87. The Second Coming As Foretold in the Book of Acts (End-Times Series Part 35)

Hello and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 87, the second coming as foretold in the book of Acts. A metaphor for New Testament eschatology. When constructing an eschatology of the New Testament, you need to do so in layers, kind of like a house begins with a proper foundation.

Then successive levels get added, one on top of the next until finally, you can put the chimney and the shingles on and live in it. In that sense, the foundation of New Testament eschatology, the critical understanding that lies under the surface of the New Testament text is the manifold witness of the Old Testament.

If we do not get our eschatological underpinnings from the men of old, if we do not understand what they were saying rightly, we could waste a lot of energy and effort constructing an eschatological edifice that will not stand.

And while many Old Testament passages have been appealed to in our study so far, a fuller eschatology of the Old Testament is still forthcoming. But if you'd like a little bit of a recap of where we've been so far, the eschaton, the final age of man was already defined by God in the first age of man.

God defined man's purpose in creation as filling the world with joyful, working worshipers, Genesis 128. When the first man fell in that task into sin and misery, the rest of the Old Testament is about how the coming man, the true man, Jesus Christ, will succeed in having that global kingdom.

And while much more could be said about Old Testament eschatology, that is its point, that the new man is coming and he will build a worldwide kingdom. And that point is demonstrated all over the place.

You can look at Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Psalm 110, Psalm 2. You can look at Isaiah 9. You can look at Zechariah 9, Habakkuk 2, Joel 2. It is literally all over the place. And eventually, forthcoming at some point, we're gonna do a look at Old Testament eschatology.

But for today, that is a little bit of a recap. That's a little bit of a summary of Old Testament eschatology is that it finds its maximum, it finds its hope, it finds its fulfillment in the coming man who will build the global kingdom.

The Old Testament Foundation of New Testament Eschatology

Now, on top of every good foundation, you have the first level, the main floor. You have the ground level, and that's how buildings work. You have a foundation and then you have the ground level. The Old Testament is the foundation level of New Testament eschatology.

Well, the next level of New Testament eschatology, the main level, the ground floor, is developed by Jesus within the Gospels. And if you've been following along with this particular blog, we went through the Gospels, and you may have been surprised when we went through it, learning that Jesus' teaching on this topic of eschatology does not concern events that are long into the future, but events that are gonna take place soon after his ascension.

This is demonstrated most perfectly in Jesus' Olivet Discourse, which is found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. And in those chapters leading up to it, in Matthew 21 through 23, you'll find some interesting material there.

But basically, in this section, you see Jesus predicting two significant eschatological events are gonna happen after his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. The first is gonna be that great woes are gonna fall upon the Jewish people within a single generation.

And it's gonna happen because they didn't correctly steward the Old Testament mysteries of God. For many years in their history, they were idolatrous. After that, they became sort of isolationist. They began hating Gentiles to the point to where they hoped that none of them would actually come into the kingdom.

They wanted nothing to do with them at all. And because of years and years and years of either idolatry and worshiping of demonic gods, or for hating the Gentiles and becoming this racially ethnic isolationist group in the first century, because of that, Jesus is going to remove them from their station because their station has always been to be a light to the Gentile world.

They couldn't be a light to the Gentiles while they're worshiping idols. They certainly couldn't be a light to the Gentiles while they were hating them. So Jesus is going to pour out seven covenantal woes upon them, Matthew 23.

And for all of those Jews that were apostate, he's going to remove them to make way for his bride, the church, which is made up of Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ. The second cataclysmic event that Jesus prophesied was the end of the old covenant order.

This means with his coming, the Jerusalem temple is now irrelevant and it would be destroyed. The Levitical priesthood would be severed so that it would no longer be in use or operation. The sacrificial system is going to end.

The festivals are gonna be repealed. And everything that exists within that old covenant that was serving as a kind of type and a shadow for the coming of Jesus would be moved from the mantle to the museum.

It would be moved from in operation to something that we look at with adoration. Something that we look at and we say, thank God for that era, but thank God that Christ has come. Now, all of this would be done to make way for Jesus's end time kingdom, which is gonna be manifested on earth through the church as he reigns over the world from the right hand of the father in heaven.

The kingdom, unlike the one from the old Testament, is gonna conquer the world that Adam lost. And through this true and better Adam, who is Jesus, is gonna deliver back to God a world that is finally and fully filled with worshipers like Adam was told to do in the beginning in Genesis 128.

Jesus will accomplish that because he's the true and better Adam. Now, Jesus predicted this kingdom would be taken away from the apostate Jews and given to the bride of Christ, Matthew 21, 43. He indicated that these earth shattering events were gonna happen within a single generation, which in the Bible is 40 years, Matthew 24, 34.

And then all throughout that 40 year window of time is the downfall of the old covenant kingdom was coming. And as the rise of this new covenant kingdom was happening, Jesus was providing incredible evidentiary signs and wonders to showcase the truthfulness of his claims.

During this 40 years, lots of signs and wonders happen to show that what Jesus said is true. Now, in previous blogs that I've written and episodes on the broadcast, we have outlined these Olivet signs and wonders, and we have demonstrated how they do not prove a future eschaton in the long distant future, but we have shown how they confirm what Jesus said to his disciples.

Again, these are near term events that actually happened in the lifetime of Jesus's disciples. And it would have been a source of incredible comfort and assurance to them as they walked through those events.

Imagine if these events happened 2000 years after the disciples died, how all of Matthew 24, Matthew 21, 22 and 23 as well, would have been a source of tremendous confusion for the disciples. It was like Jesus would have been speaking past them, saying, I know you guys are gonna go through some stuff, but let me tell you about a people you'll never meet, you'll never know about, and what they're gonna go through, and let that be a comfort to you.

That would be utterly confusing to the disciples. So again, as we have pointed out numerous times here, Matthew 21 through 24 is about near term events that were relevant to his disciples. And just briefly here, we'll go through a couple of the different signs that Jesus gave them to be on the lookout for.

He told them that there were gonna be the rise of false messiahs in Judah, the uptick of wars and rumors of wars in an ordinarily peaceful Roman empire that was under the Pax Romana. He told them that there were gonna be a large increase of earthquakes and famines, that there was gonna be a blistering period of persecutions that he called the tribulations.

There was gonna be signs of the times, which included a moral collapse of the Judean people, a period of great evangelistic fervor throughout the Roman world, and a great apostasy from the tortures and persecutions that were inflicted upon the Christians.

He told them there was gonna be an abomination of desolation in the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed, that there was gonna be a period of great tribulations from the Christians just before Jerusalem was totaled, and that there was gonna be a judgment coming of Jesus to bring God's wrath upon the apostate city and upon the fallen temple through the advance of the Roman armies.

We did that in two parts on this broadcast. And then finally, we saw how that he's gonna bring apocalyptic signs and wonders in the heavens to confirm what Jesus has been saying all along. These teachings from Christ in the Gospels encapsulate the first level of New Testament eschatology that is built upon the witness of Moses and the prophets.

Now, if you wanna go back and listen to all of those episodes that confirm how all of these different signs and wonders happened in the first century, then you can check out episodes 30 through 39 of this broadcast.

That's where we cover these particular episodes and these themes. And if I were you, I would check them out if you haven't heard them already. There is a ton of detail in how everything Jesus said in Matthew 24 has already happened.

But to continue going in this episode, that's the first floor of New Testament eschatology. Its foundation is the Old Testament. That's what the substructure is. And then what the structure of New Testament eschatology is that's built upon that foundation is Jesus' eschatology.

That's the second or that's the first level, the first floor of New Testament eschatology. Now, let's get to the second floor, which is the eschatology of the Book of Acts. Now, while many do not think that Acts is an eschatological book, I would remind you that it's the only book in the New Testament that details the earliest days of the Christian church.

And in that sense, it is critical to confirm whether or not we've understood the Old Testament passages and Jesus rightly. Because it's very possible that we've misunderstood the Old Testament and it's possible that we've misunderstood Jesus.

So in order to confirm that what Jesus is saying, or at least our interpretation of what Jesus is saying is true, and to confirm what we've been seeing in the Old Testament is correct, Acts is gonna be an incredible hinge part of the New Testament that's going to confirm or it's going to redefine what we think we know about eschatology.

And in that sense, it is a crucial book to confirm what we have understood. So think about it like this. Imagine there was such a thing as a derelict builder. I know it's hard to imagine that in today's world, but there's a derelict construction worker or builder, and he could very well construct a shoddy foundation.

He could even, with piss poor, jerry-rigged effort, build a first floor on top of that shoddy foundation that not too many people, unless they were skilled in that trade, would notice, because you can cover up everything with a little spackle and caulk.

Well, the building will stand. Its flaws are gonna be covered up a little bit, and many uninformed consumers will jump at the discount price, being none the wiser. But the higher a building goes, the more exasperated the foundation level issues become.

An inconspicuous error on the ground floor of every building or every cockeyed brick or wonky beam is gonna become a catastrophe on the higher level, as anyone who's ever played Jenga can attest. The further up you go, the more the issues at the bottom are exposed.

In this way, the higher floors of New Testament eschatology are gonna confirm whether the foundation that we have assembled is trustworthy and whether it is faithful. And this is precisely what the Book of Acts is going to do for us today.

It's gonna prove that we've understood the Old Testament correctly, and it's going to showcase whether Jesus' prophecies were coming true in the timeframe that we have argued that he has given. Now, I think it's clear that Jesus argued that as well.

Matthew 24, 34 says that these things are gonna happen in a single generation. So in a sense, the Book of Acts is incredibly important because it's gonna prove whether or not Jesus was true, whether he was a faithful prophet or a false prophet.

And that is an important aspect of what Acts is going to do for us. So when it comes to Acts confirming eschatology, let's begin with the Old Testament. How does it confirm the Old Testament eschatology?

Well, the book gives us several fascinating details. It begins with Jesus going up to heaven with the clouds fulfilling Daniel 7. Jesus also tells his disciples that he has all authority in heaven and on earth, which is fulfillment of Psalm 2, that his disciples are gonna take his kingdom to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Daniel 2, Isaiah 9, and Zechariah 7.

We also saw how the coming of the Holy Spirit mirrored God's coming on Mount Sinai, how the speaking in tongues reversed the curse of Babel, and how prophecies like Joel 2 were fulfilled before the onlooking Jerusalem crowds at Pentecost.

This, although brief, sketch demonstrates how the book confirms a near-term, first-century inauguration of the final eschaton, which is what we've argued that Old Testament eschatology is all about.

So Acts confirms it. Well, in the same way, the book of Acts should be used to confirm many of the details that Jesus provided in the Olivet Discourse and in the Gospels. It affirms the details that Jesus said.

For instance, it affirms that false messiahs that Jesus predicted were already popping up in Judah in the early church, that the prediction that Jesus gave was in Matthew 24, 4 -5, and verse 11, and its fulfillment is in Acts 5, 36 -37.

Luke confirms the beginning of wars and rumors of wars that would upset the Pax Romana in Rome, which was a hundred-year peace ushered in by Augustus Caesar. In Acts, Luke reveals the homicidal actions of Herod Agrippa, where he turns against his own citizens, making war with them over their faith in Christ.

Again, that prediction was in verses six and seven of Matthew 24, and Luke regards the fulfillment of that, at least in part, happens in Acts 12, 1 -3. If you take extra-biblical examples, there are other instances of rumors of wars and actual wars, like the civil war that plagued the city of Rome after the suicide of Nero, and the grisly, bloody battle under Titus and Vespasian to destroy Jerusalem, which was completely out of character for that time period in Rome.

You and I live in a period where there's wars and rumors of wars constantly, but for an entire century, the Roman Empire was at peace. So when Jesus said that there would be wars and rumors of wars, that was a odd thing for those people who were living in that period of time.

Again, both the book of Acts and the extra-biblical sources like Josephus and Suetonius and Tacitus and all of that confirm this. The book of Acts also confirms that earthquakes occurred during those early days.

Matthew 24, 7 said there'd be an uptick in earthquakes, and in Acts 16, 25 -26, we see an earthquake that shakes the prison where Paul and Silas were at, and burst them free. We also see earthquakes in Jesus's life.

Whenever he gives up his spirit and he dies,.

The earth quakes.

We also hear about earthquakes in different Roman historians. It said that there was a period of unusual earthquake activity. So again, Acts tells us about it, and it's confirmed. Jesus predicted that there were gonna be great famines and the book of Acts confirms this.

In Acts 16, 25 -26, Luke tells us about a vast famine that affected much of the Roman world. Jesus predicts that the early church is gonna go through tribulations and persecutions that he announced in Matthew 24, 9.

That happened to the early church. Luke records this, that the apostles were arrested in Acts 4, they were beaten in Acts 5, Stephen was killed in Acts 7. A great tribulation broke out against them in Acts 8, 1 -3 by the Jews persecuting them so that they have to scatter outside of the city.

Paul was a violent persecutor of the church in Acts 8 and 9. King Agrippa killed countless believers, including the leader of the early church, James, in Acts 12. The Jews ran the apostles out of different regions that they were preaching in, Acts 13.

Paul was stoned and left for dead by the Jews in Acts 14. They arrested and flogged him in Acts 16, 16 -24. The Jews beat a man named Jason and caused a mostly peaceful protest in Thessalonica, sarcasm included, in Acts 17.

Paul is arrested and brought before the Roman pro-council and on trumped up charges in Acts 18. Jesus said that they were gonna undergo fiery tribulations in Matthew 24, 21, that they would be delivered over to Jewish authorities, Matthew 10, 17 -18, who would kill them thinking that they were doing service to God, John 16.

And the book of Acts confirms every bit of it. It confirms that everything Jesus said happened. The book also confirms the moral collapse of the people of the Jews, the Jewish apostasy. That was predicted in Matthew 24, 10.

We see it fulfilled in Acts 7, 51 -53 in Stephen's sermon and also in Acts 28, 25 -28. The book demonstrates the heightened period of evangelism that Jesus was prophesying, where the gospel is gonna go out into the entire world, Acts 1 -8, into the entire Roman world, oikomene, which is the word that is used, and that is the word that Jesus used in Matthew 24.

And we see that fulfilled in Paul's missionary journeys in Acts 13, 1 -14, 28, that's the first missionary journey. Acts 15, 36 -18, 22, that's the second missionary journey. And Acts 18, 23 -21, 17, the third missionary journey.

Again, the book of Acts confirms everything Jesus said in his Olivet Discourse. Finally, the book confirms that near-term judgment is coming by the hand of Jesus directly against the Jews, Acts 17, 31.

In that coming, he will bring his wrath upon the apostate Jewish state for the war crimes that they have committed against the covenant people of God, the church. And he, that is Jesus, would turn the city of Jerusalem into a wasteland where only the vultures would ever dare enter it, and only to pick at the dead corpses.

This is predicted in Matthew 24, 27 -28. And as we close out our look at the eschatology, the book of Acts today, I want us to end by looking at how Jesus views his second coming and how the book of Acts confirms this critical aspect of Jesus's prophecy.

Again, we've showed how the book of Acts confirms our Old Testament eschatology. We've shown how it confirms Jesus's eschatology in the early parts of the Olivet Discourse. And now we're gonna show how it confirms what Jesus says about his second coming.

The Second Coming as a First-Century Judgment on Jerusalem

And in similar fashion, the book of Acts has something to say about it. The second coming according to Jesus. When I say that the second coming occurred during the same timeframe that the book of Acts was written, I'm sure to provoke a few knee-jerk reactions.

Today, we've been conditioned to believe that the second coming happens in the future when Jesus raptures away the church from the world. This event, as left behind novels so novelly describe it, will leave the pagan world to sort through millions of piles of clothing, surgical implants, and dentures from the vaporized bodies of the saints that Jesus took away to heaven, apparently in their spiritual birthday suits.

This is not what the Bible teaches and can only be described as an insane and laughable reading of the New Testament text. I'm not calling the dispensationalists who believe it insane. I'm saying that their hermeneutic is insane.

Now, according to Jesus, he is not going to rapture away a future Christian church, but will instead sweep away the wicked first century Jews in Jerusalem. Remember, in Matthew 24, Jesus said that some will be taken and others will be left.

This is not vaporized bodies being teleported to heaven. This is, as Jesus says, like the days of Noah. Well, what was the days of Noah like? Well, in the days of Noah, it wasn't the righteous who were swept away.

It was the wicked who were swept away. They were swept away by the flood. So unless the dispensationalists believe that Jesus is gonna come back and rapture the wicked and sweep them away, then the rapture, in their view, is not just like the days of Noah.

Just like the days of Noah means the wicked is gonna be swept away, which is what we're arguing for. Jesus is saying that some will be taken and some will be left, and it's the wicked who will be swept away in God's furious judgment on Jerusalem, and we cover that in our episode called Rethinking the Rapture.

So you should check that out if you'd like to know more. But this first century judgment coming of our Lord is described by him using the language of Noah, which confirms that it's a near-term event.

It's also talked about by our Lord using apocalyptic language in Matthew 24, 27 through 31. He uses Gentile language in Luke 21, 20 for all of us Gentiles when he says, when you see Jerusalem city surrounded by armies, then flee.

He uses parabolic language in Matthew 22, 7 and Matthew 24, 32 through 33 talking about a near-term event that is gonna happen in that generation. The timeframe Jesus gives for all of this is 40 years, Matthew 24, 34.

Knowing these things, we have legitimate grounds to stop referring to the return of Christ at the end of human history as the second coming. His second coming is a past event that already happened. It happened within a 40-year time period that Jesus described, and his second coming is not to take away the believers to heaven because it's not like that.

His second coming was a judgment coming against Jerusalem. That's what the second coming is, when he sweeps away the apostate Jews and he punishes them for their crimes. The second coming is not an event for Christians.

The second coming is not when we go to heaven. The second coming is not when all of our clothes are left in a pile and we're raptured away. The second coming is an event of judgment against the Jews, and we need to stop talking about the second coming as if it's for us.

It's not. The text confirms this. Now, I don't want you to get me wrong here. I'm not claiming that Jesus is never going to return again. I'm just saying that his second coming is not the coming that you're talking about.

He will return at the end of human history, and it's gonna be glorious. He will separate the wheat from the chaff, Matthew 3, 12. He will divide the lamb from the goats, Matthew 25, 32. He will usher us into the final state where we'll live with him in the new heavens and the new earth and his kingdom, where we'll live with him in person forever, Revelation 21, one through four.

That's gonna be awesome. But to claim that the second coming is the final coming is wrong. The second coming already happened when Jesus returned in judgment against Jerusalem. Jesus himself confirmed how central this interpretation was to him when he said that heaven and earth would pass away if any of his words did not come true, Matthew 24, 35, and last time I checked, the heavens and the earth are still here and his words are still true.

Now, how is all of this confirmed in the book of Acts? Well, after a period of awful persecution that began with Stephen in Acts 7 that caused the Jewish Christians to scatter in Acts 8, 1, and after the rejection of Paul's gospel preaching by the Jews in the local synagogue, which happened in Acts 13, 45, Paul declared that he would from that moment forward take the gospel to the Gentiles, Acts 18, 6.

In one of his most famous sermons that he gave to the Gentile audience on the Areopagus at Mars Hill, Paul confirms the near term eschatological judgment coming of Christ by saying, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead, Acts 17, 31.

Now, at first glance, this passage refers to the end time judgment that will happen in eternity, the great white throne of judgment where Jesus calls us up, judges us, you know, all that. That's what pictures maybe are popping into your mind, but I want you to notice what Paul is actually saying here.

He tells those men in the Areopagus that judgment is coming, and he gives the resurrection of Christ as the observable proof that it would happen in their day. Imagine it like this. Imagine Paul were saying, if you don't believe God is bringing judgment soon, well, I would invite you to travel back with me to Jerusalem and I will show you the empty tomb, and I will introduce you personally to the 500 witnesses who saw him after his resurrection.

Paul told these men that a world-altering judgment was coming upon the cosmos, and it would happen in their day. That was why he was telling them, because it was relevant to their circumstances. Paul is not just a kind-hearted Jewish missionary with a favorable disposition towards the Gentiles telling them to go to the temple and offer sacrifices and all of that, no.

Paul is telling them that the temple is gonna be judged, that God is providing a new way for Gentiles to know God without a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, without standing at a distance in the outer court of the temple courtyard where all the animals were crowding in and there was feces everywhere, hoping that you could find a place to kneel down and pray and hoping that the Lord would hear your prayer without even offering a sacrifice.

This is why Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple in the first place, because the only place the Gentiles were able to gather, the Jews had so crowded it with animals and industry that they couldn't even pray to ask God to have mercy on them.

So it is very clear that Paul is not inviting them to that. He's not inviting them to endure the racial Jewish hatred of people who, if you were a Gentile and you entered into the court of the men, you would be murdered because you're not allowed to go that far.

They clearly believe that you weren't welcome. No, God is not inviting the Gentile men and women to that. God is dealing with those things, bringing them to their covenant end so that he can open up a pathway to the Gentiles, to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit as the only righteous one.

And in case you're not convinced by that argument that Paul is inviting these men to know God directly because of the judgment that's coming on the temple, I invite you to look beyond the English text, which fails to see the great nuance that is here in this passage.

The English text reads like a simple future. He has appointed a day that he will judge the world, but the Greek text doesn't say that. The Greek text does not say that he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world, period, full stop.

It just doesn't say that. Instead, the Greek text says he has fixed a day in which he is going to soon bring judgment on the world. The verb that your English Bibles is translating as future tense is the verb mele krenen, he will judge.

But that's not right because this is not a future tense verb at all. Greek has very specific structures for its verb and this is not a future tense verb, it's just not. It does not look forward to some day in the long distant epoch of time when God will eventually get around to judging the world.

It is a present verb, which means that it has active and continuous verbal aspect in Greek. And that just means, I'm not meaning to nerd out on you here, but when a word is in the present continuous aspect in a Greek verb, it communicates ongoing urgent action in the present.

And by present, I don't mean our present, and I don't certainly don't mean the things that sit under the Christmas tree. I mean, the present tense according to the apostle Paul, who's the one who spoke the word.

He did not believe according to this verbal structure that judgment was a future event that he would not witness or that his generation would not witness. He believed that it was an imminent, urgent, getting ready to happen kind of judgment.

And that's why he chose the present active, continuous aspect of this verb, mele krenen. It does not mean he will judge. It means he is soon going to judge the world. Paul was a master of the Greek language and he would have known this.

This is basic Greek. This is kindergarten level Greek. If he wanted to, he could have used a future judgment verb so that he could describe the future judgment that was at the end of human history. He could have done that, but he didn't.

He relayed to those men in Athens that a near term end of the ages kind of judgment was coming and that they were going to live long enough to see the evidence that it happened. They would live long enough to see God destroy Jerusalem, Old Testament Judaism, and make a way for the nations to come to God through a relationship with his one and only son.

And Paul says that that time has already happened and the evidence of it is the resurrection. Conclusion, as we close out our eschatological study on the book of Acts, we have seen that it confirms the Old Testament vision of a near eschaton at the coming of the true man, Jesus Christ.

We have seen how the book of Acts establishes the veracity of Jesus' Olivet prophecy and that these events have arrived in his incarnation and would be completed very soon after his ascension. We saw numerous Old Testament passages fulfilled in the early church, prophecies of tribulation, earthquakes, famines, and apostasies that came true in the book of Acts.

And for that reason, this book is a powerful apologetic for the eschatological system that we have been putting forward, which is post-millennialism and partial preterism. We believe on this show and we believe at the Shepherd's Church that Christ will be victorious and that he is building his worldwide global kingdom that is gonna take over all the nations.

It's gonna disciple the nations and bring the blessings of Jesus to every family on earth. That's post-millennialism. We also believe that this kingdom was ushered in through a turbulent age that happened in the past where the old covenant kingdom was put down and the new covenant kingdom rose in events that have already occurred, partial preterism.

And we're partial because we don't believe every passage in the New Testament has a past fulfillment. We just believe that the majority of the passages in the New Testament have a past fulfillment. We do believe that there are verses that are still future, that are still waiting to be fulfilled, but we'll have to cover those in future episodes.

For now, the eschatological system that we have been putting forward, partial preterism and post-millennialism has been proven true time and time and time again. The two presuppositions that we were working with today that the Jews are gonna be punished and the church is going to rise up in the ashes of the old covenant demise have been confirmed by the book of Acts.

And the book of Acts also overturns the lies of dispensationalism at every single turn. Today, we're closing out eschatology for a little bit. We're gonna go into a Christmas series next week where we're gonna be looking at the themes of Advent.

But at some point, we will reenter back into New Testament eschatology. And we're gonna move from the book of Acts, which is the second story of our eschatological edifice. And we're gonna move to the third story of our end time house, which consists of the writings of Paul and other epistolatory literature.

We're gonna do that and we're gonna do that for a while before we get to the book of Revelation, which is the final sort of chimney of eschatology. But you can't get there until you've climbed through the Old Testament up into the main floor where Jesus is to the second story staircase where the book of Acts resides, and then on up into the third story bedrooms where Paul brings our theology home.