SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/2/2023 10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-5 “Intro to Matt. 24:4-14”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 24:4-14
Message of the verses: “4 And Jesus answered and said to them, "See to it that no one
misleads you. 5 “For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and
will mislead many. 6 “And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see
that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that
is not yet the end. 7 “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. 8 “But
all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs. 9 “Then they
will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by
all nations on account of My name. 10 “And at that time many will fall away and
will deliver up one another and hate one another. 11 "And many false
prophets will arise, and will mislead many. 12 “And because lawlessness is
increased, most people’s love will grow cold. 13 “But the one who endures to
the end, he shall be saved. 14 “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end
shall come.”
I want to finish the quotation from John MacArthur’s
commentary on his introduction to these verses.
“A sixth indicator is that ‘immediately after the
tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give
its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens
will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky’
(Matt 24:29-30). Those supernatural
events obviously have not yet transpired.
“The seventh and last indicator that Jesus was speaking
of the distant future is the figure of the fig tree (Matt. 24:32-35). Just as the budding leaves of a fig tree
signal that summer is near, so the occurring of the events Jesus mentions here
will signal His imminent return. ‘This
generation,’ that is the generation living during the time of those end-time
events, ‘will not pass away until all these things take place’ (v.34). The signs of Matthew 24-25 will all be fully
experienced within one generation, a generation that could be no other than the
generation living when Christ returns.
“The whole fulfillment of the Olivet discourse,
therefore, is future. It is not that
most of the circumstances and conditions mentioned here have not been
experienced before. There have been wars
and rumors of wars virtually since the Fall, and there have been famines and
earthquakes since the beginning of recorded history. But the events of Matthew 24-25 will be
unique to the end times in detail, in sequence, in scale, and in extent. Some of
the events, such as the disruption of the physical universe (24:29),
will be completely unique.
“The fact that Jesus spoke in the second person,
especially in chapter 24, does not prove He was speaking to the disciples about
their own generation. The Old Testament
prophets frequently addressed messages to people yet unborn, some of whom would
live hundreds of years in the future.
God picked up the prophet, as it were, and transported him to the time
of which he was to prophesy, and he spoke as if he were standing directly
before those future generations (see, e. g., Isa. 33:17-24; 66:10-14; Zech.
9:9). Jesus was saying, in effect, ‘You
who are alive at that time,…’
“Beginning in Matthew 24:4, Jesus answers the disciples’
questions, ‘When will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your
coming, and of the end of the age?’ (v.3).
He responds to the two parts of the question in reverse order. He does not deal with the ‘when’ until 24:36,
saying, ‘But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven,
nor the Son, but the Father alone.’ In 24:4-14, He begins to answer the second
part of the question by describing the initial group of six signs, the ‘birth
pains’ that will occur just before His coming:
deception by false Christs (vv. 4-5), dissension among the nations of
the world (vv. 6-7a), worldwide devastation (vv. 7b-8), deliverance of
believers to tribulation (v. 9), defection of false believers (vv. 10-13), and
the declaration of the gospel to the whole world (v. 14).”
Lord willing, we will begin to look at “Deception by
false Christs” in the next SD.
12/2/2023 10:25 AM
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