In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. David Jeremiah explores the profound prophecies of Jesus as detailed in the Olivet Discourse. Discover how these ancient words illuminate our understanding of future events and shape our priorities today. Dr. Jeremiah delves into the specifics of the signs that Jesus predicted, revealing their relevance and significance for our modern world. As you listen, you’ll gain insightful perspectives on how these prophecies impact both the spiritual and practical aspects of life in times of uncertainty.
You might not know what the future holds, but if you’re a Christian, you know the one who holds the future, and that should put your fears to rest. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his series, The World of the End, with a closer look at Jesus’ prophetic words and what they mean for the world of tomorrow. Listen as David introduces the conclusion of the prophecy.
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I’m sure most of you who have been hanging around the church for any length of time have heard of the Olivet Discourse. And that’s what we’re talking about during these days. The words of Jesus on Mount Olivet. that outlines the future like nothing you can imagine. Prophecy students say this is the most unbelievable section of Scripture. These words from Jesus are the most important words you can study if you’re interested in the future. what Jesus said is going to happen and how we can expect the future to unfold. We’re tackling that issue right now, and we’re right in the middle of our discussion of the first three verses of Matthew 24. We’ll get back to that in just a moment. But first, let me remind you that you can receive the resource for the month of April, which is the book which is behind this series. The World of the End is a 241-page hardback book that that was written to help us understand how Jesus’ prophecy shapes our priorities. This book is available to you for a gift of any size. We’ll send it to you right away. Be sure to ask for it when you send your gift. And thank you for being a part of the support ministry of Turning Point. Today, we conclude what we started yesterday, our Lord’s introduction to His incredible words in Matthew chapter 24. The Olivet Discourse is one of the great passages in all of the Bible. And you can’t study it too much because every time you read it, every time you study it, it seems like something new is available to help you comprehend what is happening in the future. And as you know, the future casts its shadow before it. So what happens in the future affects what is happening today. And so as we listen to the words of Jesus, they not only have future importance, but everyday importance as well. Watch for that as we talk about it together here on Turning Point right now. 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. First of all, he makes a profound prediction. 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. 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 mox 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. 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 four through 14, Jesus begins to answer the last two questions that were put to him by the disciples. And he says, I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen just before I return. And 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.” Jesus said that in the end times, before he comes again the second time, there will be deception by false Christs. There will be dissension between the nations of the world. There will be devastation worldwide. There will be deliverance of believers to tribulation. There will be defection of false believers, and there will be declaration of the gospel to the whole world. Jesus said, if you want to know what the future looks like, here it is. These are the things that are going to happen. Now, I’m not going to break them down today, but I’m just going to ask you this question. Do you see any signs of any of that stuff happening? I mean, you look around today and you say, wait a minute. Wait a minute, I think there’s something about that in the Bible. And then you go to the Bible and you read it, and it’s kind of astounding, really, that you would have a book in your hands that could tell you what’s going on and what’s happening today. These are the signs that we will talk about, things that Jesus say will happen before he returns, some of which are already starting to happen. the setting of the prophecy and the subject of it. Now, let me give you the secret to unpacking all of this. This is a really interesting thing. The secret is found in the eighth verse of the 24th chapter, where Jesus says, all these are the beginning of birth pains. Now, this is a good illustration. In order to help us understand how these predictions will unfold, Jesus employs a graphic picture and one that may have special significance to many women. Jesus says that the events of Matthew 24 are the beginning of birth pains. Now, birth pains at first, from what they tell me, I don’t have any personal knowledge of this, but what they tell me is they aren’t intense at all. I’m told these initial stirrings are really more uncomfortable than painful. A woman may feel one such pain and then not feel another for 20 minutes or more. But as birth approaches, the pain gets a little more intense and the pains get closer together. And when you reach a stage where the pain is very intense and those pains are gripping you with regular frequency, you know you better get to the hospital or you’re going to give birth in the backseat of the car. Paul uses this very illustration in his letter to the Thessalonians. He says that the return of Christ will come as a thief in the night, unexpectedly, quietly, and suddenly, and he uses the same figure. Listen to these words from 1 Thessalonians 5. But concerning the times of the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction comes upon them as labor pains upon a pregnant woman and they shall not escape. So what Jesus wants us to know as we study this section of the scripture is this, the things that are going to happen in the future will not be all of a sudden experiences. They will be like birth pains with the frequency and intensity of each gradually increasing. You’ll be able to watch it, you’ll be able to see it, you’ll be able to experience it, even as we are now. And they’re becoming more frequent and more intense. So the setting of it and the subject of it and the secret to it, now let me give you the scope of all of this. Wilbur Smith is a prominent scholar of the previous generation and he called the Olivet Discourse the most neglected words of Jesus Christ. From my perspective, he is right and I think I know the reason why. And I’m not going to try to get too theological here, but I hope you will bear with me. Some who have written about this passage of Scripture have buried it in history. They want us to believe that everything Jesus said to his disciples on the mountain that day, all of it was fulfilled in AD 70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem. Several of these writers have tried to convince us that the second coming of Christ actually happened in AD 70. So if you do the math on that, we are living today somewhere in the middle of the eternal state of heaven. And if you think that’s possible, just watch the news tonight and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. Actually, some theologians have said that the entire Sermon on the Mount has already been fulfilled. Not possible. Others believe that Jesus’ words have nothing to do with today’s world. They say that prophecy concerning world conditions does not kick in until after the rapture. When I was a student in seminary, this is what I thought. And this is what many Christians think today. The result of such thinking is this. If the words Jesus said don’t affect me, then why should I study them? Why should I care? But the words of Jesus recorded for us in three of the four gospels are for us today. They are for me and they are for you. One pastor that I read said, the disciples were not learned men and Jesus’ purpose was to give them clarity and encouragement, not complexity and anxiety. The intricate interpretations that are sometimes proposed for this passage would have left the disciples utterly dumbfounded. It is preferable to take Jesus’ words as simply and straightforward as possible. As I have studied this chapter, I am convinced that we have in the first eight verses a picture of what is happening at the end of this present age, introducing us to the period of time after the rapture. And we’ve limited our study for this particular series to the first 14 verses of Matthew 24. You say, well, why don’t you go through all of the chapters? Because the first 14 verses are the verses that affect us now. We can study the rest of that and be up on it if you want to. But right now we’re studying the first 14 verses. These verses describe our Lord’s words that apply to us at this critical hour of history. These verses describe what life will be like on this earth as we move toward the time of the rapture. But here is the key to our application It is true that the signs of Matthew describe the first three and a half years of the tribulation period. In fact, they line up perfectly. Let me just say this. If you study the book of Matthew chapter 24 and you study Revelation 6, where Jesus unfolds through John the apostle, what’s going to happen in the tribulation? It’s uncanny. They’re exactly the same. Jesus agrees with John and John agrees with Jesus. And they tell us these are the things that are going to happen. But after the rapture, those signs will be solidified. And during the first half of the tribulation, there will be the things that we read about a few moments ago. They will happen. But they will not begin to be felt as birth pains are felt after the rapture. They will begin now. In the days building up to our Lord’s return for his own, we will begin to feel the pain of those signs that we’re feeling right now. For instance, one of the signs is Let no one deceive you. We’re going to talk about that. Have we ever lived in a day when deceit is so rampant? And you know what the problem is? You don’t even hardly know what deceit is because nobody knows what truth is. If you don’t know what truth is, how do you know what deceit is? We live in a time of increasing deceitfulness, increasing lack of truth. All of these signs that Jesus said would increase as we move toward the end, it started. I’m not gonna predict when Jesus comes back. I don’t have the right to do that. The Bible tells us not to do that. But it also tells us we’re to be aware of the signs of the time. In fact, one time Jesus scolded some people because they didn’t do that. We need to be aware of what’s going on. And I’ll give you the reason for that in just a moment. As I mentioned earlier, what Jesus shared in the Olivet Discourse is not some ivory tower approach that has no impact on our lives. The significance of this prophecy is this. First of all, Jesus wants you to know about the future. Are you aware of that? He always was preparing his disciples about the future. In Matthew 24 and in Mark, he says, see, I’ve told you what’s going to happen so you would know. Unless we have a firm grasp of what the Bible teaches us about the future, we cannot properly handle the strains of everyday life. If we think that what we’re going through right now is all there is and there’s nothing coming that’s better, even when you know what Jesus says about the future, if you’re not careful and you watch too much television, you can get really depressed. The Bible passage about the return of Christ is written to us for a practical purpose, not to help us become better theorists of history, but to motivate us to obedience. Number two, Jesus not only wants to teach us about the future, he wants to transform us for the future. In his ministry, he wants us to be ready for the future. These things he said, I have spoken to you that you should not be made to stumble, John 16, 1. In other words, if you grasp what I am telling you about the future, you won’t fall all over yourself. You won’t get into a panic mode when some of these things start to happen. You won’t say, oh my goodness, what’s going to happen now? Because you already know what’s going to happen now because you read about it in the Bible. And you know that God is up to something and that there’s going to be a great moving across the globe as we move toward the end of time. The days are coming when the hand of God will move in astounding ways. And if we know the word of God, We won’t be taken by surprise. We will find ourselves not in panic, but in excitement about what we see the Lord doing. He wants to teach us about the future. He wants to transform us for the future. And then most of all, he wants us to trust him with the future. And I think this is the most important thing for us in all of this. Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. I don’t know where we’re going in this nation. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Ukraine. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the political environment in which we’re in, which is so depressing. I don’t know what’s going to happen with socialism that’s creeping into our country. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our schools. But here’s what I do know. I know the one who knows. I know the one who’s in control. I know the one who sits above it all, who’s not surprised, but Jesus is in control of it all. He’s on top of it all. It’s interesting that Jesus never did really answer the disciples’ questions fully. For instance, when they asked him, when are these things going to happen? He never told them when the temple was going to be destroyed. He told them it would be destroyed, but he left that up to them. And so a few years later, it happened. Jesus is not obligated to give us the answers to every single question we ask. What Jesus wants us to do in the midst of all the uncertainty we face today is to learn how to trust him and to believe that while I don’t know the answer, I know Jesus and Jesus knows the answer and learn how to trust in him when it looks like everything’s going to hell in a handbasket. Jesus is still on his throne. Nothing has caught him by surprise and nothing will ever catch him by surprise. He is the sovereign God and he is in control and you can trust him. You can trust Jesus. In the midst of what’s happening today, in the midst of what’s going to happen tomorrow. Pastor Mark Mitchell told this story as a picture of our lives in the world of the end. He said, several years ago, I was running a marathon. I trained hard to be as prepared as possible, but there’s a part of a marathon that’s always hard to prepare for. A marathon is just a little over 26 miles, but experts tell you never to train for more than 20 miles. So that’s what we all did. And that means that the last six miles of a marathon are no man’s land and you’re up for grabs. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. You may hit a wall. You may have cramps. You only know that it’s going to be tough. But somehow you’re going to get through it because you’ve trained to get there the best you know how. And you will be ready and you will be able to cross the finish line. When we read a passage like we read in Matthew 24, it’s like we’re reading about the last six miles of a marathon. We know it’s going to be hard. We know there’s nothing we can do now to replicate what it will be like then. But Jesus has told us what to look for and how to be prepared so that we can cross the finish line. We prepare by resting in the fact that God is sovereign and whatever happens to us is part of his plan. We prepare by trusting that he’s creating opportunities for us to bear witness and he’ll give us the words we need when we need them. We prepare by learning to endure hardship so that when greater hardship comes, we don’t fall by the wayside. We prepare by refusing to allow ourselves to buy the lie that the things of this world are the most important things and give up the eternal things for things that will pass away. We prepare by praying each day for God’s strength to face whatever the last six miles of life may hold for us. When I write a book or do a series, sometimes I get interviewed, and you can always count on one question, always at the end of the interview. It goes like this. Dr. Jeremiah, if you would want people to take any one thing from this, what would it be? I have anticipated that question for this and for the rest of what we’re going to talk about. And here it is. It’s frustrating as it can be not to be able to do anything about all the things that are wrong. All of us want to be a part of what’s going on so we can try to make it better. But ladies and gentlemen, here’s what you need to understand. All that’s happening together around us today, all of it, obviously we need to do what we can. But we’re not here primarily to make that all better. That’s all here to make us better. That’s all happening so that we can be strengthened and become good soldiers of Jesus Christ. God is allowing these things to build us into the kind of people we need to be. We don’t know what the last six miles of this marathon is going to be like, but we know it’s not going to be easy. So let’s get ready. Let’s do our homework. Let’s do our study. Let’s stay strong. Let’s don’t get blown off course by all the craziness that goes on around us. Let’s understand that we may not be able to control the things that are wrong, but we can control the space that’s in us called our heart and soul so that we can be the people of God no matter what happens. And we will be those people if we stay strong and we allow God to be the center of our joy. That’s my prayer for all of us. I can’t change the world. I can change David Jeremiah because God is at work in my life and he’s at work in your life. He wants you to be better than you are. He wants me to be better than I am. He wants me to be stronger, to be more knowledgeable, not to be panic-stricken when something happens I don’t understand because God is in control and we have a great God. And listen to me, when he says it, it happens. When he prophesies it, he fulfills it, just as he did with the temple. Nothing falls short of the sovereignty of God. And he’s already told us in his book what the last chapter is. One day we’re going to stand with him with our hands up high in victory, and we will be across the finish line. But in the meantime, God is calling us to be his people in the transformational time that we’re going through. And that’s my hope for all of us. that we won’t be victimized, but that we will be victors in Jesus Christ. Amen. You know, some people tell me they don’t like to study prophecy because it’s all about way out in the future and they’re living their life every day and they want something for today. Whenever they say that, I know they’ve misunderstood or perhaps haven’t even read prophecy because the prophetic word is the most motivational truth in the Bible. When you know what Jesus says is going to happen in the future, you know what you’re supposed to do today, and you have a great desire to do it and a sense of urgency about it. That’s why I have devoted so much time and so much of my life to studying these truths and communicating them across the networks that God has given us. I hope that you’re finding that to be true every day in your life. Amen. Tomorrow we begin a discussion of the world of deception. This is one of the things Jesus said would happen and the importance for us to be honest when everything else around us is a lie. I hope you’ll be with us every day during this discussion. There’s something for each one of us in every one of these broadcasts. We’ll see you next time. Have a great day, friends.
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Our message today originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah. Will you take a moment to tell us how our ministry is an encouragement? You can write us at Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s book, The World of the End, with a special Be the Answer bookmark, yours for a gift of any amount. You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah’s messages on demand on any screen with our streaming service, Turning Point Plus, for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. That’s turningpointplus.org. 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.
