Intro to Matthew 24:32-35

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/20/2024 8:55 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                      Focus:  Intro to Matthew 24:32-35

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 24:32-35

 

            Message of the verses:  “32 "Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; 33 so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. 34 “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

 

            I looked up the words “fig tree” and found out it is seen a total of 32 times in the Bible with 15 in the New Testament and 17 in the Old Testament, so I can determine from that that “fig tree” has more of a meaning than just a tree with fruit on it. 

 

            Now remember that Jesus says that what He is saying about the “fig tree” in this section is a parable and when we studied the 13^th chapter of Matthew it was seen there that Jesus began to use parables in His teaching in order to pretty much hide the truth from the Jewish leaders.  Why did He do this?  Well something happened there that caused the change in Jesus’ teaching method, from just telling stories that all could understand to telling parables which only His disciples could understand.  What happened was that the Pharisees said that the miracles that He was doing were in the power of Satan, when the truth was that the miracles that He did was in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here in chapter 13 we see what is called “the unpardonable sin.”  They attributed the power of the Holy Spirit to the power of Satan; they went too far and would not be forgiven for that sin.

 

            Now I have told the story of my coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ in many of my Spiritual Diaries and one of the things that drew me to Christ was a fear of the end times, as what was going to happen.  One thing that is surely going to happen is the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to planet earth, as this event is what every true Christian is looking forward to.  Paul writes the following to Timothy in 2 Tim. 4:8 “in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”   I remember my first Pastor that I sat under after I became a believer who said that this verse was not talking about knowing the time table of when the Lord would return, but loving the Lord’s return in order to be with Him.  MacArthur writes “God’s Word instructs believes not only ‘to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age’ but also to be ‘looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus (Titus 2:12-13).  Nothing in this world, Paul says, can compare ‘with the glory that is to be revealed to us’ (Rom. 8:18), ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (v-21), ‘the redemption of our body’ (v-23), and ‘the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 1:7).

 

            It looks like that I will have to finish this introduction to this parable in my next SD.  My wife and I are on a vacation, something that we have not done for a fairly long time, and so things are different that what they would be if I were back home in Ohio, for one thing if we were there I probably would be shoveling snow instead of walking on a beach in Maui.

 

            1/20/2024 9:30 AM

The Selection by the Angels (Matt. 24:31)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/19/2024 8:13 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                               Focus:  “The Selection by the Angels”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matthew 24:31

 

            Message of the verse:  “And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.”

 

            I think that a study of angels is something that is worthwhile for all believers to do as they certainly are important for the work of the Lord.  It is my opinion that the Lord created all the angels shortly before He created the earth and the stars, and the reason that I say that is because Lucifer was one of the top angels that God created and he then turned into Satan and then one third of the angels followed him, and that was the first part of the mess that we as humans find ourselves in.  It was Satan who then tempted Eve and she and Adam then fell and that is also the reason that we are in the mess that we find ourselves in now because of sin.  Angels are used of God in judgment as we see and will continue to see in the Word of God. 

 

            MacArthur begins his comments on this section by writing “After the unrepentant ungodly have been judged and destroyed, and the repentant mourners have trusted in Christ and been saved, He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect.  Among their other responsibilities, angels are God’s gatherers.  In that day they will be used to gather unbelievers for judgment and punishment (Matt. 13:41, 49) and believers for reward and glory.”  Let us look at these two verses from Matthew 13 “"The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness,” (41).  “"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous,” (49).

 

            Another subject to look at in the Word of God is a study of the trumpet as it is used for different purposes, and the most exciting time the trumpet is used in my opinion is found if 1 Thessalonians where we read “16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words” (4:16-17).

 

            Now referring to what is going on here in Matthew 24:31 we see that the trumpet is being used to announce important convocations, and the sound of the angel’s great trumpet wall signal the assembling of all God’s saints on earth, from wherever they might be, from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.  MacArthur concludes by writing “Many of them will doubtless still be hiding in caves fearful for their lives.  The gathered ones will include the 144,000 Jewish witnesses, their converts, and the converts of the angelic preachers.  They will include the Old Testament saints, gathered out of their graves and joined with their redeemed spirits.  Those will be a assembled together before Christ and ushered into the glory of His eternal kingdom.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  It seems to me that a number of things are going on in my life at this time as the Lord has drawn my thoughts to the end-times in my studies of Matthew 24, a chapter that is all about the end times along with chapter 25, and this just happens to be where I am at this time in my study of Matthew.  On my other blog I am posting my study of the book of Daniel, also much about the end-times.  In my Sunday school class I am teaching through the book of Zechariah, which also has the theme of the end-times in it.  The Lord used the end-times messages almost 50 years ago to bring me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and it has always been very important for me to study it as I study the Word of God.

 

            I look at what is going on in the Middle East at this time and I see many of the important players being involved in a war that was started by Iran, I see the most important player, Israel involved in this war.  I see Russia aliening itself with Iran, something that the Bible talks about that will happen during the end times.  What does all of this mean?  I hope and pray that it means that the Rapture of the church is very close to happening.  Think about for a moment if the rapture were to happen very shortly.  This event will cause much chaos in the world as millions of people will just disappear.  In my opinion it will cause a halt to what is going on in the Middle East at this time.  What then could happen is that a ruler from the Old Roman Empire could step in and begin to settle things down by signing a peace treaty with Israel as Daniel 9 speaks of which will begin the last seven years of man ruling on planet earth, for at the end of those seven years the Lord will return to set up His Kingdom for 1000 years.  Like a Pastor I once had where he said “I am looking for the Upper Taker and not the undertaker” which is what I am also looking for especially as things in the Middle East are happening at this time.

 

            My Steps of Faith for Today:  I trust the Lord’s perfect timing in all of this!!

 

1/19/2024 8:49 AM

The Strength And Glory of the Lord (Matt. 24:30b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/18/2024 8:45 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  The Strength and Glory of the Lord

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 24:30b

 

            Message of the verse:  “with power and great glory.”

 

            I have been looking at some of the cataclysmic events that will take place in the end times for some time now on these Spiritual Diaries, things that will shake the heavens and earth at the end times.  Christ’s return will be accompanied by incredible demonstrations of His divine power over the universe, including Satan and his demons.  Christ will demonstrate His power to protect His chosen people, His power to redeem those who are His elect, His power to restore the devastated earth, and also His power to establish His rule on earth.  There is nothing like the power of Christ, nothing at all as Jesus Christ is all powerful.

 

            John MacArthur writes:  “In His great power the Lord will conquer and destroy all His enemies, including ungodly men who followed and worshiped the beast, whom He will cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20).  He will also ‘make an end of sin, the make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness’ (Dan. 9:24). In the restored and purified earth the destructive nature and instincts of wild animals will be radically reversed to make them docile and harmless.  No animal will attack or molest another animal or any human being, and the carnivorous will become vegetarian.

 

‘6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. 7 Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.’”

 

            There is more about Christ’s power as it will eliminate drought, floods, corp failures, and starvation as seen in Zechariah 14:8 “And in that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter.” 

 

            More about His power, as it will be equally and spectacular of His great glory seen from Matthew 25:31 “"But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.”

 

            As I look back at the first couple of verses in the very first book of the Bible I can see that Adam and Eve had a glimpse of God’s glory as they walked and talked with Him in the Garden of Eden.  What a time that must have been for them, and yet as we continue to read in Genesis we know that that glimpse must have been all to short as sin raised its ugly head and the world would not be the same, and yet as we continue to study end-time events we get to the 19^th chapter of the book of Revelation to see that when Jesus Christ returns to the planet that He created that has been ravished with sin that through His power He will in effect re-create His planet earth and will reign on His throne in Jerusalem for 1000 years.  Things during that time period will be much different than they have been for the past six or seven thousand years.  I truly look forward in serving my Lord during that time period.  I will conclude this section with a quote from John MacArthur’s commentary, the last paragraph that he wrote on this section.

 

            “But no human being has yet seen the full unveiled glory of God in Christ, and no one will ever see it until Jesus appears at His second coming and all mankind sees Him at once.  At that time no one will have to ask who He is, for He will be perfectly recognized by every human being on earth.  There will be no mistaking His identity then as there was when He came in His incarnation.  All mankind will see the Son of Man in His full glory and immediately recognize Him as God—through all will not honor Him as God.”

 

            I have one more section to go over in this chapter, “The Signs of Christ’s Coming—part 5 The Sign of the Son of Man.”  It will be a rather short one but hopefully one that will be a blessing as we continue to look at this wonderful 24^th chapter of the book of Matthew.

 

1/18/2024 9:18 AM

PT-4 "The Sign in the Sky" (Matt. 24:30a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/17/2024 7:46 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  PT-4 “The Sign in the Sky”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 24:30a

 

            Message of the verse:  “30 "And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY”

 

            I have to say as I begin this fourth section looking at “The Sign in the Sky” that I am a bit confused, and the confusion is that in my thinking this seems to be talking about the return of Jesus Christ as seen in Revelation 19, and when I look at that I see the Lord returning to planet earth on a great white horse with a sword in His mouth accompanied by saints and angels in order to end the battle of Armageddon so that the earth will not be destroyed through the nuclear bombs that are about to go off which would destroy the entire earth.  Anyway I will keep looking at what John MacArthur has written in his commentary to see what he has to say about this.

 

            “Just as Jesus ascended to heaven in the clouds, He will also return ‘in just the same way’ (Acts 1:11).  When He appears at His second coming, the son of Man will come on the clouds of the sky (cf. Matt. 26:64; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27).  In his night visions Daniel beheld ‘with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man…coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.  And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him’ (Dan. 7:13-14).  In his vision on Patmos, John also saw Jesus ‘coming with the clouds.’  Then, he said, ‘every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him’ (Rev. 1:7).”

 

            The Bible has much to say about clouds as that word is used 51 times in the entire Word of God.  I think that is interesting in that there never were clouds until after the flood in the time of Noah happened, for it never rained before that flood took place.  So the Bible has many interesting things to say when it talks about clouds, and the going back to heaven of our Lord and the returning of our Lord is probably the most interesting use of clouds found in the 51 times it is used in the Bible.

 

            MacArthur not talks about something said in the book of Zechariah.  “Speaking of the end time, Zechariah wrote, ‘And it will come about in that day that there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle.  For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light’ (Zech. 14:6-7, cf. Jer. 30:7).  At the end of that insufferable period of darkness and anguish, the light will come, not by the reillumination of the sun, moon, and stars but by the brilliance of Christ’s own divine glory, which will later light the eternal new heaven and new earth. In that day there will be ‘no need of the sun or of the moon to shine upon [the new Jerusalem], for the glory of God [will] illumine it, and its lamp [will be] the Lamb’ (Rev. 21:23), ‘and there shall no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them’ (22:5).”

            Now I have already mentioned that in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to planet earth from heaven will be accompanied by angels and the saints of the Church age, but it seems that the Old Testament believers as well, will probably be included in ‘the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,’ which follow Chris ‘on white horses’ (Rev. 19:14).  I have to say that I have never been too good riding a horse, and so I am looking forward to riding one of heavens white horses returning with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as He comes to save the world from total destruction.

 

            MacArthur concludes this rather long section by writing “While unbelievers on earth are dying from fright, disease, or from the Antichrist’s carnage, those who are coming to salvation and who escape being killed during the Tribulation will have great reason to rejoice at Christ’s appearing.  In his account of the Olivet discourse Luke reports that Jesus says to those surviving saints:  ‘When these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21:28).”

 

            Lord willing in tomorrow’s SD we will look at a much shorter portion of verse 20 of chapter 24 and it is entitled “The Strength and Glory of the Lord.”  “with power and great glory.” (Matt. 24:30b).

 

1/17/2024 8:25 AM  

PT-3 "The Sign in the Sky" (Matt. 24:30a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/16/2024 8:12 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  PT-3 “The Sign in the Sky”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 24:30a

 

            Message of the verse: “30 "And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY”

 

            Jesus is saying in this second highlighted portion of verse thirty all the tribes of the earth will mourn.  They will be mourning over their sin realizing that they will be lost forever, that is the ones who did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.  I think that perhaps believers will also be mourning over their sin too because they are seeing the Lord at this time with their very own eyes.  I am thinking about the prophet Isaiah and what happened when in a vision He saw the Lord “1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.

    5 Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me! (Isaiah 6:1-8).  Isaiah was surely a believer, but in seeing the Lord when he did caused him to remember his sin and cry out "Woe is me, for I am ruined!  Now think also of John the Apostle who lived with the Lord Jesus Christ for three years, who was the disciple that Jesus truly loved, and then in the first chapter of the book of Revelation when he saw the Lord, “17 When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, 18  and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:17-18).  John had seen the Lord after His resurrection, saw Him as He went up into the clouds to return to heaven, but he had never seen the Lord like this, and when he did see Him he fell at His feet like a dead man.”  We in our human bodies cannot really understand what the Lord looks like, and so we have these two examples of Isaiah and John seeing the Lord in at least part of His glory and look what happened to them.  Moses is another one who wanted to see the glory of the Lord, but in his human body it would have killed him, and so the Lord put him in the cleft of a rock and passed by behind him so that he would live, and then on the Mount of Transfiguration Moses was with the Lord along with Elijah and they both could look upon the Lord for they were in a type of glorified body themselves.

 

            John MacArthur writes “There will be some from all the tribes of the earth who will mourn over their rebellion against God and their rejection of His Son.  Having heard the gospel proclaimed (v. 14; Rev. 14:6), those people will turn from and mourn over their sin and receive Christ as Lord and Savior.”  It seems that MacArthur has some more things to say about those who will see the Lord at His coming, as I was thinking more about those who were believers than unbelievers, and I have to say that I am not in complete agreement with what he wrote, for I was thinking about the scene in Revelation 19 when those who see the return of the Lord to planet earth begin to fight against Him, so perhaps MacArthur is describing a different time.

 

            I will conclude this SD with a rather long paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary.  “Among the repentant will be many Jews.  Through Zechariah the Lord promised His people: ‘And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born.  In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem (Zech. 12:10-11).  Having realized that they have rejected their Messiah, they will turn to Him in faith, casting themselves on His mercy.  At that time the ‘the fulness of the Gentiles [will have] come in; and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is from Jacob’’’ (Rom. 11:25-26; cf. Isa. 59:20).”

 

1/16/2024 8:50 AM

PT-2 "The Sign in the Sky" (Matthew 24:30a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/15/2024 8:07 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  PT-2 “The Sign in the Sky”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 24:30a

 

            Message of the verse:  “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky”

 

            I begin with a quote from John MacArthur’s commentary in today’s SD:  “Many of the early church Fathers, such as Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Origen, imagined that this sign would be an enormous blazing cross, visible to the entire world, that would pierce the total darkness then shrouding the world.  Other interpreters have suggested it will be the Shekinah glory of the Lord’s presence returning to earth.  It is likely that the Shekinah glory will be involved, as the unveiled Christ Jesus makes His appearance.  But the sign is not just His glory; it is Christ Himself, the Son of Man, who will appear in the sky.”

 

            MacArthur goes on:  The sign of should be translated as a Greek subjective genitive indication that the sign will not simply relate to or point to the Son of Man (as with an objective genitive) but will indeed be the Son of Man.  In other words, Jesus Himself will be the supreme and final sign of His coming.  In the midst of the world’s unrelieved blackness—physical, emotional, and spiritual—Jesus Himself will manifest Himself in His infinite and undiminished glory and righteousness.  Just as the destructive catastrophes of the Great Tribulation will be utterly unparalleled (v. 21), so will be this manifestation of the glory and power of Christ.”

 

            In eleven days from today I will celebrate 50 years of being a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, and I have to say that the first book of the Bible that I ever read was the book of Revelation, something that I would not advise a new believer to do, but that is how it was for me because I was very much afraid of what was going to happen to planet earth, and had no clue as to what would happen.  My mother told me when I was a child that winter would turn into summer and then the world would burn up.  Only part of that is true, and that is the part that one day the world will burn up according to 2 Peter 3:10.  The point of this is that I have been studying end-time revelation from the Word of God for almost fifty years, and many of the stories, like the one MacArthur tells of old time Bible scholars I have read, and I don’t think that they had the right idea as to what the sign really was.  I totally agree with MacArthur that the sign is the Lord Jesus Christ returning to planet earth seven years after the Tribulation period began, and is written about in the middle of the 19^th chapter of the book of Revelation.  11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and

He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. 13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. 15 From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. 16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’”  The war called Armageddon, or the last battle of Armageddon is going on at full furry at this time, and if the Lord did not return at this time then there would be no more world to save, but as soon as the two sides of this war see the Lord and the raptured church returning with Him they immediately began to fire their nuclear missiles at the Lord which will have no effect as the Sword in His mouth is more powerful than anything that they have in their arsenal.

 

            Lord willing in the next SD I will add some more comments from MacArthur’s commentary that go along with what I just wrote.

 

1/15/2024 8:37 AM    

PT-1 "The Sign in the Sky" (Matthew 24:30a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/14/2024 7:25 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  PT-1 “The Sign in the Sky”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 24:30a

 

            Message of the verse:  “and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky”

 

            I have to say that when I changed cell phones that I had a hard time hooking up my hearing aids to it so that I could listen to the sermons from John MacArthur, and I missed listening to them as he usually adds more things to his sermons than are written in his commentaries.  I really do not like change when it comes to things that I do in preparing my Spiritual Diaries, and I guess that is because I am getting older and like to continue to do the things that I do each and every day.  Now at this time, before I get into what will probably be a short SD today because it is Sunday I want to quote a paragraph from the Spiritual Diary that I put on my other blog this morning from Daniel chapter six as it really spoke to my heart and I hope it will speak to more hearts as it is read here on this Spiritual Diary.

 

            “We read at the end of Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary on this section the following:  “The most important part of a believer’s life is the part that only God sees, our daily private time of meditation and prayer.  ‘You pray as your face is set,’ said British theologian P. T. Forsythe, ‘towards Jerusalem or Babylon.’  Most of the world begins the day looking toward the world and hoping to get something from it, but the Christian believer looks to the Lord and His promises and enters each new day by faith.  Outlook determines outcome, and when we look to the Lord for His guidance and help each day, we know that the outcome is in His hands and that we have nothing to fear.  ‘Real true faith is man’s weakness leaning on God’s strength,’ said D. L. Moody, and we might add man’s weakness transformed into God’s strength (Heb. 11:34).”

 

            Now back to Matthew 24 as we see next that Jesus describes the supreme sign of His “coming, and of the end of the age,” about which the disciples had asked a few moments earlier in verse three “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?’”  Now I know that this seems like a long time ago when we looked at this verse, but real time when this was going on it was only moments earlier.  Now Jesus had already mentioned a number of lesser, though astounding, signs that would come before His coming, and these included the sign of the abomination of desolation that would precipitate them as seen in verses 14-15.  But the sign of signs and that is the greatest sign of all will be the Son of Man himself, who will appear in the sky.  Now think of that for a moment and let me just write a little bit about what this all means, and I know that I cannot exhaust this subject but I will give some information that may help. Before this happens, that is the second coming of Jesus Christ, there will be an ending to the church age which is called the rapture of the church, so at this time that Jesus is talking about the church will have already gone to heaven.  I think that the best passage that talks about the rapture is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.  All that Jesus talks about in Matthew 24-25 is about the tribulation period, which as mentioned before is the 70^th week of Daniel’s prophecy found in the ninth chapter of Daniel verses 24-27.  The seventh week of Daniel is made up of seven “Biblical years” made up of 360 day years. 

 

            Now that will end up this SD and Lord willing I will pick up where I left off in the next SD.

 

1/14/2024 8:22 AM