Vigilance and Hope: Understanding Christ's End Times Prophecies

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch, and pray; for you do not know when the time is. [00:01:34]

These are the words that came originally from the lips of Jesus to whom all authority on heaven and earth was given by the Father. He who has ears to hear these words, let them hear. Please be seated. Let us pray. [00:02:27]

Again, O Lord, we ask that You would send help in the person of the Holy Spirit, who will help our minds grasp and understand these things that have been spoken by our Lord. We pray that we may not distort the promises that He has given to His church, but that we may receive them as they were intended originally. [00:02:48]

I said the irony of this chapter is that it contains some of the most incredible future prophecies ever given by Jesus with respect to the coming destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and of the destruction of Jerusalem itself, as well as the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, which things no normal prognosticator could on his finest day have guessed would be so shortly forthcoming. [00:04:20]

And yet despite the uncanny accuracy of Jesus’ future prophecy, that He included within the context of that prophecy a pronouncement of His coming in glory and power, and all of these things of which He spoke were included within a timeframe of one generation, those who dismiss the deity of Christ, His omniscience, or at least His infallibility in His teaching, and who dismiss the infallibility of Scripture point to this chapter and to those timeframes that our Lord gave as exhibit A for rejecting the authority not only of Jesus but of the entire Bible. [00:04:47]

Now in further attempts to get around the difficulty interpreters have come at this text by a couple of different ways. One is by dividing the language of the text between those things that are spoken that are to be taken literally and those things that are to be taken figuratively. Now there’s a little difficulty in that distinction. [00:07:56]

The Bible is a literary document. It is a written document, and the rules of literary interpretation apply to it as a written document. And Luther, of course, in the sixteenth century advocated the biblical method of interpretation by seeking what he called the “sensus literalis,” the literary sense of the Bible. What that means is the literal sense is the sense in which it was written. [00:08:46]

Now the major way in which orthodox, evangelical Christians have treated this text is by looking at the timeframe references as being figurative, that when Jesus says, “This generation will not pass away before all of these things come to pass,” that there Jesus was using the term “generation” in a figurative manner. [00:12:17]

Now other aspects of this, if we put all of the information from the Olivet Discourse, mention is made of Jesus coming at the end of the age, and inevitably when people read that text of Jesus saying He will come at the end of the age, the assumption that is made is that what He’s referring to here is at the end of human history, the end of human age. [00:16:07]

Now, if there is a biblical precedent for figurative use of language with respecting of the coming judgment of God upon nations, then—and you have to choose between the timeframe references or the description of the coming as to which one is figurative—the biblical answer is clear. You be consistent with how the Bible uses language. [00:19:55]

But even if we do that, we have to say there’s some sense at least that Jesus did come at the end of this period, and it describes a judgment coming, which Jesus warns His contemporaries about the impending judgment of God upon the house of Israel for having rejected the Messiah. [00:21:02]

I personally believe that what Jesus was talking about in the Olivet Discourse was not His final coming at the end of the age, which I believe in, which has not yet happened. But I think He was talking about His coming in power and in judgment upon His own people, which occurred in 70 AD. [00:25:21]