The Book of Mark
James J. Barker


Lesson 47
SIGNS OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST
(Part 2)

Text: MARK 13:9-27


INTRODUCTION:


1.     Last week we looked at some of the signs of the second coming of Christ (13:1-8).

2.     Our Lord said, “these are the beginnings of sorrows” (13:8), i.e., they are like “birth pangs” (Scofield margin) which will increase in frequency and intensity as the time draws near for our Lord’s return.

3.     I mentioned last week that some people teach that all of these prophecies have already been fulfilled. For example, I mentioned the fellow on the radio Hank Hanegraaff.

4.     Mr. Hanegraaff is wrong about Bible prophecy.  In fact, he is wrong about many things: he criticizes the King James Bible.  He criticizes those of us who identify the whore of Revelation 17 with the RCC.

5.     He is a phony-baloney new evangelical con man.   He is a “preterist.”

6.     Preterism is the theory that all Bible prophecy, including the Olivet Discourse, has already been fulfilled.

7.     They believe these prophecies were fulfilled in AD 70 when the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem.

8.     Preterists teach that nothing remains on the prophetic calendar. According to them, events like the rapture, the rise of the coming antichrist, the tribulation all took place around 70 AD, the year the Romans invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.

9.     Preterists allegorize or spiritualize all passages of Scripture that relate to the nation of Israel, and claim that these prophecies and promises now refer to the church, which they call “the new Israel.”

10. Last week I pointed out that Luke’s account is slightly different from Matthew and Mark’s (cf. Luke 21:20, 24; Scofield’s notes on p. 1106).

11. There are two sieges predicted.   Mark 13:2 was fulfilled in AD 70. 

12. But our Lord’s disciples wanted to know when “all these things shall be fulfilled” (13:4).

13. As the Scofield Bible says, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 “foreshadowed the more terrible day here described” (margin next to Mark 13:14).

 

I. RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION (13:9-13)

1.     The context indicates that our Lord is speaking here of Jewish believers being persecuted after the rapture, and during the tribulation period (cf. “councils” and “synagogues” in Mark 13:9).

2.     The “councils” (13:9) were Jewish disciplinary courts connected with the synagogues.

3.     W Graham Scroggie said, “The whole utterance is Jewish in complexion of whatever period we interpret it, but that it points to the end of the age seems clear from the declaration of verses 26, 27.”

4.     The context is the end of the age, or the end of this present dispensation (Mark 13:4; cf. Matthew 24:3; Rev. 6:9-11).

5.     The Bible teaches that the devil and his followers will persecute Jewish believers during the tribulation (Rev. 12:13-17).

6.     They will be persecuted by both the civil government (“rulers and kings” – 13:9), as well as the official state-sponsored church, referred to in Revelation 17:1 as “the great whore” (Mark 13:9, 11).

7.     Even their own family members and other relatives will turn against them (Mark 13:12, 13).

8.     Being dragged into court before unsaved judges will provide these persecuted believers an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel – “for a testimony” against their accusers (Mark 13:9b).

9.     The Holy Spirit will give these persecuted believers the words to say (Mark 13:11).

10.Furthermore, the antichrist will deceive the Jews, and turn against them (Mark 13:14; cf. II Thess. 2:3, 4).

11.“The abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Mark 13:14) marks the halfway point of the seven-year tribulation (cf. Daniel 9:27; 12:11).

12.Matthew 24:15is even clearer – “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:).”

13.The antichrist will persecute all believers, but he will have a special hatred for Jewish believers (cf. Rev. 12:3-8; 13:4-10).

14.Ironically, though the antichrist will hate the Jews, and he will persecute the Jews, and he will murder many of the Jews – many of the Jews will follow him and embrace him and even worship him!

15.Our Lord said, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive” (John 5:43).

 

II. WORLDWIDE EVANGELISM (MARK 13:10).

1.     I have heard Mark 13:10 (and Matthew 24:14) preached as an encouragement for Christians today to get the Gospel out.

2.     There is nothing wrong with this application, but the correct interpretation refers to the tribulation period. 

3.     In fact, Matthew 24:14 says, “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”  

4.     The “kingdom” refers to the millennial kingdom which shall follow the seven years of tribulation. 

5.     The “sorrows” (Mark 13:8) are the “birth pangs” which precede the birth of the new age – the Messianic Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

6.     “The death-agony of this age is the birth-agony of the next” (Scofield margin, next to Mark 13:8).

7.     This important prophetic discourse describes the consummation of the present age, which will prepare the world for the glorious second coming of Christ (Mark 13:24-27).

8.     Revelation 7 and 14 describe 144,000 evangelists from the twelve tribes of Israel.

 

III. WORLDWIDE TRIBULATION (13:14-23)

1.     Jeremiah 30:7 refers to the tribulation period as “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” and the Jews will certainly suffer the most.

2.     Referring to the coming tribulation, Daniel 12:1 says, “there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.”

3.     The antichrist will have a fierce hatred for the Jews, and many Jews will suffer and die during the tribulation (cf. Zech. 13:8).

4.     The Jews said to Pontius Pilate, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matt. 27:25), and they have suffered greatly ever since.

5.     The LORD will allow all of this to unfold, but He will intervene at the Battle of Armageddon (Zech. 12:2, 3; 14:2-4).

6.     God will pour out His Holy Spirit upon Jerusalem and many Jews will repent and turn to Christ (12:10; 13:1).

7.     The apostle Paul, quoting Isaiah 45:17 said, “And so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26).

8.     The emphasis on Bible prophecy is on Israel – on Jerusalem, the temple, the battle of Armageddon, etc.  

9.     However, it will be a worldwide tribulation, and the antichrist will become a worldwide dictator (Rev. 13:8).

10. The book of Revelation describes the seal judgments, and trumpet judgments, and vial judgments which will affect the entire world.

11. Revelation 9:6 says, “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.”

12. Those who teach that these prophecies were all fulfilled in AD 70, or are happening now, do not take the Bible literally (Mark 13:24, 25; cf. Rev. 6:12-17).

13. Our Lord said in Mark 13:19, “For in those days shall be affliction (tribulation), such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.”

14. He added, “And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days” (Mark 13:20). 

15. Students of God’s Word have long wondered what our Lord meant – “He hath shortened the days” (Mark 13:20).  It could very well mean that God will literally shorten the days (cf. Amos 8:9).

 

CONCLUSION:

1.     These last two weeks I have preached on the various signs that indicate our Lord is coming soon.

2.     Allow me to summarize:

·        religious deception (Mark 13:6, 6) # 1 SIGN!

·        wars and rumours of war (Mark 13:7)

·        “wars and commotions” (Luke 21:9)

·        earthquakes in divers places (Mark 13:8)

·        pestilences…AIDS, etc. (Matt. 24:7)

·        religious persecution (13:9, 11, 12)

·        worldwide evangelism (13:10)

·        worldwide tribulation (Rev. 6—19)

·        like the days of Noah, ungodliness, wickedness & violence (Luke 17:26, 27)

·        widespread homosexuality – “days of Lot” (Luke 17:28-32)

·        love of self, love of money, love of pleasure, or in other words: humanism, materialism, and hedonism.

·        “This I know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy…” (II Timothy 3:1ff).

·        one-world government & one-world religion (Daniel 7; Rev. 13 & 17)

·        the focus on Jerusalem and the nation Israel (Mark 13:15)

·        modern technology - Daniel 12:4 says that there will be an explosion of knowledge in the end times and that people will move about quickly.  “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”

·        Big government keeping track of everyone (Rev. 13).  Because of the new health care bill, and problems with illegal immigration and terrorism, Democrat politicians are pushing for everyone to get a national ID card.

·        “A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.  The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.

It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

 “The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.

·        Cf. Revelation 13:16-18.

 



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