On the Mount of Olives

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and we are talking today about the Olivet discourse. This is a history podcast. I think I should just leave it there and let us proceed.

With that in mind, when I do exposition of Matthew 23, 24, and 25, I like to read all of 23 and lead into 24 because it sets the emotional tone. But since this is a history podcast we will sum up.

In chapter 23 we’re moving now to the climax of the conflict between Jesus and Israel’s religious leaders, and Jesus lets go on the scribes and Pharisees. In a number of “woe unto you” statements he brings out into the open the sins of the scribes and Pharisees. They tend to be more like general trends. He doesn’t say, “You steal and murder,” although at points he comes close. “You devour widow’s houses and for pretense make long prayers,” but generally he’s describing self-righteousness, the Pharisaical way of getting around the law by finding fine details, loopholes, exceptions. If you swear by the temple it’s nothing, but if you swear by the gold of the temple then you have to do what you said, and things like that. And he keeps calling them fools.

This is not a chapter that probably most evangelicals read out loud in the churches, but it does show us something of our Lord. In general through most of his ministry he saved very violent attacks for very specific occasions and generally kept them pretty short. This is a 39-verse “Woe unto you. How can you escape damnation?”

I’ll read the last little bit. He says, “You build the sepulchers of the prophets and you garnish their tombs.” That is, you turn the prophets’ tombs into tourist attractions and religious sites and you make a big deal over them, and yet your fathers killed them. So if you think about it, you’re just finishing the job your fathers started. They killed the prophets and now you’re making their tombs all nice.

There might be other ways to interpret it, but he knows their hearts and that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re standing in the traditions of their fathers.

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that Jesus talked like this. Again, he didn’t do it regularly. He actually mentions hell more often than anybody else in the New Testament, or the Old for that matter. This whole chapter is like that. It’s building to this climax. “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, ye seed of the serpent.”

John the Baptist had used that kind of language when he began his ministry, and Jesus here is closing the loop, as it were, and saying, “Things have not changed. I’ve been here for three years plus and you’re still a bunch of serpents or children of the snake. That being so, how can you escape the damnation of hell?”

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

That last line is particularly significant in understanding the next chapter because this opens a topic that gets closed in the middle of chapter 24.

This generation, all the righteous blood shed on earth – why is that? Because all of God’s enemies killed the prophets, killed the martyrs, killed the saints because those saints represented Messiah and they hated Messiah even though he hadn’t come yet. And they hated God for promising a Messiah. And now this is the generation that finally will kill Messiah, so this is like a giant conspiracy across the ages. Given the fact that Satan’s behind it all, you could say it’s an actual conspiracy with its roots in hell.

God is going to hold this particular generation guilty of all the blood of all the martyrs because they did not disassociate themselves from what their fathers had done. They are going to climax it, culminate it, bring it to fullness, ‘fill up the measure of your fathers.’

Is generation in this verse used in the sense of the people who are of a given age at this particular time, or is it the same sense in which it says ‘ye generation of vipers’ as in you’re the offspring of vipers?

The meaning is essentially the same. You are the offspring, you are the children currently alive who have as your father the devil, and this generation, you people here are the ones who are going to feel the wrath.

It doesn’t change the meaning of it.

It doesn’t change the meaning. There may be a nuance of connotation there, but the meaning is the same. Some people argue that it means ‘race of people’ but that’s not what it means anywhere else, and given the context that’s not what it means here. He’s talking about the people who are alive right then. That’s kind of the point.

I was going to add one thing that had just sort of come to me that I hadn’t thought about before in this verse. I’m thinking back to the beginning of Genesis where Satan in some ways is thinking, “Hey, even if God judges me I can take his people with me,” and now when Jesus says “All the blood is coming on your,” he could have a sense of “Aha! I’ve got God to destroy all his people.” Yet Jesus in some sense is also part of this generation and he is also going to take the wrath of God, because there are those that killed the prophets that are actually Jesus’ people.

I was just thinking there’s a double meaning that I hadn’t thought of before in the sense that Jesus is going to take that wrath as well and, instead of destroying all of God’s people, is actually now going to be opening up the way in history for more people in lots and lots of different places to receive a greater fullness of redemption than what they knew in the Old Testament. It’s just kind of interesting way in that we wouldn’t think that Jesus is talking about himself, but in a sense he becomes the enemy of God, for us.

He becomes the greatest of sinners on the cross, bearing the full wrath and curse of God. So yes, we have two choices. We can die with God’s enemies or we can stand under the protection of Jesus who became God’s greatest enemy for those hours on the cross.

Everything is settled in that particular generation because it’s different when God is walking on earth than any other generation.

Yes, and again, since this is a history podcast, there is a uniqueness about this history. Once Jesus leaves, God is not going to be walking on earth. I mean we’ve had theophanies, we’ve had appearances or visions of God, angels as stand-ins and such, but this is God himself walking amongst his covenant people, and they want to murder him. He’s going to let them so that not everybody has to go to hell, but those who don’t lay hold on him are. The next verse shows his concern even for his enemies.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

There’s the real compassion of Jesus. He’s been calling these guys fools and children of the devil, and telling them they’re about to be damned, and yet he tells them, “I came here to save people, not to destroy them. I’ve tried to gather you, tried to be a mother to you as it were, and you’ve refused.”

Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

He’s talking about the temple. God has abandoned the temple, or he’s about to.

For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

So there’s a little bit of hope held out there, however vaguely expressed. It does sound like someday Israel may say that, but it’s not going to be anytime soon. It’s what they said in the triumphal entry, but they didn’t mean it, and one day it sounds like they will.

There were no chapter breaks in the original so we move with an ‘and.’ He just said “Your house is left unto you desolate” and Jesus went out and departed from the temple. God just left his house.

Yikes. Again I say yikes.

Yeah. Matthew 24 is paralleled in Mark 13 and Luke 21, and each version is slightly different. Mark’s is very similar to Matthew’s but shorter and leaves off the parables that follow. Luke, being written for Gentiles, adapts some of the language to a Gentile audience and says some things a little more clearly than Matthew does. Matthew is writing for the Hebrews and he assumes that they’re going to understand Old Testament prophetic language, so we may make references to Luke along the way.

We keep saying this is a history podcast so I will try not to do a lot in the way of exegesis here, but I do want to point out a couple of broad things because they do have an impact on our understanding of all of history. But first, what Jesus says.

The disciples have heard him say these things, and they go out and look at the temple. It’s so big. It’s so glorious. It’s so beautiful. It’s an incredible piece of architecture. Herod had been working on it for 40 years or so, and the implication is, “Lord, this temple? God’s really giving up on it? We don’t understand. Look how big and beautiful.”

Notice they’re appealing not to the promises of God but to what they can see and touch. “This physical structure is so impressive,” and Jesus says –

See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

So the building may look impressive but it’s about to be destroyed until not one stone is left upon another.

We’ve talked about the idea of a leprous house, where the priest comes and checks out the house and then fixes it and then comes back and checks it again, and if it’s still leprous the house is dismantled so that not one stone is left upon another. Jesus, in his official capacity as priest, has visited the temple twice and found it polluted, so he says, “The next time it’s all coming down.”

This is incredible to the disciples, and four of them – Peter, James, John and Andew – come to him on the Mount of Olives afterward. He retreats from the temple complex and even from Jerusalem and is on the Mount of Olives, where he spends most of his time when he’s not actually teaching in Jerusalem, and notice the questions are interesting.

Tell us, when shall these things be?

“What things?” “When there’s not going to be one stone left upon another. When will this temple be destroyed?” But then they ask two other related questions – at least they’re related in their minds.

And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?

We already know that the disciples do not have a good grasp upon biblical theology or the progressive revelation of God through the various covenants of promise, so we have to be careful assuming that their questions are in fact coherent. They’re speaking from what they know.

Putting it on our terms, if a true prophet from God or an angel from heaven appeared and said, “In 40 years, all of the churches in this land will vanish. All the Bibles will be destroyed. There will not be a single Christian testimony anywhere,” and we were convinced that this actually was from God, there’s basically one conclusion that Christians would come to. It’s the end of the world. So when you say that God’s house is going to be destroyed and leveled, that’s the end of the world.

This is the place that God dwells with men.

Yes. God’s abandoning humanity? That’s got to be the end of everything. At the very least it’s the end of everything we’ve known, and whether you call it the end of the age or the end of the world kind of depends on what the disciples had in mind and how they understood those words. But clearly they thought this was far more of an ending than what Jesus intends.

So Jesus has two questions to answer. He answers the first one first – “What will be the sign that these things will come to pass? When will these things be?”

I’m not going to read it but basically he says, “There will be wars and rumors of wars, but those aren’t signs of anything because those happen all the time.” By the way, take note – wars and rumors of wars are not signs of the end. They happen all the time. Speaking of studying history, what do we usually study in history? Wars.

Because the times of peace are very seldom.

Yes. Usually we mark history by its wars, or the fruits of the wars, or the inventions that give us the next war, and things like that.

Which means that if your favorite country is being invaded, neither one of them should be cast in any biblical prophecy. There is definitely no biblical prophecy that you can read in the current news headlines.

We’re going to get flack for that one. I didn’t say you shouldn’t have said it.

It’s more because I had someone specifically say that to me who had come to speak at Cornerstone. She had been working in Israel and then afterwards said to me, “Reading prophecy is like reading the headlines of today” or something like that, and I kind of went, “Okay…” but obviously she was particularly invested in the Israel issue.

In my wife’s class particularly, anytime something happens in Ukraine or Russia it’s, “Well, this is building up to World War III. That means the end of the world.”

First of all, the huge assumptions –

“Armageddon as described in Revelation describes the final battle at the end of the world.” That’s debatable but let’s grant that.

“World War III when we fight it must necessarily be turned into Armageddon.” That’s super-debatable but it’s a common assumption, especially among these elementary kids. “Once World War III begins that’s it. That leads up to Armageddon and the coming of the Lord.”

Part of it is that we’ve bought into that idea that if we go to war again we’ll destroy the world, because that was the whole impetus for things like the United Nations and such after World War II. “This last war was so bad, if we go again we will just destroy the whole world,” so we’ve lived with that idea now for 80 years. I think it’s so ingrained into us because everybody is so fearful of modern weaponry that we can’t see any possibility of surviving. And there’s also just been too many disaster movies that have destroyed the world, and there’s the one person that’s still alive, that I’m sure has also influenced us.

Coming into the ‘50s, the United States government and educational system did a lot to convince children that war is unthinkable and that, as you say, it will destroy the world. So as those children grow up we get a lot within the peacenik movement – “Better red than dead. I know you guys say Communism is awful, but another war will destroy us all so we might as well be Communists because once you push the button it’s all over for all of us.”

Of course, there have been a lot of science-fiction movies about radiating the whole planet, the monsters that come out of that as evolution is given a new shot in the arm and new creatures arise. It’s been standard fare, first in the public school system, then in the mass media, and in politics very much. “We the peoples of the United Nations determine to save the world from the scourge of war.” It’s a very messianic dream.

And yet what Jesus actually says here is, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” Not all the rumors are true, but some are. He says, “Don’t be troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” It’s not only not the end of the world, but not even the end of Jerusalem and its temple. These are just things that happen all the time.

Yes, the Roman peace is going to be disrupted, and in the fall of Jerusalem there was a blip in the Roman peace and for a short time it looked like Rome might actually fall as emperor replaced emperor in rapid succession following Nero’s suicide. Things looked really bad and there were revolts in the provinces and such, and yet it all quieted down again for quite a while and Roman peace resumed for a while. But they could expect that this would happen.

The next thing was, “People are going to show up and say ‘I am the Christ.’” Wow, that still happens so that’s not any great new thing.

Nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences, earthquakes in diverse places. Most of these we have records of in the Book of Acts or in secular history. That first century saw exactly all these things. Famines are mentioned in the Book of Acts. The early church had to face them and provide for the poor in the midst of them. Jesus comments that all these are the beginning of sorrows, of travail. As a woman goes into travail she’s waiting for something better at the other end, but the process hurts a lot.

And there’s more pain as the process goes on.

Yes, isn’t there. Then he talks about persecution and false prophets and apostasy, being betrayed. He does say –

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

I think we need to talk about this first for just a second for what it means and what it doesn’t mean. The assumption of many modern evangelical commentators is that what’s in view here is the end of the world, so before Jesus comes the gospel will reach all lands. But notice it will be preached but there’s no concern here for discipleship. Jesus is very deliberately not saying that all nations will be discipled. He’s saying this gospel will reach the world.

Did it? Did it reach the Aztec empire? Aztecs didn’t even exist yet, but you know, the Americas and China and South Africa by the time Jerusalem fell? Probably not, but it reached the whole Roman world. Paul says so more than once. “Your faith is spoken of throughout all the world. The gospel was preached to every creature under heaven.”

The point is this, it’s a testimony, a witness to all nations. The Roman world needed to know what God was doing so they didn’t think that God was going back on his promises or wasn’t faithful or couldn’t carry out his promises or had simply abandoned his people. The world needed to get ready. Everywhere the gospel was or was going to be soon needed to hear what was happening and why it was happening, and then the end comes.

Also in the second chapter of Acts you have –

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven…

…before Peter begins his sermon.

Yes, so the gospel had reached the entire Roman world and that’s what’s in view here. It doesn’t mean that there were Jews living in the Americas who managed to get back to Jerusalem in time for Pentecost.

But as far as scripture is concerned, check.

Yes. When Caesar Augustus made a decree that all the world should be taxed, he wasn’t taxing South Africa.

At that point we shift. Jesus says –

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place. Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains. Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house….pray that your flight is not on the Sabbath.

The situation is local. It’s first of all the abomination of desolation. Again that’s taken on a particular flavor in evangelical circles over the last hundred years, and the assumption is that this means the Antichrist allows the Jews to rebuild the temple and then 3-1/2 years into the tribulation period he walks in and declares himself God and that’s that.

First of all, you have to explain how in the world God is going to allow the Jewish temple to be rebuilt, how it would be in any sense his temple even if it were, since Christ is God’s temple and the church is his temple.

Historically “abomination of desolation” is a concept that builds throughout the Old Testament. Daniel uses it a couple times. When God’s people commit abominable worship before his face and his presence, God withdraws eventually and then turns over his house to the Gentiles, who march in and destroy everything.

It happened, among other times, when the Philistines took the ark and then destroyed Shiloh. It happened when Nebuchadnezzar took the city of Jerusalem when Ezekiel sees the glory of the Lord leaving and going into captivity. And it’s about to happen in AD 70, and there are other examples, the chief one being our Lord himself being desecrated by the Jews and turned over to the Romans and killed as the living temple of God, but the focus here is on the temple.

They had asked, “How about the temple? It’s going to be destroyed?” and Jesus says, “Yes.” All this stuff is going to happen, and the key thing is once the gospel has reached the extent of the Roman empire, then it’s time. It will take about a generation, about 40 years, and then the end is going to come. God is going to abandon his house wholly and completely, and Roman armies are going to come in and destroy it.

Notice the focus is Judea and the Sabbath Day. These are things that are local. If it were to happen today does anyone care if it’s the Sabbath Day or not? Even the Lord’s Day doesn’t matter much to people anymore. You can get out of town on the Lord’s Day. In fact, you can probably get out of town faster. But in Israel in the first century, trying to travel on the Sabbath, if you were in Judea, would be met with resistance and you probably wouldn’t get a lot of help.

If you’re on the housetop – we don’t live on housetops, but they did and here are the ideas. “Don’t come down into your house.” “Why not?” Because you can go from roof to roof until you get to the walls, then go over the walls and run for it, but again that’s a first-century setting.

That’s big disaster type stuff. You don’t go out over the walls ordinarily.

No, it means everything is coming to an end. The city is about to be destroyed, and wheresoever the carcasses, there will the eagles begin to gather. The Roman vultures are coming.

Then he lapses into prophetic language that, again, the Hebrews who read the Old Testament would be familiar with – the sun going dark, the moon turning to blood, the stars falling from heaven, God coming in the clouds. All of these things would be very familiar. It would be easy for those who aren’t familiar to say, “At this point surely he’s describing the second coming.” But when we get to verse 34 we pick up what he had said earlier -

Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.

That expression, “this generation,” and God’s wrath against it opens up the discussion that leads to the temple is going to be destroyed, and close it at this point. So as far as context is concerned, Jesus is answering their first question, “When is the temple going to be destroyed?” The answer is not immediately but relatively soon, and things will be very bad – both the things leading up to it, but that’s normal human history, and then the event itself which will involve great tribulation. Luke says, “The wrath of God upon this people and upon this land,” and he leaves it there.

This is the beginning of the opening up of the gospel to the Gentile world, and that’s what we have to come back to.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

He’s been talking about “those days,” “these days that are coming,” spreading over time, but then he changes his verbiage.

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

He’s now shifted into the second question. “What about your coming? What about the end of the world?”

He says, “Of that you don’t know.” In fact, in Mark’s gospel he says, “and I don’t know,” as in his humanity it hadn’t been revealed to him. It’s something hidden in the councils of the Trinity. The Father knows but no one else knows, so a lesson there. If Jesus when he was on earth didn’t know the time of his second coming, quit trying to guess, quit trying to figure it out.

There have been some who’ve said, “Well, not the day or hour but we can know the month or the week.” No, that’s not what that means. It means you’re not even going to be close. Give it up.

“See those trees? There’s a forest behind them.”

Exactly. Then he goes into what we sometimes call the parables of waiting. These touch on our responsibility in the light of yes, Jesus is coming in judgement to Jerusalem, but one day he’s coming in judgment for the whole world. How do you wait? You stay busy at your job. You realize that he is coming. The judgment is coming for us. He will come again to judge the living and the dead, and therefore we should be ready.

If we knew the exact hour and day, that would make it really easy. We could just slough it off until we’re getting close and then go through our little repentance and get all spiritually ready, but we don’t so we better be ready all the time. If you knew a thief was coming you’d set your alarm for the time he’s going to arrive and sleep until then and then get up and shoot him, or whatever you would do with a thief – call 911, I guess. But no, you need to be busy at your work. You don’t know when the master is coming back so you better be ready. You better be doing your job.

History is of full of stories of people who thought they knew when Jesus was coming, so they quit their jobs, cashed in their bank accounts and gave it all to the cult leader who told them this was going to happen, and they just sit around for a couple weeks or a few days waiting for Jesus to come and, strangely enough, so far they’ve all been disappointed. Then they kind of drift away and don’t admit they were ever part of this. Jesus says, “Be busy at your job.”

In Chapter 25 there are three parables. One is of virgins, maidens at a wedding, what we call bridesmaids, who are waiting for the bridegroom to come and pick up the bride, and they don’t know when he’s coming. It could be in the evening, could be at night.

Interesting enough, all of the virgins, all these maidens, fall asleep. There are 10 of them. Five are wise, five are foolish, but they all fall asleep. That is, nobody knows when he’s coming. Even the faithful ones don’t know. When the bridegroom comes, the ones who had extra oil trimmed their lamps and they’re ready to meet him. The others say, “Oh, we forgot to be prepared for a long wait. Can we have some of your oil?” and they say, “No. Go to the market and buy some,” and they go.

This is another incidence of Jesus’ humor. The marketplaces are not open at midnight. There’s no all-night Wal-Mart or 7-11, so they go to the marketplace and realize, “Wait, there’s no one,” and they go back and at that point it’s too late. We must have grace. We must have the filling of the Spirit for a long wait, so he warns us, “Don’t think it’s going to come easy that you’re going to get out of the responsibilities, duties, the sufferings, and the tribulations that every generation faces.”

I remember a classmate of mine when I was in junior high or thereabouts, and as children who don’t know much do, we were talking about this whole idea and I expressed the opinion that the great tribulation is a thing past and that we’re not going to have to deal with it in that sense, but we’ll still have to go through tribulations and suffering, and he asked me a very important question. “Well, if that’s true, why should you become a Christian?”

The gospel had been presented to him as, “You need to come to Christ because Jesus is coming back and you don’t want to be left behind.”

“And when you’re raptured away you don’t have to go through the tribulation.”

Being told that you will suffer tribulation – “But no, I became a Christian so I wouldn’t have to.” Although this was a young guy, probably 13-14, he attended the largest evangelical church in Redding, and I think probably it was pretty representative of what was coming across – whether it was actually what the pastor believed or something else.

We’ve got to be careful because sometimes children and people who are not listening very carefully will get what seems to be the flow of what we’re saying and won’t catch the fine points, so we need to be awfully careful. The gospel is not “Become a Christian so you can be raptured and escape the bad things that are coming,” and Jesus does not promise this. He’s already promised, “You’re going to have tribulation. You’re going to suffer.”

The next parable is that of stewards who received talents from their master, each one a different amount, and they’re supposed to go out and invest them or do business with them and grow the principal by hard work. Two of them do and one doesn’t and they are judged accordingly. Those who have worked hard are told, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The one that does nothing is called out, a lazy servant.

The last is barely a parable because at this point he mostly strips away the imagery. The king is going to come in his glory and he’s going to judge the world. He’s going to set the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. To the sheep he’ll say –

Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me in, naked, and ye clothed me. I was sick, and ye visited me. I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

The righteous say, “When did we ever do any of that?” In their humility they don’t remember ever having done any of that for Jesus, and Jesus says,

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

I’d like to point out the words ‘my brethren,’ because “the least of these” has been the number one reason for terrible theology and terrible political decisions, terrible policies of social justice and all the other junk. “But they’re the least of these! They’re the least of these.” That’s not what he said at all. That’s completely taking the words out of context.

It’s closer to what you have in that episode of Firefly, where Jane sells out Simon and River to the government, and Mal is like, “You did it to my crew, you did it to me,” and takes it personal.

Yes, and Jesus takes it personally. When he speaks to the wicked and says, “You didn’t do these things,” they say, “But when did we see you and not do these things?” They were spiritually blind to the reality from a different direction. Jesus said, “You didn’t do it to the least of these, you didn’t do it to me,” and these go into everlasting fire.

So that concludes the Olivet Discourse. There’s a 40-year judgement that’s coming that’s going to change everything, but it doesn’t end the world. It ends that age, but it doesn’t end everything.

To return to “but this is a history podcast,” why is this significant historically? For 4,000 years now God has been dealing in terms of covenants of promise, each with its own outward symbols and signs. We start with sacrifice, then the rainbow, then circumcision and the land, then the whole tabernacle structure and the feasts and festivals, the blue fringe, the sacrifices, the dietary laws and all of that.

We move on to the Davidic covenant and Solomon’s temple, which is an amplification of all that’s gone before but we throw in some music. Then finally the restoration covenant when things are simplified, but there’s still this temple thing. Right now it seems like this temple thing is really what it’s all about. As we said, this is where God meets with man, and that’s how it’s been for 4,000 years. Then Jesus says, “And we’re done.”

If that’s all he had said you might think, as they did, it’s the end of the world or God’s giving up on us? It’s all over? There’s no salvation? What? But we hoped…but what’s happening is an incredible change. It’s the end of an old world but it’s the beginning of the new.

Each time God had renewed his covenant with his people, the covenant embraces heaven and earth. It always has. Heaven is where God meets with man. It’s God’s dwelling place. For Adam and Eve it was the garden of Eden. For Abraham, God was in heaven but Abraham could meet him at altars. For the children of Israel in the wilderness it was the tabernacle. That was God’s house. That was a picture of heaven.

It’s always a picture of a new creation.

Yes, at each point there is a new creation, and heaven and earth are both transformed and changed as God moves his plan forward. The restoration covenant was seemingly different in that the external glories fade because we lose the ark. We lose the Shekinah glory. We lose the divine fire on the altar. We lose the Urim and Thummin. We lose the Davidic kingdom, but God’s people are scattered throughout the world, poised for missionary activity, and they have the completed Old Testament with a clearly-drawn picture of Messiah, the Bible that the apostles preach from through most of their ministry.

They also have the Holy City. The temple is not the only part of the city.

We move beyond the temple to the whole city being holy, so we’re almost there and the very nature of change is changing. But now it’s really going to change, and with the fall of Jerusalem it will be as if the sun has gone dark and the moon has turned to blood and the stars have fallen from heaven. All of those old covenant orders that stacked on one another like Russian stacking dolls – God’s going to wipe them all out. Even the promise is gone because the promise is now reality.

Heaven and earth have been changed, and from the time that Jesus came into our world to the destruction of Jerusalem, that roughly 70-year period, is the turning point of history. The old world does die, but a new world is born. There is a new heaven and a new earth. Now, the fullness of that awaits the resurrection and the second coming and the final judgement, but we see the reality.

Paul says, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things are become new.” Or the writer of Hebrews, “You are coming to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” It’s this constant thing. Christ has made of two, one new man, so making peace between them.

On the other hand, the New Testament writers are constantly talking as if they’re standing at the end of history. “Us upon whom the ends of the world have come,” “In these last days he’s spoken to us by his son.” Joel said, “In the last days God will pour out his Spirit,” and that’s what’s happening now. John is very dramatic, “It’s the last hour,” so anti-Christs are showing up.

That old order with all that was promissory and figurative and typical – it was the only world God’s people had ever known – is going down in flames, but something new, beautiful, incredible, and world-spanning is coming out of it.

So in terms of a philosophy of history, the destruction of Jerusalem is a very important event. It capstones everything that Jesus has done because it brings it out in the open. Jesus goes back to heaven, the temple is still there, sacrifices are still there, priesthood is still there, Israel is still in the land, Rome still rules the world – where’s the kingdom?

So Jesus has to do two things: get rid of Jerusalem as the typical representation of his work, and then take the keys back from Rome, then Rome can either convert or not, and if it doesn’t he’ll destroy it. We get a little bit of both when that happens, but Rome stops being the center of history and the center of the world at that point, because Jesus has the keys now.

These are important things for us to understand in terms of a philosophy of history. The ancient world reaches from creation to AD 70. The new world begins with the coming of Jesus and passes on into the future, and that generation stood in what were the last days of the old covenant but are the beginning of the gospel era and the reach of the spread of the gospel into all the world, not just the Roman empire but far beyond.

That’s why we took time with this. This is why this is so important. Yes, we dabbled in prophecy, prophetic interpretation, probably more than I wanted to do, but I’ve been teaching this a long time and old ways are familiar.

That’s a wonderful place to stop, so let’s wrap up with some recommendations. I’ll go first. I want to recommend a specific episode of the show Bluey. Are you familiar?

I’ve never even heard of it.

It’s a children’s show, right?

Yes. It’s an Australian children’s show that just came out probably in the last decade, maybe more recently, but it’s quite popular and I think it’s actually good. With a lot of kid shows in my experience that you watch as a parent, you’re like, “These parents are not parenting and these children are in for a rough time.”

That’s what makes for stories. If the parents were good parents there wouldn’t be a story.

Well, Bluey proves that wrong because those parents are decent parents. Half the time when I watch it I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good strategy. I’m going to remember that.”

The specific episode that I want to recommend, because it has just brilliant storytelling and is utterly charming, is called Early Baby. It’s about the kids at preschool, and at first they’re playing hospital and delivering babies. Then one of the little girls who is pretending to be a mom says, “Let’s pretend my baby comes early,” and it’s very cute.

They’re like 10-minute episodes, tops, so I’m going to see if I can find it on YouTube and send it to you, because it’s worth the 7-10 minutes that it is.

Now you’ve got me curious, so yes, please do. I want to find out how children deal with that. There are realities in life which are not bad for children to know about, but sometimes you wonder, “How do they process it? How do they think about it? What do they do with it?” Your child comes early so what does that mean exactly and, without getting embarrassing, how do you play-act that if you’re actually not a mom and this has not been explained to you. It would be interesting to see how they work with that.

Rachel, what have you got?

I am going to recommend another podcast that I recently listened to. It’s an episode by the Off Code podcast that I’ve mentioned before. This particular episode is called The Cult of Blackness. Apparently I’m just being politically incorrect all over the place here, but I really enjoyed that particular podcast because they were discussing how – I think they called it the ‘identitarianism’ of blackness has basically become a religious cult.

They talked through some of the ways of how they see it being a cult, things like how they blacklist people and spread around “Don’t talk to these people. They’re bad news. They will corrupt you. If you believe any of these things we kick you out of the group.” They also do a really wonderful job in counteracting that false teaching with the gospel and the ways you particularly can apply it to those people, and that the whole idea of overly-reveling in your racial identity is basically creating a false savior who’s a terribly poor savior.

It's making everything worse for the black community to actually do those things rather than to give them the true freedom, and also to help them realize how free they really are already. The difference between 1850 and today is very, very different, or even 1960 and today, and the fact that other people are being oppressed does not make you oppressed.

I loved their example of just because Lebron James is a billionaire doesn’t make every black person a billionaire, neither does someone being really poor on welfare make everybody poor and on welfare. Those don’t cross, so just appreciating the good things the Lord has given you in your own life rather than constantly needing to be oppressed, and always making your gospel focused in that.

I found it very insightful and useful, and it all started because two white women made a general statement about a black church or black community, and people jumped all over them, so they were responding to that, basically saying, “No, please keep speaking. If it’s true it’s okay to speak it, in spite of what the cult of blackness would say.”

Mine isn’t nearly as cutting-edge as yours, nor as sweet as Emily’s, and part of it is personal irritation on my part, but I’m going to recommend that when a local theater company does Shakespeare you go. We did a wonderful production of Much Ado About Nothing and we had very small audiences.

It’s one of Shakespeare’s best plays and I think probably my favorite, and the kids did an excellent job and they got better each night. Generally when that happens, word gets around and people who are on the fence eventually show up and we usually have a packed audience. We did not, and this play deserved it. I don’t know why. We got a number of visitors who came to us indirectly, these people from our church who don’t even know the school, but they said they would come.

My niece actually went.

But a lot of the folks who actually have kids in our school did not come, and I can imagine a couple of reasons. First, it’s Shakespeare. No one understands Shakespeare. And for people whose first language isn’t English there’s some truth to that, I grant you. But we try to do a good enough job that you probably can follow the slapstick humor and the tears without understanding every single word.

For others it’s “Shakespeare wasn’t a Christian. He wrote all these filthy plays that have lots of dirty jokes and swear words.” That is a characterization of Shakespeare and it’s not really what’s going on here.

He did write plays with lots of dirty jokes and swear words, but he could also be a Christian and do those things, just saying.

Yes, and this is something that Christians have a big problem with, that if you tell a joke that deals with sexuality in any way, that’s a dirty joke. Not necessarily. What is the general effect of this joke? Is it to show you the funny side of reality? Is it to praise the institution of marriage? To show you the funny side of life as God actually made it? Or is to degrade everything and to pull it down and to incite lust? Those are very different motives.

You may remember in That Hideous Strength toward the end when the women are getting ready to attend the final banquet that they start talking in what to Jane are very coarse terms about sex and marriage and she’s shocked that they would talk about this, because Christians never talk about sex and here are these older women talking about all kinds of things because there’s a funny side to this.

In the long run they are speaking reverently, they’re just speaking realistically and it’s okay to smile at some things because making love can be quite humorous. But maybe you don’t want to share that with all the children all the time. It’s a question of propriety and timing and such. So those are some possibilities.

Of course, some people are just plain busy, but we did do it for four nights. I don’t know. I’m not quite sure why we had such a poor turnout. We could have done a better job of publicity, but there were people who knew about it and chose for whatever reason not to come.

This is discouraging to young actors and it does shut you off from learning something about Christian culture. The plays were made to be acted out. Just reading about them or seeing Hollywood do them is no guarantee that you’re actually getting the gist of what Shakespeare did.

So if some local theater company is doing Shakespeare and you’ve got a word that they’re doing it modestly and without sensationalizing any of the sexual elements, consider going and watching. You can come away and you can criticize, or you can say, “Well, I understood that better than I thought,” or if you’re an English major, “I understood it all perfectly and I can now argue character dynamics.” Fine, whatever, but it is part of our culture.

Did you know that in university Shakespeare is no longer a requirement, even for English majors? You can go through the state college system and get your degree as an English major without ever having to read Shakespeare. That’s unthinkable, but we’re throwing everything out the window these days. Let’s consider maybe keeping Shakespeare inside the window for a little while longer. It would do us good.

On that note, go read Shakespeare. Or better, see Shakespeare because he wasn’t meant to be read, he was meant to be seen.

Or read it together with your friends.

Yes, that’s also an excellent way to enjoy Shakespeare.

Thank you both so much for this conversation. It has been a delight, as always. Thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters for paying for his editing software. We really appreciate it. If you’d like to join their number, Dear Listener, you can visit patreon.com/haltingtowardzion. And if you’d like to get in touch with us for any reason whatsoever, you can send us an email at [email protected]. That’s toward, not towards, because we’re Americans. There’s no s on toward.

Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.