The Signs of Christ's Coming, Pt. 3

Matthew 24:6-14

Tonight, as I promised you this morning, we're going back to Matthew chapter 24. And I'm so very excited and anxious about our message tonight and thrilled that you're all here ready to get back into this great chapter. I think if I preached all the time this way, Sunday morning and Sunday night on the same subject, it would shorten up my reviews a little bit cause we wouldn't have to bridge such a long gap in time. But we're looking at Matthew chapter 24, the great Olivet Discourse, the sermon of our Lord given to teach about His own Second Coming. It is a tremendous chapter.

The disciples have asked Him the questions in verse 3 that trigger this great sermon. Their questions are: tell us, when shall these things be? What things? The destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the coming of the Messiah in His Kingdom. When shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of Thy coming? And of the end of the age?

They want to know when it is that the Messiah will establish His Kingdom, judge His enemies, purge Jerusalem, gather the scattered Jews and establish His Kingdom. And they have the feeling that it's very, very near. That it could happen at any moment, as we have learned in our studies already in this chapter. They have the sense that it's right around the corner, maybe only days away or at best maybe weeks away. Surely no longer than that. Because Jesus had said that there was going to be a desolation on Jerusalem and Israel, a time of purging. That there was going to be a throwing down of the temple. And they must have thought that meant the rebuilding of the great millennial temple would begin. And that He was coming in the name of the Lord. And surely that was very near. And surely He was the Messiah. And He had been heralded by John the Baptist. And He would have to judge the nations, the godless nations that had rejected Him and His people. It all looked like it was going to come together at this moment.

But in answer to their question in verses 4 through the end of chapter 25, Jesus gives the longest answer to any question asked in the New Testament. He tells them that His coming is in the future. He doesn't tell them how far in the future. None of us knows that. We know better than they did because we've lived the two thousand years since, but we don't know how far yet in the future.

But beginning in verse 4, Jesus says there are some things that are going to happen before My coming. When these things begin to happen, get ready. In fact, in verse 8, He calls them the beginning of birth pains. The birth being the coming of the Messiah into His Kingdom. And there are going to be some birth pains right at the end just before the Messiah comes in His Kingdom. And so He's telling them it isn't now. There are yet some birth pains to come in the future. He doesn't tell them how far into the future, but He does describe the character of these birth pains in the future that will bring in His glorious Kingdom.

Now remember what I told you this morning, that is that all that He says is future. If these are the birth pains to the end, the birth pains to the establishment of the Kingdom, then they have to come at the very end even as birth pains in a woman come at the very end of her pregnancy, just prior to the giving forth of that new life. And so, the Lord is describing what will happen in the very end. He sweeps us to a time called in verse 21 the Great Tribulation. A time in the future, yet ahead of us. And all of the details that we'll look at tonight point to that time.

Now, just one other note to get us up to speed. Remember that when the disciples looked at the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, when they looked at Zechariah and even other of the minor prophets and they saw that the Messiah was coming, the prophets never separated out a first and second coming. They just talked about the Messiah coming and doing all that He would do. And so it seemed to them that the first time the Messiah came would be the only time He would come and He would do it all then. What they didn't see was that there would be a first coming, a long period of time, and then a second coming. We know that's true. No one denies that because we're in that long period right now. And that period was hidden from the Old Testament prophets. Paul calls it a mystery hidden from ages past, but now revealed to us. And so, we're in that time period waiting for the future coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And before He comes, He says, there will be these birth pains that will issue in the establishment of His Kingdom. And there are six of them beginning in verse 4. Number one was deception, and we looked at that this morning...deception.

"And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed," or literally, keep your eyes open, beware, "that no man deceive you for many shall come in My name saying I am Christ and shall deceive, or lead astray, many." And we pointed out that there will always be false Christs. There will always be people claiming to be Jesus Christ. We have them today in our world saying they are Christ, they are the anointed, they are the Savior of the world. They'll always be around. But He's not referring to those that are here now or those that were then in the time of the New Testament. He's referring to those in the future when there will be an abundance of false Messiahs showing up to try to deliver a world that is in absolute chaos. Because if we read the other scriptures properly, they tell us that the time of the Tribulation, the time of the birth pains will be a time when all the systems of man begin to disintegrate, a time when the Lord removes the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit which holds back sin from reaching its maximum potential. All that will be removed. And sin will run wild.

And so, it is at that time as the system begins to be destroyed by its own sinfulness that there will arise a whole lot of false deliverers and false Messiahs trying to get people to follow them. The epitome of that group will be one called whom? Antichrist. And he will be the ultimate false Messiah, the ultimate false Savior that the world will ever see. And there may even be others competing for his power until he finally secures power worldwide.

So, the Lord Jesus says before I come in My Kingdom there will be deceivers who come and say I am Christ and they will lead many astray. And we read in our last message from Daniel chapter 8 and from Daniel chapter 11 and from Revelation chapter 13 and Revelation chapter 19 and 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and all of those passages tell us about this final deceiving Antichrist.

And we also noted here that the period of the birth pains, called here the Great Tribulation, that period has at its beginning the coming of these deceivers. And that is consistent with what we learn in the book of Revelation. So Revelation is consistent with the teaching of the Lord here. So, the first mark, the first of the birth pains that begins to unfold in the time of the Tribulation is a time of great deception, particularly epitomized in the deception of Antichrist who leads the whole world to follow him and worship him as if he were God, the ultimate deliverer of man.

Now let's go on to the second of the signs. They wanted signs. He says here are the signs that are the beginning of the birth pangs, not the end, but just the beginning. And we showed you that like a woman has a child and the birth pains have a certain distance or a certain space between them as they begin, they get closer and closer and closer and closer together until they are coming rather rapidly just before the child is born, so it is in the time of the Great Tribulation, the beginning of sorrows have a certain distance between them and then they get closer and closer until they're coming almost concurrently in a holocaust of exploding trauma that occurs at the very end when the Kingdom comes.

But as it begins to unfold, first come the deceivers who are offering themselves to solve all the world's problems. And our world will be ready for that, believe me. They're ready for it now. This might not be very far off. Our world is ready for some who can come along and solve all the problems. But the second is not deception but dissension...dissension.

Verse 6, "And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet." In other words, this is just the beginning of the birth pains. "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." We'll stop there.

So we find out in verse 6 that that time period is going to be characterized by wars and rumors of wars. If you're not involved in one immediately, or even if you are, you'll hear about other wars. And where wars don't even exist, there will be rumors that they do...hot war, cold war, every conceivable kind of war...global warfare, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. And there's no distinct difference between those two, unless we would say that a nation is a group of people without a king and a kingdom is a group of people with a king and that's the only distinguishing element in those two. The point is that nations and kingdoms globally wide will be engaged in wars and rumors of wars.

Now you say, "Well, we've always had this." You're right. We have always had it. Oh, we've had time periods of brief peace in the world and most nations themselves have had times of war and times of peace. And we're not denying that that will be true throughout all of man's day. There will be times of war and there will be nations fighting nations, and kingdoms fighting kingdoms. But still, what our Lord is saying here is that in the end, the beginning of sorrows that bring the Kingdom, there will be worldwide warfare on a scale unknown prior to that time. In massive proportions, there will be an intensification of war across the earth. And the wars will be national, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be great groups of people, cultures against cultures.

In fact, there's another note that you perhaps should have from the Greek text. In verse 6 it says, "You shall hear," and that is a future, what we call a future durative which doesn't mean anything to most of us. But the idea of it is it carries the idea of continual hearing. You will continually hear of wars, continually hear of rumors of wars, continually hear of nations and kingdoms fighting each other. In other words, it's a constant kind of ringing message, ringing reality at that particular time in history.

Now we can verify this easily. If we go to the book of Daniel, for example, let's look at Daniel chapter 11. And Daniel sweeps us into the future time period. Daniel takes us all the way to the time when the Messiah is coming to set up His Kingdom. And just prior to that, Daniel describes the warfare, at least in some perspectives. Daniel 11 verse 40, "At the time of the end," this is the time of the end of the age. Daniel is taking us right to the end where our Lord is taking us. "At the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him." Him is Antichrist.

And if you study Daniel's prophecy, you will find that in the end, the Antichrist rules a great kingdom basically made up of the territory that once belonged to the old Roman Empire. In other words, in a sense it is going to be a unified Europe. He will be the king of a western confederacy. He will be the king of a revived Roman Empire engulfing Europe. And Daniel makes that abundantly clear throughout his