38. The Second Coming Already Happened... But Not In The Way You Are Thinking (Part 2 | End Times Series Part 19)

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 38. The second coming has already happened.

Part two, let's get it. Nickel therapy sessions and judgment

Cummings. The melancholy boy walked timidly away from the 5 cent therapy booth, questioning the psychological advice that young Lucy had given him again.

There's no better emotional outlet. That she said than kicking a football. She mused with a sort of air of clinical sensitivity.

If you cannot trust your therapist, Charlie Brown muttered, well, then who can you trust?

That thought seemed to push him over the edge, propelling his lumpy little body awkwardly toward the prize, activating his casserole like abs and cupcake quads into the locked and loaded position that he was ready to fire with the safety off and the trigger pulled his foot, swept briskly through the air, missing the ball entirely that had now been pulled up and out from under him.

Yanking his Husky little body up towards the sky, like Darius on a warm summer day only to come crashing down like a two pound bag of potatoes.

When scenes like this play out over comic books or airwaves or movies, we chuckle at the silly little dolt who fell for the trick.

Once again, we laugh even while to testing all of the modern day Lucy's over at Buzzfeed or the ad approval division at Twitter, who treats us in very much the same way.

And yet as much as I personally to test click bait and rug pulls, I found myself last week, almost giving into my inner

Lucy. Well, almost for a split second. I almost went with the title of last week's blog, 10 reasons why the second coming has already happened.

And of course, if you read the article that is precisely true. So long as you let me define what coming means, but after some prayer and counsel, especially from an older brother in the faith,

I added the clarity that was needed to the title, even though the title is now extremely long and hard to fit on a graphic.

I did that because I don't want to be unclear on this topic.

I don't want to be a Lucy in your life. When it comes to this particular topic, I want you to be able to kick as it were the eschatological football down the field through the uprights.

And I want you to be successful. I want you to understand what the Bible is saying about this topic and not to be left like Charlie Brown, lying on your back in eschatological grief and confusion, spiritual versus physical comings.

Now to do that, we have been introducing this concept that there are two kinds of divine comings in the

Bible. There are times when God comes against a people for their sin. And when this occurs, it's always in this sort of spiritual covenantal, apocalyptic genre that is always in the context of divine judgment.

And yet there's another kind of coming in the Bible where God pursues a people in order to rescue them.

When that kind of coming happens, it's always physical, incarnational and personal.

For instance, when God comes bodily in the garden, it is to rescue

Adam and Eve from their sin. When God comes bodily to Abraham, it's to reveal his promises to Abraham and to cut him into the covenant.

When God comes physically, theophanically, you may even say to the people of Israel, it's to rescue them out of Egyptian slavery.

When God comes physically and incarnationally in the first century as the Lord Jesus Christ, it is to rescue all of God's elect people who are in slavery to Satan, sin and death.

And when Christ comes physically at the end of human history, it is to rescue

God's people finally and forever from the curse of death in order to deliver them into the imperishable and incorruptible body that will be delivered over into an eternity with him.

First Corinthians 15 and first Thessalonians four. And yet this bodily salvific and incarnational coming, does not account for all of the kinds of quote unquote comings that we see in the

Bible. For instance, look at this coming in Isaiah 19 one behold, the prophet says the

Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt.

The idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.

Isaiah 19 one. In this passage where lifeless idols made of wood and stone are now taking on personified attributes such as trembling and where human hearts are melting faster than a

Yankee candle under a flamethrower. Then it is in any wonder that the language of coming is not describing a literal physical bodily event, but a spiritual coming where God is going to be coming against a wicked nation.

When you understand that clouds, suns, moons, stars and heavenly shaking show up all over the old

Testament scriptures, when downfalls of human nations occur, such as Babylon and Isaiah 13

Egypt and Isaiah 19 Ezekiel and Ezekiel 32 tire in Isaiah 23 and 24 eat them in Isaiah 34

Judah in Jeremiah four and in and Jerusalem and Joel to Joel three

Amos five Amos eight and all those other various passage. When you realize that, then you realize that there's a tremendous amount of passages in the

Bible where God is coming in a non bodily, non physical, non incarnational judgmental form.

You realize that there's different kinds of comings and as we've been proving over the last several weeks, the coming passages that were being described in Matthew 24, especially in verses 29 through 31 do not represent the end of human history comings, the final coming, but yet they represent the judgment coming of Christ, the fulfillment of old

Testament prophecies where God has promised that his wrath is going to be poured out on his people.

You see, when Jesus answered his disciples in Matthew 24 three, a 40 year countdown began that would signal the end of the people of Israel.

When God came against the Jews and fury that had been prophesied many, many times before in that spiritual covenantal and apocalyptic sense,

I can say that the second coming of Christ has already happened in the judgment coming that befell the

Jews in AD 70 and I intend to share more evidence with you this week that that is exactly what

Matthew 24 is getting at in verses 30 and 31. But for the sake of clarity, please let me again repeat my aforementioned qualification.

I am not a full preterist. I believe in a bodily end of human history coming of Christ.

I believe that this coming is still in our future and I contend that that is not what

Matthew 24 is talking about. If you want to see what

Jesus is talking about as far as his end time coming, read first Corinthians 15, first Thessalonians four.

There's some other passages, but if you want to understand what Matthew 24 is talking about, then join me as I continue with the evidences that we've been listing from last week.

Last week we gave three evidences. Today we're going to pick up with evidence number four, that the second coming was a judgment coming that's already happened in the first century.

So evidence number four, the sign in the sky when

Jesus says, and then the sign of the son of man will appear in the sky. We have several issues that need to be understood before we can continue.

First, the timeframe has not changed when he says, and then that signals a logical and chronological sequence of events that ties this entire prophecy together.

There is not a multi -thousand year gap that we have observed. After 40 years of signs and evidences that will increase in magnitude and intensity over the first century generation, which is listed in verses three through 28 in verse 34, that one of the final signs that's going to be shown in the heavens is that Christ's kingdom has come and that the old kingdom is passing away.

That is what verse 30 is getting at. Second, there are a few linguistic challenges in this passage that need to be worked out if we're going to understand what it means.

For now, we're only going to deal with the first one, which is the translation of the word sky.

But in just a moment, we will cover some others. In our modern English translation, it appears as if the son of man is going to make an appearance in the sky.

And if you read just in the very next verse, it looks like that that appearance in the sky is going to be seen by all the people of the world.

He's going to come on the clouds. All the people on earth are going to mourn over what they've seen and over what they've done.

This is what the dispensational types would have you believe, but it's not a faithful translation of this text.

Now again, more will be said about this below, but the word that is being translated as sky here, which is material realm is actually the common word for heaven, which is spiritual dimension.

This word is not talking about the physical atmospheric sky that we look upward to.

This word is talking about the spiritual realm of heaven. To illustrate my point, you and I cannot build a rocket that'll take us to the heavenly throne room where God dwells because heaven doesn't have a physical address at some interstellar crossroad in the cosmos.

Heaven exists in an entirely different plane of existence that we cannot travel to with material ends.

One might even say that heaven is skyward or upward. That is until you start accounting for the rotation of the earth or our location in the

Milky Way and other such issues like this. Whenever God appears in bodily form or divine form, or also when he disappears in bodily form, he does not go up or down or take a specific direction of flight.

He simply shows up at a location or leaves a location almost as if it were out of thin air.

For instance, when the crowds are looking to kill Jesus, he vanishes right out of their midst.

He doesn't go up. He doesn't go down. He disappears. When he transfigured before his disciples, he does not go anywhere, but he merely pulls back the material curtain so that they may see the immaterial world that exists underneath.

In that sense, heaven is not a location that one needs to travel to, but it's an overlapping sphere of reality that God may step in and out of effortlessly without even moving.

The only exception to this rule is when Christ ascended upward into heaven.

And what we will see in just a moment is that has massive theological implications for why that is so.

But we'll look at that in just a moment. For now, suffice it to say, that heaven is not a specific or material space where God travels to and fro.

It is an immaterial and real plane of existence that God may step in and out of at his pleasure.

This is incredibly important because we need to know where the sign actually occurs.

Jesus says that a sign is going to happen either in the sky or in the heavens, if it occurs in the material sky. And if Jesus will be riding on a material cloud, and if all the material world is going to see it, then you and I have a massive problem because there's no record that an event like this has ever occurred.

In that case, this would be good speculative evidence for a futurist conclusion, but this interpretation often held by the futurist or the dispensational ignores the fact that a switch in genre has occurred.

They assume that a switch in time has occurred. Actually the text shows that a switch in genre has occurred.

So therefore you cannot interpret these passages with the same rigid wooden literalism that we employed before.

Usually most people in conversation, I'm not talking about the dispensationalist at this point, understand when this kind of linguistic switch happens, they understand it intuitively.

For instance, if I were talking to an enthusiastic wall street type, who was talking about a particular stock that I was interested in, and he was talking about all the incredible upside and great fundamentals that were popping up on all of the technical charts, he would know exactly what

I mean. When I say, wow, I really hope this stock goes to the moon.

The gentleman I'm speaking to would not struggle to understand what

I'm talking about. He would not imagine that ones and zeros were somehow showing up in space any more than he might wonder if I were going to visit the dark side of the moon stock exchange where I can make my purchases along with buy a big hunk of green cheese.

He and I would both know that I expect that the stock is going to go up.

That's the meaning. That's consistent with the technical analysis that he provided about said stock.

He would not struggle to think that I was talking about the actual moon in the same way

Jesus switches from literal communication to figurative and apocalyptic ways of speaking, not to confuse us and not to change the time signature, but to enhance and supplement and further establish the truths that he's already been communicating in more literal ways.

As we showed last week when he employs the language of suns and moons not giving their light and stars falling from the sky as well as the heavens trembling and shaking, he is using very common old

Testament apocalyptic images that are describing the downfall of a nation. In this case, that nation is

Judah. Therefore, when we consider the genre and when we consider the context of this passage and the meaning of the words like heaven and the old

Testament passages that Jesus is quoting from or alluding to, then a physical and material interpretation of this verse is not only woefully inadequate, but it's also entirely misleading.

The third thing that we need to understand in this passage is what the sign is pointing to. If it's not a bodily coming of our

Lord on the clouds, which would confuse the thought, the sign and the thing that it signifies, then what is it pointing to?

In my view, all of the signs, all of these signs that are happening in the heavens are demonstrating the covenantal upheaval of one kingdom and the coming together of another kingdom.

Jesus came to bring the old covenant era to a close. He came to accomplish redemption for the elect, which entailed ascending into heaven to receive his blood bought kingdom from the father and to rule over that kingdom by the power of the

Holy Spirit through the local church until it is finished. First Corinthians 15 24 thus the sign that happens in the sky is not a physical event that's going to flash in the atmosphere or the nighttime skies, but a spiritual event that's going to reverberate from the heavens.

We will add a little bit more detail to that in just a moment, but if you want a, an additional sort of verse that's talking about this, go to Hebrews nine 24 it's not a verse we're going to deal with today, but there you go.

Evidence number five, all the tribes of the earth are going to mourn. Jesus continues and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn.

Matthew 24 30 B this is another misleading English translation that has produced a massive amount of theological confusion and speculation and it's just patently unfaithful to what the text is trying to say.

Again, we have the a and then which upholds our continuity with the first century timeframe and limits the prophecy and its fulfillment to a very narrow window of time.

What I'm saying is that the timeframe is not changed in verse 30 B that all the tribes of the earth were mourn is a first century event.

Knowing this, knowing that the time signature has not changed, we can put away any and all of the silly kinds of notions that I've heard from dispensationals like international television broadcast over satellite news feeds that are pumped into every device on earth so that all people everywhere on earth can see the same event at the same time and we've been unison.

I've literally heard dispensational thinkers say the reason that this event could not have occurred before the dawn of globalization and before the dawn of satellite

TV where everyone can see the same thing live is because it would not have fulfilled this text.

That is silly. That is not what Jesus is saying and Jesus is not hamstrung by our technological development.

When you examine the text, that sort of view cannot stand up to even the slightest shred of evidence.

Furthermore, I feel like I have to say this, but this is not evidence for a flat earth.

I've heard many people say the only way that everyone on earth could see Jesus coming is if there was a flat earth.

Really? Really? Now, I know that everyone who's listening to the broadcast is going to not be struggling with that, but I throw it out there just in case the random chance we have a visitor on who's saying,

Hey, this is good. No, it's not. No, it's not. Now let's get back to the point. If you take the futurist view with that, all these things that are that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24 are going to happen in the future.

Then this text is seeming to communicate that all the various collections of people that exist on earth are going to simultaneously see the coming of Christ and then they're going to mourn at the coming of the

Lord. But this translation again cannot hold water once it is examined.

The word that our translators have unhelpfully rendered as earth is not the

Greek word that you would use if you're trying to talk about the entire spherical planet called earth. Had Jesus wanted to say that every single person on the spinning blue dot that's floating around in the

Milky way was going to see this event at all the same time, then he would have used the word cosmos, which covers the appropriate lexical range of meaning.

Instead Jesus uses the word gay, which means soil in Matthew 13 five ground in Hebrews 11 29 or dry land in Matthew 14 24 acts 27 43 just as an example and yet most often when the word gay is used it refers to a specific track of geography that belongs to a specific group of people for instance let's just look at the book of Matthew alone we're in the book of Matthew and we're in the book of Matthew and we're in the book of Matthew right now in chapter 24 so let's just look at how

Matthew uses the word gay in Matthew two six he uses it to say the land of Judah he uses it to say the land of Israel in Matthew two 20 the land of Zebulun and Naphtali in Matthew four 15 the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in Matthew 10 15 the land of Gennesaret in Matthew 14 34 and he uses it to allude to the geographical topography belonging to Galilee in Matthew nine 31 and to Jerusalem in Matthew 27 45 overwhelmingly in the book of Matthew at a minimum and I can prove this in other books as well the word that our translators have translated for earth actually means a specific plot of land that belongs to a specific group of people when you combine that truth with the understanding that Jesus uses the word tribes here the truth becomes even all the more clear the word tribes is only ever referring to the people who are divided into 12 tribal divisions as a part of the mosaic system of land allotments that we get from the

Torah of all the nations on earth there was only one that I know of at the time that were so clearly organized by tribal land divisions and that was

Israel yet even if you grant that there may have been some other nations in the ancient world that adopted a tribal allotment structure then it wasn't all the nations because Rome was not organized according to tribes

Greece was not organized according to tribes and neither were countless others when we see the text saying all the peoples on earth or all the tribes of the earth it gives the indication that everyone on earth is going to see it but not everyone was organized by tribes and the word earth doesn't in this sense mean earth it means a specific part of land that belongs to a specific group of people so what does it mean well if you translate this passage correctly it reads all of the tribes of the land are going to mourn this refers to the ancient people of Judah who organized themselves according to tribes who were going to undergo unimaginable pain and grief and suffering from rejecting their covenant

God in fact Revelation 1 7 makes this even more abundantly clear when it says behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him even those who pierced him and then it says all the tribes of the land same word will mourn over him

Revelation 1 7 Jesus tells us in case that we're confused about all of this who is going to see

Jesus is coming and spoiler alert it's not 21st century people who are holding their iPhones and watching all of these things take place it is first century

Jewish people who are responsible for piercing aka crucifying their

God now one last thing here the text does not say that the people of Judah would mourn in a way that entails regret or repentance the meaning of the word could have that semantical range it very well could but it does not say that explicitly in the text nor does it mean that contextually in the same way that some people in hell are going to be weeping and others are going to be gnashing their teeth yet both of them are in some sense mourning so to the

Jews were the ones who gnashed their teeth at Christ rejected his kingdom in favor of Caesar and mourned at the downfall of their nation they wept over their hatred of the consequences and not over their regret for rejecting the

Christ evidence six Jesus is coming on the clouds

Jesus continued here and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory

Matthew 24 30 now we've been talking about is this event future or is this event something that's already happened in the past and since we've already shown that this is a first century fulfillment and it's going to be directed at a first century people and because there's nothing in the text that would alert us that the time frame signature has switched

I'm not going to belabor that point but what we do need to understand is what the word clouds actually symbolizes in the

Old Testament and how Jesus is directly quoting from an Old Testament passage here that renders the futurist dispensational view entirely untenable let me say it this way if you grab hold of what

Jesus is saying here in this passage then you're going to realize that Matthew 24 cannot be talking about a future coming of the

Lord that reading when you understand this verse is rendered totally whimsical fanatical farcical and even impossible when you understand this text so first what does the word clouds mean well clouds often symbolize that the glory of God and his presence that is being shared with his people if you remember in the

Exodus the cloud symbolizes his gracious presence that's leading them out of the land Exodus 13 21 and even towards the promised land numbers 9 17 through 22 the cloud is his gracious presence that instructs them

Exodus 19 9 that dwells among them Exodus 19 16 and pours out his spirit upon them numbers 11 25 in a poetic sense the clouds represent his awesome presence 2nd

Samuel 22 his righteousness Psalm 97 and his sovereignty Psalm 104 this understanding is important and we should consider it when we're attempting to understand why and how

Jesus is coming on the clouds in Matthew 24 he is sharing his presence with people now that can either be a good thing or that can be a bad thing clouds can be seen as God's presence in a wrathful sense not only as coming to bring blessing to the people of God but bringing chaos plagues judgment and destruction upon the people who have rejected him for instance

God covers the world in a thick blanket of clouds and he as he wipes out every single living creature on the face of the earth in the global flood his clouds are an evidence of his judgment

Genesis 9 he also throws the Egyptian armies into chaos and confusion by descending upon them in the fury of a cloud

Exodus 14 24 many centuries later he revisits the same pagan nation with calamities and destruction and Isaiah 19 by writing on a cloud which mirrors the language here that Jesus is using in Matthew 24 and God this is just one other example there's many more he rains down plagues upon those who reject him by coming in a cloud just as he did to Miriam the sister of Moses and numbers 14 14 the point is that clouds are a symbol of the glory and the presence of God if you're on the right side of covenant with him then the cloud like his cloud like presence is a blessing to you and it's for your good but if you're on the wrong side of that covenantal bed then his clouds are menacing chaos inducing and annihilating to his enemies

I want you to take a few examples here just so that we can drive the point home

Isaiah 66 15 says for behold the Lord will come in fire and his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire

Jeremiah 413 expounds what the meaning of a whirlwind is when he said behold he goes up like clouds and his chariots like the whirlwind and his horses are swifter than eagles woe upon us for we are ruined may whom 13 recounts the same sort of thing the

Lord is slow to anger and great in power and the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished in a whirlwind and storm is his way and the clouds are the dust beneath his feet final example

I'd share with you Zephaniah 115 which prophesized the coming day of God's fury by saying this a day of wrath is going to be that day a day of trouble and distress a day of destruction and desolation a day of darkness and gloom a day of clouds and thick darkness

Zephaniah 115 given that this is the way that the Old Testament pictures

God's cloud like presence and how it describes his cloud like judgment coming then is it any wonder that Jesus adopts this very common image to describe his judgment coming against Jerusalem that is the first aspect that I want us to talk about when it comes to clouds the second is to understanding the passage that Jesus is actually quoting here which will lead us to evidence number seven evidence seven the son of man and the clouds of heaven now it is abundantly clear here that Jesus is using a near word for word quotation from the book of Daniel chapter seven verse 13 when he's speaking to his disciples and as we'll see in a moment he has a couple of different reasons for doing so first he wanted his disciples to recognize that he is the one who's going to be bringing about his eternal kingdom in that chapter chapter seven

Daniel is interpreting an apocalyptic vision about world history that's going to culminate in the coming of the

Messiah during the time of the Roman empire as Daniel sees that there's three successive world empires that are going to arise after Babylon including the media

Persian empire the Greek empire and the Roman empire that would each have their turn at ruling and building kingdoms and establishing their dominion and yet the most beautiful aspect of this passage comes in what it promises for the future of the world during that time the time of the

Roman empire all creaturely authority and dominion is going to be taken away from the kings of men and it's going to be given to the son of man he's the king of kings he's the one who's going to usher in a new covenant era with everlasting with an end in Daniel 7 14 so essentially what you have happening in Daniel 7 is all the authority all the dominion all of the power all of the rule all of that is going to be taken away from the kings of men and given to the king of kings once that messianic king has finished his work on earth and we know that he did that on the cross he's going to send bodily and upward into heaven where he's going to appear before the ancient of days in his throne room and he's going to receive a kingdom without in Daniel 7 13 he will then task his elect saints that he purchased with his own blood to be his kingdom emissaries over his global empire on planet earth

Daniel 7 17 through 18 according to this chapter Jesus obtained all of the rule and all of the authority for his own and he's installed his church to be the ones who apply his sovereign dominion across the nations

Daniel 7 27 and also you can look at the New Testament Matthew 28 18 through 20 we know that this is the correct translation for two reasons first because Jesus quotes from Daniel 7 and Matthew 24 he's showing that his he's not coming downward as if he were leaving heaven and coming to earth but that his coming is going to be upward which is the way

Daniel 7 talks about it when he ascends into the heavens this is the event that Jesus is saying that all the tribes of Jerusalem and Judea would see they're going to see the

Daniel 7 sign in the heavens when Jesus ascends up to the ancient of days and seals their doom we also know that that's the correct translation because Jesus himself quotes it again in Matthew 26 and he leaves no room for interpretation on what he means look at what he says in front of the kangaroo court in Caiaphas in chapter 26 verses 62 through 64 this is what

Jesus says the high priest stood up and said do you not answer what is it that these men are testifying against you but Jesus kept silent and then the high priest said to him

I adjure you by the living God that you tell us whether you're the Christ the son of God Jesus answered him you have said so yourself nevertheless

I tell you hereafter you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven

Matthew 26 62 through 64 who does

Jesus say is gonna see his coming and what kind of coming will it be he is telling us that Caiaphas and the tribal peoples of Judah are gonna be the ones who see it it's not gonna be the kind of coming where God leaves heaven he comes down to earth like he did in his incarnation no this

Daniel 7 kind of coming is gonna be when he comes up where he leaves the earth and comes up to the ancient of days into the heavens where he receives his kingdom which is gonna be assigned to them that their time has now come to an end when

Jesus enters his heavenly temple and sits at the right hand of the father their rebellion and their destruction is near all of these things come perfectly together in this wonderful harmony when we take the time to rightly examine the text conclusion as we come to an end today it seems that all of the pieces of the sun the moon and the stars in the heavens that are shaking are testifying to the downfall of Judah Jesus himself has prophesied that a sign is gonna occur in the heavens when he ascends there and sits on the throne to reign because his kingship is the sign his kingship is the sign that their kingdom has come to a close for their part

Judah saw this coming they saw Jesus is coming they saw him ascend to heaven they endured the terrible tribulations and the pains for rejecting their covenant

God sadly though as we've seen they only mourned and gnashed their teeth at their hatred for Christ instead of repenting and turning to him that fate that they endured will also be the fate assigned to anyone and everyone who is at odds with King Jesus today if you're not a

Christian that I would appeal to you to repent and to turn to Christ listen you do not want to be found in opposition to the king who has all authority in heaven and on earth you just don't humble your heart turn from your sin and turn to the living

Christ he will save you turn to him if you're a

Christian I want you to remember that you are a citizen of his end time everlasting kingdom he is your sovereign and your king his judgment coming upon Judah ended the

Old Testament era of priests tabernacles temples and feast and now you can intimately know him and experience his salvation through your election adoption and your participation in his kingdom dear brothers and sisters do not sit on the sideline of your faith participate with Christ enjoy his kingdom be a part of a local church read your

Bible pray take the Lord's table every week be a part of spreading his kingdom message to the nations who are still lost in their rebellion and have hope see over the last 2000 years

Jesus's kingdom has been steadily growing and steadily increasing and over that last 2000 years we've been steadily coming to understand that Christ has all dominion on earth we're not waiting for him to have dominion he already has it and is growing the church to step into it my final encouragement to you brother and sister is that you would not fear what's happening in the world right now just like the

Christians were told by Christ not to fear what was coming about in their time period as well be anxious for nothing do not be dismayed when the pagan kings and the faithless nations rage the

Lord is in the heaven laughs at them Psalm two four and if they don't show allegiance to the sun

Psalm two 12 they too are going to end up just like Judah Psalm 110 until next time

God bless you enjoy living in the kingdom of your great king and thank you for scribing for subscribing to the blog and for listening to the podcast