Let’s talk about prophecy in regard to a discussion of The Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25. You can also find it in Mark 13 and Luke 21. It was one of four major discourses that Jesus gave. These two chapters are often misquoted and misaligned in context and much well-intended preaching is falsely based on using verses from these two chapters out of context and incorrectly.

I will not cover too much detail for I feel I would lose my readers interest, so I will attempt to help us understand many of these important truths in as simple a manner as I can. Basically, you have to put together the three synoptics (Matthew, Mark, Luke) in order to get the full picture. Also, this probably concludes with the Last Supper in John 14 which follows soon afterward.

Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew contain this important discourse on the end of the age. Notice, I didn’t say the end of the world. We are living in a special time in relation to Biblical history called the “church age” or “the age of grace.” It is quite obvious if you take into account the event of the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah, and travel forward to the coming of our Lord to take us to be with Him for eternity, that we are in a different time in Biblical history.

This age that we are living in is different than the Jewish history in the Old Testament and it is different in relation to the events that take place after Christ comes in the clouds to take His church out of this world so they can be saved from the judgments (Romans 8:1) which are coming on a nation that rejected Him at His first coming. They were God’s chosen people, but they constantly rebelled and disobeyed God. Their priests were corrupt and their sacrifices were corrupt and finally, all stopped and they were scattered to the ends of the earth.
Then many years later, God sent His Son to reclaim them. Note that Jesus came to bring the literal kingdom to the nation of Israel, but they rejected Him. We see that in Matthew chapters 1 to 13 where His ministry was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The Apostles were given special gifts to validate that they had come from God. Jesus performed miracles to prove His authority. Still, they rejected Him. Then we see His ministry turning to the Gentiles (meaning, the rest of us) and The Kingdom was put on hold, or postponed until a later time and opened up to the entire world so that those who believed on Him and received Him could be subjects of His literal Kingdom.

At present, we can say that we, as believers, are part of a spiritual kingdom, but after the period called the Tribulation we will be inhabitants of the literal kingdom of God. A small remnant of Jews who endure till the end of the Tribulation and remain faithful after receiving Christ as their Messiah will come out of the Tribulation and into the Millennial Kingdom. All Gentile believers in Christ, The Church, will be part of and go into the literal Kingdom of God. There will be inhabitants of the earth who made it through the Tribulation Period alive but still are not Christians who will go into the Millennial Kingdom. This group will have an opportunity to accept and follow Christ.

During that Millennial Kingdom, Christ will reign in Jerusalem with David at His side and we, as God’s people, will rule and reign with Christ. It will be a time of peace and safety for 1,000 years. Blessings will flow from Israel to the entire world to those who are faithful. That is the small group of Jews, the remnant who came through the Tribulation Period. The non-Christian people of this earth will still have children who will be born upon this earth and they will have the opportunity to believe in Jesus or to reject Him. At the end of this thousand-year reign, Satan will be loosed upon the earth for a short time to try to deceive the world and turn people away from Christ Jesus.

Matthew 24 and 25 do not speak of the Rapture of the Church. Probably the first mention of the Rapture is in the upper room discourse which talks about the body of Christ, the Church, found in John 14. Keep in mind that most of these two chapters in Matthew can be connected with events found in Revelation chapters 6 through 19.

There are four views regarding when The Millennial Kingdom which I want to discuss briefly in our next study.

Ken Lewis Th.D.