of God fell upon those

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Jews. Jesus told them that when you see these things happen, flee and that is exactly what they did.

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And that is another proof that the great tribulation has already occurred.

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Jesus told them to flee before the great tribulation. The Christians fled in AD 70.

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All of these things have already occurred. And the evidence makes more sense when you look at it in the past than if you punt it to an uncertain future.

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That's reason three. Reason four, rooftops and backpacking.

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

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Matthew 24, 17. In the same breath, Jesus used to tell his followers to flee the city before the great tribulation.

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He also warned them with a very peculiar example that really doesn't apply well in the modern world.

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He told them, don't go downstairs from your flat rooftop patio in order to collect your belongings within the house.

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Today, this would be almost meaningless since none of us lounge around and congregate or spend any meaningful time on our rooftops.

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In most of the world, pointed and pitched roofs are dangerous to climb on, so you don't.

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Much of our life is not done on our rooftops. We live inside of our homes. We have air conditioning.

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We have heating and electrical and water. We don't spend time on our rooftops.

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But in that time, they did. They spent a lot of time on the roofs because their houses would become so hot during the daytime that they would congregate on a flat roof, not a pitched roof.

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And they would have spent time in the evening there. They would have spent time up there because it was cooler there than it was downstairs in their homes.

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This means that meals would occur on the rooftop. Parties, family gatherings, many other significant social occasions would occur on the roof of your house instead of inside of your house.

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You would only, in fact, go down into your house later in the evening when it's cooled off.

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You would sleep there. You would store your supplies there and your possessions there. And you would spend the cooler moments there.

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But most of your life would either be out in the fields working or on your rooftop doing your social family life.

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Now, because all houses were built that way in that time period and because most of the houses were actually built into the walls of the city, those who were going up to their rooftop to avoid the sweltering heat of the

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Judean sun would have had a perfect view of an advancing army. Imagine being on your rooftop relaxing in the evening and seeing the

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Roman legions marching toward Jerusalem with their banners flying high and their siege equipment moving into position.

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Jesus is warning Christian homeowners, don't go down into your houses. Don't waste your time packing your bags.

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Get out of the city immediately before it's too late when you see them upon the horizon. This warning makes perfect sense in their world and at their time and it makes almost no sense at our time.

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And as Josephus recounts to us, the Roman siege was marked by sudden advances, relentless attacks, any delay, whether it was to gather their possessions or whether to make one final preparation, any delay would have been fatal for the first century

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Christians. Jesus' prophecy down to the very practical details of rooftops and backpacking shows an unparalleled precision that cannot be ignored and just does not apply to our world.

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That's evidence number four. Reason five, hey farmer, leave your coat.

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Matthew 24, 18 says, whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak,

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Matthew 24, 18. In a similar warning, Jesus tells the farmers at that time not to go back into their homes to get their coats.

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This makes sense in an agrarian society where the majority of the

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Judean landscape was filled with farmers who all cared very deeply about their cloaks.

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At that time, a good coat said a lot about you. You remember Joseph. And we have other biblical examples of bloodthirsty men who were gambling in order to have

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Jesus' coat because it was a beautiful coat. It was a coat that was sewn in one piece of fabric and it didn't have stitches in it.

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In those days, a coat mattered. In those days, a coat might be your most valuable possession.

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But today, a coat is not really considered your most prized possession.

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Most people don't run into a burning house to save their pullover or their cardigan.

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At that time, people thought about a particular clothing item a lot differently than we do today.

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When Jesus gave this warning, it would have applied to farmers and it would apply to the fact that most of Judea at that time was dominated by farmers, shepherds, fishermen, mostly blue -collar, poorer people who needed their coat in order to survive.

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It would have been their prized possession. But today, that's not what modern -day Israel looks like.

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If you look at modern -day Jerusalem today, this geographical region that Jesus is referring to that used to be home for blue -collar tradesmen has now become a sprawling metropolis that's filled with high -tech industry.

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Instead of farms that are filled with plants, the landscape now is dominated by server farms, cybersecurity plants, information and communications technology firms, and all kinds of research and development enterprises that are highly affluent.

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If you're living in or around Jerusalem today, you are wealthy, which means that farming doesn't even contribute meaningfully at all to modern -day

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Israel. So when Jesus says, if you're in the fields, then don't go back to get your coat, it doesn't make sense today because no one in that area that Jesus is talking about actually works in the fields.

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There just aren't farms there anymore. And even if there were, none of them consider their coat to be among their most prized possession, not like they would have in the first century.

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The plain and simple fact is that this was a specific warning to a people living in a specific time to avoid a tribulation that was going to happen to them.

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Forcing this into the modern world is to accept the ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense.

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

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But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, but pray that your flight will not be in the winter or on a

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Sabbath. Matthew 24, 19 through 20. Now, if you think that this passage is about the end times and you believe that someone somewhere is gonna be fleeing the city of Jerusalem and it's gonna be a good thing if they're not pregnant or it's not on the

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Sabbath. And yet, that makes no sense of the modern world. If you were planning in the ancient world to flee your homeland when

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Vespasian brought his Roman legions to your doorstep, well, then you would have appreciated Jesus' warning here.

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Beyond not going back to your house to get your cloak or not coming down off your rooftop to grab your rolling pin, it would have been a really good idea to know what other travel hindrances might afflict you.

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For instance, if speed was the most crucial thing or the most crucial component of your flight, which would have been on foot, by the way, clothed in sandals and robes, then being pregnant would certainly be a prohibiting factor that would have slowed you down.

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Stopping to nurse your crying infant while frantically trying to run for your life would have not only been difficult, but any crying that the baby made would risk someone hearing you and your position being exposed.

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Winter travel would have made your flight miserable and it would have exposed you to the elements, especially in the mountainous portions outside of Jerusalem.

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And then on top of that, trying to do that on the Sabbath in first century

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Judea could have gotten you killed because Sabbath observance, remember, we've talked about this in the late 60s, was enforced so heavily by the fanatic zealots then you would have been killed for violating the

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Sabbath. The hardline zealots and the legalistic Pharisees that were controlling the city would have not allowed you to move beyond the prescribed

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Sabbath day's journey, Acts 112. And that wouldn't have only brought public shame upon you if you tried to do something different, but they would have killed you for it.

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Today, that's not the case. If you're living in Los Angeles or Paris or Sydney or any of these other cities, nobody cares if you're traveling on the

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Sabbath. I'm not saying that that's good or bad, but nobody's looking at you and saying, why are you in your car on the

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Sabbath? That's not the case in our world. It was the case in theirs. No one would stop you today, but back then you would be stopped.

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This was a real and present danger for the people of the first century.

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Jesus' warning was perfectly tailored to his immediate audience and what they were gonna deal with in the 40 years after his resurrection.

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But today, the warning loses all practical meaning. I mean, we're not gonna be fleeing the city of Jerusalem on our feet.

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Temperature -controlled cars, heated runways, and hospitals eliminate the dangers of traveling in the wintertime and traveling if you're pregnant.

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Modern conveniences make nursing or pregnancy far less of an obstacle than it would have been in the first century.

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And strict Sabbath observance that characterized first century Judea is almost nonexistent in the world today, even in Israel.

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If a future antichrist waged all -out war on Israel, no one would pause to ask whether fleeing on the

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Sabbath was permissible or not. It simply would not matter. This is yet another prove that these words are perfectly tied into that generation's social context and not ours.

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Jesus' warning were precise and they were practical and they were tailor -made for his audience.

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To force this passage into the modern world and to say that it's a good thing you're not traveling in the wintertime because of all of those inconveniences of riding around in your heated car, and it's a good thing that it's not gonna be when you're pregnant because God forbid you'd have to drive four miles to the next hospital, that's terrible.

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Think about it. The whole situation of the way that we live in the modern world and how modern the

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Judean landscape is today with all of its hospitals and airports and everything, this makes no sense in the modern world.

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But it does make sense in theirs. To ignore the cultural, geographical, and religious realities of Jesus' day in order to punt this into the future borders on stupidity.

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This has nothing whatsoever to do with an end time disaster. This is a first century calamity that Jesus is warning his people to avoid.

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That's evidence number six. Reason seven, these be days of vengeance.

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Luke 21, 22 says, because these are days of vengeance so that all things which are written will be fulfilled.

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Luke 21, 22. Now at some point in my lackluster elementary school career,

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I was introduced to the concept of near and far demonstrative pronouns. A near demonstrative pronoun, which is this or these, describes things that are close in relationship to you, whereas a far demonstrative pronoun, which is that and those, describes things that are far from you.

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For example, I could eat this apple that's right in front of me, but if I wanted to eat that apple that's on the television commercial, well,

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I would need to travel a long way to wherever that apple is located. This little silly example proves my point.

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We use the words this and these to describe things that are near to us, and we use words like that and those to describe things that are far from us.

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Now, knowing this, Jesus says that these days are the ones where God's vengeance is gonna be poured out.

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He's not speaking about far off years, those years in the future.

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He's talking about the years that are right in front of him, the years that are right in front of his disciples. By using the word these, he is telling us that it's the near -term fulfillment that's actually in his mind.

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It's years that are near to the disciples' experience. If multiple thousands of years in the future were

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Jesus' point, he would not have said these are days of vengeance, he would have said those are days of vengeance.

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Now, in addition to the most basic elementary grammar that we're just talking about here,

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Jesus also cites fulfillment out of the Old Testament passages like Isaiah 63,

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Daniel 9, Hosea 9 as the reason that the great tribulation would occur in that very generation, case in point.

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Notice how Hosea speaks about the punishment that is going to come and why God is going to bring it in these days, in the days following his resurrection.

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Hosea 9, 7, and 17 says this. The days of punishment have come.

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The days of retribution have come. Let Israel know this.

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The prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented because of the grossness of your iniquity and because of your hostility is so great.

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My God will cast them away because they have not listened to him and they will be wanderers among the nations,

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Hosea 9, 7, and 19. Not to keep beating the same old drum here, but Jesus said, these are the days of vengeance.

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He's quoting Hosea 9 and Hosea 9 said it's gonna come upon that generation. To think that these things happen, that the days of vengeance are still in the future is just to ignore common sense.

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That's reason seven. Reason eight, the land distress and the people wrath.

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

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Now, after our little foray into near demonstrative pronouns, you're well qualified to see that the point

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Jesus is making here. He said that great distress is gonna fall upon the land, which is common reference to Judah.

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And it was the covenantal territory given to God's people. And he says that great wrath is gonna fall on this people.

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Not those people over there, not that people who are far away, but this people, the people right in front of me, the people who are alive at the time of Jesus's giving this prophecy, the people who are going to reject him as Messiah.

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When Jesus said these words, he was addressing a specific audience, his contemporaries, the

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Jewish leaders, the people who were gonna turn their back on him, the people who were gonna say, we have no king but Caesar.

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That's the people he's saying that are gonna face the covenantal disaster that's outlined in Deuteronomy 28 for breaking the covenant with God.

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And if you read Deuteronomy 28, it is not an easy read. It is painful, awful, disastrous consequences.

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Not that they're gonna get a slap on the wrist. No, that they're gonna eat their children, that they're gonna roast them in the fire, that they're gonna be surrounded by enemy armies and their city's gonna be set on fire and they are going to be undone.

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That's what Deuteronomy 28 is predicting. So when Jesus, in Matthew 23, he tells them that all of God's wrath is gonna fall on them, that all of his covenantal woes is gonna fall on them.

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He is enacting the Deuteronomy 28 curses and he is pointing that it is on that generation, the generation that he was standing right in front of, that it is not a future point that is gonna happen to a future people.

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It is covenantal punishment on covenantal people for their covenant crimes.

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It was a local immediate judgment that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in AD 70.

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And history confirms the accuracy of Jesus's words. Josephus recounts that the

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Roman siege brought unspeakable horrors on the land of Israel. Famine, slaughter, total devastation fell upon this people.

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That very generation that rejected the Messiah was put under the curse of God. No generalizations are needed here.

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The text is clear. The great tribulation was a first century event focused on first century issues, i .e.

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the covenant people turning their back on their God. To force this passage into a modern, futuristic context is to ignore its specificity, to ignore its covenantal framework, to ignore its grammar, to ignore its language, to ignore its setting.

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All of it is to look right at Jesus and say, we know better than you what you meant when you said this.

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That is reason eight. Reason nine, an unprecedented event.

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For then there will be a great tribulation such as not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.

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Matthew 24, 21. Apparently, Jesus believed that immediately after the

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Roman army showed up and surrounded the city that a great tribulation would occur. He didn't think that it was gonna occur in the long, distant future, thousands of years away.

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He thought that in that generation it was gonna happen. That a great tribulation was going to occur that was gonna bring complete and total ruin upon Jerusalem.

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He says then, meaning after the army show up, then a great tribulation was going to happen.

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Then manifold calamities were gonna befall the people. Then these things were going to occur, which is exactly what happened in history.

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After Rome showed up and they set up camp and they began chopping down trees on the Mount of Olives, which by the way is why there are no trees on the

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Mount of Olives today, because the Romans gathered there, chopped all of those beautiful trees down, and they used the wood to either warm their bodies at night or to build catapults and siege ramps.

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When that happened, the Jews inside the city were driven to a kind of reckless insanity that fueled all kinds of turf wars and factional infighting.

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This is what's so crazy, is that when the Romans showed up, which were God's instrument of judgment upon the

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Jews, God also withdrew his restraining presence. He withdrew whatever presence that he has been sharing with the

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Jews that was left, he withdrew it and they became insane. Think about this, why are we not worse than we are?

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It's because God is restraining our evil. God is restraining even Hitler. You think about some of the

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Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, you think about people who are typically considered to be your worst of the worst people.

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They could have been worse if God had pulled back his presence from them. God in his grace restrains evil on earth, but in Judea, in this time, when

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Rome showed up, God withdrew his presence and they went absolutely mad.

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You read about it in Josephus and you're like, what is causing the insanity? What is causing the psychopathy that's going on inside of the city?

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There's no other explanation, and Josephus highlights this, than that God was cursing them.

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Brother was turning on brother, father was killing son, thousands were being butchered, innocents were being robbed, raped, and pillaged.

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The temple was being defiled like they didn't even care about it. The food supply was poisoned, the water supply was poisoned, all of this brought such intense pain, starvation, and misery that mothers resorted to eating their own babies.

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Dignified men were feasting on animal excrement and different items that were found in the city sewers.

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Josephus tells us that in Jewish wars, five, 13, seven, and six, three, four, that all these things were happening.

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Josephus is an eyewitness to these events, and he barely had words to describe the calamity and the misery that he was witnessing, he couldn't even believe it.

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He tells us in the preface to his history this, but if anyone makes an unjust accusation against us when we speak so passionately about the tyrants or the robbers or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our country, let him indulge my infections herein.

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

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Jews, are not considerable as they were. Jewish wars preface four. While Josephus was not a believer, and it's not clear that he even knew the words that Jesus said in Matthew 24, 21, he is telling us that what the

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Jews went through was like what no one on earth had ever been through before. He is telling us that the tremendous devastations and tragedies that befell the

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Jewish people were worse than what any people had ever gone through before. That's what Josephus says. He even goes as far as to say that no people, no people group, no nation has ever suffered the way that the

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Jews did in that war, which is an astounding thing to say. He's saying that, he's echoing what

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Jesus said, that this will be worse than anything that had happened previous to that.

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This was not just another siege warfare. It was covenant judgment. It was marking the end of the old covenant era, which meant that the unparalleled suffering that Jesus predicted that aligns with the curses of Deuteronomy 28 are unique and they are horrific, and that they are worse than anything anyone else had ever went through before and after.

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The consequences for their covenant disobedience, including the siege conditions, were so severe that people fell into unique and hostile madness,

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Deuteronomy 28, 53 through 57, and some might argue that other historical events, such as the

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Holocaust or how many people Stalin killed in World War II, that those rival or exceed the numbers of dead bodies that we get in AD 70, and if you're only doing your math by how many dead bodies show up, then maybe you have a case, but Jesus's words were not about the body count.

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They weren't about the geographic devastation. They weren't about how badly the city was destroyed. The tribulation that Jesus is talking about was unprecedented because it was covenant judgment against God's chosen people in the very land that he promised to dwell with them.

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It culminated in the destruction of the temple he promised to dwell in, the symbol of God's presence on earth, where heaven and earth connected was now being destroyed by God.

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This signified the end of a longstanding old covenant age where God was dwelling with his people.

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From that perspective, there's nothing else like it on earth ever in human history. The Holocaust and other historical events, as bad as they were from a physical brutality standpoint, are not even comparable to what's going on in AD 70 because in AD 70, the covenant people in covenant relationship with God are being destroyed.

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And I wanna be sensitive here. When the Jews were destroyed in the

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Holocaust, when Christians were destroyed by the Russians, when Chinese people were destroyed by their leader,

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Mao Zedong, when you have all of these tragedies, you are not dealing with a people who were in covenant relationship with God to be the very nation on earth where God made his presence dwelling.

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That's what makes this unique. The first century Jews went through a horrific devastation that was both physical and spiritual.

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It was God cutting out his covenant people for their murderous crimes against their covenant.

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Far from this being a global event, Jesus' prophecy was laser focused on Judea and on this people,

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Luke 21, 23. Let me give you an example of how this is. There were tens of thousands of people who were crucified just like Jesus was crucified.

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There were people who were crucified and beaten with 40 lashes. There were people who carried their own cross.

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What Jesus went through physically, other people also went through. So in that sense, when we talk about the physical brutality of the cross, it was awful, but other people went through it as well.

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What makes Jesus' cross so horrific is that on top of the physical brutality,

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Jesus also felt a spiritual brutality of the fact that God, who for all eternity had been in perfect fellowship with his own son, now is turning his face away from his son.

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That's why Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? Because Jesus was going through physical brutality and spiritual brutality, which made his crucifixion the worst horror that's ever happened to a single individual on earth.

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Well, in the same way, the city of Jerusalem did not only go through the physical brutality of the siege warfare in Jerusalem, not only did they starve to death, not only was raping, pillaging, violence, not only was blood poiled or pooled up in the city so much so that if you were to walk through it, you would get your ankles wet with blood, not only was the temple being devastated, not only was mothers eating their children, not only were people eating feces in order to survive, not only all of that, that was bad enough, there's other places in history that you could find similar brutality.

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What made it worse is that not only was it the physical brutality that God predicted in Deuteronomy 28, but it was the spiritual violence of being severed and cut out of the covenant, and in that sense, there's nothing else in human history like it.

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And it qualifies quite well for the term great tribulation.

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No other future time that you could concoct in your mind would fulfill this better than what already happened in the past.

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That's reason number nine. Reason 10, the days cut short.

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Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days,

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Mark 13 20. From the beginning of the Roman invasion into Galilee and Judea in AD 66, to the final stand of the zealots at Masada in AD 73, seven years were appointed by God for the total destruction of Judah.

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Three and a half of those years were allocated to the siege upon Jerusalem, and another three and a half were dedicated to the destroying of the zealots at Masada.

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Three and a half of those years were allocated to the siege upon Jerusalem, which witnessed the most horrifying atrocities imaginable.

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Jesus warned his disciples that as bad as those three and a half years would be, they were shortened by God as an act of grace for any elect

01:00:01

Christian that remained in the city. What's remarkable though is how God shortened those days, because the siege of Jerusalem under normal circumstances would have lasted maybe decades.

01:00:13

It could have. The city at that time had strong defenses, underground water supply, stored food rations.

01:00:20

They could have waited out the Romans for a much longer than three and a half years. Yet, as we've already said,

01:00:28

God handed the Jews over very quickly. The siege didn't last very long.

01:00:33

Why? Because the Jews were given over to a fit of madness, causing them to turn against each other, causing them to enter into civil wars where factions like the zealots were fighting the

01:00:44

Sicarii, the Sicarii were fighting the Pharisees, and you had warfare going on within the city so that the

01:00:50

Romans who were standing on the Mount of Olives are watching the Jews kill each other. Out of jealousy, one group poisons the other group's food supply.

01:01:00

And out of retaliation, one group poisons the water supply. And before long, every single blessing and benefit that Jerusalem offered to withstand a long siege warfare was eliminated.

01:01:14

These actions that the Jews did to themselves crippled their ability to withstand a prolonged siege, and it led to imminent starvation, sickness, and chaos, and it sped up their downfall.

01:01:28

God's sovereign act of a judicial hardening, which was hardening them by removing his presence, it turned their rebellion into self -destruction, and it ensured that the siege didn't last for 10 years.

01:01:42

It didn't last for 15 years. It was over in three and a half, which is really quickly, which is really quick for a city that was as prepared for this as Jerusalem must have been.

01:01:57

What would have been a prolonged and excruciating siege was cut short.

01:02:05

And paradoxically, that was a gift from God. And on top of that, every single person in the city of Jerusalem should have died for their rebellion, and yet that's not what happened.

01:02:16

The Romans didn't kill everybody. They did take some people hostage, which is grace. It's a cutting short of the calamity that could have killed them all.

01:02:26

This is what Josephus says, and now since his soldiers were already quite tired of killing men.

01:02:32

Think about that. The Romans who were professionals at killing people were tired of killing people. It's astounding.

01:02:38

And yet there appeared to be a vast multitude still remaining alive.

01:02:44

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

01:02:53

But together with those whom they had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm.

01:02:58

But for those that were in their flourishing age and who might be useful to them, they drove them together into the temple.

01:03:06

But of the young men, he chose out the tallest and the most beautiful and reserved them for the triumph.

01:03:12

That's when Titus paraded them throughout the city. He wanted the best looking Jews to be paraded through the city so that he could get credit for conquering the best, right?

01:03:23

But the young men, he chose out the tallest and the most beautiful and reserved them for the triumph.

01:03:29

And as for the rest of the multitude that were above 17 years old, he put them into bonds and sent them to the

01:03:37

Egyptian mines. Titus also sent a great number into the provinces as a present to them that they might be destroyed upon their theaters by the sword and by the wild beast.

01:03:49

But those that were under 17 years of age were sold for slaves. Jewish Wars 692.

01:03:58

Now this dramatic fulfillment of Hosea 9 demonstrates that God did shorten the days of the calamity upon the

01:04:05

Jews. He did make it shorter. He made it to where it did not linger on for a decade, but he brought unparalleled devastation in a shortened time period that spared the city from a prolonged protracted era of even greater suffering.

01:04:23

The significance of this shortening is twofold. First, it highlights God's sovereignty and his faithfulness to the elect who escaped the city.

01:04:32

Even in judgment, he preserved his purposes and he ensured that the suffering, though it could have lasted longer, didn't.

01:04:40

Second, it underscores the specificity of Jesus's prophecy. The Great Tribulation was a local, covenantal judgment, not a future global apocalypse.

01:04:51

Futurists claims that these things refer to a worldwide calamity, ignore the historical context, and the clear evidence that everything that we've said, or everything that Jesus said in this passage actually occurred, even the shortening.

01:05:05

Jesus warned his followers to flee Jerusalem because the city was doomed. The prophecy came true with so much precision that even the days were cut short, not to spare the guilty, but for the sake of the righteous, which is exactly what happened.

01:05:23

That's evidence number 10. Reason 11, false signs and wonders.

01:05:31

Now, we've already covered the marked rise and the proliferation of false messianic figures that dominated

01:05:37

Judea in the years before AD 70. During the buildup to the Roman War, charismatic rebels were gaining ascendancy in Judah.

01:05:44

They were drawing large crowds and they were promising freedom and emancipation from Rome, which ended up causing this great deception that happened that led to their demise.

01:05:56

But what we've not covered yet is the false signs and wonders that were occurring in the final months of the great

01:06:03

Jewish tribulation, which have been recorded by Josephus for us to consider.

01:06:09

For instance, Josephus describes a few very strange phenomenon that he was eyewitness to.

01:06:16

In fact, Josephus risks his own credibility as a historian in order to tell these stories.

01:06:23

Now, if you've never heard these before, these are fantastic in nature. Josephus is a credible historian and eyewitness to these event, and he's even skeptical of his own eyes when he's describing these things to us.

01:06:36

But I'm gonna share with you seven crazy false signs and false wonders and just strange events that happened around the time that the

01:06:48

Romans were getting ready to, that the Romans were getting ready to take over the city of Jerusalem.

01:06:55

I'm gonna give you seven. Here we go. Sign one, the sword and the comet that appeared in the sky.

01:07:03

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

01:07:12

God himself, while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident and did so plainly foretell their future desolation.

01:07:23

But like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them.

01:07:34

Thus there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city of Jerusalem and a comet that continued a whole year.

01:07:45

Jewish Wars 553. In those days, signs in the skies were powerful omens of national triumph or of coming destruction.

01:07:56

We're told by one Roman historian that Emperor Nero, who is a beast of a man, killed himself on the night of Halley's Comet.

01:08:05

And he believed that the comet was a sign of his imminent downfall. Well, in the same way,

01:08:12

Josephus is telling us of terrifying signs that are flashing in the sky. He's telling us of stars that were assembled which looked like a sword in the sky that was signaling to the

01:08:25

Jewish people that they were doomed by God. And while it's really hard for us to imagine a sword -shaped phenomenon that was hanging over the city of Jerusalem in the months that were leading up to the

01:08:35

Jewish War, or a comet that just hung in the sky for an entire year, the

01:08:41

Jewish historian Josephus was an eyewitness that these things did occur, and that it was this sign that was a sign of God's coming wrath against the

01:08:51

Jewish people. So he looks up, he describes this sign, and it was not good news for him.

01:08:56

That's sign number one. Sign two, the bright light during the festival.

01:09:02

Josephus tells us this. Thus also, before the Jews' rebellion and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month

01:09:17

Nisan, and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone around the altar and the holy house, which is the temple, that it appeared to be bright daytime, which lasted for a half an hour.

01:09:33

This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes as to portend those events that immediately followed upon it.

01:09:44

Jewish Wars 553. Now, Josephus is telling us that just before the

01:09:49

Romans arrived at the city and they surrounded the city and put it under siege, another sign appeared in the skies in Jerusalem in the months that were leading up to their downfall.

01:09:59

Apparently, while the sky should have been filled with nighttime darkness, a very strange and unnatural light, which came out of nowhere, shone around the temple complex and it made the altar and it made the temple complex beam with noonday intensity.

01:10:18

And while many in the city of Jerusalem took this spectacle, I mean, how often can you imagine that you're in the middle of the night and then all of a sudden it's shining brightly without the sun as if it were as bright as noonday, there were many in the city who took this to be a sign that they were going to be victorious over Rome.

01:10:37

They saw it as a good thing, but Josephus tells us that it was not a good thing.

01:10:43

This sign of God's light showing up outside of the temple was not a sign of his favor upon them, it was a sign of him exposing them, of him marking them out like a laser beam on a sniper scope.

01:10:58

Josephus remind us that this light was demonstrating that judgment was coming, like a spotlight shining down from a helicopter onto the criminals that were running away.

01:11:09

This was no good news to God's people, the Jews. This was sign that they had actually become

01:11:16

God's enemies. That's sign number two. Sign number three, the heifer that gave birth to a lamb.

01:11:25

Josephus tells us at the same festival also a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple.

01:11:37

Jewish Wars 553. Now, while the historian Josephus doesn't pause to give us any commentary or any opinion on the account of this fantastical nature, it can't be overlooked.

01:11:51

He's saying to us that a female cow gave birth to a lamb. He's saying that out of a cow's womb came an actual lamb as it was being led to the slaughter.

01:12:02

This was a strange sign. And you can imagine what

01:12:08

Josephus is thinking, even as he's writing it down, he's like, I'm going to say this and all people in the future are going to think that I'm a crazy person.

01:12:16

They're going to think that I am the kind of person that writes for like the National Enquirer, if you remember what that paper was.

01:12:26

Strange signs and mysterious events like these are fantastical by nature, but Josephus who is widely considered to be a serious scholar and a serious historian is telling us these things.

01:12:40

And I think it actually lends to his credibility. He's telling us things that he can barely believe with his own eyes.

01:12:47

Why? Because later he will tell us that all of these things that he's been describing have been supporting his fundamental thesis that the

01:12:57

Jewish people are under the curse of God. And that this sign and all the other signs should have awakened his people to repentance, but instead it pushed them further into pride and hubris, which led to their downfall.

01:13:13

That's sign number three. Sign four, the day God opened their gates.

01:13:19

Josephus tells us moreover, the Eastern gate of the inner court, which is the court of the temple, which was of brass and vastly heavy and had been with difficulty shut by 20 men was seen to be open of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night.

01:13:37

Now, those that kept watching the temple came here upon running to the captain of the temple and told him of it, who then came up thither and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again.

01:13:49

This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness.

01:13:59

But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies.

01:14:13

So these publicly declared that the signal foreshadowed the desolation that was coming upon them.

01:14:20

Jewish Wars 553. Josephus and the men of learning in the city knew what had just happened.

01:14:26

The temple gates were open. It took 20 men to open these gates normally and yet they were just somehow opened.

01:14:33

He records that somehow miraculously with no human intervention, the gates were open.

01:14:41

And he tells us that this was clear evidence that God had turned against them.

01:14:47

God was opening the gates of the temple to the Romans and saying, come in and destroy this place.

01:14:54

And while this seemed clear to the discerning, the powerful faction of messianic firebrands, the zealots who controlled the city thought that God was showing them that he was on their side, that he was opening up a gate of happiness to them, that he was gonna fight for them in their upcoming war, that he was gonna deliver them.

01:15:14

And this group of false messianic figures, false messiahs, false prophets deceived the entire population of Jerusalem into following them over the edge of a cliff.

01:15:29

And no doubt, this is why Jesus warned his followers not to listen to them, Matthew 24, 23 through 24.

01:15:37

That's sign number four. Sign five, chariots running across the sky.

01:15:43

Now, after the first four signs, things became even stranger in the writings of Josephus. He says this, besides these, a few days after that feast on the 20th day of the month of Giar, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared.

01:15:58

I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable were it not related by those that saw it and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals.

01:16:12

Four, before sun setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their army were seen running about among the clouds and surrounding the city,

01:16:23

Jewish War 553. Now, while we dare not speculate what

01:16:29

Josephus and his contemporaries were seeing, it was something that was very clear that Josephus saw something.

01:16:36

In fact, Josephus felt encouraged to write about it only because a sizable group of people also saw the same parade of soldiers riding through the sky.

01:16:46

Now, this eliminates the possibility of it being a vision because psychologically speaking, you don't have shared visions.

01:16:53

You don't have multiple people seeing the same things. Josephus and a group of people saw actual soldiers riding across the sky surrounding the city of Jerusalem.

01:17:03

Again, those who were discerning were noticing that heaven's armies were surrounding the city, getting ready to destroy it.

01:17:12

The city was encamped by three legions of Romans on all sides, but it was also surrounded by the armies of heaven who were ready to invade them from above.

01:17:22

And again, Josephus says, not good news. That's sign number five.

01:17:27

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

01:17:35

Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner court of the temple, as their custom was to perform their sacred ministrations.

01:17:46

They said in the first place that they felt a quaking and heard a great noise.

01:17:52

And after that, they heard a sound as of a great multitude saying, let us remove hints.

01:17:58

Jewish Wars 5, 5 -3. Now again, we've said this, earthquakes signal divine judgment, divine punishment upon a people.

01:18:07

And we've showed how there were earthquakes all throughout Judea and in various places in the Roman world during that 40 -year period of time.

01:18:14

But if that wasn't clear enough, that right then and there at the Feast of Pentecost, the earth was shaking beneath the priest's feet, they also heard words in Aramaic.

01:18:26

They heard it sounded to them like angels or like divine beings shouting at them, let us remove hints, which could mean nothing less than the removal of the temple, the end of the temple era, the decimation of their holiest building.

01:18:48

The writing on the wall was almost fully dried as the temple priest heard the angels declaring, let us remove this place.

01:19:01

And they ignored the signs to the bitter end. That's sign number six. Sign number seven, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

01:19:09

The final sign that Josephus records to us in his account appears to be the most important one to him of them all.

01:19:16

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

01:19:27

Here is the long form quote from Josephus describing what he saw that led him to believe that Jerusalem was going to undergo a great tribulation, that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.

01:19:39

This is what Josephus says. But what is still more terrible, there was one named

01:19:45

Jesus, the son of high priest at the time, Ananus, a plebeian and a husband man, who four years before the war began at a time when the city was in a very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast, where on it is our custom for everyone to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, a voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and against the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and against the brides, and a voice against the whole people.

01:20:27

That was his cry. And he went about by day and by night in all of the lanes of the city.

01:20:32

However, certain of the most eminent among the population had great indignation at this dire cry of his.

01:20:41

And they took up the man, and they gave him a great number of severe stripes and beatings.

01:20:47

Yet he did not say anything for himself or anything peculiar to those that chastened him, but simply went on with the same words which he had cried before.

01:20:58

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

01:21:06

Roman procurator, where he was whipped until his bones were laid bare. Yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor did he shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip, his answer was, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

01:21:28

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

01:21:48

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

01:22:08

Woe, woe to Jerusalem. Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food, but this was his reply to all men, and indeed, no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come.

01:22:23

Woe, woe to Jerusalem. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals and continued this ditty for seven years and five months without growing hoarse or being tired therewith until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest, fulfilled in our siege when it ceased, for he was going round the wall and he cried out with the utmost force, woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house.

01:22:56

And just as he added the last, woe, woe to myself also, there came a stone out of one of the catapults and smote him and killed him immediately.

01:23:08

And as he was uttering the very same presages, he gave up the ghost.

01:23:15

Jewish Wars 553. Can you imagine the haunting howl of this man for seven years pronouncing covenant woes upon the city that would not listen to him?

01:23:28

Woe, woe to Jerusalem, he walked down this alleyway and said and woe, woe to Jerusalem, he walked into the marketplace and said, and they beat him and all he said was, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

01:23:40

And they smacked him in the face and he said, woe, woe to Jerusalem. Some felt bad for him and gave him food, but all he said was, woe, woe to Jerusalem.

01:23:49

I want you to imagine how people must have thought that this man was crazy, a scoundrel, or even a liar.

01:23:55

And yet in the end, his proclamations upon the city came true.

01:24:01

Woe did come upon that city. Woe did come from God upon those who refused to repent and turn from their wicked ways.

01:24:09

But in their blindness, and in the blindness of their false messiahs who were leading them to make war with the

01:24:15

Romans, they died and the woes came upon them. They saw everything that Josephus had written.

01:24:23

They saw all the astounding signs, all the warnings, all of the denunciations of the false prophets and the zealots.

01:24:29

And I can scarcely imagine how all of the end time experts during that time period avoided the simple truth that woe was coming.

01:24:40

The only thing that you can say is that God must have removed his presence so severely, so thickly had he removed it that they could not see the truth.

01:24:53

And this gets to the point. And it's a similar thing that I would say about the dispensationals. You have swords appearing in the sky, soldiers running across the clouds.

01:25:04

You have the light that shows up in the temple, the temple gates being opened miraculously with no human effort.

01:25:10

You've got angelic voices saying that let us depart thence. And then you've got human voices by this man named

01:25:17

Jesus who's running around the city, calling it into covenant woes. And with the mountain of evidence that we see piled up here, and not just in this episode, but in all 10, this is number 11, all 11 episodes of this

01:25:32

Olivet Discourse that we've been doing, mountain upon mountain upon mountain of evidence. And how is it that end time experts today can avoid the magnitude of this evidence?

01:25:43

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

01:25:48

Christ, false signs, false wonders has demonstrably already occurred. We've just proved it.

01:25:55

Jesus said during this period of time, false signs and false wonders were gonna happen. I've showed you seven of them.

01:26:01

This is not a future event. This is not, we're not waiting on future signs and wonders. They already happened.

01:26:07

Josephus recorded it. This was a period of awful suffering that was poured out upon the

01:26:14

Jews for killing their Messiah, for persecuting his bride, and for abandoning their covenant that they had with God.

01:26:21

For all these reasons, the curses of Deuteronomy 28 were being poured out on them. And isn't it ironic that Jesus in Matthew 23 in 30

01:26:30

AD called down seven covenantal woes upon the city, and now 40 years later, a man who's also named

01:26:37

Jesus spends seven years calling down covenant woes upon the city. Is there any doubt that Jesus wants us to interpret these events as happening in the first century?

01:26:48

Is there any doubt that this is the great tribulation that he was prophesying that was coming upon Jerusalem?

01:26:54

I think not. All of that is the 11th evidence that we've given so far, that false signs, false wonders are all pointing to the fact that this is a first century great tribulation.

01:27:07

Reason 12, I told you so. Mark 13 23 says, but take heed, behold,

01:27:15

I have told you everything in advance. Now this needs very little explanation.

01:27:22

After giving them explicit details about the great tribulation that was coming in their lifetime, Jesus reassures his disciples not to worry because he told them about it in advance.

01:27:33

He reassures them that it's gonna happen in their lifetime. He said, don't worry, I told you about it.

01:27:41

Think about this. This reassurance wouldn't have meant a whole lot to his disciples if these events were 2 ,000 years into the future.

01:27:50

This would be like warning me or you of a worldwide financial collapse that's gonna happen in the year 4 ,250.

01:27:58

And then encouraging us, don't worry about it because I told you about it beforehand.

01:28:05

I mean, could one really assume that I would spend my days worrying about an event that wasn't gonna happen within 2 ,000 years?

01:28:13

Could anybody assume that I would spend a moment thinking about something that's two millennia away?

01:28:18

No. So why would you even encourage me to say, I don't worry about it, I told you about it beforehand. The only reason that Jesus would say, don't worry about it,

01:28:25

I've told you beforehand, is if it was gonna happen to you in your lifetime and your people. Jesus was speaking directly to his disciples using the second person pronoun you, which clearly indicates that his intended audience was gonna go through something great, a great tribulation.

01:28:41

But don't worry, he tells them, because I told you about it before it happened.

01:28:49

Jesus lovingly tells them all the details and he comforts them not to worry because he's prepared them in advance.

01:28:59

That's what being loving is, preparing somebody before they experience something hard, preparing them before it happens.

01:29:08

It makes no sense if this is about a future great tribulation. It makes great sense if it's about something that's gonna happen in their lifetime.

01:29:16

This warning fits perfectly within Jesus' broader ministry of preparing his disciples for the massive covenantal shift that was about to occur, the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant, the destruction of Jerusalem, making way for the new

01:29:31

Jerusalem, which is the bride of Christ. Jesus' reassurance was not just a comforting platitude.

01:29:39

It was a reminder that these events were sovereignly ordained and orchestrated by God to advance his redemptive purposes, to bring about his new covenant in Jesus where the church would spread his dominion to the ends of the earth.

01:29:54

And we know that the disciples understood it. They were the ones who heeded his warnings, they fled

01:29:59

Jerusalem and they avoided its destruction. While the city was reduced to ruins by the

01:30:06

Roman forces, Jesus' words to the Christians protected them and they got out.

01:30:12

His words were timely, they were practical and they were rooted in his loving care for his followers. And they survived because he told them beforehand.

01:30:21

To suggest that this warning was intended for believers in our day is to rob the text of its meaning, of its urgency and of its sense.

01:30:30

Jesus' prophecy was precise, it was personal and it was perfectly fitting to that time and to that audience.

01:30:37

That is evidence number 12. Reason 13, coming like lightning.

01:30:46

Matthew 24, 27 says, for just as lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be,

01:30:56

Matthew 24, 27. The point Jesus is making here is unavoidable.

01:31:03

His coming will happen quickly. It's not gonna take several thousands of years in order to materialize.

01:31:10

It's gonna come quickly, it's gonna come suddenly like a flash of lightning. And lightning is an apt metaphor here because it symbolizes both suddenness and the devastation of God's judgment.

01:31:23

For those who are uncomfortable with this language, I recommend that you re -examine what you actually believe about the coming of the

01:31:30

Lord. Because if coming can only mean the end of world history, physical bodily coming of Jesus to call the living and the dead, to rise to meet him in the air, then this passage will make no sense to you.

01:31:43

But if you can look at the word coming, the way the Bible talks about the word coming, then you can understand that there are such things as comings of God that result not in physical bodily at the end of human history coming, but actual judgment comings against a people.

01:32:03

If you can see how the Old Testament uses the word coming to describe God's judgment on a nation, then you will begin to see all these things are very clear.

01:32:13

For example, Isaiah 19 one says, behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt.

01:32:21

Here we're not talking about God physically bodily showing up in Egypt in order to destroy them.

01:32:27

This is a metaphor that he's coming on the clouds in judgment. He's coming against Egypt through a human army like Babylon.

01:32:39

Similarly, Psalm 18 seven through 14 describes God intervening in judgment with imageries of storms and lightning and earthquakes.

01:32:47

When Jesus speaks of his coming like lightning in Matthew 24, he's referencing an event that would occur suddenly and decisively within the lifetime of his disciples.

01:32:58

The immediate context of Matthew 24 focuses on the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and not a distant future event.

01:33:05

The Old Testament use of the word coming shows us that there are categories of coming where God comes against the people like when he comes on the clouds of Egypt or when he comes on the clouds in judgment of Egypt, and here we have all of the hermeneutical keys that we need to understand it.

01:33:20

The Roman siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 with its devastating speed, precision, perfectly in lines.

01:33:27

God came in judgment against Jerusalem. God came riding on the clouds just like he did in Egypt, which was not a physical bodily coming.

01:33:36

He came in that same way against Jerusalem. He came like lightning. He came and he struck them down.

01:33:42

He came and he left their dead bodies rotting on the soil. This is what the coming of Jesus in Matthew 24 is all about, and it was like lightning.

01:33:53

That's evidence number 13. Reason 14, the circling vultures.

01:33:59

Jesus says in Matthew 24, 28, wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

01:34:06

Matthew 24, 28. Now, it could certainly be the case that Jesus is predicting that after all of the devastation and after all the dead bodies have been heaped up in piles by the

01:34:18

Romans, that the skies over Jerusalem were gonna be filled by circling vultures that are ready to feast upon their dead carcasses.

01:34:28

That would be a logical conclusion to such harrowing events, and it would prove the great tribulation occurred in the past.

01:34:38

So if this passage is saying that these are circling vultures, that would confirm that these things happened in the first century, but I don't think that's what

01:34:48

Jesus is actually saying. Josephus makes no mention of the city being surrounded by vultures.

01:34:56

He doesn't talk about anything like that at all happening, and more than likely, what's really happened here is that Bible translators have unfortunately mistranslated a very common

01:35:07

Greek word, which is eitos in this passage, calling them vultures when the word actually means eagles.

01:35:16

Why is that important? Well, in ancient Rome, the eagle was the symbol of imperial power.

01:35:24

The eagle was like Rome's mascot. The eagle was their bird, and they carried a symbol of the eagle with them every time the

01:35:36

Roman legions were deployed. A Roman legion is a cohort of about 6 ,000 soldiers, and they would carry the eagle with them, a golden eagle, and it would have been prominently displayed near the very front of their army as they were marching towards the city.

01:35:53

There would have been eagles displayed, and it would have been as recognizable to the ancient people as the golden arches are to us.

01:36:02

They would have seen the golden eagle in the distance at the front of the Roman troops, and they would have known that disaster was coming.

01:36:11

More than the eagle being Rome's mascot, men and women of that time would have associated that fabled bird with the dominion and the power of Rome, and they would have had good reason to fear it because when they saw it, they knew that Rome was coming after them.

01:36:24

They knew that the eagles were circling the city. In the same way, the 17th century pirates would foist the

01:36:34

Jolly Roger just before an all -out naval attack where they would steal all of your treasure.

01:36:39

The Romans would proudly display their eagle just moments before they advanced upon your city and they killed you.

01:36:47

By the time you saw the eagle, all hope of survival would have been gone.

01:36:53

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

01:37:03

Roman soldier from bringing the symbol of the eagle into their city and into their courtyard.

01:37:10

For instance, about 80 years before the destruction of the temple, Herod the Great installed a golden eagle on the outside of the temple, and he was doing it to appease

01:37:19

Rome. He was doing it to remind the Jews that they were a subjugated people. They were not autonomous, that the

01:37:25

Romans owned their temple. The Romans owned their nation. Their eagle was prominently displayed.

01:37:32

Well, when the Jews saw it, they violently protested, and they ripped the graven image right off the temple, and Herod set all of the

01:37:43

Jews that rebelled against him on fire, and he installed a new high priest who would be loyal to him and would do

01:37:50

Rome's bidding, but he never again installed a golden eagle on the outside of the temple, and Rome understood that it was not worth it to bring a golden eagle into the temple precinct because the

01:38:03

Jews would basically respond in all -out war, that is, until the

01:38:09

Roman siege. Josephus tells us that when the three legions of Roman soldiers, so three golden eagles, when they surrounded the city, they brought their golden eagles with them into the city the first time this has happened since Herod the

01:38:27

Great. He tells us this. Then came the ensigns encompassing the eagle, which is at the head of every

01:38:35

Roman legion, the king bird and the strongest of all, which seems to them to be a signal of their dominion and an omen that they shall conquer all against whom they march.

01:38:48

Josephus, Jewish Wars 362. And when the eagle showed up, conquered, they did.

01:38:54

After three and a half years of devastating battles, Jewish starvation, death and destruction, the

01:39:00

Romans finally conquered the city and they set fire to its temple. And Josephus tells us that while the city was burning, while the dead bodies and the blood on those bodies was coagulating, the

01:39:13

Romans brought their three eagles, one for each of those legions, not just into the city, but they brought them into the temple complex and they started offering sacrifices to their golden eagles inside the temple.

01:39:29

Josephus says this. And now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city and upon the burning of the holy house itself and of all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns, their eagles to the temple and set them over against its

01:39:45

Eastern gate. And there they did offer sacrifices to them. And there they did make

01:39:51

Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy.

01:39:57

Jewish Wars 661. Perhaps the bloodiest battle in the entire campaign was over.

01:40:04

The epicenter of Jewish resistance had failed. The temple was now on fire and the majority of the fighting men were either dead or they were getting ready to be killed and thrown into a heaping pile of bodies.

01:40:20

When Jesus told his disciples, wherever the corpses are, there the eagles will gather.

01:40:27

He could have been referring to the real vultures that were flying overhead and looking for an easy lunch.

01:40:33

He could have been, but it is far more likely that Jesus was alluding to the idolatrous ensigns of Roman eagles that entered the city, that were placed in the temple complex right near the piles of bodies.

01:40:49

Where the bodies are piled up, there the eagles gather. That's what happened. Where the

01:40:54

Romans piled up the bodies, there they took their eagles and they made sacrifices, idolatrous sacrifices to those birds right in front of the final group of Jews that were not murdered.

01:41:10

So here again, we have Jesus speaking unbelievably clear with unbelievable precision.

01:41:19

The Greek word there is eagles. And while it's translated vultures, I think it's much clearer to say where the dead bodies are gathered, there the eagles circle.

01:41:32

That's all 14 evidences. Now let's go to our conclusion. Conclusion.

01:41:40

While it may be fashionable and even popular to concoct endless end time scenarios and speculations that will inevitably fail, like we said in the beginning, like Olympic losers, they continue to pile up their end time fantasies.

01:41:55

We've seen something that's far better. We've seen real historical events that perfectly align with the prophecy that Jesus gave, that perfectly align with Matthew 24, one through 28, which we've been talking about now over the last 11 episodes.

01:42:14

These real historical events remind us that God is faithful to his word, that his promises cannot fail, and that his warnings and promises are true.

01:42:23

To be clear, this does not mean that everything in eschatology has already occurred.

01:42:29

I'm not a full preterist. There are still glorious and future realities that are awaiting us, truths that we will explore at some point in the weeks ahead.

01:42:37

But intellectual honesty and a commitment to the authority of scripture compel us to interpret every passage within its proper context.

01:42:47

And what we've seen is that Matthew 24, every passage we looked at is not about a future forecast of apocalyptic disaster in the modern world, but it's an ancient fulfillment, a covenantal outpouring of judgment against people who broke covenant with God.

01:43:06

All this was fulfilled in AD 70, which brought judgment upon apostate Judah and signaled the dawn of a new covenant era.

01:43:15

Dear Christian, as we conclude, I wanna encourage you to take heart that all these events are behind us.

01:43:25

They're not before us. Jesus has already triumphed over the forces of sin and darkness.

01:43:32

He's already brought a great tribulation upon his people. He's already brought a great tribulation upon the covenant rebels.

01:43:42

The future of the world is not tribulations and disasters and abominations and desolations.

01:43:50

The future is the church of Jesus Christ taking the gospel that he gave us and advancing to the ends of the earth, bringing his gospel to nations, making nations

01:44:02

Christians from the top to the bottom. The future of the world is not disaster. It's joy.

01:44:12

It's dominion. It's the name of Christ being made much of on every square inch of the planet in every tribe, in every tongue, in every nation.

01:44:25

The hardest passages in the Bible that talk about the most dense forms of judgment have already occurred, which means that we're not pressing forward towards judgment.

01:44:39

We're actually, as the church, pressing forward to victory. We're not waiting on Jesus to return and to destroy everything.

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We're actually the hands and feet of Christ who are obeying Christ and who are advancing now to build his kingdom.

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What you do in your life matters is what I'm saying. If you look at all of these things and say that this was things that God poured out in the past on the

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Jews for their covenant crimes and now today that we are in covenant with Yahweh, now we can be obedient and faithful to spread his dominion to the ends of the earth, then that means your life matters.

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It means what you do as a mom matters. It means what you do as a dad matters. It means what you do at your job matters, how you build and how you work.

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And it matters like politics. Go and take over school boards. Go and take over your local politics.

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Go and do things. Don't hide, don't wait, don't put your head in the sand like an ostrich.

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Do something that matters because your labor for the Lord is not in vain. We are the church of Christ.

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We are the ones who have been brought into covenant relationship with him. He destroyed the rebels.

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He's brought us into covenant. Now is the time for us to obey him and move forward.

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Now's not the time to hide. Now's not the time to run. Now's not the time to flee. Now's not the time to fear. Now's not the time for doom and gloom.

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Now is the time for obedience. Brothers and sisters, our country is in a mess right now because of dispensational garbage.

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Our country is in a mess right now because we've ran, because we've hid, because we've acted like cowards, because we've thought that the only meaningful activity that we can do is inside of our churches.

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Stop that. It's time for every Christian in America to stand up, to stand strong, and to bring the gospel into our world.

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It is time for us to take back our cities that the pagans have taken. It's time for us to take back schools.

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It's time for us to take back entertainment. It's time for us to take back the world for Jesus, to spread the gospel until every tribe, tongue, and nation obey it and love it and worship him.

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The time for judgment we've described in great detail has passed.

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Now it's time for the church to be obedient. It's time for the church to be a royal bride who brings the goodness and the glory of Jesus's reign everywhere she goes.

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And we do that until the increase of his government knows no end.

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We do that until the world is covered with the glory of God as the waters covers the sea. We do that until from the rivers to the ends of the earth, the dominion of Yahweh is there.

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We do it until this kingdom that Jesus has been given is the little stone is a mountain that fills the entire earth.

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We do this as leaven until it leavens the entire lump. We do this until there is nowhere else to do it, where no one doesn't know the

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Lord. We do this until the whole world has been made Christian. Jesus returns and he receives unto himself a faithful bride and then he defeats the final enemy, which is death.

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And then we enter into eternal state. Now is the time for obedience, not judgment.

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Christ has already judged the rebels. He's judged our sinful natures. And now by the spirit, it's time to advance.

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That is what I hope that Christians get out of this, that the great tribulation has already happened.

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And so now it's time for the great missionary advance of his church. And until next time,

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I hope you're encouraged. I hope you're strong in your faith. I hope you're invigorated to go and do the things of God in your home and in your town and in your church.

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And until next time, God richly bless you and we'll see you again next time. On the broadcast.