Prophesy – the great tribulation
Matthew 24:1-25
In verses 3-8, Jesus gives us a summary view of the conditions found in the church age. That many false Christ will appear, there will be wars and rumors of war and as the age comes to a close there will be nations fighting one another and famines and earthquakes will occur with increasing intensity.
After verse 8 and before verse 9, the rapture of the church will take place (Rev 3:10), the anti-Christ will be revealed (II Thess 2:6-9) and is identifies as the one who will conquer 3 of the 10 nations (Dan 7:20,24)
In Daniel 9:24-27, we have God’s timetable given to us. Verse 24 gives us the scope of God’s program for Israel.
Verse 25 we have the starting point. With the decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Neh 2:5-8), a total of 173880 will elapse, broken down by 17640 to rebuild the city and then 156240 days to inhabit the city during troubling times at which point the Messiah will enter the city. Which is recorded in John 12?
Verse 26 describes an interval time, during which the Messiah is cut off (crucified) and the city and temple in Jerusalem is destroyed and the peoples scattered. We are still in this time period.
Verse 27, describes the final 7 year period of time left in God’s time table. This is known as the tribulation and it starts when the prince of the people makes (anti-Christ) makes a peace treaty with Israel and then will break it after 3 and a half years.
Next week we will start to look at some of the detail the Bible gives us concerning the tribulation.