Day 257

If you were to go to Jerusalem today you could see these stones still piledwhere they fell almost two thousand years ago. For those of Jesus’ day this would be unthinkable. The Temple had been the center of their collective lives since the time of David. It was something that symbolized their identity. Without the Temple, Israel was just a shadow. It had been destroyed once before and rebuilt. And now Jesus says, as a sign of Israel’s spiritual decline, it will happen again.

One of the goals of the destruction of Jerusalem was the scattering of the Believers. Christianity was not to be localized. We take God’s presence everywhere we go, and going is integral to the Gospel. Everyone needs to hear. And it will not be a time of peace. Despite what many want to proclaim, the Gospel often brings division rather than peace. People don’t like it when we say there is only one way to a relationship with God. They call us intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, simple, uneducated, backward. Jesus was called worse. When the end comes, we will be pushed to the edge.

Some of the particulars of who sits in the Temple are fuzzy to me. Many have pointed to particular moments before 70AD. Some place it still in the future. Some say it is both. What I can tell from the text is that it will be a horrible time to be around. This distress will never be this bad again. And even in the middle of the destruction and distress, God’s grace is present. He shortens the time of distress for the sake of the believers. Everyone gets the benefit of that shortened distress.

During that time many will be led away from the faith. Believers won’t be deceived because we are watching, alert to what is happening and the eternal significance of those events. But those on the fringes will be led astray. And then there will be Jesus’ return in power and gather believers from the whole earth and heaven. The exact nature of this gathering is not spelled out, so we will have to wait until the events unfold to find out.

With the Christmas buying season almost complete, I was wondering if you ordered anything online? Was it shipped UPS, FedEx or USPS? Did you track it online and know what day it was coming? Were there indications that the package was getting closer to your house? Email updates? Did you recognize the truck when it pulled up to your house? Did you know what it contained for you?

So it will be for us. We know many of the things that surround Jesus’ return. If we are awake and alert, watching for His return, we will notice the signs and continue to be prepared. We might not know the exact moment when the box will be handed to us in advance, but we will recognize the truck when it pulls up in front of our house. We will not be surprised. We know He is returning. We know it things will get really bad before He does. We know His grace will sustain us. Be ready!