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As you will hear in this PODCAST, with Jesus’ words here in Matthew 24, the climax of human history as we know it will occur.
No one will miss it. No one will mistake it. Everyone will know exactly what it is that is happening and why it is happening!
The “it” to which I refer and which I intentionally repeated in the above sentences is Jesus’ Second Coming.
What did Jesus say? “Then all the tribes of the earth… will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”
Quite a contrast to Jesus’ first coming, which you will remember was seen only by a few lowly shepherds out in the remote regions of Bethlehem. When Jesus came the first time, He came not with power and great glory, but as a newborn baby laid in an animal’s manger in the cold of a cave.
That was Jesus’ First Coming. In the run-up to the crucifixion, the disciples were understandably fixated on the future, specifically on Jesus’ Second Coming.
They were waiting; we are waiting. They were longing; we are longing. They were asking; we are asking: “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
In giving His answer, Jesus said this: “That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 24:39).
“So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42).
“You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected” (Matthew 24:44).
“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne” (Matthew 25:31).
That’s what Jesus said just in Olivet Discourse. Indeed, the whole point of the Olivet Discourse is Jesus’ Second Coming.
So with all of that background, let’s discover together what Jesus taught us in the Olivet Discourse about His Second coming.
In Matthew 24:29-30, Jesus told His disciples:
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
But, how do we make sense of all this, here in the 21st century?
Well, we can begin by examining Peter’s second letter:
This is my second letter to you, dear friends, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate your wholesome thinking and refresh your memory. 2 I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles.
3 Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. 4 They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.”
5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. 6 Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.7 And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed.
8 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. 9 The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.10 But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.
11 Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, 12 looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. 13 But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness.
14 And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.
15 And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—16 speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.
17 You already know these things, dear friends. So be on guard; then you will not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing. 18 Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen. (2 Peter 3:1-18)
Peter said that there will be scoffers who mockingly question whether we believe that Jesus will really come back. Well, I believe Jesus when He said:
“After I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back…” (John 14:3)
So, considering that Jesus said that after his ascension, He will come back again, we have three options:
- He knew He wasn’t coming back, yet promised that He will over and over again, which makes Him a liar. Or…
- He’s not coming back, but He really did think that He would, which makes Him a lunatic. Or…
- He told us the truth.
In the same vein, if He is not really coming back, then we do not have the option of saying that Jesus was a great teacher, an upstanding moral man, an example to be respected, or an amazing communicator of life lessons (all things that people who minimize who Jesus is tend to offer). Since He claimed over and over again that He would rise from the dead and then return again, He created a binary choice: He is either believable, or unworthy of us basing our calendar on His birth and printing “In God We Trust” on our currency. If His claims were wrong, then it would be intellectually dishonest to honor Him with any credibility whatsoever.
But I believe Him.
I believe Him when He told us that prior to His Second Coming, Satan, through the anti-christ, will desecrate the Temple, demand that the world’s population worship Him as God, and as we read in Revelation 16:14-16,
“…demonic spirits who work miracles and go out to all the rulers of the world to gather them for battle against the Lord on that great judgment day of God the Almighty…
16 And the demonic spirits gathered all the rulers and their armies to a place with the Hebrew name Armageddon.”
And, in direct response to this, Jesus will make a declaration of His own:
“Look, I am coming!”
And the battle of Armageddon will ensue between with all the armies of the earth combined along with the forces of hell against the forces of heaven.
Now, I understand that this all sounds like a wild tale.
Yet, no one can deny that our world today is a daily witness to the collision of the forces of good and evil. The Bible merely puts a name to it all.
But, as it names the places and even the people who will be involved, how are we supposed to know when the Bible – specifically the Book of Revelation – is speaking literally or figuratively?
The interpretive key is this: whenever you are reading any prophetic literature in the Bible, especially concerning the End Times, remember that the Book of Revelation is written in the language of appearance – how things will look like.
We know this based on what John wrote in Revelation 1:10-11,
It was the Lord’s Day, and I was worshiping in the Spirit. Suddenly, I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet blast. 11 It said, “Write in a book everything you see, and send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”
So, he did. He wrote down everything he SAW. And what he saw was this:
And the demonic spirits gathered all the rulers and their armies to a place with the Hebrew name Armageddon.
Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air. And a mighty shout came from the throne in the Temple, saying, “It is finished!”. (Revelation 16:16-17)
So, by and large, we should take John’s words literally, since he wrote down what he saw, as he watched it. But, where we get into trouble is where some of the things that he saw sound really bizarre to us. You just have to understand that he is writing these things in the terminology of an uneducated first-century fisherman.
So as he describes, for instance, scorpions that seem to come up out of the earth and sting everybody with fire coming from their stingers… he’s not describing some crazed, fire-breathing dragon. Consider being in John’s shoes with his life-experience and suddenly you saw an Apache helicopter attacking ground troops. One way you may describe that scene is a giant scorpion breathing fire!
Therefore, John’s writings are literal, in that they do describe what he saw. But, when we try to attach specificity to every little thing that he describes, then we begin to run into trouble as we match today’s technologies with his first century understanding.
So, when God declares from His throne, “It is finished”, there shouldn’t be any debate on whether or not this is literal or metaphorical. It’s literally what John witnessed in his prophetic vision from God. There was a definite beginning to human history – In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) – and a definite end is coming.
But John’s vision didn’t end there:
Then the thunder crashed and rolled, and lightning flashed. And a great earthquake struck—the worst since people were placed on the earth. 19 The great city of Babylon split into three sections, and the cities of many nations fell into heaps of rubble. So God remembered all of Babylon’s sins, and he made her drink the cup that was filled with the wine of his fierce wrath. 20 And every island disappeared, and all the mountains were leveled. 21 There was a terrible hailstorm, and hailstones weighing as much as seventy-five pounds fell from the sky onto the people below. They cursed God because of the terrible plague of the hailstorm.
In his attempt to sum up all that stands against God in a single word or phrase, John uses the term “Babylon”. Knowing the Old Testament, and assuming that his readers would as well, John conjured up the perfect “anti-God” nation who followed the perfect “anti-God” king to summarize just who was daring to battle against the heavenly armies.
And, when John writes that every island disappeared and all the mountains were leveled, I am reminded of the L.A. Dodgers. No, not any time when they may have seemed to disappear. But a very memorable afternoon game when the beloved Vin Scully noticed that “…the hills beyond Chavez Ravine have disappeared today…” No, the hills beyond Dodger Stadium didn’t actually disappear that afternoon. But, from Vin’s vantage point, they appeared to.
And, when we read the Book of Revelation with this perspective – through the eyes of a first century fisherman who loved Jesus Christ – then we can understand his words so much more clearly.
In the fog of such a cataclysmic battle as what will occur at Armageddon, I can’t imagine what it must have looked like to this first century fisherman! Regardless of the specific details of how John’s vision and depiction translate into modern technology… it’s going to be spectacular! It will be unlike anything the world has ever seen!!
John continues to report what he saw after the Great Battle in Revelation 18:1-7,
I saw another angel come from heaven. This one had great power, and the earth was bright because of his glory. 2 The angel shouted,
“Fallen! Powerful Babylon
has fallen
and is now the home
of demons.
It is the den
of every filthy spirit
and of all unclean birds,
and every dirty
and hated animal.
3 Babylon’s evil and immoral wine
has made all nations drunk.
Every king on earth
has slept with her,
and every merchant on earth
is rich
because of
her evil desires.”4 Then I heard another voice
from heaven shout,
“My people, you must escape
from Babylon.
Don’t take part in her sins
and share her punishment.
5 Her sins are piled
as high as heaven.
God has remembered the evil
she has done.
6 Treat her as she
has treated others.
Make her pay double
for what she has done.
Make her drink twice as much
of what she mixed
for others.
7 That woman honored herself
with a life of luxury.
Reward her now
with suffering and pain.
Any modern reader today can feel the longing in the hearts of so many for justice. At this moment – after God proclaims, “It is finished”, justice will finally be served. Evil will be brought to its justified end. And righteousness will prevail.
John continues with his description of seeing an entire global system that is in denial and rebellion to God completely collapse:
“Deep in her heart
Babylon said,
‘I am the queen!
Never will I be a widow
or know what it means
to be sad.’
8 And so, in a single day
she will suffer the pain
of sorrow, hunger, and death.
Fire will destroy
her dead body,
because her judge
is the powerful Lord God.”9 Every king on earth who slept with her and shared in her luxury will mourn. They will weep, when they see the smoke from that fire. (Revelation 18:7-9)
So, in Matthew 24, when Jesus said,
“…the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
…you better believe it!
In these short phrases, Jesus summarized what John wrote all throughout Revelation 16 and 18. There will be a bloodbath like no other in earth’s history. Imagine the devil and every demon furiously fighting in desperation because they sense that their end is near.
Jesus continued in His Olivet Discourse:
Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
Understand this – Jesus doesn’t need a secondary sign as an opening act for His Second Coming. Jesus is the sign. When He returns, everyone will see Him. Everyone will know who He is and what they have done to Him. That is why everyone will mourn.
As Jesus said these things on the Mount of Olives, He then told His disciples another parable:
“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Wait a minute… “this generation will certainly not pass away?” Which generation? Jesus is talking about the generation that will be alive to see these signs and ultimately the battle between ultimate good and ultimate evil.
You see, Jesus Himself said He would come back. I believe Him. If He was wrong either maliciously or ignorantly, that would make Him a madman or a liar. There’s enough proof in His life to contradict both of those possibilities. So I believe Him.
I also believe Him when Jesus said:
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
So, just as in the days when Noah was around, when evil had reached a global height that God had to intervene and wash it from the earth’s surface, just like then, evil will once again rise up to unprecedented global levels.
Jesus continues to describe what will happen:
Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. (Matthew 24:40-41)
Now, many Bible teachers have mistook these two verses as references of the Rapture. However, within its context, we see that this is actually talking about Jesus’ Second Coming – an even that will happen years after the Rapture. While a similar description may be applied to the Rapture – Christ’s followers will be taken up to be with Him and those who refuse Jesus will be left behind – but, that’s not what Jesus is referring to. He is speaking in the context of Noah’s flood where people were swiftly “taken” into judgment.
The people right before Noah’s flood were in full rebellion to God’s will and had no idea what they were about to be a part of. The same will be for those at the end of the Great Tribulation. This is why Jesus issues this warning:
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. (Matthew 24:42)
And, as in Noah’s day, the skies will open. But, instead of rain falling from the skies, John writes what will happen in Revelation 19:11-21,
Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. 12 His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. 13 He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. 15 From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress.16 On his robe at his thigh was written this title: King of all kings and Lord of all lords…
…Then I saw the beast and the kings of the world and their armies gathered together to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army. 20 And the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf of the beast—miracles that deceived all who had accepted the mark of the beast and who worshiped his statue. Both the beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 Their entire army was killed by the sharp sword that came from the mouth of the one riding the white horse. And the vultures all gorged themselves on the dead bodies.
With merely a word from Jesus Christ, it will be a bloodbath.
But, let’s end this on a happy note. John continues in Revelation 20:4,
I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony about Jesus and for proclaiming the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his statue, nor accepted his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They all came to life again, and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
And this will begin a blessed 1,000 year period of absolute utopia. During this time, the earth will be governed by Christ, Himself and His peace will reign.
Jesus wins. And when He wins… we win!