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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

Prophetic Turning Point

Let's go right into our scripture reading, Luke 21.

Men's hearts, failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud of power and great glory.

When these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.

A message today is entitled, Prophetic Turning Point.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and to study these prophecies of Matthew 24 and Luke 21.

Lord, I ask now that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty nail, Lord.

Lord, hang a portrait of Jesus Christ upon that nail.

And now, Lord, more than ever, we need your Holy Ghost.

We need Lord to speak a word in due season for your people.

So Lord help us Lord, cleanse us Lord, prepare us now as we study these words, is our prayer in Jesus name.

And earlier in the pandemic, or, you know, we talked about these verses, but we're going to do a little more advanced dive into Matthew 24 and Luke 21 tonight.

So some of this may seem familiar to some of you, but hold on, there's some heavy stuff, especially to the middle and the end of this talk, that you're going to want to get.

Matthew 24 1 says, And Jesus went out and departed from the temple.

And His disciples came to Him, for to show him the buildings of the temple.

And the disciples were showing him the buildings of the temple because Jesus had just told the people in the temple that he leaves their house unto them desolate.

This did not jive well with the disciples who were expecting Jesus to be the king 1 day.

And so why would the king who would sit on David's throne disrespect the temple?

So they're trying to show him how magnificent the temple was.

Historians like Josephus describe it as so well built that it looked like 1 solid piece of stone.

It was almost like when a light hit it during the day, at night, some of it would shine back off.

It almost seemed like the stones could never fall some say because of how well put together, how tightly put together the stones were, so that it would look like it was like 1 piece of stone is said.

But verse 2, Jesus says unto them, See ye not all these things?

For verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here 1 stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." When Jesus said that, the disciples were perplexed.

They look at it and they say, how could that possibly be?

Verse 3, and as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?

The disciples connected very closely the fall of Jerusalem and the temple with the end of the world?

How could there be a world without the temple?

Even though, of course, we know that the temple, we've been without a temple in Jerusalem for over 2, 000 years now, really.

And so they said, how can this possibly be?

They wanted to connect the 2 things together.

And the Spirit of Prophecy tells us that Christ was very careful in explaining these things to them because they would not have been able to accept the full weight of the prophecies.

So he mingles the prophecies for the end and the destruction of Jerusalem with the prophecies for the end of the world.

Well, the first 1, of course, was this 1, the fall of Jerusalem.

And in 8070, the Roman general Titus, who would go on to be emperor, comes in and they surround Jerusalem and they take it.

The soldiers, the Roman soldiers, were so angry at the defiant Jews that when they get inside the city, they tear the place apart, killing women and children.

They commit heinous atrocities against the people that were in Jerusalem.

And ultimately, they make sure to tear every stone down.

There are some who argued or would say that there was almost supernatural help in making sure that not 1 stone was left on another, just as Christ had prophesied.

Of course, they took for spoil all the valuable things that would have been in the temple, and the city and the temple were destroyed, and many lives were lost.

But because the Christians heeded the warnings of Jesus as we are going to go through, they were able to leave, and historians say not 1 Christian died.

So the lessons we're going to get here that apply to the fall of Jerusalem apply to the fall of this world.

And if we can hear the warnings and heed them, we will be ready to escape this world like they escaped Jerusalem.

This is the 490-year, the 70-week prophecy.

It starts at 457 at the decree to rebuild Jerusalem.

It goes all the way to 8034 when Stephen is stoned and the gospel then goes to the Gentiles just as Jesus predicted in 8031 when he said, listen, I leave their house unto you desolate.

He was predicting that the time for the Jews was running out, and that was exactly what the prophecy said.

And so, once you understand that, you get what Jesus is starting to say.

Matthew 24 and verse 4, And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

When Jesus speaks of end time events, the first warning he gives is to not be deceived.

The Greek word for deceive there is the word planeo.

It means to cause, to stray, to lead astray, to lead aside from the right way, to go astray, wander, roam about.

It is the same word used in the parable of the ninety-nine and the 1 sheep.

2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 19 says this, We have also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, Until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.

Peter, in 2 Peter 1 and verse 16, 17, 18, describes his experience at the Mount of Transfiguration.

And after describing what he saw with his own 2 eyes, Peter says there's something more sure than that.

If you go to a church or if you hear a preacher preach not to worry about prophecy, if they belittle and ridicule the study of prophecy, it is because there is no light in them.

The study of prophecy allows us to have an anchor upon which, a hook as it were, upon which to hang our faith.

The prophecies, as we study history and see how they've been fulfilled, the prophecies as we move forward and we see them be fulfilled, we know that we are not blindly believing.

Prophecy brings the Word of God to life and gives it strength.

2 Peter 1 verse 20-21 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

When you study the Bible, 1 of the ways that I was taught is the Bible is not word inspired, it's thought inspired.

You study God's Word to extract the thought.

The prophecies were given and we ought to study them to extract what it is that God is trying to teach us.

And you can see in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, many of the most important end-time prophecies Christ alludes to or directly speaks to in those 2 chapters.

It is powerful because if you're not going to be deceived, He lays down, if you're not going to be planeo, He lays down truths that you need to understand to survive the end times.

Pray that your flight be not on the Sabbath.

May 2420, if the Sabbath was done away with, Jesus would not be telling them 40 years later to worry about the Sabbath.

The state of the dead, Matthew 2431, He speaks of the great sound of a trumpet.

That's the sound of the trumpet that would awake the dead out of their sleep.

If they were already in heaven, there would be no need for that trumpet.

It says, Lest at any time your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.

Luke 21, 34 speaks to the clarity of mind that comes from following God's health message, not being drunk on the things of this world.

Solomon says, blessed are your princes when they eat for strength and not for drunkenness.

And because iniquity shall abound, Matthew 24, 12, speaking of future times, says iniquity shall abound.

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Prophetic Turning Point

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