Say What? The End?

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

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

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.