It’s later than you think.
One question we rarely hear asked today, but as an Elim pastor, it was in the air every Sunday evening: “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” I loved end-times preaching!
It’s the question the disciples asked, gazing up at the massive, immovable stones of the temple. Standing right next to them was Jesus. He saw something else. Where they saw permanence and longevity, he saw collapse. The very stones that shaped their sense of relevance, identity, worship, and safety – he said would be torn down. All of them. Not one left upon another. Total disaster. That wasn’t sensationalism. It was prophecy with a deadline. And it came to pass, quicker than they could imagine… but for a few short years things ticked over, unchanging. The status quo was what it was. Until it wasn’t.
The disciples, shaken at this announcement from Jesus, ask their tangled question – the fall of the temple (it hurt to even consider it), the return of the Messiah, the end of the age – as if it were all one and the same. Jesus gently unpicked their confusion. He speaks of war, betrayal, persecution. The gospel proclaimed across the known world. And the fall of Jerusalem as covenantal judgement. “This generation,” he says, “will not pass away until all these things take place.” At that moment, their expression must have looked much like mine when my smart friend Ben explained that, in quantum physics, a particle can behave differently simply because it ‘knows’ it’s being observed.
And we, centuries on, have watched the world crumbling, too – not just in the streets of Jerusalem, but across the flickering glow of our televisions and phones. We’ve seen cities shelled world-wide, hospitals bombed, children weeping, thousands dying at the barbaric hands of others. Every headline another groan. We are not untouched. We are just distracted. Sunday for many has become a two-hour blip – neatly packaged, swiftly forgotten. It’s not marking us. Not the way it should.
What we need is a trumpet.
Not the sound of mere routine. But the sound that arrests. That reorients. That wakes us to what matters. We need to hear again the voice of Jesus – steady, clear, unflinching – calling us to our great hope: himself. Not politics. Not optimism. Not nostalgia. Christ. And yes, there is the sound of a certain Trump that’s begun to stir global nerves anxiously again. But let’s not let that not drown out the more urgent sound – the voice of the Bridegroom saying ‘ Stay awake.’
Matthew 24 is not a puzzle or an enigma machine code to crack. It’s a radical, audacious call to faithfulness when the ground shifts, trembles and shakes.
It reminds us that Jesus didn’t just see the end. He walked through it. The city that would fall, first tore him apart. The darkness he spoke of fell on Golgotha. And still, he will return – personally, visibly, rightly. Not metaphor. Not myth. He’ll do it with unfettered power, majesty and unimaginable glory.
And perhaps, sooner than we imagine.