JESUS AND THE GREAT TRIBULATION

The simple and biblical view of “The Great Tribulation” is nothing fanciful or speculative. And it may not be an “exciting” appeal to the flesh or an excitement to the intellect to occupy the mind. The truth, I believe, is far more direct and simple and meaningful than that.

According to Jesus, the great tribulation has already happened. It happened in AD 70 when Rome attacked the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and killed millions of people. Yes, the great tribulation was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in the first century.

Jesus is the Prophet that Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy 18:15-18. He was not just A prophet, He was THE Prophet sent by God.

A prophet was one who spoke for and communicated for God. Jesus spoke with the absolute authority of God because He is God.

How do we know that He was a true prophet? One of the reasons is because He predicted the fall of Jerusalem a generation before it happened and before there was any reason to believe that it would ever happen.

In the Olivet Discourse, which was Jesus’s teaching on the Mount of Olives in answer to questions His disciples had about the fall of the temple and the end of the Jewish age. Jesus said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world until this time” (Matthew 24:21).

This was a direct reply to a direct question (Matthew 24:2-3). This was not just something Jesus brought up because it is even now yet to happen in the future. The disciples asked Him about His statement that not one stone would be left upon another when He viewed the temple. He predicted its destruction, in other words, and the disciples wanted to know when it was going to happen.

“Then Jesus went out and left the temple, and His disciples came to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, Don’t you see all these things? Truly I tell you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down. Now when He was on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:1-3).

That is how the whole teaching about the “great tribulation” came about. Jesus was answering a first century question in the first century. His words were spoken FOR us, but they were not spoken TO us. They were spoken to the people of that time concerning things that they would witness.

In spite of all of the blessings that God had bestowed on Israel as a whole, they, led by the religious leaders, rejected Jesus as the Messiah. Think of that. A religion based on awaiting the Messiah rejected Him when He came, which resulted in His death. That is what Jesus was talking about (Matthew 23:37-38).

The Jewish-Roman war occurred from approximately AD 66–70 and culminated with the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the total destruction of the temple, including all of the temple records upon which the Levitical system that developed under Moses was based.

This event was the fulfillment of much prophecy. Jesus Himself said plainly that these things would occur in the lifetime of the ones to whom He was speaking (Matthew 24:34). He was not talking to you or me. He was talking to them. Yes, it was said for our benefit because there are principles that we learn from it, as well as the fact that it reveals that Jesus could predict the future, which only God can do. But He was not warning us of anything that is still to happen in the future in this discussion. “That generation” has long passed and Jesus’s words were fulfilled. The great tribulation has already happened.

While Jesus gave no signs to look for that would herald His imminent bodily “second coming,” He did give many signs for first century believers to watch out for to know that the great tribulation—the fall of Jerusalem, the attack upon Jerusalem—was coming. When He spoke of wars and rumors of wars, and false Messiahs, and famines, and earthquakes, and persecution, He was talking about the impending fall of the temple (Matthew 24:5-9). We read about the fulfillment of these things both in the New Testament record as well as references from secular historians like Josephus.

During the reign of Claudius, there was a great famine, which was given great emphasis in the infancy stage of the early church (Acts 11:28). Acts 5:36-37 refers to the appearance of false Messiahs during that time. Jesus said to them, not to us, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that the desolation thereof has come near” (Luke 21:20).

That was THE sign that the great tribulation was about to happen. When Jesus’s followers saw the Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem, they were to leave town as fast as they could (Luke 21:21-22).

We know from history that Christians who listened to Jesus did just what He said. They escaped the destruction because they knew what to look for and they had been warned concerning what was about to happen.

Christians avoided the great tribulation by fleeing to Pella in Greece before the Roman attack. They escaped this demonstration of God’s wrath for the rejection of His Son by fleeing. These were Jewish men and women who listened to Jesus and escaped the judgment of God because they accepted Jesus as their Messiah and obeyed His commands.

When Jesus referred to the fall of Jerusalem—the great tribulation—as the “abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15), His hearers (most of them, anyway), would have recognized that phrase from the Book of Daniel and the prophecy that Daniel made (Daniel 9:26-27). This had reference to the pagan Roman soldiers desecrating and then demolishing Solomon’s temple. As a means of mockery and humiliation, the Romans even brought idols into the temple’s holy place, which would have been called an abomination in the Old Testament. All of this was the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy that “the people of the prince who is coming will destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Daniel 9:26).

The things that Jesus said in this context had absolutely nothing to do with anything still to come in the future. He was not talking about the rise of “the Antichrist,” He was not talking about things happening between nations in our day, He was talking about something that was about to happen back then. The judgment for rejecting Christ was coming upon Judaism.

Jesus did use apocalyptic and symbolic language in reference to these things. When He said in Matthew 24:29 that the “sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” that would not have been a surprise to His Jewish listeners who were familiar with the Old Testament’s apocalyptic language (Isaiah 13:10, Joel 2:10). This kind of speech is symbolism referring to the fall of nations and the opponents of God. It is not speaking about events that will literally happen in the cosmos.

Often when God brought judgment upon a nation, He described it as HIM coming upon that nation. While there will be a literal coming of the Lord at the end of time (Acts 1:9-11), the “coming of the Son of Man” in Matthew 24:30 must be interpreted in light of the context of what Jesus was talking about and the other things that He said. Here He was not talking about His bodily return, but about the fact that when the Roman armies came against Jerusalem, that was the judgment of God. And therefore God was “coming” in judgment.

We see that God “came on the clouds” to bring wrath upon Egypt (Isaiah 19:1). Using the same symbolism, Jesus came in the clouds of judgment against Jerusalem.

Revelation 1:7 is also about the coming of Jesus and judgment upon the nation of Israel when it says, “He is coming on the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him.” Those who in the first century rejected Jesus and were responsible for His murder, would see Him coming in judgment when Rome attacked the city of Jerusalem.

While the temple was still standing, in the intervening period between the death of our Lord and the fall of Jerusalem, God stated that the Old Covenant was “ready to vanish away”  (Hebrews 8:13). It completely vanished, was gone, was taken out of the way, when the temple was destroyed.

So the Great Tribulation was an event from the past that has already happened. Its fulfillment happened literally in the first century. Jesus would go on in Matthew 24 to talk about His literal, bodily return, which suggests that the great tribulation was a “type” of the end of the world and God’s final judgment upon sinful humanity if they reject Jesus. But the great tribulation itself has already happened.

The great tribulation signified the end of the Old Covenant age and the establishment of God’s true kingdom. It did not have reference to something global and eschatological as far as the world itself is concerned. That will come, but that is not what the great tribulation was.

As long as the temple stood, Jews who rejected Jesus could point to the temple and say that “we are the true children of God.” But Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ, like Jesus and Paul and Peter and all the apostles and the church in Jerusalem that started in Acts 2 were saying, “No, Christians are the true children of God.”

And the Jews who rejected Jesus held an advantage over the Jews who accepted Him as long as the temple was still standing. Because they could point to the temple and say, “Everyone knows that God set that up.” But when the temple was destroyed, God showed the world who His true children, His true chosen people are—Jews and Gentiles who accept Christ.

If you want to understand when the great tribulation would happen, all you have to do is believe the words of Jesus: “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34). All of the things He spoke about up until that statement were going to happen in the historical context of the first century.

Some say this casts a negative light on the Bible’s prophecy. On the contrary, continuous unfulfilled speculation from “prophecy experts” about the end times and how Jesus is always “coming soon” because the “signs are being fulfilled” and “the end is near” because of how bad the world is—those are the things that make a mockery of Bible prophecy.

When people are told that they need to get their lives right “because Jesus is about to come,” and then He doesn’t come during the specified time, that means that biblical prophecy failed. But biblical prophecy did not fail. And it does not fail. Because what Jesus prophesied actually happened when He said that it would.

     Bryan Dewayne Dunaway