Could Jesus Come Today? B

You see the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. You've already seen the collapse of the stellar bodies. Everything is moving into chaos. And the whole calendar goes crazy. The tides will go crazy.

And the sum of it is in verse 35. Heaven and earth shall come to an end. As we know it, heaven and earth will end. The earth that we know, the heaven that we know, will cease. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Albert Einstein once said, I never think of the future. It'll come soon enough. Well, you can choose to think lightly or not at all about the future, but being ignorant about what's ahead can have devastating eternal consequences.

So I urge you to consider a few questions. Why do we know that Christ will return to the earth? How soon will He return?

And what's going to happen when He comes back? For a glimpse into the future to see where history is headed, stay here as John MacArthur continues to address this question, could Jesus come today? And now here's John with today's lesson. Matthew 24, beginning in verse 32. Now learn a parable of the fig tree.

When its branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So likewise, ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. He gives this parable and its explanation in verses 32 to 35. And I want you to look at it.

It's marvelous. And I want you to see four elements as it unfolds. First, an uncomplicated analogy, an uncomplicated analogy, verse 32. Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When its branch is yet tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So what the Lord is saying is very simple in this uncomplicated analogy. When you see the leaves come forth in the spring, you know that the coming of summer is near and there will be soon a harvest.

And since they would perceive the harvest to be the second coming, the coming of God's judgment, they would very easily understand the intent of what the Lord is saying. So the uncomplicated analogy leads secondly to an unmistakable application, an unmistakable application, verse 33. So likewise ye...he says...when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near at the doors. You say, what is the antecedent to all these things? Well, it's all the things that he's just talked about.

What are all those things? The birth pains of verses 4 to 14, the abomination of desolation of verse 15, the need to flee because of great tribulation in verses 16 to 28. And then in verse 34, further in an unmistakable application, he says, Truly I say to you, and that's for emphasis, to emphasize the importance and verity of the statement, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.

Now the question comes immediately at this juncture. What generation is he talking about? What generation isn't going to pass?

Well, to pass means to die, to come to an end. The generation will not come to an end until all these things be fulfilled. What generation?

Very important question. And we've had a lot of different answers. Let me see if I can filter you down to the answer that I think is the right answer. What generation?

Here are some of the options. Some suggest that this generation refers directly to the disciples. But what he is saying is, you disciples will not die before the second coming. You will not die before the second coming. You say, but that's not true.

Right. And those people who hold that view say Jesus was wrong. It was a good guess, but he was wrong. But we shouldn't be surprised that he was wrong because he even admitted, they say in Mark 13 32, that the day nor the hour knows no one, not even the Son of Man. So they say Jesus even confessed his own ignorance. Listen, Jesus confessed there that in his incarnation, he said he did not know. He chose not to have that knowledge. But it's one thing to choose not to have knowledge.

It's something else to propagate something that isn't true. And Jesus in his incarnation may have restricted his knowledge, but he didn't lose his connection with the truth. That is an unacceptable view. And if Jesus was wrong about this, folks, grab for the nearest skyhook, because there's a good possibility he was wrong about a whole lot of other stuff also.

We reject that view totally. Jesus is not wrong. He is not mistaken. He is not uttering ignorance at all. In his incarnation, he put self-imposed limits on elements of his own deity and the expression of his divine knowledge.

But at no point in time did he ever utter anything out of his mouth that was not absolutely true. And there's no reason to believe this generation means this little group of disciples, because if that's what he meant, he could have said, you will not pass away until all these things be fulfilled. There's another view.

So that's an unacceptable view. View number two is that it refers to the disciples, but the thing he's talking about being fulfilled was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. In other words, they say this whole chapter is all about 70 A.D., that it doesn't describe the second coming. By the way, this is a very popular view and many of the commentaries you'll read will hold this view, that this whole thing is a description of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and that Jesus is saying you're going to be here, this generation right now, you disciples and the people of your time, are going to be here in 70 A.D. when all this happens. That also is an unacceptable view because you cannot confuse the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. with the second coming of Jesus Christ. And they're not asking him about the coming of Romans, they're asking about the coming of Christ. When they said in verse 3, what shall be the sign of thy coming, they didn't ask what's the sign of the Romans coming. And when he answered them, he answered their question.

And their question had to do with his coming. Plus, there is no way under the sun that you can fit all of these events into 70 A.D. When in 70 A.D., for example, was the sun darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars all falling out of heaven and the Son of Man appearing in heaven and gathering the elect from the four corners of the earth?

When at that particular time did all the tribes on the face of the earth mourn? No way. Absolutely impossible. And in 70 A.D. it was the Romans against the Jews. It wasn't nation rising against nation and kingdom rising against kingdom and earthquakes and pestilences all over the world.

No. It's impossible. It cannot refer to 70 A.D. so that also is an unacceptable view. And by the way, the people who wanted to refer to 70 A.D. just make everything symbolic. They just say, well, it seemed to the Jews like it was that bad. Or it seemed to them in sort of a hyperbolic way that it was that sort of far-reaching.

So that's an unacceptable view. The third view is that it refers to the Jewish race. It refers to the Jewish race. That what he says when he says this genea, he could refer to a stock or a kind or a race of people, and that's true. He's saying this generation of Jews, this Jewish people, will not die until all these things come to pass. In other words, he is predicting the survival and continuity of the Jewish race until the Second Coming. Now that's true. The Jews will survive till the Second Coming and I wouldn't want to go into an alley and fight a guy over this view.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to go into an alley and fight a guy over anything, but certainly not over this view. But again, that's not a good interpretation here for a couple of reasons. The reason it comes to my mind is that it doesn't say Israel. And if the Lord was talking about Israel, it would seem to me He would say that. I mean, He's not...it would be a rather off-handed way to refer to the covenant people to just call them this generation. Instead of saying my people, it would seem to me He would have said my people shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.

To call them this generation seems to be a rather indifferent way to speak of the covenant people. And why would He even bother to say they're going to survive until the kingdom when that wasn't even a question in the minds of the disciples, right? I mean, they believed in the survival of Israel because they believed in the everlasting nature of the covenants, right? I mean, they believed that God made covenants He was intending to keep. And so they weren't even asking, is God going to bail out on all this? That isn't in their mind here.

They just want to know when it's going to come. Why would He say, well, the Jews will survive until then? It's obtuse to the issue. So it's possible that view is possible.

It's possible, but it's not the one that I would choose. There's a fourth view. That is that genea, or this generation, means God rejecting, Christ rejecting kinds of people. In other words, the kinds of people who rejected me, the kind of people that we've been talking to all day in the temple that hate what I stand for, this kind of God hating, Christ rejecting phony religious people are going to be around until the second coming.

That He's referring to that. There will be the continuance of evil Christ rejecters. Genea can mean that.

It's used, for example, in the Old Testament, Greek Old Testament, Septuagint version, for the word dor in Hebrew, which sometimes is translated this evil generation or this righteous generation. So they say it means this evil generation is going to be around until Jesus comes. So don't expect things to get better. There will always be wretched, God hating, Christ rejecting people among the Jewish race and elsewhere all the way to the second coming. Again, that's a possible view. That's a possible view, but it's vague and it seems that it's not consistent with the context, nor with the issue in the hearts and minds of the apostles. They're not concerned about whether evil people are going to survive till the second coming.

They're concerned about when is it going to happen and what are the signs. There's a fifth view, and this is probably the one you've been exposed to. That is this, that the fig tree is Israel. And by the way, that doesn't say that either in the Scripture. It just says here's an illustration of a fig tree. Somebody along the line says the fig tree is Israel. Jesus didn't say that. So now you have stopped the analogy and you've got an allegory. And you have to tell us what the elements of the allegory refer to. So we say then that the fig tree is Israel and when it puts forth its leaves, I've heard that is the statehood of Israel in 1948. Now have you heard that view? Okay, that's sort of a popular view that when Israel becomes a state, well, in the first place Jesus didn't say that and how in the world the disciples would have ever perceived the statehood of Israel in 1948 is pretty far-fetched.

And you have to remember this. Jesus is illustrating for them the things He's teaching them. He is trying to make clear what He has taught them.

He is not trying to say something to them that is so infinitely obscure that it could never be perceived by anybody who lived before 1948. Plus, how can we conclude that the life pulsing through the fig tree and pushing out leaves is the statehood of Israel? Certainly if we're thinking, if we would use it that way, it would have to be if the tree was Israel and it started to put forth leaves, we would assume that it was life coming into Israel, right? And life coming into Israel would be spiritual, not physical. And Israel, though alive today, is one of the most secular nations on the face of the earth. So it doesn't make a good allegory of the spiritual revival of Israel. And why would the Lord talk about only the statehood of Israel as if it were spiritual life pulsing through the nation? And who's to say that the fig tree refers to them anyway when the context has nothing to do with the survival or restoration of the nation Israel but has to do with the second coming of Jesus Christ? So I think that also is an unacceptable, though imaginative, view.

What's left? My view. Now my view is...you know, and I went into this pretty open-minded because, you know, I've thought about a lot of these things.

And I was just reading and it's so clear to me what He's saying. When the branch is tender and puts forth leaves, you know the judgment is near. So, when you see all these things...all what things? The leaves.

And what are the leaves? The birth pains, right? The sign in the heaven.

The attendant signs. All the things He's been describing through the whole chapter. When you see all those things, you know that judgment is near. And this generation...what generation?

The this has to modify the people who see all those things. This generation that sees all those things will not end until the rest is fulfilled. In other words, what He's saying, they're wondering how long is that going to take?

And when we see the sign...the signal rather of the abomination of desolations and start to see the other's birth pains and then all of a sudden the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, how long is that going to take? And what He is saying is the generation that sees all these things will not die off until everything is fulfilled. In other words, He's emphasizing again the concept of the pushing forth of a leaf. When you see the leaf, you know summer is near. Summer is near.

That's the whole point. Or the idea of the birth pains. Birth pains come in rapid fire at the very end just before birth.

So, if you see the leaf, you know you're going to be alive in the summer. If you see the birth pains, you know you're going to be alive at the birth. The generation that is alive, the generation that sees these things, the generation that experiences the phenomena of signs and wonders at the end time will not die off until all these things be fulfilled. In other words, when it comes, it will come fast. In fact, we learn that it is a period of seven years called the time of Jacob's trouble, but the real tribulation period lasts how long? Three and a half years, 1260 days, or 42 months, and that's reiterated again and again by Daniel and John. It is a very intense, condensed period of time.

And the generation that is alive when it begins is going to still be around when it ends because basically it lasts just beyond three and a half years. And that's what he's trying to say. Look back at verse 15, for example. When you see the abomination of desolations, verse 16 says, then run to the mountains.

And he says run. Verse 21, why? Because a great tribulation is coming upon the earth.

Get out as fast as you can get out. And the point is it's going to come fast and furious. And it's going to be ended by the sign of the Son of Man in heaven because it says in verse 29, immediately after that three and a half year period, the sky begins to fall and the Son of Man appears and He's ready to establish His kingdom. And He just summarizes that so beautifully. So He says, those of you who see the signs will see the end.

Got it? That's the clearest, simplest, I think unmistakable application of what our Lord said in effort to make things clear. Anything else is unclear. That's extremely consistent with the context. So, and by the way, does no injustice at all to the Greek text.

The matter of aute and its antecedents is completely covered. Now I want to ask this question. Who is this generation? What generation will be alive then? What generation will be alive to see these signs? Now among Christians there are two views.

Some say the church will be there. That's a post-tribulational view. In other words, we will be taken out of the world after the tribulation. So we'll see all this stuff.

We'll go through it. Some of us will get slaughtered in the process. We'll still go to heaven, but we'll get slaughtered. Some of us will survive, but we'll go through it and be post-tribulation raptured and we'll go up and meet the Lord in the air and come back down for the kingdom.

It's sort of like just a loop is all. Others believe that in a pre-tribulational rapture, that is before any of this, we are taken out and we spend the time with the Lord and come back at the end of the seven years. Now some years ago I did a series on will the church go through the tribulation and you can listen to the fuller explanation, but let me just give you for this moment a reason or two why I believe that we will not be there.

We will not be that generation. That is the redeemed church. Some of you may who don't know the Savior because you'll not go in the rapture, you will be that generation who will see those things. And depending on whether you're saved or not and how much you know about the Bible, you'll either know what's going on or you won't know what's going on. But the church, I believe, will not be here. I believe we will be taken out. And I'll give you some reasons. I'm going to just fire them at you rather rapidly.

That's not my intent to get into great detail on them. Reason number one, the church in the book of Revelation appears in chapter 2 and chapter 3. In fact, it is the theme of chapter 2 and the theme of chapter 3. And our Lord speaks to the church and purifies the church and writes letters to the church and messages to the church and then ends that whole section at the end of chapter 3 with the idea that He stands at the door and knocked, ready to come. You move right into chapter 4 and the church is in heaven. The church is in heaven in chapter 4. And the church is in heaven in chapter 5.

Chapter 6, the tribulation breaks out on earth. And from chapter 6 through 18, the whole story of the tribulation, there's never one mention of the church. Never one mention of any local church or of how the church ought to act. The word church isn't there. So the absence of the church from Revelation 6 to 18 seems to me rather significant, especially when they've been on earth in 2 and 3 and they're in heaven in 4 and 5. Another point, there is an absolute absence of literature in the New Testament to instruct the church about how to endure the tribulation, about how to conduct itself in the tribulation. The church is not mentioned in Matthew chapter 24 as such and it is a unique group of people from Pentecost to the rapture that I'm speaking of.

In a sense, in a larger sense, we're all a part of God's redeemed people. But the unique church is not mentioned here in Matthew 24 and there's no warnings given to us about the tribulation and how to deal with it and how to live through it and how to handle the Antichrist kind of thing as a church and so forth and so on. In fact, the only church that I can find during that period is called the Mystery Harlot Babylon, the prostitute, the false church, which is to be destroyed. Thirdly, the rapture seemed to me to be absolutely pointless. The rapture is described in 1 Thessalonians 4 where we're caught up to be with the Lord in the air and never are we with the Lord.

That seems pointless to me. If it happens at the second coming, why bother to go up and come right back down again? I mean, if He's coming to earth with His saints to reign and rule, why doesn't He just come down and we'll meet Him right here when He gets here?

How long does it take Him to get from up there to down here? What's the point? It eliminates the point of the rapture. Why does Paul make such a great point about the rapture if that's all there is to it? That's it.

And let me ask you another question. If all the believers are raptured up at the second coming and come back with Him, who's left on earth alive to populate the kingdom? In other words, when the Lord comes, the Bible says He will destroy all the wicked. And if He comes down and raptures all the redeemed, all the redeemed are raptured, all the unredeemed are destroyed, there's nobody left on earth to populate the kingdom except spiritually glorified beings. And the Bible says there will be children born during the kingdom.

Who's going to have those kids? You know, there's got to be people there. There have to be people going in because they'll produce a whole generation. They'll produce a whole population, many of whom will not even believe and will start a rebellion at the end. Remember that in Revelation?

So somebody's got to be alive. But if the rapture occurs at the same time as the second coming, then all the redeemed are out and all the unredeemed are destroyed. There's nobody left to populate the kingdom. So this generation refers to the people that are alive at that time that were not taken in the rapture because they did not know the Savior, so they'll be Jews and Gentiles. But during the time of the tribulation, what happens? God takes 144,000 Jews according to Revelation 7.

They witness all over the world. Jews are saved. Gentiles are saved so that they can't even be counted. So you have a redeemed group and an unredeemed group and that unredeemed and redeemed group of Jews and Gentiles that have not gone in the rapture because their salvation came after that or they've never been saved. They're the generation who will see these things come to pass. And when they start to see them come to pass, they'll not die off until all those things are fulfilled. I think that's what He's saying. Now let's look at an unprecedented alteration and wrap it up with verse 35. An uncomplicated analogy, an unmistakable application, and then an unprecedented alteration. Verse 35, heaven and earth shall pass away.

Stop at that point. That's a flat statement, period, paragraph, tremendous, unbelievable statement. Heaven and earth shall pass away. You see the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. You've already seen the collapse of the stellar bodies. Everything is moving into chaos. We already learned, didn't we, back in verse 22 that God's going to shorten the daylight hours during the day and the whole calendar goes crazy.

The tides will go crazy. And the sum of it is in verse 35, heaven and earth shall come to an end. As we know it, heaven and earth will end. The earth that we know, the heaven that we know will cease.

Now just exactly all that that embodies is very, very difficult for us to perceive. We've read much of Revelation and many things written by Isaiah, the prophet and others. So we know that heaven and earth are going to pass away as we know them and in their place is going to come a new creation, a new creation. Finally Jesus said this, heaven and earth shall pass away but My words...what? ...shall not pass away.

That is an unchanging authority. And He closes the parable with an unchanging authority. My word shall not pass away. In Luke 16, 17 He said heaven and earth will pass away and it's easier for them to do that than for one tittle out of the law to pass away. He said not one jot or one tittle in Matthew 5, 18 will pass away till all is fulfilled. In John 10, 35 He said Scripture cannot be broken. And so if we believe the Word of God, we believe this is going to happen.

It's going to happen. And the question we ask you is are you ready for that? To go with the Lord's raptured people, to be in His presence or do you find yourself staying for the holocaust that follows? Seeing that you know all these things, what manner of persons ought you to be, Peter said. You ought to be godly and holy. You ought to be looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. You ought to be growing in grace. You are a redeemed people looking for the Savior.

That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, wrapping up his lesson today on grace to you called Could Jesus Come Today? John, you know there are so many things in life that we prepare for, weddings and the birth of a child and even the short trips we take, our vacations, we plan. And of course, John, after hearing a lesson like today's, the idea of being prepared for a trip takes on a weightier meaning because now I'm thinking about how I don't want to be caught unprepared for the trip to heaven.

No, if you're going to get ready for anything, that would be a good thing to get ready for. You know, John really sums that up in a beautiful way. He says that we're headed that way in John 5. The whole human race is headed toward a resurrection.

I don't think people understand. Everybody rises. Every human being who's ever lived is going to rise in the resurrection of the just or the resurrection of the unjust, John 5, and they're going to face the judge and the eternal sentence of hell or the eternal bliss of heaven. People live their lives as if they had whatever future they want to have.

Maybe that's part of the idiocy of the prosperity message. You can sort of speak your own life now into existence, so why not speak your future life into existence? They don't understand that they are accountable to a perfectly holy God who has determined their eternal destiny based on their response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think everybody needs to live in the light of eternity. One of the things that we benefit from in society is a threat of death. I mean, I can imagine people in the Ukraine, and we've been there many times, and I can imagine they're thinking about eternity more than they normally do.

You know, when somebody's dropping bombs on you, people need to have a real view of the brevity of life, and it's appointed to men once to die, and after this the judgment. And understanding that it's eternal, you better want to be in heaven, and you better find out how to get there. And of course, there's only one way through Christ. But what helps, I think, in elevating the desire for heaven is to understand the glory of heaven. So I just want to mention the book, The Glory of Heaven. The Bible says a lot about heaven. There are a lot of silly, foolish books written about people who go to heaven that obviously are fabricated. But the Bible does say a lot about heaven, and you need to know what heaven is like. And this book will open up everything that the Scripture says about the glory of heaven. We'd love to get a copy of The Glory of Heaven in your hands.

That's where you want to go. You're going to die, and you definitely want to be in the glory of God's heaven. That means you need to come to Christ. But maybe an attraction, if you haven't come to Christ, would be to know what heaven is like. So order a copy from grace to you.

That's right. The truth about heaven may be quite different from what you think. To see all that awaits Christians, get John's classic book, The Glory of Heaven, when you contact us today. You can call us here at 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org.

The Glory of Heaven shows you what the Bible says about your future home, and what it will be like, what you'll do there for eternity, encouraging stuff. To pick up a copy for yourself or for a friend, call us at 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. And as you tune in each day, remember, friends like you make these broadcasts possible. Your support allows us to take the clear teaching of God's Word to people who may not have access to it anywhere else. To partner with us in gospel ministry, write to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or call us at 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. And of course, thanks for your prayers. Your most important ministry to us is to uphold us in prayer. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, or check your local listings for Channel and Times. And then join us when John shows you the path to anxiety-free living. For the series, he begins Monday with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.