Seven Days That Changed The World | Signs Of The Times | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

I'm so glad you're here today.

You know, we've been in a series uh talking about uh seven days that changed the world, that Passion Week, those seven days leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Today's message, I just think, is just so timely of God.

Uh, it seems like I get questions almost every day now, people asking, is this the end of time?

Is this the end of the world with what's going on in the Middle East?

A lot of those questions brimming up, not just in our congregation, but among my friends.

And in case you didn't know, the third day of the seven days that changed the world is commonly referred to as the Olivet Discourse.

And this is where Jesus speaks about end times.

So I am going to, as best I can today, uh keep this at a level I think that all of us can understand, but I am going to ask you to stretch a couple of times uh to grasp some of the concepts I'm bringing to you.

But I think it's important.

I think it's important because I think of all the teaching of the church, the end times is uh has been used the most in the church to gin up fear, to make people just feel like they're full of anxiety and I don't know about the future and that I should be scared about the return of Christ.

That's really the opposite of what the New Testament teaches.

This is the return of my best friend.

Why would I fear that?

And why would I fear what lies ahead for me if I know my God is with me?

So what I want to do is I just want to ground what we're saying all in what Christ actually teaches, what he has to say to us.

But before we get started, let's just pray together.

Father, this is your time and these are your people.

I know, God, you're already at work in this place.

You've been moving in our hearts during this time of worship.

Now you're going to move in this time of worship around your word.

Feel free, God, to speak into our life the things that need to be spoken, where we feel fear, may we find courage, where we feel anxious, may we sense your peace.

God, wherever we feel kind of lost and without direction, may we find, God, you're our true north point when it comes to compass.

So I thank you, God, for what you did in the first service.

I pray, God, that you'll continue that work now in this service as we gather around your word.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So this is the Olivet Discourse.

It's actually found in three places, only three Gospels recorded: Matthew and chapters 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke chapter 21.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

Now, the reason this is called the Olivet Discourse is because Jesus spoke these words when he was on the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives, I'll show you a present-day view.

If you were sitting there and looking out on Jerusalem, this is what Jerusalem looks like today.

You'll notice in the front center is a golden dome.

That's an Islamic shrine called the Dome of the Rock.

It sits on top of the exact location where the temple used to be.

That site has actually been called the most contested piece of real estate in human history.

And it's true, there have been a lot of wars around what happens at that place.

In this message, I'm going to mainly focus on Mark's telling of the Olivet Discourse.

It's been described like this by one commentator.

It's one of the most perplexing chapters in the Bible to understand for readers and interpreters alike.

So get this.

The Olivet Discourse is the longest block of teaching that Jesus does in the Gospel of Mark.

It's his second longest sermon.

The longest sermon is actually the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

But this Olivet Discourse is the longest prophetic teaching in the New Testament, apart from the book of Revelation itself.

So what I want you to help help you see is first what's going on.

The disciples are really confused at this point.

They're struggling, trying to make sense of what's happening.

At this point, they do know that Jesus is the Messiah.

Even the events around the triumphal entry seem to confirm that.

But Jesus has also told them on three separate occasions, explicitly, that he's going to be rejected and be killed.

Now that doesn't square with their idea of Messiah.

So they are thinking still that Jesus is going to set up his kingdom now.

Excuse me, that he's going to take up his place on Israel's throne and he's going to restore the nation to its former greatness.

But here's the deal: since the high point of his entrance on Sunday morning, when he's welcomed by all the people, crying out, Hosanna, save us now.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Ever since then it's been a downhill journey.

The Jewish leaders have rejected him.

They've already uh hatched a plot to kill him.

Jesus knows he doesn't have much time left to complete the disciples' preparation for what's about to happen.

So the disciples are actually commenting on the magnificence of the temple, and it really was uh a beauty, something to behold.

And Jesus uses that as an opportunity to tell them about what lies ahead for the future of the temple, and not just the temple for the city and the Jewish people.

Because the temple's going to be destroyed, the city's going to be sacked, and the Jewish people are going to be spread to the four corners of the earth.

The unthinkable is about to happen.

So let me say up front a couple words about end time prophecy.

At Spring Creek, we believe in unity, not uniformity.

So we all agree on the big issues, like who Jesus is, that the Bible is the Word of God, that human beings are sinful in need of a savior, that God loves every human being so much he was willing to die for them, and he wants no one to perish without him.

Amen?

We agree on that.

That's a basic understanding we all have.

But in regards to end times prophecy, we believe we can walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye.

So we can discuss and we can dialogue and debate and even disagree, but there's no reason these issues should ever divide us.

So I want to begin with what I believe is one of the keys to really understanding all prophecy in the Bible, and it's this: the now and the not yet.

To understand the Olivet discourse and to understand Old Testament and New Testament prophecy requires us to put on bifocals.

Some of you aren't old like me, but if you were, you may have found that as you got older, you had to sacrifice your thin cool glasses you used to wear because you had to accommodate bifocals.

So you had to get larger lenses in order to have bifocals in the bottom part of the frame.

What bifocals do for us is they enable us to see both near and far.

That's the kind of vision you need to understand biblical prophecy, the ability to see near and far.

Because what Jesus is going to do in this sermon, he's going to talk about events that are going to transpire within the lifetime of the disciples, 30 to 40 years.

But he's also going to talk about his second coming and the end of human history.

So the Olivet Discourse deals with the near and the far.

The big debate around this sermon is what goes in the near bucket, what goes in the far bucket.

So everyone has their opinion.

And at Spring Creek, it's perfectly fine for you to have your own opinion about these things.

But we don't want our opinion about things which no one has real certainty about to divide us.

Does that make sense?

I mean, nobody can claim certainty about end times prophecy.

If they do, they're self-deluded, honestly.

I mean, I don't know for certain.

I'm going to share with you my best understanding of prophecy today, but certainly you can feel free to correct me if you have a better understanding than I.

Now, I personally believe that the principle I'm teaching you right now would end a lot of the debates around prophecy if people understood it.

This way of looking at prophecy through a near lens and a far lens is the most common feature of all prophecy in the Bible.

In fact, we have two terms for it.

One is called prophetic foreshortening, and the other is called prophetic perspective.

So let me explain.

When a prophet would see the future, that when God gives them this vision of the future, they would speak of the future as a whole unity, but wouldn't necessarily differentiate between what would happen in the immediate and what would happen a long time from now.

In fact, in many cases, you could say that the prophet was really saying both things, that it could be understood in both ways.

In other words, there's an immediate minor fulfillment within the lifetime of the prophet, and there's a more ultimate fulfillment yet to come with the prophecy.

For example, in Isaiah chapter 13, the prophet talks about the coming judgment on Babylon.

Isaiah 13 · chapter mention

Now it was clear it was coming and it did happen in history, but we also know from the language that he's talking about the judgment of the entire world and all humankind as well.

In other words, Babylon's going to be punished, but there's a judgment coming in the future for the rest of the world.

So you could say that the first judgment is anticipation of the second one.

But both are seen by the prophet as a single future.

Does that make sense?

So here's the really important quest question: Why is dual fulfillment necessary in the Bible?

Why have a near and a far fulfillment prophecy?

I'll let the book of Deuteronomy explain it.

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.

You may say to yourselves, how can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?

That's a good question.

How do we know if that's from God or not, right?

Well, listen to what he says.

If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken presumptuously, so don't be alarmed.

So dual fulfillment is there because there's a death penalty associated with false prophecy.

So how do I know if something is genuinely from God?

Well, Deuteronomy answers it.

First, what does the prophecy say?

And two, did it happen?

Because you know what?

If it didn't happen, it didn't come from God.

You know why?

Because God knows the future as clearly as he knows the past.

So if God actually said it, and it didn't happen, if God actually said it, it will happen.

But if God did not say it, then it might not happen.

So we have this sense of dual fulfillment.

It authenticates the prophet in the moment and their message when a fuller fulfillment remains.

Which means when people read prophecy, Old Testament and New Testament, and they see history, they're right.

And when people read the prophecies of the Old and New Testament and they see the future, they're right.

It's not either or, it's both and.

This is the principle in the Olivet Discourse, because Jesus is going to talk about the destruction of the temple, and that will happen within the lifetime of the disciples.

But at the same time, he talks about the second coming and which will happen many years off in the future.

This is the same dynamic in the book of Revelation.

Much of Revelation is written to a church undergoing persecution.

And a lot of it is very symbolic language about Rome and how it is oppressing the church.

If you can't see that historical narrative, if you can't understand how that prophecy applied to the first century church, then you'll never understand how to apply it in our generation.

Because it takes understanding those principles well enough to see how they played out in the first century to understand how they play out now.

Which means you need an understanding of ancient biblical history and ancient history itself.

You don't read prophecy and then pick up a newspaper to figure out what it's saying.

If you want to understand prophecy, you've got to go back to the Old Testament.

You've got to read history.

You've got to ask yourself, how does this work out in the time in which it was spoken?

Now I'm gonna share with you a really well-known scholar.

His name is Bernard Rahm.

He wrote a book on hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is about the science of the study of scripture.

And the book is called Protestant Biblical Interpretation.

Listen to what he said about interpreting prophecy.

Some of this language may sound a little confusing, but I just want you to get a sense of what he's saying.

The prophetic material of Scripture is to be found from Genesis to Revelation.

To assemble each passage, to thoroughly digest its meaning, to arrange the passages in a prophetic harmony would involve a prodigious memory, years of exacting work, a masterful knowledge of biblical language, an exhaustive reading of prophetic literature, a keen exegetical sense, a thorough knowledge of the histories of many people, and a knowledge of all relevant archaeological materials.

Basically, what he's saying is not all the Bible is easy to understand.

And this is especially true when it comes to prophecy.

When it comes to prophecy, you have to have a bigger knowledge than just what you're reading and trying to figure out what that means today.

You have to understand how to interpret scripture, you have to understand the principles that underlie prophecy, you have to understand biblical languages, you have to understand Old Testament.

I'll give you an example.

We have the book of Revelation.

Everybody loves the book of Revelation, everybody wants to be an authority on it.

There's 404 verses in the book of Revelation.

Guess how many times the Old Testament is either quoted or alluded to?

Over 500 times.

400 verses, over 500 references.

So if you want to understand the book of Revelation, again, you don't begin with today's headlines, you begin with the Old Testament.

John is writing to people who understood the Old Testament.

And that's their primer, that's their source.

All the judgments, all the symbols, all of that is found in the Old Testament.

So before I can understand what it says today, I have to understand what it meant to people that it was written to.

So when it comes to prophecy, there are some people who hold what's called a preterist view.

Preterist just means past.

A lot of people read the Bible and say, this has all happened in history.

And there's a lot of truth to that.

And then there's the futurists who say, no, all of this is yet to come.

And there's a lot of truth to that.

I say they're both right.

So let's begin to dig into this prophecy in particular.

This is Jesus, and this is Mark 13, 1 to 4.

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of the disciples said to him, Look, teacher, what massive stones, what magnificent buildings.

Jesus is going to reply now.

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us when will these things happen?

What will be the sign that they're about to be fulfilled?

So we're going to look at this story, this sermon of Jesus in two ways.

Historically and the future.

Okay?

We're going to begin with the past, the implications for the first century.

I want to zero in on one comment Jesus made.

Do you see all these great buildings?

replied Jesus.

Not one stone here will be left on another.

Everyone will be thrown down.

So at the heart of Jesus' sermon is this judgment that's going to fall on the temple itself.

The disciples had just remarked how beautiful and amazing the temple is, and now Jesus turns to speak about its destruction.

So let's begin with understanding the building itself.

We call this point the temple.

Keep in mind, the temple is not yet completed in Jesus' day.

He's talking about the destruction of a building that they haven't even held the dedication on yet.

So it's not yet completed, and Jesus is talking about being destroyed.

Now you need to know the temple grounds were massive.

The entire temple complex sat on an area roughly the size of 12 football fields.

That's massive.

The retaining wall around the temple was as tall as 15 stories high in some places.

The massive stones that were foundation stones were the size of railroad boxcars.

Huge, massive, weighty stones.

So in addition to that, the temple itself, the outside was plated with gold and silver, real gold and silver, which means in the hot Mediterranean sun, if you weren't being careful, you could be blinded just looking at the temple, the sun reflecting off of that gold and that silver.

So we actually have some eyewitness stories.

In the first century, a guy named Marcus Agrippa, he was the grandfather of one of Rome's emperors.

He went to Jerusalem, saw the temple, and went on and on about how beautiful it is.

It's all recorded in history.

Josephus, he's a first century Jewish historian.

He wrote this about the temple.

The exterior wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye.

There's a modern-day commentator named Grant Osborne who said the top was adorned by pure marble with gold plates on the facade, so numerous that people were almost blinded when the sun shone on it.

So it must have been an amazing sight.

They said that Jerusalem was not a city with a temple.

It was a temple with a city.

I mean, it dominated the landscape of this entire city.

This is the place, not only is this magnificent, beautiful architecture dominating the city skyline, but for the Jewish people, this is where God lived.

Remember what God said?

He said, This is my resting place forever.

Here I will set in throne, for I have desired it.

To the Jewish people, the temple was God's home on earth.

So when Jesus says the temple will be no more, Jesus is in effect saying, it's no longer needed.

Not the priest, not the sacrifice, not the temple.

Why is it not needed?

Because Jesus is our high priest, he is our sacrifice, he is our temple.

Now what's amazing is when the disciples heard this, they actually did believe him.

They didn't protest and say, Jesus, this can't happen.

What they asked is, when will this happen and how will it happen?

So not if, but how and when.

So Jesus describes this coming judgment as the abomination that causes desolation.

Let's continue in his sermon.

When you see the abomination that causes desolation, standing where it does not belong, let the reader understand.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out.

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 these uh that this will not take place in winter, because those days will be days of distress, unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world until now, and never to be equaled again.

So the abomination that causes desolation is a quotation from the book of Daniel, chapter 12.

Daniel 12 · chapter mention

Most Jewish people believe that this was actually already fulfilled about 169 years before Christ walked the earth.

This uh Greek general, his name was Antiochus Epiphanes, came into the temple, slaughtered a pig on the altar, spread its blood around, and desecrated the temple.

That act defiled the temple.

Now Jesus is saying the prophecy is gonna be fulfilled a second time.

Once again, Jesus is underscoring the near and the far of prophecy.

Jesus is saying there's gonna be a repeat.

He says, When you see the abomination that causes desolation, head for the hills.

Now what's interesting is we have parallel accounts of this sermon.

We have Mark's version, we have Luke's version.

Luke is gonna say the exact same thing that Mark did, but he's not gonna say the phrase the abomination that causes desolation.

He's gonna substitute another phrase in there.

Listen to what he said.

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, that's the abomination that causes desolation.

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

So Luke says the abomination that causes desolation is when the mount when the uh armies surround Jerusalem.

Do you know because of what Jesus said in this sermon, that not a single Christian died in Jerusalem in 70 AD when the Romans finally took it over and destroyed the city.

You know why?

Because Jesus already told him what would happen.

Jesus said, when the armies begin to surround the city, take flight, leave.

You say, but Pastor, when an army laid siege to a city, you can't get through those lines.

You can't get out.

It's too late once the army already encompasses them.

Well, here's the thing: we know from history that the guy who, the Roman general was a guy named Gaius.

Only nine days after laying siege to the city, he realizes that his supply lines were vulnerable to being attacked.

He didn't have enough supplies on hand to maintain an extended siege.

So he draws back to the coast for a period of time, which means there's this withdrawal that creates a window to leave.

That's when the Jewish believers, when the Christians fled the city, they crossed the Jordan River and set up a new community in the town of Pella.

This is all history.

Christians fled the moment the armies retreated for a moment.

Then in 68 A.D., Vespian and his son Titus besieged Jerusalem once more and the city falls.

Over a million people died.

Now, let's talk about how it played out.

Josephus says this war lasts for four years, from 66 A.D.

to 70 A.D.

There's a lot of fighting, a lot of death in those early days, but nothing compared to what it was like in the final days.

The worst suffering came at the end.

The Romans laid siege to the city, which means nothing going in, nothing going out, no food going in, no food coming out.

I mean, nothing.

Everybody's told up there.

And people began to starve.

Famine sets in, dead bodies begin to pile up in the street, and there's not enough able-bodied men to take the corpses out.

So the stench of dying, decaying bodies filled the whole city.

It wasn't long before the people began to turn on each other.

They fought each other.

Jewish people killed more of their own people than the Romans ever did.

They did desperate things to get money in order to try to bribe their way through the Roman lives.

And get this the worst part, moms began to cannibalize their own children so as not to starve.

When Jerusalem finally fell in 70 AD, Roman forces under Titus captured the temple.

There was an accidental fire.

And when that fire happened, all that gold and silver that was on the facade of the building began to melt.

And it went down into the temple drainage system.

And the Romans began to dismantle the temple stone by stone in order to retrieve as much of that gold as they possibly could.

So what Jesus says literally came true.

He said, Do you see this great building?

There will be not left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

Now I'm gonna show you something from archaeology.

We don't get to do this a lot in church, but this is one of those things.

It's super compelling when you've seen it.

In Rome, there's an arch called the Arch of Titus.

And this is about Titus' conquest of Jerusalem.

And you can see, of course, the menorah there in the midst of it.

This is about them sacking Jerusalem and taking the treasures of Jerusalem back to Rome.

That still exists, that's a part of the historical record.

Now, all that gold and all that silver on the temple that melts, it also went down into the limestone pavers that surrounded the city.

So what we know from history is soldiers began to systematically pull up those pavers to try to loot as much of that gold for themselves as possible.

Titus eventually takes his chariots and over months runs over those pavers to break them up into rubble so they could more easily access all the gold.

They crushed the temple into pieces so that not one stone was left on another.

So to show you how devastating this actually was, here's a picture first of the Temple Mount.

It's massive, as you can see.

Now notice in the foreground there's this staircase.

We'll have a close-up here on this next slide, and the next slide shows us this staircase.

Now, all of that was destroyed when the Romans came in.

The staircase was taken out completely.

Now, there's the only thing left of that staircase.

This is called uh Robinson's Arch.

Robinson's Arch, that's where the staircase went into the old city.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so that exists.

That's a part of the historical record.

And what you'll notice then in the second picture is just a close-up of Robinson's Arch.

Now, to give you an idea of just how devastating this was, we have a picture from history.

This was taken over a hundred years ago in the city of Jerusalem.

And what you're going to see in this old photo, you see there's a donkey and a little tree.

You notice that?

Donkey and a tree right there.

Well, right behind it in the next photo, there's a circle place.

That's Robinson's Arch.

Okay?

Donkey photo, Robinson's Arch.

We have excavated down all the way, notice this next photo, that's where the donkey was standing.

You see where it is?

See how much how to get down to the Roman ground, that's how much dirt and debris had to be moved away in order to get down to that level.

You know, people when they go to Jerusalem, I hate to burst this bubble on people, but they say, I'm walking the streets where Jesus walked.

No, where Jesus walked is about 20 feet down from where you are.

Just like they when they found uh uh Sloan, uh the pool of Sloan.

When they found the pool of slum, it's 20 feet underground.

You have to descend the stairs to get down to the original city.

So the city's been built upon, built upon, built upon.

That's how deep it was.

Now I'm gonna show you another photo, and you'll notice over here on the left, you see all those big blocks.

They didn't do that when they cleaned up the city.

When they began to remove all the dirt and debris that had piled, these are the stones that were a part of the temple.

That the Romans, when they began to destroy the temple, would push the blocks off the temple mount, and they fell there in a pile and never been moved.

What you're seeing right here is the proof of Jesus' prophecy.

This is prophecy come to life.

Not one stone would be left upon another.

Literally, they scrape it to the ground.

Here's another photo close up of the ground below these Roman papers where all those blocks fell and landed on those pavers.

You see how it's just indented like that?

That's from these blocks falling some 40 feet from the Temple Mount down to the ground below and shattering that.

This is history.

This is proof that what Jesus said is true.

It's fulfilled prophecy.

Josephus, that's first century historian, he talks about this moment.

He says this Caesar ordered the whole city and the temple to be raised to the ground.

All the rest of the wall, uh, all the rest of the wall encompassing the city was so completely leveled to the ground as to leave visitors to the spot, no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited.

In other words, they they made it look like the temple never existed.

That's how much they scraped the temple mount.

So they literally wipe it off the mount.

The temple, the priest, the sacrifices for sin, the temple, all that has existed, all that no longer exists, but had existed from the time of Moses.

In addition to that, you realize all the records for who they were as a people, all that whole, you know, you're part of the tribe of Benjamin, you're a part of the tribe of Judah, you're of Naphtali, you're of Benjamin, all those records are destroyed.

If you ask a Jewish person today, what tribe are you a part of?

I don't know.

They don't know.

And it's not ignorant, it's just they don't know the records are gone.

It's been too many generations.

You can't trace it back to that.

So I want you to think about the implications of this.

After 70 AD, none of those expressions of Judaism were ever revived.

No priest, no sacrificial systems anymore, no temple, none of this.

We know who what tribe we're from.

Why?

Because we don't need it anymore.

We don't need the temple, we don't need the priest, we don't need the sacrifices.

We have Jesus.

He's our holy of holies, he's our great high priest, he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

So the center of our faith is a person, not a place.

We don't go to Jerusalem, we don't go to Mecca, we go to God.

In fact, God has come to us.

So we're centered on a person.

And by the way, God forced an end to their way of life completely.

So much so that the Jewish people who still are in search of a Messiah, you realize if Messiah showed up today, he's supposed to be from what tribe?

The tribe of Judah.

How could he prove that?

It's impossible to prove it today.

So the only time this prophecy could have been fulfilled is this time when Jesus came.

They just didn't recognize Messiah when he came.

So the question is, is all this limited to 70 AD?

Some people would say, you know, this is all just about what happened with the Romans and the destruction of the temple.

And that argument comes from verse 30 in Mark 13.

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

Well, if they're going to happen within that generation, then surely it did happen in history.

But here's the deal.

I have known a lot of people who believe all of this is about the future, and they have to make generation mean something that doesn't mean the Bible.

And I say, you don't have to do that.

Both can be true at the same time.

What he's talking about is what happened in 70 AD, but he's also talking about what's going to happen in the future.

So this is where we come back to that bifocal view of prophecy, the near and the far.

The destruction of Jerusalem is a part of history.

But there's another judgment yet to come.

So let's talk about that, the implications for the future.

So Jesus speaks of war, natural disaster, false Christ.

There are numerous things listed in the Olivet discourse about signs of the end, of the coming judgment.

These are them.

False Christ, wars and rumors of war, political upheaval, famines, earthquakes, persecution of believers, betrayal and hatred due to falling away, many false prophets arising, and how the love of many people will grow cold.

Let me let you hear the words of Jesus Himself.

When you hear of wars and rumors of war, do not be alarmed.

Such things must happen, but notice this next statement.

But the end is still to come.

Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

There will be earthquakes in various places and famines.

These are the beginnings of birth pains.

So people see stuff that happens in the Middle East, like this ongoing war, this conflict that's happening right now, and they say this must be the end, right?

Well, look at what Jesus said.

When you see these things, the end is not yet.

These things are gonna happen for sure.

They've happened over the last couple thousand years.

Will Durant's really well-respected historian, he made the statement war is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization and democracy.

You know, we have about 5,000 years of recorded history.

5,000 years is all we have.

Of that, how many years have been completely free of war?

You know how many?

Somewhere between 230 and 268.

So a tiny fraction of history has been peaceful.

The rest of the time we've been killing each other.

So what that means is every generation who's lived from the time of Christ believes we're in the end times.

Look at all the wars that are happening.

So it's really easy to see things that have been a constant through history as somehow being more important today.

What Jesus says here that is important is he says the end will be like labor pains.

Now I can't personally relate to that, but we've had two kids and I've seen my wife go through it.

And what I know is this is up front, you have a general idea of your due date.

You have an idea on the calendar, yeah, I'll probably have a kid by that time.

But between then, between where you are now and that moment, there's going to be some indications from your body as that day gets nearer.

Sometimes you'll have these contractions and they'll happen, these labor pains, low intensity, low frequency.

Sometimes they can go on for weeks and then just stop.

I mean, all of a sudden they just stop.

You quit having labor pains.

And then as you get closer to that day, those labor pains begin in earnest.

The tempo starts out slow and steady.

As time passes, the pain becomes increasingly greater with more frequency, and finally the pains come in rapid succession, and you have your child.

Every generation who's walked this earth from the time of Christ has had wars, natural disasters, and false Christ.

Those signs occur in every generation.

What makes the end truly unique is as the last days approach, the tempo and intensity of those events will increase dramatically.

That's the point.

It's also important to keep in mind that Jesus is talking to his disciples, who, when they see the destruction of Jerusalem, they're going to think that's the end of the world.

That's it.

God's taken away our way of life forever.

So they're going to equate that with the end of time.

And Jesus wants to be clear, that's not the end.

That's the end of a chapter, but God's going to begin writing a whole new chapter after that, and you need to be aware that just because there's a war, that doesn't mean the end of time.

So here's the deal there's a far more reliable sign about what the end of time is, and I've yet to hear a prophecy nut talk about this.

This is what Jesus said: the gospel to the nations.

Listen to this.

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

So Jesus says up front, you're going to have wars and rumors of war, but that's not the end.

But then he comes over here and he switches gears and he says, But the gospel is going to go out to the whole world, and then the end will come.

So if you want to know how you hasten the end, if you want to hasten the Lord's return, hasten the mission.

Get out there and share gospel with other people.

Make sure the world knows that Jesus loves them and he died for them and he wants to have them give them a new life.

It's not picking up our weapons and fighting in a war that's going to bring about the end of all wars.

God wants all people everywhere to get this message of his redeeming love in Jesus Christ.

This is a part that the end time entrepreneurs always leave out.

They're so focused on ginning up fear and warmongering that they forget the task that Jesus left us to complete.

They forget that we bring about the end of the world by making sure the love of God is spread to the ends of the earth.

So God didn't call his church to sit around speculating about the end times, not playing the game that so many churches play, who's the Antichrist?

No, we got a job to do.

We got to get busy telling the good news.

It reminds me of another great principle: the worst tragedies can be the best opportunity.

You see, when the world runs out of hope, that's when Christians run in.

Sometimes when you hear an end times message in the church, I know at least for me when I was growing up, it was all doom and gloom.

I was always more afraid after I heard an end time message than I did at any other time in my church experience.

But that's not the way Jesus brings it.

Jesus' return to this earth is the return of my very best friend.

Jesus' return to this earth is to make all things new.

And Jesus wants to make sure that before he returns, that the world knows his message of his great love.

And he says, once you get that to the entire world, then I can come back.

And isn't that so much like God?

God doesn't want to judge people in their ignorance.

God wants people to have that opportunity to hear the message of Christ's love and make a decision for themselves.

So the worst tragedies can be turned to the best opportunities.

But here's the thing: the church always runs in when everyone else runs away.

Because we have a message of hope.

We have a message of life.

And it brings hope in life and it brings hope in death.

When suffering comes, we ask all the wrong questions.

We ask, where's God?

Why doesn't he care?

Is he paying attention?

Does he love me?

Has he abandoned me?

Those are questions people ask that don't have any hope.

What we ask instead is, where's the opportunity?

How can I help?

Where can I serve?

What should I do?

How can I show the compassion of Christ to other people?

So, what are you going to do when the bottom drops out of your life?

The worst tragedies in your life can be great opportunities.

Some of you right now are thinking you're going through your worst moments because your boss said you're fired.

Your spouse said, I'm leaving.

Your kids said, I hate you.

Your doctor said it's cancer.

And it's easy to shrink into yourself into a wallow in misery at a time like that.

It's your opportunity to live, to believe in the one who believes in you, to discover your purpose, and to realize, understand what life is really about, because the worst tragedies can be the best opportunities.

So we live between two events.

We live between the destruction of the temple and the second coming.

And I call this the in-between time.

So let me tell you some general things about prophecy.

Do you know that Christopher Columbus, who is quoted as you know, discovering the new world, Christopher Columbus believed that through his missions, he was going to help bring about the fulfillment of this command to bring all nations to himself.

He thought he's leading a Christian army in the final crusade that could convert the entire world to Christianity.

His calculations made him to believe that the world would end in 1656.

In fact, Christopher Columbus said, there is no doubt that the world must end in 155 years.

The Jehovah's Witnesses predicted Christ would return in 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, and 1975, and then they finally gave up on trying to figure it out.

The Seventh-day Adventists got their start as date setters.

Some years back, 200 people moved here from Taiwan.

Moved here because this is Garland.

God's land.

Garland.

God's land.

That's what they said.

They came here because they believed that God was going to return to us in a spaceship to Garland, Texas, and take them home on March 31st, 1998.

They've all since moved back to Taiwan.

So, back in 1991, I was at Dallas Theological Seminary.

One of my professors, a guy named John Walverd.

He wrote a book on end times.

It's called Armageddon, Oil and Middle East Crisis.

Dr.

Walverd was seeing Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and bolstered his argument that the Middle East is the center of impending biblical prophecy.

But Saddam Hussein is dead.

Christ did not return.

And I've often wondered, did Walvard ever regret associating Hussein's name with the second coming?

You know, I grew up in a time when end times mania was really big.

There was a Christian film went around the world called A Thief in the Night.

And it was about Jesus and the rapture and coming back, and people would be left behind, right?

And after I watched that, every time I came home after school and nobody was at the house, I'm always thinking, I've been left behind.

They've all gone on to be with Jesus, and here I am, you know.

And some of you, you read the Tim LaHayes, you know, uh the Left Behind series that he did.

And you have similar trauma from that.

But without doubt, I gotta tell you, the best lesson I learned about end times, I learned at a yard sale.

I was 16 years old, loved to read.

I went into a yard sale, had a ton of books.

And one book I picked up was called The Coming Tribulation.

I couldn't wait to read about prophecy in the future.

So I picked up the book, I go home, I begin to read, and the book wasn't about the future.

The book was written about the past.

The book was written at the height of World War II, and this person clearly saw Adolf Hitler as the Antichrist.

And I'm reading this book, and I'm thinking, you know, I mean, World War II, you gotta know, of all the wars in human history, at least the ones we've been a part of, somewhere between 60 and 80 million people, most of them civilians, were killed in that war.

It is the greatest death toll of any war that we've ever been a part of.

If I lived during World War II, saw what Hitler was doing, saw the Allied forces moving against him, heard about what was happening in the Holocaust, I'd probably think this is probably the end of the world, Hitler is the Antichrist.

I mean, who wouldn't think that?

It was one of the worst times in our history.

But you see, I wasn't reading that at the height of World War II.

I was a kid, we were past Vietnam by this point.

And I looked at this and I thought, man, this guy, people probably thought he was an idiot after he wrote this book.

Because Hitler's dead, he's gone.

Look at what happened in history.

We moved on beyond that point.

And see, what I learned is this is that people who like to get into prophecy and associate current events, names with certain things like the Antichrist, what they end up doing is they bring reproach on the cause of Jesus Christ.

They end up making Jesus look like the psychic helpline.

And that's something we should never do.

We should be very careful about what we associate those prophecies with when it comes to current events.

So what I'm saying is this Christian discipleship is a call to persevering, gospel-centered faithfulness, not of fascinations with end-time speculation.

Yes, as Christians, we live in the in-between times.

Jesus told his disciples this at the time, people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

I believe in the second coming of Christ.

I believe he's coming home.

I believe he's coming to claim his own.

I believe in that with all my heart.

I know he came the first time in humiliation.

He was rejected, he was killed.

When he comes back, he's coming in vindication.

He's coming in power and he's coming in glory.

But he also reminded us of this.

But about that day or hour, no one knows.

Not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

The thing that Jesus is absolutely clear on is this you and I are never going to know the date of his return.

Even Jesus doesn't know that.

Even the angels in heaven don't know that.

So the one thing I can always be confident of is when some man or some woman says, hey, Jesus is coming back this Friday at 2 o'clock, that's the one time I can count on.

He's not going to be here at that time.

Because human beings don't know that.

Only God in heaven knows that time.

That's reserved for him.

That's not a part of our domain.

It amazes me why people still set dates and times and associate current figures with prophecy.

The point of eschatology, which is the study of last things, is not for us to predict the future, but to live faithfully in the present.

So people ask all the time, are we living in the last days?

And the answer biblically is yes.

We're living in the last days.

But you know when the last days began?

Listen to Hebrews 1.2.

But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, to whom he also created the world.

When Jesus walked this planet, it was the beginning of the last days.

We've been in the last days for 2,000 years.

Even uh Peter, when he quotes the prophet Joel from the Old Testament in Acts 2.17, he talks about we're living in the last days when the Spirit comes upon us.

So as Christ's followers, we long for his return.

But until he comes back, we've got a job to do.

When the master comes back, I want him to find me busy doing what he once done.

How about you?

I want him to find me engaged in his work.

I want him to know that I am his servant and I'm doing what he asked me to do.

So I'm going to get busy and be doing the things God wants me to do so that I am ready to meet him personally.

But here's our official position at Spring Creek Church.

As it pertains to the second coming of Christ, we're on the welcoming committee, not the planning committee.

Okay?

So when he shows up, we're all going to welcome him, but we're not planning the party, getting the kazoos, or commissioning the cupcakes.

We're not going to set it up at all because we don't know when it's going to happen.

We're on the welcoming committee, not the planning committee, but more importantly, we're on the get people ready committee.

That's the committee we're a part of.

We're not sign watchers, we're gospel proclaimers.

The last sign that the end will happen, that Christ will come in all of his glory, is the gospel being proclaimed in all the earth.

I think it's really sad that there are Christians who think that the sign of the end is war and violence and hate.

Jesus said, It's my love permeating society at every level.

And when that happens, then I will return.

He explicitly tells us that in the Olivet Discourse.

You're going to hear about wars and rumors of war.

That's not the signs of the end.

But when my word goes out to the world, that is when the end will come.

So the church has never called, uh, had been called to decode headlines.

The church has been called to proclaim good news.

So no matter what you're going through, no matter how long.

We wait.

We don't sit on our hands and do nothing.

And we don't wring our hands worrying about what will happen to us.

We get our hands busy in God's work.

We're the ones entrusted with the gospel message.

We believe that Jesus conquers evil by changing hearts and transforming lives.

Christ is waiting for the church to finish his business.

So this encourages me, encourages me so much.

Because before judgment comes, God wants the people to know you have an opportunity to avoid it.

There's always a way of escape.

And I've provided that escape in my son.

So God wants that message to be heard throughout the world.

So as Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives with his disciples, he gives them bifocal vision, the ability to see what's coming in their immediate future and what's coming in the distant future.

So he lets them see, hey, Jerusalem is going to fall.

Be prepared for this.

Get ready to flee when it happens.

And then, secondly, and I'm coming again one day.

Lift your eyes above this moment and realize that some distant future I'll return in all my glory.

It's an encouragement for the disciples to endure, to stay alert, and refuse to let their hearts be filled with fear.

So we live in the in-between time.

When the world shakes with wars and disasters and upheaval, we don't retreat into our panic or arguments.

We move toward people with love and hope.

We are on the welcoming committee.

We are the get people ready committee.

We're getting people ready for Christ's return.

Here's what I know.

And this is the best way I know to end this message.

When I was a young teenager, I had not grown up in church, and I found, we found this little Baptist church, a little country Baptist church.

And one evening, a Sunday night, the pastor gets up and talks about, here, I want to tell you how you can become a Christian.

And when I heard that message, it's like, that's what I need.

That's what I want more than anything.

Now, this is one of those churches that believed in an altar call where you come down front and you give your life to Christ.

And that's great.

I mean, I'm not, I got nothing against altar calls, but I understood a long time ago the geography of your body has nothing to do with the condition of your heart.

You can receive Christ right where you're sitting.

You can receive Christ in a bar.

You can receive him in your home.

It doesn't matter where.

It's about your heart condition, not your body's position, okay?

So when you come to Christ, what I did that night when he told me about what it meant to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, I had my best friend of the world with me, Bill Burge.

He's sitting on the end of the aisle.

I just looked at him, I said, move.

And he got out of my way, and I walked down front and I knelt at that altar and I said, Jesus, I don't understand hardly any of this.

But if you did what this pastor said, if I can give my life to you and you'd forgive me and making me a new heart and be my leader and love me for the rest of my life, then I, as best I know how, I'm going to give my life to you.

That was more than 50 years ago now.

And I can tell you this, I've been through a lot of junk, just like you have.

And of the many things I've doubted, I have never doubted that Christ came into my life in that moment, that he changed me in a real way, that I had a new hunger and a new z desire for the things of God.

And that hunger has never abated.

Even through challenges, difficulty, and doubts and confusion, that hunger to know God, to love him, and to make him known, it only gets stronger as time passes.

I want that for you.

I want you to know that you can have a no-so salvation, that you can know that your heart is safely in the heart of God.

You can know that your life is under his protection and care.

You can know that your sins are forgiven.

You can know that you can begin a new life, not in your own power, but in his power working through you.

And so, to complete the mission, I give the call to you.

If you don't know him, come to know him today.

Let's pray.

Father, I just want to thank you for Jesus' words, how timely, how true, how amazing they are.

God, we see prophecy fulfilled in history, literally, down to the very stones that comprise the building, being pushed off the Temple Mount, falling to the ground in a pile just where the Romans left them.

And God, we see that because those words are true, that we can see them and verify them in history, in archaeology, and through your word.

God, because we can see all of that, we know that what you said about coming back is also true.

We can rely on you, God, that your word is faithful, that your word is true, that your prophecy that you will return in power and glory, that's true too.

And God, our part in hastening your return is to make sure that this world knows about your love.

And so, God, if there's somebody here today who maybe for the first time ever has come to a church and they're listening to this message, and there's something within them that they don't quite understand, but is tugging at their heart, this pastor's talking to you.

God, help him right now to surrender and say, Jesus, I want you in my life.

I I don't understand it all.

But this much I do.

You must love me pretty incredibly to die for me, to make it possible for me to know you.

And so, as best I know how, I surrender my life to you.

I confess, God, I'm a sinner.

I've done things my own way, and I want to do them your way from now on.

Come into my heart, change me from the inside out.

I ask you to do that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

God bless you all.

See you next week.