Matthew Twenty Four: No Apologies NeededIntroduction:
I believe the issues I address in this article are of the upmost importance. Some may say the timing of Christ’s return isn’t really all that important in the way we conduct our lives but I would say that the exact opposite is true. In this article I base all my conclusions squarely on the Scriptural texts and time setting and relevance of the first century disciples and their Jewish world view.
How would you live your life today if you realized that grace and mercy has been completely fulfilled and victory is no longer a future concept in the Kingdom of God concerning mankind or the earth itself. The reality is nations have risen and fallen all in the name of God because of misguided interpretations of Scripture. The heart of our nation’s foreign policy is based upon these very issues that will be discussed here. Before you read this article, I would encourage you take a few minutes to read and prayfully consider the twenty third and twenty fourth chapter’s of Matthew’s gospel in their time relevance and their first century perspective.
Vindication from the Deception of a Misplaced Hope
"And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you." Matt 24:4
It has been over two thousand years since Jesus Christ died upon the cross. Every generation and most believer’s since that moment have claimed a very special promise. As His ministry drew to a close and His death was drawing near, He sat upon the Mount of Olives and prophesied over His beloved city. What He said was recorded in detail in the Scripture but even today a majority of Christianity can not grasp those words and their intended meaning and context. Even knowledgeable Christian men like author C.S. Lewis have come to the conclusion that Matthew twenty four verse thirty four was an "exhibition of error." Here is his complete quote.
"Say what you like," we shall be told, "the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, 'This generation shall not pass till all these things be done.' And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else."
What a profound statement to claim that the Son of God said something so embarrassing and created such a delusion even His disciples believed it until the day they died. Lewis states Jesus was clearly "wrong" about His own second coming. Thus in essence making Jesus Christ a false prophet. If Lewis or for that matter most of Christianity since Ad 70 is right, than we can dismiss everything Jesus ever said or did throughout His ministry because He would truly be a false prophet. Scripture is inspired while C.S. Lewis is just a man. That fact alone should have you considering that Matthew twenty four was fulfilled in the disciple's lifetime. To break that chapter up and apply it to our day does the words of Jesus a grave injustice. There are answers and there is proof that all these events Jesus speaks about concerning His return has been fulfilled. Let's begin by taking Jesus at His word.
Why was Jesus concerned about His disciples being deceived? Could it simply be this was their warning and not ours today?
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Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" Matt 24:3
Basically, the generational promise this article address’s is the promise and circumstances of Christ’s second return. So according to Jesus, whose promise was to be fulfilled and is it a promise that still applies today? Was it ours or was it theirs? Has that "age" or world His friends asked Him about passed away or are we still living in the shadow of Herod’s temple with our forgiveness still being bought with the blood of goats and lambs? Here is the truth we are left with from Matthew twenty four. The promise His disciples held to in their time is the salvation we so hold dear today. The writer of Hebrew’s makes this very clear. The pattern of the Old Covenant temple and the priestly system of sacrifice demanded it to be so in how God accepts the forgiveness presented before His throne. Jesus Christ’s return fulfilled that Old Covenant pattern in the events surrounding AD 70 and the sign of His return in the destruction of the earthly temple in Jerusalem. Matthew twenty four explains these events and clearly demonstrated these signs in the years that immediately followed. We will address the disciple's original question because it involves the very temple that was the center of all life itself the Jewish nation evolved around.
Heb 9:28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
Jesus was very precise in His prophecy on the Mount of Olives that day. So precise that any research of the history of Judea at that time bares record of The all the events that Jesus said would come upon their generation. What He foretold were answers to the original question they presented Him with, "what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" So as a believer today do you think Jesus was reaching out in time to you and me or can it be that He wanted His friends to know the things to look for in the completion of God’s redemptive plan for mankind?
"Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place." Matt 24:34
Is God sovereign enough to carry out His plan in the salvation we so freely claim today? Of course He is yet if the return of Christ is still a future event, than how can you claim to be fully saved? Rest assured, salvation was firmly established upon His second coming in the judgement fires of AD 70. Again, read and carefully think about these powerful words from Hebrew’s,
"To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation."
Could the answer of one man’s sacrifice and grace be that simple or is the majority of Christianity still blinded by a two thousand year old cataract's of not knowing how to interpret the words "this generation."
The Earthly Temple becomes "Christ in Us"
The Earthly Temple becomes "Christ in Us"
In the years immediately following Christ’s crucifixion, Matthew Chapter twenty four was a message of promise and of an "expectant" hope. These men who knew Jesus intimately saw Him violently taken away from them. These Hebrew’s also understood through the OT Scripture their time as a nation ruled by law and sacrifice was about to come to an end. They knew all the Messianic prophecies and they understood something was about to change forever and it all centered around the one they called Master. The men who talked with Him that day on the mount of Olives knew He spoke of something that some of them would be witness’s of and experience before they took their last breath. They asked their Lord a specific question about their future because they sensed they wouldn’t share His company much longer as they did the previous three years. The promise and hope my article speaks about is the answer to their very question and that is the timing of His coming and the end of the age. It was theirs alone.
What a horrific picture Jesus painted for them. Jesus wanted them to know specific details to watch for because He knew it would be their witness that would testify to His return. It is important to remember they clearly understood the language He used because it was the language of their own Hebrew Scripture. This is where the great controversy begins. Every generation since that summit talk wants to be the ones to witness these things found in Matthew twenty four. They want to be the ones who witness their Lords return because the Scripture specifically assures us that return is soon and at hand. Does soon and at hand mean a two thousand year gap that grows with each year that passes by? As we have seen in Hebrew’s the problem with their hope is that it denies the very salvation that was part of His return and the grace that the age to come represented in its completion.
This kind of hope applied today is empty and it robs good sincere believer’s of a life that can be lived victorious because a hidden fear found in preparing to greet a groom that can arrive at any moment. The hidden fear of being caught unprepared at the sound of a heavenly trumpet and not wanting to disappoint the Lord of Hosts in His sudden appearing.
Here is a profound statement. God’s clock is not our clock. Christians today will answer, God dwells outside of time so two thousand years is really a drop in the bucket compared to being surrounded by the eternal. T rue but rest assured, God can set a clock. He just does it in the heavens that surrounds us. Jesus came to us in the fullness of time. Calvary was a time event as well as His birth and His resurrection. Time measures all things for us who live in the flesh. On the Mount of Olives that day Jesus was measuring out an event that was to happen in response to the original question. An event that they would experience in their time and place because theirs was a dying breed. That breed being law and sacrifice, temple worship and original sons of Abraham.
"Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place." Matt 24:34
Splitting hairs to justify a "mistake" Jesus apparently made concerning His "this generation" statement
How bold we are as men to think we can split time apart and take the words "this generation" spoken by a King and say they are for our generation? A King who became a servant to His Father’s Will to do the unthinkable in our place. A servant ripped of His majestic nature so He could experience the sight and sounds of nails and thorns ripping His skin. Who has ever apologized to Him for the things done to His flesh? Yet are apologies really necessary if the truth of the cross was His idea all along? Will the world owe us an apology if we turn out to be right in the timing of His second coming? Of course not! Truth is not exclusive to only a few. Scripture unlocks the truth of God only if it is important to enough to us to seek after it.
Jesus Christ never asked mankind for an apology simply because we should never ask for one when His truth is established in the heaven’s and is no longer hidden from any man. Listen carefully, forgiveness is a word we’ll truly never fully understand especially since we are still "on the clock" and breath still sustains us. Just because we don’t "get it" at times doesn’t mean it isn’t revealed in Scripture. How often do these words of Christ take hold of us in our everyday journey of pursuing the truth?
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Matt7:7
The Truth and Power behind Matthew Chapter Twenty Four
To fully understand the context of Matthew chapter twenty four you need to begin in Matthew chapter twenty three. Chapter twenty three ends with a very powerful moment in the ministry of Jesus. He laments over Jerusalem after just proclaiming before all the elders of Jerusalem all the blood that Israel was guilty of before God.
"Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt." Matt 23:32
His disciples were there with Him as He cried out in the temple courts. Jesus was pronouncing a coming judgement and He also made it quite clear as to whom He was speaking. Jesus would repeat this same statement concerning their generation in the very next chapter.
"Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation." Matt 23:36
Do you actually think those scribes and pharisee’s present thought He was speaking to some future generation? That they were off the hook for the time being because Jesus surely wasn’t referring to them? Of course not. In their eye’s Jesus had to die. He had just pronounced judgement upon all of them in a public forum in their most sacred temple.
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Matt 23:37
" Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Matt 23:38
" Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Matt 23:38
It is shortly after this confrontation that the disciples approach Him outside the temple and want to remind Jesus of the beauty that the temple represented in all its splendor. Jesus then proclaimed the complete destruction of the temple which also meant the end of the only way of life they ever knew.
And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."Matt 24:2
As you can see Matthew twenty three is the witness to the very generation of the messiahship of Jesus Christ. There can be no mistake that Jerusalem was about to suffer a terrible fate because they did not come to recognize their one true deliverer. Jesus was very clear in His intentions and very clear on what was about to happen to that generation, the disciple's generation.
"And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." Luke 19:24
The Season of their Visitation and the Reality of our "Hope of Glory"
To whom God would make known what [is] the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Col 1:27
Finally, years are measured by the seasons and time is embedded in the constellations themselves. What happens in thirty or forty years when today’s believer’s realize that Matthew twenty four was not theirs to experience? Are they going to die unhappy because what they looked forward to appearing in the Eastern sky never materialized? I don’t think so because their life was full and they just pass their misplaced hope on to the next generation to carry its torch. Maybe at this point you may be asking what’s the difference anyway in what we believe about the return of Christ? Two very important one’s. First, did the prophecy of Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives occur in the disciples generation? If it didn’t that makes Jesus a false prophet and strips Him of all the authority from which He spoke. And second, if we are still waiting for His return than issues of salvation and grace are still a future concept.
Finally, years are measured by the seasons and time is embedded in the constellations themselves. What happens in thirty or forty years when today’s believer’s realize that Matthew twenty four was not theirs to experience? Are they going to die unhappy because what they looked forward to appearing in the Eastern sky never materialized? I don’t think so because their life was full and they just pass their misplaced hope on to the next generation to carry its torch. Maybe at this point you may be asking what’s the difference anyway in what we believe about the return of Christ? Two very important one’s. First, did the prophecy of Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives occur in the disciples generation? If it didn’t that makes Jesus a false prophet and strips Him of all the authority from which He spoke. And second, if we are still waiting for His return than issues of salvation and grace are still a future concept.
This sort of one day future hope can only produce fear. Fear if you are caught on a "bad day" in your Christian walk and fear that you never loved enough during your lifetime. History proclaims the Olivet prophecies of Christ to be true. Read the New Testament writer’s and try to experience what they were expecting. Trust me, Jesus didn’t drop the ball concerning them. They sacrificed their own lives because they witnessed in person the one who came down from heaven to claim mankind as His own.
So no apologies are ever necessary when God’s truth is revealed and you come to realize the one’s you called heretic’s was nothing more than a Berean. A Berean isn’t satisfied with the explanations of men or their commentaries. Neither does their college degrees or titles written on paper and framed upon walls for all the world to see and marvel over are not his measure nor should it be. It’s not a title that measures the worth of a man but the love of truth for which he sought after and sacrificed so much to be a pleaser of God and not men. Seek the truth found in the relationship founded upon His Word and from the perspective in which that Word has come down to us. It is still very much alive and applies even more so because it can now be applied in the total victory His cross and return has both bought and brought us this very day and hour.
James Robert Kessler
Because of Him Art Ministry 2007
Because of Him Art Ministry 2007
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