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 comings.

The melancholy boy walked timidly away from the five cent therapy booth, questioning the psychological advice

that young Lucy had given him again.

There's no better emotional outlet, 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 detesting all of the modern day Lucys 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 detest clickbait and rug pulls, I found

myself last week almost giving in to 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 wanna be unclear on this topic.

I don't wanna 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.

1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.

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 .1.

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 .1.

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 gonna be coming against a wicked nation.

When you understand that clouds, suns, moons, stars, and heavenly

shakings show up all over the Old Testament scriptures when downfalls of human nations

occur such as Babylon in Isaiah 13, Egypt in Isaiah 19, Ezekiel in Ezekiel

32, Tyre in Isaiah 23 and 24, Edom in Isaiah 34, Judah in Jeremiah 4,

and Jerusalem in Joel 2, Joel 3, Amos 5, Amos 8, and all those other various passages.

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

gonna be poured out on His people.

You see, when Jesus answered His disciples in Matthew 24, 3, a 40

-year countdown began that would signal the end

of the people of Israel.

When God came against the Jews in 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 wanna see what Jesus is talking about as far as His end time coming, read 1 Corinthians 15, 1

Thessalonians 4.

There's some other passages, but if you wanna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna

understand what it means.

For now, we're only gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna be seen by all the people

of the world.

He's gonna come on the clouds.

All the people on earth are gonna 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 gonna 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 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, 1 Corinthians 15, 24.

Thus, the sign that happens in the sky is not a physical event that's gonna 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 an additional sort of verse

that's talking about this, go to Hebrews 9, 24.

It's not a verse we're gonna deal with today, but there you go.

Evidence number five, all the tribes of the earth are gonna mourn?

Jesus continues, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, Matthew 24, 30b.

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 and then, which upholds our continuity with a 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 30b, that all the

tribes of the earth will 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 weep in 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 that all these things that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24 are

gonna happen in the future, then this text is seeming to communicate that all the various collections of people

that exist on earth are gonna simultaneously see the coming of Christ and then they're gonna 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 this spinning blue dot that's floating around in the Milky Way was gonna

see this event all at 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, 24.

And he uses the word gay 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 right now in chapter 24, so let's just look at how Matthew uses the word gay.

In Matthew 2, six, he uses it to say the land of Judah.

The land of Zebulun and Naphtali in Matthew 4, 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

9, 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 gonna 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 gonna

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 gonna be weeping and others are gonna be gnashing their teeth, yet both of them

are in some sense mourning, so too 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 gonna be directed at

a first century people, and because there's nothing in the text that would alert us that the

timeframe signature has switched, I'm not gonna 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 gonna 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 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 -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, 2 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, 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 in Isaiah 19

by riding 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 in 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 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 4 .13 expounds what the meaning of a whirlwind is 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.'".

Nahum 1 .3 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 1 .15, which prophesies the coming day of God's

fury by saying this, "'A day of wrath is gonna 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 1 .15.

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 7, 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 gonna be bringing about His

eternal kingdom.

In that chapter, chapter seven, Daniel is interpreting an apocalyptic vision about world history that's gonna

culminate in the coming of the Messiah during the time of the Roman Empire.

As Daniel sees it, there's three successive world empires that are gonna 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 gonna be taken away from the kings of men, and it's gonna be given to the Son of Man.

He's the King of Kings.

He's the one who's gonna usher in a new covenant era with an everlasting kingdom, 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 gonna 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 gonna ascend bodily and upward into heaven, where

he's gonna appear before the Ancient of Days in his throne room, and he's gonna receive a kingdom without end, 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 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 gonna 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.

So 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 and 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 Matthew 24, 29 through 30 are starting

to come together.

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, then I would appeal to you to repent and to turn to

Christ.

Listen, you do not wanna 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 feasts, 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 2 ,000 years, Jesus' kingdom has been steadily growing and steadily increasing.

And over that last 2 ,000 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 and laughs at them, Psalm 2, 4.

And if they don't repent, and if they don't show allegiance to the son, Psalm 2, 12, they

too are gonna 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 subscribing to the blog and for listening to the podcast.

God bless you.