By His grace, what the radical life of Christ should look in an American context!

has but one word of caution to the church when reading Matthew 23-24 and that is to heed the warning of Romans 11:21-22! @WeeManWest

Matthew 24:16 We cannot miss the specificity of this command. Those who are in Judea. That is a specific place in which Jerusalem and the Israelites lived in Jesus’ day. This enforces the context from Matthew 23 and Matthew 24:1 that Jesus was speaking to His disciples about the coming destruction of Jerusalem that they would indeed see happen in 70AD.

Matthew 24:18 Jesus’ instruction was that when these things begin to occur in Jerusalem the only option will be to flee for their lives. They will have to forsake everything if they hope to survive.

Such isn’t a bad principle to apply to ourselves today. Would we be able to leave all of our possessions behind if our lives depended on it?

Matthew 24:27 Jesus is talking about His coming in covenant judgment against Israel and Jerusalem. He is not speaking of His return. The Roman armies invaded from the east, instead of the more natural west.

Matthew 24:28 Two notes here. Jesus is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem. He is letting His listeners know that indeed Jerusalem would be full of corpses and that that vultures/birds of prey.

However, another note is that the word in the Greek used here is the word for eagle. Eagles don’t happen to go after carrion, yet the eagle was the Roman Military standard. The “eagles” on the roman standards (flags) would surround Jerusalem before it would be destroyed. Luke says this very thing in his account of Jesus teaching.

Matthew 24:29 After the tribulation of those days, the days of vengeance in which Jerusalem would be left desolate and full of corpses surrounded by birds of prey, we immediately see a reference to both a literal and symbolic understanding.

The sun, moon, and stars would be blotted out by the fire that would engulf Jerusalem as Rome burned Jerusalem to the ground. Anyone who has been close to a fire at just one location should be acquainted with smoke’s ability to block out the sun. I recall how dark it was in New York City in the days that followed 9/11 as that cloud of smoke covered the city.

Imagine what impact the smoke of an entire city being burned down would have on the sky. Enough of an impact that the sun, moon, and stars would be unseen until the city was burned down.

The symbolic reference requires us to understand the symbolism in Scripture of the sun, moon, and stars. In order to get this understanding we must return to the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis.

When God created the ‘lights in the expanse of the heavens’ He designed them to “be for signs’ (Genesis 1:14) and they were also to ‘give light upon the earth’ (Genesis 1:15) so we should recognize the immediate symbolism.

Then two great lights are made, a greater one to ‘rule the day’ and a lesser one to ‘rule the night’ (Genesis 1:16) and a reason for their ‘rule’ is given in that they are to (Genesis 1:18) ‘rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.

What we see is the symbolic picture presented to us in the sun, moon, and stars as the religious authorities put in place so ‘rule’ and ‘separate the light from the darkness’.

Then we arrive at Joseph’s story.

Joseph dreamt that the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowed before him. Jacob (Israel) realized the dream represented himself, his wives, and his children bowing before Joseph.

Israel, given authority by God to shine its light in the world, lost its place of authority in the kingdom and was shaken and darkened in its day of covenant judgment in 70AD.

Matthew 24:30 The sign of the Son of Man appears. What is the sign? It is the great cloud of smoke raised up as Jerusalem is burned to the ground. He is coming on the clouds of judgment. Those clouds are dark clouds of billowing smoke as the city was burned to the ground by the Roman armies in 70AD.

At this billowing plume, all the tribes of the land, specifically the tribes of Israel, will mourn when they realize their day of judgment has come.

Matthew 24:31 He will send out His messengers with a loud trumpet. This is the dispersion that would take the church OUT of Jerusalem and into the nations. We are part of His messengers still today gathering His elect from the four winds.

Jesus was stating emphatically that the new age, the Gospel age, was soon to come upon the entire earth. However, the Law age had to come to an end, and it did so decisively in 70AD.

Matthew 24:32 As if anyone had missed the point that this was about Israel, Jesus brings in the fig tree which is one of Israel’s national symbols.

Matthew 24:34 Jesus repeats Himself from Matthew 23:36 so that it couldn’t be more clear. The very generation Jesus was speaking to was indeed going to see Jerusalem destroyed and desolate suffering covenant vengeance, the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of judgment. He could not have been any more clear!

His word came to pass, 40 years later (a generation, i.e. the wilderness wandering) Jerusalem would lie desolate.