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Pastor Lars Larson, PhD                                                                                               FBC Sermon #626
First Baptist Church, Leominster, MA                                                                            August 28, 2011
Words for children: judgment, end, second coming                                                         Text: Matthew 23:36-39; 24:1ff

The Gospel of Matthew (90)
The Announcement of Judgment upon Jerusalem

Our current progress through Matthew:

I.  Prologue (chs. 1, 2)
II.  The Kingdom Comes (chs. 3-7)
III.  The Works of the Kingdom (chs. 8-10)
IV.  The Nature of the Kingdom (chs. 11-13)
V.  The Authority of the Kingdom (chs. 14-18)
VI.  Kingdom Blessings and Kingdom Judgments (chs. 19-25)
            A.  From Galilee to Jerusalem (chs. 19, 20)
            B.  The King enters Jerusalem (chs. 21-23)
                        1.  Triumphal Entry and Cleansing the Temple (21:1-22)
                        2.  Parables of Resistance to the King (21:23-22:14)
                        3.  Conflict with the Pharisees and Sadducees (22:15-23:39)
            C.  Fifth Discourse: Kingdom Judgment, the Olivet Discourse (chs. 24, 25)
                        1.  Signs of the “End” (24:1-31)

*****************

        E.  Our Lord’s pronouncement of Judgment upon the Jewish leaders (23:1-39)

         I had hoped that we would have completed our consideration of all of Matthew 23 last Lord’s day.  We were almost successful in doing so, but I believe it would be good to give more attention to the last verses of this chapter before moving on to the very important Olivet Discourse of our Lord, which is in Matthew 24 and 25. 
         Last week we considered the words of our Lord in which He had pronounced God’s judgment upon the Jewish leaders of Judaism.  He had proclaimed seven “woes” upon them.  The Jewish leaders would encounter the judgment of God for all of the accumulated guilt of all the Jewish leaders who had killed the true prophets that God had sent to His people.  God’s wrath would come upon them to the uttermost and it would happen to them within their generation.  Matthew 23:31-36 read:

         31“Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.  33You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?  34Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35so that on you may come all the righteous bloodshed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.  36Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

Our Lord then pronounced judgment upon the city of Jerusalem, in verses 37ff:

        37“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!  38See, your house is left to you desolate.  39For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Matt. 23:37-39)

         The generation of Jewish people whom our Lord addressed would be judged for the accumulation of guilt through the centuries.  They had come under God’s curse.  They would come to ruin.  This occurred through the Lord’s instrument of the Roman armies after they had laid siege to the city and captured it in AD 70.
         The Lord Jesus made it clear that “Jerusalem” was guilty before God for repeated and horrendous crimes against the Lord’s spokesmen and representatives.  “Jerusalem” was the capital of the nation of Israel, but it was also a metaphor for the entire nation.  The Jewish people were in rebellion and defiance to their covenant God, and the curse of the covenant was now upon them.  In spite of God’s many centuries of long forbearance, Israel refused to respond to God’s prophets, and now they had rejected God’s promised Messiah. 
         The Lord expressed His great concern for His people.  He had desired that they turn to Him, but they refused.  He would have gladly cared for them and blessed them.  As a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings, the Lord would have cared for His people.  But their opportunity was now past.  God’s judgment was upon them.

         The statement that our Lord gave in verse 37 is one which is often brought into play in a great doctrinal disagreement that has waged for centuries in Christendom.  The heart of the issue is this: When God brings salvation to people, does He save them as a result of their choice born out of their free will, or rather, does God save His people wholly through His sovereign grace?  We are Reformed, which means that we understand the Scriptures to teach that salvation is wholly through the grace of God who saves His people due ultimately to His will.  This must be so, for a sinful man does not have a free will, if what is meant by that he is capable to respond to God’s invitation to salvation.  His will is free only in the sense that he is free to do as his mind and his affections incline him.  The problem is that his mind and affections are sinful, and so his will, that is, the choices he makes, are sinful also, and he has no ability in himself to change.  That people are saved by the will of God, not by man’s will, may be shown throughout Scripture.  But we might simply cite John 1:12 and 13, in which the matter is stated quite clearly:

He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.  11He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.  12But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

         This debate about man’s “free will” has raged since the early centuries of the Christian era (actually, even before that).  Fallen man does not want to accept the teaching of Scripture that if a man is to be saved, it must be due to the grace of God alone.  This matter of man’s will has continuously emerged over history as a challenge to the biblical teaching of grace alone.  One of the major opponents of grace came upon the scene in the 4th century.  His name was Pelagius.  Pelagius was born around AD 354 in the British Isles.  He was a well-educated man, fluent in both Greek and Latin, and schooled in theology.  He was generally known as a devout man who sought to live a holy life.  He traveled to Rome and soon made a name for himself.  He was a skilled orator and gathered a number of faithful followers of himself. 
         In about AD 405 Pelagius heard a quotation from Augustine, in his book, Confessions, which read, “Give me what you command and command what you will.”  Augustine believed and taught the sovereignty of God’s grace in election and predestination.  He also developed the teaching of the Bible regarding original sin, the teaching that Adam’s sin resulted in the human race becoming sinners, wholly slaves to sin unless and until God sets them free.  Pelagius reacted to Augustine’s theology, claiming, teaching, and writing that man has a free will and is able to believe the gospel apart from God’s enabling grace.  Pelagius also denied the teaching of original sin, one aspect of that being that man’s will was also corrupted by Adam’s fall into sin.  Augustine withstood Pelagius, writing and preaching in order to refute him and check his influence among Christians.  Later Pelagius traveled to Palestine, where Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate Version of the Bible, opposed him and his teaching.  Eventually Pelagius was charged with heresy and a council was convened to assess and pass judgment on his teachings.  Interestingly, Pelagius was exonerated at the first council held (the Council of Diospolis).  But later, at the Council of Carthage (AD 418), the free will taught by Pelagius was condemned as unbiblical.  Pelagianism was thereafter regarded as heresy.
         After that official finding of the churches, rather than Pelagianism falling by the wayside, it morphed into a hybrid form of heresy which much later came to be known as semi-Pelagianism.  This is the teaching that man and God can cooperate to a certain degree in this salvation effort.  Full-blown Pelagianism teaches that man can, unaided by God’s grace, make the first move toward God, and God then completes the salvation process.  Semi-Pelagianism teaches that man’s will is free, but is aided by the grace of God to believe.  Semi-Pelagianism is also a denial of sola gratia, by grace alone, as is full Pelagianism.  Semi-Pelagianism also teaches “free will”, in other words, a man by his own effort or work may be coupled with God’s grace which then results in salvation.  Another term that is often used to describe this teaching is synergism.  This is taken from two Greek words, erg, meaning “work”, and syn, meaning “together.”  Synergism describes the teaching that both man and God cooperate together resulting in the man’s salvation.  This is a denial of sola gratia, that salvation is by grace alone. 

         Now some may wonder why we take the time to describe a heresy that was dealt with nearly 1700 years ago.  It is because this error has existed in one form or another ever since the days of Pelagius.  And it is widespread today.  Interestingly, although Roman Catholicism declared Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism to be heresy, Rome itself teaches a semi-Pelagian gospel.  Rome teaches that salvation is by God’s grace, but is by the free will of man also. 

         This is one of the points of belief that cause us to regard ourselves as a Reformed church.  The word that is commonly used to describe God’s work alone is monergism, from erg meaning work, and mono, meaning “alone.”  The historic reformed position is that of monergism:  God of His own free will saves His people.  We believe in monergism.  God alone takes the initiative and saves His people by His grace.  God comes to sinners who are condemned and incapable of responding to Him due to their sin, and He illuminates their hearts and minds to the truths of the gospel.  God regenerates them, that is, causes them to be born again, thereby enabling their willing belief and compliance to the gospel.  Martin Luther said this about “free will”, so-called:

I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, My Lord, or come to Him.  But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in truth faith.

Luther debated the Roman Catholic theologian, Erasmus, on the issue of the human will.  One of Luther’s classic books, The Bondage of the Will, is a record of Luther’s arguments in this debate.  The church historian, Michael Haykin stated,

“The Reformation was not merely about justification through faith alone but, more importantly, it considered ‘...whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith.”

         A generation after the initial Protestant Reformers, Jacob Arminius arose and taught a semi-Pelagian gospel.  Those whose positions regarding the way of salvation agree with Arminius are known as Arminians.  Arminians are semi-Pelagian.  Although they may claim to believe in salvation by grace alone, it is their teaching that it is God’s grace coupled with man’s “free will” that brings about salvation.  They hold to synergism, the cooperation and contribution of both God’s grace and man’s free will, that results in salvation.  The Gospel of Arminianism is synergism, not monergism, which the Bible teaches.

         Semi-Pelagianism, or synergism, is alive and well today.  In fact, most evangelicals believe in a semi-Pelagian gospel.  They believe and teach that man has a free will, that although he is a fallen, sinful creature.  They believe that with some help from God, fallen man has the ability to freely believe on Jesus Christ for salvation.  They may claim to believe salvation is by grace alone, but in reality they do not believe the Scriptures.  They hold to the belief that God has made a plan of salvation and that it is up to man and his free will to respond to that gospel, resulting in his salvation.  This is unbiblical.  God’s Word declares that salvation is by God’s grace alone, not of any man’s works.  Salvation is of the Lord first to last. 
         Sola gratia (by grace alone, i.e. monergism) believes that in regeneration (the new birth) the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ independent of any cooperation from our unregenerate human nature.  God quickens us (makes us spiritually alive) through the outward call of the preaching of His Word.  God “disarms our innate hostility, removes our blindness, illumines our mind, creates understanding within us, turns our heart of stone to a heart of flesh resulting in a love of His Word, all that we might, with our renewed affections, willingly and gladly embrace Christ” (John Hendryx).  We believe in man’s will, but it is not free until God sets it free through the new birth.  Then and only then are we able to respond to God in faith.
         Most Christians deny this.  They are Arminians.  They are semi-Pelagian.  They believe and teach that God saves people through man’s cooperation.  This is a denial of the clear teaching of Scripture.  It takes away from the glory that is due to God alone. 
         Now they would deny that they do so.  And, they would argue that semi-Pelagianism would be a false charge leveled at them, for they claim that people are helped by God’s grace to believe of their own will.  In other words, they say that God comes to all sinners alike and gives them grace (prevenient grace) inclining them and enabling them to believe.  But then they choose whether or not to believe.  In other words, God has offered salvation, and man must do his part to receive it.  But we respond by asking,

If two persons receive prevenient grace and only one believes the gospel, why does one believe in Christ and not the other?  What makes the two persons to differ?  Jesus Christ or something else?  And that “something else” is why Calvinists believe Arminians to be synergists. (John Hendrix).

         How does Matthew 23:37 enter the argument?  Again, it reads, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”  Arminians argue that this verse teaches that the Lord did all that He could do to save these people, but that He would not “force” them.  They chose of their own free will to refuse to come to Him.  They argue, therefore, that man has the ability within himself, the free will to come to God and he has the free will to refuse. 
         But in response to their assertion, we would argue that they are asserting more than what this verse allows for them.  Our Lord did not say that they had the ability to come to Him.  What He denounced was their refusal to come to Him.  It is a false premise for the Arminians to argue from this passage that fallen man has the capability to come to Christ, if he wanted to do so.  The Scriptures are clear in this matter:

1 Corinthians 2:14.  “The natural person (i.e. a sinner uninfluenced by God’s grace) does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

Romans 8:7.  “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”

         What is being taught in Matthew 23:37 is that the Lord does not desire that people harden their hearts toward Him, even in the face of all of His overtures to them and His patient longsuffering toward them.  It is true that fallen man due to his sin cannot come to Him, but his guilt and condemnation is that he will not come to Jesus Christ for the life that is in and through Him.

         We now arrive to this last major discourse of our Lord recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.  The subject of this discourse is the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the age.  This is a passage of Scripture that is notoriously difficult to interpret.  As J. C. Ryle once wrote concerning this passage:

         All portions of Scripture like this ought to be approached with great humility, and earnest prayer for the teaching of the Spirit.  On no point have good men so entirely disagreed as on the interpretation of prophecy: on no point have the prejudices of one class, the dogmatism of a second, and the extravagances of a third, done so much to rob the Church of truths, which God intended to be a blessing.  Well says a certain divine, “What does not man see, or fail to see, when it serves to establish his own favorite opinions?”(1)

         With respect to Matthew 24, many who seem to know little about the issues at hand, quote verses from this chapter while applying them to contemporary events and times, presuming that this chapter contains a prophecy that only addresses the end times just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  We will take our time working through this chapter so that we might not only understand what the Lord was teaching in this discourse, but that we might also know what He is not teaching.

         1.  Signs of the “End” (24:1-51)

              a.  The setting for the discourse (24:1-3)

         1Jesus left the temple and was going away, when His disciples came to point out to Him the buildings of the temple.  2But He answered them, “You see all these, do you not?  Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
         3As He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?”

         The immediate setting of our Lord’s speech was the questions posed to Him by His disciples.  As they were departing from the temple mount out of the city, the disciples drew attention to the great buildings of the temple.  These men were from Galilee.  Jerusalem to them was “the big city.”  But our Lord dismissed their wonder at the buildings, for these buildings would not be standing for long.
         Our Lord first declared that these buildings would be destroyed, to the extent that not one stone would be left standing upon another.  When the party arrived at the Mount of Olives, which is perhaps a quarter of a mile from the city wall, the disciples came to Him and asked Him two questions: (1) “When will these things be?”  And (2) “What will be the sign of your coming?  And (3) What will be the sign of “the close of the age?” 
         I suspect that when the disciples asked these questions of our Lord, they assumed that they were asking of events that they believed were simultaneous with one another.  To them, the temple that stood before them would be destroyed at the coming of the Lord, and at the close of the age.  Of course we have the advantage of history.  We know that the temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 but that the Lord has not yet returned the second time.  These events for us are two separate events, and so we need to understand Matthew 24 with our understanding of history. 
         One more point of difficulty of interpretation might be based on our Lord’s own words, in which He declared that He did not know the day or hour of His return.  We should understand that our Lord in his human nature was unaware of the time of His return.  He will reveal this to His disciples in verse 36 of this chapter: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”  Of course our Lord is one person but He has two natures, a human nature and a divine nature.  This is a difficult matter to understand, but it is also an important matter.  As a friend of ours recently expressed:

         Though mystery abounds, it is clear from the biblical data that our Lord as he was in this world was a divine Person and not a human person.  He was fully man, in possession of a human soul with all the unfallen faculties of soul.  By reason of his two natures there were within him two minds, a divine and human, two capacities for emotion and affection, both divine and human, and both a divine and a human will.(2)

He did not know “the day or the hour” in His human nature, but in His divine nature, He is omniscient, even when He was manifest in the flesh in this world.

         This passage in particular is notoriously difficult to interpret rightly.  The great difficulty of this chapter lies in two areas.  First, the popular and majority opinion of Matthew 24 is that the message of the entire chapter speaks of the times just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  Many seem to disregard the context totally of our Lord’s foretelling of the destruction of that temple.  Also, they seem to be totally unaware of the fact and importance of the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem that took place in the 7th decade of the first century.  The second difficulty in interpreting this passage is determining which of our Lord’s words should be understood as referring to the events of AD 70 and at what point He began to speak of His Second Coming.  Every effort to identify the shift in our Lord’s intention contains difficulty, as we shall see.
         Actually, there are three major interpretations of Matthew 24.  The footnote in the Reformation Study Bible describes these:

         There are three basic interpretive approaches to this discourse: first,  all or most of ch. 24 (at least through v. 35) is concerned exclusively with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the “coming” of the Son of Man (24:30) is the exaltation of Jesus in heaven.  Second, all of the sermon is about the Second Coming of Christian judgment.  Third, the sermon combines the destruction of Jerusalem and the judgment of the world in such a way that it is difficult to separate the references to the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem and the Second Coming.(3)

         The first position is known as a full preterist position, which asserts that every detail of this Olivet discourse speaks to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and that it does not prophecy of the second coming of Christ.(4)  The problem with the first position is that if this were true, then the Lord failed to answer the disciples’ question.  For they clearly asked when His second coming would occur.  Verse 3 records their question, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?”
         The second interpretation of the Olivet discourse, which understands all of the Olivet Discourse as a prophecy of events at the end of the church age just prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ, is also very problematic.  For this position would also have our Lord failing to answer the question of His disciples.  They asked when the temple buildings, which were before them, would be destroyed as Jesus had foretold them.  To say that all of Matthew 24 addresses events at the second coming would leave their question unanswered.
         The third position, the one which I hold, understands the Olivet Discourse to speak both of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and of the second coming of Jesus Christ at the end of the age.  The problem with this position is identifying at what point the Lord shifts from speaking of the first century events and of His second coming.
         I might add that there is a fourth interpretation of the Olivet Discourse.  It holds that our Lord was speaking of the events of Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70, but that event was also a foreshadowing of similar events at the end of the age.  In other words, the same kinds of things that occurred leading up to Jerusalem’s overthrow would occur again in Jerusalem at the end of the age just prior to the second coming.  Although I am sympathetic with this view in some regards, namely because I highly respect those who hold this position, nevertheless, I find that interpretation of Scripture that calls for double fulfillment of prophecy is very problematic.(4)

              b.  Events that are not signs of “the end” (24:4-14)

         4And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray.  5For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.  6And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.  7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  8All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
         9“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.  10And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.  11And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.  12And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.  13But the one who endures to the end will be saved.  14And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

         Most would read these verses and look at them as “signs of the end times.”  But our Lord makes it clear that these things would occur but that they are not signs of the end.  “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet” (24:6).  These are the kinds of things that His people may expect to encounter throughout this church age.  Let us consider what our Lord said:

                    1.  First, our Lord warned His disciples of deceivers (24:4f)

         We read, “And Jesus answered them, ‘See that no one leads you astray.  For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray’” (24:4f).  There is in my mind question whether our Lord at this point was warning His disciples of false christs, or He was warning His disciples of false teachers in the church, who would affirm that He Jesus was indeed the Christ, nevertheless, they would deceive the people of God through their errant teaching.  Now it is clear that later in the passage our Lord does warn of false christs (24:14), but I do not think that is what He is doing here.  He is warning His disciples of heretical teachers.  He is telling His disciples not to be deceived by false teachers.  My position is not the common one.  Most see this as a warning of false christs.

                    2.  Second, Jesus told of the common occurrence of wars and calamities in nature. (24:6-8)

         There will be many wars that occur, but these are no signs of the destruction of Jerusalem or of the Second Coming of Christ.  Verse 6, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.”  This is what is common to human history.  Jesus said, “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.  7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  8All these are but the beginning of the birth pains” (24:6b-8).  We live in a fallen world and war has characterized the human race since the early days of history and will continue to do so throughout this age.  “Wars and rumors of war” are no signs of the second coming; they are the common experience of human history.  The same with “famines and earthquakes.”  They have always occurred and will continue to occur in history.  They are not signs that the end is near.
         Now, when our Lord says that “these are but the beginnings of birth pangs” (24:8), it might be the case that He was intimating that the intensity and frequency of wars, earthquakes, and famines would increase in frequency and severity throughout the church age, just as a pregnant woman’s labor pains become more frequent and severe as the birth of her child approaches.  But this understanding would be an assumption for the Lord does not say directly that this is what He intended by this metaphor.  Perhaps He was simply saying that just as birth pangs precede birth, so wars, earthquakes, and famines precede the day when this world will come to an end and the new creation will be come. 

                    3.  Jesus’ disciples would suffer persecution and even death, but those who persevere will be saved. (24:9-13)

         9“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.  10And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.  11And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.  12And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.  13But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

         When His disciples heard these words of the Lord, they no doubt saw them as applying to them.  Now certainly, by extension, all disciples of Jesus Christ ever since who have encountered persecution could look to these words and see that their own experience was not unusual or unexpected, but our Lord’s words were given directly to His disciples.  These words are true for all His disciples in all times.

                    4.  The Gospel will be proclaimed throughout the whole world (24:14)

 14And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

         What end?  The end of the temple and Jerusalem?  Or, the end of the age with the second coming of Jesus Christ?  In my opinion this “end” is referring to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish temple.  But was the gospel of the kingdom proclaimed to the whole world before AD 70? 
         Many argue that before the Lord returns the gospel will be preached to all people groups.  Some advocate that we should be concerned about missions and support them so as to bring about the second coming of Christ.  But probably what our Lord was speaking about was not that every people group that would ever exist in any part of the world would need to hear the gospel before the end of the world would occur, but that the gospel would spread widely into the Gentile world before the end of the Jewish temple and the Jewish system would be effectively destroyed.
         And so, I ask again the question, But was the gospel of the kingdom proclaimed to the whole world before AD 70?  Consider Paul’s words in Colossians 1:

         3“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.  Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, 6which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing--as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, 7just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant.” (Col 1:3-7)

         There was a sense in which, spiritually speaking, the end of the old covenant of the Jewish temple and sacrificial system occurred when Jesus died upon the cross.  The veil in the temple that kept the worshippers of God from the presence of God was torn from top to bottom.  But in another sense, the old system lingered on even in the minds of the early Jewish disciples and apostles until the temple was destroyed in Ad 70.   But by the time that occurred, the gospel had gone out into all the world.  IN fulfillment of our Lord’s words, He declared that the temple would not be destroyed before “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.”