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Matthew 24 Explained_ What Did Jesus Teach about the End Times_ · Bible stories

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
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  Speaker 1: our channel. To support us, you can scan the first
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  Speaker 1: QR code to join the Bible Stories podcast app, where
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  Speaker 1: you can listen offline and access exclusive episodes. Or, if
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  Speaker 1: you simply want to give, you can scan the second
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  Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
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  Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. Jesus taught that this world
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  Speaker 1: is going somewhere, and that he himself is the ending.
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  Speaker 1: He said he would come back in person, in the open,
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  Speaker 1: where no one could miss it. He said no one
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  Speaker 1: on earth knows the day, and he listed the very
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  Speaker 1: things people have always pointed to as proof that the
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  Speaker 1: end has arrived, things like war and hunger and earthquakes,
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  Speaker 1: and he said plainly that they are not the signal.
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  Speaker 1: Most of us come to this chapter looking for a schedule,
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  Speaker 1: wanting to know whether the world is finally falling apart.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus spends most of it doing the opposite of what
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  Speaker 1: we expect. He takes the signs away, tells his friends
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  Speaker 1: to stop being alarmed, and then gives them a handful
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  Speaker 1: of clear commands, and not one of them is figure
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  Speaker 1: out when. If you have ever felt afraid of the
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  Speaker 1: news or worn out by people who kept announcing the
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  Speaker 1: date of his return and kept being wrong or quietly
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  Speaker 1: ashamed because your life feels too small to matter before
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  Speaker 1: God returns, then this chapter was written for you. Because
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  Speaker 1: the ending of Matthew 24 is not about the sky.
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  Speaker 1: It is about a servant handing out food and the
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  Speaker 1: master who comes home and finds him doing it. Let
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  Speaker 1: us walk through the whole thing together from the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: It is the last week of Jesus' life. He has
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  Speaker 1: just come out of the temple after a long and
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  Speaker 1: painful confrontation with the religious leaders. He has told them
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  Speaker 1: plainly that their house is being left to them empty.
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  Speaker 1: Then he walks out through the courts, and his disciples
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  Speaker 1: do something very ordinary and very human— They point at
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  Speaker 1: the building. You have to understand what they were pointing at.
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  Speaker 1: Herod had begun rebuilding the temple around 20 years before
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  Speaker 1: Jesus was born, and the work was still not finished.
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  Speaker 1: Men were still cutting stones there while Jesus taught. Some
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  Speaker 1: of the foundation blocks weighed more than 50 tons. The
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  Speaker 1: whole structure sat on a platform so enormous that visitors
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  Speaker 1: from across the empire came just to look at it.
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  Speaker 1: Gold on the front caught the morning sun so brightly
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  Speaker 1: that travelers coming over the eastern hills had to shade
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  Speaker 1: their eyes. To a Jewish man in the first century,
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  Speaker 1: that building was the proof that God had not left.
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  Speaker 1: It was the most permanent thing in the world. So
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  Speaker 1: the disciples point at it the way you would point
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  Speaker 1: at a mountain, and Jesus answers them with one of
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  Speaker 1: the most shocking sentences he ever spoke. Truly I tell you,
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  Speaker 1: not one stone here will be left on another. Everyone
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  Speaker 1: will be thrown down. Matthew chapter 24 verse 2. He
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  Speaker 1: was describing a building taken apart down to the bare ground.
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  Speaker 1: They say nothing back. There is no recorded reply, and
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  Speaker 1: that silence is the most honest reaction in the chapter.
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  Speaker 1: What do you say to that? They walk with him
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  Speaker 1: down through the Kidron Valley and up the slope of
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  Speaker 1: the Mount of Olives, the ridge just east of the city,
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  Speaker 1: where you can sit and see the whole temple platform
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  Speaker 1: spread out below you like a map. And there, sitting
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  Speaker 1: on that hill, looking down at the building he has
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  Speaker 1: just condemned, four of them come to him privately. Then
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  Speaker 1: they ask the question that everything else in Matthew 24
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  Speaker 1: is an answer to. Tell us, when will this happen,
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  Speaker 1: and what will be the sign of your coming and
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  Speaker 1: of the end of the age? Matthew, chapter 24, verse 3.
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  Speaker 1: Read what they actually asked. There are two, maybe three
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  Speaker 1: things packed into one sentence, and they did not know
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  Speaker 1: they were separate. When will the temple fall? What will
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  Speaker 1: signal your coming? What will signal the end of the age?
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  Speaker 1: In their minds, those were one event. The stones come down,
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  Speaker 1: the Messiah takes his throne, the age of the world closes,
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  Speaker 1: all in the same week. They could not imagine a
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  Speaker 1: world where the temple was gone and history simply kept going.
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  Speaker 1: That fusing of two different things into one question is
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  Speaker 1: the single most important fact about this chapter. It explains
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  Speaker 1: almost every confusion that has followed for two thousand years,
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  Speaker 1: because Jesus does not separate them for us either. He
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  Speaker 1: answers both in one long stretch of teaching, and he
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  Speaker 1: never stops to say,' Now I am changing subjects.' His
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  Speaker 1: answer begins with a warning about being fooled. Many will
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  Speaker 1: come using his name, claiming to be the Christ, and
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  Speaker 1: they will pull crowds after them. That is the first
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  Speaker 1: thing out of his mouth. Watch out for people who
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  Speaker 1: sound spiritual and are lying to you. Then he starts
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  Speaker 1: listing the very things every generation has treated as proof
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  Speaker 1: the end has arrived. Wars, rumors of wars, nation rising
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  Speaker 1: against nation, famine, earthquakes in various places. And here is
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  Speaker 1: where the chapter turns everything upside down. See to it
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  Speaker 1: that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but
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  Speaker 1: the end is still to come. Matthew 24, verse 6.
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  Speaker 1: He names the disasters and then tells them these are
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  Speaker 1: not the finish line. Wars will come, and the end
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  Speaker 1: is still to come. Nations will collapse, and the end
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  Speaker 1: is still to come. The ground itself will shake, and
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  Speaker 1: the end is still to come. He calls all of
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  Speaker 1: it the beginning of birth pains, which is his way
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  Speaker 1: of saying that these pains are the start of a
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  Speaker 1: long labor, not the last push. That cuts against nearly
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  Speaker 1: everything we absorb about this chapter. People quote Matthew 24
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  Speaker 1: to prove that a headline means the return is next week.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus quotes these same events to say the exact opposite,
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  Speaker 1: do not be alarmed, not yet. And Jesus never says
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  Speaker 1: the wars are meaningless. He says they are not the signal.
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  Speaker 1: There is a real difference between a world groaning and
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  Speaker 1: a world ending, and he wants his friends to be
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  Speaker 1: able to tell those two apart so they can live
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  Speaker 1: through the groaning without falling apart every time the ground moves.
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  Speaker 1: Then he turns from the world outside to the people
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  Speaker 1: who follow him, and it gets more personal. They will
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  Speaker 1: be handed over. They will be hated because of his name.
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  Speaker 1: Betrayal will come from inside, from people they trusted, from
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  Speaker 1: their own circle. False prophets will rise and lead many away.
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  Speaker 1: And in the middle of that list, Jesus says something
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  Speaker 1: almost nobody teaches— Because of the increase of wickedness, the
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  Speaker 1: love of most will grow cold. Matthew 24, verse 12.
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  Speaker 1: Look at what he is describing. Hearts wearing out. In
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  Speaker 1: a long stretch of prophecy about armies and temples and
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  Speaker 1: the sky, the one thing Jesus says will decay is love.
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  Speaker 1: The warmth between people. The willingness to care about someone
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  Speaker 1: else's trouble when you have plenty of your own. If
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  Speaker 1: you have watched that happen, in a family, in a church,
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  Speaker 1: in your own chest, you know he is telling the truth.
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  Speaker 1: Cold love does not usually arrive as a decision. It
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  Speaker 1: arrives as tiredness. You get hurt, and then you get careful.
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  Speaker 1: You get disappointed, and then you get distant. Wickedness increases
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  Speaker 1: around you, and slowly your heart pulls in its edges
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  Speaker 1: to protect itself, and one day you notice that you
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  Speaker 1: do not feel much of anything for anybody. That is
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  Speaker 1: why the very next words matter so much. The one
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  Speaker 1: who stands firm to the end will be saved. The
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  Speaker 1: promise belongs to whoever is still there, still caring, still
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  Speaker 1: walking with God after the warmth has gone out of
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  Speaker 1: the room. And then he says the world will not
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  Speaker 1: end before the good news of the kingdom has been
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  Speaker 1: announced to all nations. That is worth noticing because it
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  Speaker 1: is the one thing in this chapter that looks forward
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  Speaker 1: with hope instead of dread. Whatever else happens, the message
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  Speaker 1: keeps traveling. Now the discourse narrows and becomes urgently practical.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus tells them that when they see what Daniel called
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  Speaker 1: the abomination that causes desolation standing in the holy place,
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  Speaker 1: they must act immediately. And then he gives instructions so
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  Speaker 1: specific they read like emergency directions, because that is what
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  Speaker 1: they are. Most people hit the phrase, abomination that causes desolation,
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  Speaker 1: and assume it is a riddle nobody can crack. Most
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  Speaker 1: people hit the phrase, abomination that causes desolation, and assume
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  Speaker 1: it is a riddle nobody can crack. It is not.
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  Speaker 1: Daniel used that phrase to describe a foreign ruler defiling
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  Speaker 1: the temple and shutting down the worship of God. And
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  Speaker 1: by the time Jesus spoke, it had already happened once.
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  Speaker 1: Around 167 years before Christ, a Greek king named Antiochus
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  Speaker 1: took the Jerusalem temple, stopped the sacrifices, and set up
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  Speaker 1: pagan worship inside the holy place. Jewish families still told
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  Speaker 1: that story. It was in living memory the way a
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  Speaker 1: war two centuries back is still in a nation's memory.
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  Speaker 1: So when Jesus said those words on the Mount of Olives,
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  Speaker 1: his listeners heard something familiar. They heard a category. They heard,
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  Speaker 1: it is going to happen again. The holy place will
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  Speaker 1: be violated. Worship will stop. And when you see it,
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  Speaker 1: do not stay to argue about it. Leave. Luke records
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  Speaker 1: the same teaching with plainer wording that helps enormously here.
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  Speaker 1: In Luke chapter 21, the sign is Jerusalem surrounded by armies.
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  Speaker 1: Same warning, less mystery. When the ring closes around the city,
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  Speaker 1: the desolation is at the door. And history records exactly that.
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  Speaker 1: In the year 66, the Jewish people revolted against Rome.
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  Speaker 1: Four years later, a Roman general named Titus, who would
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  Speaker 1: later become emperor, brought his legions around Jerusalem and sealed it.
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  Speaker 1: The historian Josephus was there and wrote it down. The
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  Speaker 1: hunger inside the walls was so bad that people chewed leather.
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  Speaker 1: When the walls finally broke, fire took the temple. Then
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  Speaker 1: the soldiers pulled down what the fire had left, stone
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  Speaker 1: by stone, until the platform was bare. Josephus puts the
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  Speaker 1: number of dead above a million. That figure is probably
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  Speaker 1: too high, but nobody who reads his account doubts the
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  Speaker 1: scale of it. The prophecy came true within the lifetime
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  Speaker 1: of people who heard it spoken. And there is one
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  Speaker 1: more piece of history worth knowing. The earliest Christian records
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  Speaker 1: tell us that the believers in Jerusalem got out before
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  Speaker 1: the siege closed, crossing east of the Jordan to a
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  Speaker 1: town called Pella. That is not in the Bible, so
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  Speaker 1: I will not treat it as Scripture. But the early
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  Speaker 1: church kept the memory, and it fits the command exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus told them to flee, and it seems they did.
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  Speaker 1: In the middle of describing the worst days his people
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  Speaker 1: would ever see, Jesus stops and says this,' Pray that
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  Speaker 1: your flight will not take place in winter or on
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  Speaker 1: the Sabbath.' And just before it, he says how hard
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  Speaker 1: those days will be for women who are pregnant and
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  Speaker 1: for mothers nursing infants. Think about what that means. He
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  Speaker 1: is prophesying the end of a world, and he pauses
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  Speaker 1: to think about the weather. He pauses to think about
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  Speaker 1: a woman running with a baby on her hip. He
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  Speaker 1: is inside the suffering he is predicting, worrying about cold
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  Speaker 1: roads and tired mothers. That is who is speaking in
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  Speaker 1: this chapter. A man who cares whether it rains on
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  Speaker 1: the day you have to run. Everything we have covered
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  Speaker 1: so far fits the fall of Jerusalem well. The temple,
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  Speaker 1: the armies, the flight to the mountains, all of it
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  Speaker 1: landed in the year 70. But as the chapter continues,
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  Speaker 1: the language expands until it will not fit inside one city.
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  Speaker 1: The sun goes dark. The moon gives no light. The
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  Speaker 1: stars fall. Every nation on earth sees the Son of
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  Speaker 1: Man coming with power and great glory, and angels gather
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  Speaker 1: his people from one end of heaven to the other.
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  Speaker 1: That is the closing of history, far larger than the
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  Speaker 1: fall of any single city. So how does Jesus move
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  Speaker 1: from one to the other without telling us? The answer
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  Speaker 1: is that he is speaking the way the prophets always spoke.
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  Speaker 1: Look at how Isaiah announced the fall of Babylon. He
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  Speaker 1: reached for the sky. He said the stars would give
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  Speaker 1: no light, the heavens would tremble, and the earth would
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  Speaker 1: shake out of its place. Babylon fell and the stars
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  Speaker 1: stayed where they were. Isaiah was telling his readers how
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  Speaker 1: enormous the fall was. When a great power collapses under
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  Speaker 1: God's judgment, it is as though the universe shudders. Every
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  Speaker 1: Jewish listener understood that language. It was the ordinary way
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  Speaker 1: of speaking about earth-shaking events. The prophets also had a
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  Speaker 1: habit of seeing near and far together. A prophet would
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  Speaker 1: announce something close at hand and something far ahead in
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  Speaker 1: the same breath, the way you see two mountain ridges
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  Speaker 1: from a distance and cannot tell how many miles lie
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  Speaker 1: between them. The nearer event became a picture of the
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  Speaker 1: farther one. Judgment on a city became a preview of
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  Speaker 1: judgment on the world. That is what is happening in
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  Speaker 1: Matthew 24. The fall of Jerusalem is real, specific, and fulfilled.
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  Speaker 1: It is also a rehearsal. It shows in miniature what
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  Speaker 1: the last day will be on the full scale, the
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  Speaker 1: end of something people thought could never end, and the
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  Speaker 1: arrival of God's verdict on it. Christians who love the
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  Speaker 1: Bible have divided over where exactly the seam falls. Some
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  Speaker 1: read almost the entire chapter as fulfilled in the first century,
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  Speaker 1: treating the cosmic language as the prophet's way of describing
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  Speaker 1: Jerusalem's fall and Christ's judgment on it. Others read the
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  Speaker 1: temple's destruction as only the opening act and place the
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  Speaker 1: heart of the chapter in the future. Others hold both
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  Speaker 1: together with one prophecy answering two moments in history. Every
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  Speaker 1: one of those readings has to admit something. The first
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  Speaker 1: has to stretch to explain a coming that every nation sees.
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  Speaker 1: The second has to explain why Jesus described the fall
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  Speaker 1: of that temple with such precision that it happened inside
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  Speaker 1: 40 years. The reading that asks the least of the
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  Speaker 1: text is the one that lets both stand. The near
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  Speaker 1: fulfillment happened exactly as he said, and the final return
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  Speaker 1: has not happened yet. The stones came down as a
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  Speaker 1: promise that the rest of his words are just as reliable.
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  Speaker 1: And notice what that means for you. The part of
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  Speaker 1: this prophecy we can check, we have checked, it came true.
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  Speaker 1: Which is the only reason the part we cannot check
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  Speaker 1: yet is worth staking your life on. Between the tribulation
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  Speaker 1: and the glory, Jesus inserts a warning that is startlingly relevant,
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  Speaker 1: and it is the closest thing in this chapter to
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  Speaker 1: a test you can actually use. He says, people will
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  Speaker 1: come telling you that Christ is here, or that Christ
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  Speaker 1: is out there in the wilderness, or he is in
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  Speaker 1: that inner room. And Jesus does not tell you to
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  Speaker 1: go and check. He says, do not believe it, do
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  Speaker 1: not go out there. False messiahs and false prophets will
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  Speaker 1: perform signs impressive enough to shake even people who have
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  Speaker 1: followed God for decades. Then he gives the reason, and
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  Speaker 1: it is one sentence that ends every rumor forever. For
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  Speaker 1: as lightning that comes from the east is visible even
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  Speaker 1: in the west, so will be the coming of the
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  Speaker 1: Son of Man. Matthew chapter 24 verse 27 Nobody has
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  Speaker 1: to text you about lightning. That is the whole argument.
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  Speaker 1: Lightning announces itself, and it needs no spokesman. If someone
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  Speaker 1: has to inform you that Christ has returned, that alone
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  Speaker 1: proves he has not. His coming will not be a report.
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  Speaker 1: It will not be a private discovery that a certain
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  Speaker 1: teacher made before everyone else. It will be a sky
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  Speaker 1: no one on earth can pretend not to see. Hold
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  Speaker 1: on to that, because it protects you from an enormous
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  Speaker 1: amount of nonsense. Every group that has ever gathered people
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  Speaker 1: around a secret return, a hidden messiah, or a date
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  Speaker 1: only they had access to, has been refuted in advance
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  Speaker 1: by one sentence about lightning. Then the language rises, the
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  Speaker 1: sky darkens, the sign of the Son of Man appears,
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  Speaker 1: the nations of the earth mourn. He comes on the
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  Speaker 1: clouds with power and great glory, and a great trumpet sounds,
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  Speaker 1: and his angels gather his people from the farthest edges
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  Speaker 1: of the earth. Notice who is doing the gathering. He
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  Speaker 1: sends for his own, from wherever they have scattered, from
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  Speaker 1: countries where the church was crushed, from graves in villages
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  Speaker 1: nobody can find on a map. No one gets left
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  Speaker 1: behind by accident, and no one is too far out
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  Speaker 1: on the edge to be collected. If you have ever
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  Speaker 1: wondered whether God has lost track of you, that sentence
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  Speaker 1: is your answer. The gathering is his job, and he
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  Speaker 1: does not misplace people. Jesus follows the glory with a
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  Speaker 1: small picture from the countryside. Look at the fig tree,
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  Speaker 1: he says. When the branch softens and the leaves come out,
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  Speaker 1: you know summer is close. It works the same way
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  Speaker 1: with everything I have told you. When you see these
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  Speaker 1: things happening, you know it's summer. is near, right at
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  Speaker 1: the door. The fig tree is the most ordinary observation
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  Speaker 1: in the world. Anyone who has lived through enough seasons
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  Speaker 1: can read a tree. Jesus is saying that his people
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  Speaker 1: should be able to read the times the way a
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  Speaker 1: farmer reads a branch, without needing a chart. He is
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  Speaker 1: asking them to pay attention, and anyone can do that.
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  Speaker 1: And then comes the verse that has caused more argument
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  Speaker 1: than any other line in Matthew 24. Jesus says that
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  Speaker 1: truly this generation will not pass away until all these
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  Speaker 1: things have happened. When Jesus uses the phrase, this generation,
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  Speaker 1: elsewhere in Matthew, he consistently means the people standing in
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  Speaker 1: front of him. If that is the meaning here, then
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  Speaker 1: he was pointing at the men on that hillside and saying,
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  Speaker 1: you will live to see this. And in the most
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  Speaker 1: concrete part of the prophecy, they did. The temple came
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  Speaker 1: down while some of them were still alive. That is
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  Speaker 1: the reading that respects how Matthew uses the words. Others
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  Speaker 1: have understood generation to mean the Jewish people as a
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  Speaker 1: whole or the generation that lives to see the final
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  Speaker 1: signs begin. The word by itself will not settle it,
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  Speaker 1: but whichever way you take it, do not miss the
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  Speaker 1: sentence Jesus puts right beside it. Heaven and earth will
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  Speaker 1: pass away, but my words will not. He has just
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  Speaker 1: predicted the destruction of the most permanent building his friends
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  Speaker 1: could imagine. Now he tells them that the sky itself
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  Speaker 1: is less permanent than what he just said. Everything you
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  Speaker 1: can lean on will eventually go. His word outlasts all
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  Speaker 1: of it. And now, after all of that, Jesus says
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  Speaker 1: the thing that should have saved the church 2,000 years
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  Speaker 1: of embarrassment. But about that day or hour, no one knows,
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  Speaker 1: not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but
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  Speaker 1: only the Father. Matthew chapter 24, verse 36. Not the angels.
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  Speaker 1: That date is kept in the Father's hands alone, and
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  Speaker 1: no one pulls it loose by studying harder or fasting
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  Speaker 1: longer than everyone around him. Which means every date that
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  Speaker 1: has ever been announced was announced by someone who did
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  Speaker 1: not have it. Then Jesus reaches back to Noah to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: show what that unknowing looks like from the inside. In
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: getting married, planning the next season. Ordinary life, right up
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: to the end. They knew nothing about it until the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: water came. What Jesus points at is how ordinary all
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of it was, and that is what makes it frightening.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: The last ordinary Tuesday looks exactly like every other ordinary Tuesday. Then,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: two short pictures. Two men working in a field, and
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: one is taken, and one is left. Two women grinding
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: grain at the mill, and one is taken, and one
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: is left. Christians have read those pictures in different ways,
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  Speaker 1: and Jesus does not stop to explain them. What he
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  Speaker 1: does with them is unmistakable, because he draws the same
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  Speaker 1: conclusion he has been driving at all along. Therefore, keep watch,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: because you do not know on what day your Lord
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: will come. Matthew 24, verse 42. And one more picture.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: If a homeowner knew what hour a thief was coming,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: he would sit up and wait. He does not know,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: so he has to live ready and live that way
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. That word, watch, is
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: where so many people go wrong. In the Bible, it
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: means stay awake, stay alert, hold your post. It is
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the language of a night guard. A guard is paid
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to be there, awake, doing his job, whenever the sun
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: happens to come up. Guessing the hour of sunrise was
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: never part of the assignment, which brings us to the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: end of the chapter and to the only question Jesus
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: himself asks in this entire discourse. After the falling stars
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and the trumpet and the gathering of the nations, Matthew
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: 24 ends somewhere nobody expects. It ends in a kitchen.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: master has put in charge of the servants in his
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: household to give them their food at the proper time?
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Matthew 24.45 Everything in the chapter has been building to
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that question, and notice how far it sits from the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: question the disciples asked. They asked when. Jesus asks who.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: They wanted the schedule. He wants to know what kind
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: of person you will be while the schedule stays hidden.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: And look at what faithfulness turns out to be. The
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: servant left in charge is handing out food at the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: right time, feeding the household, making sure the people under
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: his care get what they need today. That is it.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: That is the picture of readiness Jesus chose to end
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: with after all that thunder. Then he shows the other
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: kind of servant, and the reason that servant fails is
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: worth reading closely. He still believes the master is coming.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: He simply says in his heart that the master is
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: staying away a long time. That is his whole error.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: He pushes the return out to the horizon until it
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: stops touching how he behaves. And then he starts hitting
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the other servants and living for himself, because a master
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: who is far away is a master who cannot walk in.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: That is the real danger this chapter is warning about,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: and it is much closer to home than false prophets
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and armies. It is the slow assumption that God is
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: not going to show up in my lifetime, so it
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: does not much matter how I treat the people in
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: my house. And the discourse does not stop there. It
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: runs straight into the parables of Matthew 25, and every
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: one of them makes the same point. Ten young women
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: wait for a bridegroom, and the five who fail are
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: the ones who did not bring enough oil to last
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: through a delay. Servants are given money to work with
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: while the master is away, and the one who is
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: condemned is the one who did nothing with what he
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was given. and at the very end the nations are
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: gathered before the king and he separates them by whether
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: they gave food to the hungry water to the thirsty
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: clothes to the poor and visits to the sick and
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: imprisoned not one word about prophecy charts put the whole
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: discourse together and the shape of it is unmistakable the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: disciples asked for a sign in the sky jesus answered
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: with a hungry neighbor There is something about the timing
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: of this teaching that we should not walk past. When
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus sat on that hillside and told his friends that
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the temple would be torn down, he was three days
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: away from being torn down himself. He described the sun
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: going dark, and within the week the sky over Golgotha
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: went dark. He spoke about the holy place being emptied,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and then his own body, the true temple, was broken
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and laid in a borrowed grave, and the curtain in
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that magnificent building ripped from top to bottom. He walked
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: into the end of his own world first, on purpose
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: for us. That changes what his return means for a
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: tired believer. If you are afraid of the second coming,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: ask yourself who is coming. It is the same man
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: who wept at a grave, who let a woman he
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: barely knew wash his feet with her tears, who cooked
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: breakfast for the disciple who had denied him. This is
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the one who stopped in the middle of a prophecy
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: about the end of everything to worry about mothers with
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: babies and cold winter roads. For anyone who has trusted him,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the day he comes back is the day you finally
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: see the face of the one who has been carrying
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you the whole time. So let me bring this all
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the way down to where you are sitting. Maybe you
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: are afraid of the news. Every year seems worse than
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the last, and something in your stomach tightens every time
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: you turn it on. Matthew 24 has a word for you,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and it is Jesus' own word. Do not be alarmed.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: He told you these things would come. He told you
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: in advance, so that when they arrived, they would not
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: knock you over. A world with wars and famines and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: shaking ground is the world He told you to expect.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: And He told you while looking straight at His own cross.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are tired of dates, you have watched the
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: predictions come and go, watched people you respected be wrong
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in public, and it has left you a little cynical
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: about the whole subject. Then hold on to verse 36
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and let it do its work. Nobody knows, not even
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the angels, so anyone who claims a date is standing
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: exactly where you are standing, his return will arrive without
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: anybody's calculations. Maybe your love has gone cold and you
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: know it. You used to feel something in worship. You
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: used to care about people's troubles, and now there is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a kind of numbness where that used to be. Jesus
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: said this would happen to many, and he said it
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: without contempt. He was warning them, which is what you
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: do when you want someone to make it. If you
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: can feel the cold, you are not too far gone
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to be warmed. That awareness is itself a sign of life.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are older now and slower, and the circle
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of your life has shrunk down to a few rooms
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and a few phone calls. You wonder what you could
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: possibly be doing for God at this stage. Look again
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: at how this chapter ends. The servant the master praises
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: is the one who was found handing out food when
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the door opened. Faithfulness at your actual post, in your
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: actual house, with your actual small strength. A phone call
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: to someone lonelier than you. A prayer nobody sees. Kindness
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: to the person who brings your groceries. That is the
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: picture Jesus chose, out of all the pictures he could
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: have used, to answer the biggest question anyone ever asked him.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are lonely and you have been waiting a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: long time for something to change. Then hear the part
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: about the gathering again. He sends out and collects his
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: own from the four winds, from the farthest edge of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: heaven to the other. There is no distance in that verse,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: no forgotten corner. Whatever room you are in right now
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: is not outside his reach. What did Jesus teach about
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the end times in Matthew 24? He taught that it
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: ends with him arriving in the open where every eye
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: can see. He taught that terrible things come first and
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: that most of them are not the signal. He taught
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: that the temple would fall inside a generation and it fell,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: which is why the rest of what he said can
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: be trusted. He taught that no one knows the day,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: not even the angels, so anyone selling you a date
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: is selling you nothing. And he taught that being ready
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: has almost nothing to do with information and almost everything
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to do with faithfulness. The disciples wanted to know when
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the world would end. Jesus told them to stay awake,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: stop being afraid, keep loving when it gets hard, and
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: feed the people in front of them. Two thousand years later,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: that is still the answer. He is coming. You cannot
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: know when, and the best thing you can be doing
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: when he arrives is the small, unnoticed, ordinary good you
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: were already trusted with today. Heaven and earth will pass away,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: his words will not, and neither will you if you
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: belong to him. If this video helped you grow deeper
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: in God's Word, I want to personally invite you to
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: be part of what we are building here. Every video
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: on this channel takes many hours of study and careful
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: research to make sure we bring you content that is
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: faithful to Scripture and worthy of your time. If you
• 32:57
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• 33:00
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• 33:03
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• 33:07
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• 33:13
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• 33:17
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• 33:20
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• 33:25
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• 33:28
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• 33:32
  Speaker 1: being here, and may God bless you richly.