124. How The Book Of Revelation PROVES Postmillennialism! | A Practical Postmillennialism Series

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Those prophecies were not meant to confuse you and they weren't meant to send you into the arms of Nostradamus or the

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Mayans or anyone else who writes some sort of crazy eschatological future. They weren't meant to get you best friends with Tim LaHaye or any of the other nonsensical charlatans who promote the premillennial vision.

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Those prophecies were meant to give you absolute certainty. Not that they occur in multiple millenniums into the future, but that they occurred in the past.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 124,

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How the Book of Revelation Proves Postmillennialism. What this is and what it isn't.

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Whenever one attempts to write on the subject of eschatology in general and also about Revelation in particular, well, it won't be long before an army of what about thisers and what about thaters are crawling up to the surface and pummeling you with a litany of questions.

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It's not necessarily a bad thing so long as the questions are relevant, so long as they're connected to what the author, me in this sense, is trying to accomplish.

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For that reason, I thought that I would explain myself. I would qualify my very narrow purpose in this episode.

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I am not attempting to cover an extended exposition of Revelation 20 on how postmillennialism is the only and right millennial view of that great chapter.

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I believe that that's a good, a very good and a very necessary thing that I could be doing, but that's not what

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I'm doing today. Today I intend to accomplish something different. I am planning a full scale series on the book of Revelation in 2025.

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Maybe that's an announcement. Maybe I've never even said that publicly before. I don't think I have. Hey, I'm going to be doing a series in Revelation in 2025.

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It's going to be epic. We're going to go through the whole book. So more is coming. So with that,

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I'm not going to be doing an extended exposition today. I'm not going to be talking about the beast and who he is.

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I'm not going to be talking about the mark of the beast, the 144 ,000. I'm not going to be getting into any of that stuff and I hope that that's okay.

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I want to save those details for my longer series next year, which is happening and it's going to be great.

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It's going to be epic. Stay tuned. Today. My hope is actually to show the structure of Revelation and how the book is organized and how that proves a post -millennial vision.

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So if you're down with that, if you're down for that modest goal, and if you're down for the final episode in our post -millennialism series, isn't that crazy?

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We've been going at this now for like six months and we're at the final episode of the biblical part of this series.

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We've got some more interviews that are coming, but we're at the final episode. So if you're down to see how

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Revelation is the post -millennial capstone on a post -millennial Bible, then all

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I have to say to you is own word, Christian soldier, let's go.

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Part one, the difficulty with the book of Revelation. The most natural expectation that a reader can have is that a book's conclusion concludes the story.

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That's obvious, right? After investing hours into a plot line, perhaps multiple volumes of novels, the reader should expect that the end of the book ends the book.

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That again is sort of basic, but it's not always the case.

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Chronologically speaking, the final pages of a book are supposed to describe the final events in the story arc.

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There's supposed to be nothing significant that comes after that unless there is a continuation of the story.

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And yet, contrary to our expectations, the book of Revelation does not end that way.

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Now on the one hand, the book does form a kind of grand conclusion, but not in the way that we're thinking.

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We come to the last book of the Bible expecting it to tell us about the final moments of our future.

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And that's not its purpose. Its purpose is not to describe how the world is going to end.

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In fact, its purpose actually is to describe how the new world begins.

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We assume that because it's the last book of the Bible, that it's going to deal with the final moments of human history, which is why so many people have become confused when they come to this book.

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Instead of it being a conclusion for our story and the end of all material reality, Revelation is doing something very different.

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It's describing the end of the Jewish age through apocalyptic images, and it's talking about how

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Jesus fully and totally brings a new world order, a new creation, a new church, a new city, a new bride that he's going to use to redeem everything that was broken.

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So in that sense, Revelation 1 through 19 is the explosive ending of the old covenant world.

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It is the old covenant world crash landing and blowing up as it were.

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And Revelation 20 through 22 describes a new beginning, a new beginning of a brand new world where Jesus is going to transform everything that was broken, everything that was twisted, everything that was mangled as a result of the fall, and he's going to heal everything.

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The curse is going to be eliminated through his church. Now, that kind of structure where you've got one dramatic ending and then a little pop up, you've got, it's almost like a plane comes down on a runway and smacks the runway and bounces back up.

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That's sort of what we're looking at here in the book of Revelation and 19, it looks like a plane crash.

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And then all of a sudden, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the church comes back up and starts to take off and you don't see when it lands.

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All you do is you see the takeoff of the church. Now that kind of ending has happened in literature.

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If you've been around this channel long enough, you know that I love J .R .R. Tolkien and the Lord of the

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Rings. I love all of those books, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales. I love those stories.

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Well, The Fellowship of the Ring is kind of like this. If you remember, I was in Iraq when

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I read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time. And as I was reading it, that's the only book that I had. My grandma, it took her three weeks to send a package from North Carolina to Baghdad, Iraq.

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So it was going to take me a while. And she didn't know if I was going to like the story. So she only sent me that one. As soon as I got to the end,

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The Fellowship and the formation of all those storylines kind of resolved themselves.

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And then the book doesn't end. Instead, it sets up new challenges and unresolved issues.

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And before I knew it, I had been cliffhung and I was like ready to read the next volume.

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And I was eagerly on the satellite phone telling my grandma, please send the next books, please. I had to wait three or four weeks to get them.

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Well, in a similar way, Revelation concludes the story of the old covenant world at chapter 19.

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It's done. And yet the story is not finished. It's talking about a new story, a new narrative arc, new conflicts, new challenges, a new world.

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And it's going to bring us to eventually the end of all things.

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But Revelation leaves that a little bit vague. So that understanding helps us understand this book.

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And if we don't understand that strategy, then we're not going to understand the book of Revelation. If we don't understand that Revelation is telling the story of the end of Adam and Israel and the glorious beginning of Jesus and his new church.

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If you don't understand that, then the book of Revelation is going to be sorely confusing.

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So that's one aspect of why this book is so difficult to read. Another aspect is that we don't understand why

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John wrote this book. I think there's an answer to that, but many don't understand why he wrote this book.

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Let me explain it this way. John's gospel is the only gospel.

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Remember, there's four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. John's is the only one that does not contain the

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Olivet discourse. Now that's the section of the gospels. If you're not familiar with what the Olivet discourse is, where Jesus is prophesying about the end of the

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Jewish age, Matthew 24, three, where the temple is going to be destroyed brick by brick, Matthew 24, two wars and rumors of wars are going to be unleashed upon the land.

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Matthew 24, six false prophets are going to be leading the people astray. Matthew 24, 11 famines and earthquakes are going to break out in the

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Roman world. Matthew 24, seven, the church is going to be persecuted in a very increasingly intense season of 40 years,

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Matthew 24, nine. And for her covenant crimes against her God, Judah will be totally destroyed.

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Matthew 24, 15 through 22, such that the only thing that is left of her in the

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Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 is the dead bodies that lie in the streets of Jerusalem. The vultures are pecking off the meat from the bloody cadavers.

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That's Matthew 24, 28. Matthew's gospel has this dramatic prophecy of Judah's end.

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That's called the Olivet discourse, and it's described for us in Matthew 24, Mark covers it in Mark 13,

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Luke enumerates it in Luke 21, but John doesn't even mention it.

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The most remarkable prophecy that has ever been uttered on human lips that came true with the most astonishing clarity, it's unrivaled in literature, it's not even alluded to by the fourth gospel, it's not even mentioned at all.

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Why? Well, many point to John's gospel being written for a particular purpose.

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His purpose is revealed to us in John 20, 31, he said, these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of God, and that by believing in him, you have life in his name, which is undoubtedly true.

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And it means that John's gospel's purpose was the salvation of sinners, therefore the

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Olivet discourse did not really have a purposeful place. But it's also true that John didn't ignore this content totally.

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It's also true, and I'm going to prove this today to you, that John not only didn't include it in his gospel, but he also wrote an entire book about it.

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You see, John, instead of just making it one chapter, like the synoptics have done, he writes an entire book on the

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Olivet discourse, which we know by the name of Revelation. What I'm going to be arguing is that John gives us an expanded 22 chapter exposition of the

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Olivet discourse that's in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, that is going to show us how

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Jesus inaugurates his new bride, the church, and puts down the old covenant whore called

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Judaism. Now with that in mind, I intend to show you today how the Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 is clearly and unmistakably about the first century end of Jerusalem.

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And as I'm demonstrating this, I'm going to show you how the book of Revelation perfectly follows the

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Olivet structure so that Revelation is saying the same thing as the

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Olivet discourse. If the Olivet discourse and Revelation follow the exact same structure, they're saying the exact same things.

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The Olivet discourse is talking about the end of first century Jerusalem, so is Revelation. And I'm going to prove that to you that in AD 70, the book of Revelation, this is what the book of Revelation is about.

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So with that introduction, let us begin our final biblical episode on this series by looking at John's Olivet Revelation.

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Part two, comparing the Olivet discourse and Revelation, opening timeframe references.

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Now, as Jesus leaves the temple mount for the final time in Matthew 23, after cursing the city for her covenant crimes, he indicates something.

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He tells us that God's wrath is going to be poured out on that wicked and adulterous town.

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According to Jesus in Matthew 23, all of God's wrath and fury that has been stored up all the way since Cain killed

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Abel was about to be was about to be let loose on that generation, Matthew 23, 35 through 36, which is going to result in the imminent destruction of the

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Jerusalem temple and the holy city of Jerusalem within a 40 year window of time.

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You'll remember that in the Bible, a biblical generation is 40 years. This means that as Jesus began his most detailed and expansive prophecy ever given, the one that is directed squarely at the

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Jerusalem temple in the Jews, he took the time to indicate to you and I when this was going to happen.

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And he did that so that none of us would be confused. Instead of us believing that these things are about the end of our world or about the end of material reality,

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Jesus doesn't do that. He tells us that this is all going to happen in a single generation.

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These are events that are not far off in the distant future. They were imminent judgments against the ones who crucified him, against the ones who pierced him, against the ones who persecuted his church, and against the ones who wholly turned away from their

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God, Matthew 24, 34. The timing of Jesus's coming and judgment against Jerusalem in the

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Olivet discourse is not distant. It is imminent. The same can be said about the book of Revelation.

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Now, the book of Revelation gets this sort of moniker or reputation as being about things that are in the distant, distant future, but it's not.

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It's so clearly not. For instance, the book of Revelation.

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Do you know what the very first verse says? It begins by saying that this is the revelation of Jesus Christ about the things that are soon to come to pass.

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Revelation 1 .1. The very beginning of the book of Revelation is a timeframe reference that is indicating that it's about things that are soon to happen because the judgment, he says in verse 3, is near.

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Now, thankfully, you and I do not need to be linguistic scholars to understand very complex words like soon and near.

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These are not the kind of words that Jesus uses when he's talking about thousands of years into the indeterminate future.

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Jesus uses these kinds of words when he's talking about things that are coming soon and that are near.

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And he even says that the ones who pierced him are going to be the ones who see his judgment coming.

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Revelation 1 .7. There you have three timeframe references right in the first seven verses.

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And I want you to remember something. None of us, 2 ,000 years after the crucifixion, none of us were a part of the piercing of Jesus.

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Now, you may say that mine and your sin was a part of what nailed him to the cross.

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We sing that in one of the great songs. I get it. You're correct in a spiritual sense, but in a physical sense, you and I did not hammer those nails into Jesus's wrist.

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We did not stab him in the side with a spear, and we did not deliver him over to Pilate and assume the guilt of our trespasses, saying to Pilate, his blood be on us and our children.

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None of us were there. None of us are over 120 years old, much less over 2 ,000 or nearly 2 ,000 years old.

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So when Revelation says that he is returning and the ones who pierced him and who delivered him over to this crucifixion are the ones who are going to see his near -term judgment coming to pass.

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When it says that, it's not talking about us. Jesus comes in judgment against the ones who pierced him.

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That's what Revelation 1 .7 says, which means that the events that Revelation described are not about you.

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Unless you were one of the ones who pierced him, unless you were alive 2 ,000 years ago, Revelation is not about you.

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It's about them. It's about Jesus returning to deal with the ones who crucified him, the ones who persecuted his bride, and the ones who turned against their

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God. In both the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation, Jesus began the prophecy with imminent time frame references.

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Why? So that you and I would not be confused and so that we would not believe that these events happened long into the future.

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I laugh because Jesus himself put these clues in the text so that we would not be confused, and yet we have found a way to make

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Revelation the most confusing book on earth. That just goes to show you that he did not choose us because we're smart.

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The birth of the church. Now, Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation also speak about the birth of the church.

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Not only do they speak about the exact same time period, 40 years between the resurrection of Jesus and downfall of Jerusalem, AD 30 to AD 70, 40 years, that's a biblical generation.

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Not only do they talk about that same time period, but they also use the metaphor of pregnancy, which again shows that these two scriptures,

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Matthew 24 and the entire book of Revelation are intricately connected. And I don't believe that this is coincidental also because pregnancies last for 40 weeks and not only do average pregnancies last 40 weeks, but the

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Jerusalem Jews who were under the ban of God, under the judgment of God, were going to limp along, wander along for 40 years.

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So the metaphor of pregnancy is actually incredibly insightful. In the same way that a woman experiences pain and trials all the way leading up to her labor for 40 years, the

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Jewish people are going to experience three phases, three hostile phases of increased intensity that is going to steadily increase all the way to the very end, just like a pregnancy.

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Now, at the end of a pregnancy, a child joyfully arrives and that's what we're going to see. The child is the church,

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Jesus' blood -bought church, but we're also going to see how the

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Jewish people have increasing tribulations and woes that do not get better.

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They get worse all the way until their destruction. That is what we see in Matthew 24 and how he compares this era to a pregnancy.

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But that's also what we see in the book of Revelation that does the exact same thing as well. For instance, in Revelation 12,

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John envisions a woman who is in hard, full -on labor, crying out in pain as she's giving birth to a male child.

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This child symbolizes the church who comes under the constant threat and the beratings of Satan, the dragon, and his illegitimate progeny, whose

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Jesus already has identified as the Jews of the first century in John 8, 44. He says, you think your father's

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Abraham, your father is Satan. So in both the Olivet Discourse and in the book of Revelation, the church is the one who comes into the world through violent tribulations and labors like a woman who's in the throes of her pregnancy.

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But in both scriptures, the baby is symbolized by the church that is being attacked by the Jews, and it's the

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Jews who are the ones who are going to be destroyed. In both passages, Christ will put away the

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Jewish opposition so that his child, the church, will exist on earth without rival.

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Now, for a moment, I want us to dive a little deeper into this pregnancy metaphor. I want us to look at the three trimesters of increasing suffering that are going to happen in Matthew 24 and Revelation.

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Now, you remember, Jesus says that this is the beginning of the birth pains, and later he says this is the continuation of the birth pains, and then he says the labor has come.

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That's Matthew 24. Revelation also describes three sets of seven judgments, the bowl judgments, the trumpet judgments, the seal judgments.

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So you have a sort of threefold structure here that I'm saying looks a lot like pregnancy, three trimesters.

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So for a moment, I want us to look at the three eras of this period of time from AD 30 to AD 70 when things get steadily worse, like the pain in a pregnancy, where it happens in three sequential phases, which

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I'm going to call trimesters, and these exist in both Matthew 24 and in the book of Revelation, which say the exact same thing.

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So if you will, let's look at that for a moment. Number one, the first trimester.

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Now, the conception of the Christian church accounts as the second most consequential conception in all of human history, only exceeded by the incarnation of Christ in Mary's virgin womb.

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In these 40 gestational years of the church's early establishment, Jesus predicted that she was going to experience all kinds of tribulations, pains, and sorrows, and a very hard delivery.

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For instance, in the first trimester of pain, Jesus, after he ascends into heaven, this newly conceived church almost immediately witnesses the rise of false messiahs, which

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Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24, four through five. Then he said that they're going to go through wars and rumors of wars in a period called the

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Pax Romana, where there were no wars, Matthew 24, six. Jesus says that they're going to go through earthquakes,

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Matthew 24, seven, famines, Matthew 24, seven. Again, the initial stages of persecution, Matthew 24, nine, and a growing number of early believers in Christ are going to leave the church.

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They're going to apostatize because the pain and the persecution were too great, Matthew 24, 10.

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Now, Jesus is not the only one who talks like this, and revelation also mirrors it, but we'll get to that in a moment.

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What I want to show you is that the book of Acts confirms everything that Jesus said. Everything that he said is going to happen in Matthew 24 happened.

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For instance, Acts 5, 36 through 37, Luke mentions that there's going to be, or that there were a rise in false messiahs.

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He even names two of them. He names them Thutis and Judas, which is easy to remember because they rhyme, Thutis and Judas.

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He said that they rose up and they led the people astray. That's fulfillment of prophecy. Jesus said false messiahs were going to rise up, and Acts confirms that they did.

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Acts 11, 28 confirms that a great famine occurred under the reign of Claudius, and I think it's Suetonius who said that it was a worldwide or a

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Roman empire -wide famine, which means that here you have another fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy in Acts 11.

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The persecution of believers was a recurring theme in the book of Acts with early instances such as the beating of James and John, the stoning of Stephens, the persecutions that were led by Paul or Saul against the early church.

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These persecutions led to the scattering of believers with some of them even turning away from their faith, which is why

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Acts 20, verse 29 through 30 reminds people not to abandon their confession.

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So all of these events confirm the accuracy of Jesus's Olivet Discourse, that false

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Christ famines, earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars, and apostasy were going to be a part of that first era of Christian travail,

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Christian pain, and that era probably is about AD 30 to AD 40,

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AD 45, somewhere around in there. That's that first gestational era. Now, unsurprisingly, this same pattern shows up in the book of Revelation.

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Like Matthew 24 where Jesus gathers his disciples around him, Jesus gathers seven Asia minor churches and strengthens them and encourages them in Revelation 2 through 3.

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Then after this, he ascends into heaven. He sits down on the throne of his father to rule over his church,

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Revelation 4 through 5. Then after he's sitting on his throne, he initiates the very same kind of tribulations and trials that he's already predicted in Matthew 24.

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I want you to think about it like this. Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 24 what he's going to do.

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Then he ascends to heaven and he does it. That's what Revelation chapter 6 is talking about.

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For example, in Revelation 2, verse 2 and 14 through 15, Jesus reveals that false prophets, false teachers were arising in the church, fulfillment of prophecy.

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Jesus opens up the seal in Revelation 6. What happens? Wars and rumors of wars. That's in verse 3 through 4, followed by famines, earthquakes, and various pestilences on the earth,

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Revelation 6, 5 through 6. Then what happens? Persecution, martyrdom, and apostasy of some believers,

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Revelation 2, 10 and Revelation 6, 9 through 11. All of these things perfectly mirror what

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Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24, which makes perfect sense. Jesus told his disciples on earth what he was going to do.

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And now in Revelation 6, he's accomplishing that in heaven. That is what the book of Revelation is describing.

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It has the same eminent timeframe references. It has the same language of pregnancy and has the same period of time with the same tribulations occurring right there in the church's first couple of years of existence.

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These similarities continue as we go forward. They really bind these sections of scripture together in a way that is undeniable.

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Revelation, despite all of its fantastical images of beasts and flying objects and apocalyptic symbols, is really just the apocalyptic version of John's Olivet discourse.

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It's telling the same exact story. Number two, the second trimester.

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As the church continued into its second and third decade, you're talking about years like 45 to 65.

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As it's continuing on, the pain that Jesus prophesied was going to happen began to increase, especially in Jerusalem.

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When the church began to increase in Jerusalem, Acts 2, 41 through 47, and as it began to spread in Judea, Acts 8, 1, spread in Samaria, Acts 8, 5 through 8, and spread to the uttermost parts of the

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Roman world, Acts 13, 47, a new phase of more intense sufferings began to emerge, which was akin to a woman transitioning out of the first trimester of her sufferings into the second.

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These increasingly difficult trials were marked by increased persecution, internal conflicts, external threats, all of which were part of the birthing pains that Jesus said were going to prepare the church for her delivery.

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Now, according to Jesus, the persecutions that were present in the first period were going to drastically increase in Judea and, more specifically, in Jerusalem, and they were going to continue to increase as the church moved forward towards her delivery,

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Matthew 24, 9. So, along with increased persecutions, the Jewish people were going to also devolve into greater instances of immorality.

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Jesus describes the increase of persecution as being more intense and the increase of the

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Jews' immorality as being more insane, becoming increasingly unhinged the longer they persisted in their unbelief and rebellion.

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I want you to think about it like this. They killed Christ, then they persecuted God's people, and because they refused to repent, they didn't get better and they didn't stay the same.

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They got worse and worse and worse to a degree that they could not even imagine.

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Instead of the Jews maintaining or improving with every decade, they got worse. They became more mangled and a more satanic version of themselves, spiraling into the kind of sins that they would have never been able to stomach just a few decades before.

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It was clear that God was giving them up to insanity, to degrees of depravity that are deplorable, and over the four decades that we're talking about, from 8030 to 8070, they descended into a kind of doomed and insatiable madness.

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In fact, I'm not just making claims here. I'm going to actually back it up with some receipts.

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Josephus, the Jewish historian, records that by the 50s, 20 years after Jesus was crucified, the city of Jerusalem descended into a state of lawlessness and chaos, just as Jesus predicted.

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Now, what I find so fascinating is that Christians today don't know these stories. So as I'm telling you these things, go and read

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Josephus, read the Jewish wars, read what he says. This is an eyewitness account from a

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Jewish follower of the Mosaic law. He hates

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Christ, he hates the church, and yet he's honest. And what you will find is that Josephus so perfectly and so clearly supports the fact that Jesus was right.

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Everything Jesus said, Josephus confirms. He is an eyewitness of the unfolding of Jesus's prophecy, and he describes it in gruesome, ugly, and awful details, the likes of which

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I have never read anywhere else. So as I'm telling you these things, pay attention to the details, but don't just take my word for it, go read it, go read the

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Jewish war. I think it is so critical to understanding eschatology, because if you don't, you're going to be like, well, none of these things happened.

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And they did, they actually really did. But if you don't know that they happened, and you ignore history, then you're probably going to be the kind of person who's either a pan -millennialist and says,

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I don't know, I'm going to pan out in the end, or you're going to be the kind of person that says these things clearly didn't happen in the first century, so therefore

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I'm going to believe that there's still future. That's false. Just because you're ignorant of history doesn't mean history didn't happen.

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So go read it. Josephus describes some incredible things, and I'm going to tell you a lot about them today.

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For instance, the high priest and the ruling classes in that 50s era, they started engaging in violent power struggles.

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The high priest and the ruling class turned against one another, and even go in so far as to assassinate one another in order to gain control of the city of Jerusalem.

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So you have the priesthood turning against the aristocracy. It was pandemonium. The zealots, who was a

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Jewish militia, this militant Jewish sect, they were inciting rebellions in the city. They were slaughtering any single person that they believed were collaborators with Rome.

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They were even going throughout the city with swords, killing people if they violated the Sabbath. The city had descended into lawlessness.

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The love of people had grown cold, just like Jesus said. The temple itself became ground zero for this battle.

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It was desecrated by bloodshed and corruption by those who claimed that they were lovers of God.

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Josephus talks about this in the Jewish war, book four, chapter three. Another thing that was happening is that brigands and robbers were roaming through the countryside of Judea, and they were plundering villages.

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They were raping women. They were causing widespread fear and panic among the people. This period was a period of increasing lawlessness and brutality within Jerusalem and Judea that was a direct result of the fact that God was abandoning them.

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Romans one says that when God gives you over to these things, he abandons you and you become worse.

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This is exactly what was happening in Judah. Without the God of the law, the people who said they believed in the law slipped into lawlessness.

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Without God, their empty religion wasn't enough.

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And they descended into madness in the moral repugnant that set the stage for their catastrophic judgment and calamity and downfall, which demonstrates to us that without a relationship with God, it don't care what society you're in.

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If it's built on law and order, I don't care. It will degenerate into chaos and brutality, which is exactly what we're going through right now in our society.

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Because we've abandoned God, we are devolving into chaos. This is what was happening in Judah.

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But like to the thousandth degree, Jesus predicted it was going to happen.

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And it came true with awful certainty as the Jews flagrantly marched towards their own destruction like lambs before the slaughter.

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Now, before showing you how the book of Revelation says the exact same things, because that's what it does.

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It says the same things that the Olivet discourse says. Before we get there, I want to prove even more that these things were going on by adding some commentary from the rest of the

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New Testament and also giving you some more detail from Josephus. So the book of Acts, the book of Acts tells us that the persecutions were increasing.

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Jesus said persecutions are going to get worse. And they did. And it was because of the bloodthirstiness of the

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Jews. The Jews of that 50s era wanted to see Christians murdered.

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They were salivating over the death of Christians. For example, Acts chapter 12 describes

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Herod Agrippa, who was trying unsuccessfully to hold this nation together. He was the son of Herod the

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Great. He was trying to hold the country together, and it was not working. And he found that the only way that he could quell the hatred of the

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Jews or the pesky rebellious nature of the Jews was by killing Christians. So in order to curry the favor with the

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Jews and to gain some sort of political stability, he executed James, who was the brother of Jesus Christ.

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He was the leader of the early first century church. He killed him, and then he arrested

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Peter, and he had every intent on killing Peter as well. And he did these things because it pleased the

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Jews. Acts 12, one through three. In addition to this confirmation from the book of Acts, Herod is this is confirmed in Josephus, where he says that Herod was eager to kill

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Christians because he believed that it would appease the Jewish sentiments. If he could annihilate this

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Jewish rival spinoff that believed in Christ, then he could go back to vacationing and living his life of indulgence without the fear of Jewish uprising.

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Because he was afraid, he was trying to pacify the Jews with the blood of the martyr Christians.

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Jesus predicted this was going to happen. The book of Acts confirms it. Josephus confirms it. Paul also talks about this rampant period of persecution, which is not

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Pauline exaggerations. Paul is not just being extra, but he's talking about real growing threats to the early church that he himself faced in dramatic ways.

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Paul describes beatings, imprisonments, constant danger, shipwrecks, snake bites.

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You can read about it. Second Corinthians 11, 24 through 26. He's talking about things that Jesus said were going to happen.

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Another example in Thessalonians. First Thessalonians 2, 14 through 15. Paul speaks directly to the

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Thessalonian Christians and he says, your sufferings are coming because of the Jews.

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These references that I just gave you are highlighting the fact that the early church was undergoing the most severe period of persecution that they will ever face.

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There's never been a period of persecution on the Christian church like that first century. And they were getting constant barrages of attacks by the

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Jews who wanted to see them totally obliterated. The last great sign of this redemptive gestational era beyond increased persecution and Jewish madness was that the gospel was going to be preached throughout the entire world, which would precipitate the end.

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That would be the sign that would let the disciples know that the end was near. Now, my chart -loving, tinfoil hat -wearing dispensational critics might actually argue that this could not have happened.

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This didn't happen before the fall of Jerusalem because the gospel didn't go to Timbuktu. It didn't go to the

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Northwest Territory. It didn't go to the Yucatan Peninsula. The gospel, it was not heard in those regions before the downfall of Jerusalem.

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Therefore, this passage is future. And I appreciate your desire to try to protect the

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Bible from contradiction, but you're the one who's the fool. This perspective misses the context.

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It misses the fact that the Bible was not written in 21st century English. And as I've said in other episodes, the word world needs to be understood carefully because our

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English translators have done a terrible job at translating it. For instance, what I'm trying to say is Jesus did not say that the gospel was going to be preached in all of the cosmos, referring to the entire planet, meaning that the gospel is going to be preached in Madagascar and Chile and Taiwan and everywhere else on Earth before the end comes.

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That's not what it says. That's just not what it says. Instead, Jesus says that the gospel must be preached in all of the

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Oikamene, which means the inhabited Roman Empire.

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The gospel must be preached in all the Roman world. And then Jesus says he will bring about the end of the

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Jews. Paul himself confirms that this actually happened. In Romans chapter one, verse eight, he says that the gospel or sorry, he says that their faith, the

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Roman church's faith was being proclaimed in all the world, not cosmos

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Oikamene. In Romans 10, eight, Paul says that the gospel has gone out into all the

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Earth Oikamene, meaning that the entire Roman Empire had been evangelized before the fall of Jerusalem, before the book of Romans was being finished written.

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So before 60 AD, the entire Roman Empire had heard about this resurrected

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Christ. Now, that may not satisfy the most diluted dispensationalist who prefer confusing and cloudy

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English over the original Greek. But for the rest of us, I think we need to remember that words actually have meaning.

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That if you can't build your theology off the meaning of the word, then your theology needs to become more accurate.

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Because if the word means Roman Empire, you can dress it up like cosmos all you want. That's not what it means.

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Now, this sign was fulfilled. The Olivet discourse tells us that it was that it was a sign.

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Paul tells us that it was fulfilled. The book of Colossians also says that this was fulfilled when Paul says that the gospel was preached to every creature under heaven.

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But it was also these things are repeated in the book of Revelation. And that's a very interesting feature because the book of Revelation is so often looked at as a futuristic book, and yet it's not.

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It's not. The book of Revelation describes the exact same things that Jesus talks about in the second trimester.

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It talks about them in Revelation. For instance, Revelation 7, 1 through 17 says that the gospel is going to go into all the world.

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And it talks about that through this number 144 ,000. 144 ,000 is the number of the elect from both the

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Jews and the Greeks, the 12 tribes and the world who come together out of every tribe, tongue and nation throughout the

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Roman world who worship Christ. So Paul says that the gospel is proclaimed in all the world.

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Revelation says that the world is represented by this 144 ,000. They're saying the same things.

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Revelation 13, 11 through 18 points out that there's this beast, this false prophet that emerges and reminds us of Jesus's warning that false prophets are going to arise in Matthew 24.

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The corruption and the dissent and the lawlessness by Jerusalem is described in Revelation 11, 2 and Revelation 17, 1 through 2, which illustrates that the moral decay that Jesus talks about shows up in the book of Revelation.

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Revelation also records that Jesus calls the church to persevere and not to defect into apostasy.

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Revelation 2, 7, 2, 10 and Revelation 3, 10, which also again fulfills Jesus's prophecy.

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This consistent and constant agreement with the

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Olivet discourse reminds us that they're both speaking about the exact same things.

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They're both talking about the end of Jerusalem and Judaism and the rise of Jesus's new covenant church.

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Number three, the third trimester. Now, the final period of tribulation and travails, which takes us all the way to the downfall of Jerusalem, occurred somewhere in the mid to late 60s

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AD. Maybe think about 62 to 68, 62 to 70, somewhere around in that period was the final era of tribulation that Jesus said was the worst by far.

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These last years of Jerusalem and her temple represent the heaviest of the birth pangs to date. Just as a woman's pain intensifies as she goes forward all the way into the final stages of labor.

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Now, for instance, as Jerusalem descended into moral chaos, the Romans had no choice but to put down this rabid dog that was about to bite and strike anyone who came near it.

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Because Jerusalem was behaving like it had spiritual mad cow disease, Rome sent its armies as the final solution to the problem of the

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Jews. Entering the country through the northern region of Galilee, setting fire and pillaging one town after another in route to the defiant

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Jerusalem. Now, it's clear in Josephus, who was a Jew, that the Romans did not want to do this.

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They were trying to get the Jews to cooperate, but they wouldn't. They had descended into madness.

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So the Romans had no choice. They burned down city after city after city. Those who escaped didn't give up.

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They didn't throw their hands up and say, you're right. I'm sorry. Let's meet. Let's be friends. Instead, they fled on foot to Judea and then to the capital city of Jerusalem, which was set aloft upon a collection of hills known as Mount Moriah.

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Jerusalem at that point was widely thought to be the safest place in all of Israel that someone could go.

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And this, my friends, could not be further from the truth. As Rome ran out of Galilean cities to loot and burn, they made their way to Jerusalem and they staged their armies outside of the city with three legions of Roman soldiers and cavalry ready to take down this rebellious city by a long protracted siege.

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Now, if you're unfamiliar with siege warfare, let me give you a little bit of an example of what this looks like. An army would stand outside of your city, cutting off your supply lines, starving you into cannibalism, and they would wait you out until a slow withering death took you over so that when they came into the city, they merely had to just kill you where you lay because you were too weak to stand up and fight.

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That's what siege warfare is. Matthew tells us that this is exactly when the abomination of desolation occurred.

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Matthew 24, 15. Now, if you're not familiar with very Hebrew ways of speaking, this is

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Matthew, who is written to the Jews, his very Hebraic way of saying that the pagan

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Roman armies were surrounding the city of Jerusalem. They were entering it and they were defiling it. We know that that's what

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Matthew intends to tell us because of what Luke, who wrote to the Gentiles, actually said. Luke writing to the

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Gentiles makes this a little bit easier to understand. He goes, I know these Gentiles aren't going to understand what the abomination of desolation is, which comes out of the book of Daniel.

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So I'm going to say it more clearly so that the Gentiles can understand. So if you're not a

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Jew by birth, if you're not a very Hebraic oriented person, if you don't know the book of Daniel, like the back of your hand, listen to what

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Luke says. It's very clear. But this is what he says. But when you see

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Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near.

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The abomination that causes desolation is the Roman armies surrounding the city, plunging her into ruinous insanity and leaving the city drowning in unspeakable defilements.

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That's what Matthew is saying. That's what Luke is saying. And that's also what the book of Revelation says as well.

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By the time the armies were swarming around the city, Jesus had already warned his followers ahead of time to flee.

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Luke 21 20. He says, when you see that run. He told them not to go down into your house to get your favorite coat.

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He told them not to worry if you forgot your pocketbook in the house. He said, go flee with all of your might so that you will not get swept up into the same kind of judgment and destruction that is coming on the city.

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Jesus warns them even how hard it's going to be if you're pregnant in those days because you're not able to run very fast.

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That's the point. You see, there were Christians in the city of Jerusalem at this time.

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They weren't welcome. They were hated. But there were Christians in the city. Why? Because they were there on mission.

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They were trying to convert their neighbors. Many Christians stayed in the city of Jerusalem so that they could tell their families about Jesus so that they could try to convert them to Christ before the city was totally destroyed and eliminated.

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But here's the thing. Jesus only gave him 40 years to do that work. And at the end of the 40 years, when the armies of Rome showed up,

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Jesus warned them that it's no longer time for you to stay. Their time is over. The countdown clock has struck midnight.

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And now it's time to flee and flee. They did. Josephus records how the

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Christians, it was the only group of people who left the city were the Christians and obedience to Jesus's prophecy on the

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Mount of Olives. They left the city and they were spared from its destruction. It's one of the great interesting features of history.

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Josephus says it like this. But before the war began, the people of Jerusalem had received an oracle in that country, which was that when the city should be taken, a certain people should be driven from it and fly to some remote place beyond the

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Jordan, which so came to pass for they fled to a city called Petra beyond the

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Jordan, where they found safety. Josephus, the Jewish war book six, chapter five.

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This people who were driven from the city were the Christians. Josephus doesn't tell you they were the

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Christians, but they were the Christians. The oracle that they received that Josephus references is the prophecy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24.

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And Josephus, who was no friend of Jesus, confirmed that it was the Christians who left and found safety.

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There's other reports that the Romans, when they came in, this is astounding. When the

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Romans came in and everyone saw it, there was this moment where the Romans removed themselves from the city.

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And it was then that the Christians left. And when they left, the Jews stayed.

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And because the Jews stayed, they stayed for the destruction. On top of these things,

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Jesus also detailed that there would be untold suffering in the city once the Christians left. I want you to think about it like this.

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The Christians stood, stayed by for 40 years to disciple them, to teach them, to evangelize them all to no avail.

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And when the Christians left, what did they take with them? They took with them the gospel and they took with them the

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Holy Spirit of God so that when the Christians abandoned the city, the Spirit of God abandoned the city because there was no more people who had the spirit.

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So that a city, because there was no more spirit, descended into a kind of hell on earth.

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While they remained, there was a kind of restraining effect that occurred so that the Jews were mercifully protected from the deepest, darkest expressions of their madness.

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But when the salt left, the city started to rot and it started to stink and it became putrefied and nauseating unto

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God. As the Roman legion suffocated the city in siege warfare, Josephus recounts some of the most horrific examples of human debasement that have ever been recorded in human literature.

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I'm going to give you a few examples. You can read the rest of them in the book called The Jewish Wars. Again, I recommend that you read it.

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Here's a few examples. The famine was so severe in the city that Josephus tells us that people were driven to consume their own leather belts.

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They were eating their own shoes. They eventually were stripping the cowhide off of their shields in order to survive and they were gnawing on it like beef jerky.

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The famine became so severe that entire households were filled with piles of dead bodies that the living had neither strength nor the inclination to bury them.

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I want you to imagine being so frail and so weak that you only had the motivation to waste away in a room that was rotting with corpses.

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You're in your living room and grandpa is rotting right across the way from you. Your mother is dead and her blood now is dried.

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You're in a room full of 10, 12, 13 dead bodies and you're so weak that you can't even get up and move them.

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That was what happened to the blue collar population of Jerusalem who didn't have the money to afford food.

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So they sat there withering away in abject starvation. Josephus also records the account of a well -to -do woman, a wealthy woman who was wealthy, but now she's so poor, so mad, so insane in her hunger that she killed and she roasted her own infant son, cooking her son over the fire and then offering it to the people who came and found her.

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The stench of her son's hair was wafting up into the sky and people came and found her and she tried to offer them the meat of her son to eat.

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This act horrified the most hardened soldiers so that they confessed that this city must be under the heavy doom of almighty

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God. The city was plagued by internal strife and violence among the aristocracy who could afford to eat and yet they weren't spared from the judgment.

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They were divided into different warring factions fighting for control over the city, killing each other, poisoning each other's food supply, burning each other's wheat, poisoning each other's water.

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This not only worsened the famine that was in the city, but it aided the Romans in killing them without even lifting a finger.

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Josephus notes that there were people who saw how bad it was and who attempted to flee the city and they were captured and tortured and killed, not by the

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Romans, but by the Jews, the zealots who accused them of treason and desertion, tortured them and killed them for sport.

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The city descended into a kind of unique chaos with acts of murder, looting, raping, cannibalism where all those things had become commonplace.

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Bodies were being thrown over the wall so that the stench of death might be abated.

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Blood was reported as coagulating in puddles near the temple. It was, there was so much blood that it was pooling in puddles.

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Josephus even estimates that 1 .1 million Jews died during the siege, which makes this the most prolific destruction of the

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Jews per population in human history. It's estimated that nearly 30 % or more of all the

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Jews on earth died in the downfall of Jerusalem, which makes those numbers either on par with or exceeding the

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Holocaust. These accounts from Josephus paint a chilling picture of the horror that befell the city of Jerusalem, which fulfilled

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Jesus's prophecy of a great tribulation, unmatched in its severity in any other era of human history.

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Josephus even says that he can't imagine a time period either past, present, or future that would be more wicked and more disgusting than what he saw happening in Jerusalem.

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The abandonment of the city by Christians and by God left the city devoid of divine protection, vulnerable to destruction, and an even greater addiction to their vices, which led to their destruction.

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The untold suffering that was occurring in the final moments of Jerusalem and all of the different flagrant examples of false messiahs, false prophets, which led the people into greater acts of rebellion against God is part and parcel for these last few years.

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In fact, the Romans almost had to kill no one because the Jewish people killed themselves.

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In the final moments, right before the Romans finished the job, we see this connection back to the

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Olivet Discourse. The Jewish people were waiting for a messiah. They'd been waiting for a messiah for decades, for centuries.

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As the people were starving to death and falling into cannibalism, and as the people could have turned from their sins and repented unto

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God, there was one final nail that got thrown into the coffin. The Jewish people began trusting in false messiahs who were raised up in the final hours of the

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Jewish city, who were peddling petty parlor tricks, pagan magic.

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They were offering snake oil signs and wonders that led the nation of Israel into a final hardening that caused their demise.

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You think about and remember back in the Exodus where Pharaoh was watching his magicians imitate the miracles of God through Moses, where they turned a little bowl of water into blood, supposedly.

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In the same way, the Jews in that final era followed their satanic leaders.

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They followed them like mice following Pied Piper to their extermination. Josephus tells us that there were multiple false messianic figures that popped up in the final moments of the besieged city near its very end.

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For instance, he recounts how lawless men under the guise of divine revelation were leading the

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Jews to believe that Rome was not going to be successful. There was a group of people who said, Rome is not going to be successful.

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We're going to win. We're going to beat the Romans. And this group led a whole large contendency of Jews to the temple, promising them that God was going to deliver them.

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And every single one of them got slaughtered. Josephus also describes figures like Menahem Ben Judah, who dressed up in royal garments like David and said that it was

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God's divine fiat that he would take over the city and that he would become king and people followed him.

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And you know what he did? He started executing his enemies, murdering those who opposed him. He killed the high priest in the temple.

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And he went on a murderous rampage until just a few weeks later, he was eventually killed by another rival faction.

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He said he was hearing from God. He led people astray and they died because of it. Similarly, at the very, very, very end,

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John of Giscala and Simon Bar -Giora. These were two influential leaders of rival factions in the final days.

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They were fighting parties. Can you imagine? The Romans are outside watching.

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The Jews in a civil war inside their city. They don't have to kill anybody.

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The Jews are killing themselves. Well, anyway, John of Giscala and Simon Bar -Giora were influential leaders who both spoke like and talked like they were the

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Messiah. They used their positions to exploit the people and to exploit the people's desperation so that they used messianic language to get them to follow him, especially with John.

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John, in particular, told them false prophecies to maintain his grip on control.

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And the leaders not only were in the people not only followed them, but they failed to receive the kind of deliverance that they were being promised.

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There was a cherry on top of Jesus' prophecy. They illustrated how the people who were led astray by their sin and their hatred of Christ were now exasperated and suffering and who were believing false signs, false wonders instead of God.

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After all was said and done and the Romans came in and looked at the massive pile of dead bodies and they killed a few people who were left.

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After all was said and done and the Romans had finished their work. Jesus' prophecy stands alone as being true with horrifying clarity.

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He told them that their city was going to be so utterly devastated and leveled and turned into ruin that all that was going to be left was a pile of bodies baking in the mid eastern sun swelling because of the fluids that was inside of them where vultures were actually come and poking at them and eating them and feasting on their rotting flesh.

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Matthew 24, 28, the Olivet discourse has perfectly foretold every single event that happened in the story of Jerusalem from 80, 30 to 80, 70.

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And the same is true for the book of Revelation, which again says the exact same things as Jesus said in Matthew 24.

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For instance, Revelation 11, one through two speaks of the abomination of desolation as the trampling of the holy city.

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It talks about it in the same ways that Luke did, that when you see the city surrounded by armies, the trampling of the city by the pagans, then you will know that it's desolation has come near.

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Revelation talks about it as a trampling that happened. Revelation 12, six through 16 describes the woman representing the church who flees into the wilderness, escaping from the dragon's pursuit, just like the

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Christians who fled when the Romans showed up and escaped to Petra. Revelation describes it.

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Revelation six, 12 through 17 and Revelation 18, four through eight talk about earthquakes and celestial disturbances in the sky, signs in the sky, and all of this outpouring of divine wrath, which echo of the great tribulations and judgments that are described by Jesus in the

01:00:14

Olivet discourse. Revelation speaks about the holy city of Jerusalem as the

01:00:19

Babylon of old. You remember, Jesus said that the city was going to grow cold.

01:00:24

It's love was going to grow cold. It was going to descend into madness. The book of Revelation says that it's like Babylon.

01:00:31

Jerusalem was plunged into such rank lawlessness and whoring that it was called

01:00:39

Babylon, Babylon, the nation of a million vices.

01:00:46

Jerusalem had become Babylon. Now, furthermore, Revelation 13, 13 through 14 warns that there were these longest messianic figures that were perpetrating deceptive miracles in the city.

01:01:02

Revelation calls this man, the beast and his prophet who perform many signs and wonders so that they harden the people's heart.

01:01:10

That's what John of Giora and Simon, this is what these two men did.

01:01:16

They fit the bill. Now, Revelation doesn't tell us what their names are. It calls them the beast and the prophet. Matthew 24 doesn't tell us who their names are.

01:01:24

It says that they're false prophets who do false signs and wonders. But I'm telling you, when you study this, John and Simon, these two messianic false prophets in the last days of Jerusalem fit the bill pretty well.

01:01:38

It's not a coincidence that Revelation gets this right. Not a coincidence that the Olivet discourse gets this right. We don't need to wait on a future beast.

01:01:45

We've got one in the final days of Jerusalem. Revelation 19, 17 through 18 also describes an angel of the

01:01:52

Lord. This is disgusting. An angel of the Lord calls the birds to gather so that they can have a great supper of God.

01:02:00

Do you know what that supper was? The birds are called to gather around Babylon, Jerusalem, so that they can eat the flesh of kings, eat the flesh of captains, eat the flesh of mighty men and horses and riders, which is exactly what

01:02:16

Jesus predicted. Jesus said the city would be surrounded by ravenous vultures. Revelation says that the angel of God invited these birds to an unholy feast.

01:02:28

Both of these scriptures are saying the exact same thing. They're both referring to the exact same period.

01:02:34

They're talking about the same city, the same ruins, the same curse, the same sin, the same doom.

01:02:40

All of it is speaking about things not far in our future, but things that have already happened in the past.

01:02:47

And since the Olivet discourse is a prophecy about the first century downfall of Jerusalem, we can safely say that Revelation, which has followed the

01:02:56

Olivet discourse point by point by point is saying the exact same things.

01:03:05

Now, there's one more thing that we need to talk about before we move on, and that's the concluding time frame references.

01:03:13

Before we draw any conclusions on these two works, we have to talk about the last aspect of it, and that's that both of them talk about time frame references.

01:03:25

The Olivet discourse and the book of Revelation both talk about time frame references.

01:03:30

Now, if you remember moments ago, we began by talking about the time frame references at the beginning of the

01:03:37

Olivet discourse and at the beginning of the book of Revelation, which said that these things are going to happen in one generation.

01:03:42

They're things which must soon take place. They're going to happen quickly because the end is near, right?

01:03:48

We said that that proved that the events of the Olivet discourse and Revelation are talking about the same event and the same century.

01:03:55

It's the first century. These things are going to happen in the first century.

01:04:01

Now, to ensure that no one would be confused, turn up your hearing aids,

01:04:07

Mr. Dispensational. I'm talking to you so that no one would be confused. Jesus not only began the

01:04:15

Olivet discourse in the book of Revelation with time frame references, he also ended both of them the exact same way.

01:04:23

Notice how the end of the Olivet discourse. He began in Matthew 23 saying that these things are going to happen to this generation.

01:04:30

Well, how does he end it? In Matthew 24, 34, he says this generation will not pass away until everything that he predicted has come about.

01:04:38

That means it is not complicated that that generation was not going to pass away until everything that he said came true.

01:04:48

And what is everything? Everything between Matthew 23, 36, which is the first mention of the word generation and Matthew 24, 34, which is the final mention of the word generation.

01:04:58

Everything between those two goalposts are going to happen in a 40 year window of time.

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Those prophecies were not meant to confuse you, and they weren't meant to send you into the arms of Nostradamus or the

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Mayans or anyone else who writes some sort of crazy eschatological future. They weren't meant to get you best friends with Tim LaHaye or any of the other nonsensical charlatans who promote the premillennial vision.

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Those prophecies were meant to give you absolute certainty, not that they occur in multiple millenniums into the future, but that they occurred in the past.

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That's precisely why Jesus urges his disciples to be vigilant and to be prepared.

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Matthew 24, 42 through 44. He doesn't tell them some people at some point in a long distant future are going to have to be diligent, prepared.

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He says, you be diligent, you be prepared because you have no idea when I'm coming back.

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Why would Jesus warn his people to be on alert, to be on guard, to be diligent if he had no intention of returning in judgment in their lifetime?

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He even said that some of them would not taste death until they saw these things come to pass,

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Matthew 16, 28. This is why Jesus was installing his disciples as stewards over his house.

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Don't miss the symbolism of the parable. He says that there's this parable of a master who owns a house and he goes away on a long journey and he installs his servants, his slaves, his masters over his house.

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Don't miss the point. Jesus said in Matthew 23 that Jerusalem, the old covenant house was going to be left in ruins.

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Why? Because Jesus was going to install his servants over his house. Jesus was going to bring out of the ashes of first century

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Judaism, the desolation of their house. He was going to bring a people that transcends regional tabernacles and temples.

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Who is now tasked with stewarding the entire world that now belongs to Jesus.

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Do you see the point? In Judaism, the Jewish temple, the house of God was this regional place that you had to travel to in order to worship

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God. Now in Christ, the whole world has become the temple of God. The Christians, the slaves of Jesus have become his

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Levitical priests who are now working and serving over his house so that they can bring the blessings of Yahweh to the nations.

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Like the Levites of old, Jesus assures us that those who follow him and do his will and work are going to be blessed.

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Matthew 24, 46. They're going to spread his blessings and they're going to receive his eternal reward.

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Matthew 24, 47. Like the Olivet discourse, revelation begins with urgent, imminent timeframe references.

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And it repeats them at the very end of the book. Remember, the beginning of the book says the time is near.

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Revelation 1, 3. Revelation 22, 7 says, behold, I am coming soon.

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The end of the book says that Jesus is coming soon. Why do we think that the beginning of the book and the end of the book say that he's going to come soon?

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Why do we think that that's not true? Why do we think that that his coming is somehow long out 2000 more years in the future when

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Jesus begins the book with I'm coming soon and he ends the book with I'm coming soon. I believe what

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Jesus said, revelation as a book is about the events that happened in the first century when he came soon against his people who needed to be destroyed.

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See, there's two stories going on in the book of Revelation. There's the destruction of the old covenant world and the rebels who killed him, who persecuted his church and turned their back on God.

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That's the first half of the story of Revelation chapters one through 17. The second half that also happened in the first century was the rise of the

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Christian church that happened shortly from the vantage point of the author.

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It had a first century fulfillment. We're not talking about the end of the world. We're talking about the beginning of the church.

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This indicates to me and I think anybody who has any common sense whatsoever that the book of Revelation only describes events that were eminent to the first century audience.

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It doesn't predict distant future things that involve you and I and our circumstances in the world economic forum and whatever other ridiculous theory that you can come up with.

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As we've said before, if you do not understand that these things happen soon, he comes quickly.

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The time is near. If you don't understand that the book of Revelation will make absolutely no sense.

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It is the apocalyptic account of Jesus's Olivet discourse.

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It is the visionary version of Jesus's prophecy of the downfall of Jerusalem and in the birth of the

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New Testament church. And when you understand that the book is really not that complicated.

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It's no longer shrouded in confusion, but it becomes actually really clear, really encouraging and totally knowable.

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How does this prove post -millennialism? Now, after our little foray into the structure of the book of Revelation, which

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I hope that was interesting to you, how that lines up with the Olivet discourse. And by the way, if you like me came out of dispensationalism once upon a time,

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I will include a chart. I'll include it in the blog on our website. So you'll have to go there to find it.

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But after our little foray into the structure of Revelation, we need to be like a boomerang for a second and come back to the point.

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If the book of Revelation is the apocalyptic version of the Olivet discourse, and we've proven that it is, then it is describing two grand stories, which we've proven that it does like a normal conclusion.

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It is the grand finale of the Jewish age as it collapses and burns. But unlike a normal conclusion, it is the beginning of a new story that will not find its conclusion in the book of Revelation.

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You're not going to read about what the church is going to look like after 40 years. You're not going to read about what the church is going to look like in the third century, the fifth century, the 10th century, the 20th century.

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You're going to read about what the church is supposed to be in the first century and in every century.

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What I mean is that Revelation 20, 21, and 22 describe the birth of Jesus's church after 40 years of gestation, after 40 years of tribulation and labor.

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Now she's been delivered unto the world and now is the time where she will grow and she will mature into the queen that Jesus envisioned her to be.

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Revelation describes the moment of her birth and of her infancy where the first century church was propelled into the world, unrivaled by the

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Jerusalem temple, unrivaled by the sacrificial system, unrivaled by the corrupted and apostate priesthood, unrivaled by the old covenant rebels who hated her.

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Revelation does not describe what the church is going to look like in the 21st century. What we get is the paradigmatic description of who she has been called to be at all times and in all places until her

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Lord returns. And that, my friends, is a thoroughly postmill vision.

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Let me give you a couple of examples. Revelation 21 and 22 vividly depict the church as the culmination of God's redemptive plan.

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She is the new heaven and the new earth, replacing the old covenant system of temples and types and priests and shadows.

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Revelation 21 says that John beheld a new heaven and a new earth, signifying the end of the old covenant order, which was characterized by hereditary priesthood and animal sacrifices and feasts and all of that.

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This transformation from the old world to the new world is expedited by the church who

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John not only sees as a new heaven and a new earth, but he sees coming down from the heavens as a holy city, the new

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Jerusalem that is descending out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. There's only one person in the

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New Testament who's called the bride of Christ, and that's Jesus, or sorry, that's the church, which means that the church is also the new

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Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem is the new heaven and the new earth. The New Testament portrayal of the church as the bride of Christ, Ephesians 5, 25 and 27 means that she is the new

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Jerusalem. She is the new temple of God who descends out of the sky. The declaration that God's dwelling place is no longer in the back room of the

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Holy of Holies, but now it has been made with man. That's why in Revelation 21, three, the church comes down as a cube because the old

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Testament Holy of Holies was a golden cube. So the New Testament church comes down as a golden cube because why?

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Because now God's presence is not locked away in a room. The whole world has become the presence of God. The whole world has been brought into God's perfected state so that God's people now dwell with him no longer with the need of a physical temple,

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Revelation 21, 22, because now the temple is the world. The vision that we see in Revelation encapsulates the shift from the old covenant to the new where the church now embodies this new creation that is marked by direct communication with God.

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She's described as the bride of Christ, which, by the way, is in stark contrast to the whore of Babylon.

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Judah and Jerusalem had become the whore. Now the church has been made the bride.

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In Revelation 21, nine through 10, one of the seven angels invites

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John up to the high mountain and said, Look, John, the bride, the wife of the lamb who is depicted as the holy city, the new

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Jerusalem who's coming down out of heaven. This imagery highlights the purity and the faithfulness of the church in contrast to the corruption and the degradation of the old covenant

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Jewish people. The new Jerusalem is not just a city. It's a replacement of the old

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Jerusalem. That was the Babylon, the great whore of the nations. This new

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Jerusalem, the church is not a walled city like every other city in the ancient world. This is a wall less community of believers no longer encumbered by geography and time, but who experienced the redemption of her

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Lord over every square inch of the earth. In Revelation 21, 15 through 21, the church is described in terms of the holy of holies because she is now the temple of God, no longer bound by ethnic boundaries or geography.

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The city walls that were adorned with precious stones and his streets with pure gold symbolize that this church is pure, that she's lovely, that she's beautiful, and that she's the only place on earth where you can go and know

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Yahweh God. The absence of a physical temple in this new heaven and new earth is clear that the

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Lord God doesn't dwell anymore in temples made with human hands, but he dwells in the heart of man who gathers the church of God every

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Lord's day until he returns. The lamb is its temple. God's people worship the lamb.

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It indicates that God's presence through the church is now fully accessible to all who call upon the name of the

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Lord. Revelation 21, 24 through 26 talks about the nations and their kings bringing their glory, their honor, and their tribute to the new

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Jerusalem, which is exactly what happens every Sunday. There's men and women all over the world who come to the church and bring their gifts and offerings to Jesus's church so that it can fuel

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Jesus's mission to the nations. This reflects the Matthew 28, 18 through 20, where Jesus said, all of heaven and earth now belong to me.

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Now that I go forth and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them how to obey Christ. The church's mission on earth is to teach the nations how to obey

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Jesus Christ. The church is the new temple is the one who's teaching the nations how to come into obedience to its king, no longer defined by a local geography, but now able to bring the gospel to every square inch of the world so that people can come to know

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God regardless of where they live, regardless of who their father or mother is, regardless of what tribe, tongue, or people they're descended from.

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This picture that's being painted of the church anticipates the greater reality that the church of God is the better, more full, more perfect, and more complete version of what the old

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Testament people of God were always supposed to be. A burgeoning, growing people who are intensifying, who are multiplying, who are growing so that the knowledge of the

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Lord is spreading out and covering the entire earth as the water covers the sea, Habakkuk 2, 14.

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In this new world that Christ and his church has, that Christ has purchased and that his church is bringing under his dominion, all of the promises that we've been talking about of old are going to come true.

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His kingdom is going to come on earth as it does in heaven, Matthew 6, 10. His reign of peace is going to know no end,

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Isaiah 9, 7. And at some point when the spread of the church is complete, you're no longer going to be able to go to your neighbor and say, know the

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Lord because your neighbor is going to know the Lord, Jeremiah 31, 34. Every family on earth is going to come under God's Abrahamic blessing,

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Genesis 12, 1 through 3. The whole world is going to obey Jesus who is the Shiloh, Genesis 49, 10.

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And the purpose for which God created the world to be a world that is filled with worshipers,

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Genesis 1, 28 is going to happen in Jesus's church before Jesus returns.

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The church is also portrayed as the garden of Eden in Revelation 22, 1 through 5.

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Do you notice how Revelation 21 and 22 are picking up all of the Old Testament symbols, the temple, the city, the priesthood, all of it.

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And it's no longer talking about it through the lens of Israel, it's talking about it through the lens of the church. The same is true for the garden of Eden.

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Revelation 21, 1 through 5 talks about the church as the garden of Eden. And maybe you're like, how is that possible?

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I've read Revelation 22, that's talking about heaven, the final heaven. No, it's not. In the final heaven, people don't come out and leave.

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And yet in Revelation 22, people come out and they go in. People come to the garden and they leave the garden.

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They come and they eat the leaves that are there for the nourishment of the nations that bear the tree of life and the river of life that bear the 12 kinds of fruit for 12 months of the year that heal the nations.

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They come into that and they go out of that. That's not heaven. Unless you believe that you can enter heaven and leave heaven, which

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I don't believe. So this is a picture, a dramatic apocalyptic picture of the church who is downstream of the river of life because she's connected to Christ.

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And she, like Psalm 1 says, is a tree planted by living waters and her fruit feeds the nations.

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She's the church. She's the one who brings the nations into fruitfulness and healing.

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That garden imagery recalls the original creation of Genesis. It points to the restored consummated creation in Christ, the church as the new

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Eve with Jesus as her true Adam is the one who's going to spread the glories of the garden, who's going to feed and nourish the nations until there's no more curse left upon the ground.

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The church's role in removing the curse is highlighted in Revelation 22, 3, where it states no longer will there be any curse.

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Why? Because the church who's empowered by the gospel purchased by the

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Savior, empowered by the Holy Spirit participates with Jesus in his work of taking dominion over the world.

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Jesus is redeeming everything that is lost. That means the church under the Lordship of Christ is about that work until that work is finished.

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In support of that grand division, Revelation 22, 5 declares that believers are going to reign forever and ever, which means that we are going to be victorious until there's no more victory that can be had.

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Then Jesus is going to return. And as 1 Corinthians 15 says, after all his enemies have been put under his feet and after every family on earth has been brought under his blessing, then the end will come.

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Christ will come and defeat the final enemy, which you and I will never defeat, which is And then he will bring us into his eternal state where we will live and reign with him forever.

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Not in a soul only and not in a body only, but in a body and soul brought back together again by Christ.

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It's what 1 Corinthians 15 says to worship Jesus and live with him forever.

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This is what the book of Revelation is all about. This is what the Olivet discourse is all about.

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And this is why I say that the book of Revelation is the perfect post -millennial capstone on a post -millennial

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Bible. Until next time. Thank you so much for watching this series called

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A Practical Postmillennialism. Thank you for all of your comments, for all of your encouragements, and even for those who didn't quite understand what we were doing and threw some jabs and challenges.

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I don't care. Thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing this content. You know, when we began this series, we had about 200 subscribers, and now we're knocking on 1 ,200 subscribers.

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We've added 1 ,000 subscribers just since we started this post -millennial series.

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And if that ain't post -mill, then I don't know what is. So until next time, brothers and sisters,

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God bless you. Be of good cheer. Fight the good fight. Work like crazy to see

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Jesus' kingdom built. Stop getting distracted and discouraged by what's going on in the world.

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Take your eyes off that and put your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross for you.

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And for the joy set before you, you endure the world for him. Go work. Go build.