Matthew 24:29–31
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that is drunk on newspaper eschatology. Many well-meaning Christians read the Olivet Discourse with a copy of the New York Times in their other hand, trying to match up the day's headlines with the Lord's prophecies. This is a profound mistake, and it is a mistake that breeds confusion, consternation, and ultimately, embarrassment. Jesus did not give us this chapter so that we could become frenzied speculators in the prophetic stock market. He gave it to His disciples to prepare them for what was about to happen to their world, within their generation. The central error that trips up the modern reader is a failure to understand the biblical vocabulary of prophetic judgment. When we read of the sun being darkened and the stars falling from the sky, our twenty-first-century minds immediately jump to astrophysics and the literal end of the space-time continuum.