Living in the Times When the Love of Many has Grown Cold

Greetings in Jesus' name this morning. Um, I am glad to be here, and I would invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 24. I'm going to take a little break from the Gospel of John this morning and look at this, uh, passage, um, because I think it's ap um, I mean, of course, what John is talking about, what, uh, is in the Gospel of John is also very apropos for our days because we know all Scripture is profitable. But, um, I thought that, um, John, uh, Matthew 24 might be something we want to think about. And the title of my message is "Living in the Times When the Love of Many Have Grown Cold."

Living in the time i-in the time when the love of many have grow has grown cold. I wanna read, uh, chapter 24, the whole chapter. "Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, 'Do you see all these things? Assurely I say unto you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.'

Now, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the s-sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?' And Jesus answered and said to them, 'Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not trouble, for all these things must come to pass. But the end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilence, and earthquakes in various places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to the tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he endures to the end shall be saved. And this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, whoever reads, let him understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is in the ho on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house, and let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days.

And pray that your flight may not be in the winter or on the Sabbath, for when then there will be great tribulation such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time, nor ever shall be. And lest those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened.

Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ,' are there, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Therefore if they say to you, 'Look, he is in the desert,' do not go out. Look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For whoever for wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be sh of the heavens will be shaken. Then the signs of the then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he will send his angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they will gather together w-with sound excuse me, with a great sound of trumpet, they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Now learn this parable from the fig tree. When its branches has already when its branches already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also know so you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near at the doors. Assurely I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.

But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also be the coming of the Son of Man b will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So also will be the coming of the Son of Man be.

Then two men will be in the field. One will be taken, and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the meal. One will be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Who then is that faithful and wise servant? Who his mas who his master made ruler of his house to give him food and do season. Blessed is the servant whose master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assurely I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods. But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master's delaying his coming,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkard, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint his p-portion with the hypocrites.

There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Okay, the title of my message, of course, is taken from verse 11 I mean, verse 12, and it says, "Because of lawlessness will the law uh, because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."

Now, this discourse of Christ is prompted by, by an observation or by something the apostles want to dr bring to Jesus' attention. He sees, uh, they, they are in this temple, and this is a really grand structure. Um, when Solomon's temple was built, it was very grand, and then it was destroyed. And then when the children of Israel returned from their captivity, they built again another temple. But if you remember, uh, in, in, um, I think it's in Ezra and Nehemiah, when the old people saw the temple, those who still had some memory of the glory of Solomon's temple, they looked at it and they wept because it wasn't just quite as glorious. The children from Exo were doing the best that they could, but it wasn't just quite as glorious.

And then later on, after the time of the Maccabees, um, when Herod the Great came to, to rule over, over Judea and Galilee and so on, sort of as a sop to the Jews, he tore down that temple and he built a very glorious, marvelous temple.

Um, and it and so these disciples and you can think of it in a sense, here are these, in a sense, country bumpkins from Galilee, uh, who, you know, they just have these little houses they live in. They haven't seen a lot of great things. Coming to Jerusalem is probably an amazing thing for them. And the and the crown of Jerusalem is this beautiful temple sitting on top of the mound, and they are just astounded by it. It is glorious. It's wonderful. It's fitting the majesty of the God they lo they serve.

And, and they are sh they're saying, uh, "Look at this, Jesus. Isn't this great?" And Jesus g Jesus crashes their enthusiasm. All right? He's he, he, uh, takes the wind out of it and he says, "Do you not see all these things? Assurely I say to you, not one stone shall be left there upon another that shall not be thrown down."

Wow.

I'm sure they were startled because one of the things I think as we go through the Gospels, we can see, they come with all their preconceived ideas about what the kingdom is about. And slowly, bit by bit, they start to get glimmers of what it's all about. And Jesus, in a sense, has to reeducate them. He has to get them away from their own preconceived ideas about the kingdom and what it's going to entail and so on. And for them, the glory of the temple was part of it.

All right? And for them, it was very hard for them to, to, to perceive the kingdom being a separate entity or being something bigger than the, the than a national, uh, people with a with a city as their a city on earth as their capital, with a physical temple as the focus of it.

It's hard for them to see that. And Jesus is crashing their mis-misperceptions here by saying, "Not one stone will be left on top of another." So whatever you think the kingdom of God is about, it's not gonna be wrapped up on this on this building sitting on top of this mountain in this particular place in Jerusalem.

Okay?

All right, so they got the point. They got that idea. Okay, but they come to Jesus and they say to him they a they c uh, um, now he went to the Mount of Olives. The disciples came to him. It's just them. And they ask him three questions. "Tell us when these things will be. When will the temple be destroyed? When will the time come when not one stone of this temple will be left on top of another?"

Okay? "What will be the sign of your coming?" That's the second question. "What will be the sign of your coming?" The third question is, "What will be the sign of the end of the age?" So there are three questions here Je that they ask Jesus. "When will the temple be destroyed? What will be the sign of your coming? And what will be the sign of the end of the age?"

And those are the questions that Jesus is answering in this discourse. Okay? And it's important for us to understand that those are the three questions. All right? And I also just want to look at a couple terms that are being used here. This term, "What will be the sign of your coming?"

That is the Greek word pararosia. And it has the idea of coming, but it has something more than that. It has actually the idea of being present. "What will be the sign of your being present here?" Um, Paul talks, for example, uh, I think it's in Corinthians where he tells them, uh, you know, he wants to be present with them. The term there is pararosia.

Okay? So it has this, uh, this idea of coming and being present. Okay, so what will be the sign of your coming? Not just that, that he's coming and leaving, but he's gonna come and he's actually gonna be here. Now, of course, they already have him there.

Okay, they al they already have him there. Um, and, uh, Peter refers to that in 2 Peter 1:6 where he says, "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye were eyewitnesses of his majesty."

Okay, in that particular case, I think Peter is talking about Jesus' first coming when he was present here on the earth. And he said, "We were wi we were eyewitnesses of that coming, of that of him being present here."

And somehow already they do have this sense that Jesus is going to be leaving and that he is going to be coming back and he's going to be present. And so they're asking, "How will we know when you're coming back?

How will we know when you will once again be present here?" That's the question they ask. And then they say, "What is the sign of the end of the age?" All right? And in the Bible, uh, we talk about this present age. Paul refers to it as this present evil age. And we also have the idea that in the last days are and, and sometimes there's you sort of get a sense that there are the latter days, which are kind of the end of the last days. All right? You have all these different kinds of way of things. But we are living in this present evil age. And so they're asking, "What is going to be the sign of the end of this present evil age and the beginning of the age to come that we're looking forward to that is tied up with Jesus coming back and being present?"

All right? So they wanna know, "When's this gonna happen? Or how can we know when it's gonna happen?" All right? Now, I want you to, to notice something here in this passage. The term pararosia is an event. Okay? It's an event. It's something that uh, it's, it's, it's a su it's a noun. Okay? It's his presence right here.

And the this passage also talks about coming as a verb, as an action, something that's that is, is, um, is being done. And that is not using the term pararosia. Okay? That is using the word coming. Okay? It's a very common word. And some ti so some of the times when it talks about Jesus coming, it's not necessarily talking about his pararosia. We'll see that when we look at, um, at verses 29 and, uh, through, um, 34.

But Jesus says, "Take heed that no one deceives you." And time and time again, he says here, "Don't be deceived." Well, that suggests to me that the h the all these questions about his coming and about the about the destruction of the temple and about his coming and about the end of the age is something that it is possible to be deceived about, to think that something's happening when it's not happening or to be not aware that something is happening when it is happening.

And so he gives us these, these things to keep in mind, the these things to observe. All right? And the first thing he talks about is that there will be there will come people who will claim to be the Christ. There will come many who will claim to be me. They will claim to be the Christ. They will claim to be God's anointed one. All right?

And they will carry people away. They will deceive people. And people will fall away because of these deceiving persons, these false Christs, these antichrists. Okay?

And that has happened. There are numerous, numerous cases of that happening in the course of the last 2,000 years. And then he says, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not trouble for all these things much come to ha pass." But notice what he says, "The end is not yet. The end of the age is not yet.

There's gonna be wars and rumors of wars." And then he goes on to say, "Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines. There will be pestilence and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of sorrows."

Okay? Now, Jesus ever since Jesus has came the first time and returned to sit at the right hand of his Father and we await for his pararosia, the interlude has been a time marked by wars, rumors of wars, pestilences, earthquakes, destruction, devastation that's been part and parcel of the human experience.

And it's part and parcel of our experience today. And one of the things that happens is that when we're in the midst of that and when we're experiencing it, and particularly if we haven't experienced it for a while or if, if in particular if it's pushed away from our immediate experience and it comes close to us, we begin to feel, "Oh, things are getting worse."

Or this we've never had it this is this is unusual. I mean, COVID-19 is really interesting. I-it's it has really ups it has kinda turned things over overturned things. That's, that's things on their heads. We're, we're having to cope with things we haven't ever had to cope with in our experience here, right here.

Okay? And we think, "Oh, the world's coming to an end. It is coming to an end." Okay? It is coming to an end. But in 1918 and 1919 with the Spanish influenza epidemic, 50 million people died. Just pro d-during the during the, the war that, that followed off on the heels of, there were also tens of millions of people who died simply by the by the by the, um, consequences of the war.

When President Wilson decided that our country needed to get involved in that war, he said, "This is gonna be a war to end all wars. It was gonna be a war to make the world safe for democracy." This was, in his mind, a righteous cause. And that's what why he was pushing us to get into it. And we got into it. And we were only in it as far as the actual fighting was concerned for about six months, for only six months. And we lost several hundred thousand men in that six months.

And the other countries had been involved with it in four years. They lost millions.

In fact, Peter Hitchens says in his book, The Rage Against God, which I really mech recommend you reading, is that World War I was the thing that destroyed Christianity's credibility in Europe because you had all these ministers and clergymen and, and religious forces saying, "This is the war to fight to make the world a better place."

And in the trenches, the soldiers learned differently. Okay? Now, you would have thought we would have they would have learned. But what followed? 20 years later, we have another world war in which millions of people have died. The 20th century is estimated to be the bloodiest, most warf warfield century of our of human existence. But for us but for us here in this country, that has all been kept at arm's length. Okay? Certainly, yes.

During World War II, World War I, there were young men who went over who were killed. But right here in this country, we did not feel that impact. Now, in Europe, they did. In Asia, they did. And so on. They felt the impact of the devastation of war.

Okay? I remember almost 20 years ago some of you are, are have haven't been around since then. But in 2001, when the World Trade Towers collapsed, our country thought that was awful. And it was awful. It was awful. But and our response to it was amazing.

And we've gotten our country gotten involved in a war that's lasted till this very day. But again, it's being kept at a distance from us as far as our own personal experience. And so we get this feeling that things are just okay.

But for a moment, that thing came home. And I remember I remember when that happened in the New York Times, the secular most secular pr uh, newspaper in the country had full-page ads about God bless America. People got really religious for a short period of time. And they were certain that God was on their side.

This is so astounding, so amazing.

Now, if you lived in some other parts of the world, it wasn't amazing nor astounding nor unusual. Okay?

And my point here is that what Jesus said was gonna be the experience, the human experience: pestilence, famines, earthquakes. Do you know today, famine and in fact, there's this real concern about with all the thing with COVID and the focus on that and, and the lockdown o uh, of services and goods and so on that people are going to go hungry.

And some people estimate more people will die of hunger and of starvation, particularly in third world countries, than will die of COVID. Famine has been something that has s has been with us this in this se in this last century in a big way. A lot of it is caused by the fact that societies are disrupted by war.

Okay? What does Jesus call this? He says, "It's not the end yet. It's the beginning of sorrows. We are living in the time of the beginning of sorrows."

All right? And then he talks about what will our experience be. "They'll liver you up into tribulation and kill you. And you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake." Okay? There will be persecution. Again, again, we live in this bubble called the United States of America.

And we live in a society, in a country that guarantees us certain liberties, certain rights, the ability to, to gather together. Listen, the governor of our state, when he started when he when he issued his pr his orders about, about social distancing, about how many people could gather, what was the exception he made?

Religious gatherings. There was no limit on that. Okay? Now, I don't know what some other states did. But you know, there isn't any other country in the world that has done that. Okay? That hasn't happened. And so that gives us, I think, the sense of false security because the persecution has been pushed to the side. That makes us think, "Well, but if we go elsewhere? If we go to China where the government is working very hard, very effectively to squash Christianity? They pass rules that say nobody under the 18th can go to church, can go to a church gathering.

They are insisting on, on monitoring what ministers preach and to make sure it lines up with Communist the Communist Party, um, uh, party line. We haven't experienced that here yet." Okay? Now, we are experiencing something. I mean, I, I think that you we're feeling maybe that some of this is croaching in. But part of what's happened, though, is that we have lived in a society that, in a sense, has been so friendly toward Christianity that when it has and it's beginning to get less friendly. It's beginning to get less friendly.

All right? We begin to think, "Oh, we're being persecuted." Well, it is getting less friendly. And less friendly can turn into lesser friendly and to write down hostility. And that may indeed happen. That may d indeed happen. But we still live in a time when we can do what we need to do without any limitation, without any fear of reprisal.

It's time to buy up the time that we have and to take advantage of it. But the, the, the threat of wars, the threat of, of famines, the threat of pestilence, the threat of earthquakes and you think about it, the natural disasters. It seems like every year we have hurricanes sweep through the through, um, and cause massive destruction. We hear of earthquakes here, earthquakes there. Now, part of the reason is, is because we have better information these days. All right? You can't do any nothing can happen without you knowing about it if you wanna know about it.

There's always been earthquakes. There's always been, been hurricanes and so on. But now people are aware of them all. And of course, they cause destruction.

All right? These are the beginnings of sorrows. But the important thing, I think, for us to focus on what Jesus says here is, "Because of lawlessness and because of lawlessness will bound will abound. The love of many will grow cold."

This I see as the key danger we are facing in our society today: the lawlessness. Now, we can look at the riots and think about that being that we see and so on being a matter of lawlessness. We can even look at, uh, policemen, uh, who are doing brutal things they shouldn't be as an example of lawlessness. And they are all that. They are all that. But I would like to suggest to you that there is a general lawlessness in our society that wants to throw off any kind of restraint and has exalted the individual and individual gratification as being the greatest and finest good.

I was reading an article this morning, um, not in conjunction with this. It's just I had something on my desk and I hadn't read that before. I was mean to. And it w it was called The Ascendancy of Eroticism. It was written by an Italian philosopher, um, and he talked about how today, today, modesty is abnormal.

Modesty is abnormal. People think there's something wrong with you if you want to be modest. It's abnormal. It's no longer the normal thing. Now, he, he didn't think that was a good idea. And he was trying to explain how this, this, uh, uh, came to pass. Now, I haven't finished the article yet, so I have to I can't give you the whole j but I just thought about that. Modesty is abnormal.

And he said it's not only not only is, is modesty considered to be abnormal, it's considered to be bad. It's considered to be bad.

You know, it says that they have called good evil and evil good. That's what lawlessness is. All right? And one of the things now, and notice what he says here, "Because lawlessness abounds. The love of many grow cold." Whose love is growing cold?

It's those who profess faith in Christ. Their love is growing cold. Why? Because they have allowed the lawlessness of our society, this whole movement to uh, throw off restraint and to exalt the individual's gratification as the greatest good. They've exalted that. And we are being impacted by that.

We are being impacted. It's in the air. And we breathe that air. So we do. And, and I think about it even in, in relationship to our plain churches. One of the things I have noticed is that and, and you know, and I, I get around a bit and I talk with a lot of people. It's part of my job. All right? But I have noticed that all of our plain churches are dealing with this problem. They're dealing with the problem that this that the lawlessness of our society is invol is, is promoting. They're dealing with the impact that that is having on our communities.

Some are dealing with it effectively. Some are not dealing with it effectively. Okay? And I and I will just tell you, I'm 60 years old this year. Okay? There's some of us here who are older than that. All right? There are people like Brother John and Marvin and Ronnie who grew up who grew up as young men during a time in our in the Mennonite Church where there was a wholesale departure from what the scriptures tea taught and what was a what was right and what was good.

And we heard the arguments then. "You have to be loving and accepting. You have to major on mo on the major things and not on the minor things."

"Well, that's just culture." We heard all those things. And I will just tell you, when I hear those, those kinds of things uh, things being, um, expressed today by a generation that really didn't understand what their fathers had to do to say no to that, "We're not going along with that." And because they said no to it and they weren't gonna go along with it, they preserved a heritage for us.

Now, I'm talking about that, um, for myself, you know, spiritually, not physically. Okay? Because, you know, you know what my back that's not my background, uh, physically, biologically. But because some people were willing to say no to the worldliness that overtook most of the Mennonite Church and preserved a faithful remnant, I could be part of that too.

And anybody who comes into it and accepts that heritage, it's their heritage by faith just as much as it is of those who grew up with it. And sometimes I think those who grew up in it don't understand what have been has been given to them.

They don't understand how much they have been blessed. And they can play they sometimes leads them to, to treat it w-with to go treat it with a sort of fast and loose with it and just kind of kind of sit back and, you know, it doesn't matter.

It does. We are living in a lawless age. And this is not the time to be playing around with the world and everything the world offers us.

For example, back then, one of the issues was the TV. And people realized, "If we let the TV in our homes, what is it going to do to us? Is it going to help us in our walk with God?" "No, it's not."

Others said, "Oh, well, what does it matter? There are good things on that TV. You just have to look at the good and, and turn it off when it's bad and so on."

That was a fool's argument. Okay? That was a fool's argument. The ones who looked at this and said, "This is bad news," they were right. It was bad news. And if you wanna see what the result of this of lawlessness is when people began to tear down the things that allow then allow that allow the world to come in into their communities, there are examples in this valley of that. And they're not the worst examples of it. So they aren't.

We face other challenges today. And the interesting thing is we face a challenge that is similar to the whole television and then the radio question. We face the question of the internet. And there's, I think, a presumptuousness that says, "Oh, we can control this. We can handle it. We can turn it off. We can do it. And we can just regulate it." Well, we can. We can. There are ways of doing that. Okay?

But I just am going to say that if the TV was bad news, YouTube is worse.

Sure, there's lots of things we can do with it. There are lots of things that may even help with spreading the gospel. But it's not gonna be something that's gonna stand us in good stead if we let that thing in our homes. It's not gonna work.

We're going to see a tearing down and we're gonna see a growth of lawlessness. And the result will be the love of many will grow cold. And we're seeing that. We're seeing that. The love of many are growing cold.

I think that we are on the cusp or maybe we're on the uh, already into a new day of apostasy that's impacting our plain churches. And just as back in the 1950s and '60s and '70s, there were men who stood and said no to that. And they were accused of being, being narrow-minded, of being unloving, of being ridiculous, being hide-bound, being focused on culture rather than the important things. And we will be accused of the same thing.

Okay? When we li when you live in a society in which the gratification of the individual is the highest good and we allow that concept to enter into our communities, it will destroy us. It will destroy us. And that's the that's the challenge we're facing today.

But notice here, Jesus says, "The end is not yet. We are in the beginning of sorrows." Okay? We're in the beginning of sorrows. But he says, "He who endures to the end will be saved." And he has this other thing. He says, "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all the nations and then the end of the age will come."

All right? Now, that's kind of a general overview of what's happening. Jesus then next focuses on the first question: What will be I mean, when will, um, when will the temple be destroyed? Well, the nice thing about this is that we know exactly when that temple was destroyed.

It was in AD 70, about 40 years after Jesus said this. All right? In fact, if you go to verse 35, 34, um, and says, "I surely I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place."

There, I think he's specifically referring to his answer to the first question: What will be the sign? Not one stone left on top of another, the temple will be destroyed. It happened in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.

Okay? So that's kind of the boundary we have here. We know that happened. So he says here, "Now, when you see the abomination of desolation, what's that?" Well, that is referring back to a time of the Maccabees when the Greeks took over, over, uh, Judea and they actually took in they went into the temple and sacrificed a pig on the temple in the altar there. And it desecrated the temple.

And after the Maccabees took it back over, they had to cleanse the temple and so on. You can read all about that in the books of Maccabees. Very interesting reading, by the way. Okay? And Daniel had predicted that. And so he's saying, "This is gonna when you see that happen again, you will know that that is going to be the sign of what I'm talking about."

Okay? And he says, "When you see that happening, when you see that happening, don't stay in Jerusalem. Flee to the mountains. It's gonna be a bad time if you're if you have a wife who's pregnant or she's nursing because, you know, it's a little hard to get around. Um, that donkey is not gonna go fast enough or it's gonna be a little harder to get up in those mountains.

It is gonna be a time of tribulation." And if you read Josephus and, and his account of the destruction of the of, of Jerusalem, the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem by, by the Roman armies, um, it fits what's being described here.

All right? In fact, it's interesting here. It says in verse 28, "For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together."

The Roman legions carried on their standards an eagle at the top. Okay? And there were legions surrounding Jerusalem. The legions gathered around Jerusalem with their eagle standards there. Okay? They were gathering around the carcass of Jerusalem and they overtook it. And those things went into the temple. And the temple was destroyed. Now again, he's saying, okay, when this is happening and the and you again, you can read this in Josephus, the accounts. You know, they were hoping, well, the Jews were hoping, "We're surrounded by one of the mess this is really a good time for the Messiah to come and deliver us from these folks." It didn't happen. But there were stories about the rumors, "There's a guy out here.

There's a guy there. There's a guy there." And Jesus said, "Don't be deceived. That's not me. That's not me." He said, "The coming" and there's here it's the pararosia. "The coming of the Son of Man will be like lightning that flashes from the east to the west across the sea." And you know what that across the sky, you know what that's like. You've seen that, haven't you? You've seen a bolt of lightning, a big bolt of lightning that just flashes all across the sky. And it lights up everything. And you know it happened. And then comes this great thunder. It's not gonna be something it's gonna be something everybody will see.

You're not gonna doubt where the mess when the Messiah comes, when Jesus comes again, okay, it's gonna be obvious and nobody will, will mistake make a mistake as to whether he's here or whether he's not. So don't be deceived about these false pro-Christ.

And then he goes on and talks about, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be dark and the moon will not give up its life. The stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heaven and then all tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet. And they will gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to another." Now, that's a very interesting passage.

All right? And it's a particularly interesting passage when you go down to verse 34 and it says, "These things will happen within this generation." Now, there's been different ways to, to kind of define generation. People have done some rather clever things with that and so on. But in reality, there's only one actual definition of generation.

It's a period of time lasting about 40 years. Okay? You go through the scriptures, that's how it's, it's used. All right? It, it's talking about the lifetime, about a lifespan of a of a person. Okay? And so when he says that, okay, when he says that, we ha and we look at the destruction of Jerusalem, we have to conclude that what he's talking about here in verse 29 and, uh, to verse 31 is talking about something that happened.

All right? So what could it possibly be talking about? Well, this image, uh, and, and some of you might not accept this, but I'll ask you to entertain this idea with me for a while.

This kind of language, I think, is talking about and, and we see, uh, I'll try to point out some places in elsewhere in the scriptures where we see this. I think it's referring to the cosmic battle that is taking place in the heavens.

And stars, moons, sun, they can be, uh, sometimes literal. Okay? The physical stars, sun, moons we see. But they can also stand for those principalities and powers in the heavenly places. Okay? Angelic powers, sometimes demonic powers. And one of the things that's interesting too is that oftentimes governments are connected with those angelic powers.

One of the one of the interesting, almost ironic things about how the New Testament looks at government is in Romans 13, servants of God appointed to maintain order. Okay? That's one, one aspect of it. But also, it also talks about governments being controlled by demonic forces that help to that can help to advance the cause of the evil one.

And that there is that behind this all is a cosmic battle, a battle in the heavenlies. Okay? Between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, between God and Satan and his minions. And, um, this term, um, the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, uh, that is that's the same term. Often the term power in this case is a is dynamis which is often more commonly used to talk about miracles, about the power of the Holy Spirit and stuff like that. But it's also in a number of different places simply referred to spiritual powers.

Okay? There's another word that can be translated like that. And first, um, in Colossians 2:15, it talks about having that Jesus having disarmed the, the, um, principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them. And how did he do that? He did that in his death and in his resurrection.

See, one of the things that I think we forget is that what Jesus did here on earth, that behind all that was this great cosmic war that had been going on. And he won the battle. He won it. He won it.

All right? The prin the principalities and the powers that are somehow connected even with our whole governing structure, with the whole society that is corrupted, that is, is ruined and marred by the fall. And part, uh, part of the task that God is about is reclaiming those of some of us away from that. You know, Paul talks about that we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, of God's dear Son, Jesus Christ. That's the job that God is about. All right?

Um, in Zechariah 9:13 to 14, it, it uses this kind of language also in somewhat of a figurative way. "Against you, sons, O Zion, then the Lord will be seen over them. And his arrow will go forth like lightning. The Lord God will blow the trumpet and go with, wi wi with the whirlwind from the south." And there he's talking about, um, he's talking about the, the judgment that God is bringing.

And behind the judgment they're experiencing in a physical way is this is this cosmic battle that's going on. And it's all described in these very ki kind of, um, ways that are connected with suns darkening, moons darkening, stars falling. And of course, we know that stars sometimes are used to refer to the angelic host. So when the stars fall.

So I think that what has happened what happened there in Jerusalem with the destruction of Jerusalem was more than just the destruction of Jerusalem. That was all part and parcel of a cosmic battle that was going on. And notice here what it says.

Okay? "The Son of Heaven Man will appear in the heaven. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a great sound of trumpet." Zechariah 9:14 talks about the Lord of God will blow the trumpet and the whirlwinds will blow.

And, um, and they're gonna in that case, blow against Greece. It talks about, uh, the chastisement of Greece for its, its sinfulness against Israel of its treatment of, of, of Israel. So we have that kind of language. What I see pictured here is that there was also happening a cosmic battle. And Jesus won that cosmic battle even as Jerusalem was destroyed.

All right? All the people will mourn. What is the first step in repentance? Mourning. Mourning for your sin. Recognizing your undone condition. All right? They'll make a great sound of the trumpet. I think that is symbolic of the proclamation of the kingdom of God, the proclamation of the gospel.

And then it says, "He will gather together from the four corners, from all directions, his elect, bringing them out of every tribe, tongue, kindred, and nation." And we know, we know that the destruction of Jerusalem was the major event for the church that it had been it had done it already. It started to do that already. But with the destruction of Jerusalem, the church very quickly entered into the time when they were drawing people from all corners. And it became no longer a Jewish Christian church predominantly, but a Gentile church predominantly.

Okay? So I'd like to suggest to you that what we're seeing here is, is a cosmic battle that was being won. And Jesus says, "Learn this parable. When you see it, when you think tree, when it when it buds, you know it's gonna be time. Surely I say to you, this all is gonna happen before this generation passes." And like I said, we do have this nice handy date of AD 70 when what he's describing here happened.

Then he goes to the second question, "The sign of your pararosia. What is the sign of your coming? What is gonna be the sign of your presence right here? You know, you're returning your presence right here." Jesus says, "The angels don't know."

He says, "I don't even know. But only the Father in heaven has kept that for himself." All right? But he says, "This is what it's gonna be like before I come." All right? He says they're gonna be giving him marriage and marriage. It's just gonna be like the days of Noah. Things kept going. Noah was, was preaching a gospel of repentance. Most people almost everybody ignored it. Okay?