Sermon Tone Analysis

We got started, last week, on the Olivet Discourse, so called because Jesus preached this sermon on the Mount of Olives.

It is all about Jesus’ second advent.

Indeed, we know that all that Jesus is going to say is going to happen word for word for His prophecy about the Temple and its stones all being thrown down was also fulfilled word for word.

We know that the tribulation, as it says in verse 8, is the beginning of the end and despite all that has happened already things are going to increase and get worse until Jesus intervenes.

Things are not going to get better.

Last week we saw that we have the start of wars, of famine, of disease and of earthquakes and the corresponding passage in Revelation 6 does not leave much to the imagination as around 2 billion lives are lost or 20% of the world’s population at that time.

All hell has broken loose on earth and lawlessness is no longer stopped.

The police can do nothing.

The army can do nothing.

All that there is now to do is to fear; fear, for nothing is going to stop the evil in people’s hearts now.

God is judging and pouring out wrath and who gets it in the neck in retaliation except who?

Well, let us see...

Hang on a moment!

Did you not say that the Church will be removed before the tribulation so who is going to be delivered up to persecution in verse 9? Well, people will be saved after the rapture.

There will be those who will remember what they had been told, some who would have heard sermons on this very passage who will get saved.

They will realise that they missed the boat as far as the rapture is concerned, maybe are missing loved ones who have disappeared.

There will be others trying to make sense of these things and will either find material about the event or read the Scriptures for themselves.

You can see some of these ideas in films about the rapture or in books such the ‘Left Behind’ series and so on.

I caution about these though, for whilst they are trying to have a biblical viewpoint, it is still fictionalised.

When the Church is removed nothing can prepare the world for what is about to happen but even so, there will be people who will realise that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and commit their lives to Him.

There are two other ways that people will become Christians during this time and we read about them in Revelation 7 and Revelation 11.

The first are 144,000 Jews that find Christ almost immediately after the rapture that will be from all 12 tribes of Israel.

This is God’s mercy during Jacob’s trouble.

These will make the gospel known as verse 14 tells us: The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world and who will do the preaching?

The 144,000.

Each of these will be sealed and protected by God.

And then there are the two witnesses in Revelation 11 who seem to arrive in the last 3.5yrs of the tribulation and are thought most probably to be Elijah and Moses.

They will be seen by the whole world and all will know they have been sent by God.

They will preach and do signs and wonders for 3.5 yrs and will finally be killed by the Antichrist but whilst the world celebrates they will be resurrected after 3 days in the sight of all.

Because of all this some people will come to faith in Christ though we cannot know how many.

In Revelation 6, the parallel passage to Matthew 24 we find this:

This is still at the beginning of all these things in the first half of the tribulation.

Even now our brothers and sisters are being persecuted, being tortured, being put to death.

11 Christians die for their faith every day according to Open Doors in the top 50 nations of persecutors.

Soon there will be no safe sanctuary anywhere on earth for those who are Christians.

Gay people can be loud and proud in public but if you say that its not OK to be LGBTQ+ then you could lose your job.

Do you know that there is a move to accept paedophiles as a natural part of society?

What?

Don’t be ridiculous, right?

After all, we have people out there exposing these people and bringing them to court.

You do know that being transgender was a considered to be a mental disease by scientists and society not so long ago?

The next move is to see that it is simply another sexual orientation.

They were born that way.

They can’t help it.

For them it is natural.

Can it happen?

Of course.

The number of convicted paedophiles is enormous in the UK.

It didn’t take society long to accept other aberrations as normal.

The way we are sexualising children and giving sex education to those who should be innocent of even the thought of these things and made to think that society is normal in all its behaviours and should be accepted and promoted.

What we sow, we reap.

Have you also noticed that it is being said that criticising Islam is racist!

Indeed many political parties have adopted the Islamophobia Definition put forward by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims.

But you don’t have a choice what colour skin you are born in - skin colour does not define you nor where you’re born - but what defines you is what you do and say and believe - in these things you have a choice including being a follower of Muhammad or not - you can choose Christ instead.

What all this does though is put real Christians at risk for who are the ones who are going to stand for righteousness?

We are light and salt and for those who love darkness they will soon get irritated with us like salt in a wound.

But we don’t have to worry just about those in the world…the false religious system that is coming together in our time mixing Christianity, Islam and other faiths that Scripture says the HQ is in Rome according to Revelation 17:9.

What religion could possibly be based in Rome?!

And according to Revelation 16:6 it is drunk with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus - indeed it already is - just think of crusades and the counter-reformation where many a true Christian died as a result - but they are not finished yet according to the bible.

The false religion which is spreading even here in the UK with its capitulation to unity at any price for the sake of peace.

Paul called out on heresy for much lesser things.

Unity should never be at the expense of truth.

The persecution of God’s people will happen more and more at the hands of those who think they are doing God’s work and that is true of the so-called Christian church let alone what we see with Islam and Hinduism in other nations.

Criticising Islam or Hinduism or Catholicism is not something that should be banned but is right to do whilst respecting people’s wish to believe whatever they want.

Come Judgement Day they will have to answer for ignoring the truth to follow their false religion.

Jesus goes on to say that there will be traitors and haters - these will be the defectors.

Some who name the name of Christ and see the price that needs to be paid can’t do it but more than that they give up others, turning them in for surely by now believers will be underground, and names and addresses will be handed over so that they protect themselves but get others killed in the process.

But the worst traitors will be those that are your own family:

This is already happening.

I heard a story this week where a woman ran for her life and had to leave her two children, parents and others when she was threatened as a result of becoming a believer in Somalia - because her husband turned against her and had informed the extended family what she had done.

This is more understandable because he is a Muslim but so-called Christians can be like this too.

I’ve experienced betrayal on more than one occasion by those who were supposed to be believers.

Are the people who do this believers?

No, but pseudo-believers.

Of course, we are warned about such in

How do we know they are not actually believers?

We are already living it and we are not in the tribulation so things are going to get even more perilous.

These are just the beginning of birth pangs!

On top of this there will be false prophets who will arise and they will gain large followings.

We see such people today and there have been many a cult that has arisen whether we Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons, or Moonies or People’s Temple or Krishna or Scientology or or or(!),

This is what happens when you reject the truth; you believe a lie.

They will no doubt speak of peace and prosperity but the evidence will be to the contrary.

And now we are only at the mid-way point of the 7-year peace deal.

Either before and/or during the first half of the tribulation, there will be a rebuilt temple.

For this to happen there is a certain Dome of the Rock Mosque in the way on the Temple Mount.

Speculation about how it could be removed abound but two obvious ways is through war or earthquake.

The building has been destroyed 3 times as a result of earthquakes, though the last time was 1004 years ago.

But it was damaged again in 1927 when it was already in a state of disrepair.

Since then enormous sums of money have gone into it.

There is no surprise that a newly constructed temple could replace it during the last times.

It is not as impossible as some think - just think did anyone think Herod’s Temple could ever come down but down it came in AD70.

An organisation in Israel, The Temple Institute, is ready to establish a third temple based on the Ezekiel vision of a new temple in chapters 40-48 and are, even now, training Levites for priestly ministry.

They claim to have all the material needed to build the temple and furnish it.

How do we know a temple will be built?

Well, we are told in verse 15:

The holy place is the temple.

The Antichrist will stop the sacrifices and something called the Abomination of Desolation will be put into the temple, in the holy place.

Jesus points us to the prophecy of Daniel where it says:

By the time of Jesus people thought that perhaps this had been completely fulfilled by a man named Antiochus IV.

He named himself ‘Epiphanes’ which means “God manifested”.