Dive deep into the end times prophecies as Dr. David Jeremiah kicks off the series, The World of the End. This episode focuses on the prophecy in Matthew 24, where Jesus speaks about the signs that mark the end of days. Experience the profound insights of the Olivet Discourse as Jesus reveals the future to his disciples, setting the stage for what is to come.
The Bible contains many prophecies about the Earth’s final days, but one of them deserves special attention because it comes from Jesus himself. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah begins the series, The World of the End, focused on that prophecy in Matthew 24. Learn to live with confidence in these turbulent times as David introduces today’s message, The Prophecy.
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And today we’re going to open our Bibles to the book of Matthew in the 24th chapter, and we’re going to read the words of Jesus concerning the future. The title of this book tells the story. We may not be at the end of the world, but we are at the world of the end. And we’re going to talk about how Jesus’ prophecy shapes our priorities. During these next days, we’ll take you through every chapter of this book and every word that Jesus spoke, and we’ll talk about it together. I hope that you take the time to sit down and write a note, let us know how Turning Point is touching your life, enclose a gift of some size to help us, whatever the size you can do, and then ask for your copy of this book. Here then is the prophecy, part one, Matthew 24. You’ll know the words when you hear them. Let’s begin. During a 2007 interview with USA Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a shockingly inaccurate prediction. He said, there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to gain any significant market share. He told reporter David Lieberman, no chance. Ballmer seemed to base his prediction on the notion that iPhones would be interesting to technology nerds, but not to the general population. He said, I want to have products that appeal to everybody. It’s safe to say Steve Ballmer was wrong. Our world is filled with a lot of people who make predictions, prognosticators and prediction makers, always ready to share their opinions. In fact, in the world today, there are two million podcasters 6 million journalists, 375 24-hour news networks, and 5 million ministers, all of them ready to get your attention and tell you what’s going on now and what’s going to happen in the future. We hear so many voices, so many arguments, so many speculations. Everybody’s got a theory. Everybody’s got a slant. I’d like to suggest to you that there’s one slant we should trust more than any other. One take we ought to prefer above all the other takes. One opinion we ought to value more than all other opinions. Amid the thousands of shrill voices that are being heard today, we need to listen to one voice, and that’s the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you say, he doesn’t have anything to say about the future. It may surprise you to discover that one of the longest messages of Jesus recorded in the New Testament was all about the future, all about your future. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there is a section referred to as the Olivet Discourse. It is so called because Jesus answers the questions of four of his disciples, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, while sitting on the Mount of Olives. Now, Olivet was the very place from which Jesus would soon go to heaven, and it’s the same place to which he will one day return. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I get the chills every time I’m there. But even today, it’s one of the most breathtaking views in all of the world, especially when the morning sun casts its glow across the golden city with its haunting walls, limestone buildings, ancient monuments, its steeples, its spire, and its minarets. dominating everything in this 38-acre powder keg known as Al-Haran al-Sharif to Muslims and the Temple Mount to the Jews and Christians. This is Mount Olivet. And the message that Jesus delivered to his disciples on that historic day is the second longest message recorded of Jesus in the Scripture. The only longer one is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 through 7. That was a public message given at the beginning of his ministry. This is a private message given at the end of his ministry just to four disciples. My friend and the former pastor of this church, Tim LaHaye, was a lover of the Olivet Discourse. He wrote this in one of his books. The Olivet Discourse delivered shortly before Jesus’ crucifixion is the most important single passage of prophecy in all of the Bible. It is significant because it came from Jesus himself immediately after he was rejected by his own people. and because it provides a master outline of end times events. So in these days that are before us, we’re going to talk about the Olivet Discourse. It’s in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. Now, in order to get this right and understand it properly, we need to get the setting of it. And the setting of this prophecy is in Matthew, where we read in verse 1, chapter 24, that Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. To put our Lord’s great prophecy in its proper context, we have to feel the gravity of the moment. This didn’t just happen in a vacuum. This happened in the middle of a bunch of stuff that was going on in Jesus’ life. This was Passover week, and it was the last week of his life on this earth before he went to the cross. On Tuesday morning, Jesus goes to the temple and And there he delivers a blistering rebuke of the Jewish leaders and of the Jewish nation. I may want to just insert here, the last week of Jesus’ life was a week of great disappointment to him. He cleansed the temple during that week. You remember what he did? He went in and cast out all the people that were merchandising the gospel, selling stuff where they shouldn’t have been, ripping off the Jewish people. He sat in the temple and watched as people came by and cast their money in the treasury, and he made the comment that they were giving out of their abundance, and he pointed out this one beautiful woman who came and gave out of poverty all that she had. He walked by a fig tree that wasn’t bearing any fruit, and he cursed it and said, that tree will never bear fruit again. What was he saying? he was saying that if you claim to be something, it should be evident in your life. He didn’t like fake religion. He had come and been presented to the Jewish people and they had rejected him. And so, In one of his last speeches, he excoriates the leaders and the people that were a part of that rejection. I’m not going to read you what he said, but I’m going to read you what John Walvoord said about what he said. As Christ dealt with spiritual, theological, and moral apostasy in his day in Matthew 23, he delivered the most scathing denunciation of false religion and hypocrisy to be found anywhere. He calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites no less than seven times. He calls them blind five times. He labels them fools twice. He calls them whitewashed sepulchers, serpents or snakes, the children of poisonous vipers, and tells them they are in danger of going to hell. It would be difficult to find words more biting than these words of Christ that he used to characterize the religion of his day. You know, if I’ve learned anything from this particular passage of scripture is I’ve learned how awful it is for Jesus to see us playing at church. How it so grieves the heart of Jesus to see people acting like they’re something they’re not. And while the righteous anger of Jesus was expressed in his fiery words against these people, the fact is, and all of us who are pastors or any of us in leadership, we understand this, though he was very angry at their conduct, he loved them. He loved these people. These were his people. And so at the end of the chapter that precedes the portion of Scripture we’re going to study, Jesus prays this prayer. He says, “‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” So it was after all these things that on the Tuesday of Passion Week, just three days before his crucifixion, Jesus, the scripture says, left the temple. That’s not just a description of his departure from the edifice. It’s a descriptive term that’s saying he turned his back on those who had rejected him. He walked away. He walked away from the temple. He left the house desolate. All of that was symbolizing the withdrawal of his presence. And I hope you can visualize this scene and appreciate the moment as our Lord brokenheartedly descended the staircase of the temple. leaving the temple, which should have received him and promising that he would never come back again until they were ready to say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And here are the disciples. when Jesus is walking away in Matthew 24, coming to Jesus at this poignant moment in his life and saying this, teacher, look at the magnificent buildings we have. Look at the impressive stones in the wall of the temple. That’s like you and I, messing everything up in our lives, not living for the Lord and allowing it to come into the church and destroying the inward nature of the church, but going around bragging about what great buildings we have. And we have some nice buildings. Do you know the Lord doesn’t care about our buildings? In the discussion Jesus is about to have with his disciples, he will speak as a prophet. He will accurately forecast the future of the Jewish people and predict some things that will affect us as well. and you can count on it, what Jesus says will happen will happen. In the prologue of the book of Revelation, the apostle John gives us one of the most profound reasons for listening to the prophetic words of Jesus. John was on the Isle of Patmos on the Lord’s day, and he saw the one to whom we should listen, and this is how he described his encounter. He said, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead, but he laid his right hand on me saying to me, do not be afraid for I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. Write these things which you have seen and the things which are and the things which will take place after this.” Now, let me ask you a question. Who else do you know who has one foot planted in eternity and the other foot planted in time? Who do you know who actually lives in the present and lives in the future both at the same time? That’s what the Bible tells us about Jesus. He lives in the eternal present, which means he lives in the past. He lives in the present. He lives in the future. Time is of no value to the Lord Jesus Christ. He created time. He lives above time. What he is saying to his disciples is this, I want to tell you what’s going to happen when you get to where I already am. No one who has ever lived or will ever live has a grasp of the future even remotely as firm and complete as the Lord Jesus Christ. As God, he sees the whole parade of history from the beginning to the end. We see little snatches of it. The Almighty sees it all, and Jesus Christ as God tells us what is going to happen in the future, and you know how he knows what’s going to happen in the future? He’s already there. He lives in the future. Nobody can do that but Jesus. When Jesus says, this is what’s going to happen, you can count on it, he knows. And Jesus in the subject of the prophecy said to his disciples, do you see all these things? You want to talk about the temple? Let me tell you about the temple. I say to 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, Lord, when is this going to happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? And this is a really critical part of this whole scenario. Because the disciples hear Jesus say that this temple is going to be destroyed. Jesus responds to the disciples’ awe of the temple by sitting down with them on the Mount of Olives. In that culture, sitting down was the posture a teacher would take before he was to give an important lesson. This is the final teaching recorded for us in the Gospel of Matthew, and it is Jesus’ most important lesson on the world of the end and what it will be like when that time comes. From the Mount of Olives, Jesus and his disciples would have had a staggering view of Jerusalem and the temple complex. Jesus sitting there with his four disciples and they’re looking over across the valley at the temple. And they’re asking Jesus the question, what does all this mean? It was the place and the moment that Jesus uttered this unbelievable prophecy. First of all, he makes a profound prediction. He says, disciples, do you not see these things? And he points to the temple. I say to you that not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. What was Jesus doing when he made that prediction? If we’re not careful, we miss the meaning of it. What Jesus is about to do is to file his credentials as a prophet. You know, the Old Testament says that you know a prophet by whether or not what they prophesy comes true. And if it doesn’t come true, he’s a false prophet. And you don’t get a 90% or an 80%. You have to be 100%. In the book of Deuteronomy, it says, he who says something that is not true is not a prophet. And in the Old Testament, they stoned that person. Well, Jesus knew exactly what would happen and when it would happen. And he spoke with prediction and precision. And he said, this incredible facility that you’re looking at across the valley there, it will be flattened, it will be totally destroyed, and it will never appear again the same way. Now, I have to ask you to stop for a moment and think about how absurd that must have seemed to the disciples. I mean, Herod’s temple complex was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The reconstruction process had begun 15 years before Christ was born and had been going on for more than 40 years. It was not actually completed until AD 64, and even at this stage, it was a magnificent temple built of stones that weighed many tons, some of them 20 feet long and 12 feet high. These stones were carved out of stone quarries that were underneath the city of Jerusalem, and they were cut precisely to size. And with great labor, using rollers and earth inclines to raise them to their proper height, they were fitted into the buildings of the temple, Listen to this, there was no mortar between the stones of the temple. They were lockstep together and carved out in such a way that they were built one upon another. And those great buildings were built in that way. Herod was trying to rival Solomon’s temple. because Haggai said that the latter temple would be greater than the first one. And he employed 10,000 skilled workmen, 1,000 priests acquainted with fine work in wood and stone. And he doubled the original area of the temple mount by constructing huge supporting walls. And the temple complex became a source of tremendous pride for the Jews. If you wanted to talk to a Jew about something that turned their crank, it was the temple. And Josephus wrote, it is the most amazing structure of all we have seen or heard, both in its construction and scale and in the lavishness of every part and splendor of its holy places. The temple was one of the most expansive, majestic, important buildings in all of the world. And here is Jesus saying, it’s all going down. And you have to wonder what’s going through the minds of the disciples. Has Jesus gone off the deep end here? So the precise performance of this is pretty amazing. Fast forward to AD 70. The Roman general Titus built wooden scaffolds around the walls of the temple buildings, a tactic never before used. He piled the scaffolds high with wood and other flammable items, and he set them all on fire. And the heat from the fires grew so intense that the temple structure was weakened. And the Romans were able to dislodge the giant stones from one another, prying them off one by one and throwing them into the valley below. And soldiers sifted through the rubble that was left on the temple site, trying to find any of the gold that had melted into the ruins. All that remained on the site was flattened, exactly as Jesus had said. In less than 40 years after Jesus’ prediction, the temple was destroyed, and today the location is a wall compound within the old city of Jerusalem. It’s the site of the Dome of the Rock to the north and the Alask Mosque to the south. In the southwest stands the western wall, the retaining wall of Herod’s Temple Mount.” One of the keys to understanding Jesus’ words about the world at the end is to understand that his prophecies are always fulfilled exactly as he said they would be. Nothing illustrates that truth more powerfully than Jesus’ prophecy concerning Herod’s temple. In this prophecy, because both the prophecy and the fulfillment have already happened, we are able to verify the accuracy of Jesus’ words. We see what he said would happen, and it happened as he said it would, down to the last stone. What then should we think about the things he has predicted that are yet to be fulfilled? We can have every confidence, men and women, that precision will be in the phrase that describes the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy. If Jesus said it, you can take it to the bank. If Jesus said it, it will happen. You know why? Because he’s already there. He’s already there where he says we’re headed. And that’s when the disciples asked Jesus the next two questions. They said, tell us, Jesus, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? In Matthew chapter 24, verses 4 through 14, Jesus begins to answer the last two questions that were put to him by the disciples. And he says, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen just before I return. Why do you need the temple story? You need the temple story to validate the fact that what he’s going to tell you is true. How do you know it’s true? Because he said it, it happened, you can witness it. He’s going to say some things now that haven’t yet happened. Some of them are beginning to happen right now. The reason why the temple story is so important is because you need to understand this is not conjecture. This is not Jesus’ best guess about what’s going to happen. This is Jesus saying to you and to me, if you want to know what the future looks like, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen before I return. And listen carefully because I’m not kidding. I’m not making this up. This is the truth. In Matthew 24, verses four through 14, Jesus says, take heed that no one deceives you for many will come in my name saying I am the Christ and they will deceive many and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, 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 and pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Well, we have to put a bookmark there because we don’t have enough time to finish this up. We’ll conclude this discussion tomorrow here on Turning Point as we continue Look at Matthew chapter 24 and the first three verses, the words of Jesus concerning the future. Hey, friends, I want you to know that we are going to Alaska in a short time, and we’d love for you to come with us. This trip to Alaska, July 12th through the 19th, is aboard a very beautiful ship with special guests Michael Sanchez and Uriel Vega. We’ll have such a wonderful time studying the Word of God, seeing Alaska, enjoying fellowship with each other, and encouraging worship. And we’re going to have a great time. If you have been looking for a way to get away and enjoy some time of relaxation and fellowship, this could be it. I hope you can come with us. Go to davidjeremiah.org and find out all about it. Get registered and plan to be with us when we go to Alaska in July. See you next time. Thanks for listening.
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For more information on Dr. Jeremiah’s series, The World of the End, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected. Our monthly magazine, Turning Points, and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That’s davidjeremiah.org slash radio. or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s informative and inspiring book, The World of the End, with a special Be the Answer bookmark, yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah’s decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, The World of the End, on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
