What shall be the sign of thy coming?

This verse is taken from:
Matthew 24. 1-28
Thought of the day for:
5 February 2025

As the Lord Jesus left the temple for the final time, the disciples sought to draw His attention to the beauty and magnificence of the building which had been constructed over the past forty-six years under the jurisdiction of the Herods. The disciples’ interest provided opportunity for the Lord to reveal one of the most important prophetic outlines found in scripture.

He began by announcing the utter destruction of the temple, ‘not one stone left upon another’. The disciples were amazed and questions came flooding out, ‘Tell us . . . when? . . . what?’ Before addressing the questions directly, however, He spoke of conditions which would prevail in anticipation of the end times.

Many attempts have been made and much has been suggested to try and equate the Lord’s words to historical and present events. However, we need to bear in mind that the ‘coming’ referred to throughout is not the rapture of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It has often been taught, and rightly so, that the present church age is not the subject of prophecy. The Lord is here speaking of events leading up to His return‘with power and great glory’, Matt. 24. 30; Rev. 19. 11-16. There is no doubt that history is scarred by false Christs, wars, famines, and earthquakes; these, however, are not the ‘signs’ referred to in our chapter, but rather, a marked intensity of these things will follow the rapture of the church as the seals are broken in Revelation chapter 6.

The Lord then outlined a timetable of events which will accompany those days of tribulation, yet future, of which the scripture clearly speaks. It is important to understand that before that time commences the church will be gone, 1 Thess. 5. 9; Rev. 3. 10. Jeremiah the prophet calls those days ‘the time of Jacob’s trouble’, Jer. 30. 7, hence, the context of Matthew chapter 24 is clearly Jewish and relates to conditions on earth, and particularly in the Middle East, centred upon Jerusalem. The latter part of the seven years of tribulation, which concludes the remarkable prophecy of Daniel chapter 9, will be marked by events or signs which will clearly indicate to the suffering nation of Israel the imminent return of their Deliverer, their once-rejected Messiah, the Son of Man.

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