NOTES for Mat 24:1-31

For two thousand years now we have been awaiting His coming. And at almost every point in history, many have been convinced that the time was near. We do not know—and cannot know—"when this will be": today or a thousand years from now. The ominous signs have been and remain evident: false prophets, wars, famine, idolatry, and love growing cold. It seems that throughout all this time the world has been living in the "last days." And, as always, people can be divided, roughly speaking, into three groups: those who do not believe that the end of the world is connected with the coming of Jesus, those who believe and are afraid, and those who believe and wait. The main themes in Christ's prophetic discourses are the severity and anguish of the final trials and the joy of the encounter. If this encounter promises nothing joyful, but only darkness and gnashing of teeth, then the Second Coming becomes a nightmare—subconscious for unbelievers and conscious for believers. This is how most people regard it. But those who thirst to see His Face read these verses of the Gospel not with terror, but with hope.