The End Times

Matthew 24:16 – 37

Jesus is talking about the end of the world. Many people talk about the end of the world. I can remember being a teenager and hearing people say that the end of the world was soon. What is “soon”? Of course everyday we draw closer to the end, which for Christians is a great thing; the millennial reign of Christ, the new heaven and new earth, peace, love, joy ruling our lives, seeing the Trinity face to face, what an amazing concept. But earlier in chapter twenty four we need to see a couple of things. First, the end will not come until the whole earth hears the Gospel. Everyone in the United States has gotten excited about Israel’s rebirth (1948) because of this many of been disappoint by set dates for the Lord’s return that did not come to pass. They missed the most important sign, that every man woman and child living will have had the opportunity to accept Jesus as Lord (24:14). According to verse 12 our making it through all the junk the world will throw at Christians is dependant of our walking in and living, love. This is where we blow it, everything we do should be motivated by love, real honest, “I’m willing to lay my life down for others and God” kind of love. Not the “I’ll be your doormat”, kind of love but the “I know who God is, who I am called to be and I love you enough to live that before you,” kind of love. With that in mind we can talk about what Jesus is saying in the rest of this chapter.

The first question that comes to mind when people are reading this is, "This sounds awful, will I have to go through this first part?" If you are alive at this time the answer is, “yes”. The second is, "Is this really taking about the great tribulation or is this something leading up to the great tribulation?" There is some debate about that. I believe the great tribulation begins (according to this passage) after Jesus appearance. The good thing, we can be assured that the Spirit of the Lord will be shining brightly through this time more than ever before. It is only in darkness that lights really shine.

There will be no tricks or hidden messages to decipher. When Jesus shows up everyone will see him. In fact, they will recognize their sin because of it. You see the world is going to continue to become more and more tolerant, politically correct, and loving (sarcasm implied) except to true Christians. They will continue to legislate away the values of the Bible and sink into more of a humanistically centered mindset (this is the whole idea behind the mark of the beast, “666” the perfection of man) and a mindset away from the knowledge and love of God. It is easy to blame worldly people, but it is wrong to do so. These things only happen because we as Christians have failed to present the Gospel in a way that everyone can understand it.

I believe in God’s sovereignty but I also believe we impact when things happen. God’s desire is for all to come to know Him. Jesus died for all so our sharing the truth we know in ways everyone understands delays* the Lord’s return until everyone hears. We need to understand what we believe first and how to share it in the best way to reach people. Ask the Lord today to show you, what you need to understand better and how to explain it to the people around you in a way they can understand.

* God already knows the time when this will happen we really don’t change Him, He simply changes us to get motivated to get things done