Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

A man who tried never to miss a boxing match had an important business meeting the night of the championship bout.

He hated to miss the fight, but he did what he thought was the next best thing.

He asked his wife to watch it and tell him about it when he got home.

When his meeting was over he rushed home and said, "Well honey, how did the match go-who won?" "Nobody won," she said, "One of the guys got hurt in the first round and fell down unconscious, so they had to quit."

Any sport is hard to interpret when you don't understand the rules.

It gets even harder when people have different ideas of what the rules are.

Have you ever played a game where the people you are playing with go by different rules than you are use to?

You have to work out compromise somewhere, for no game or sport can make any sense unless everybody is playing by the same rules.

Christians have their little games too which sometimes lead to major conflicts because they play by different rules.

A great illustration of this is the subject called The Great Tribulation.

There is a great deal of tribulation over this issue of the Great Tribulation, for Christians have radical different rules by which they interpret the Bible when it comes to this subject.

Believe it or not, the paradox is that there is almost universal agreement among the opponents in this conflict over one key issue.

All Christians agree that God's people will escape the wrath of God.

Jesus took the wrath of God on Himself at the cross, and now those in Him will not have to suffer that judgment.

It would be totally inconsistent for God to let His wrath fall on His own children.

That would be like chasing a car in which your child has just been kidnapped, and forcing it off the road over a cliff.

You judge the culprit severely, but at the same time you destroy the innocent.

It is not a very wise plan, and not the sort of strategy that an all wise God would use.

When He judged the world with the flood, He saved Noah and his family out of the flood.

When He destroyed Sodom He took Lot out of the city.

It is just logical, even if the Bible did not say so, that God would spare His own in a day of wrath.

So all Christians see this logic, and they are fully agreed.

But then we come to the wrath of man and Satan, which is what the Great Tribulation is all about, and the unity of Christians is shattered.

Some say the church will be raptured out of the world, and escape this tribulation.

They are called the pre-tribulationists.

This means the rapture comes before the tribulation.

Other Christians, and keep in mind there are millions on both sides of this issue, say that the church will not be raptured until after the tribulation.

They are called the post-tribulationists.

So you have your two sides; each writing a ton of books defending their position, and in many cases calling each other lame brain numskulls for not being able to see the obvious truth.

There is the mid-tribulationists too, but that is just another form of the pre-trib.

Over the last 30 years I have read hundreds of authors on this subject, and there are brilliant and marvelous men of God on both sides.

Anyone who thinks all the good guys are on one side are terribly ignorant.

To cast doubt on any man's love for Christ, or his love for the Word of God, based on his conviction about the tribulation is a great sign of ignorance.

No matter what your conviction is, some of your favorite heroes of the faith are on the other side.

When wise and godly people see an issue differently, I like to try and figure out what is true and valid on both sides.

My first conviction is that both sides in this controversy can be shown to be correct in their emphasis as we focus on the tribulation that came in 70 A. D. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.

The pre-trib side is concerned to spare the church from the tribulation, and this appears to be the whole point of Jesus here in Matt.

24.

He is giving them these warnings so they can watch and be prepared to escape.

When they see the abomination that causes desolation they are to flee to the mountains.

By heeding this warning they will be spared from the Great Tribulation.

We know from history that the Christians did listen to Jesus, and when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Roman legions they fled to a town called Pella 50 miles away.

They were spared the great slaughter that killed a million and a half people in Jerusalem, as the city and temple were utterly demolished.

So the pre-trib idea of the church being spared is supported here.

On the other hand, the post-trib side who stress that the church has to go through the tribulation are equally supported in this passage.

They are spared from death, but they are not spared from the distress of the tribulation.

Jesus says that in their fleeing the city they have to forsake their possessions.

They are to flee so fast they are not to go into their homes to grab anything, and not even their cloak.

In this emergency evacuation they get out with just the clothes on their back, and they lose all else.

It will be dreadful for pregnant women and nursing mothers.

It will be hard on anyone, but for them even worse.

Then in v. 20 Jesus says to pray it does not take place in the winter or on the Sabbath.

That will just add to the misery of an already terrible situation.

The point is, though they are spared from the death of this tribulation, they are not spared from the loss and suffering of it.

They survive it by God's grace, but they have to go through it.

Now we don't have to guess about this, for we have the history of the fulfillment of all this prophecy, and it was just as Jesus said it would be in 70 A. D. The Christians escaped to the city of Pella.

The problem is, though both the pre-trib and the post-trib are right in their basic ideas, with one saying Christians escape, and the other saying they endure tribulation, neither of them is right about the rapture.

The pre-trib says the church will be raptured out of the world before the Great Tribulation, but we do not see that here at all.

They are warned to flee, and God cuts it short for their survival, but they are not raptured out.

The post-trib says the church is raptured after they endure it, but the record of history is clear-they went through it and survived, but they were not raptured out.

The Great Tribulation of 70 A. D. did not see Christians raptured before or after.

They escaped and had to endure, but there was no rapture.

Now they key fact that has to be established is that 70 A. D. was, in fact, the Great Tribulation that Jesus spoke of, and not some other tribulation at the end of history.

Both the pre-trib and post-trib scholars in their desperation to be right twist this passage all out of shape to make it fit their systems.

They ignore the context and force this passage to refer to some far off event that has no relevance to the disciples and that generation at all.

This chapter is one of the most abused in all of the Bible.

Common sense would never dream of the things men do to rip this chapter out of context.

Lets put it in context as Jesus does, and see than any attempt to tear this away from the 70 A. D. fall of Jerusalem is abusive.

Jesus clearly puts brackets around this Great Tribulation to make clear just what it is.

First he says in chapter 23:35-36, "And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berakiah whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation."

The generation that rejected and killed the Son of God, as the last straw of unjust killing, was to be the generation of God's worst judgment.

All other generations that were judged were judged for the sins and folly of their own generation, but this generation was to be judged for the sins and folly for all of history.

That is why Jesus says in v. 21, "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equalled again."

The Great Tribulation was to come upon that unique generation which crucified the Son of God.

There are many attempts to get around this obvious truth of what Jesus is saying, and not make that generation the most unique in all of history in terms of the judgment that is to come upon them.

Many want to push this into the future and some unknown generation.

They come up with elaborate theories that take you into the book of Daniel or Revelation, and they make this chapter refer to something totally irrelevant to the disciples and the Christians living in that day.

They are clever theories, but they do not hold water.

They are buckets without bottoms, in fact, for not only does Jesus tell us before this chapter that that generation was to suffer for all the unjust killing of history, but after telling of the Great Tribulation He says in v. 34, "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."

The first three Gospels all record this, but not John's Gospel, for when he wrote it was already history and no longer prophecy.

This Great Tribulation was over, and that is why John does not record this longest teaching passage of Jesus on prophecy.

I take Jesus at His word, and see that he clearly teaches here that the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. was the greatest tribulation ever in history, and there will never be another like it.

The only way to escape from this conclusion is to try and make generation mean something else, like the Jewish race, or Christian race, and many try, but all attempts are futile, for generation is a word Jesus used frequently, and always to refer to the people of His day.

In Matt.

12:41 Jesus says , "The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here."

In 12:45 He calls them "This wicked generation."

In 16:4 He calls them, "A wicked and adulterous generation."

In 17:17 he says, "O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you."

Jesus is always referring to his contemporaries when He used the word, and that is what He means in Matt.

24.

All of the details of the tribulation that Jesus gives here fit that generation, and it is far fetched and meaningless in any other context.

If this referred to some future tribulation, as many try to teach, it is really obsolete.

How many people in Israel live on their roofs any more?

How many work in the field, and what is the relevance of the winter and the Sabbath for travel?

The whole picture fits perfectly the events of 70 A. D. To take it out of context of that day and make it refer to some unknown event of the future is purely man made fantasy in order to force this passage to fit some man made scheme.

Jesus said it would happen to that generation, and I believe Him.

There is a reason why men work at a theory that makes this refer to some future generation, however, for Jesus says that after this tribulation He will come again in the clouds with power and great glory, and the elect will be gathered from on end of heaven to the other.

Obviously, this did not happen after 70 A. D. they say, and so that is what makes this one of the hardest chapters in the Bible to understand.

Jesus seems to be teaching that His second coming and the rapture were to happen right after the fall of Jerusalem.

This leads to all kinds of theories to try and explain what seems to make Jesus teaching an error.