Matthew 24:1-17

You still needed faith because you still needed to believe God, and your sin could not be permanently forgiven because the sacrifice that would take away sin did not happen until the Messiah came and sacrificed Himself on the cross for sin. However the law was the standard, the way God dealt with man.

Gentile nations didn’t have the law. It was given to Israel, but every gentile had the ability to recognise God’s reality through creation and they’d go to Israel to learn of God’s ways.

Jesus lived in this dispensation of the law when He was born and ministered on earth.

Then, when the dispensation of the law changed to the dispensation of Grace after Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection and ascension back to heaven, God’s way of dealing with man changed also. No longer was the law the way to God and His salvation. Now it was, and still is, by God’s free gift of grace alone, without our own works. In fact, to try and earn salvation by good works is a terrible denial of the fully completed work of Christ on the cross.

Whereas, in past ages, Israel’s covenants and law had been the vehicle, the means to salvation now that vehicle if faith and faith alone. Faith is simply believing God and what He’s said. Today we believe in the Gospel of Grace summarised in 1^st Corinthians 14 verse 4, that Jesus Christ, Who was God, died according to the scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

So, when we recognise these differences in ages, or dispensations, it’s easy to understand what’s happening because we know how God’s dealing with mankind in that particular dispensation.

 

Matthew chapters 24 and 25, are known as the Olivet Discourse.

Jesus has now denounced the religious rulers.

He’s turned His back on Jerusalem and has told them that their house (the temple) is left desolate.

When we completed Matthew 23:39, we saw Jesus speaking and He says,

…for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘BLESSED is HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’ ” 

Jesus is referring here to a time that would be at least 2000 years into the future, when the nation of Israel would no longer reject Him as the long-prophesied Messiah.

 

The disciples ask Jesus three questions; He answers two about the signs of the end of the age and the sign of His coming.

Here’s where wild assumptions and theories abound, mostly because of a failure to take the whole counsel of God and these different ages we’ve just talked about into account.

When scripture is taken in isolation error can easily creep in.

There’s an old but irreverent saying, “I can do all things through out of context scripture.”

We open Matthew 24:1,

Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. 

 

The Lord Jesus has just announced that His Kingdom would be postponed, and that the temple would be left desolate. Very few understood the depth of what He was saying, even the disciples.

 

The temple was made up of many buildings. This was the temple that Herod was having built, and the construction was still in progress. It was made of white marble, and at this time it was very large and very beautiful.

The disciples are disturbed by Jesus saying that it’s to be left desolate. So, the disciples come to Him, wanting to show Him around the buildings as if to say, “Look Lord, look at the beauty and sheer size of it. How could it be destroyed and left desolate?”

 

Verse 2,

And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” 

 

“Do you not see all these things?”

The disciples thought they saw it, and they ask Him to take a look.

So, He says to them, “Do you really see it?”

This is a good question for us to consider today. Do we really see the reality of life today?

When we look at all the great buildings in the cities of the world, the bridges, the roads, all that mankind has built, it’s almost impossible to imagine it all passing away. But one day it will. All of it’ll be gone.

No, it doesn’t seem possible, from the perspective of the natural mind, and that’s just how the disciples felt.

Jesus continued by saying, “not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”

If His first statement put them in shock, this must have really traumatised them.

Of course, with our historical, 20/20 hindsight, we know that’s exactly what happened. Not one stone was left upon another because in A.D. 70 Titus the Roman thoroughly destroyed the temple and that city!

Although this is ancient history to us, it was a shocking revelation to the disciples. They talked it over, I’m sure, then came to Jesus with three questions.

 

Verse 3,

Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” 

 

Question 1 “When shall these things be?” That is when one stone would not be left upon another.

Question 2 “What shall be the sign of your coming?” The answer to this question is found in Matthew 24:23-51 as we’ll see soon.

And question 3 “What shall be the sign … of the end of the age?” The answer to this question is found in Matthew 24:9-22 as we’ll also soon see.

The Lord Jesus is going to answer these three questions, and we call His answers the Olivet Discourse because it took place on the Mount of Olives.

 

The first question, “When shall these things be?” (when one stone shall not be left upon another) is not answered in the Gospel of Matthew. We find it in the Gospel of Luke, and we find segments of it in the Gospel of Mark.

Why isn’t it included in Matthew’s Gospel? Because Matthew is the Gospel of the Kingdom. It presents Jesus as the Christ, The Messiah and the King Who would rule over His coming Kingdom. Matthew shows Jesus Christ in perfect fulfillment of all prophecy that related to the coming Messiah.

The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has nothing to do with the distant future when the King is coming. Therefore, Matthew doesn’t carry that part of the Olivet Discourse.

 

Undoubtedly, many of those who heard the Lord Jesus say these things were present in A.D. 70 when the Roman armies surrounded Jerusalem, laid siege to it, cut it off from the rest of the world, then finally breached the wall and got in. What the Romans did was terrible. They demolished the city. It was the worst destruction in its history, more devastating than that conducted by Nebuchadnezzar over six centuries earlier. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the first part of the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled.

But that’s not the end of the story.

This’ll all be repeated in the Great Tribulation Period. They’re to get out of Jerusalem as quickly as possible.

There’re those who claim that it could never happen a second time, but it happened once and that’s a matter of history. The Lord said it would happen again!

 

The next two questions asked by the disciples were these: “And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

The first thing the Lord deals with is the sign of the end of the age.

 

The world will never come to an end. The old world will pass away, and a new earth will be brought on the scene. But the world will never actually cease to exist.

However, there will be the end of an age, and that’s the word the disciples are using in their question to the Lord Jesus.

In this Olivet Discourse, when Christ speaks of His coming, He’s referring to His return to the earth to establish His Kingdom.

The church is not in the picture at all. In fact, by the end of the age, the church will have been removed, and it will be the last days of the nation Israel. Jesus is speaking about the Great Tribulation period, and He labels it this way in this discourse.

 

Before going any further in Matthew 24 we need to revert back to our old practice of asking the Who, What, Why and When questions.

Who is speaking?

Jesus.

Who is Jesus speaking to?

The 12 apostles as representatives of the 12 tribes of the nation Israel.

What was the purpose?

To answer the three questions the 12 put to Jesus. Question 1 When shall these things be? What things? The things Jeus has just told them in chapter 23 verse 34 to 39.

Question 2 “What shall be the sign of your coming?” What coming? He’s already in front of them isn’t He? He’s referring to His second coming at the end of the age.

Question 3 “What shall be the sign … of the end of the age?”

Jesus was educating and informing the disciples about a period of time, an event in prophecy, about which the Bible says more than any other period in history, including the time when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee and climbed the mountains of Judea!

When?

When will these things happen? They’ll happen in the future, and they’ll fulfil the final seven years (the 70th week) of Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 9:27.

 

We go now to Matthew 24:4-5,

And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. 

The disciples are asking about the signs of the end and the first part of Jesus’s answer is, let no man deceive you.

One of the signs is deception or confusion.

Jesus was entirely correct. Between the time of His accension and our present day there have been countless deceivers, many claiming to be the Christ.

We should know that even now there are many antichrists, those who oppose the real Christ, but at the end of the age there’ll come one Antichrist who’ll not only oppose Christ but set himself up as the Christ, and many will believe and follow him to their destruction.

 

Deception will happen more and more before the tribulation begins and today it seems as if just the mere mention of the end times sparks off wild and weird theories and ideas with little or no sound bible study behind them.

One of the many deceptions running through the Christian community, is the claim that the Body of Christ will go into or even through the tribulation.

The one cord that binds all these deceivers and deceptions together is the rejection of Paul’s Apostleship and his 13 epistles to us, the Body of Christ today, and it’s easy to see why.

Paul alone reveals the Doctrines, the Practices and the end of the Body of Christ on earth.

For example, Paul alone reveals a salvation based on faith and faith alone in the finished work of the Cross. How Christ died for the sins of the whole world and how His shed Blood, and our faith in it, brings justification. How the Power of His resurrection is imparted to us when we believe.

Paul alone teaches us the end of age of the Body of Christ on earth. Consequently, Paul alone gives us the Scriptures concerning what many now ridicule – the rapture or the catching up of the Church, which is Christ’s Body.

If we try and fit the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, into the Church we fall into confusion. We have this mish mash, this mixing of Israel’s destiny with the church and we just can’t do this and make sense out of it. All we’ll have are unanswerable questions.

 

While the church is made up of individuals, both Jew and Gentile, the nation of Israel has a destiny all of its own and that’s not the same destiny as the church.

If we mix Paul’s doctrine concerning the Church with the Second Coming, then we live in a mix of law and Grace which, if you think about it for just a few minutes, is impossible. We’re either living according to the law (and failing on every single point, condemning us for eternity), or we’re living by nothing, but God’s grace accepted through faith in His Word, His Word about His death, burial and resurrection, His blood shed for the redemption from sin in which we’re made righteous totally apart from our works.

 

Now to Mattew 24:6,

And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 

Wars and political turmoil are often used as signs of the times, yet, Jesus said specifically they were not.

He says the end was not when wars occurred. Wars have happened for 2000 years. They’re nothing new. They would not make good signs. Neither do earthquakes and pestilence.

Matthew 24:7,

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 

There are people tracking the earthquakes and their frequency trying to predict the Lord’s return. This is futile. Jesus said these are only the “beginning of sorrows” not a sign of the end. Disaster and tragedy have happened since sin cursed the planet. They’re not predictable signs of the end. “But the end is not yet,” Jesus said.

 

To Mattew 24:8,

All these are the beginning of sorrows. 

 

Many great Bible teachers believe that our Lord, up there on the Mount of Olives, looked down to the end of the age and to the Great Tribulation period, but that at the beginning of His discourse, He bridged the gap by giving us a picture of the present age and that our Lord is not referring to the Great Tribulation until we reach our next verse, verse 9 of this chapter.

Matthew 24:9,

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. 

 

Now the Lord is most definitely speaking of the time of tribulation.

Who is the you Jesus is talking about here?

Obviously, He is not addressing the church, it’s the nation Israel. The affliction He is talking about is anti–Semitism, hatred of the Jews on a worldwide scale.

As long as the true church, the Body of Christ is in the world, there couldn’t be a total worldwide anti–Semitism. The church would resist it because no genuine believer in the Lord Jesus could hate the Jews; it’s impossible. This worldwide, total hatred, will break out after the church has been removed at the Rapture.

 

You and I are living in the dispensation or the age of grace today, some call it the church age.

The Bible divides the world today into three groups of people: the Jews, the Gentiles, and the church of God, the Body of Christ.

In this age God’s offering grace to all peoples both Jews and Gentiles. He’s offering grace through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and He’s offering that grace free, aside from our own efforts. All we need do is believe. Believe the Word regarding the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through that faith we believe and receive God’s grace freely.

When we believe we become members of the third group, the Body of Christ, the Church.

This third group which will be taken out of the world at the time of the Rapture, and then the Great Tribulation, the outpouring of God’s wrath on an unbelieving, God rejecting world will begin.

1 Thessalonians 5:9 we see,

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

 

Matthew 24:10-11,

And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 

Even within the Jewish family children will report on their parents, and vice versa to escape the wrath that is falling upon them as a nation of people.

 

As we saw earlier, Jesus warns against false teachers. It’s interesting that in this verse, speaking directly to and about Israel, He’s warning against false prophets.

So here, the Body of Christ has been removed, and the warning is against false Jewish prophets.

The Scripture is constantly warning of the false prophets, not just in the Tribulation, but even during this age today. When Paul’s message, and Christianity had just begun, false teaching started to pop up immediately. This is why Paul had to write the Book of Galatians. He’d just brought these Gentiles out of paganism, and under the Gospel of Grace, then in comes the Jewish false teachers. They’d tell these Gentiles that they couldn’t be saved by Grace, but, rather they must keep the Law.

So false teaching has been against Christianity from day one. And here in these Tribulation days in Israel, as all the calamities are falling, and people will be grasping for something, the false teachers are going to have a ball.

 

Verse 12 now,

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 

 

The only deterrent to wickedness in the world today is the Church.

The Holy Spirit, Who is within us, is restraining wickedness. What’s so frightening to us today, particularly us oldies who’ve lived much of our lives in a society of basic Christian structure, is to see a world falling apart and rejecting those values that were once second nature.

But for most of the world it’s been pretty much that way down through the centuries. But, for ta large part of the western world, Christianity has been the guard against the falling away of those moral principles.

It’s the Christian that stands in the gap and says, “Now wait a minute, this is wrong.”

 

Take away every believer, and the Holy Spirit and His role as He works today, and what’s left to hold back iniquity? Absolutely nothing! Then what’ll happen?

Iniquity abounds, and the love of many grows cold, and this will be even more true at the end of the age.

 

Matthew 24:13 now,

But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 

 

We must be careful here. Does enduring save anybody? No. Jesus isn’t talking about salvation here by enduring the Tribulation.

He’s certainly not talking about salvation as you and I know it today. It’s just that some will actually survive these horrible events.

 

Now verse 14,

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jesus is speaking toward the end of His earthly ministry here, and, what Gospel has He been preaching all through this period? The same Gospel John the Baptist preached and the same Gospel the apostles preached, and the same Gospel Jesus is preaching here, The Gospel of the Kingdom.

This long promised and prophesied Kingdom on earth with Christ Himself ruling from David’s throne in Mount Zion. The rise of the nation of Israel with the New Covenant in their hearts and minds accepting and rejoicing in the Messiah on whom they believe.

This Gospel of the Kingdom of God will be preached throughout this tribulation period. Remember that the Age, the dispensation of Grace is now over at this time. The Body of Christ is gone and the age of free grace by nothing more than believing is gone with it. Salvation is no longer by grace alone but grace plus works of the law. Salvation once again is through covenants, the law and Israel.

This’ll be a very dark time for humanity indeed.

Who’s going to do all this preaching in the Tribulation?

The Book of Revelation tells us. 144,000 Jews, 12000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, will cover the earth during that seven-year period. They won’t be preaching the Gospel of Grace as we preach today, by believing that Christ died, was buried, and rose again as was given to the Apostle Paul by Christ Himself, but rather preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom that Christ and His disciples preached during His earthly ministry. The King is coming, and indeed He will be coming in a little less than seven years when this takes place.

 

Many well-meaning people have totally twisted this verse, and made as if we today have to get the Gospel to every nation on earth, and after that’s been accomplished, Christ will come.

But, that’s not what that verse means at all. It doesn’t mean that we’re not to get the Gospel out today. If it weren’t for that, you and I wouldn’t be saved.

But it isn’t the Gospel of the Kingdom that we’re proclaiming today. It’s the Gospel of Grace. And there’s a huge difference!

Just compare them and see which one belongs to you and me here in the Church Age, the age of Grace.

 

Jesus said that in this future day that He’s talking about, this seven-year period, that the Gospel of the Kingdom would be preached, and these 144,000 will succeed in touching every nation, tribe, and language before Christ returns.

We find in Revelation that millions will be martyred after believing this Gospel during the Tribulation. This is exactly what this verse is talking about. Why can’t we just leave the verse where it is instead of trying to put us, the Church, the Body of Christ Age in it! Everything in the Bible is for our knowledge and learning but everything in the Bible is not speaking to us. If we realise this it’ll all fit nicely.

 

Now to Matthew 24:15,

“Therefore, when you see the ‘ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 

 

Jesus is referring back to Daniel the prophet, and God says, through Daniel, that this individual stands in the holy place, the Tribulation Temple.

 

God’s timeclock has been stopped since the day The Messiah was cut off, or died on the Cross and the Jewish nation continued, even after the resurrection of the Messiah, to reject Him. Because of that, for the past 2000 years the Church Age or the age, or dispensation of grace has been the way in which deals with humanity. He’s not sending wrath and judgment today, but grace, and that grace is free to all who believe.

 

But when the last person is saved during this Age of grace, then the Rapture, the great snatching away of the Body of Christ, occurs. Then the Anti-Christ will be revealed.

He signs a seven-year treaty with Israel and its enemies and the day he signs that treaty the Gods prophetic timeline kicks into gear again, and the final seven years will start ticking off. Remember a year in Scripture is twelve thirty-day months or 360 days for the year.

 

In the past we’ve had two Temples in Israel, and the third will be on the scene during this tribulation period.

The first Temple was built by King Solomon about 960 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed that one.

The second Temple was the one that was rebuilt first by Ezra, as Israel came back from the Babylonian captivity, but this Temple was pretty make-shift.

It wasn’t anything like the Temple that had been destroyed because they lacked the resources and manpower to make it beautiful like the first one.

Then Herod the Great came along about 50 B.C.

Being embarrassed at Israel’s Temple, he started remodelling and extending the size of it, so it also became a beautiful Temple. This is the one that we’ve just read Jesus telling the disciple about, that it would be destroyed. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

 

The Tribulation Temple, which is still future, will become the third Temple. The Jews are more than ready to rebuild their next Temple, but what’s holding them back is politics. Other races inhabit the land.

We don’t know if that temple will be built before or after this Anti-Christ signs the peace treaty with Israel, which he will at the beginning of this tribulation period, as he comes to power, but we do know the Temple will stand once again and be in operation at the mid-point of the Tribulation.

We can see all these events clearly prophesied in Daniel chapter 9.

This is what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 24:15 That the man Anti-Christ will come into the Temple and will defile it.

 

Matthew 24:16-17 now,

“then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house.

 

You and I will not be fleeing to the mountains of Judea.

This has to do with the people who’re in Judea at that time. Our Lord is giving that prophecy to those people, not to us.

 

Timing will be very important here. This is a repeat of the escape out of Egypt and there’s a lot of parallels.

Just as God protected and provided for Israel then, He’s going to do the same thing for this escaping remnant of Jews at this time in the middle of the Tribulation.

This is not the 144,000 we read about in Revelation that’ll be preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. This is a cross-section of the society of Israel who’ll be living in the Jerusalem area. There’s going to be men, women, young women, children, the working class, the retired class and they’ll all be fleeing from Jerusalem.

They probably have a lot of things they’ve collected over the years and would like to take with them, but they’re not going to have time for that at all.

In the next episode we’ll take it from Matthew 24 verse 18 where we’ll continue to see this flight of the Jews out of Judea. Until then may God richly bless you with knowledge of the truth.