Chester Clark

Ouachita Hills College

This Generation

It's wonderful to be here with you today and to enjoy the fellowship.

It's a wonderful thing to be a part of the GYC movement, but even more wonderful to be part of the Advent movement.

And everywhere we go in this world we find people who are looking for the return of Jesus.

It's exciting to see what God is doing today that gives us courage and confidence, knowing that the sorrow and suffering we see around us will not continue indefinitely, but it will come to an end.

This morning we're going to be looking at a scripture, Matthew 24.

If you'll turn with me there again, Matthew 24.

We're going to be looking at the, well, really most of the passage, most of the chapter of Matthew 24.

Often we preach from Matthew 24 and draw applications from many of the verses, but I find that it's not very frequent, not very frequent that we actually have an interpretation of the chapter.

And so we're going to be looking at a historicist interpretation of Matthew chapter 24 and focusing on an understanding of these last few verses here, verses 32 through 34.

And let's just bow our heads for an additional word of prayer before we read those verses again.

Father in heaven, I confess my need, we confess our need today for your Holy Spirit.

We cannot understand, much less apply your word in our hearts and lives without your spirit to guide us.

So today we ask for his presence in our hearts and our minds to guide our thinking that we might not only be hearers of the word but doers as well And we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

In Matthew 24, there's this parable that many people have wondered what Jesus meant by.

Matthew 24, verse 32, he says, "'Now learn a parable of the fig tree.

When his branch is yet tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.

So likewise, when ye shall see all these things, that's all the things that he's just talked about in the preceding verses, so likewise, when you see all these things, know that it is near even at the doors.

Now Jesus has just described the signs that precede His second coming and described the second coming itself.

And then He says in verse 34, the words that have seemed puzzling to many people throughout the ages, verily I say unto you this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.

As Jesus' listeners were standing about Him there as He was speaking, they thought they knew what He meant.

They thought surely Jesus was saying that the culmination of Earth's history would take place in their lifetime.

This generation will not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.

Now, wouldn't you have liked to have been listening to Jesus preach in person?

Sometimes I read these accounts and we just have a few of the sermons of Jesus.

By the way, this sermon of Jesus, Matthew 24 and 25, is the second longest sermon recorded of Jesus, second only to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7.

Here they had been listening to Jesus, They had heard what Jesus was saying, mostly the small group of disciples that were gathered around Him.

And as He's telling them all the signs that precede the second coming, He gives them this promise, verily, truly I say unto you, this generation will not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.

When Jesus leaves, or after Jesus left, they said, he's going to come again in our lifetime.

But you know, some 50, 60, 70 years later, the old standard bearers were dropping to death.

John was in exile on the island of Patmos, and eventually the last person who heard Jesus' words on that day passed to their rest as well.

And some were left scratching their heads saying, what then did Jesus mean?

I think it's a good question for us to ask this morning, isn't it?

So let's look at Matthew 24 and see if we can discover what Jesus meant when he said, this generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.

Perhaps there's a message for us living in 2009 as well.

If we turn back to the beginning of Matthew chapter 24, we find that this took place as Jesus and His disciples were leaving the temple.

And the disciples must have been marveling as human beings marvel at the creation of other human beings, they must have been marveling at the splendor of the temple.

Even though this temple did not match the glory of the Temple of Solomon, it was still a magnificent, beautiful building, made even more so recently as the Romans, trying to appease the Jews, had contributed significant resources to beautify and enlarge the temple premises.

And so here they're leaving the temple and Jesus is walking out with his disciples and the disciples must have been commenting about the temple building and Jesus said something that to them was very startling.

He said verse 2, see ye not all these things?

Verily I say unto you there shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

Now this must have hit the disciples right between the eyes.

They were proud of their Jewish heritage, they were proud of their temple, they had in their mind still in spite of the teachings of Jesus the idea that the Messiah was going to come, sit on David's throne, overthrow the Roman yoke, and the city of Jerusalem and the temple would be the center of the world.

And so when Jesus said, do you see this beautiful building?

Do you see how magnificent and splendorous it is?

Not 1 stone is going to be left upon another.

There was only 1 possibility that existed in the disciples' minds, and that was that Jesus must be talking about the very end of the world.

Of course, they knew the world in its sinful state was going to be destroyed.

And so they came to Jesus sometime afterwards as He sat on the Mount of Olives.

And they said to Him in verse 3, Tell us, when shall these things be?

And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?" Do you see how they ask that question?

They're assuming they're asking 1 question, when in reality they're asking 2.

But Jesus knew something they were not yet then able to bear.

Jesus knew the temple would be destroyed nearly 2, 000 years before His second coming.

Jesus knew that they were going to reject him and crucify him, they being the Jewish nation.

Their house would be left unto them desolate, and that which was determined would be poured upon that city of Jerusalem.

The king would send forth his armies and burn their city.

And so Jesus began to answer them, and in his answer he answered both questions.

He both gave signs for the destruction of Jerusalem and also signs for the second coming.

We read in Desire of Ages page 628, Jesus mingled the description of the 2 events.

And so I'm going to, we're going to go fairly quickly through this, but if you have your Bibles, I encourage you to follow along.

If you have something, take notes, I encourage you to write down because it's very simple.

What I love about Adventist prophetic understanding is it's very simple.

Historicism is a very simple hermeneutic for interpretation of prophecy.

And Jesus begins in verse 4 and says, take heed that no man deceive you.

Verses 4 through 14, if you wanna take note of this, verses 4 through 14, Jesus gives 10 signs.

Jesus gives 10 signs that would precede both the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Coming.

10 signs that would precede both the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Coming.

We can scan down through them and see them very quickly.

First of all, there would be false Christs who would come and deceive many.

There would be diseases or as the King James calls them, pestilences.

There would be earthquakes in many places.

There would be persecution of God's people.

There would be betrayal of brethren, 1 betraying another.

There would be false prophets, there would be a condition he called the love of many waxing cold, and finally in verse 14, the 1 maybe we're most familiar with, this gospel of the kingdom would be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then what?

Now some Adventists even, when I share these 10 signs, they say, wait a minute, the gospel was taken to the whole world before the destruction of Jerusalem?

Colossians chapter 1 verse 23, Paul speaks of the gospel of which he was a minister, having been preached to every creature under heaven.

I believe what he meant is it had reached the furthest extents of the inhabited globe in 1 generation.

So here we have 10 signs that would precede the destruction of Jerusalem.

We don't have time to go into the historical fulfillment of all of these 10 signs, but the short answer is yes, they were.

There were many false Christs and false prophets.

Having rejected the Messiah, rejected Jesus, the Jews were left to whatever imposter would come along.

And there were many imposters who presented themselves to the Jewish nation and said, I am the Messiah, rally around my standard, we will overthrow the Roman yoke.

In fact, Jerusalem was destroyed eventually just because of such false messiahs.

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This Generation

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