Jesus wanted every generation to be ready for his second coming.
Jesus spoke of future happenings in Matthew 24:
In Matthew ch 24, Jesus responds to a question from his disciples….after stating that the Temple would be completely destroyed….”not a stone left upon a stone”…
”While he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached him privately, saying: “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your presence and of the conclusion of the system of things?”
Some translations use the phrase “sign of your coming and the end of the world” but this was not what Jesus’ disciples asked…they asked about the sign indicating his “parousia” which means “presence”, not “coming”. And it wasn’t “the end of the world” but “the end of the age” or period of time that Jesus was speaking about. His return was to be identified by a series of significant global events that would signify his return…….but if Jesus’ “coming“ was a visible event, (“every eye will see him”) then a sign indicating that he was “present” would not be needed. So what did Jesus mean?
Could it be that Jesus has already returned and has been
present for quite some time? Have we already seen these events that he spoke about?……because if we did not discern the signs then we may be overtaken by the “end of the age”….not expecting it, but believing it to be at some time in the future. As Jesus said…..
“Keep on the watch, therefore, because you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
43 “But know one thing: If the householder had known in what watch*the thief was coming, he would have kept awake and not allowed his house to be broken into. 44 On this account, you too prove yourselves ready, because the Son of man is coming at an hour that you do not think to be it.”
Daniel’s prophesies help us to know when Christ was to return to set up his kingdom.
After a fearsome dream about a huge image that was struck down, a troubled King wanted to know what it meant…..Daniel was the one who sought God’s help in interpreting the dream because it was divinely inspired. He told the King that the head of gold represented the Babylonian world power, who was ruling in Daniel’s day. The Israelites were exiled captives in Babylon at the time, due to God’s punishment of them, and Babylon had dominion over God’s people and their land for 70 years….long enough for the older disobedient ones to pass away.
The king dreamed of a fearsome image made out of metals in descending order of inferiority, (gold, silver, copper, iron and in its feet a mixture of iron and clay.) The image was toppled by a stone cut out of a mountain, striking the image on its feet. The stone was not man made.
Daniel told the King….
“….you yourself are the head of gold. (Babylon)
39 “But after you another kingdom will rise, inferior to you; (Medo-Persia) then another kingdom, a third one, of copper, (Greece) that will rule over the whole earth.
40 “As for the fourth kingdom, it will be strong like iron. (Rome) For just as iron crushes and pulverizes everything else, yes, like iron that shatters, it will crush and shatter all of these.
41 “And just as you saw the feet and the toes to be partly of clay of a potter and partly of iron, the kingdom will be divided, but some of the hardness of iron will be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong and partly fragile. 43 Just as you saw iron mixed with soft clay, they will be mixed with the people; but they will not stick together, one to the other, just as iron does not mix with clay. (This describes the British Empire who rose to power after the collapse of the Roman Empire…..these later allied themselves with their estranged children, the USA in this “time of the end”. These operate under a democratic system of government that undermines the power of the government to rule with ansolute authority)….IOW they don’t mix.)
Daniel continued……
44 “In the days of those kings (in our day) the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it alone will stand forever, 45 just as you saw that out of the mountain a stone was cut not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the copper, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The Grand God has made known to the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
We are living in that future time right now. The events Jesus described began in 1914 with the outbreak of the
First World War in man’s history. It was followed by the Spanish Flu epidemic which took more lives than the war did. Food shortages followed as the whole world was engaged in conflict. It was “nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom” just as Jesus said. From that time onward the world has not known peace and the signs, including great earthquakes, will keep occurring until God finishes this whole mess with the introduction of his Kingdom.
The signs indicating Christ’s “presence” occurred right on time, when the prophesies in Daniel were due to be fulfilled. Those gentile governments, represented by that image, would ‘trample’ on the right of God’s Kingdom to direct human affairs and would themselves hold sway under Satan’s control. (1 John 5:19)
But only by God’s permission.
These are signs from heaven.
"you" refers to the future people who will see all those future signs.
Jesus wasn't kidding. He spoke to the future people ("you") using the words from this passage.
Jesus saw this generation in his mind and directly addressed them. When the time comes, this future generation will read this passage as Jesus' words speak to them.
The time is well along and those who saw the beginning of these distressing events who are chosen as God’s elect, would not pass away untill all the signs were fulfilled. There are a remnant left on the earth right now….soon to be gathered, as the storm clouds of Armageddon keep building.
All those signs will occur within a single generation.
Or the “generation“ of those who will rule with Christ in heaven, would not pass away until all of those foretold events had taken place. Right now we are staring down the barrel of the greatest tribulation in mankind’s history. Unless the days were cut short, Jesus said, “no flesh would be saved”.
Are we ready?
The words of Jesus will come through space-time. Jesus wanted every generation to be ready for his second coming.
It was always spoken of as an immanent event…yet here we are almost 2000 years later seeing the fulfillment of Jesus’ words. Those who were asleep in their graves were not conscious of the passage of time, so for them time stood still. They were awakened in the resurrection as if they closed their eyes only a moment ago. As the time closes in on us, we know that God’s kingdom is going to replace all corrupt human governments with the rulership we should have had all a long.
The “coming” of Christ as judge of all the earth is fast approaching…..it is almost time for him to pass judgment on “the sheep and the goats”….he has been closely observing mankind now for over 100 years, so the separation is almost over.
The above is my current interpretation of the passage. As usual, of course, I could be wrong :)
The above is my understanding of the events as outlined in the Bible.
