Sunday, September 16th

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Daniel 7-9

Today's scripture focus is Matthew 24:1-25

Signs of the End of the Age

24 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ² “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

³ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

⁴ Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. ⁶ You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷ Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸ All these are the beginning of birth pains.

⁹ “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. ¹⁰ At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, ¹¹ and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. ¹² Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, ¹³ but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. ¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

¹⁵ “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— ¹⁶ then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ¹⁷ Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house.¹⁸ Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. ¹⁹ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! ²⁰ Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. ²¹ For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. ²² If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. ²³ At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. ²⁴ For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. ²⁵ See, I have told you ahead of time.

Our passage today deals with the second coming, a topic which is always fascinating.

And Jesus first predicts the incredible destruction of the temple (which occurred exactly as He predicted in 70AD) in order to give credibility to the rest of His prophecy regarding the Second Coming.

The disciples think this day is imminent but Jesus makes it clear that it is in the future at some point.  And right before the end there will be intense birth pains (just like right before women give birth there is intense pain), but what will kick off the whole thing is the abomination that causes desolation.

MacArthur explains this phrase....
Abomination meaning a detestable thing; desolation meaning that ruins. A detestable act of idolatry that ruins, that brings sacrilege in the temple of God.

The Jews will be gathered together and the antichrist will come in as their defender, ally, protector against the threat of Russian and Arab aggression. They will sign a peace treaty with him (Daniel 9) and in the middle of this 7 year period he will violate their treaty with him and he will desecrate their place of worship, setting up an idol of himself, and that will be the abomination of desolation that triggers the greatest holocaust of all time.

Now, when that happens, all the things from verse 4 to 14 will break loose. Pseudo-saviors will come, wars, rumors of wars, nations against nations, kingdom against kingdom, famines, earthquakes, and people delivered in persecution to be killed and hated. And there will be betrayals and false prophets and deceivers and sin will run rampant, iniquity will abound, it says in verse 12. The love of many will grow cold. And all of that is going to be triggered by the abomination of desolation at the midpoint of the seven years. Satan's counterfeit king becomes king of the world and he is a demon-possessed, hell-inspired, Christ-hating, God-defying, Christian-killing, Jew-despising man of sin who takes over the reigns of rulership in the world. And Satan pulls out all the stops to try to destroy all Christians, all Jews, the nation of Israel and stop Jesus Christ from establishing His Kingdom.

By the way, I believe at this point in time, the church has already been raptured. So we're not going to be there. We're looking forward to that time when the Lord takes us out and then brings that judgment on the earth and we return at the end of the time with Him from heaven when He establishes His Kingdom. And that subject we'll cover more in later studies.

So, the Lord has given us a clear picture of His Coming. He says, here are the birth pains, here are the kind of things that are happening and here's the trigger that starts it all...

Now, as we come to verse 16 to 28, He warns us. And He warns all the readers who will read this, who will know this in the time that it happens. And He warns about four things: severe calamity, subtle confusion, spiritual collapse, and Second Coming...Now what is the response when this happens? When this happens, flee..Run, get out because as long as you stay in Jerusalem, you're going to be vulnerable to death.

You're going to be vulnerable to persecution, especially if you're a Jew because the antichrist wants to stamp out Israel. Satan has wanted to do that all through history because if he can eliminate Israel, he can thwart the whole plan of God which is fulfilled ultimately in bringing Israel to salvation and to their Kingdom. Satan has tried to wipe out the Jew throughout history.

And when antichrist takes over in Jerusalem, sets up his throne right there in Jerusalem, the Jews that are left there are going to be very vulnerable and so He says in that day you better run...

And not only that, if there happen to be any who are believing people, who refuse to worship the antichrist, who are Christians, you better run too if you're in Judea. Judea is the area in which Jerusalem is the main city, the southern part of Palestine. Any of you who are believers, you better run also because he'll want to wipe you out. Revelation 13, he says he wants to make war with the saints. And we know in Revelation 12 that he wants to wipe out Israel. So the general command here to run is to anybody who refuses to bow to the antichrist image, be they Jews who refuse to do it, or be they Christians who refuse to do it, you better run.

And so, we believe that when this happens there will be a sort of an exodus out of the land, out of the city of Jerusalem for protection. Not everybody's going to make it. Go back to Zechariah for a minute, next to the last book in the Old Testament, next to the last chapter in the book, verse 8 of chapter 13. "And it will come to pass," Zechariah looks at the same time period here, "It will come to pass that in all the land, says the Lord, two parts in it shall be cut off and die."

Not all the Jews are going to make it. The antichrist is going to move against them and two out of three are going to die....

[Hosea 13:16] "They shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be dashed in pieces." That's why He warns those with little babies. I believe when antichrist comes, this is an indication that there's going to be the devastation of infants. You see it here prophesied in Hosea 13:16, you see it fulfilled even when Christ was born. When Satan tried to stop the birth of Christ what did he do? Massacred all the babies. When Satan wanted to kill the prophet of God like Christ who was Moses, what did he do? Massacred all the babies trying to get to Moses. And it won't be any different in that period of time either. The antichrist, I think, is going to bring upon the world such a hellish kind of activity that it will encompass infants being smashed to pieces and pregnant women, women with child, will be ripped open. And that, I believe, is primarily why the Lord warns in that regard that the kind of things that are going to happen in that day are almost inexplicable to us, almost unbelievable to us. But that's because we don't understand the nature of the holocaust when Satan has total control of the world, the church is removed, the restrainer has taken back His restraining power, all sin runs rampant, all hell breaks loose and that's what happens.

And so the Lord says in that day you better run and you better run fast. And oh how sad for those who have little babies which will be dashed to pieces and those who are pregnant who face the possibility of being ripped open. Unbelievable...

And then verse 20, He says, "Pray that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day." And this is just to stress the urgency. Pray that it isn't in winter, it might be cold, it might be raining, it might even be snowing because there are parts of Israel where there is snow. And so you have to pray that it's not going to be a time when you cannot travel swiftly.

Nor on the sabbath day. Pray that it isn't on the sabbath, particularly if you have to run or drive through certain sections of Jerusalem. Because if it happens to be the sections where the radical legalistic Jews live, they'll stone you if you do that because they hold to the sabbath law of two thousand cubits being a maximum sabbath day journey and if you even today tried to go through those areas, they'd stone you....

Now how severe is it? Verse 21, "Such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no nor ever shall be." You know, in a way it's kind of sad to say this, but the proper message to give to Israel today is that things are not going to get better, they're going to get infinitely worse. They're going to get so bad that Zechariah's prophecy is going to be fulfilled.

There's going to come a desecration and abomination, there's going to come a holocaust in Jerusalem that's going to take the lives of two out of every three of you. There's going to come a devastating thing that...unlike anything you've ever dreamed of in the future. When as Hosea says it may well be that your pregnant women are ripped open and your nursing mother's children are dashed to pieces...

Now, the worst time in the history of the world and in verse 22 is most fascinating. "And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved but for the elect sake, those days shall be shortened." ...Those days...and if you take it as it is, those 24 hour days, except those 24 hour days should be shortened, I believe that when the abomination of desolation occurs and people start running for their lives, Jews and believers, trying to get away from the holocaust of antichrist, that God supernaturally by His mercy and grace is going to alter the length of daylight in order to give them the protection of darkness. [Rev 6:12, 14; Rev 8:12; Rev 16:10] ....And I believe what's happening is gradually, just less and less daylight until ultimately at the end of the tribulation period it's total darkness and the antichrist's hosts are moving around in absolute darkness. And, of course, that becomes a protection for the elect...

God affirms that He elected that nation. And so it is that He protects His people. He keeps His remnant. He spares one third so that He can redeem them and bring them the Kingdom....We belong to Him because He chose us. Elect means to choose or to call out. He chose us. He chose Israel. He chose us...You know, even people who want to deny the doctrine of election in reference to salvation, don't deny the doctrine of election in reference to Israel...There's no question at all about God electing Israel. And if Israel is God's elect, then why should be disturbed that the church is also God's elect?

So, He says I am going to take care of My elect. And you want to know something? He takes care of His elect. Nobody would survive to go in the Kingdom. There wouldn't be any redeemed Jews to go in the Kingdom. There wouldn't be any redeemed Gentiles to go in the Kingdom if He didn't change the days so that they could be safe. Listen, you know what this says to me? When God chooses someone for Himself, He will keep that person for Himself and He will fulfill His promise if He has to restructure the entire universe. ...

So, for the elect's sake, He just changes everything and squashes daylight down into a small time period and ultimately all together blots it out so that they can be safe. Now total darkness couldn't last very long because nothing could grow...And that's why you're going to have famines all over the earth and that's going to contribute even to more hatred and more anger and more warfare and more of everything else. But that's for the sake of protecting the elect.

It's so wonderful. The Lord goes to these extremes to protect His own, even changing all the function of the universe for the elect's sake...

But they're going to be shot at, the false Christs are going to come and they're going to say, here these people are, they're desperate waiting for the Messiah, the world is falling apart, the calendar is changing, the stars are falling out of heaven, wars all over the place, slaughter, massacre, rivers turning to blood, the sea turning to blood, the whole holocaust of Revelation 6 to 19 is going on around them and it's just a devastating time in the world, all the plagues are breaking loose, earthquakes, famines, the whole deal. And they're going to be hidden away, holding on for the coming of Jesus Christ.

And they would be so vulnerable to a bunch of false prophets saying "He's over here, He's over there. Come and see Him. We've got Him, He's here."

So, if you hear it, don't believe it... 

they cannot be destroyed because the sovereignty of God protects them by reorganizing the universe and they cannot be deceived because they have in them the knowledge of the true Christ. 

That is a lot to take in!  I'm still not sure where I stand with the whole pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib thing and I'm a little confused by MacArthur saying that the rapture will have already taken place, but then also talking about Christians who will refuse to worship the antichrist. 

Your thoughts? 

Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 24:26-35

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Daniel 10-12