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Matthew 24:29-51
00:30:05
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber, professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into 24:29-51.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to form. Now I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute. And Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who's a professor of Scripture here at the Augusta Institute. And we're going to continue our ongoing Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. Last time we left off in the midst of Matthew chapter 24 and talking about the end of the Temple and the end of the world. And of course that's a big topic. And if you haven't followed our previous, you're really going to want to go back to the previous session to understand what we're going to be talking about today because there's a lot of rich theology here and a deep meaning, but in short, in some. We talked about that. Jesus leaves the temple complex, goes up on the Mount of Olives. His disciples on the way point out the wonderful buildings of the Temple. Jesus says amen. I tell you, not one stone will be left upon another. And the disciples come and ask Jesus privately how, when, when, what's the sign of, of that and when will it happen? And, and so we get these two elements. Jesus is coming at the end of the age and, and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. And of course we talk about how that prophecy of our Lord was actually fulfilled 40 years after he gave it. So that was probably 30 A.D. that Jesus's last year of his life. And then in exactly the year 70 AD, 40 years later, Jesus, Jesus word comes true. And the Romans utterly destroyed the temple and the city of Jerusalem after over a year long siege. And it's a time of, it's brutal.
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B
It'S catastrophic, it's remembered in Judaism to this day as one of the great tragedies of history.
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It was the greatest loss of Jewish life until the Holocaust.
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B
Wow. Yep, that's right.
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It was the greatest tragedy until the Holocaust. So it was a big event. So why don't you take us back to a couple of the key images that Jesus is going to use.
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B
All right, so let's pick up. In Matthew 24:29, Jesus says something that's remarkable. He says, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers in heaven will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man. Now we've been talking about how Jesus's teaching here relates not just to the end of the world, but also to the events of the destruction of the temple in AD 70. And if we really want to understand how this works, a key passage that's helpful to look at is in Isaiah 13, Isaiah 13 is a famous oracle against Babylon. And what's remarkable about this passage is it's actually in two parts. So what you see in verses 9 through 13 is judgment directed at sinful humanity. In general terms. Right. A general judgment of the world. And then in verses 14 through 22 there's a shift, as many scholars have noted, a shift that moves from a cosmic calamity to a national disaster. And what ends up happening is what we see in prophecies, not just like this. We see it again in Isaiah is it 34, the Oracle against Edom. What we see is there's a specific manifestation of the day of the Lord's judgment. So you see for example, this Isaiah 13, Babylon, Babylon is going to be judged, but there's also a general judgment, a universal cosmic judgment. And so the idea is the judgment on Babylon is an instantiation, is a kind of expression of what is going to happen at the end of time. Right. When God judges all the world. And that's really applicable to what we see here in Matthew 24. There's going to be a specific judgment. Yep. In AD 70, but that has a fuller reference. Right. The judgment will come in its fullness at the end of time. So you don't want to separate these two things, you want to get them together. Did you? I think we should turn to Isaiah 13.
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I'm going to give you a couple examples of Isaiah 13. So I think one of the problems that we want to address, Michael, is that when people hear that Jesus says the sun will be dark and the moon won't give its light and the stars will be falling from the heavens. You know, a lot of people read that in a flat footed way, wooden, literal way and they say, oh, Jesus thought the world was going to end. And then later, a little bit later from there, Jesus will say, all these things will take place before this generation passes. And a generation is 40 years for the Jews. So one of the common things that happened after the Enlightenment, 18th, 19th century biblical scholarship, especially amongst the Germans and then the French, was the idea that, well, Jesus predicted the end of the world and it was only the end of Jerusalem and the temple. And so Jesus was wrong. And if Jesus is wrong, that disqualifies him from being divine and he can't be the Son of God.
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Right.
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And so all of a sudden Jesus becomes a good moral teacher, maybe a nice guy, but he's not the Son of God. And so you get what will become liberal Christianity and That is a Christianity that sees Jesus as a good moral teacher, but not as the divine Son of God. So Christianity loses its supernatural faith because the linchpin of that faith is Jesus Christ. And if Jesus is wrong, he's not God. And what we want to show is that when Jesus is saying the Son and the moon and the stars are darkened, he's not talking about the end of space and time. He's talking about the end of a particular nation, in this case Israel and a particular era, and that there's a judgment coming to them. And that same language is used. Jesus is not just coining this afresh, he's drawing on a deep Jewish tradition of judgment oracles that you were talking about, Michael. And this, these judgment oracles use what we call apocalyptic language, metaphorical language that's full of meaning. And we use this kind of language even in our scientific culture when we talk about Black Friday, you know, and talk about the stock market crash and the sunset. Yeah, exactly. And there wasn't a solar eclipse that day. The sun was out, and yet people were jumping off their high rise buildings in Manhattan because they had lost their fortune.
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That's right.
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And because the stock market crash. And so we will, we will talk about something being up. We'll use that highly charged language like, you know, Black Friday or the, you know, the, the, the, the, the day of the stock market crash, even the idea of crash, you know, it's not like the stock market actually collapsed. The roof didn't collapse in. But we call it a crash because we're investing it with the kind of meaning that it's at a big event. And so it's important to understand that kind of metaphorical language and to not take it literalistically. And ironically, it was scholars in the, in 1819 and a lot of the 20th century who took this language literalistically rather than metaphorically.
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Although we would want to say there is a literal fulfillment of this. I mean, there will be an end of time. Right. And there will be an end of the stars, and there will be an end of the, of the, of the cosmos as well. So in a way you can say what's happening with the destruction in Jerusalem can be spoken of in terms that are borrowed from that future day, because that event in AD 70 is a kind of anticipation of that end of the cosmos.
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Exactly, it's an anticipation. But also, even the sun, the moon are darkened for Babylon, but that doesn't mean it's darkened for Israel or other nations in the time of Babylon. Right. So if we look at Isaiah, chapter 13. If you turn your Bibles to Isaiah 13, just to give you the beginning of this oracle, it begins, the oracle concerning Babylon, which Isaiah, the son of Amos saw on a bare hill. Raise the signal, cry aloud to them, wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles. And a warning signal is a fire that would be on a hill to warn, because he didn't have cell phones and other things to warn that an enemy army was coming. And I just think of the Lord of the Rings in the movie. They have the fires burning in Gondor, and so that's an ominous sign. And then he goes on and God's commanded for judgment. There's the sound of a trumpet in verse four, the uproar of kingdoms, nations gathering together in verse, they come from a distant land in verse five, to the end of the heavens, the Lord and the weapons of his indignation to destroy the whole land wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand. And so this becomes a shorthand in the prophets for a day of judgment. This nation, its sins, has risen to a certain level that now there's going to be a judgment upon the nation of Babylon. So wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand. Destruction from the Almighty. And so you go a little bit further, there's going to be. People are going to be dismayed and notice they'll be, in verse eight, pangs and agony will seize them. They will be in anguish as a woman is in labor. And of course, Jesus uses that very metaphor of the labor pains, the birth pangs, to describe the kind of intense pain and suffering and dismay that people will have. And again, verse nine, behold, the day of the Lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the land a desolation. So we've heard that term of desolation, the house being desolate and to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the land for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. And so this idea of the sun, the moon and the stars, well, that's how people kept time in the ancient world. And the idea of the sun you kept the hour, the moon you kept the cycles for the month and the weeks and. And then for the constellations, for the seasons. And so the idea of the sun, the moon and the stars being darkened means your time is up. And the time for Babylon is at hand now. And Jesus is saying the same thing for Jerusalem and for the nation of Israel. When the sun, the moon and the stars are darkened, their time is up, Judgment is at hand.
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Yep. And so what I just point out again is these verses from 9 through 13 talking about cosmic judgment, which is it can be interpreted symbolically. In fact, we also see this in other places. Book of Daniel, fascinating passage, describes the destruction of the temple. And we read about how In Daniel chapter 8, when the temple is destroyed, we read some of the hosts, some of the stars came down from heaven and it was trampled on, and then the regular burnt offering was taken away and the place of sanctuary was overthrown.
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So.
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So we have the falling of the stars in Daniel 7, Daniel 8, linked with the judgment. Right. Because. Yeah. How do you tell time? Don't have a Rolex. Right. So the way you tell time is you look at the place of the sun and you know what time of the month you're in by the place of the moon, you know what year you're in by the arrangement of the constellations in the sky. So sun, moon and stars, the way you tell time. So it can be interpreted symbolically. At the same time, we don't want to fall into the trap of saying, oh, well, this is all symbolic. There's not going to be an end of the world. There's not going to be an end time. And Isaiah, I think, is telling us that is going to happen. There is going to be judgment. And what's going.
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It's literally the end of time for the kingdom of Babylon, right?
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Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then, of course, there will be a final judgment. There will be a last day. And what happens to Babylon is a kind of instantiation of that, is a particular expression of that final judgment that's going to come.
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Let me ask you, Michael, since you bring up the idea of the end of the world with the sun, the moon, the stars being darkened as an important metaphor and pointer towards that, do you think that the great sign of the miracle of Fatima, of the sun dancing and it looked like the sun was going to fall out of the heavens upon people, and everybody was panicked. Do you think that was a sign relating to this?
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I mean, certainly this is all apocalyptic imagery. And I think that, you know, the apparition at Fatima, which is. It's an amazing story. There's a Protestant biblical scholar who's written a book all on miracles, and he has a whole section on Fatima in there because he's like, how else do you Explain this. I mean, there are so many witnesses to this phenomenon that took place. Of course, it makes sense that this is a sign of.
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Imminent judgment. And ultimately, what is it ordered towards repentance. Right. Why is God telling you about these? Why is God sharing these signs of doom? Well, it's not just to kind of flex his, you know, his celestial muscles or something. Right. Ultimately, God wants to warn his people that judgment is coming and it's time to reform. It's time to. To look at your life anew. After Jesus says this, he says, the sun will be darkened, the Son of Man will be coming on the clouds. And that's an allusion to Daniel, though I'll point out again, the image of someone coming is an image of judgment and Jesus coming on the clouds of heaven. There's only one person in the Old Testament who really rides on clouds. It's the Lord. And to speak of the coming of the Lord is a way of speaking of coming judgment. Jesus then goes on, talk about the fig tree, says, learn its lesson. You can tell when the leaves are ripening. Likewise, should be able to read the signs of the times. Right? In light of what I've told you, should be able to recognize when this period of judgment is upon you. Then he says something interesting. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. And now we're going to have a shift. Up until now, Jesus has been saying, all right, look here. Here are the signs. You can read the signs. This is what's going to happen. Step by step, this is what's going to happen. Then he says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Then he says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass. My words will not pass away. Let me say that again. Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will not pass away. The idea is I was talking about what's going to happen A.D. 70, but now the focus turns especially to his coming at the end of time. And now the tone changes. Now the warning is, no one knows the hour of that day. And Jesus is going to go on to tell parables in Matthew 25 that emphasize you need to be vigilant because you won't know the time of that day. So there's a bit of a distinction between what happens before verse 24, right? Where Jesus is laying out, these are the things that are going to take place. So you'll know from the fig tree learn its lesson. You'll know. You'll be able to Escape Jerusalem. Then after that he says, heaven and earth will pass away. That's referring to the end of time. And of that day, hour, no one knows. Right. So it's going to come like a thief in the night. Now we have a very famous verse here, long vexed interpreters. Jesus says no one knows that hour, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. I thought Jesus was God. How does no one know the day or the hour? Even the Son. Shouldn't Jesus know the day or the hour? Dr. Gray, how do you explain that passage?
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You know, I try to address this subtly in my dissertation. I didn't have the room and the freedom to fully do that. But you know which you can get.
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It's called the Temple. The Temple and the Gospel of Mark. It's a fantastic book.
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Yeah, Jesus in the Temple and the Gospel of Mark. Thank you. That's right.
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But in Mark's Gospel, he really sets this up with a fig tree and that there's the watches of the night. And then you're going to get each watch of the night mentioned in the Gospel of Mark at key moments during Jesus Passion narrative. And he ties that in. And.
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I don't know how to do that justice in the time we have here.
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But.
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But I would say, in short, my answer is this. Jesus prays because he says no one knows the day or the hour. Well, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus will pray that the hour may pass from him and that the cup may pass. But he says, not my will, but yours be done. And the Father, clearly Jesus knows the hour is coming, but he also knows he's going to pray that the Father may let this hour pass.
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Put off this hour perhaps. And Jesus knows the answer to his Father in prayer. And so when he turns to disciples and says, arise, let us be going, for my handover is at hand, my betrayer, he says, for the hour has come. And so the first hour of judgment and wrath will happen upon Jesus at midnight. And that's the hour that the passover, that the firstborns are struck in Egypt. And there's all kinds of illusions to that in Mark's narrative. And Jesus, the angel of death comes at midnight. And that's the hour that Judas comes and Jesus will be taken. And so Jesus says no one knows that day or the hour, but he does know it later in the narrative. But he also knows he's going to pray to the Father. So there's a sense of a little bit of openness that Jesus has to that and his humility, because he's submitting to the Father's will. But he also knows what the Father's will is. So he knows the hour, but he also knows he's going to pray that that hour may be put off. So there's a certain openness here in 24 that when you get to Gethsemane, Jesus will have a definitive answer to that. And so Jesus does know. He's not caught by surprise. But he also tells us clearly we don't know the day or the hour of our own individual death and our own individual judgment. We don't know the day or the hour of a nation's individual judgment like Babylon's. And we don't know the final judgment that day or the hour that will come upon the world.
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That's right.
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And now there'll be signs to prepare us. And so we'll know. All right, summer is coming. We don't know the hour, the day maybe, but we know the season. And I think Jesus gives us signs to know when we're in the season of the end times.
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And so part of that is going to be a period, once again, of.
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Judgment. And Jesus uses the language of the flood to explain this. Now, some of you may have heard of a TV movie or a movie called Left behind, and it expresses this idea that's common in a lot of Protestant circles, that there will be a great tribulation, which we believe as Catholics before the final day. But in many Protestant circles, the idea is that the righteous are going to be raptured. They're going to be taken up from the earth before the time of tribulation. Now, Catholic tradition doesn't receive this, and really Protestant tradition doesn't really know it either. It's a really new idea comes around the 19th century as a result of the Scofield reference Bible. But big problem with that is the idea that we're not going to be present for suffering, that God has to rescue us from suffering because the righteous are. Oh, we'll never suffer. Well, the cross shows us the faulty thinking there. Yeah.
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So Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me. He doesn't say, put down your cross and follow me.
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Right. And say, put down your cross and I'll rapture you so that you don't have to suffer. Right.
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And usually. Well, you're probably going to explain this, I bet. Okay, I'll let you go.
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No. What are you going to do?
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Well, the idea of those who get taken up, this is where we're going.
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But let's do it. Go ahead. Yeah.
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There's a great irony here because those who get taken up in the prophetic oracles tend to be those who aren't going to a good place.
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So, anyhow, well, see, and the idea of being left behind comes from Matthew 24. So if you've heard that before, Jesus says that it'll be like the days of Noah. People entered the ark, they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away. So who are swept away? The wicked. The wicked are the ones taken away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field. One is taken and one will be left behind is the way that's read. And so what people often imagine is you want to be taken and you don't want to be left behind. But the logic here is, no, actually, the one taken is the one taken away in the flood. Right? So you actually want to be left behind according to Jesus. So people who use this passage to describe the righteous are going to be taken, misinterpret the saying in light of its original content.
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I get a kick out of it when I see the car. It says, in case of the Rapture, this car will be empty. Too bad for you. That's what I think.
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Yeah. Pretty dangerous. Yeah. Okay. So Jesus goes on to express this need for vigilance. Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in part in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. And that's a lesson for all of us, that we need to constantly be vigilant, that we need to be prepared for the coming of Christ. It could happen at any moment. Now some people are terrified by the thought of the Second Coming. Yet if we're living as if Jesus comes to us every week in Holy Communion, if we live in such a way that we recognize that every Sunday is the day of the Lord. Because the Lord comes, right? Comes to be present to us, if we're ready to meet him when he comes in the Eucharistic celebration, we really don't need to worry about the last day. Because as we see here, he's coming to vindicate the righteous and to save the righteous. Make no mistake about it, there will be suffering. And he who endures to the end will be saved. Which means that if you don't endure to the end. Well, you won't be saved, right? But at the end of the passage, we're filled with hope, right? Because we recognize that the Son of Man is coming ultimately to save us.
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That's so important, Michael. And I think that early on Jesus says, you will be delivered up, you know, to synagogues and to judges and you'll be handed over. And this idea of the suffering that's going to happen for the sake of my name, for the sake of being a Christian and following Jesus Christ and being faithful to Jesus Christ, the world will hate you because the world hated Jesus and you'll be hated and you're going to suffer and some of you are going to die because of that. But the idea of endure to the end, even if that end means death at the hands of the world. Endure because at the end, the Son of Man is going to come with his angels, gather his elect, and there will be a final judgment. And the death of our body is not the ultimate thing we need to fear. It's the death of our souls. We don't want to go to hell. And we know that he who made us can remake us in the resurrection. And so it's the Christian hope that even if the world turns, and the question isn't, even if it's a matter of when the world turns against us, we shouldn't abandon the faith because what the devil wants us to do is to give up our faith in Jesus Christ so that we can avoid the suffering and the tribulation aimed at Christians. And, you know, we're seeing this in a small way in our own society where people who with our cancel culture, Michael, people who are Christian might be, you know, considered as bigoted as, I mean, I think of Amy Cohen Barrett when she was up for the nomination. There was people who said faith, you know, people who accused her of being too religious. And she didn't deny her faith. She stuck with that.
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Right.
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And that's what we have to do in different parts of the world. We can't put away faith in Christ in order to avoid a short term pain. We have to play for the long game.
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And that's the lesson that comes out of A.D. 70, right, is that you had a choice. And the choice was you're either going to hear the words that Jesus spoke and flee to the mountains or you're going to try to stay and defend this temple. Now, you can imagine the kind of pressure that must have been put on those Jewish Christians. Right? Well, okay, I understand you believe Jesus Is the Messiah. Yeah. Didn't he come and worship here? Yeah, he celebrated the Passover here every year. He came up for tabernacles. Right. He came up for the feast. I'm pretty sure Jesus wants you to be here. No, no, we were told to go out to the mountains. Yeah, but this is the temple of God. I mean. Yeah, but there's also a heavenly Jerusalem. Ok, but you can't see that heavenly Jerusalem. You can see this right here. What are you doing? And so what ends up happening is in our spiritual life.
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Satan doesn't have anything of his own to tempt us with. He only has good things. He only has the things God has made. And God's made everything good. So the only way the devil can get us to fail is for us to choose real goods over even better goods. And I think what AD 70 presents for the early Christians is a challenge. Right. Are you going to be detached even from the temple? Are you going to be detached even from this sacred and holy place.
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And recognize that Jesus has already declared what's going to happen? How much trust do you really put in Jesus words? I think that's the challenge that we all have to face. How much trust do we put in Jesus's words? Do we really believe this world is passing away? Right. Do we really believe that we're not going to ultimately be saved by our savings accounts? You know, we're not. We're not. We oftentimes feel like, I can't give money to the poor because I need to put money in the bank. I need to store up a little bit more. I need as much as I can for myself right there. We're being tested in the same way that you see the Jewish disciples of Jesus being tested in and around the time of the destruction of the temple.
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A
And you think about even Peter and Paul are going to die at the hands of Nero.
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B
Yes.
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And I think that their witness, their foundation of faith strengthened the other Christians.
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B
That's right.
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And we have to be willing to sacrifice. Jesus says, unless a man denies himself, takes up his cross and follows me, you cannot be my disciple.
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B
That's right.
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A
There's no. Getting away from the fate of Jesus is our fate, and it's the fate of the church. And the church can't escape the fate of Jesus. I mean, the church thinks that sometimes when you're in a storm in an ancient ship, we hear this in Acts of the Apostles, the idea of throwing out the cargo can make the ship more seaworthy. Right. And I think a lot of people Think the church could be more seaworthy, Michael, if it could just jettison some of its teachings, some of those belief that Christians have. If we just jettison a bunch of those, well, then the church can make it through these turbulent times and these storms. But that doesn't help the church, does it?
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B
No, it doesn't. And Jesus reminds us that we need to endure to the end and not capitulate to the temptations that emerge. And in fact, that's the end of Matthew 24. He describes the faithful and wise servant who remains faithful when the Master comes, and opposed to the wicked servant who thinks, well, you know, he's not going to come anytime soon. I'll be fine. I can put it off for later. I can make excuses in the here and now. Don't need to remain vigilant. And what happens to him is he ends up in the outer darkness. He ends up where he's weeping in the gnashing of teeth, which is a reference, of course, the eternal punishment in hell.
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Yeah, we don't want that. And so hopefully that will scare the hell out of you so that you don't go there.
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We don't want that. I think, you know, Michael, just in the last minute here that the takeaways for this intense discourse of Jesus, this is he's going to face his own death in a few days at this point in the story, and he's warning us for our sake. And so, you know, what's some of the big takeaways that people should have from this?
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B
Well, I think one of the major ones is.
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Just as the temple is going to be destroyed, Jesus is going to be destroyed. Right. And so it's appropriate that Jesus is talking about the temple's destruction right before his own death. Right. And guess what? The temple, if you will, of our own bodies are going to be destroyed as well. There will come a day of judgment for all of us. And Jesus is calling on all of us to have the perspective of wisdom. Wisdom in the Old Testament is in part recognizing that you have a limited number of days. Right? And just as Jesus dies, just as the temple is destroyed, so too we will face a test and ultimately be tested. And we will have to come to terms with the fact that the Son of Man will judge us. And we will wonder, have we been the faithful servant or the wicked one.
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To call for vigilance. Michael, I like what you said. We have to be vigilant and ready for that judgment whenever that may come. And I hope that by hearing Jesus's prophetic words, and we seen it fulfilled in 70 AD and then knowing that his words about the end of the world will also be fulfilled. That we're not only vigilant, but we're faithful. That we're filled with faith and conviction. Because many who fall away have a weak faith. And we want to have the faith of that sowing of the seed right of good soil. So we really need to take God's word deep into our hearts so that we can keep the word of God and keep the faith even in difficult times. That's what Jesus wants us to do. He tells us these scary things to forewarn us and to prepare us. So may you be prepared, and may the Lord bless and keep you in the faith. God bless.