The future tribulation

Grace to You :: Unleashing God's Truth, One Verse at a Time The Future Tribulation Scripture: Mark 13:14-23 Code: 41-67

It’s the thirteenth chapter then of the gospel of Mark. As we come to this section before us, we are with our Lord Jesus and the disciples sitting on the Mount of Olives. It is the end of the day on Wednesday of Passion Week. On Friday He will die on the cross. On Sunday He will rise. On Thursday He will prepare for the Passover and celebrate the Passover meal Thursday evening with His disciples. And that’s where the betrayal will occur, that night, and it will all come to fruition on Friday, He will be tried, He will be executed on the cross, as I said, to rise on Sunday. So in a very real sense, this is a very, very important moment for our Lord. His final day of public teaching has been concluded, spent the whole day in the temple. He arrived in Jerusalem on Monday. On Tuesday He went in to attack and assault the temple and threw out the buyers and sellers that were there and prepared that temple for His entrance on Wednesday. Went in and used that full day to teach the truth in that place, first time in hundreds of years the truth had dominated the temple. But for a day He taught His final lessons, His final messages. Then He pronounced judgment on the temple, judgment on Israel as well. He left the temple and His disciples followed Him. They went out the Eastern Gate, down the little bank, across the Kidron Valley, a little stream that runs there, up the slope to the Mount of Olives and He sat with His disciples on the Mount of Olives in the dusk of Wednesday. And they looked and they saw the temple fading in the glow of evening. This prompted a question on the part of the disciples, as you remember. They asked Him privately in verse 4 of chapter 13, “When will these things be?” That is, the destruction of the temple, “And what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?” They wanted to know about the end of the age.