All right. All right. So, anyone remember 1988? Looking at the youngins. Oh, yeah. In
1988, I was 10 years old. And yeah, because Tony, Tony, he's laughing at how old he is,
at how young I am. And little did I know that in 1988, when I was 10 years old, that the
world was about to come to an end. I was in the fifth grade, and I remember my mom was
driving me to school. My mom always had the Christian radio station on, and something
that was said on the station prompted me to ask my mother, what were they talking about?
There was a guy named Edgar C. Weisnant. He was a former NASA engineer, so obviously had
a certain level of intelligence about him. He was a Bible student. And he was predicting
that the rapture would occur sometime between September 11th and the 13th of 1988. Weisnant
published and sold two books called On Borrowed Time and the very catchy 88 Reasons Why the
Rapture Will Be in 1988. He mailed 300,000 copies of 88 Reasons for free to churches
across America and sold 4.5 million copies in Christian bookstores. This is how End Times
focused parts of the church had become. While Jesus said in Mark 13, 32, no one knows the
hour, Weisnant was quoted as saying, only if the Bible is in error am I wrong. Spoken
like a true NASA scientist, right? And his predictions were actually taken seriously
in some parts of the evangelical Christian community. And as the date approached, like
that morning on the way to school, Christian broadcasting networks like TBN would interrupt
regular programming to provide special instructions on how to prepare for the rapture. Of course,
we know that the rapture didn't happen, but Weisnant was undeterred. Weisnant followed
up three times each time he was wrong. He wrote a new book in 1989, 89 Reasons, one
in 1993 and one in 1994. By the time he got to 94, it was like 21 reasons it might happen
in 1994. Weisnant died in 2001. Today is May 7th, 2023. The rapture has not occurred.
And I want to let people down gently, but the rapture may never occur. Will Jesus return?
Will He make all things right? Will He make all things new? I absolutely believe that.
Yes. But fewer and fewer theologians believe that the rapture, where all Christians will
disappear for seven years before Jesus comes again, again, because in order for that to
be what happens, He'd have to come again and then seven years later come again. They don't
think it's actually a biblical concept. They think it's more of a deduction. Just really
quick, there's this really helpful theological structure that you can use called phyto. F-I-D-O.
F is the center. F is the foundational things that if we don't believe these things, then
it's not Christianity. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. That's foundational. And
interpretation is, these are the interpretations, so these get further away from what is absolutely
central. So I interpret something that Jesus said in this way, but I could be wrong. D
is a deduction. I'm now taking different things and I'm deducing what I think is true, but
it's further and further away from the central idea of what is absolutely necessary. And
then O is opinion. What color should the carpet be? Right? What has happened is over the years,
theologians believe that we have taken a couple of verses from Paul and one verse from Jesus.
And because we typically, as modern Americans, don't understand history, we don't understand
the language that they were using, we have actually misunderstood Jesus' point. And we've
misunderstood him to the point that we are probably in direct conflict with what he's
actually saying. So today is week four of Say What? That's right. What it says that
Jesus says, what he says and what it says when Jesus talks about his return matters.
There's a great deal. So let's jump into Matthew chapter 24. Matthew 24. If you do not have
a Bible, we have Bibles out in the lobby on the bookshelf. They are blue, easy to spot.
You're welcome to take one of those home with you or download a Bible from any of the digital
app stores. This is going to be a really long passage. So I'm actually going to invite you
just to sit. We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention. And I actually
think that this passage is long enough that if you stand for the whole time, it will be
difficult for you to give it your full attention. So let's all sit together as I read this passage,
Matthew 24, starting in verse one, it says this. Jesus left the temple and was walking
away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. Do you
see all these things he asked? Truly, I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another.
Everyone will be thrown down. 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? Jesus answered, watch out that no one
deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming I am the Messiah and will deceive
me. You will hear of wars, rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such
things must happen, but the end is still not come. Nation will rise against nation and
kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these
are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put
to death and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time, many will turn
away from the faith and will betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear
and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow
cold. But the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 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.
So when you see standing in the holy place, the abomination that causes desolation, spoken
of through the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea
flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house.
Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days
for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Pray that your flight will not take place in winter
or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning
of the world until now and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short,
no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened. At
that time, if anyone says to you, look, here's the Messiah or there he is, do not believe
it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders
and deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if
anyone tells you there he is out in the wilderness, do not go out or here he is in the inner rooms,
do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west,
so will be the coming of the son of man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will
gather. Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened and the
moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies
will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the son of man in heaven. And then all
the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the son of man coming on the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call.
And they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other.
Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves
come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know
that it is near. Right at the door, truly I tell you, this generation will certainly
not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will never pass away. But about the day and hour, no one knows. Not even the
angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the father. As it was in the days of Noah, so
it will be at the coming of the son of man. From the days before the flood, before people
were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the
ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them
all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the son of man. Two men will be in a field.
One will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill. One
will be taken and the other left. Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what
day your Lord will come. But understand this. If the owner of the house had known at what
time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his
house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the son of man will come at
an hour when you do not expect. Let us pray. God of every tribe, every tongue, every color
and every nation, we thank you for the scriptures. We thank you that they have persisted through
the millennia, that we have them to hold, to read, to consider, to learn from, to be
sharpened by. And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, I pray that it
would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith
would become stronger, that we would become more like your son, Jesus. Amen.
Alright, so I just read 44 verses which might hold the record for longest passage read at
the house during a sermon. And we will not go over all 44 of these verses verse by verse,
because that wasn't the point. The point was this, that this is the kind of passage that
needs to be read in its entirety, not just for context, but to illustrate just how much
is being said. And not only how much is being said, but how much is being said that is not
easily understood. Think about how many times as we read that, if you really, if you really
let your brain go, you would have been like, I wonder what that is, I wonder what that
is, I wonder what that is, I wonder what that is. What is that? What's he talking about
there? This is on purpose. This passage is what's called an apocalyptic segment. Apocalyptic
writing in the scriptures is intentional future thinking. It is intentionally future predicting
and prophetic, and it is intentionally coded and layered with secret meaning. It is intentionally
trying to confuse people. Not including the Apocrypha, there are only two books considered
mostly or completely apocalyptic in the Bible. You get so many Bible points if you know what
they are already. I don't bet you know. Daniel in the first testament and Revelation in the
second testament, only two. But considering how much of modern Christianity in the past
one hundred years has focused on end times and scaring people with the idea that they
were going to get left behind, you'd think that Jesus had spent chapter upon chapter
talking about it, or entire books laying out the plan word for word without any confusion,
but he didn't. There's only a few bits and parables throughout the gospels, and this
is actually the primary passage. It's called the Olivet Discourse, because where did he
say it? On the Mount of Olives. It just happens to be the same place that he went to pray
the Garden of Gethsemane before he was betrayed and handed over. This discourse, this sermon,
this moment of teaching his disciples is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and in none of
them does Jesus spell out what he means. They come to him, his disciples come to him and
go, tell us what you're talking about. What is this? When will this happen? How will we
know? And then he goes on in apocalyptic discourse, intentionally speaking in code. It was confusing
for them, but even more so for us, because we don't know the original language. We didn't
grow up under Rome as our rulers, and we don't actually know personally all the little references
that he's making. And as a reader, that can be a problem, because that's when we can make
a lot of assumptions. We read things, oh that reminds me of that, that must be what he's
talking about. Sometimes we learn something, and then we go to the Bible and we read what
we learned into the Bible. It's what Scott McKnight, the Bible scholar, calls the blue
parakeet. If you have something, you end up seeing it everywhere else. I remember being
in a Bible class in college, and someone, and the professor asked, and we'll ask in
this room, right? So who's the most recent purchase of a car, new or used, in the last
year? Who's gotten a different car? Okay, what kind of car is it? Are you okay with
his name?
O6 Impala.
O6 Impala. Once you got an O6 Impala, did you start noticing more Impalas on the road?
No? Good for you, Bradley. Good for you. Good for you, because the typical answer is yeah.
What did you get? A Jeep. All right. And they're everywhere, yeah. I remember being in class
and the guy was like, oh yeah, I got a Cavalier. And they were like, oh, what color was it?
And they were, oh, it was actually a blue Cavalier. And the professor said, oh, have
you noticed more blue Cavaliers? And they were like, oh my gosh, I totally have. This
happened to me when I bought a rendezvous. I didn't realize that it was a middle-aged
woman's car. No offense. Like, I just didn't realize. Every rendezvous I saw from that
point on was being driven by a 40-year-old woman. And I was like, oh, all right, I got
something in common with a bunch of ladies. That's awesome. It drove well. It's comfortable.
It had the whole family in it. We can start reading the things that we've learned into
the Bible and we start making a lot of assumptions about what we're reading. Or we make, at
best, deductions about what we're reading by piecing things together that maybe we don't
actually understand. And I just want to say that deductions are rarely the kinds of beliefs
that anyone should argue over. So let's consider this passage as simply as we possibly can
in this prophetic snippet. I think that there are at least two things that are being prophesied
about, that are being promised by Jesus specifically about the future. One is impending destruction.
The second is future glorification. Jesus is saying, you are going to be able to tell
when destruction is coming. And then sometime after that, I will return. But no one will
know when that is happening. Let me say that more precisely in the context of this passage.
Jesus is saying to them, you, they, will be able to tell when destruction is coming. They
will see it. He says, you will see this happen in your lifetime. Truly, I tell you, this
generation will certainly not pass away. And then Jesus is also saying to everyone, including
us, that we will not know when he is returning. Why is it not? For all his calculations and
insight and interpretation, forgot one thing. Jesus said, we will not know. So what do we
know? We know that when Jesus said that they would see destruction, that he was telling
you the truth. We know that that prophecy has been fulfilled. And how do we know that?
We know because of history. It has been mentioned from this pulpit at least five or six times
that I can think of as I think through the different sermon series that we have done.
But that does not mean that we all remember it because I am sure it got mentioned from
the pulpit at the church that I grew up at. But I did not remember it until I was probably
in my late 20s or early 30s when I learned about it again. What am I talking about? I
am talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. This passage begins with Jesus
telling them what? Not one stone will be left on top of another. It was prophetic. It was
a future statement. Destruction is impending. It is imminent. It is inevitable. I went to
a Bible teaching church every Sunday, exegetical, verse by verse. Sunday schools for kids that
were basically Bible studies with a little bit of entertainment to keep you paying attention.
But it was all about the Bible. Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible. I went
to a Christian grade school through sixth grade. I went to a Bible college. And I got
through all of that without knowing or remembering that between the year of 66 and 100, 35 years
after Jesus ascended, that Rome came through and completely destroyed the temple. And I
bet money that most modern American Christians don't know that either. In the history books,
it's what's called the Jewish revolt. About 35 years, like I said, after Jesus, between
66 and 70ish, the people, the Jewish people began to revolt against Rome and eventually
Rome did what Rome did best. They squashed their enemies. The highest estimate says that
one million Jews died in the Jewish revolt. And in the process, because they knew that
the religion of Israel was part of the thing that kept causing the Jews to revolt and push
back against Rome, they decided that they would level the temple. Completely obliterate
it. If you look up pictures right now of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it stands now as
it did then. The mount was not part of the temple. The mount was actually built by Herod
so that the temple could be built on top of it. Rome left the part that they built. They
destroyed the part that meant something to them spiritually. They left no stone on top
of another. The Romans desecrated the holy place. To this day, the Jews have never rebuilt
their temple on the mount. That doesn't mean they didn't try. The first time they attempted
to rebuild the temple was during what's called the Bar Kokhba revolt in 123 to 135, about
50 years after the first Jewish revolt. By the year 120, in the 120s, the Roman emperor
of the time had forbidden Jews from circumcision, which is a central tenet of the Jewish faith.
And he had begun building a temple to the Greek god of Jupiter on the Temple Mount.
So they revolted again. The eventual result was even worse than before. Because this time
not only did Rome squash their revolt, this time Rome expelled all Jewish people from
the holy city. When we know the history, and then we read parts of the passage again, like
let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the
field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women
and nursing mothers. Pray that your flight not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.
When we read it with historical context, now we can hear what Jesus was talking about. We
can feel confident that what he said would happen has happened. We are no longer waiting
for impending destruction. I grew up being taught that this passage was about our rapture.
That the destruction that was being talked about was a great tribulation. About how there
would be so many wars in the world, Christians would be so persecuted to the point that finally
Jesus would come and just take all the Christians away from the pain. I had a friend that was
seriously considering not getting married. Not because he thought he was called to celibacy,
but because he was afraid of having a pregnant wife when this happened. And so it is time
for your theological word of the day. Everyone say partial preterism. Partial preterism.
Full preterism is an end times view that says that all the prophecies in the Bible have
already happened. It says books like Daniel aren't talking about events that we will experience.
It's talking about events that the Israelites experienced in the 200 years that were leading
up to the birth of Christ, which is probably true. It says that the book of Revelation
is describing what happened in the Jewish and Bar Kokhba revolts. Which is also at least
mostly true, if not partially true. But full preterism would say that even when Jesus said
that the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him, that that has also
somehow already happened. But as I look around, I don't see a new earth. I don't see the
recreated heavens. I do not see the end of war and sin and sickness. I see a world that
is still in need of a savior. That is still waiting for the King of Kings to come again
and make all things new. So personally, I'm not a full preterist. I am what we said a
partial preterist. Partial preterism is the idea that says that while much of what was
prophesied in the Bible has already happened and that history bears that out, that other
prophecies have most definitely not happened yet. And they will. Which brings us back to
the simplicity of this complicated passage about impending destruction and future glorification.
The impending destruction has happened. And Jesus tells us that destruction will continually
happen until he returns. But what we are supposed to learn, at least in one way, is that destruction
is not the trigger that tells us Jesus is about to come. Destruction is the sign that
he has not yet come. Destruction, floods, famines, wars. As we look around continually,
we are not meant to be afraid of them. We are not meant to get out our holy abacus and
try and add up the spiritual math of when he will return. We are meant to feel confident
that Jesus was right and that he will also be right. And if we were to boil this down
even to one thing, this passage is about faithfulness. It says those who would endure to the end,
no matter what happens, no matter what we experience, no matter what wars and travesties,
famines and earthquakes happen around the world, Jesus is asking us to be faithful,
not to be fearful, to believe that he knew what he was talking about. We can still trust
that what else he said can still be trusted. Because the Son of Man will come at an hour
when we do not expect it. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you know the day
and the hour, that you know the minute that trumpets will sound, that your Son will appear
with the angels in the sky and gather all of his people that he loves across the earth
to himself. I ask that you just help us to trust your spirit, that we would be patient
with each other, that we would put down our calculations, that we would open our hands
and let go of our fear, that we would trust that destruction may always happen, but you
are always faithful. We can continue to look to you, continue to trust you, continue to
understand that you've told us these things because we will have trouble in this world
but you have overcome this world. And you will never leave us or forsake us. You have
not left us here as orphans, but you have sent your spirit to be with us, to comfort
us, counsel us, guide us, every moment, every day, until we see you again. Amen.