Matthew (24): The End of the Age (I): Tell Us, When Will These Things Happen? (Part 1)

We’re now in the final week of Jesus' earthly life here with us at this point in the Gospel. It’s a Tuesday afternoon, just a couple of days away from Passover on the Jewish calendar, and Jesus has just spent the better part of the last three days teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, and in that time He's been speaking to the large crowds who come to hear His teaching. But He's also been enduring the constant harassment and inspection of the religious leaders of Israel who've come to discredit Him. Jesus sparred with these men in the course of four encounters, and after all that was over, He emerged triumphant and unindicted by their inspection. He demonstrated He was above reproach, and as such, He was the spotless lamb of God qualified to die for the sins of Israel and the whole world.

And at the end of that final exchange between Jesus and the religious leaders, He delivered a scathing rebuke - He pronounced seven woes on those men, and in those woes, He judged them for their hypocrisy and for the way that they have led this generation of Israel against their own Messiah and into their own judgment. They misled the people, they robbed them of their wealth, and ultimately they robbed them of the Messiah and the Kingdom. And so Jesus declared those men would pay the ultimate price for their sin: they'd be excluded from the kingdom and they would face their future in hell, He said. 

Now here we are getting ready to see the final statement that Jesus makes to the nation of Israel before His death, but before we look at that, we’re going to go back briefly to something that happened roughly six months earlier in Jesus' ministry. It occurred at the end of Chapter 12 in Matthew's Gospel, and at that point there was a moment of great significance in Jesus' ministry, a moment that was pivotal in His approach to offering the Kingdom and to what followed in His time on earth.

In that chapter, Jesus performed a miracle – a Messianic miracle - a specific miracle that proved that He was the Messiah. And in fact, the people who watched that miracle in Chapter 12 recognized the significance of it. They even responded by saying, “this is the son of David”, a Messianic term. But as they saw it, they were met by a contrary perspective. Their own religious leaders who were present said no, that is not proof that Jesus is the Messiah, it's proof that He was inhabited or in-dwelled by Satan. And the people heard that explanation, and they believed it, despite what they saw in the miracles that Jesus performed, and when that moment occurred in Chapter 12, that was when the unforgivable sin was committed by that generation of Israel, and as a result they forfeited the opportunity to receive the kingdom in their day. 

And that’s a very important moment in the entire gospel of Matthew, because in that moment everything changed. Jesus went from offering the Kingdom to Israel openly to hiding that news from Israel thereafter, and He spent all the time remaining preparing His disciples to inherit the Kingdom program instead.

And that is this period of history that we've now been involved in for the last 2000 years, in which disciples of Jesus have gone out offering the Kingdom in His place, mostly to Gentiles throughout the world. That began to be the focus of Christ after Israel rejected Him in Chapter 12.

Now, jumping back to the present moment here at the end of Chapter 23. Jesus' death is barely 48 hours away, and His public ministry has now ended. And as it does, Jesus makes one last public statement lamenting Israel's decision to reject Him. And this connects us back to Chapter 12. We’re in chapter 23 Verse 34 here:

Matt. 23:34 “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city,

Matt. 23:35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Matt. 23:36 “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

This is part one of a two-part statement He makes here. Jesus says in these verses - essentially a footnote to the seventh woe that we studied - that these men, the Pharisees, will be guilty of having killed all the prophets. Now remember that the seventh woe was the one in which Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for having claimed that they were more righteous than their forefathers, that in prior centuries, when the prophets came to Israel, as God sent them, the leaders of Israel would persecute those men who came declaring the truth. Those men would often be killed as a result of what they said. And in John's Gospel, John opens in that prologue of chapter one by saying that men, unbelieving men, love darkness and they hate the light. And the reason they hate the light is because it exposes their evil deeds.

And that's the problem: when prophets come to people who are in opposition to God, they come declaring the truth and exposing the sins of people, shining a light, as it were, on the sins of people, and as they see their sins reflected in the light of God's truth, they react, in some cases, and in fact, in many cases, by killing those or persecuting those who bring that news to them.

And now you have the Pharisees with the benefit of hindsight, claiming with hypocritical intent that if they had been alive in those earlier days, they wouldn't have made that mistake, that they would have responded to the prophets’ warnings; they would have come and acknowledged God and done differently, that they were more righteous than their forefathers were in that regard, and they would have obeyed the prophets.

And what Jesus says is no, the Pharisees were worse than their forefathers. Not only would they have persecuted the prophets, they did worse in their own day, and He proves that by simply pointing out that they persecuted John the Baptist, who was their prophets of that time. And He also, of course, is referring to His own persecution. Here they are, the Pharisees, opposing the very Messiah sent to them. So Jesus condemned them for all of that hypocrisy. That was the seventh woe:  thinking that they were more righteous than their forefathers when at the same time, they were actually doing worse things than their forefathers. 

Now, in verses 34 to 36, Jesus has this footnote, and He says He will confirm their hypocrisy, their unrighteousness by giving them even more prophets, which they in turn will then also persecute. The religious leaders of Israel will kill and scourge these men and drive them from city to city, and some of them will even die hanging on crosses, Jesus says.

And which prophets are those that Jesus is referring to? Well, of course, He's talking about the prophets of the New Testament age, which, largely speaking, are the apostles. So the book of Acts is our record of what Jesus foretold - there we see the Ministry of the New Testament prophets, men like Peter, and James and others, and you see the fierce resistance that they faced at the hands of these same men and their successors. And so, just as Jesus predicted, they were often killed, they will run from city to city. James, in Acts 12,  was the first of those to die for His faith, and earlier in Acts five, you see the apostles being scourged for their faith after having been tried by the religious leaders.

These historical accounts simply confirm both the accuracy of Jesus' prophecy and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And in verse 35, Jesus says that will prove that they are guilty not just of the blood of the men that they know, but they are equally guilty of the blood of all the Old Testament prophets that died in similar ways.

And He gives a little list here from Abel to Zachariah. Now Abel, you may remember, is the second son of Adam and Eve. His mistakes, if you will, his sin, was daring to speak the truth to his unbelieving brother Cain. And as he did that, evil Cain was a witness to his righteous brother’s devotion to God. It made him jealous and it prompted hatred, and he lashed out and killed his brother, and that was the first righteous prophets killed by an unrighteous person. That's a pattern that was established and has continued on ever since. Paul refers to that pattern when he talks about another couple of brothers in Galatians 4 :29. Paul says this, 

Gal. 4:29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also.

Here’s where Ishmael persecuted Isaac. So, was it just sibling rivalry? No, Paul says. There was a spiritual principle at work. The one who is righteous will always be persecuted by the one who is unrighteous. That is, those of the flesh, as Paul calls them, the  unbelievers, will persecute those who are born again by the Spirit - that is, believers.

And it has always been that way from Abel and Cain, and it will always be that way, Paul says. And that is why service to the Kingdom, service to Jesus always leads to persecution, at least at some level, because when you serve God in righteousness or for the sake of righteousness, you stir up those who are opposed to God. And in Jesus’ day you see that evidence, and the fact that the Pharisees who were born of the flesh were opposing Jesus and persecuting John the Baptist and so on - that was their persecution of those born of the Spirit.

And that just continued on with the apostles, because the principle is an ever true principal. Jesus says when that begins to happen, it will simply give evidence to prove the fact that these men, the Pharisees, are no better than their predecessors were. They share in the guilt of their fathers. In that respect, you can say they share in the guilt of Cain, who killed Abel, and they share in the guilt of those who killed the rest of the prophets, all the way down to Zachariah.

Now, Zachariah was killed in the Temple Court because he had gone there seeking to claim refuge. And there was a principle that if you went into the temple and you held onto the corners of the altar, you could claim sanctuary from your enemies. And he had gone there, fleeing Jews who were seeking to kill him for his prophecies. But they were so evil in that day, they didn't respect that gesture, and they killed him anyway, right there in the court of the temple, we’re told. And he was the final Old Testament prophet to be martyred before the advent of Messiah, before Jesus’ arrival.

And so the saying of Abel to Zachariah is shorthand to refer to all the prophets who were martyred from the first to the last. So the martyrdom of the saints, in particular, the apostles, reminds us that when you follow Christ, it comes with risks, and those risks are unavoidable. The most effective disciples of Jesus will be the most persecuted disciples of Jesus. And the most persecuted disciples of Jesus will be the most effective disciples for Jesus. If you follow Jesus' footsteps, you end up where Jesus went. That's the principle of Scripture, and there's an important corollary to that truth.

So in verse 36, Jesus, now having made that point, takes a sharp turn, and the transition here is quite dramatic. And in fact, the turn that He makes here will take us all the way through the next three chapters of Scripture.

In Verse 36, Jesus says, “All these things will come upon this generation”, and the things that He's referring to are the things we just looked at in versus 34 and 35 - that is, the entire generation of Israel that He was now a part of in that day will do the same things largely that the religious leaders will be doing, things like persecuting those who come in the name of the Lord, scourging them, killing them.

And as such, the guilt for those acts will be shared by this whole generation of Israel, not just by those religious leaders. And that whole generation of Israel, therefore, will experience a just and swift judgment. And what we learned now as we move out of Chapter 23 and into Chapter 24 is what that judgment entails and what it will lead to, not only for Israel, but for the whole world. 

First, Jesus says, they will fail to receive their Messiah sent to her as a result of having the unforgivable sin of Chapter 12, and therefore they'll lose the opportunity to enter into the kingdom. But more than that, because they've rejected Jesus in the day He came for them, Israel will lose its place in its land. It will lose access to the temple, and it will lose a chance to be in the land as we know it.

In fact, they will enter into a time of exile, as they had in the past. But this time the exile won't be for decades or even centuries. They're about to enter into a period of millennia, two millennia of exile from their land as a result of what came in this generation. That's what we're about to go to learn in part, among other things.

So the topic of the next few chapters is how this age will play out to the end in response to Israel's rejection of its Messiah and all the consequences or many of the consequences that will come from it. Another way to look at this is: why did God bring Israel back into its land in that day? It was principally so that they could receive their Messiah when He came. So, when they rejected Him, their purpose for being in the land was no longer valid. And so He sends them out again.

It begs the question: then why is He allowing Israel to come back into its land today?

I think most of us know how to fill in that answer. We'll get there in time. But for now, we’ll finish out of 37 with a lament that leads us into Chapter 24. Starting in verse 37, Jesus says: 

Matt. 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.

Matt. 23:38 “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!

Matt. 23:39 “For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’”

Now, this is where chapters 23 and 12 connect, because back in chapter 12, in response to that moment that Israel committed the unforgivable sin, Jesus pronounces a judgment on that generation by speaking the words that we see here in Matthew 23. These three verses are almost verbatim – except that when we refer back to Chapter 12, we do not find these words there.

Now in Chapter 12, Jesus said that because of Israel’s rejection of Him, He could not gather them as He wished and be their king as He desired. But rather He was leaving, and He was leaving their house to them desolate. And that, of course, refers to not only the temple being destroyed, as it happened in AD 70, but also to the whole nation of Israel being driven out of its land. And then He set the terms for the recovery of Israel, the return of the Lord and the re-offer of the Kingdom. He says, “You'll have to call out on Me. You as a people will have to recognize that I am your Messiah and call on me. When you do that, I'll come back.” 

That was all covered in Chapter 12, but we didn't find these words recorded there because the words weren’t there.  They were actually in Luke. Luke, at Chapter 13, recorded those words that Jesus said back at the time of Matthew Chapter 12.

While Matthew didn't put them in his gospel at that point, he weighs and records them here in Chapter 23. 

Why? 

Because Jesus said it a second time.

In the first occasion when they rejected Him in Chapter 12, Jesus issued these words because that was the moment in which the Kingdom opportunity for Israel was lost. But here He repeats them a second time, and it's this time that Matthew chose to record them.

And Matthew does so here as a way of summing up the conclusion of Jesus’ earthly ministry and making clear that this is His final statement to the people of Israel. It becomes Jesus’ parting words, if you will, and as such they're very fitting because they set the conditions for His return. 

Jesus says they will not see Him again until they meet the terms, and we’ll look at those terms as we get into Chapter 24. 

So after this moment at the end of Chapter 23, Jesus stops addressing the nation of Israel. He goes to the cross silent like a sheep going to its slaughter and His ministry to Israel, His public ministry, has now completed. All that there is now is the one-way trip to the cross, into the grave and out. But there's also a period of preparation remaining for His disciples. In fact, in spite of the fact that Jesus says so little to the public, He has a lot left to say to his disciples in private.

In fact, two of the most important teaching moments in all the Gospel are about to follow in the chapters to come in the next 36 hours of Jesus's life. The first of those is an extended teaching on the nature of the current age and how it will progress after Jesus departs, and particularly how the end of the age will come about. That's what we’ll look at starting in Chapter 24. Following that, Jesus teaches His disciples about the communion meal in the context of that final Passover supper that He has with them. Those are the two last teaching moments He offers His men. 

Chapter 24 - we call it the Olivet Discourse, and it’s called the Olivet Discourse because it was delivered while Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives - is where we go now.

Matt. 24:1 Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him.

Matt. 24:2 And He said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.”

The opening here sets the stage and we need to do a little background work as we get into this. Jesus has been in the temple now for three days teaching, and every night, as was His custom, when He finished in the temple, He would leave exiting out the east side of the city at the east gate, which then took Him directly down into a valley called the Kidron Valley. And He walked down that road each day at the end of the day, and walked up the other side of the valley which is the Mount of Olives and He would cross over the top of the Mount of Olives. Ultimately, about a quarter mile later, He'd find His way to a little town called Bethany, where He would spend the night probably staying in the home of Lazarus and Martha.

And then every morning He walks up again with His disciples, makes that journey back into the city and continues teaching. But now it's Tuesday afternoon and it's been a long day with the religious leaders and the like. So He's walking out of the temple with His disciples in tow, and as they exit out the east side of the city, the disciples engaged in a little bit of sightseeing. They are taking in the amazing view of this structure called the Temple Mount, the temple that Herod had built.

Herod's Temple was one of the most impressive construction projects that's ever been undertaken in all of the history of humanity. There are massive foundation stones that support this retaining wall around the Temple Mount that hold all this dirt that then holds the temple. These stones are in some cases 60 or 70 tons each. This building was the longest and most complex building project of any that Herod undertook, but it was not completed in his lifetime. In fact, it wasn't even completed in Jesus’ lifetime. This temple wasn't finished being built until 40 years after Jesus died, and then, ironically, it was destroyed by the Romans barely five years after it was finished in AD 70.

But here you are in AD 28 , while it's still under construction, the disciples, like everyone in Israel at that time, are truly fascinated as they watch this building project unfolding, and marvelled at the grandeur, the ambition of it all. And so there they are with Jesus. They're walking out, and they're pointing out the building to Jesus. And rather than offering a complimentary response, Jesus looks at them and He says, “Do you know this massive structure will one day be torn down, stone by stone?”

Jesus’ prediction would have been on the verge of being unbelievable had the disciples not come to know that Jesus is the Messiah. But because He is the Messiah, they're struggling with what He is saying. These men, knowing that Jesus is Messiah and therefore believing His word, are stuck in this strange place where they don't think He's wrong, but they don't understand how He's right.

And so naturally they start to question what He's saying and their questions go in an interesting direction. They don't simply ask, “How could this happen?” They go beyond that and they start asking questions about the end of the age, and that makes sense when you understand what they were thinking.

These men were naturally assuming that any kind of event with the magnitude and the potential to bring down a structure this large must be indicative of the end of the world. And especially when you consider the building and what it was for. It was God's temple. It was the home of God. If God allows His own temple to be destroyed in that way, wouldn't it mean that the end of the world was coming?

And that was their conclusion. And so, in hearing the statement Jesus made, their mind goes to a series of questions related to the end of the world. And we see that starting in verse 3 here:

Matt. 24:3 As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

Matthew says the disciples came to Jesus privately. That would indicate that Jesus said what He said as they exited from the Temple Mount, in the time it would have taken them to walk down the Kidron Valley and back up to the Mount of Olives. That's at least 15 minutes or so. So they're spending the next 15 minutes or more contemplating what Jesus said, maybe afraid to ask Him.

So they wait. And when He gets to the Mount of Olives, they stop somewhere, and there's a private moment, and that's when they come to Him.

And the series of questions they ask are going to serve as an outline of sort for us the next two chapters.

So in Chapter 24 verse 3, we have the question “When will the temple destruction happen?” That's the first thing they asked, and the obvious starting point.

Then the second thing they asked Him is, “Well, then, what will be the signs of Your coming?” That's question number two.

Now, keep in mind that the disciples didn't know Jesus was leaving yet. So when they say "His coming", don't think that they mean the second coming of Christ, because they didn't know there was going to be anything other than the first coming. They mean the term differently than that.

They mean it as in “coming into Your reign”, “starting Your reign as king” because for now they've only seen Jesus walking around the earth and in robes as a humble man from Nazareth. They keep waiting for Jesus to assume His position as king. So the way they're speaking here is “what will be signs of Your coming into Your reign as king?” But in our case, we know that's essentially equivalent to the second coming, because that's when Jesus will reign. But in the disciple’s minds, the distinction is non-existent.

Then the third question they ask is, “what are the signs of the end of the age?” And of course, that's a question that follows naturally, from an assumption that Jesus is going to reign.  The disciples know from their Old Testament prophets that the Messiah's reign starts a new age, and an old age ends.

All right, so those are the questions that Jesus is asked. You see three of them right there. But there were actually four, and the fourth doesn't appear in Matthew's gospel. That question is in Luke.

In Luke Chapter 21 you find a complementary passage but with Luke recording a different set of questions. Luke gets one of the questions that is in Matthew, the one that says  “when, therefore, will these things happen?” That's the same as the first question from Matthew. But then Luke skips questions two and three and what he does give us is a question that Matthew didn't give us.

If you look at Chapter 21 verse 7, there's this addition of what will be signs when these things are going to happen. That is “what signs would tell us, Jesus, that the temple is about to be torn down?” 

So let's put what we learn in these passages together into a single list.

We have four questions:

1) When will these things take place? That is, when will the temple destruction happen? (from Luke)

2) What are the signs of your coming? (from Matthew)

3) What would be the signs of the end of the age? (from Matthew)

4) And then from what we learned in Matthew, we have kind of a sub question (which we are going to refer to as (1A) later), which is about the signs of the temple's destruction.

Virtually everything Jesus says in what follows in Chapters 24 and 25 will be in response to these four questions. And before we start looking into them, there are a couple of quirks to the Olivet discourse that we have to understand if we're going to interpret Jesus' answers correctly.

First, In addition to answering these four questions, Jesus gives a fifth answer to a question that the disciples did not think to even ask. Jesus will give the answer to the question “What are NOT signs of the end of the age?”

So Jesus adds this extra question, making it a total of five questions now. Jesus gives the disciples a bit of advice about what not to consider a sign, and this ends up being very helpful, because some of the true signs are pretty similar to things that you see everyday that are not signs. So He wants to disambiguate these two before He gets into the details. That's the first thing we need to know – and it’s that even though there were four questions asked, there are going to be five answers. 

And then the second quirk is that Jesus does not answer these questions in the same order that they were asked, and this ends up being the most important detail we need to understand if we're going to interpret this chapter properly. Jesus reorders His answers according to His own priorities in order to make sure that what He says is well understood, and because the order is a better order for His purposes.

Now, the order that Jesus answers the questions looks like this:

He starts with His own extra answer. He begins by telling the disciples what are not signs. Then He moves in the order of question number three, then one, then 1A and then back to two.

Now you may ask, “But how do we know this? How would we know that this is what’s happening?”

Well, as in every case when we want to interpret the Bible correctly, we look at context, and when you look at the context of what He says and you look at it carefully in relation to the questions, it becomes clear which questions He's answering.

And we'll do that as we go through this text in the next few parts to come. We'll follow this outline in that order, and you'll see clearly what Jesus is saying. 

Now, if you studied this chapter or any of the related chapters of Scripture that deal with the end times or the events of the end of the age, then you probably know there are some strongly differing opinions in the church about how we should interpret what Jesus says in this chapter. And much of that disagreement centers on when these events happen or on the relative relationship between them.

You might have heard some of these debates and perhaps you've even participated in some of them, and if so, you must have wondered why there are so many different opinions, why there is so much disagreement about this particular area of Scripture.

And one of the reasons for this endless disagreement in how the Bible is interpreted is this: your interpretation of the Bible can go sideways if you miss important details in the text. For example, in this case, the detail of Jesus’ re-ordering of the questions. If you overlook that detail, and you just charge ahead through the text, thinking that the order is different than it really is, you're going to be on the wrong track, obviously, and your interpretation is going to go sideways as a result.

It's kind of like the analogy of a ship that leaves the port headed for some other port across the world. Its rudder is set a few degrees off from the correct course and at first, it’s a very minor deviation, barely noticeable, but when you leave it there long enough, you end up hundreds of miles off track by the time the journey has been done.

And that’s exactly what you see happening in the interpretation of this chapter, among others in the Bible. People make one or more simple mistakes you barely notice at first - perhaps they made that mistake in their own interpretation, or perhaps they were taught that mistake from somebody else - and because they made that little mistake, their ship ends up a long way off from the truth by the time they're done.

And therefore the key to getting our ship, so to speak, back on track so that we end up on the right interpretation when all is said and done is to learn to recognize that error, and learn to realize where the mistake went back.

If you've ever done a complicated math problem and you think you're doing it right, and all of a sudden at the end, you get the wrong answer, and you look back and you wonder, “where did I go wrong?” And typically, it's somewhere early on where you made a little mistake, and you identify it and fix it, and everything else just suddenly fixes itself.

That's a lot of the way in which interpretation of the Bible goes wrong, and sometimes you may encounter someone who has got the knowledge to show you that little mistake, and when you accept that input and you re- factor that in, and all of a sudden, you’re able to see things clearly. Now you know where you went wrong.

Unfortunately, this kind of correction probably doesn’t happen a lot. Because most Christians cannot explain why they believe what they believe, because they simply don't understand what they've been told. They just know what they've been told.

And so the debates that will ensue between differing opinions just become intractable, with no one being able to explain the mistake that divides them on a particular passage of Scripture. And when you cannot work out with someone where they've gone wrong or where you've gone wrong in the details of Scripture, then you cannot sort out wrong from right. You cannot make progress.

So our study of the chapter that's following is not merely a pursuit of the knowledge of what it says - just like the study of all scripture, our goal is to try to understand what God revealed so that we may share that truth with others, so that ultimately we unite in the body of Christ.

And then we also know there are those in the church who would advocate that we should not study this stuff and advocate a continuing ignorance of this area of Scripture.

Among the dissidents are those who misinterpret Scripture and as a result arrive at the conclusion that an interest in Christ’s second coming is a bad idea, and they usually quote from verses referring to events that are not pertaining to the second coming. And the Bible itself actually says we're supposed to have interest in these things. Hebrews 10 :25 says “We shouldn't forsake our own gathering together, as is the habit of some, but rather encourage one another.” And it says, “Doing so all the more as we see the day coming near.” That is, we're supposed to be looking for these things, anticipating these things, encouraging one another in these things. 

Those who advise that the studying of end times is a bad thing often prove their point by using this particular verse that wasn't talking about the Lord's coming, but about something else that we're going to look at in Matthew 24. The point here is, those who advise against studying the end times have taken a wrong turn in their interpretation, thinking that Jesus said that we are not to know about something that the Bible actually says we are supposed to know. And because of that wrong turn, they got off track in their understanding, resulting in their concluding that Christians ought to stay entirely away from that area of Scripture.  They call the study of end times “speculating on the exact timing of Jesus’ return”.

But we have to understand that endeavoring to understand what the Bible teaches about the end times is not the same thing as trying to time the return of Christ. More importantly, we have to ask ourselves, why does the Bible give us so much eschatology? If it was not supposed to be studied, why is roughly 40% of the Bible prophecy?

There's a passage in 1 Thessalonians, Paul says in one passage, that we should study and understand some things about the return of Christ and about the church's future. In 1 Thessalonians, Chapter four verse 13, Paul says:

1Th. 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

Paul begins a section that talks about Christ’s return for the church and our movement into glory with Him by saying, “You ought not be uninformed about this” And why? “Because I don't want you to be without hope.” What is this hope he's talking about? 

The hope he's talking about is the hope of resurrection, the hope of a future with Jesus.

So when you're living in a world filled with difficulty and trials – which is where we are right now - and you're trying to keep your mind on eternal things and on the glory that is to come, do you know what the best way to do that is?

According to Paul, it's to study it and understand it. That is, it's so easy to become distracted and preoccupied with what's going on here, and if you do that, you have the potential to lose that hope of what is coming, of why death is not our enemy, of why better things await.

That's why we study things like Matthew Chapter 24. It's supposed to remind us of the glorious future that we have in Christ, and the Christians Hope is the hope of knowing this is not the end of us. 

Share |