Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 15)
Part Two – The Timing of the Second Coming
Chapter 2 – What the Gospels Say
Other Signs To Be Fulfilled, Too (continued)
Let’s review what we’ve learned to this point from the Olivet Discourse: As to when these things would happen (the question of timing the disciples first asked), Jesus could not have been clearer. As they preached the gospel throughout the world there would be wars, famines, and earthquakes. As the movement of disciples grew, they would be subject to persecution and even betrayed within the ranks (Judas, in a matter of days, would foreshadow this dynamic). The destruction of the temple would mark the beginning of the most intense period of their tribulation. (And if anyone should doubt that these dark times would qualify as “great tribulation,” as Jesus called it, let him read the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who gives gory details of the horrors that came on Jerusalem.) After that, the false leaders would appear
everywhere in the Christian movement, tearing up what the apostles had worked so hard for…and then Messiah would come. We have confirmation in the New Testament that these false teachers did actually gain prominence (Jude 1:4-19; 1 John 2:18; 4:1). Though none of the disciples could know the day or hour, all of them could be sure that (excepting those who died as
martyrs first, by His choice) if they endured to the end, they would see it. No soldiers going into lifelong battle could have asked for clearer marching orders.
Now some have said that Jesus’ coming was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D. You have seen that this is not so, for Jesus said the temple’s destruction was only the sign of worsening tribulation before his coming, and therefore was preliminary to, and not a climax of, His coming. People who see the destruction of Jerusalem as the Second
Coming, however, are at least on the right track, honestly acknowledging that the destruction of the temple is a key piece of the timetable. Jesus said the subsequent tribulation would be so bad it would have to be cut short. By “cut short” do you think He meant a period of time longer than 1,946 years? This is just how many years have elapsed since 70 A.D. If that were the actual
timeline, not even Methuselah (who attained to the age of 969) had he been an apostle, could have endured to the end!
The disciples rightly recognized the destruction of the temple as the sign of the end for Israel. Jesus explained to them exactly where it fit into the timetable of events. How can we today ignore so obvious a fact as its destruction? Hardly a week goes by that you don’t see a picture of the Muslim structure that dominates the temple’s former site and the shred of a wall (called “the wailing wall”) that sits humbly beneath it. All history testifies that Jesus’ prophecy about the temple was fulfilled. How can today’s “prophecy experts” ignore such realities and say that Jesus’ prophecies are meant instead for our age or beyond?
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