Seeking Jesus First Dec. 26, 2024
Signs of a New and Better Covenant - Part Three
“Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”” (Matthew 24:3, NKJV)
The disciples asked three questions. The first was, “When will these things be?” It is clear that they were asking about the things that Jesus had just been speaking. Matthew 21:23 starts with “Now, when He came to the temple…”, and Matthew 24:1 starts with, “Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple…” During those three chapters, Jesus was speaking parables of the kingdom, answering questions from the Sadducees, Pharisees and Herodians, rebuking them with Eight Woes, and finally decreeing the desolation of Jerusalem. The disciples wanted to know when Jerusalem would be destroyed.
Matthew 24 shares the answers to these questions, but let’s find the answer to, “When will these things be?”. Jesus said in Matthew 24:34, “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”
What did Jesus mean by, “this generation”? Now, we should find it rather simple to understand as this is the fifth time this phrase is used by Jesus in The Gospel of Matthew. Each of the previous times the same phrase is used in Matthew, it is referring to the generation that is alive at the time Jesus spoke the phrase. The “law of first mention” is a way of understanding Scripture that applies the understanding of the first mention of a word or phrase to future uses of the same word or phrase unless it can’t be understood that way. The first time “this generation” is used in The Holy Bible is when God declared in Genesis 7:1, “Then the Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation.” It is clear in this use that God was delivering Noah from a world of wicked people who were alive at the time of Noah.
Therefore, we should conclude from the prophesy of Jesus that Jerusalem would be destroyed within the next 40 years. Rome utterly destroyed Jerusalem, a city of over two million people, 40 years later, yet all of the believers in Christ Jesus were delivered from the city prior to its destruction. One can read of this total desolation of Jerusalem in The Works of Josephus the Historian. The temple and the very way Old Testament religious worship was forever destroyed. “There remains no more sacrifice for sin.” The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was enough and His blood still speaks from The Mercy Seat before God’s throne in Heaven.